Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #74 - UX Improvements

[Cagallo]

1) That is correct! This is the tooltip for it:
View attachment 946064

Great, thanks for the clarification! My only wonder is whether the most informational indicator is "trade revenue after tariffs" or simply "tariffs" (which is what I meant). The first indicator is just what the shopkeepers earn in the trade center (good for them), but the second is what the public budget is getting out of the trade, which maybe I care more as a strategic player.

Usually I spent a lot of time looking at this tooltip below (other people too?)... maybe it can be incorporated in this screen you are showing so it can be seen more directly.

 

[ruhrbaron]

Super nice changes but would you mind going further and adopting most of the ones made by the more spreadsheets mod?https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2884035975

Really excited for 1.2 - the QoL, economy and UI improvements look very promising so far

 

[Oglesby]

What is the fascination with buttons that appear to be not needed.

In this pictures we have added the + in square button a few places such as in the Construction Interaction panel that you presented. Currently it appears this button serves two purposes that can be moved from the button and just put onto the row to which the button was attached. These actions are add building to queue and as an anchor/target for the tooltip. Is there reason we couldn't just remove the "+" button in these cases saving some real-estate and just click the row of information?

The tooltip and button action works for the things on the top bar, I don't need an extra indicator the pound and +7.35K (note: this K should be lower case) to be able to open the budget screen or see the tooltip for it.

Spoiler: Plus button

Same here with the Arrows, in this case if I click on fragile Unity it opens the panel about it, but I just cannot click the Journal Entries bar but need to click the arrow. Same with e construction information, please let me just hit the bar.

Spoiler: Arrows

This can also be seen in the general/admiral panel when looking at the battalions/flotillas where clicking the picture and the bar that has arrow button could have been enable as the target area for click. Interesting thing here is that we can click the whole box for the individual battalions and it takes us to the Barracks in Shandong (and has a context menu to increase / downsize barracks).

Spoiler: General Panel

The last type of button that I will mention is the "Go to Details screen" buttons in tooltips clicking on the area that you hover to get the tooltip should perform that action. Don't make me lock the tooltip (wasting time or adding another click), move to the button and then click.

 

[Brinf]

Great changes but I think this also needs addressing as per the new law changes. Playing Command Economy as a communist country becomes impossible. It goes like this:

Vanguardist forms a Communist Party. Vanguardist wants to make command economy. Command economy required autocracy. Autocracy disables parties. Therefore, Communist Party abolishes itself when it passes its own laws. A little absurd and game breaking IMO.

How to fix: allow parties to exist in an autocracy UNLESS autocracy is an absolute monarchy, chiefdom, or theocracy. An autocratic Council Republic will still have parties, but the ruling party cannot change. Or, alternatively, parties outside of government are disallowed and disabled under autocracy (but ruling party stays, as long as it is a Republican government). Since the ruling party is an ideological umbrella group of interest groups, these interests groups can come and go in government while the Party cannot.

This not only fixes the problem illustrated above, but gives more playthrough difference between an autocratic republic and an autocratic monarchy.

 

[TripleAgent]

What is the fascination with buttons that appear to be not needed.

In this pictures we have added the + in square button a few places such as in the Construction Interaction panel that you presented. Currently it appears this button serves two purposes that can be moved from the button and just put onto the row to which the button was attached. These actions are add building to queue and as an anchor/target for the tooltip. Is there reason we couldn't just remove the "+" button in these cases saving some real-estate and just click the row of information?

The tooltip and button action works for the things on the top bar, I don't need an extra indicator the pound and +7.35K (note: this K should be lower case) to be able to open the budget screen or see the tooltip for it.

Spoiler: Plus button

Same here with the Arrows, in this case if I click on fragile Unity it opens the panel about it, but I just cannot click the Journal Entries bar but need to click the arrow. Same with e construction information, please let me just hit the bar.

Spoiler: Arrows

View attachment 946079

This can also be seen in the general/admiral panel when looking at the battalions/flotillas where clicking the picture and the bar that has arrow button could have been enable as the target area for click. Interesting thing here is that we can click the whole box for the individual battalions and it takes us to the Barracks in Shandong (and has a context menu to increase / downsize barracks).

