What makes good UI in Turn Based Strategy Games - Good UI Analysis 01

Turn Based Strategy - Good UI Analysis 01

Hi All,
Today we are talking about Turn Based Strategy (Empire Building) Games and what makes good UI. This is the first article in the TBS Games UI Analysis series.

The difference between UI and UX

Firstly to be sure that we understand the difference between UI(GUI) and UX.
UI is a User Interface (GUI - Graphical UI). As its name says it is Interface for the user identified by its looks (design), and what action it does (Interface to do some Interaction). While UX is short of User Experience, which is also self-explanatory.  That's an experience that a user has while he uses UI while playing TBS game in our case.

Self Explanatory Design + Call for Action

UI is there so you can do something with it, even if it is something passive as to just get Information from it. 

A good example of a call for action in TBS Games is NEXT TURN button. 

It needs to be well designed, that it's obvious it is a button that should be clicked if it is a desktop channel, or to be dragged if its mobile or tablet of course if that is appropriate for that channel. It should be obvious what it is and how to interact with it on a channel that player use. 

One UI for all channels is rarely an optimal experience. It is optimal from a production costs point of view, but that not our topic here.

NEXT TURN button has to be clearly visible and to attract your attention but only when it makes sense to click it. If it blinks, for example, all the time it is same as it not blink at all, except it is maybe more noticeable. You know the saying if everything is a priority then nothing is a priority. That's true with UI design also, for all types of games, not just TBS Games.

Good UI shouldn't call you for action until it is a reasonable time for it. If you have more units to move or things to handle in the city, good UI should not call you for NEXT TURN, it should call you to finish those other things first. 

Good UI should guide you through the game flow to makes things easier for you with enough information to help you, but also not limiting you and annoying you by not letting you to do something you want on your own order or way. Of course, this applies only if it doesn't conflict with game rules and mechanics. Good UI Always show only possible actions. If something is not possible at the moment or with current selection it should be clearly disabled, preferably with info on mouse over why, or it should be hidden in whole.

To summarize: Good UI is there to help you out with what you should do and how to do it, and then get out of your way, and don't unnecessarily distract you. 

CIV 5 - Good UI - Call for Action examples

On this Civ 5 example, you can clearly see what you should do next, what are notifications to deal with. You see text ADOPT POLICY calling you for most important next action from others possible. All notifications look like rounded buttons calling you for click action to get more info.

The self-explanatory design here is obvious for +1 icon informing you that one of your Cities Grown +1 population, or even more obvious  Hammer Icon calling you to select what to build next. While clicking on them will often locate and zoom you on the map or open dialogue with possible actions to additionally help you out with your task.

Tooltips are good!

Even if the UI (like obvious button with clear Icon) is pretty much self-explanatory I think it is always good practice to introduce tooltip when you hold a mouse over it. That way user can be sure what will happen when he clicks it, and if he got something wrong you will spare him of unnecessarry clicking. Especially as those notifications will often disappear after they are clicked.

Therefore tooltips are good, especially as you can put shortcut Keys there that helps player remembers them as an additional benefit. If there is an option to disable it later then it is even better. 

But Long text should be avoided even in tooltips. If you cant explain in a sentence or two then something is probably wrong with the gameplay and UI. You can put an additional link to help page about concrete action (like civilopedia) if you want to provide all details, but try to keep tooltip explanations short. They are there so people don't need to go through boring tutorials and remembers what means what, and what it does.


That was brief brainstorming on the importance of Self Explanatory Design and especially  Call for Action in good UI in Turn Based Strategy Games, that of course, can be applied on games in general.

If you like this article, stay tuned, as more topics on Good UI will come explaining some other important things like Classification of Info in UI, Responsiveness, Intuition, Management screens...and othe aspects of good UI.


What is your opinion, which TBS Games you find to have good UI and why, let me know in comments, I would like to hear an opinion of real TBS Games fans? Especially if you put a lot of hours in those games, either playing or creating them?


Please subscribe/follow if you like this article and you are interested to read more on TBS Games.

Thank You

BadHabit.

Turn Based Strategy - Empire Building Games - Why some players don't like them

5 Reasons Why Some Players don't like TBS Empire building games.

Hi All,
Today we are talking about Turn Based Strategy (Empire Building) Games and why some players don't like them. What are those main reasons that people don't like or I can even say hate about them, what makes them unattractive and why they avoid them?

No 5: Specific Niche - Players either Love them or Hate them

TBS Games are Specific time and planing demanding

This is not like one reason but more a combination of reasons, which is related to benefits and specific type of players that like Turn Based Strategy Games. From Game Pace to Slow Progress, A lot of thinking, planning and managing...

Check my post explaining those good sides: Turn Based Strategy Games - Good Sides

If you not finding yourself on any of those explained in the "Good Sides" post above, or at least on half of them, you are probably on the other side that hates those type of games.

I think that a lot of it has to do with fact that most of the players like fast, fun, adventurous, exploring and entertaining game, with an adrenalin rush and similar. It's not that TBS Games doesn't have at least some of those characteristics but on the other side, they often demand careful thinking, planning, management and decision making, step by step planning and patience. Again some of those characteristics are also in other games, but not in that scale as in TBS, Tycoon or Management Games. That's why you often find players that like TBS games also like all those Management like genres.

Why is that? TBS is a very specific Niche that's not meant to be for a very wide audience. Although there are very popular titles like Sid Myers Civilizations series, still it's not comparable to some popular FPS, or RPG Game in a number of players playing them.

