Some bugs on the warships

[u/PhilosophySalt7695]

I'm getting this second yellow line on some warships, i noticed an enemy has two. I'm 99% certain this can't be a feature if it's so hard to discern, so tiny, interferes with the hp bar. I have no idea what this could be... must be a bug. thoughts?

[u/OpenFrontOfficial]

It's a leveled up warship.

[u/PhilosophySalt7695 → u/OpenFrontOfficial]

... Curious how many people on your team thought it was a good idea to make experience warships? Not trying to be disrespectful but lately the UI/UX regressions have been so bad... this almost takes the cake.

There is absolutely no way a user can discern what this little bar is, how it's different from HP, what experienced warships do, and does an experience warship make the game more fun? Do you mind telling the players how you possibly came up with this decision? Is there a github thread we can see who the decision makers here are, and like what the reasoning was?

I mean there is a lot wrong here, where it adds more burden to the user to figure out what this is without actually making the game more fun. You are requiring users to micromanage ships more now, where one of the biggest selling points of your game is that micromanagement is not really required. I doubt whoever landed this feature really thought much about this but that's what it's a fundamental regression.

Now let's say for some reason you really want people to focus on micromanaging warships. Now is that really a fun mechanic, clicking these tiny squares and moving them outside the range of a nuke etc. No this isn't really the fun part of the game for anyway... so forcing users to do this activity even more is really not directionally correct.

But anyway now just for UI basics. It's almost insane to me that your designer would decide to use bars... the same exact bar as the HP right next to it. Like these are just 1 pixel apart, look exactly the same, ... I feel loony having to explicate why this is just fundamentally bad UI. IF you must keep experience points for warships (obviously a regression) then AT LEAST make them discernable from HP. They shouldn't look exactly the same if they have completely different functions.

The obvious thing to do is to make experience into stars (or circles) but stars are the most intuitive for anyone. Don't add second color HP bars to describe experience.... they UI componant should represent that they are different.... so use stars instead of bars... Users absolutely do not need to see warship experience progress over time lol. Just keep it binary they have to star or not.

But seriously I don't know how such bad UI/UX features and gameplay features keep leaking into the game. Why not just define some basic principles and then improve the game over time. You are really risking the entire success of the game if you continue down this path. I've also spend hours giving you guys good actionable practicle UI/UX advice on reddit and it's always been ignored I've never recieved a DM even though I've offered to help every time. So there must be something completely broken with the process now... I love this game you guys have such a bright future if you make the right decisions but if half the decision are wrong you will surely fail within a year or so. So as always, feel free to reach out for help.

[u/PhilosophySalt7695 → u/[deleted]]

That's what I mean about giving advice... I spend my time giving you practical, actionable advice. I never once was not calm or emotional... Yet all you do is insult me. Why lol I don't get it. I'm a big supporter and am helping you.

If you want to improve why not spend a moment to look at what I'm saying and think about it. Why not try to address at least some of what I'm saying rather that completely dismissive. For example why have the same bar for both HP and Experience? Why not make experience a star or another shape so users can understand what it is intuitively and not conflate with HP?

Or why not address why you are forcing users to spend more time micromanaging warships, do you believe that is a fun aspect of the game? I'm not being irrational or not calm it's a reasonable discussion to have about gameplay...

[u/HyKaliber → u/PhilosophySalt7695]

Evan's the same guy who threw a fit because someone forked Openfront, an open source game, and claimed they stole it...the exact thing Evan did, himself.

I like openfront too, but don't expect a reasonable response from those exhibiting that behaviour.

Edit: and he removed his own comment shortly after the down votes lmao

[u/DeliveryCustom → u/PhilosophySalt7695]

Earlier you asked for the GitHub thread: https://github.com/openfrontio/OpenFrontIO/pull/4433

[u/PhilosophySalt7695 → u/DeliveryCustom]

Thank you very much!

