Improve game UX

[Phrancis]

Right now it is difficult for a new player to get started playing. Though it's nice to have documentation in the wiki/website on how to play, we should not expect that every new player will want to read documentation before they can play, that would be a major turn-off for many people. Here are a few points I think we need to address and find ways to improve.

(I have added identifiers to make it easier to discuss)

1. Lobby

A new player arrives. They have to do several things which may not necessarily be intuitive, and the UI doesn't have much in the ways of telling you what to do. For example:

• 1.a: You try to start a game, the chat tells you "No Opponent Selected".
• 1.b: You then try to start a game, the chat tells you "No Game Type Selected"

It would be better if there was something that invited the new player to take the correct steps, instead of just telling them they are doing something wrong.

2. Deck Builder

The deck builder at first comes with an empty deck (referencing issue #172 here). There are several UX issues here:

• 2.a Unless you already know the game rules, the card values are not very intuitive. CardId is unimportant to the player. The Attack/Health are not identified as such, how will a brand new player know the difference between 4 / 2 and 2 / 4 without having to RTFM?
• 2.b There is not much visual feedback when a card is added. It appears in the Active Deck and the counter below the card goes up by one but that's it. Same for removing a card, it's not intuitive to remove it by clicking it in the Active Deck. My initial reflex would be that I would expect clicking it there would show information about the card, not remove it.
• 2.c The Active Deck view shows the card's ID and then a string of values in tiny print. As a new player, a string like 8 [Val= 2, Cost= 3, A= 4, Type= Mech, H= 1] is not very helpful. Showing the name of the card would be at least an improvement.

For reference, this is what the more user-friendly deck builder screen looks like in HS:

3. Game screen

I think this is mostly being address as issue #115 but open to other ideas to improve in-game UX.

[Phrancis]

I think one possible quick improvement would be for there to be a splash screen when a user first logs in, and when they first open the deck builder, and when they first start a game, with basic instructions. And add a "Help" or "?" button on all screens that would bring up that screen again.

In order to not annoy more experienced players, the server would need to recognize when a user first connects, vs. when they perform the same actions again (open deck builder, start a game) when they have been connected for a while.

At some point later in development I'm sure we will get around to users having actual accounts but for right now I think this would be "good enough" and experienced players can put up with the mild inconvenience of closing the splash screens when they first connect.

[rubberduck203]

2.a & 2.c
I think a huge improvement would be to display the Card Name in place of the CardId. I'm not so sure I agree about the attack/defense points. They seem to be in the standard card game format.

[marcandregirard]

2.a
From my own experience, I can say that specifying what 2 / 4 means would help with beginners. I've initiated my girlfriend to Hearthstone and she was having a "hard" time figuring the attack and health on cards (even if in Hearthstone it's a bit more descriptive (sword and heart)). Once you're used to card games, it's pretty obvious what it means (even when Phrancis is talking about attack/health and ckuhn203 is talking about attack/defense). One option would be to have two UI levels (like in D3) one advanced and one basic. The basic one could specify things more in depth or provide more information. The advanced one would only show what is important and would not provide tips or explanations about attributes.

1
Something else that is not obvious is that you need a deck before joining a game. I know it would seem pretty obvious normally, but when you start a game, I thought that it would have shown me the deck builder thing and I could build or choose from there.

[Zomis]

I am not a big fan of a splash-screen as @Phrancis suggested. I'd prefer the GUI to be intuitive enough for that to not be needed. It is better to make the GUI more intuitive than to show messages when users make an error. In fact, it would be even better if the GUI could be modified to make such "No opponent selected"-errors impossible.

@marcandregirard The deck builder does show up when you start a game, but it doesn't show in front. It is however related to issue #161.

[Phrancis]

@ckuhn203 The cards will have names in the next release (they already do, they are just not displayed) in both the builder and in-game, I've tried it in 0.6-snapshot version and it plays so much better!

[rubberduck203]

Awesome @Phrancis! Honestly, I still need to take a few minutes to actually play the game...