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Worker/Army Counter
We’ve seen some great questions and comments on why certain decisions were made with our new Worker/Army feature in the UI, so we wanted to discuss how to proceed with potential changes to this feature. First, let us explain our thought process, and then we can decide whether our reasoning was sound and move forward from there.
We’ll begin by discussing the merits of the Worker/Army feature always being displayed vs. requiring a mouseover like we have it now. We had two main reasons for going with the current decision. First, we believe that unlike supply or current resources, this number isn’t something that players have to know every second of the game. Instead, these numbers are beneficial at specific points to gauge the state of the game and make specific decisions. Second, we want to avoid having too much information displayed in the UI. We want to keep the UI cleaner by minimizing the amount of non-essential information being shown on screen at any given moment.
Regarding how the workers are counted, we simply took the same numbers that the Units tab used for observers. This has caused some confusion, because the number is different from how the supply count works. For example, when you have 10 Marines and 10 SCVs and start building 1 more SCV, the supply is displayed as 21 / X (unit supply you have, AND units you are currently building) instead of 20 / X (unit supply you actually have right now). Meanwhile in the Units tab (and therefore in the new worker counter), it would only show that you have 10 SCVs, since that’s how many you currently have on the field.
All that said, these are things that can be changed if needed, so let’s try to figure out what the best choices are for the game before deciding on a solution.
Matchmaker and Balance Testing
Both the matchmaker and the changes we were discussing went out this week! Let’s play as much as we can and figure out our next steps for balance tuning!
ByuN
With how much ByuN accomplished last week, we thought he deserved his own section in the Community Update this week. Congratulations, ByuN! It was so awesome watching him take on teams of the best players in the world to win one of the most prestigious, longstanding tournaments in StarCraft II!
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They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it.
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On September 17 2016 02:58 Elentos wrote:
They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it.
Yeah, I'd be cool with that. Mostly I just want the option to have it on at all times (I'm not sure why you'd want it off, but whatever).
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Very interesting Community feedback update.
it gave me a lot of insight into the thought process of blizzards balance design decisions.
for example: buffing swarmhosts/ravens for the ultimate balance or adding a very balanced ability to the tempest.
the way SC2 feels right now makes me very confident about the game's future.
I have absolutely no trust issues in blizzard and i would buy SC2 lotv again if i could.
Star Craft was never that good before than in legacy of the void.
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OMG I realized I totally forgot to use the worker count feature lol. I really need to get used to it.
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For me Wings of Liberty was the golden days, all the casting all the in depth and somewhat stable gameplay... Everyone knew some general timings when the few styles could attack and it was actually really cool as fuck..
Now every game is random as fuck.. Because of all the fast acting spells that will generally turn out different every game, such as bile and adepts.. and liberatior locations.
I think it's much harder to take a stable 3rd and play now
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I very much prefer for the worker and army count to include those that are in production. The main reason I think this tool is useful is because it helps inform you on what you still need to produce (especially on the worker front) and if you already have N units/workers in production, that's N of those things less that you need to make.
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Welp maybe developers think there's not enough data to decide/change anything for now.
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I like the decision to not permanently show worker count.
balance wise I hope burrow fungal won't stay in the game because it would mean terran could never move out without a raven unless you build extra CCs to be able to consistently scan your army. this is just dumb.
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I also like that the separate supply count is not permanently visible. However I would like the units already in production to show up in those counts so that both counts add up to your global supply. It just makes it less confusing.
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United States12235 Posts
On September 17 2016 02:58 Elentos wrote:
They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it.
Generally that's not something you want to gate behind an options menu. There's an extra burden of knowledge there (you have to know that the option exists, you have to know what it does, you have to know why--or whether--it's beneficial for you). I know it's easy to say "just make it an option" but that's very rarely the best solution.
The other thing is that it has to have some default behavior even if you did make it an option, so what would that default behavior be? I think the mouseover thing is probably a satisfactory compromise and agree with the devs' reasonings completely. You only care about how many workers you have when you're deciding whether to expand or after you've been raided, which are specific and special circumstances.
