New UI Update: Gameboard

Bad

I use to play my 2 phone games at the lefmost side of the bright bar because I already checked too much bright it causes eyestrain for me.
Right now this fix it feels better for me.
Until a better fix could come you might try it.

Siv75

Why is the dimming still there? Very very dissapointing.... goes to show while they may be good at some things... they are completely clueless about UI design. Still a lot of flashes and the backdrop is still pitch black. I still have to look away on enemy turns...

You have a UI that is SO BAD...people have to look away. I don't think it gets any worse than that. 

joec3

Is this the final fix on the dimming issue?  I'd like to know so I can officially give up the game rather than wait for something that it is not going to happen and continue to degrade my eyesight!

I can't for the life of me understand why you would make it more difficult to see the game board for half the time you are playing it!? Seriously WTH is going on?

Being able to clearly see an enemy turn and plan your next move is critical to a turn based game.  We all knew when it was our turn just fine previously, so regardless of whether this bothers your eyes or not, what is the point or benefit of this exactly?   Is there ANY other turn based game anywhere that does something similar? There's a reason the answer to that is no.

I am one of the players of the game (for years) who are having eye strain issues and need to turn away STILL after the most recent "fix" and have noticed that in the past few weeks my eyesight has deteriorated significantly as a result of the dimming. 

I've played this game for years (day 2,282) and been a commander in a top 100 alliance for the past 3+ and am now have the choice of playing MPQ and ruining my eyesight or giving up the game.  Obviously I'm giving up the game, I am just pissed to lose a game I enjoyed for many years due to a horrendous and harmful design choice.  I was finally ready and excited for the transition up to 5* gameplay and  now I'm forced to quit.

Whoever is responsible, thanks for ruining the game for me, and thanks for screwing up my eyesight. 

dragonlover44

UNSHMD said:

was so excited when i read the change was on. But then realized that there’s really no real chance so disappointed 

I can't tell the the difference either. still gonna give me migraines ASAP. what a joke, a month later, and I STILL CAN'T PLAY. is this what 'fixing it' looks like? i still can't look at the screen, and the flashing is still obnoxious because the background is so dark.

Captain_Carlman

Been checking back from time to time to see if the board fixes ever came to be.  When I saw the pinned posts regarding the UI had something like 40 new replies, I was genuinely excited that maybe things were fixed for the better.  Once I started reading the replies, I was a bit disheartened to see that it was only marginally better.  Regardless, I redownloaded the game and went through DDQ to see how it turned out for myself.  

While it is a little better, it still needs work.  The dimming was still an issue that the developers are doubling-down on for some reason, which I still can't understand.  Like others have said, the change in color of the background of the old board was perfectly serviceable and since finding out the dimming is related to fixing the speed exploit, I'm not sure why the background color changed couldn't be what was tethered to the exploit-fix rather than the dimming of the board (I'm not a programmer, so there could be a very reasonable explanation why).  Like another person said, why not just have an invisible gamma layer that "dims" over the screen that would more or less work in the background without being noticed to the player?  The dimming at the start of the AI's turn was still jarring, but the slower brightening to the player's turn was better on my eyes.

The color and tile issue was a mixed bag, I felt.  While it was better than before with better color differences and such, I did agree with what someone else said here that everything pops so much now that nothing really stands out now.  Everything against the black background just makes it all fight for your attention, rather than the things that need your attention (special tiles, for example).  

Overall, I was still very disappointed.  It was a step in the right direction, but as it's been pointed out multiple times now, it was something that was perfectly fine before so a "step in the right direction" is still way off the mark from where it was.  It was like getting punched in the face this time around, rather than a full-on kick to the **** before:  Not as bad, but still something I would rather not deal with.

With that, I decided to uninstall the game again, this time permanently.  I had my fun for the last seven years, but I'm not going to make myself uncomfortable playing a mobile game.  If you haven't had an issue with the new UI or if the recent fix took care of any problem you had with, that's great.  Enjoy Marvel Puzzle Quest to your heart's content.  I'm disappointed with the recent changes and "fixes" as of late and the response to said issues by the company producing it and can't continue supporting their product in good concience.  I understand that the developers are only human and can make bad decisions and judgements like the rest of us, but it does not seem they are learning from their mistakes at all and the disconnect between them and their audience just seems to be growing further and further apart as time goes on.  

abmoraz

doom_decrees_it said:

Dear D3,

Have any of your employees actually SEEN the color purple before?

As a person suffering from deuteranopia (type of colorblindness), I can honestly say "No.  I have never seen the color purple."  It's always appears pink, blue, or black to me.

abmoraz

The new changes are a vast improvement.

