Back again with another suggestion, one that likely has already been posted, but fuck it.

The TLDR of these suggestions:
- There are too many wasted clicks in the normal navigation of the game.
- There is no option to change the way I interact with the game

(1) Let me make my own macros [web browser].

I've followed the wiki's entry for the built in macros since Day 1 and have used them consistently since, but it is such a shame that I cannot modify these macros or improve their functionality. Using Q+A to rotate between the magnifying glass, deploy, and transfer is a huge time saver, but also a huge slap in the face when a more simple solution would work so much better, ex: Key "1" is magnifying glass. Key "2" is deploy. Key "3" is transfer".

(2) Why are we not using the right mouse click?

Why can't I modify the settings to make left click transfer, right click deploy or some variation? Because right now if I right click, there's a 50% chance that it will glitch and make the game think I'm holding down the left mouse button.

(3) Why are we not using a click+drag combo to deploy?

You click on your territory, you click on the adjacent one you want transfer to. You click on the slider bar and drag it to the desired amount. You click okay. 4 clicks for 1 move. That's a bad deal.

What about something like this? Click and hold the territory you want transfer troops out of. While holding, the arrows/options for the move are present. Drag your cursor in the direction that accompanies the arrow with a snapping like effect to make it obvious which territory you're selecting.

Or, another variation of this: Click on the territory you're transferring out of. Click on the territory you're transferring to, but instead of releasing that click, hold it. While holding, the distance you move your mouse from initial click outwards determines the number of troops you move with a clear number displayed. Bonus points: have the number "snap" to each value that increases the "armies killed" value.

(4) What did the scroll wheel do to you, Fizzer?

The most simple improvement that moves in the same direction as (2) and (3) is just letting me fucking use the scroll wheel to adjust the # of troops in the deploy/transfer box.

(5) Why does the "return"/"enter" key work on some prompts, but not on others?

It drives me crazy that there are certain dialogue boxes (which are all identical in theme) allow the return key to act as the "Accept" input, while others dont. This should be consistent.

(6) Add some js/html in the game UI that prevents the game from highlighting everything on the page when I accidentally hold a click to long while moving my mouse elsewhere. It's like the digital equivalent of getting your headphones snagged on something while walking about. Incredibly annoying but totally fixable.

Right now, Warzone is incredibly user hostile from a UI perspective. It works well as a beginner, but once you start trying to kick your gameplay to the next level, you're faced with an increasing amount of hurdles in order to get your moves in quickly, comfortably. Warzone legit starts to hurt my hand after a few hours with all the mindless extra clicking required to play my turn.

The more steps between a player thinking of a move and making a move, the higher the odds that the player gives up because the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Warzone is better than RISK, yet I don't have to touch a game piece 4 times in RISK to move just 1 piece.


Alright thats my soapbox.

That would be a mindblowing update.

Edited 6/23/2022 20:01:35

Using Q+A to rotate between the magnifying glass, deploy, and transfer is a huge time saver, but also a huge slap in the face when a more simple solution would work so much better, ex: Key "1" is magnifying glass. Key "2" is deploy. Key "3" is transfer".

Numbers keys are used for entering attack/deploy quantities, so Q/A were chosen to avoid conflicts. Of course these happen at different times so numbers could still work, but imo it's preferable to use different keys since it makes accidents more unlikely (for example, if you think the attack/transfer dialog is open and try typing numbers, you'd accidentally enter hotkeys if the number keys were the hotkeys. Easy to happen when entering lots of orders quickly)

Why are we not using the right mouse click?

Warzone is a cross-platform game, and most people play from mobile, and mobile doesn't have the concept of right-click. My core design concept is to keep the interface the same across all platforms, which avoids players having to re-train themselves every time they switch platforms, so nothing game-essential should rely on concepts that don't exist on touchscreens like right-click, hover, hotkeys, or scroll wheels.

Why are we not using a click+drag combo to deploy?

Click+drag is already used to pan around the map. Of course, you could have it deploy when you start on a territory you own and pan when you start on a territory you don't own, but that would be terrible. What if you were zoomed in on an area that's entirely made up of your own territories? It would be impossible to pan the map. Also when quickly panning around, it would cause accidental deploys all over the place whenever you accidentally started a pan near your own territory.

