Constructive Comments for Voting Menu
lordfarva
Join Date: 2013-05-24 Member: 185357Members
Join Date: 2013-05-24 Member: 185357Members
This is not a rant post so please keep reading...The voting menu does need some very minor UI re-work that, in my opinion could, easily be included in the next patch. If any devs are reading this, if we were using story points then my story is barely 0.5 points:
There are two minor UI changes for the on screen voting box:
1) I think the size of the vote box is fine, however, the background shading for both the vote question (ie, Randomize in Ready Room?) and vote options (ie, yes/no) needs to be more translucent. Honestly, I think opacity of only 10-15% is plenty to differentiate the vote section from the rest of the UI.
2a) The Yes/No vote boxes should not be color coded and instead should be the same color. I say this because in most cultures green will mean "yes" and red will mean "no" (which most likely is why they were color coded), however, in most cultures green usually means "correct" or "go" and red means "wrong" or "stop" which can lead to bias - this is why surveys are always monochrome. I sincerely hope that the NS2 userbase is smart enough to read instead of rely on pretty colors or hit F1 in a knee-jerk fashion, but when the vote is to kick someone or not I think it's better to be safe than sorry. Also the bright red and green selections really are a bit to high contrast to NS2's brown/grey/blue palette.
2b) My suggestion is to use a slightly different color of shading (say, "light grey") for the vote question than for the vote options (say we use just regular "grey" for those) but the vote options need to be shaded with the same color as each other. Standard white NS2 text should be used (it is already).
And those are my hopefully useful "low hanging fruit" suggestions to improve the voting UI. ...maybe I should create a mockup...
Bonus suggestion! -> I'm not sure if this is done already or not as I have not tested it, but to mitigate possible vote spamming it would be good to have a cooldown period for voting. So, if for example, I vote to kick Player Joe but that vote fails as people outvote for "no" then I cannot immediately call another vote to kick Player Joe again. This actually should be done for every type of vote (round restart, change map, etc) to keep people from spamming a vote. This may already be implemented, like I said I'm not sure, but it was vital to have this feature in L4D2 to keep the troll kiddies at bay.
Whew...hell of a first post. Anyways, just to give a shout out to the UWE team...keep up the good work! I sincerely believe that UWE is the best game development group in existence today. Right up there with the EPIC Games crew from 1999 in my mind (who were also busy at that time creating their own engine and game...hmmmm).
There are two minor UI changes for the on screen voting box:
1) I think the size of the vote box is fine, however, the background shading for both the vote question (ie, Randomize in Ready Room?) and vote options (ie, yes/no) needs to be more translucent. Honestly, I think opacity of only 10-15% is plenty to differentiate the vote section from the rest of the UI.
2a) The Yes/No vote boxes should not be color coded and instead should be the same color. I say this because in most cultures green will mean "yes" and red will mean "no" (which most likely is why they were color coded), however, in most cultures green usually means "correct" or "go" and red means "wrong" or "stop" which can lead to bias - this is why surveys are always monochrome. I sincerely hope that the NS2 userbase is smart enough to read instead of rely on pretty colors or hit F1 in a knee-jerk fashion, but when the vote is to kick someone or not I think it's better to be safe than sorry. Also the bright red and green selections really are a bit to high contrast to NS2's brown/grey/blue palette.
2b) My suggestion is to use a slightly different color of shading (say, "light grey") for the vote question than for the vote options (say we use just regular "grey" for those) but the vote options need to be shaded with the same color as each other. Standard white NS2 text should be used (it is already).
And those are my hopefully useful "low hanging fruit" suggestions to improve the voting UI. ...maybe I should create a mockup...
Bonus suggestion! -> I'm not sure if this is done already or not as I have not tested it, but to mitigate possible vote spamming it would be good to have a cooldown period for voting. So, if for example, I vote to kick Player Joe but that vote fails as people outvote for "no" then I cannot immediately call another vote to kick Player Joe again. This actually should be done for every type of vote (round restart, change map, etc) to keep people from spamming a vote. This may already be implemented, like I said I'm not sure, but it was vital to have this feature in L4D2 to keep the troll kiddies at bay.
Whew...hell of a first post. Anyways, just to give a shout out to the UWE team...keep up the good work! I sincerely believe that UWE is the best game development group in existence today. Right up there with the EPIC Games crew from 1999 in my mind (who were also busy at that time creating their own engine and game...hmmmm).