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On September 17 2016 03:29 Dillon1 wrote:
For me Wings of Liberty was the golden days, all the casting all the in depth and somewhat stable gameplay... Everyone knew some general timings when the few styles could attack and it was actually really cool as fuck..
Now every game is random as fuck.. Because of all the fast acting spells that will generally turn out different every game, such as bile and adepts.. and liberatior locations.
I think it's much harder to take a stable 3rd and play now
I mean wol had its own problems. It over encouraged games where very little skirmishing took place and both sides would camp before engaging In one or two huge fights to end the game. It also in its latter days had huge ballance issues, I don't rember brood lord infestor particularly fondly. I think we've actualy come a long way. The current game encourages players to take more than three bases, reducing the camping deathball syndrome. The ballance despite our whine is better than it was in the bl infester days. Overall the game is in a better state. Don't get my wrong I loved playing wol, that's why I ground my way to master during the bl era with Terran. But I'm glad we have moved on
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just make it an option if you want to see it or not
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I remember in Warcraft 1 and 2 you had to click on one of your farms to see the Supply. They could put the worker supply iu there. It does not change anything you see normaly and if you are interested in the exact count then you can just click on a Ovie,Pylon/supply
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Add an option to change the color of mouse pointer.
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a small bug: when I morph a bane, the army supply count goes down temporarily. when the banes are ready, number goes back again.
it's just a small quality of life improvement (the worker/army supply ui), but I like it, even later game its very easy to keep the target drone count. they probably should put he numbers permanently on the hatchery info screen.
now back to the ~balance patch.
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On September 17 2016 03:31 The Bottle wrote:
I very much prefer for the worker and army count to include those that are in production. The main reason I think this tool is useful is because it helps inform you on what you still need to produce (especially on the worker front) and if you already have N units/workers in production, that's N of those things less that you need to make.
I agree with this. Once a worker is in production it should be counted towards the total number you have as that is the number you have invested in. Terran and Protoss aren't affected by the decision much either way as the numbers aren't going to be off my more than the number of town halls you have, but zerg could be out by quite a lot depending on whether you're currently trying to drone hard - which means that the information you are getting is quite inaccurate. I cannot think of any benefits of displaying the current number of workers on the field instead of workers using supply.
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I might be in the minority here, but I don't actually see why this is necessary at all. With all the automation put in already, it's not hard for me to figure out exactly how many workers I have.
As far as saturation is concerned, I'm already accustomed to doing quick mental math for saturating all my bases and building buildings, and I'm usually right on the exact saturation count every game (when I'm not playing Zerg).
I'm not complaining about it like I did when Blizzard decided to display saturation counts, I actually just don't care. An always off option would be nice...or an always on option? I don't mind a bit more UI clutter, lol. When you're playing SC you don't really notice those things.
It's not like SC's UI is cluttered compared to some games like WoW anyhow.
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Showing the worker counts above each CC/Nexus/Hatch was silly enough, this shouldn't be allowed in competitive matches... Trying to work out your position in a crazy game shouldn't be any easier.
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On September 17 2016 03:54 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2016 02:58 Elentos wrote:
They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it. Generally that's not something you want to gate behind an options menu. There's an extra burden of knowledge there (you have to know that the option exists, you have to know what it does, you have to know why--or whether--it's beneficial for you). I know it's easy to say "just make it an option" but that's very rarely the best solution. The other thing is that it has to have some default behavior even if you did make it an option, so what would that default behavior be? I think the mouseover thing is probably a satisfactory compromise and agree with the devs' reasonings completely. You only care about how many workers you have when you're deciding whether to expand or after you've been raided, which are specific and special circumstances.
I think this is where "sensible defaults" comes in. I think this comment really confuses the conversation.
