UI Feedback & Streamlining

[Killrob]

Hi Eric!

I gave the current open-beta release a shot to see what you've been cooking up, and thought it would be unfair to not leave any comments. Having very limited experience with Gearcity - I've spent only some 2h in the game - you need to take this feedback for what it is. As you may remember, I'm the producer of "Automation", which may put more or less weight into my words depending on your view.

Firstly, I'd like to say that the game and the genre has big potential to become a very enjoyable, rather nostalgic title.

For me personally I found it rather difficult to find my way into it despite watching the three pretty good YouTube tutorials you posted. 2h into the game I still haven't sold my first car, and I have no clue why that may be.

I track this back to a general lack of UI feedback, obscuring dependencies and making it unnecessarily difficult to make choices based on anything but gut feeling - which makes it very tough and somewhat frustrating for people not being used to the game yet.

The major example I'd like to give you here is 5-star rating concept, which in its current form doesn't allow for detailed feedback on your design choices. Sometimes in component or car design moving a slider from minimum to maximum changes exactly nothing in the star rating, while having a huge effect on price. This makes it incredibly difficult to gauge if your money is well invested or not. I would suggest you give all your star ratings at least one decimal (e.g. 3.7 stars), for more direct feedback to the player's actions, especially considering you are working with non-integer values in the underlying calculations anyway.

Also, the road to getting your cars to sell could be somewhat more comfortable: adding an option to autofill all current projects on a monthly basis would have saved me many turns of wasting money. Removing some depth of UI branching in the different design stages would give a better overview and reduce lots of the unnecessary clicking-through-all-windows. It's seldom you make use of more than a small part of the screen at any given time in the design stages.

This UI branching with lots of pop-ups is made more frustrating by the fact that the tiny windows currently dislike being closed, I found myself clicking X on average two times per window, so I guess either I should practice more FPS, or those windows/buttons need to be made somewhat bigger for better usability.

Well, enough of this for now. Wish you the best of luck for further development!
Cheers!
/Robert

[Eric.B]

Good evening, Killrob, I know who you are. I check up on Automation once and a while myself. It's a great game you guys have. I've been meaning to send you guys a thank you for the Facebook post, but just in case I keep procrastinating; "Thanks a bunch!"

For me personally I found it rather difficult to find my way into it despite watching the three pretty good YouTube tutorials you posted. 2h into the game I still haven't sold my first car, and I have no clue why that may be.

That is peculiar. What city are you trying to sell them in? How much does the car cost? Is there any AI in that city? Is the memos window on the desk giving you any warnings?

GearCity is geared fairly accurate to sales figures for the period, so in smaller cities (less than 100k people) and lower percapitas (less than $150) you're going to have a hard time moving any units until roughly 1907ish. Assuming the AI hasn't already filled that void.

I'll be testing an entirely new sales system in next few weeks. So maybe that will help out somewhat in making sales a little more even.

I track this back to a general lack of UI feedback, obscuring dependencies and making it unnecessarily difficult to make choices based on anything but gut feeling - which makes it very tough and somewhat frustrating for people not being used to the game yet.

A lot of the fluff is missing (specially in the car designer). By fluff I mean hovering tool tips and info boxes that are completely empty. Eventually we'll get to this.

The major example I'd like to give you here is 5-star rating concept, which in its current form doesn't allow for detailed feedback on your design choices. Sometimes in component or car design moving a slider from minimum to maximum changes exactly nothing in the star rating, while having a huge effect on price. This makes it incredibly difficult to gauge if your money is well invested or not. I would suggest you give all your star ratings at least one decimal (e.g. 3.7 stars), for more direct feedback to the player's actions, especially considering you are working with non-integer values in the underlying calculations anyway.

Interesting observation and the sort of thing I was looking for in feedback. Most of the estimations (star system) I wrote before all the ratings were finalized. So I probably really do need to expand upon that panel, and increase the details of the star system. The same needs to be done when building a new branch and factory. Greatly noted, and ticketed. Thank you sir!

Also, the road to getting your cars to sell could be somewhat more comfortable: adding an option to autofill all current projects on a monthly basis would have saved me many turns of wasting money. Removing some depth of UI branching in the different design stages would give a better overview and reduce lots of the unnecessary clicking-through-all-windows. It's seldom you make use of more than a small part of the screen at any given time in the design stages.

If you don't mind me asking what do you mean by "autofill all current projects."

Utilizing the "Quick Menu" (clicking the abacus and later calculator on the desk) you can do everything by hitting buttons except building a factory,branch,car,carpart, and setting production lines. Within the next 3 or 4 features added I will be adding an "All in One" window much like Detroit had where you can control branches/factories/research/etc from the office.

This UI branching with lots of pop-ups is made more frustrating by the fact that the tiny windows currently dislike being closed, I found myself clicking X on average two times per window, so I guess either I should practice more FPS, or those windows/buttons need to be made somewhat bigger for better usability.

May I ask if you're using a laptop trackpad? This has been a problem with laptop users (as well placing tires.) I should have bigger close buttons in the next patch.


Anyway, Glad you tried my game, and good luck to yours! I think you're going to have a much bigger hit than mine.

