Suggestions for more informative messages

[Talleyrand]

Graeme Dice said:

I'm glad that you've got a direct mental link to their brains and can determine exactly how they want the game to be. Back in the real world, we'd like to see things that need to be fixed, get fixed.

Stating something needs to be fixed implies that it is broken. If Illwinter thought the current system were broken, don't you think they would have "fixed" it by now? I don't have a direct link to their brains but I do have a little bit of common sense. Perhaps you should try exercising yours before you post something else.

The nature of a compromise is that it leaves everybody unhappy with the result.

Here's some advice: Don't bother applying for a position as ambassador for your country because you have very little knowledge about how negotiations work.

[JaydedOne]

Yet another good thread with a good initial idea headed for Locksville.

Is there something in the water this month?

[Leif_-]

Talleyrand said:
Stating something needs to be fixed implies that it is broken. If Illwinter thought the current system were broken, don't you think they would have "fixed" it by now?

Not necessarily. Illwinter is a "garage operation" and they've always had a tendency to work more on what they find interesting than on what's broken (which seems a pretty sensible approach for this type of game, really.) So that they haven't "fixed" something can mean that they don't think it's a problem, that they don't think it's important, that they've prioritised other stuff, that the code they'd have to change is particularly ugly and double-plus-un-fun or that they've been distracted with shinier, more rewarding aspects of making the game.

Besides, this is really a UI issue, and Illwinter's attention to those have always been a little haphazard.

[Graeme Dice]

Talleyrand said:
Stating something needs to be fixed implies that it is broken. If Illwinter thought the current system were broken, don't you think they would have "fixed" it by now? I don't have a direct link to their brains but I do have a little bit of common sense.

Unless you are going to argue that Illwinter believes their game is perfect, then you have no idea whether they want the messages to behave in a certain way. However, even if they do want the messages to be uninformative, which is unlikely, it's the player's job to inform the developers of what changes are necessary.

Here's some advice: Don't bother applying for a position as ambassador for your country because you have very little knowledge about how negotiations work.

Could we avoid silly analogies about international politics? Illwinter can either keep the messages as uninformative as they currently are, or they can listen to the dozens of people who have asked over the past several years for improved information to be presented in the message summary. The first case is supported by a few people who feel that strategy games present too much information and would rather be playing a RPG. The second case has been asked for constantly since Dominions I was released.

[thejeff]

I don't think anyone doesn't want more information available.

There seems to be a consensus on more info in the battle summary screens. Is anybody actually upset that the main message page doesn't tell you who won the battle?

The debate is getting heated and the actual positions are inches apart.

[Truper]

This thread is generating a lot more heat than light. Its become personal, which is hard to understand, but clearly against board rules. Unless the dicourse here gets back on topic, and becomes more civil, I'm going to have to lock it down.

[FAJ]

I think it would be easy for illwinter to have a game setting that allows you to set how much of a message is shown in the main log area.

I think a changable setting is easiest and pleases everyone? Why does the issue have to be black and white?

I would like them to bring back the right-click-closes-current-window feature. Then I could very quickly scroll through the messages anyways.

[AMF]

To recap (and avoid lockdown city), the initial suggestions fundamentally were:

* CHANGE "There was a battle in Ipriscia" TO "We won a battle in Ipriscia"/"We lost a battle in Ipriscia" respectively
* CHANGE "Methone has cast auspex" TO "Methone found no/2 sites in Ipriscia with auspex."
* CHANGE "A sneaking enemy was discovered" TO "A sneaking enemy was defeated by/escaped from"
* CHANGE "An unexpected event has occured in Olypha" TO "Unexpectedly, an ill omen was seen in Olypha."

From a newbie's perspective, these suggestions seem spot on, and I could give a LOT more just from what I have seen in my games. I would dearly love more informative messages.

I think most people here are in agreement, no?

But, yes, there was a dispute. The controversy, as far as I can tell, is more about how much detail people want to see about the outcomes of battles. They don't want to lose the suspense of knowing how a battle went or watching the battle play out.

This could be solved, as suggested by the above post, by having a toggle.

Overall, it's hard for me to think of any situation where more accurate and more concise information is not desirable. And, from a newbie's perspective, I would REALLY like more informative messages. As it is, I have to hunt and peck to figure out what happened each turn, because I am still new to the game. But I doubt that is a desirable outcome, from a game design perspective. Why make people work hard for information?

I mean, it really seems like an easy and logical fix...almost as obvious as fixing some of the humorous english in the text...

[Cainehill]

I would rarely see a situation where "We won/lost a battle" would be more useful than "There was a battle". If I don't already _know_ intuitively that I'd be in a massacre, those messages are useless without information about the casualties.

Since casualties would rarely if ever fit into the summary message, I see no benefit in changing the message - only in giving the follow-up message a lot better information.

That makes it rather different from many of the other messages, where a single line in the summary could often obviate any need to click for more information, unless you wanted to view "flavor" of further messages. Example being : "Wimpy Mage cast Wimpy Knowledge revealing X sites". 90% of the time you'd then _know_ you didn't need to click further, because it would say "revealing no magic sites".