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If it was up to me the map would be displayed directly and largely in the middle of the screen in a semi-transparent manner (like Diablo 2 IIRC) -- selectively disableable of course for battles or watching for burrowed mines, etc. And the UI should be like the Gameheart UI too (obviously only showing your details and not your opponents). Blizzard would never do this of course -- it's not fashionable to have "clutter" these days.
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On September 17 2016 09:09 Korakys wrote:
If it was up to me the map would be displayed directly and largely in the middle of the screen in a semi-transparent manner (like Diablo 2 IIRC) -- selectively disableable of course for battles or watching for burrowed mines, etc. And the UI should be like the Gameheart UI too (obviously only showing your details and not your opponents). Blizzard would never do this of course -- it's not fashionable to have "clutter" these days.
There's enough stuff going on in even a low level sc2 game to have that much clutter in the middle of the screen.
Personally, I think the in game worker counting stuff is good enough as is.
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On September 17 2016 03:29 Dillon1 wrote:
For me Wings of Liberty was the golden days, all the casting all the in depth and somewhat stable gameplay... Everyone knew some general timings when the few styles could attack and it was actually really cool as fuck..
Now every game is random as fuck.. Because of all the fast acting spells that will generally turn out different every game, such as bile and adepts.. and liberatior locations.
I think it's much harder to take a stable 3rd and play now
WoL was never really stable until BL infestor and people knew the timings because if you didn't die to those timings you won the game
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just adds another layer for optimised builds and another gauge to minimise mistakes. things like this give people something to look at, so get x workers then do this this and this making the same games over and over again
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Well, sometimes you may have an Oracle in your worker line and the Voice announcing is some seconds late. So you lose 5 workers before recognizing the Oracle...
With Real Time Display of the cuttent worker count, you will never have that issue.
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Worker count on the UI is a terrible idea. Going from base to base to count workers is very APM demanding in a high level game, and in WOL you even had to box your workers to count them.
Having this number displayed at all point will make the game much more easy in a stupid way.
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I disagree with the idea that the game will be easier. This kind of changes will never make the game easier in anyway. There is infinite amount of actions to do in any moment of the game, cutting the less strategic ones like counting the workers would just create time for more actions on the map.
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On September 17 2016 08:16 zyce wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2016 03:54 Excalibur_Z wrote:On September 17 2016 02:58 Elentos wrote:
They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it. Generally that's not something you want to gate behind an options menu. There's an extra burden of knowledge there (you have to know that the option exists, you have to know what it does, you have to know why--or whether--it's beneficial for you). I know it's easy to say "just make it an option" but that's very rarely the best solution. The other thing is that it has to have some default behavior even if you did make it an option, so what would that default behavior be? I think the mouseover thing is probably a satisfactory compromise and agree with the devs' reasonings completely. You only care about how many workers you have when you're deciding whether to expand or after you've been raided, which are specific and special circumstances. I think this is where "sensible defaults" comes in. I think this comment really confuses the conversation.
"Make everything an option" is bad design. The option UI is also an UI, and you don't want to have too much information there either for the same reasons you don't want it in the main UI. "Make everything an option" is a cop out for people not wanting do the hard work of designing the UI properly. Unfortunately it's not uncommon.
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Make the mouse-over the default. This way, even people that don't know about this feature will inevitably notice it while making it less annoying than "always on" for those that don't want it. Once that is the established default, make it an option to either disable it altogether or make it "always on" for those that want it showing. I think health bars works similar to this currently.
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Now automate Mule/Larva injection and semi-automate creep spread. Senseless micromanagement killed the game for casuals(I'm not part of casuals) and attributed to the decline of the scene.
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I honestly don't know I feal about this change. I think in some ways it's an indirect buff to zerg as it makes it so that they can more easily ballance workers and units.
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On September 17 2016 03:54 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2016 02:58 Elentos wrote:
They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it. Generally that's not something you want to gate behind an options menu. There's an extra burden of knowledge there (you have to know that the option exists, you have to know what it does, you have to know why--or whether--it's beneficial for you). I know it's easy to say "just make it an option" but that's very rarely the best solution. The other thing is that it has to have some default behavior even if you did make it an option, so what would that default behavior be? I think the mouseover thing is probably a satisfactory compromise and agree with the devs' reasonings completely. You only care about how many workers you have when you're deciding whether to expand or after you've been raided, which are specific and special circumstances.