Spoiler: General Panel

View attachment 946082

The last type of button that I will mention is the "Go to Details screen" buttons in tooltips clicking on the area that you hover to get the tooltip should perform that action. Don't make me lock the tooltip (wasting time or adding another click), move to the button and then click.

Agreed with all of this, especially the new construction bar; I wish we could just click on the icon to go to the type of construction we want to access, rather than having to click the unnecessary arrow and then sometimes have to click again to switch to the construction queue we want.

And re: the army menu, is there any reason why those boxes have to be so large with so much empty space? the amount of space above and below the information in that infantry box makes it so much more of a hassle to see the information that we need, its height could easily be halved while portraying the same information. That "waste of space" is a kinda common complaint I have about the UI, but the army screen is almost certainly the most annoying example for me.

Edit: For the person that respectfully disagreed with me, what's wrong with having functional buttons and efficient use of space?

 

[Redcollie]

Loving the new redesign, but noticing an issue with the beta - None of the interest groups seem to back cooperative economy, so it can't be passed into law. Labor Unions, Communist, and Anarchist ideologies do not support it, so wonder if there is something I am missing, or if this was an oversight for this beta?

 

[Bearjuden]

Pop Needs

Another fully reworked panel is the Population overview, which now gives you more information about who your Pops are, how many they are, how much money they make, what they spend it on, and how much that goes to increasing/decreasing their Standard of Living (the last one not included in the screenshot, but visible without scrolling when the Taxes and Needs sections are collapsed).

So, I see better mapping of "this good is being bought this much". But I'm not seeing so much of "these goods are being bought to service this need". For example, we can see that pops are buying services, transportation, and automobiles, but not how that fits into their free movement needs. This I think still needs to be addressed, because it is effectively (if not actually?) impossible right now to work out "okay, I can reduce the price of good A by making more of good B to meet pop needs". I can see that pops are buying a lot of liquor, but the gap from "liquor is expensive" to "I don't actually need more liquor, since I can address the intoxicants need with other goods and allow my grocers to focus not on liquor" has yet to be bridged it seems.

and given the transition between two Map Modes a configurable fade in/out to make it smoother.

Oh thank god it's configurable because I did not personally like that gif you shared of the fade-in. But I am glad to see new maps, and many other changes!

 

[Melange_Thief]

Here's a question for the devs: When are you going to fix the utterly atrocious map problems there are in the Pacific Northwest so I can start playing the game finally?

 

[Don_Quigleone]

Would it be possible to create a menu where we can see all the possible trade routes I can make for just 1 specific country?

Example: I want to bring Portugal into my market, so I want to increase trade volume with Portugal specifically. Currently I have to go through every single good and look for Portugals name on the list, a highly tedious process. It would be better if I could see a list of what's most profitable between my country and Portugal. So I might see that the biggest profit between our markets will be fabric, followed by dyes, followed by Steel, and I'd accordingly make those trades.

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

A small (but beautiful?) request for the Population tab. The Taxes dropdown is currently sorted by size:

I find this a little bit annoying since I have to actually read the labels, which is an extra mental step when comparing strata or considering tax changes.

I think it would be better to sort the taxes in alphabetical order. That way, any player with more than a few hours' experience would be able to get the info at a glance (reading the labels would not be necessary) and can easily compare strata. New players would be no worse off.

I completely understanding sorting by size for longer lists (such as the Population Needs list), where you want to make sure that people don't have to scroll for important items. But this is only a three-item list, so that's not an issue here.

 

[Fawr]

This is a great list of changes, and I'll need to look at pops more in the beta (I never noticed those changes).

Great, thanks for the clarification! My only wonder is whether the most informational indicator is "trade revenue after tariffs" or simply "tariffs" (which is what I meant). The first indicator is just what the shopkeepers earn in the trade center (good for them), but the second is what the public budget is getting out of the trade, which maybe I care more as a strategic player.