What did the scroll wheel do to you, Fizzer?

See #2

Why does the "return"/"enter" key work on some prompts, but not on others?

Generally it works wherever there is a text box, such as attack/transfer dialog. But it has to be coded by hand for each place so it's possible some are missed.

Add some js/html in the game UI that prevents the game from highlighting everything on the page when I accidentally hold a click to long while moving my mouse elsewhere.

Sometimes highlighting text is important since people want to copy/paste things. I'm not sure of a way to prevent accidental ones without disabling highlighting completely.

Warzone is a cross-platform game, and most people play from mobile, and mobile doesn't have the concept of right-click. My core design concept is to keep the interface the same across all platforms, which avoids players having to re-train themselves every time they switch platforms, so nothing game-essential should rely on concepts that don't exist on touchscreens like right-click, hover, hotkeys, or scroll wheels.

From a programmer perspective I get why you want to keep everything the same, and not make it different for PC, but having the browser pages work like proper browsers pages would be great.

With all the UJS buttons the browser gets completely broken: back and forward doesnt work anymore, middle clicking a button to open it in a new tab doesnt work anymore, etc... Going anywhere is just so tedious with all the UJS stuff. Navigation of WZ itself isnt required for the core gameplay, but being able to click on a button and have it behave would be greatly appreciated ♥

You cant really play WZ from the mobile app since things like ctrl + click to deploy during attack phase and selecting multiple orders at once dont exist in the app, and phone screens are way too small to see the map properly. Trying to convert the big screened browser version into the same thing as the small screened phone version just makes the browser version crappy.

(3) Why are we not using a click+drag combo to deploy?

You click on your territory, you click on the adjacent one you want transfer to. You click on the slider bar and drag it to the desired amount. You click okay. 4 clicks for 1 move. That's a bad deal.

That just sounds like a million more ways to make misclicks 🤔

My core design concept is to keep the interface the same across all platforms

Thanks for responding Fizzer. To preface my response, I want to first state that my aggression is only targeted at your arguments, and not meant to come off as overtly agro to you personally. I feel as though you've hand waved quite a few of my suggestions. See below:

> Numbers keys are used for entering attack/deploy quantities, so Q/A were chosen to avoid conflicts. Of course these happen at different times so numbers could still work, but imo it's preferable to use different keys since it makes accidents more unlikely (for example, if you think the attack/transfer dialog is open and try typing numbers, you'd accidentally enter hotkeys if the number keys were the hotkeys. Easy to happen when entering lots of orders quickly)

You are attacking the hypothetical option I brought up rather than the concept of the suggestion. The number keys may not have been the best example, but the premise remains unaddressed by you. The premise being that having macros to rotate forward/backward is super unfriendly to use and should be replaced with action defined macros. Alternatively, and in order to make the game easier to play for all players, you could just allow users to define these themselves, and leave the defaults as they are now.

Think about it like this: the current control scheme (rotational) is similar to a car's shifter. You can go forward or back. However, the UI shows buttons. The user interacts with them by tapping or clicking said buttons. Surely you must agree that form a design philosophy, these things are at odds with each other.

> Warzone is a cross-platform game, and most people play from mobile, and mobile doesn't have the concept of right-click. My core design concept is to keep the interface the same across all platforms, which avoids players having to re-train themselves every time they switch platforms, so nothing game-essential should rely on concepts that don't exist on touchscreens like right-click, hover, hotkeys, or scroll wheels.

(1) To be fair, this game started as a web game. While I'm sure most of your revenue comes from mobile users, that doesn't mean you have to abandon desktop users. Nor does it mean you have to have a "one size fits all" development strategy. I find that the handwaving of my suggestion here comes off as "fuck your desktop, play on your phone".

(2) Designing a game or a program around the lowest common dominator should be a high priority, I agree. But when your catering to said domination creates an extremely hostile gameplay experience for users on desktop, then I'm sure we can both agree that the design philosophy has failed.