I am sorry, but this way of thinking is exactly the reason why so much of new software is such shit. Yeah, make whatever you think is the most genius way of doing thing the default - but what the hell does it hurt to have an option?!
There are so many cool things that people have suggested to which Blizzard just said "that would be too many options and that would be confusing for the players" - which almost makes me vomit. If the player doesn't want to customize anything, he is completely welcome to use the defaults, but how is such a person hurt by the fact that the customization option exists for people who are not completely dumb? If you thing the menus would be too complicated, just make a huge "advanced options" tab that can be scrolled down for hours, or hide it all away into an ascii config file, but for humanity's sake stop removing options because you think people are too stupid to be presented with options!
Edit: the same goes to this guy:
On September 17 2016 22:28 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2016 08:16 zyce wrote:On September 17 2016 03:54 Excalibur_Z wrote:On September 17 2016 02:58 Elentos wrote:
They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it. Generally that's not something you want to gate behind an options menu. There's an extra burden of knowledge there (you have to know that the option exists, you have to know what it does, you have to know why--or whether--it's beneficial for you). I know it's easy to say "just make it an option" but that's very rarely the best solution. The other thing is that it has to have some default behavior even if you did make it an option, so what would that default behavior be? I think the mouseover thing is probably a satisfactory compromise and agree with the devs' reasonings completely. You only care about how many workers you have when you're deciding whether to expand or after you've been raided, which are specific and special circumstances. I think this is where "sensible defaults" comes in. I think this comment really confuses the conversation. "Make everything an option" is bad design. The option UI is also an UI, and you don't want to have too much information there either for the same reasons you don't want it in the main UI. "Make everything an option" is a cop out for people not wanting do the hard work of designing the UI properly. Unfortunately it's not uncommon.
But I WANT the information, I want to have these options. Why can't I have them? Just because the mantra of "proper UI" is more important than what I want? But who do you make the software for in the first place? Again, if you really thing the average user doesn't have the ability to process more than twenty options (even though I can't imagine how such user plays such a complex game), then hide it somewhere, where only dedicated users will find it. But do not take choice away because of buzzwords (unless you want to work for Apple).
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On September 18 2016 03:40 opisska wrote:But I WANT the information, I want to have these options.
Type "about:config" in Firefox. That's a bad config UI. There is no way to know if something is in there. I would have to stumble on the information in a forum or something. That makes the UI not very useful. I don't want Blizzard to put effort in useless things so you get a big fat NO from me.
One extra option wouldn't change anything of course, but this "let's make it an option" comes up in almost every single UI discussion. No. Let's not.
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On September 18 2016 04:49 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2016 03:40 opisska wrote:But I WANT the information, I want to have these options. Type "about:config" in Firefox. That's a bad config UI. There is no way to know if something is in there. I would have to stumble on the information in a forum or something. That makes the UI not very useful. I don't want Blizzard to put effort in useless things so you get a big fat NO from me. One extra option wouldn't change anything of course, but this "let's make it an option" comes up in almost every single UI discussion. No. Let's not.
about:config was actually an example I wanted to throw at you, but thought about it too late and was too lazy to edit my post. How does the existence of this page hurt any user of Firefox that doesn't want to meddle with it? For me it was useful many times and the high level of configurability is one of the main reasons I am using FF in the first place. Do you really get somehow mysteriously offended by the very thought that the software you use has an option page that you don't like? Nobody is forcing you to use it, since there is a selection (which I would guess is sufficient, or probably even too big for your liking) of options accessible "normally". Removing about:config would be of zero benefit to you and to detriment to me, so why should it be done?
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On September 18 2016 05:10 opisska wrote:How does the existence of this page hurt any user of Firefox that doesn't want to meddle with it?
