New UI Update: Gameboard

Xair

the board looked good before this change, now it looks bad. 
this is just the latest of bad decisions the game has made: the recent store look, recent poor design with 5*, etc

design suggestions:
1. don't fix what no one is complaining about.
2. make sure u get more than 1 opinion before you do anything.
3. try to fix the thing that people are actually complaining about.
4. hire a color expert, cause who ever does your colors is clueless.

Mymkllr

Hi all. Played this game daily for around 4 years and this would be my first time posting. Out of all the UI changes I've seen, this is by far the most unwelcomed design. It is so disappointing it has brought me here to make my first post! 

Now, to be fair, I don't play the game for the PvP or treat it as a competition type league, but to pass an hour or two with a game that has successfully managed to capture not just my time and attention, but my wallet. Not an easy feat for me! I've managed to adapt to previous changes, however this one is a tough pill to swallow.

For one thing, it has slowed my gameplay down significantly. It's very difficult to distinguish between certain colors as they are all a dark shade of their respective colors. Part of what keeps me engaged is the fast game play which is hampered because of this change. Granted, some change takes time to get used to, however I have a hard time convincing myself of that in this case.

I implore the dev team to consider an alternative, or at least a way to revert the gameboard back to "classic" mode. I've really enjoyed the game and all the effort that has been put into it's development over the years. I can only hope that our voices will be heard and a compromise can be reached.

Thanks for reading.

thedarkphoenix

Ruff change, I can see what they were going for but some marks are a miss and for longer time players a pretty big one.

I'll make a short list

1) Tiles, the tiles while brighter and bigger (or so they appear) are much less distinguishable at a glance, I didn't realize how much I could "auto pilot" by simply knowing the tile shape, and actually I think the reason the tiles appear bigger is because the character icons are shrunk. Either way before the change I could easily identify a character tile and color now it's much more of a hassle for now reason. And while that may seem like a very small thing it makes a HUGE difference in trying to casually play instead of having to double check and make sure what is what...

2) health bars, I'm not sure why this sticks out to me so much now, but I assume it's because of the UI change, and maybe it was changed also. But as Player 1 or playing on the left hand side. Shouldn't my health bar go down and get lower from left to right and not right to left? 

3) Color contrast, everything feels dimmed and to dark, it makes symbols and character icons even harder to see. 

4)  Dimming the lights on enemies turn, pleassseee if nothing else let us toggle this off.. not only is it super annoying for some reason it triggers mild anxiety... I know that's crazy to read but man it def does with me.

 

Edit: The AP bar is also a big issue, I can't put my  finger on why it's worse but it's much harder to gauge AP with now. 

LavaManLee

One other thing is depending on the character, it is not as easy to tell which tile they are going to match.  Case in point: Polaris' icon is a very faint etching and on blue, it is almost non-existent.  Kitty is in a full on hand and much easier to see on a tile.

Along with everything else, I am just dumbfounded by why they would initiate such a major change to a game with what appears to be very little actual testing from players.

obikenobi12

to the Dev team, i appreciate that your trying new things to improve the game, but this change to the tile color and background is really impacting my game. i can't see the tiles very well as the brightness is much less. i thought my screen was going dark but it wasn't, it was the new tiles. made it really hard to play the game and strategize moves when i can't see clearly what tiles colors are. i think the main issue is the darker backdrop behind the tiles. the backdrop makes the already darker tile color even harder to see. also the special tiles need to be updated to stand out more. when going against polaris teams, you need to take out those special tiles or you just end up getting destroyed. please look into ways of improving this or reverting the changes!

ThaRoadWarrior

Just in case anyone wants to play around with it - there are tools you can use to simulate your screen's appearance with various types of color blindness:

https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/

I think for me at this point the biggest issues I have with it are the special tile indications not being obvioius:
1)Friendly Protects inexplicably have a lot of black in them, which made me think they were enemy protects
2)charged tiles formerly had an external glow on them and now have an internal icon that doesn't really look different than a random character's ownership icon. They get lost immediately
3) strike icons are very small, and the pitch black no border enemy ones get lost on black tiles over a black background. They also at a glance aren't very different from the horizontal hammer icon in use for Beta Ray Bill - could we at least rotate the orientation of those to be 45 degrees or something? In future, also consider not leaning in to using weapons as character icons as well?
4) the murky color of the new Green tiles is just so muted that even with the slight difference in shape against Blue it is hard to have a corner-of-your-eye awareness of about how many are on the screen. Given how often iHulk turns up, this is a pretty serious quality of life reduction
5) the overall murkiness of everything is so pronounced that a number of times I didn't even realize it was my turn until i noticed the "make this move!" tile wiggle calling my attention to the board.

Bubba3210

This hurts my eyes and I already have eye problems as it is. The eye strain to differentiate colors is about as bad as the dimming when the other side is taking its turn. 

Please consider reverting this change.

Bad

After playing it almost one day I think I got used to it. I can tell all colors, all special tiles, all charged tiles. 
I can fire a power because I know how it was the gauge of the power on my last turn previous to matching (not because I can reconigze the power being ready in the bar).

The enemy phase must be reworked. Right now on a dark room playing in bright it strains eyes, and the opposite playing in a bright place it is a veil.
I suppose they are working on it and it must take some days to do something about it.
It is unfortunate indeed.

Seph1roth5

Not a fan.  Too dark in general, so now the tile icons stand out more than the color which seems backwards.  Other than 1 or 2 characters I don't need to know whose icon is on a tile. 

I know that we'll get used to it a bit in time, but I feel that if any of the surveys (like the one that JUST came out) had asked if ANYone wanted the game darker, you would've gotten like 98% saying no.