(3) To combat the point about users being forced to 'retrain themselves every time they switch platforms' (which is hardly a good faith argument considering re-learning in this hypothetical only happens the one time they switch platforms and in a program with great design sense the cross over should be relatively natural), you could just allow users to define these themselves, and leave the defaults as they are now.

(4) Even though the user experience on desktop and on a phone are objectively identical, this does not change my criticism that the ratio of inputs to desired action is insanely high for what is essentially a point and click game. Some users may not have issue with that, but users with physical constraints, disabilities would beg to differ. In addition, you kill everyone's ability to become more efficient by the option entirely. I see that around 62% of your games are real time. There's a lot of players where that number is >90%. Shaving off 3 or 4 clicks per action is a huge QoL upgrade for us. With so many real time games having 1-2 minute turns, the lack of flexibility here is objectively game breaking. Should everyone just increase the timer to accommodate that? Of course not, because that would be addressing a symptom rather than the problem.

> Click+drag is already used to pan around the map. Of course, you could have it deploy when you start on a territory you own and pan when you start on a territory you don't own, but that would be terrible. What if you were zoomed in on an area that's entirely made up of your own territories? It would be impossible to pan the map. Also when quickly panning around, it would cause accidental deploys all over the place whenever you accidentally started a pan near your own territory.

(1) Click and drag is already used around the map, yes. It was an example . It could be shift+click. It could be ctrl+click. It could even be the dreaded right click that went largely unaddressed because "touch screen". The point being is that there's a huge canvas here for improving the way you interact with the game. You'll notice in this section "(3) Why are we not using a click+drag combo to deploy?" I wrote 3 paragraphs to explain the function behind my suggestion. I'm disappointed that you not only ignored the premise of the argument, but also replied to just the heading title as if the explanation you gave acknowledged the entirety of the point.

(2) If you need an example of how to avoid these obvious conflicts in your control scheme...just download Google Earth. Or go to http://maps.google.com. Holding down a modifier key while clicking and dragging clearly is a interaction scheme that is both intuitive and purposeful to the laymen. Alternatively, you could just allow users to have some authority over how their own personal inputs are defined in the game, and leave the defaults for all users as they are now.


> See #2

Once again, I'm extremely disappointed that you felt the need to reply to me yet did not put in any effort in hearing the suggestions laid out before you. Do you think I'm roasting you? Are you taking this as a personal insult? As someone who works in a creative field with a lot of subjective reasoning within collaborative projects, your response rings a similar tune to conversations with individuals on teams who were incapable of hearing criticism of their idea as anything other than "your idea bad and that means your bad".

I'm not trying to be rude or put down the game in anyway. I love Warzone, and I'm trying to make it experience of playing it less cumbersome for myself and others. But I digress, here's my response to the argument you copy+pasted:

(1) Just make the scroll function only work when the mouse moves over the deploy/transfer box...because guess what? The zoom function doesn't even work in the current build when the mouse is over the box! . The 'conflict' here is already resolved, the functionality just needs to be added. Its a funny coincidence that argument you spent the least amount of effort engaging with might also be the suggestion that requires the least amount of effort!

> Generally it works wherever there is a text box, such as attack/transfer dialog. But it has to be coded by hand for each place so it's possible some are missed.

I personally think that every single dialogue box that needs to be cleared should be dismissible via hitting "enter". Right now this is crucial for me and players like me.

> Sometimes highlighting text is important since people want to copy/paste things. I'm not sure of a way to prevent accidental ones without disabling highlighting completely.

Fair enough, admittedly this was the least contentious suggestion I had.


Final thoughts

I'll reiterate my first paragraph here: I'm not trying to be rude and I hope you see my passion for the game as passion rather than personal anger. I chose to be aggressive here because I felt you did not engage with some of the suggestions here and as someone who genuinely loves this game, it makes me feel that you do not care about my experience unless I pick up a phone. I'd be curious to see what % of your oldest active users play on desktop. I'd also be curious to see what % of the top ranked players play on desktop. Onboarding new users obviously is a top priority in a venture like this, but between the interface, the paywalled features (mentioned in a separate thread), and the generally confusing global UI, you're giving users a lot of reasons to not stick around. I want to stick around, but right now playing warzone is really fucking hard compared to its competitors.