It hides things that I want or need to meddle with. For every option you add to the Starcraft UI it gets harder and harder to get an overview. If I can't browse through the options with a low effort I won't bother and it becomes useless. Blizzard is well aware of this of course. That's why you won't get your option for the Worker/Army feature.
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On September 18 2016 03:40 opisska wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2016 03:54 Excalibur_Z wrote:On September 17 2016 02:58 Elentos wrote:
They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it. Generally that's not something you want to gate behind an options menu. There's an extra burden of knowledge there (you have to know that the option exists, you have to know what it does, you have to know why--or whether--it's beneficial for you). I know it's easy to say "just make it an option" but that's very rarely the best solution. The other thing is that it has to have some default behavior even if you did make it an option, so what would that default behavior be? I think the mouseover thing is probably a satisfactory compromise and agree with the devs' reasonings completely. You only care about how many workers you have when you're deciding whether to expand or after you've been raided, which are specific and special circumstances. I am sorry, but this way of thinking is exactly the reason why so much of new software is such shit. Yeah, make whatever you think is the most genius way of doing thing the default - but what the hell does it hurt to have an option?!
It hurts because casuals feel intimidated by a huge options menu. casuals want to know what they are playing and what options there are so they will scroll through the options and when there are to many options available and they not even understand what they do exacly it can definitely intimidate them from playing sc2 because they think it's so complicated.
and no, an advanced settings tab wouldn't help because casuals would still click on it.
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On September 18 2016 05:24 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2016 05:10 opisska wrote:How does the existence of this page hurt any user of Firefox that doesn't want to meddle with it? It hides things that I want or need to meddle with. For every option you add to the Starcraft UI it gets harder and harder to get an overview. If I can't browse through the options with a low effort I won't bother and it becomes useless. Blizzard is well aware of this of course. That's why you won't get your option for the Worker/Army feature.
Why are you constantly avoiding to address my actual arguments? Your reply doesn't make logical sense - you are against "hiding" things you want to meddle with and the solution is to not have them at all? How does that help you in ... anything? Please, explain what harm ant to whom is caused by taking all the options you do not want to include and summarily including them on a separate, possible hard to use place. The harm cannot be "the options aren't easily accessible", when the other possibility is that they aren't accessible at all.
On September 18 2016 05:24 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2016 03:40 opisska wrote:On September 17 2016 03:54 Excalibur_Z wrote:On September 17 2016 02:58 Elentos wrote:
They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it. Generally that's not something you want to gate behind an options menu. There's an extra burden of knowledge there (you have to know that the option exists, you have to know what it does, you have to know why--or whether--it's beneficial for you). I know it's easy to say "just make it an option" but that's very rarely the best solution. The other thing is that it has to have some default behavior even if you did make it an option, so what would that default behavior be? I think the mouseover thing is probably a satisfactory compromise and agree with the devs' reasonings completely. You only care about how many workers you have when you're deciding whether to expand or after you've been raided, which are specific and special circumstances. I am sorry, but this way of thinking is exactly the reason why so much of new software is such shit. Yeah, make whatever you think is the most genius way of doing thing the default - but what the hell does it hurt to have an option?! It hurts because casuals feel intimidated by a huge options menu. casuals want to know what they are playing and what options there are so they will scroll through the options and when there are to many options available and they not even understand what they do exacly it can definitely intimidate them from playing sc2 because they think it's so complicated. and no, an advanced settings tab wouldn't help because casuals would still click on it.
The other guy has actually given me a great rebuttal to this kind of arguments. The vast majority of Firefox users are total BFUs, the "casuals" of internet browsing - do you think that they are intimidated by about:config? 99 % of Windows users do not understand shit about registers, but these are still user-accessible in every version to date. This argument doesn't hold any water at all.
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having the worker count not always shown is fine.
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On September 18 2016 07:12 opisska wrote:you are against "hiding" things you want to meddle with and the solution is to not have them at all?