Usually I spent a lot of time looking at this tooltip below (other people too?)... maybe it can be incorporated in this screen you are showing so it can be seen more directly.
View attachment 946073

They are currently talking about pop revenue. In my beta game the numbers went negative when I increased tariffs.

 

[hagerhink]

Great work team!

Sadly, no credit to my Visible Pop Needs mod (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2898482972)

Oh, I am so sorry, accidental omission from my end! Will update the post!

 

[lilunxm12]

On both Mac and Windows(DX12), my keyboard pause isn't working, whether the original space or rebind to anything else. I don't see other people complain that, am I the weirdo here?

 

[DragonAtma]

Yeeeees. More ways to make it easier for Greater New York [All States Independent mod] to absolutely dominate the world! I do have a few suggestions, though:

(1) Make an incorporation map mode. Dark red for not incorporated, light red through light green for currently incorporating, and dark green for fully incorporated. No, it's not usually an issue, but as Greater New York I have over a hundred states scattered around the world, so it'd be nice to see at a glance where I need to hit the Incorporate Now button.
(2) When listing radicals and loyalists, please include the percentage that's radical/loyalist instead of just the absolute number. Some countries lean more towards one poptype or another, so percentages make it easier to see what needs work and what doesn't.
(3) If you're making a green/red map for which nations accept a diplomatic offer, why not make obligation-only acceptances yellow instead of green?
(4) Include the rank icon for "Select general for naval invasion". Surely I'm not the only one who uses Promote Officer to designate who's best in combat!

 

[hagerhink]

What is the fascination with buttons that appear to be not needed.

The main reason is "Players more often than you think miss that some buttons are buttons". We saw this time and time again when doing user research, both from new players and experienced PDS veterans. The arrow navigation buttons solved most of those problems.

In addition to this, for the Construction Map Interaction the reason was two-fold:
1) We wanted to be able to both queue a construction and navigate to the details panel for that Building, not just queue
2) We wanted to make sure that it was easy to move your mouse cursor into the tooltip if you wanted to dig deeper into it, which a button for the entire list item made much harder to get right

For the Construction Widget in the Outliner, it was also two-fold
1) We wanted to be able to Pause/Unpause the queue from the Outliner, and to be able to navigate to the Construction panel
2) We wanted it to align neatly with the rest of the Outliner
However, after looking at the result of this, and listening to the feedback we got from internal testing and the Open Beta, this will be changed in the upcoming release.

 

[n1k1t00]

I would really like to see the opportunity to receive notifications about revolutions and the beginning / end of wars around the world, as it was in Victoria 2.

 

[Cagallo]

They are currently talking about pop revenue. In my beta game the numbers went negative when I increased tariffs.

Yes, that's what it seems. My point was that the revenue pops get after tariffs is not that a useful indicator when we already have productivity displayed (which tells the same story). Instead, tariffs that "I" get as a government, would be more useful for decision-making.

 

[Mannio5]

The main reason is "Players more often than you think miss that some buttons are buttons". We saw this time and time again when doing user research, both from new players and experienced PDS veterans. The arrow navigation buttons solved most of those problems.

From my experience in UI/UX design, it's possible to catch at least some of it with a slight color change on hovering if the user has a reason to have the cursor nearby.
And Vic3 at least encourages hovering with the popups that often appear.

But it might be you also tested this and found it was not enough.

 

[adil3tr]

This does remind me that qualifications are kind of broken in the game right now. There's really no reason why you can't build tons of factories and advanced production in the colonies, it may be the largest issue with the economic simulation besides not being able to build resource extraction in subject nations. On paper you'd think it should be really hard to build them in colonies because of a lack of staff. I also don't think incorporated vs unincorporated isn't a great solution because a german territory owned by france should be able to easily build lots of steel mills and chemical plants and staff them, while a core territory owned by Yemen should not. Regions like southern latin america or indonesia should be able to build industrial economies, but with significant effort; right now in the game you can just join a great power's market and industrialize immediately.

 

[adil3tr]

I'd love to be able to (and be incentivized to) group buildings/provinces so farms in europe are on more advanced modes than ones in the colonies.