New UI Update: Gameboard

IceIX

Hey all! As part of our continued UI updates, we’re going to be making one of the bigger ones in R223, an update to the gameboard!

As you can see, the Gameboard has been updated, but keeps all the same features. We wanted to go with a bit more of a facelift with this screen as opposed to a wholesale change. This brings it in-line with the multitude of other changes we’ve made across the game.

Along with the characters being more visible, we’ve toned down the backdrop to the tiles to make them a bit more readily visible. As well, we’ve changed the tile colors slightly and reduced the glow. Now the PinkPurple tile is PinkPurpler than ever!

PC users will be getting the tile updates, but otherwise the UI will be staying almost identical to the current.

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With this gameboard update we are also bringing in another update to the gameboard that is a bit more experiential than something to show off in a screenshot. We’ve updated the tile physics for tile movement and drops. This change makes no actual gameplay changes, with the same frame counts and speed as the current drop physics, but makes things a bit more “active” during play. This feature is available in the Options menu to toggle on and off. For veteran users, this defaults to off, but we encourage you to take a look and check it out!

We’re still going strong on our UI updates, with more to come including the big one: The Main Menu. We’ll have more info soon!

Daredevil217

First impression is I like it a lot. Hoping it’s as good in practice as it seems in the screenshot. 

I’m curious if any improvements to saved teams (more slots, save 2-person teams, etc.) are part of the UI revamp pipeline. 

Very interested in the main menu one where poor poor Prologue takes up so much real estate. 

Kwahder

Like the bigger board. I don’t like the new jewel colours. Make black actually black.

Now we can see more of the characters, can we get more info on their status? If the wrong person is in front of Yellowjacket, I can’t see how many turns of invisibility he has left.

jp1

I didn’t realize how outdated it looked. Nice change!

zonatahunt

I like the formatting change, but for someone like myself who’s green-red colorblind...it’s really hard to see the difference between green and black now.  I’m sure I’ll get used to it though.  Happy purple is finally purple 

Cannibalqueen

Nice.  I hope this means we can now read rounds of stun on our own characters.  Sometimes it gets obscured back there.

I remember the tile bouncing got leaked accidentally sometime last year.  They took it away after a couple days but I liked it.

edit: I noticed again during Strange Sights that battles with Kaecillius go faster.  Like the actual tile switching and drops seems sped up.  Some characters I noticed tend to have faster tile movements in general.  5* Storm I think is one like that.  But it’s odd that during Kaecillius fights, everything runs smoother.

Thanos

IceIX said:

. We’ve updated the tile physics for tile movement and drops. This change makes no actual gameplay changes, with the same frame counts and speed as the current drop physics, but makes things a bit more “active” during play. This feature is available in the Options menu to toggle on and off. For veteran users, this defaults to off, but we encourage you to take a look and check it out!

Why not give the option to speed the game up? You could nullify any speed hacker advantages and put everybody back on even footing.

BlackBoltRocks

IceIX said:
Now the PinkPurple tile is PinkPurpler than ever!

The age-old debate has finally been solved.

ThaRoadWarrior

The saturation reduction on the AP bar seems like it isn’t as easy to read as before; there isn’t as much contrast, and it all feels a little murky to me now. I’ll be interested to turn physics back on; I liked it but I recall it felt linear on the bounce, like it needed ease in and out curves.

JHawkInc

BlackBoltRocks said:

IceIX said:
Now the PinkPurple tile is PinkPurpler than ever!

The age-old debate has finally been solved.

There have been separate Purple  and Pink  tiles since at least 2017. Only the Purple one is in the game.

This isn't a recently-solved debate. It was never an actual debate to begin with. It's always been Purple.

Blackstone

Daredevil217 said:

First impression is I like it a lot. Hoping it’s as good in practice as it seems in the screenshot. 

I’m curious if any improvements to saved teams (more slots, save 2-person teams, etc.) are part of the UI revamp pipeline. 

Very interested in the main menu one where poor poor Prologue takes up so much real estate. 

Just an FYI: you can save a two person team by creating a team with the two you want in the left and right slots, and placing a character in the middle that you don't need...(recruit a one star or put in a character you're about to sell so you can recycle them... Anyone you plan to get rid of)

Save the team, then sell the third.  You'll be left with a saved two person team.

An option to just create the team might be handy, but you can do it fairly easily.

Borstock

I like that you can see more of the character art. I like that the character logo is more visible on the tiles.

I don't quite love the color changes. My eye finds it harder to distinguish between the updated colors. I might feel differently once I've had time to get used to it.

Aweberman

Cannibalqueen said:

But it’s odd that during Kaecillius fights, everything runs smoother.

Everything goes more smoothly against Big K because no damage calculation needs to be processed.

Storm of fire

I like the increased visibility of the character symbols on the tiles, not sure about the green and the blue looking so similar in hue and shade. 
I also like the increased character display, as I do play with the AP indicator flipped up. 

_Vitto

@IceIX Is this new update going to be "compulsory" any time soon? 

Switching to this new interface would eventually slow us hardcore players down and affect heavily our gameplay. However, if one day we find ourselves being stuck with it, we might as well get used to it right away. 

DeNappa

Good opportunity to finally add a visual indicator on wave nodes.

Bzhai

So looks like MPQ´s version of Dark Mode. Would be nice if this was added instead of replacing current layout so players can toggle between the version they´re more comfortable with.

tonypq

Can't say I'm a big fan. I don't get what the big deal is to see a miniscule amount of extra stationary character detail, doesn't really add much or serve a purpose. 

I like the blue background board much better than the new black one. I really wish you could toggle which game board to use instead of having this new one forced on us. 

The only thing I do like is the character symbols being easier to see. I wish they just kept the same board and updated the tiles. 

I've played other match type games that let you have different boards or customize them. I don't see why D3 couldn't allow similar features or to be able to toggle between both boards above.

Sekilicious

I kind of like it but feel the colors should be differentiated more. I was going to say the old color scheme was fine but the change from blue to black background might alter them somewhat. There are palettes online that could serve as a basis for maintaining the highest separation between colors for almost everyone

KGB

tonypq said:

Can't say I'm a big fan. I don't get what the big deal is to see a miniscule amount of extra stationary character detail, doesn't really add much or serve a purpose. 

I like the blue background board much better than the new black one. I really wish you could toggle which game board to use instead of having this new one forced on us. 

The only thing I do like is the character symbols being easier to see. I wish they just kept the same board and updated the tiles. 

I've played other match type games that let you have different boards or customize them. I don't see why D3 couldn't allow similar features or to be able to toggle between both boards above.

I'm not a big fan either but in my case I hate the fact the symbols are more prominent because it now makes everything look too busy (I preferred the subtle blended look).

I also hope we don't be more accidental mis-clicks on phones since the board is compressed and everything is closer together (I feel for those with older/smaller physical displays).

I'd also love the option to toggle to the original colors.

KGB

ThaRoadWarrior

I assume that this has been thoroughly tested on iOS, but I do have a bit of concern that losing the padding on the tiles down at the bottom of the screen will result in accidentally swiping up the ap as if I were going to try changing apps when interacting with bottom-row matches. Right now there is a fairly decent margin/padding between that grab point provided by iOS, but the closer you put those in-game interaction points to OS-provided interaction points, the more opportunity to introduce unwanted behavior you're creating for users.