I like the idea of a classic mode so the 5 people that like the new UI can keep using it lol.  Or go snes final fantasy style and let us customize our game a bit, choose from a few window colors and such.

The_Boogie

@IceIX @LakeStone,

Out of genuine curiosity, what is the current state of QA testing being done on game changes? Is there a group of players outside of the D3/Demi team who test run UI changes, character rebalances, etc. before they are released to the general public? Happy to take this to direct messages if that's what you'd prefer.

KGB

Just got the update this morning.

Colors (including special tiles) aren't as bad as I feared but then I have an S9+ with a fairly large screen for a phone and a good CPU / Ram so game seemed normal for me.

But the dimming effect made me nauseous after only a handful of battles. The old dimming effect just changed the background slightly (something I never noticed till this update and someone pointed out the dimming) so it was hardly noticeable. We need a way to turn off the dimming or else just dim the background slightly and not the gems.

As others have stated, a classic mode to use the original color scheme would be fantastic but I suspect that won't happen due to having to support 2 UI's

KGB

Reecoh

Just adding a vote to the revert or implement major fixes camp. I won't rehash the list of issues as they have been pointed out many times already, but this is really bad. 

liminal_lad

This is incredibly bad. I tried playing this morning and it's really hard to see the difference in tile colors with the new muted palette. Also it subjectively feels slower during the enemy's turn and the dinning makes it harder to tell what's going on. Please make this better or change it back. Truly terrible. 

HoundofShadow

The dimming and undimming of the board can be quite irritating and uncomfortable on the eyes. It's akin to you standing in front of a car and the driver keep on turning the headlights on and off.

If you are a Polaris user, the flashing that occurs when you match special tiles can be really glaring. It could be due to the huge contrast between the board and the creation of special tiles.

PiMacleod

I'd like to think that i'm a generally positive player.  If I see something positive, great.  If I see something negative, I'll then try to work with it to see where the potential positive is (i.e. the silver lining). 

I did that here, as with all things, but I think the negative is winning out, and I having a hard time playing Devil's Advocate.

Everyone did a great job mentioning their points, and I'll admit, I only skimmed so many responses before I posted this... however, I'll voice my concerns as well.  If they double up with someone else, well, I hope a dev or someone similar is keeping note of how many of each complaint is tallying up.

1) The colors themselves.  They aren't as bright... And as such, they dont stand out like they once did.  Sure, it might "look cool", but it needs to be functional before anything else.  And after seeing this update, Im understanding more and more why nearly all match 3 games have bright colorful tiles to match.

I wouldnt say that its a gamebreaker by itself, but here's a problem I already noticed.  Because the colors blend a bit more now, I have to strain a bit more to notice match-4+s, which means against enemy 5* Prof, or Onslaught, or Chavez, they now have a better chance of winning, just because its harder to see certain match patterns we are trained to look for.

2) The same color problem lends itself to the powers and where we select them.  Usually, when a power is ready to fire, it glows or pulses, letting us know its ready.  The same thing still applies, but its pretty hard to see green's pulse, and nearly impossible to see yellow's.  As such, I didnt think they were ready to fire for a few turns just for that alone.  Sure, i could look at the number and see that I was ready, but I didnt -- Ive trained myself to just keep an eye out for the pulse, and gun for the colors I normally need for my plan.  Once I see the pulse, I'll fire what I need to, and leave whatever I wanna save up alone.  It takes a little longer now, because I need to check my AP numbers, since yellow and green are so hard to see.

3) The emblems on the tiles.  These are nicely pronounced, depending on who you're using.  Some symbols thrive, while others just seem a bit faded.

4) Friendly repeaters.  They just kinda get lost... Or is it just me?  I have a hard time finding them, due to the new thinner/sleaker lines used to draw them.

I think thats about it.  The tile physics dont seem to bother me or move the needle for me.  Its my first bullet point thats my real issue... And it'll drag gameplay down a bit, as I have to take more time to analyze things.

AdamMagus

Personally I am pro the new design choice, yes they are a bit darker and the screen fades a bit when it's the AI's turn but I find the new look easier on the eyes when playing a few matches late at night in bed. (I am playing on a ASUS ZenPad 3S 10 tablet)

Overall the game feels a bit snappier thanks to the new tile physics.

I am not sure why Heals changed from green numbers to an orange-red gradient (same as damage numbers), but other than that am pretty happy with the changes.

There have been a lot of suggestions mentioned on this thread, hopefully some get implemented to make this a better experience for others as well.

Jacknife

Question is this : Developers will hear our screams or not? I hope someone who work for MPQ read this writings.

Zalasta

Both my wife and I got this update this morning and don't really care for it. It's super hard on our eyes. We both had to turn the brightness up on our iPads to make things more visible. The new tile colors are subdued or faded, and harder to differentiate. Black is now grey. Don't care for the black background or the way it flashes between turns. When powers have full AP, it's not as clear as it used to be. You can barely see ready yellow powers pulse. I'm hoping for an option to return to the classic format, or we're probably going to be playing much less MPQ.

Daredevil217

Jacknife said:

Question is this : Developers will hear our screams or not? I hope someone who work for MPQ read this writings.

I put the over/under at 10 pages of tortured screams before we get a developer response. Anyone taking the under? Should I set the bar at 20 pages?

First time posters creating accounts just to voice their concerns, long time vets talking about retirement over this, mostly optimistic posters and dev “white knights” talking about how much they dislike the change.

This is bad... really really bad. I really hope we get a response/acknowledgment. 

HobieCat76

I haven't posted here in a very, very long time.  But this UI change has forced my hand to come in and take a look because this game is borderline unplayable.  I'm glad to see I'm not the only one.  I cannot tell the difference between tiles.  Please listen to your users and bring back the old UI (or add an option so that we can toggle to the old UI).