Therefore like in real life when something is too specific or custom, and it's not that much commercial most of the people will not like it. You can find this often with music or movies. While a smaller part of the population still will love it, adore it,  and create almost a cult around it, most of the people will find it not that special, or even boring.

No 4: Long Lasting Slow Progress and Time investment

After 4700 hours, i decided i dont like it that much :)

Turn-based strategy games often have slow progress, patience and effort are needed. You are not getting instant results of your play. It is happening in small steps, every action, every decision that you made gradually ads up. 

Although you play in turns and it doesn't demand your full focus and quick reaction and you control the speed of playing, still it demands long hours of a play session in order to accomplish something and have some fun in return. It will not happen like that You built your first city and the first unit, and you are cool, and you stop playing. You will want to invest more and be part of that slow process of building Empire by yourself.

Unfortunately Most of the people especially these days like instant fun without too much effort, like with most things in life these days, instant food, instant coffee, instant dating, instant everything.

Angry birds, Just play it and have fun immediately 

They will prefer Angry Birds that they can play immediately, without too much thinking, and not spend hours or days on some Empire Building Turn-based strategy. 
Don't get me wrong I love Angry Birds its a great game, I just want to make a point here....why people often avoid TBS Strategy games. And that's for sure is slow gradual progress that demands time investment.

No 3: Complexity - Often Unnecessary Micromanagement

I must admit that those games are sometimes unnecessary complex. Often there are too many things to handle that playing those games becomes really a burden. That's one of the first things that differentiate a good game from a bad one. 

Civ 5 Screen. Too many things to deal with!

Creators of those games often mean that more is always better. And forgot an important thing that those games are firstly strategies and then management and progress games, if not then that game is probably in some other category, like simulation or tycoon management.

Nobody thinks it is fun to micromanage a pile of options or settings that have no or have minimal impact on their gameplay. Therefore it is important that a player has to manage only systems that actually adds a meaningful deep to the game and can have significant effects on strategy and impact on how games playouts at the end. 

Unfortunately, some devs add things just to full fill game with features or because of reality and comparability to real life. All that often complicate things and makes games even look more complex then they are maybe, especially to newbies in a genre. This in combination with bad UI, that complicates gameplay instead to ease it, is a usual suspect for reason why people abandoning those games.

Civ 5 Screen. Too many things on the map.

For Example why in Civilization Games I have to see every fuc.. shi.. I built in the city. My brain is screaming of all that detail when I look at the map, and I cant easily locate and identified my units, or roads or terrain, because of really nice life-realistic trading centar spawned around.... And you will agree that it is more important to have a brief and easy overview of your units/terrain so you can plan out moves (without going to different types of maps/overviews and similar please). 

No 2: Simple AI - AI / Diplomacy is rarely good enough

CIV 5, Weak diplomacy and AI

I am not an expert for AI, but competing with AI that only trying to do things ideally without creativity makes it predictable opponent and not challenging and fun to play against.

Most of the time that is because AI development is the last thing to deal with in-game productions and there is never enough time for such a demanding task.

Second is that with complex system and to many things effecting gameplay like in those type of games it is very hard to program good AI, which brings us to the previous point that Games shouldn't be unnecessary complex and not only because that will ruin our gameplay experience but also will make programming an adequate AI if not impossible then at least very close to it or very challenging.

Most of the players that actually like playing turn-based strategies often complaining about AI. Developers then try to fix that Artificial Intelligence logic inferiority by giving AI ability to produce more and faster which makes the game more challenging and less boring, but on the other side create unfairness effect which sometimes ruins the game, even more, create a revolt within players.

Therefore the perception of bad AI and lack of good Diplomacy is often recognized as one of the important downsides of those games.

No 1: Multiplayer Struggle - Speed or Conflict Limits 

CIV 5, Multiplayer. Waiting for the player...

Turn-based strategy games are traditionally bad at Multiplayer Mode. That is because they are slow-progressing and turn-based. Which mean that playing session will be very long in most cases, and on top of that half of that time you are waiting for other payers to play and that only in best case scenario when you play against one player. If there are more players then than the situation is even worse actually Num of Players times worse. That's a big problem. 

The solution that helps to make a multiplayer game at least bearable is simultaneous multiplayer. Which means that all players play they turn in the same time, and when everyone is pressed next turn, that turn is played. 

Which is fine in a way when you build things and similar, but is really problematic on units movement and war actions. 

Because those conflict actions are then resolved by one of the algorithms depending on the game. But in any case, you can end up with some of your moves not possible because other player did something else, and because it is simultaneous you couldn't see it. 

That makes things sometimes very unpredictable and some of your best planned strategic moves ridiculous, which can turn lost battle to lost war and defeat in the end.

It looks there is still not a proper solution for multiplayer, sometimes there are time limits or there are different variations on how those simultaneous moves are solved but they are often either unfair or hard for a player to understand, or still take to long and cause other players to wait. 

Anyway, bad multiplayer is a big loss for Turn Based Strategy games and that is the reason why it is on No 1 of their downsides. Having in mind that almost all games today have multiplayer versions and that it is often the most popular and strongest play of today games its a real pity that it is not like that in this genre. 

Although I used Civilisation 5 game for some examples of bad sides in TBS Games, many other titles suffering from it also, and Civ 5 is in my opinion still the best game in this genre.

That were the main downsides of Turn Based Strategy - Empire Building Games.

What is your opinion, which TBS Empire Building Games you find troublesome and why, let me know in comments, I would like to hear an opinion of real TBS Games fans or haters :) ? Especially if you put a lot of hours in those games, either playing or creating them?


Please subscribe/follow if you like this article and you are interested to read more on TBS Games.

Thank You 
BadHabit.