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Important UI things missing in 1.0 to make it really polished!


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There's still no reason why you couldn't send craft to them. I mean, the notification effectively act like blockers peppering the geoscape with little areas you can't set destinations in.

Also, as mentioned earlier, there really needs to be a way to split up a group of fighters (or indeed join them up to attack a ufo together). Right now you have to send them back to the base (where they may or may not be temporarily grounded) and send them out as a group - or tag team a ufo which can be much more inconvenient.

Yup, that's a weakness of the game for me as well. Sadly it won't happen though.

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eobet has a valid point in that the window which pops up after you click on Launch Interceptors (which yes, should be called Launch Aircraft), can block the actual UFO icon. It's annoying, but it's a minor thing as you can send fighters by clicking on UFOs directly, without ever resorting to Launch Interceptors. Alternatively, I suppose you can use the arrow keys to pan the map left and right, to get the pop-up out of the way.

Launch Interceptors is not a useless button, however, as it enables you to send aircraft to empty spots on the map.

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I think of it more as a feature than a bug. It means that before I scramble all my interceptors in a single squadron to go after a UFO, I need to consider whether I really need that much firepower and what I will do if two more UFO's pop up.

But before you have the alien communications structure, it's difficult to anticipate which craft you need to attack as a group, and when there is a half dozen or so UFOs, you really don't want to group craft together since you know you can't split them up again. I think the inability to split up a squadron is too hard to sell as a feature when there are so many times when you want to do it and you know that in reality there would be nothing stopping you from doing that.

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But before you have the alien communications structure, it's difficult to anticipate which craft you need to attack as a group, and when there is a half dozen or so UFOs, you really don't want to group craft together since you know you can't split them up again. I think the inability to split up a squadron is too hard to sell as a feature when there are so many times when you want to do it and you know that in reality there would be nothing stopping you from doing that.

Really wanting to do something doesn't mean it has to be possible. It just means you have to make strategic decisions, and yes, sometimes guess. And there doesn't always have to be a real-life justification.

The air game would certainly be easier if you could split and merge squadrons that are already out, but I don't think that's necessarily a good thing.

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Max, you are right that it's bit too late to be trying to change the game, but almost none of these are game mechanics changing suggestions. It's all just UI improvements and polish. And let's be frank, this game sorely lacks polish (except the cover system). I've been playing it since alpha and it's still basically the same wonky game, regarding player comfort when playing.

It does reming me greatly of the original XCOM in that regard, but it's 2014 for crying out loud. I understand Chris and his team are completely fed up with the game after spending so many years developing it in that horrible horrible engine. But all this final polish is what would change the game from good experience to great experience.

After almost a year of saving the game experience for final version, I finally got to play it in it's (almost) complete state this week. I've spent over 30 hours playing it (having a job really screws with my game time :) ) and it's great experience from nostalgic standpoint, but not from gameplay one. Not having crucial mouseover information (all base buildings, some weapons, ie Magstorm) is annoying. Not having proper mouse & keyboard controls like those in OP is annoying. Not being able to click on the geoscape events is annoying (and it would be great to be able to send a plane there just by clicking on them). And when I decided to scout with a plane I was unable to find the damn button to send it out even though I read about it on the forums day before! It was all understandable in alpha and beta, when there were more important things to finish, but now is the proper time to critique their absence.

Another thing would be today's episode with trying to leave soldier equipment screen before base assault. That brought me a regular headache. I think this right now is the most important time to improve player experience with this awesome game. Most people who try it won't see how great it is, over not being able to enjoy it through crappy controls and UI.

Edited by Shima
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UI improvements aren't trivial, though. There's no "just" about it.

(Not saying, in an ideal world, I wouldn't like the game fully polished too. But given there's no stated plans to be working on the game after tomorrow, I think it's safe to say that it's not going to happen.)

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Yes, I know that the possibility of having any UI improvements now is basically zero. It seems to me that changing anything in this game completely breaks it from the development reports on the forums, so it's great achievement to have it done as it is.

But it still doesn't change the fact that the game feels way worse than it is.

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As I said, I wasn't disputing the polish would be welcome (although, honestly, a lot of the stuff that's been brought up doesn't really bother me. I can only assume I'm too used to it to care!) and indeed I'm not sure anyone would disputing that point.

But I think it's got to the point where criticism is nothing more than just criticism. Which is fine - there's nothing with criticizing the game. But it's probably not helpful to be presenting that criticism as if there's anything that can be done about it. Because there isn't (massive U-turn by Chris notwithstanding).

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And there doesn't always have to be a real-life justification.

That wasn't the point I was really making. The problem is that there are recurrent situations when you really want to join and divide squadrons and there's no real game-play/strategic reason why you shouldn't be able to. It doesn't feel like a feature, it feels like an oversight or a bug or something yet to be addressed. All you can do is put up with the arbitrary limitation and shake your head in annoyance.