[Kubby]

By "autofilling all current projects", Killrob means that there should be option to automatically hire the projects as they are started (so, for example, you start a research, and all the engineers are hired automatically, without the need to go to a separate menu to do that). If the players wished to have more control, the window asking for how many employees would you like to hire, popping up immediately after the project is started, would be nice and save some time.

[Killrob]

Hey again!

Coming with some clarification, as requested.

What city are you trying to sell them in? How much does the car cost? Is there any AI in that city?

Zürich as center for production, with a branch in Milano (I think), the car cost 1500, and no competition was showing up as far as I can tell. I guess the costs were too high, but my production costs were around 1000 so I thought that might be a good price (obviously it wasn't).

All that is fine though, and not really the issue I was addressing - I don't think it was a bug or anything either, but my lack of understanding and lack of points of reference in that situation. There are no direct indicators for what would potentially sell and at what price, it's kind of a guessing game going in as a total n00b. As a player of a tycoon game you always want to base your choices on data, and while the data probably was there, I wasn't able to make the needed connections. Any more data showing what may sell, what the market wants and what the competition is selling, etc. would be very helpful. Maybe having something like a market study you can pay for (and takes a month or two to complete), to give new players an anchor, while better players get around that because they can make the necessary connections anyway.

What do you mean by "autofill all current projects."

As Kubby pointed out correctly, what I meant is an option like it already exists to fill all areas of your company with staff, but automatically at the end of the month before the next turn. I can't think of any situations where you'd want to build facilities and then let them stand empty. Sure, on higher levels of play there will be lots of optimization and fine-tuning going on. For a newcomer to the contract-work (project) oriented approach of yours, that kind of feature would make things easier, as it removes one item from the "must-remember" list.

May I ask if you're using a laptop trackpad?

I'm on a desktop computer, running standard full HD, gaming mousepad and a good mouse. I thought I did click the crosses the first time whenever that happened, felt like it didn't register. Maybe the hitbox is slightly smaller than the graphic representation?

Cheers!
/Robert

[Eric.B]

Quick note, I'm typing this in haste, I only have 6 minutes until the next class comes in.

All that is fine though, and not really the issue I was addressing - I don't think it was a bug or anything either, but my lack of understanding and lack of points of reference in that situation. There are no direct indicators for what would potentially sell and at what price, it's kind of a guessing game going in as a total n00b. As a player of a tycoon game you always want to base your choices on data, and while the data probably was there, I wasn't able to make the needed connections. Any more data showing what may sell, what the market wants and what the competition is selling, etc. would be very helpful. Maybe having something like a market study you can pay for (and takes a month or two to complete), to give new players an anchor, while better players get around that because they can make the necessary connections anyway.

Market surveys will be added after the image system and new buying system is implemented, The new buying system should create a way for me to have a dynamic demographic based on how companies influence the market. Sounds like a mouthful, but surveys will be a main part of that.

Viewing the competition already has spots in the GUI, the feature just isn't there yet.

As far as price, the per unit cost are all broken down in the expense report in the sale log in the office. Down to labor/marketing/branch/factory cost per unit. Perhaps I should make this visible in the distribution window?

But I do agree with you, There is still much work to be done displaying more data to the user.

As Kubby pointed out correctly, what I meant is an option like it already exists to fill all areas of your company with staff, but automatically at the end of the month before the next turn. I can't think of any situations where you'd want to build facilities and then let them stand empty. Sure, on higher levels of play there will be lots of optimization and fine-tuning going on. For a newcomer to the contract-work (project) oriented approach of yours, that kind of feature would make things easier, as it removes one item from the "must-remember" list.

Got it, I'll include such a checkbox in the quick details, settings, and RnD menus. Along with the increase wages with inflation checkbox.

I'm on a desktop computer, running standard full HD, gaming mousepad and a good mouse. I thought I did click the crosses the first time whenever that happened, felt like it didn't register. Maybe the hitbox is slightly smaller than the graphic representation?

Cheers!
/Robert

It is actually a problem with DDS textures and alpha picking... seems like some video cards change 2% opacity to pure alpha thus why you were having trouble clicking it... The close button has been changed to a fat box which should be easier to click...



Thanks again for the insight!

[lemonhead75]

I think it would be useful if you could directly access a production overview from your office, rather than going through the globe. Generally all of the pieces of the UI work but they need some polishing; quickly managing adjustment of car prices is difficult when the drop-down bar refuses to display the price you just set. It would also be handy to have some kind of distribution overview chart in the office to show what cars are distributed where, and for what price.

[Eric.B]

I think it would be useful if you could directly access a production overview from your office, rather than going through the globe. Generally all of the pieces of the UI work but they need some polishing; quickly managing adjustment of car prices is difficult when the drop-down bar refuses to display the price you just set. It would also be handy to have some kind of distribution overview chart in the office to show what cars are distributed where, and for what price.

If you could, could you clarify some of these points a little better?

You can view everything production related in the office via the MegaMenu.

The Quick Management tools do need some work, I'll be addressing them shortly.

You can see where your cars are sold at via the sales book on the desk in the office.
Select "Our Sales by Model per City" Then select the model you wish to see. There is a bug with the city names, this has been fixed for 1.11. The price is not included on this page, should I include it?