New UI Update: Gameboard

ThaRoadWarrior

I wouldn't be surprised to hear there was some cost-of-printing related reason for Stan having said that at some point as well, but I don't want to undermine the point about contrast.

DAZ0273

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I wouldn't be surprised to hear there was some cost-of-printing related reason for Stan having said that at some point as well, but I don't want to undermine the point about contrast.

Yeah, quite possibly true.

dragonlover44

been lurking on the forum for a while now, just got an account to say I too had issues with the new look. bad eye strain immediately, then that  triggered a migraine after only a small amount of playing. I'm years into playing (day 1654) and I'll have to quit if things stay as is. 

I could live and play with the terrible colours and small indicators on the cover store, the dark background of the roster screen, and the change to the team select screen, even though I don't like them much. i can't do the same with the board update.

I'm regreting buying a Logan's loonies earlier this week before R223 went live.

Polares

freakygeek said:

...

My wife starts getting a migraine on the new interface.  I have heard this a lot.  The new scheme triggers vision issues and headaches.  

This.

dragonlover44 said:

been lurking on the forum for a while now, just got an account to say I too had issues with the new look. bad eye strain immediately, then that  triggered a migraine after only a small amount of playing. I'm years into playing (day 1654) and I'll have to quit if things stay as is. 

And This.

It is also happening to me and also, I think I am forcing my eyesight way more, after playing for 30min, my eyes were struggling and started developing a headache.

The constant dimming and lighting it back of the screen is AWFUL, like THE WORST THINK THEYCOULD DO. This must be removed ASAP, STOP the dimming! If it is not changed I will stop playing. I dont want to damage my eyes. 

PS: Seriously, did they test this? Did they have someone playing for an hour with this?

PS: In a time that most games try to make things easier for people with eyesight problems and colourblindness, MPQ goes the other way around (triple facepalm)

SilverAgeFan

It's 48 hours since this update has been released and reports of significant health effects have been reported. This is an inexcusable slow walk on the part of D3.

This should be treated with the same level of seriousness as if the central game server were down with hotfixes and top priority amongst their team to revert things back to a playable state while they take the new game board back to their internal development setup for necessary revisions.

I don't think D3 registers the longer they leave this out there with just a boiler plate "thank you for your feedback" as if this were a game balance issue, the more they open themselves up to a liability for the unintended physiological effects this is causing so many users. They should be taking this as serious as a restaurant would if two of their customers found shards of glass in their soup. Deeply disappointed at the indifference on the part of this game studio.

SnowcaTT

I have several alliance-mates who can't play now due to headaches and/or not being able to see the tiles due to colors.

Really, really wish the devs would make big changes like this with a toggle for on/off....or implement a player test base, who could have given a heads-up on this before it went live.

CubRob

Day 2380 Player: Basically the same opinion as everyone else:

1. Get rid of the dimming on the opponent turn
2. Make the charged AP bars easier to see
3. The colors should be changed if they are causing problems for people who are color blind

BriMan2222

SnowcaTT said:

I have several alliance-mates who can't play now due to headaches and/or not being able to see the tiles due to colors.

Really, really wish the devs would make big changes like this with a toggle for on/off....or implement a player test base, who could have given a heads-up on this before it went live.

Same. I've had several alliance mates unable to play for any length of time struggling to just get through the deadpool daily and some of them have said that they will not be able to play at all until/unless this is fixed.  For their sakes I hope this is resolved soon.

Polares

This change MUST be reverted ASAP, today, tomorrow at the latest. This is a MUST FIX (the same as the sever going down).

If Devs want to iterate and make this design better and address all these problems, sure, they can do that, and release it in the next update, but first, revert the changes and go back to the old UI so we can continue playing. I wont be playing the current event in this condition.

The rockett

Boss event starts tomorrow as well which is normally and increased of activity.   This could get very ugly for the Dev team.  

crakker

HoundofShadow said:

Interesting. How does other game developers accomodate to those three types of colourblindness? Is there some ISO standard for choices of colours or shades?

I have tried several tile matching games that I had to quit immediately because the colours confuse me. A few nice ones have a colourblind option that make the colours more contrasting but maybe more garish for a regular user.

Spider_Ham42

I’m jumping in on the UI update.  While I appreciate trying to evolve the game, but the new tiles certainly leave a bit to be desired.  I spent time playing the game to see if I become familiar with the UI that I can adjust, but the tile screen is just too dark.  Everything just feels muted. The tile colors, fortified, animations, enemy tile select, and the action bars (friendly and enemy) just don’t pop like they did prior to the update.  I did enjoy the highlighted numbers popping from the board, so I did find something I liked.  I’ll continue to wait on the update from the dev team on this topic, but note that I will be playing less until the UI is either reverted or updated with some changes.  Sadly, It’s just not as enjoyable.

Kwahder

Polares said:

This change MUST be reverted ASAP, today, tomorrow at the latest. This is a MUST FIX (the same as the sever going down).

This isn’t in the dev’s hands. Even if they just rolled everything straight back (and I don’t think they can do that), it’d still have go through Apple & Google’s approval process. ‘Early next week’ is my best guess for something happening.

Notwen

I like that the icons on the tiles are much more distinct than before.

aithene

First-time poster, long-time player (day 1978 of daily play, today). I'm also a UI designer, so I tend to wait before passing judgment on new UI changes since I know that Baby Duck syndrome is real and powerful. However, I'm running into several serious gameplay issues with the new design.