On a tangential note, something else that I think is frustratingly wrong is the fact that you can't reassign airborne interceptors without going through their dialogue box. There's a squadron of 2 interceptors on their way back to the base and a new ufo pops up on the radar with its dialogue box but you can't hit the 'intercept' button and send airborne craft. Why?

Edited by Tiktaalik
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That wasn't the point I was really making. The problem is that there are recurrent situations when you really want to join and divide squadrons and there's no real game-play/strategic reason why you shouldn't be able to. It doesn't feel like a feature, it feels like an oversight or a bug or something yet to be addressed. All you can do is put up with the arbitrary limitation and shake your head in annoyance.

It kinda seems like it is your point, though--as I said, it introduces a strategic component to air combat and makes you think a bit about how you scramble your interceptors. Maybe you even let the situation develop for a bit before sending any aircraft. Limitations like that make the game more interesting once you get over the fact that you can't do everything that you want to do. I agree that it would be nice if the intercept window would let you redirect squadrons/craft already in flight, though.

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There are an infinite number of arbitrary limitations you could place on the player, literally. I wouldn't call them all 'strategic'. Obviously there are a lot of limitations to the player in the battlescape, for instance, but they're pretty much all because of it's turnbased nature. The geoscape is real time, so it should play more realistically. The inability to break up or rejoin squadrons doesn't fit with the mechanics of the game.; it doesn't make any sense.

Limitations for their own sake don't make challenging games good challenging games.

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There are an infinite number of arbitrary limitations you could place on the player, literally. I wouldn't call them all 'strategic'. Obviously there are a lot of limitations to the player in the battlescape, for instance, but they're pretty much all because of it's turnbased nature. The geoscape is real time, so it should play more realistically. The inability to break up or rejoin squadrons doesn't fit with the mechanics of the game.; it doesn't make any sense.

Limitations for their own sake don't make challenging games good challenging games.

By the same token, getting rid of them for arbitrary reasons ("I don't like it") doesn't make it a better game. And this one does happen to force the player to make a strategic decision, whether you like making that decision or not.

It doesn't make sense for the knight in chess to only be able to move in an 'L', passing over other pieces. It (apparently) breaks the rules of the game, none of the other pieces work like that, it's not intuitive; in short, it just doesn't fit. It's an arbitrary limitation. There may be many times that I wish that knight could move differently or act differently, but that's not how the game is played.

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Well there are alternate rulesets for chess. Fairy chess.

This limitation doesn't make you make strategic decisions, it just makes you guess and hope her magesty RNG is smiling on you this time. In this case getting rid of this limition would make it a better game.

Edited by Tiktaalik
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I have to agree with Tiktaalik on this.

The added layer of 'strategy' seems to me nothing more than the strategy of how to deal with a missing feature in the game. It is a random nature. The reason you should be allowed to is not some arbitrary whim, it is because it would make a better gameplay experience, and is based on a very basic element of realism.

You're still sending multiple fighters, burning up fuel and having them out of the way if something else happens or out of fuel.

To me the limitation currently placed means you generally need to send all your fighters to one UFO in case you need all, which is akin to how in the new Firaxis XCOM Enemy Unknown you could only pick one of three abduction sites (which added a layer of 'strategy' to the game as you had to choose which one to do). I think we can all agree that was a stupid limitation and the same gameplay (nations having panic increase) could have been achieved in better ways, like here with more attacks than you can handle, and I think this one is a stupid limitation too for the same reason. The 'mechanic' of choosing where your fighters go and who to intercept is still there - missiles still used, fuel still running out - but a small QOL addition that stops me losing immersion in the game and makes it slightly easier to manage your interceptors? Yes please!

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It was suggested a long time ago but would have involved rewriting a lot of the code around how squadrons worked.

At the time it wasn't seen as important by the devs and very few of the community at the time asked for it.

It boils down to the reason that you cannot do it is because the devs didn't want you to be able to and were never convinced by the players that they should change their mind.

If people had been vocal about the system a year ago, or even six months ago, then then this could have been changed.

That is one beauty of being involved in early access, if you really don't like a feature of a game then you can campaign to have it changed before it is set in stone.

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Hm, may I say something? Looking at the discussion about dynamic squadrons there seems to be an underlying assumption that not having dynamic squadrons is a design decision, but I don't think that's quite true.

This is only something that a long-term forumite such as myself would know, but if you go back through the forum history the specific request that squadrons could split up and re-join has been asked on and off since build 10-11 which is almost, what, 3 years? It has been resisted each time on technical grounds, there was a post that explained why and I can't seem to find it. But from the posts Chris has made on the subject, creating dynamic squadrons seems to be a considerable amount of work. I'm not in a position to determine whether the amount of work required is small or big - Chris says it is, but a harried developer who wants to crack on with the work might say anything. But the reason why you can't re-form squadrons isn't the result of sticking the design document, it's far more the developers looking at creating dynamic squadrons and deciding their efforts were better spent elsewhere.

Edit: Ninja'd AGAIN.

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I think the original explanation may have been on the old forum, tied in with the reason aircraft couldn't hop between open hangars but were linked tot heir home hangar.

