dear @sweet, (and other RADIANT members),
In a recent stream, @max99x added a ‘dissmiss forever’ button to the Re-embarkation UI. I would like to voice a complaint.
The ‘dissmiss forever’ button was supposed to satisfy the desire of players who do not care about re-embarkation to not be bothered by it. That came as response to frustration about the re-embarkation being there, forcing itself in the players attention seemingly saying ‘you ought to press me, for I decide you are finished with this town’. Despite it being an improvement on that situation, I believe it is not an adequate solution, for two reasons:
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People who complained and proclaimed not to care about re-embarkation might still care about re-embarkation after all. Just not, immediately. They see the games’ town progression story as ending in the middle of their own story, and want to go on. These players might say they want a way to dissmiss the notification forever, but I’d rather think what they really want is to dissmiss it ‘for the far forseeable future’, by which I mean a vague, different-from-player-to-player, long time span that goes beyond the simple dissmiss time frame. That is a weird and difficult thing to cater to, and I understand that the frustration prompted you to add the dissmiss forever button.
However, after said long time, even a player who didn’t want to be annoyed by the re-embarkation button might still get the desire to come back on their earlier decision and take their hearthlings with them, and then even these players would potentially want a way to find the re-embark button somewhere. But just, in a place where they where never bothered by it. -
You don’t want a town progression notification continuously nagging your attention in the first place. This is a complaint about the idea behind the ‘re-embark’ and ‘dissmiss’ thingies being notifications (dissmiss=snooze). You don’t want that to be how you handle these milestones anyway. especially when it comes to the re-embarkation button (and thus, the end of your current playthrough). What you want in these cases is that the button is always somewhere, but out of your view, so you’ll never be bothered by it. It just needs to sit patiently waiting for you if ever you demand it’s functionality. That is how you’d want to approach these buttons. And the notification system just doesn’t cut it for that. (Of course, getting the milestones is still worthy of a notification, just not the overview windows that show you what to do to get the next milstone, which is what we are talking about.)
So what would solve both of these problems/concerns. That is where a solution discussed by @Logo, @SirAstrix and others comes in. The solution firstly involves moving all buttons allowing you to see your town’s progress in the town overview screen. Most of these buttons link to a progress overview anyway, so it definately fits in there. See picture 1 for a mockup by @Logo.
Picture 1: A mockup of the potential new town progress button placement (Credits @Logo)
The other changes that would be made are that any changes in town progression will still keep the notification of the story, as is currently the case. But these notifications will serve as a reminder that the central button in the Town overview has changed functionality (next to celebrating of course). Other changes are that the dissmiss buttons are removed out of reduncancy.
This proposal deals with the first concern by moving the re-embark button to a place that is not constantly in sight while you do not care for it, whilst being there at a predictable place when you do. And it works so well that you don’t need different buttons for different dismissal time scales.
You never want to seem to pressure or nudge players to say goodbye to their cities, which the current system does by the attention grabbing power of notifications. However the proposed system does accomplish this goal by patiently waiting until the players are done with the city, letting them take their sweet time with it if necessary. That is mentally a plus.
It also deals with the other problem by ceasing to be a permanent notification. However, by moving all town progression screens to this button it would solve the inconsistency that this move for the re-embark screen alone would create. It also deals with a more general gripe of me and other forum go-ers about any permanent notification (which conveniently is just about only town progression screen notifications, and not much else).
People with this gripe believe that notifications shouldn’t be semi-permanent, because that defeats the purpose of notifications, which are meant to grab your attention. And grabbing attention is something semi-permanent notifications either annoyingly do, or self-defeatingly do not because you are unnecessarily numb to it.
And doesn’t it make sense to have the last button you press each playthorugh be in a screen that shows you a short overview of what this city has become?; the town overview.
All in all, I consider this a more elegant solution to the concerns than what we currently have.
So @Sweet, and other radiant members, even though you already have a solution you think works (dissmiss forever), and put work into it, and even though you might have already talked about this and made a desicion, and even though change is scary, I ask you to consider this proposal.
Signed,
@nikosthefan
(you can add your signature via a reply)
P.S. If I was wrong in the functioning of the system, say so. I don’t have access to the unstable so I know that I do not know the workings beyond every shred of doubt, and I need to do with what info I’ve got. In short, I know I can expect these kind of replies, so don’t hesitate.