Don't get me wrong, I love the design, aesthetically. Looks beautiful. There are some strong steps forward. But there are a number of color issues I'm surprised made it through testing.

1. The BIGGEST issue I have is with the fade to black during the opponent's turn. Depending on screen brightness, the screen dims so much that I struggle to see anything that is happening. It takes me completely out of the gameplay. It's like I've been pushed out of the game, and then brought back in after the move, and I have no idea what just happened.

2. The power-up bars draw much less attention to themselves than before, and honestly, they were never really eye-catching to begin with. Now, I have to stop and look and wait for the 'wave' to be sure that a power is actually ready to use. And while they have never been great at capturing my attention while looking for matches, the new design fails completely to pull my eyes to a power that is ready to go.

3. When nightshift is on (which is a lot of my gaming time, actually; early morning, late evening) you have a lot of color issues. As you know, nightshift pulls the blue from all colors, so that purple looks like red, and blue looks like green. This affects a number of features.

The power bars are completely indistinguishable since they are the same shape. Storm, for instance, has blue and green power, and when one is powered up, you cannot tell which it is by simply looking. Same with Deadpool's red and purple powers.

Blue and green tiles look nearly identical since the square and rectangle are too close in shape and the colors are the same. I've been surprised a number of times by failed matches when I have accidentally tried to match blues and greens with each other.

Interestingly, I have also found that red and purple cause issues when the colors cannot be distinguished. I know that an upside-down triangle and a right-side-up triangle should be distinct enough for easy identification, but cognitively, they are too close together in shape to dismiss out of hand. It definitely takes extra brain-power to sort them while playing with night-shift on.

Of course, it would be all too easy to say, 'turn off night shift while playing.' And while that might work for me, it won't work for someone with actual color-blindness issues.

Hope this helps! Keep the updates coming.

zonatahunt

Kwahder said:

Polares said:

This change MUST be reverted ASAP, today, tomorrow at the latest. This is a MUST FIX (the same as the sever going down).

This isn’t in the dev’s hands. Even if they just rolled everything straight back (and I don’t think they can do that), it’d still have go through Apple & Google’s approval process. ‘Early next week’ is my best guess for something happening.

If this is the case, then once again, open and transparent communication with the player base is the answer.  If they announced that they realize mistakes were made but they can’t do a “quick fix” because of an approval process, I would understand and be more patient.  However, they’ve chosen to issue a single blanket statement across multiple info outlets for the game; that’s why people are becoming increasingly frustrated and impatient.

abmoraz

crakker said:

HoundofShadow said:

Interesting. How does other game developers accomodate to those three types of colourblindness? Is there some ISO standard for choices of colours or shades?

I have tried several tile matching games that I had to quit immediately because the colours confuse me. A few nice ones have a colourblind option that make the colours more contrasting but maybe more garish for a regular user.

Most of my alliance was playing this long before me.  We're mostly friends that worked at or frequented a local bar.  They tried for a few months to get me to play (since I was a big comics fan) but I generally replied with "I can't play most match-3 games because I'm colorblind.  Bejeweled, Bust-A-Move, Candy Crush, etc... were impossible for me to play with any sort of enjoyment.  It's impossible when I can't tell certain pieces apart.  I finally gave it a shot and the old board was distinct enough that it wasn't a chore.  The only colors in the old board that I got confused where the blues and the pinks (or purples, if you will) but their size (not so much the shape) made it easy to see at a glance.  The blues were of a completely different size than the pinks and stood out against the background

The new one mutes all the colors and they are not separated as distinctly from the background.  Blacks and reds are confusing.  Blues and purples are still awful, but the new "candy-like" sheen on the gems blurs their distinct shapes making it harder to discern them at a glance.  While the "owner" marker on the new gems is more distinct, it's almost "too-distinct" as it makes it harder to find special tiles (especially enemy strike tiles).

There's a lot wrong with this update.  But the good news is that most of the worst parts can be fixed just by turning up the saturation and contrast and getting rid of the "dimming" effects.  The rest will come with us mentally re-adjusting to the "new norm".

Listen... I know I've been pretty vocal about this change.  I would be remiss if I didn't say that this is the first "Big Miss" the UI developers have had in a long time.  The Roster screen updates were amazing.  They hit that one out of the park.  The store revamp?  Mostly good.  I only have one tiny complaint about it, and that's because the new layout cost me some HP in accidental buys because I was monkey-clicking through vault tokens.  But over all, it was a big improvement.  Even the forced screen ratio seemed like a problem at first, but I've grown to accept it (and it accidentally/coincidentally fixed a bug my phone in particular had with re-sizing the screen when coming back from a lock screen that made the game's hit-boxes be slightly off from where they appeared on the screen).

killahKlown

Well at first I agreed with everyone here, but after less than a day of playing I'm already used to the new movements, colors, and dimming.  It doesn't bother me at all.  I think it's just the usual human nature of resisting change.  Dont be too hasty in undoing your hard work devs.  Give people some time to get used to it and I think the complaining will go away.  The headaches and seizure nonsense is most likely overly dramatized to force change. 

chris0001

You would think after 17 pages and only 1 "red" response from the powers that be, there would be more said.  But as usual 1 response " thanks for your feed back, we will look into it".  Personally, after update played 24 matches in pvp and had a really bad migraine, first time in over 7 years of playing this has happened. 

Bakerbane

I’ve been playing for 7 years and am colour blind. I don’t think that I can continue playing with the new AI, it hurts my eyes trying to tell the colours apart and the dimming gives me a headache. Please put it back or allow us the option to turn it back.