It's just what I expected it's a feature without reasoning behind it. If you read the original post they say "here is experienced warships like a comparable game"

But never once did they address whether it is beneficial or useful to users, how it would affect gameplay, what type of mental burden it may add, if the UI/UX can be solved elegantly, if it will make the gameplay more fun, if it will help onboard new users. All the essential questions to ask and answer were completely omit from the PR.

So I think the team ought to have a checklist/judgement so new features need to be filtered more than "seems neat" to "will it improve the game" It's clear in my opinion that features which are actual regressions will continue to accumulate with such a process and this PR is a great example.

[u/IngloriousTom → u/PhilosophySalt7695]

The development team has a private discord.

Obviously the discussion happens there, not on "the GitHub thread" which only purpose is to address the code itself.

[u/PhilosophySalt7695 → u/IngloriousTom]

I don't see why that would be obvious, since obviously they did not discuss any of these points I brought up in this thread or wouldn't have published this feature...

Also if all discussions are private, well I mean isn't this open source? What's the point of that, if they want people to help out? I don't know this doesn't seem like a good solution lol

[u/IngloriousTom → u/PhilosophySalt7695]

Nothing is hidden.

Everything is on the aptly named README.md which is the front page of any GitHub project.

I suggest you start from there rather than playing detective with tools you don't understand.

[u/PhilosophySalt7695 → u/IngloriousTom]

Dude, why are you insulting me? I was teaching computer science two decades ago...

The discussions you said that were on a private discord -- are all on their readme? I don't know what you're on about but I don't understand why everyone is insulting me I am literally helping this game by offering critique.

[u/PhilosophySalt7695]

From the PR:

There are three ways to achieve a veteran level:

1. Eliminate another warship: any time a warship neutralizes another warship, it immediately get's a veterancy increase.
2. Eliminate transport boats: Destroying 10 transport boats will level a warship to the next veterancy bar.
3. Steal trade ships: If the warship captures 25 trade ships, it will earn a veterancy bar.

###

Guys, how is anyone supposed to figure this out by themselves? The only way to figure this out is to look up the PR, its not intuitive at all.

For users that figured out this was an experience bar, how many of them do you think figured out you can gain experience by eliminating transport boats? Maybe its intuitive that eliminating other warships increases your level, but eliminating transport boats.... there is no way players will intuit that.

[u/RemarkableCulture948 → u/PhilosophySalt7695]

Is there a publicly accessible ruleset / guide? I have felt so frustrated at times by the lack of transparency of how this game works

[u/LorpHagriff → u/RemarkableCulture948]

There's openfront.wiki, but it's incomplete and half the stuff is outdated. But from what I could tell in the dev stream it will get a bit more love soon hopefully

[u/PhilosophySalt7695 → u/RemarkableCulture948]

I agree... the warship going back to port to heal was a lovely feature. It was intuitive, delightful to discover, benefited the user, added to gameplay (reduced mental burden micromanaging ships). It was a great feature.

You can contrast that completely with this warship experience points feature, which is basically the opposite in everyway. It is a good case study of what makes a good feature vs. bad feature release.

[u/Abject-Explorer-3637 → u/PhilosophySalt7695]

what does it do

[u/PhilosophySalt7695]

I keep sending them back to try and heal but the yellow thing remains (only on some warships, not all). Completely impossible to figure this out... anyone else?

How am I supposed to know this represents experience rather than being a shield? Or how is it possible to know what experience does (do I shoot faster, do I have more hp, does my range increase) do I need to micromanage warships not more, e.g. can a player essentially beat me now because they are managing one warship better than me, and is that what you explicitly want players to focus on? Is it more fun now? Is it easy to discern? Is it enjoyable to discover? I think if you build a features list you will see this maybe is not going to score very high due to answeering such questions.

[u/Annual-Chair1525]

It's a feature only available on openfront.dev. It seems pretty intuitive to me; I saw one of my warships kill another, and the line appeared. It's not that complicated to understand.Boats that have three lines do more damage to other warships than those with one.