1. They tiles are still a bit hard for me to see normally, but the new shades work much better when combined with colorblind-mode on my phone.  The first iteration of the new board used colors that were too dim/muted for the color-correction options to help.  This one is much better in that the colors aren't muted, so the color-correction works much better. (screenshot linked at the end)

2. I find the dimming is much less noticeable than with the first iteration.  Good change, but it could be better.  Not sure why it exists at all... but baby steps...

3. Yellow (and for me, green) powers are noticeable when ready to fire.  YAY!

4. The game does seem less... responsive?  Like, when it's my turn, there seems to be a delay before I can actually act.  This seems to be the case any time it is my turn to input an action.  Once the board is settled, there seems to be a 1 second "lock-out".  I have to press the character button 3-4 times before it finally registers and brings up their powers to fire.  Same with making a match.  I swipe the tile I want to move 2-3 times before it actually registers.  It's been that way since the new board came out.  I was curious if it was just me or if everyone sees that?  Is this a side-effect of them fixing the "speed hacks"?

Ok, that's odd.  I think the screen-shot function on my phone doesn't take the color correction into account.  That screenshot does NOT look like my phone screen right now (at least to me).  The pinks are MUCH darker on the phone, as are the blacks.  The Greens in the screenshot look much closer to orange to me than green (which they do on the phone).  I just turned off color correction on my phone and it does look just like the screenshot above... so... i guess I'll have to find another way to show it.

Took a snapshot with my webcam.  It's not the greatest resolution and has some glare, but it is better at displaying the adjusted colors:

KGB

I find the screen dimming WAY less noticeable now but at night red/purple are almost identical (S9+ phone, no filter on).

The fact that the screen has always dimmed on the AI turn (it dimmed the background before) makes me believe they won't ever remove the dimming effect because it's always been there. At best I imagine they will go back to dimming the background again in which case on our turn it will have to be lighter (more grayish) and I'm not sure that's going to be a good thing.

They could solve a lot of color issues if the let players manually adjust the RGB values for the 6 colors to their hearts content and save those values. Then each player could tailor it to their personal preference with an option to go back to default RGB colors if you mess things up really badly.

KGB

revskip

UNSHMD said:

revskip said:

Fixed the dimming,  brightened the colors and gave us back pink tiles.  I'm a big fan.   

Fixed dimming???? We didn’t get the same update 

It's much more muted for me.  I do have some issues with distinguishing between red and pink when using the blue light filter at night but overall much, much better for me.  YMMV

Seph1roth5

The dimming is a lot lighter, but still there and pointless.  Probably much worse for your eyes because your eyes are going to be adjusting automatically over and over and over.

Siv75

Captain_Carlman said:

While it is a little better, it still needs work.  The dimming was still an issue that the developers are doubling-down on for some reason, which I still can't understand.  Like others have said, the change in color of the background of the old board was perfectly serviceable and since finding out the dimming is related to fixing the speed exploit, I'm not sure why the background color changed couldn't be what was tethered to the exploit-fix rather than the dimming of the board (I'm not a programmer, so there could be a very reasonable explanation why).  

Well I am a developer for 25 years and I have designed and programmed award winning games before so I may have some idea of what they are facing here. Exploits are a priority to patch as they can represent a threat to the entire game as a whole. However, as you've mentioned there are other ways to do it. It is never good to solve one problem by creating another problem. It may take some R&D ... some real brainstorming to see alternative solutions that will not cause migraines or eye issues. Some solutions I've seen are quite elegant ...such as when hacks may require some level of system settings or files to exist in order to run. The game can then detect these and choose to not run when the hack is detected. For example, JW Alive detects if a setting for GPS is set for troubleshooting... this setting is required by that games hack to run. JW Alive simply says it cant access the GPs when that setting is.enabled ...prompting the user to uninstall the hack in order to continue playing the game. Same philosophy can apply for the MPQ speed hack. 

This case is quickly becoming a good case study for UI/game design and can foresee opportunities for a thesis study.

dragonlover44

Now that I've had a day to calm down, and gotten rid of a headache that MPQ caused, I can put down more thoughts than I did earlier.

I was willing to wait weeks after a board change I saw no one ask for. I was willing to wait extra time after the devs said it would take longer, though I was disappointed. I was willing because I thought they saw the swift, massive, almost all negative feedback for it, and they would do something to actually fix the issues they caused.

I've played for four and a half years, caught up to the release schedule, dropped some money, been genuinely excited that this year I had more in-game resources to use at anniversary in a few months time. And with the new board all my daily playing went out the window. I couldn't look at it for multiple short rounds without being halfway to a migraine. Just playing through all nodes in DDQ would have given me a full blown migraine.