There is a third option. DONT HIDE THEM! The advanced options UI in Firefox could have been useful. The designers could have done their job, and made it a reasonable sized collection of options that the advanced user may want to change. They were lazy and put every option they could think of in there instead. The result is that I don't know if there is anything in there that I would like to change. I've never found it.
The Starcraft UI doesn't have "advanced options". Maybe you could add it and make room for more options, but it's still a bad idea to make it into a dumpster where you put "everything else" without extra thought. UI design rules still apply for the same reasons they apply everywhere else.
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Edit: In general I'm against "advanced options". It encourages the behaviour above. The correct way to handle a lot of information is to categorize it so it becomes easier to find. Having the same type of options in several places is the wrong way. In the case of Starcraft and Worker/Army it belongs in the Gameplay tab not an Advanced tab, so you get a NO vote from me for "advanced options" too.
Edit2: So yes, the answer in this specific case is that it's better to not have the option at all.
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I find it pretty useless to display it when hovering. It seems to me that low level players generally don't care that much about it, and higher level ones don't have time to go hover on the supply count to check their workers count.
I would prefer if they showed it all the time (in a more discrete manner than the supply count), or add one more gameplay option to show it all the time.
I think it would help low level players to focus on making enough workers (while not making too much), and would help higher level players to get the exact value they want (avoiding the need to check it manually, which is APM that could better be spent somewhere else), especially in long games where workers are split among lots of bases and where it's often hard to know how many were lost due to a drop or some harass.
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On September 18 2016 05:24 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2016 03:40 opisska wrote:On September 17 2016 03:54 Excalibur_Z wrote:On September 17 2016 02:58 Elentos wrote:
They should just give people an option in the menu to show it at all times, show it upon mouse-over or never show it. Generally that's not something you want to gate behind an options menu. There's an extra burden of knowledge there (you have to know that the option exists, you have to know what it does, you have to know why--or whether--it's beneficial for you). I know it's easy to say "just make it an option" but that's very rarely the best solution. The other thing is that it has to have some default behavior even if you did make it an option, so what would that default behavior be? I think the mouseover thing is probably a satisfactory compromise and agree with the devs' reasonings completely. You only care about how many workers you have when you're deciding whether to expand or after you've been raided, which are specific and special circumstances. I am sorry, but this way of thinking is exactly the reason why so much of new software is such shit. Yeah, make whatever you think is the most genius way of doing thing the default - but what the hell does it hurt to have an option?! It hurts because casuals feel intimidated by a huge options menu. casuals want to know what they are playing and what options there are so they will scroll through the options and when there are to many options available and they not even understand what they do exacly it can definitely intimidate them from playing sc2 because they think it's so complicated. and no, an advanced settings tab wouldn't help because casuals would still click on it. you heard it here folks, casual players who play casually (not hard-core) now include crazy people and people with severe brain deficiency.
Big menus are never the reason why a player would stop playing the game. This is some next level mental gymnastic here.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with adding "advanced tab" and putting other options there as well. In fact, leave the less important options where they are and put everything else in advanced tab, or just put "worker count toggle" somewhere in "game" options or whatever.
Players are never intimidated by amount of options. I don't even know who come up with that myth. Have you ever seen a post on any forum saying "yeah gameplay was fine but there are too many options int the options menu so I quit playing"?
Having many options is fine. But these options should have good well explained tooltips, and that is it.
The real discussion should not be about how to implement it and where should it be displayed, but why should there be a counter in the first place.
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On September 18 2016 15:44 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2016 07:12 opisska wrote:you are against "hiding" things you want to meddle with and the solution is to not have them at all? There is a third option. DONT HIDE THEM! The advanced options UI in Firefox could have been useful. The designers could have done their job, and made it a reasonable sized collection of options that the advanced user may want to change. They were lazy and put every option they could think of in there instead. The result is that I don't know if there is anything in there that I would like to change. I've never found it. The Starcraft UI doesn't have "advanced options". Maybe you could add it and make room for more options, but it's still a bad idea to make it into a dumpster where you put "everything else" without extra thought. UI design rules still apply for the same reasons they apply everywhere else. -- Edit: In general I'm against "advanced options". It encourages the behaviour above. The correct way to handle a lot of information is to categorize it so it becomes easier to find. Having the same type of options in several places is the wrong way. In the case of Starcraft and Worker/Army it belongs in the Gameplay tab not an Advanced tab, so you get a NO vote from me for "advanced options" too. Edit2: So yes, the answer in this specific case is that it's better to not have the option at all.