I think your design philosophy is in the right ball park, just in the wrong spot. Typically when devs have dedicated players or a minority on a separate platform, they give them flexibility so that they can choose how to use the program/game, because the constant patching and upgrading for a smaller demographic is too time intensive. If you take anything away from this, I beg of you to please just give us the option. Add some customization for all users in how they interact with this game and I promise you that you will see a huge improvement in user retention. I've suggested this game to so many colleagues and family members, individuals who work in software development, entertainment, and general service industry. Only one of them still plays: my mom, who is retired and has 0 technology experience. That would be a success if it didn't make the experience so dreadful for everyone else who found the game too cumbersome to play. It was only after so many people in my circle rejected the game over what is essentially UI based issues that I realized how unignorable it is.

The simplest game changing fixes :
- Left click to transfer, right click to deploy.
- Scroll wheel on slider box
- Enter closes all prompts
- A single button push that commits (if you meet the turns requirements) in both commerce and regular gameplay, disabled by default as to avoid accidental committing

I can only do so much with greasemonkey myself. Please reconsider the attention you've given on this matter. You are losing troves of players who love the concept, but hate the experience.

Thanks!

@ JJ

> That just sounds like a million more ways to make misclicks 🤔

It was simply a demonstration of the different formats that could be adopted to make the user experience better. It's not a perfect solution, and in my response to Fizzer directly, I outlined the simple fixes that would make a huge difference.

I ask of you (and all others who wish to chime in) to make an effort to not miss the forrest for the trees in the discussion I'm trying to have here.

These issues are a cancer on the game. Right now its Stage 1, extremely operable, and safe to fix. But the games that are killed off by cancer care not about when you discovered the cancer. It cares only that you did nothing to remove it.

<3's and kisses to everyone in the thread, I appreciate the dialogue. Warzone forever!

@burner: you really need to make that more concise, because (as you seem to have picked up on) Fizzer can't/doesn't read attentively

Bumping for visibility. @Fizzer, I'd appreciate it if you could reply.

Sometimes highlighting text is important since people want to copy/paste things. I'm not sure of a way to prevent accidental ones without disabling highlighting completely.

That's one aspect that makes the WZ desktop app annoying, as it does block copy/paste of everything outside of textboxes. :(

So there's the opposite use case for comparison. Web, copy/paste almost everything, permits accidentally selecting whole screen, then finding some harmless text on screen to click to cancel the mass-highlight. Versus WZ desktop app, where copy/paste almost entirely disabled, can't accidentally select whole screen but also lose useful copy/paste ability for stuff you can do on web.

That's one aspect that makes the WZ desktop app annoying, as it does block copy/paste of everything outside of textboxes. :(

So there's the opposite use case for comparison. Web, copy/paste almost everything, permits accidentally selecting whole screen, then finding some harmless text on screen to click to cancel the mass-highlight. Versus WZ desktop app, where copy/paste almost entirely disabled, can't accidentally select whole screen but also lose useful copy/paste ability for stuff you can do on web.

One of the many reasons why the web is still way better than any app!

Bumping for visibility x2. @Fizzer, I'd appreciate it if you could reply.


I do find it interesting that people still prefer the website to the Unity app. Gives credence to the requests for QoL improvements for desktop users.

Once again, bumping for visibility.

What do we do when the creator of the game does not engage with community criticism?

Have you wrote your suggestion on the uservoice forum. That's the main place you should put such suggestions. You can find it at Help-->Contact-->Uservoice forum

I do find it interesting that people still prefer the website to the Unity app. Gives credence to the requests for QoL improvements for desktop users.

Well besides the site having more features and a bigger screen so you can actually see the entire map, the site also allows for the use of userscripts and/or use of the browser console.

Scripting allows us to do things that we are perhaps not supposed to do (e.g. invite entire clan to a tourney with 1 button), but it does greatly improve the experience of (not) doing tedious things.