So, I thought maybe with the 'fixes' I could resume play again. I was wrong. I can barely tell a difference - and I was looking hard for any, which gave me bad headache (I stopped before I got a migraine but it was a close call). The biggest was that I think I went over to the opposite side of the purple/pink debate than I was on before. Some of my alliance mates couldn't tell that the fix went live until I mentioned it. How much change was there if they didn't notice?

I get that they might have needed to recode things, to stop people from hacking their play, or simply because it's been years and technology changes rapidly. And to their credit, they acknowledged the change caused issues, sent out survey about it, and did apparently change things if the very short list is correct. It's just not enough in my opinion.

I just can't understand how it took a month for this 'fix' to be finished and rolled out. I really hope there is more to come, or the game will force me to quit for my health, and I had no intention to stop playing.

Seph1roth5

What's this hullabaloo about speed hacking and such?  Wouldn't they accomplish the same by having the pause before the enemy's turn and NO DIMMING?

pheregas

I gave the recent UI display changes a few days to play under various conditions before reporting back.  While I do find the AI shadowing during their turn a little annoying, it is loads better than it was before and, at least for me, tolerable.  

My almost instant migraines and looking away to play is now gone.  So that's awesome.

My most major criticism is that while the enrichment of colors now makes all colors distinct for me under daytime play settings, night mode on my iPhone still leaves pink/red difficult to differentiate.  This may be a holdover of my slight colorblindness, or it may be part of my dyslexia, but it is not immediately evident that the pink/red tiles are different.  I know that the triangles point in opposite directions, but given said dyslexia, I have to focus pretty intently to differentiate the two.

Mind you, this is only in night mode.  Day modes colors are distinct enough for me that the triangle point direction is a non-issue.

Summary:  Not as good as before any of the UI changes, but loads better than the pre-fix.  Just a little tweaking, IMHO.

Cannibalqueen

Yeah my experience has been same.  The recent change, at least for me, has made the game entirely playable again.  

All my other complaints about clutter and board readability, while I think still valid, are things I can imagine getting used to.  Since now without the game being an active enemy to my eyes and head, I can sink in the time to relearn those muscle memories.  

I know some people are still getting headaches, but since even this minor change to dimming or whatever it is exactly has had such an effect for me, I think maybe one more tweak away from putting a bow on it. 

merb713

abmoraz said:

The new changes are a vast improvement.

1. They tiles are still a bit hard for me to see normally, but the new shades work much better when combined with colorblind-mode on my phone. 

That looks like it might help with my issues as well (astigmatism). Does your colorblind mode have different options, and if so which one did you use?

Thanks!

abmoraz

merb713 said:

abmoraz said:

The new changes are a vast improvement.

1. They tiles are still a bit hard for me to see normally, but the new shades work much better when combined with colorblind-mode on my phone. 

That looks like it might help with my issues as well (astigmatism). Does your colorblind mode have different options, and if so which one did you use?

Thanks!

Yeah, I have the 3 pre-programmed ones (for each of the major types of colorblindness) as well as a customizable option where you can set them yourself.  I use the Deuteranomaly option because I have Deuteranopia. 

I have an LG G6 running Android 8.0.0. YMMV

Low44

Just wanted to say, that I'm grateful for this (imo) useless update. I just deleted the game and now got more then one hour new free time daily, to make something I want and the way I want it. No more "playing" a game, whose dev's never really cared about their players. Thank you!

Twomp_thaDJ

Just here to add to the many who just want the dimming to STOP not reduce but STOP.. I really am trying to find who this actually helps and what was the purpose.. I haven’t once read “ hey D3 is there any way you can make the opponents side darker, when they play it irritates me to see their moves”

 please just put it back for the Love of MPQ

PUT. IT. BACK.

KGB

Twomp_thaDJ said:

Just here to add to the many who just want the dimming to STOP not reduce but STOP.. I really am trying to find who this actually helps and what was the purpose.. I haven’t once read “ hey D3 is there any way you can make the opponents side darker, when they play it irritates me to see their moves”

 please just put it back for the Love of MPQ

PUT. IT. BACK.

Put what back? It's always dimmed on the AI turn even on the original board. Just because you never noticed (it dimmed the background, not the gems as it does now) doesn't mean it wasn't dimming.

If you want them to go back to dimming just the background, they'd have to change the background from Black to a lighter Black (or Grey) so that they could then darken that background.

The current change to the dimming is night and day better than it was to my eyes so that I hardly notice it at all now after playing for a week plus on it. My biggest complaint is that the flashing is still too bright (esp as a Polaris user) to my eyes due to the black vs blue background and the Red/Purple is too close in color.

KGB