And now please explain me specifically, why is it better - not using abstract concepts and capital "NO", but specific examples of things that not having the option makes better for specific people. I don't know if I have any chance, but I still hope that if I make you think specifically about the issue, not just repeat phrases that you have learned somewhere, that you will notice the logical inconsistency of your argumentation. Even though in this particular example, the point is really unimportant, learning to think logically instead of dogmatically may improve your life, so why not try?
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On September 18 2016 17:46 opisska wrote:, but specific examples of things that not having the option makes better for specific people.
Do you want an option menu that says "these options are for people that don't care about usability", or what? And that makes it ok? Adding a feature or an option always incurs a cost. As an UI designer you must decide if it's worth it. Calling the UI "advanced options" does not relieve you from that responsibility. If an option is not important you should not add it to any UI, regardless if you call it "advanced" or not.
And I'm noticing a condescending attidtude in your last post. Drop it.
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On September 18 2016 18:07 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2016 17:46 opisska wrote:, but specific examples of things that not having the option makes better for specific people. Do you want an option menu that says "these options are for people that don't care about usability", or what? And that makes it ok? Adding a feature or an option always incurs a cost. As an UI designer you must decide if it's worth it. Calling the UI "advanced options" does not relieve you from that responsibility. If an option is not important you should not add it to any UI, regardless if you call it "advanced" or not. And I'm noticing a condescending attidtude in your last post. Drop it.
Yeah, that makes it ok. Why wouldn't it? Again, all I am really asking you for is to provide example of how exactly it is "not worth it", who does it specifically hurt - apart of the pride of the UI designer. I just refuse to accept being deprived of an option just because somebody thinks that it's mere existence is hurtful, without providing real reasons.
Again, let me clarify, because you have mixed those things in the previous discussion: I am not talking about options that should be elsewhere - those if are burried in a place that is difficult to access, that's a bad choice. I am talking exclusively about options that you would not put in because you consider them not important and you do not want to clutter you options UI. For these options, I just do not see how not having them is superior to having them in a sub-optimal location and you have still not provided a single argument.
I am not "condescending" and I do not like your line of defense there. You are committing logical fallacies and I am pointing them out, you do not get a free pass out of criticism just by saying that you do not like to be criticized.
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On September 18 2016 18:22 opisska wrote:Yeah, that makes it ok. Why wouldn't it? Again, all I am really asking you for is to provide example of how exactly it is "not worth it", who does it specifically hurt - apart of the pride of the UI designer.
It hurts the users of the UI, obviously. For every option you add it becomes less usable. If it's ment for users, usability is important.
We already have an example, SC2 and the worker/army counter. This option would belong in the Gameplay tab. It's not worth the added clutter to have it there, because it's not an important option.
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On September 18 2016 18:33 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2016 18:22 opisska wrote:Yeah, that makes it ok. Why wouldn't it? Again, all I am really asking you for is to provide example of how exactly it is "not worth it", who does it specifically hurt - apart of the pride of the UI designer. It hurts the users of the UI, obviously. For every option you add it becomes less usable. If it's ment for users, usability is important. We already have an example, SC2 and the worker/army counter. This option would belong in the Gameplay tab. It's not worth the added clutter to have it there, because it's not an important option.
I am sorry, you aren't listening at all and just repeating things over and over again. Have a nice day.