The work involved in changing the system would have to be justified and balanced against the rest of the work that needs doing just to get the game finished and out the door.

If only a couple of people want something changed and the effect of the change would not bring major improvements then I would say it is right to leave the system alone.

After all the current system does the job and isn't broken, it is just not perfect.

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I'd just like to respond to a couple players who have commented that launching a squadron is done blind until you have the Quantum Cryptology Center, and that you don't know what kind of air power is needed until that point. This simply isn't true. There are only a handful of UFO types in Xenonauts, and you can distinguish between them reliably without any additional intel. Air superiority UFO's can always be differentiated from primary UFO's, whether they're flying independently or escorting a primary craft. The primary craft can be differentiated by their size.

Certainly, the situation in the air can change when new detections occur, and you might want to change your squadron deployments in response to that. When it comes to any specific engagement, though, you should always know what it takes to bring down the enemy, unless you're dealing with a new enemy or have new tech on your side.

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That's right. I haven't encountered large UFOs yet (landing ship is the latest class), but so far all I've needed to know to determine which type I'm dealing with is size and speed. And you can tell which contacts are fighters simply because they have a unique icon on the geoscape.

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@Max_Caine, Gauddlike: to me, the more important question at this point than "why is it like this" is "how should I react?" Whether it was a design decision or a technical restriction doesn't really matter to me at this point. I think we all know that can't change, so saying that it should be different is beyond pointless. Discussing how to deal with this limitation (whether we like it or not) is much more useful.

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I can totally accept the idea that this is a limitation from the way the game is coded, rather than a design decision, and I think I assumed that's what it was. And it's obviously not a huge deal, just a frustration that arises when ufos are coming thick and fast. I just wanted to dispute the idea that this would be a desirable way of doing things as opposed to a more realistic arrangement.

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@Max_Caine, Gauddlike: to me, the more important question at this point than "why is it like this" is "how should I react?" Whether it was a design decision or a technical restriction doesn't really matter to me at this point. I think we all know that can't change, so saying that it should be different is beyond pointless. Discussing how to deal with this limitation (whether we like it or not) is much more useful.

Just giving a bit of background so people have the full picture.

I feel that is quite important and can help move the discussion along when it gets bogged down.

Nothing in the game is going to change unless it somehow becomes utterly broken so background, perception, and how to handle the situation now are all we can really discuss without drifting off into 'it would have been nice if...' territory.

I think we have covered those three aspects quite nicely ;)

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I was very excited to at long last read about the 1.0 release of Xenonauts, so I could finally play it!

However, immediately several issues popped up... I'm probably going to add to this list as I play:

  • No radar sweep or pulse graphic on the map, or explanation in base on how to improve efficiency of the radar. How often does it (try to) detect something? Does building another one help?

  • Why are there no Xenopedia entries on base facilities? How DOES that radar work? Should I build another one? I have no idea currently!

  • No middle mouse click drag to pan the view in combat? THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT!!

  • No tooltip to explain what the different stats represent in the soldier list.

  • No obvious button to select next soldier with unissued orders... perhaps highlight the small 1-8 stat buttons with a orange colored border until the guy has received at least one command?

  • When marine dead zones, storms and other events are reported, I cannot send aircraft to scout the areas by clicking on those zones, which I should be able to... otherwise, why mark them on the map with mouseover highlights at all?

  • In fact, how DO you send out aircraft to patrol? In X-com, all aircraft had a small radar which helped with Ufo discovery, and you could manually patrol regions with high activity... how do you do that here?

  • I see my forecast change for monthly income is negative, but there is no tooltip explaining why and I can't click on it to get more information. Mousing over countries just says the same negative stat, but with no real explanation... where are the graphs from X-com showing alien activity?

  • Double clicking on an unassigned soldier with still not full health in the soldier list doesn't take me to his equipment screen. Bug!

  • I chose two aircraft to intercept an ufo, and another one popped up. Now I can't split my two aircraft!

  • Manual combat is unfortunately poorly explained. For auto combat it was 100% win chance according to the UI, yet when I entered manual combat and just let it play out, I lost. Yet I saw my plane fire missiles and shoot... I even clicked evasive roll a few times... yet this happened over and over again... auto combat gives me 100% win, manual gives me 100% loss... what should I have done?

  • Night missions don't look like it's dark at all. The original UFO was much darker. I can't even see where my soldier's aim is supposed to end, as the tutorial popup mentioned. Also, why not add a blue, moonlit palette shift to the night missions?

Also, I cannot explain this:

2rPazOu.jpg

Intuitively, in the left image I should be able to hit the alien, and in the right one I should not. So how can I plan ahead when the cover system doesn't appear logical to me?

The game looks and sounds lovely, it has a very good atmosphere and vibe around it, but all in all, imo, it's not 1.0 yet, and I'm very sad to hear the news that development has ended apart from fixing "stability". :(

I really hope that last statement doesn't turn out to be true, though.

Dont forget Buttons!!!

there are buttons for everything but the system menu and pause in air battles!

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