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I've played the game for a couple of years, so I always have a decent grasp of about how much of my supply is workers and how much is army. I constantly forget that this extra thing that would allow me to make sure now exists in the game because the supply count is not in a place where I generally have my cursor. Maybe other people us this frequently, I don't know. But you can win games and improve just fine with or without showing worker and army supply separately, so it's mostly a quality of life addition.
Quality of life additions are things you should be able to adjust in the settings, because these depend largely on personal preference. Like your team color preferences, those are not world defining but recently got added because people wanted to play in different colors. What really has no place in the options menu and is a waste of UI space are the options nobody in their right mind would want disabled like the ability to select enemy units and structures (which can actually lose you games) but that one is even disabled by default. That one is a waste of space and hurtful to new players, it's unjustifiable.
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On September 18 2016 18:35 opisska wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2016 18:33 Mendelfist wrote:On September 18 2016 18:22 opisska wrote:Yeah, that makes it ok. Why wouldn't it? Again, all I am really asking you for is to provide example of how exactly it is "not worth it", who does it specifically hurt - apart of the pride of the UI designer. It hurts the users of the UI, obviously. For every option you add it becomes less usable. If it's ment for users, usability is important. We already have an example, SC2 and the worker/army counter. This option would belong in the Gameplay tab. It's not worth the added clutter to have it there, because it's not an important option. I am sorry, you aren't listening at all and just repeating things over and over again. Have a nice day. Thank you for trying. You are the only person in the argument that was being rational. Luckily as others have pointed out, worker count is a fairly minor issue and if you're already an experienced player you're already accustomed to keeping track of your worker count. So it's really no big deal either way.
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Agree with at least having an option to always show it.
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As a programmer I understand the desire for simple ui. But as an sc2 player who is familiar with the game I want more options. If options arnt to hard to add, and are useful why not include them, even if you have to hide them away. Also I think the whole casuals won't understand argument is dumb. Just because some one plays video games casually does not atomaticly make them an idiot or unable to translate basic skills. Often if you've seen one or to option menus in your life it's usualy not hard to peruse another one. Also if some ones bought this game and enjoys it I doubt a crowded options menu will scare them off. Most casuals probably won't do much with options except mabey tinker with sound/graphics. As long as they can find these I don't think more options is a problem. In game ui is another story, this does need to be clean for casuals. But allowing us to turn on more features is not a problem. Some of these features are very helpful for gameplay like the clock and grid settings, and should be there even if they are not defualt.
There seems to be a myth of stupid casuals in the gaming community I think this myth is more elitism than reality. Casuals arnt stupid they just don't play games as much as us. they can figure out basic stuff. They just don't have the same skill set as hardcore gamers, I doubt that having this skill-set dramatically impacts your ability to use an options menu.
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On September 18 2016 18:33 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2016 18:22 opisska wrote:Yeah, that makes it ok. Why wouldn't it? Again, all I am really asking you for is to provide example of how exactly it is "not worth it", who does it specifically hurt - apart of the pride of the UI designer. It hurts the users of the UI, obviously. For every option you add it becomes less usable. If it's ment for users, usability is important. We already have an example, SC2 and the worker/army counter. This option would belong in the Gameplay tab. It's not worth the added clutter to have it there, because it's not an important option.
We have options for how our control groups are displayed in game, and an option to display experience points earnt, how would this be any different? Are you really arguing that this specific option would be a bad one to add because it would seem that the precedent has already been set by Blizzard that they like making these things customisable. They want people to be able to interact with the game however people choose (completely customisable hotkeys, mouse sensitivity, sound levels, privacy settings etc) and allow people to see as much or as little information as they choose (health bars, flyer help, build grids etc)
I think that when Blizzard are confident that the vast majority of people want something, there's no reason to make it an option, but when they aren't sure, what's the harm in making it an option?
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On September 18 2016 18:22 opisska wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2016 18:07 Mendelfist wrote:On September 18 2016 17:46 opisska wrote:, but specific examples of things that not having the option makes better for specific people. Do you want an option menu that says "these options are for people that don't care about usability", or what? And that makes it ok? Adding a feature or an option always incurs a cost. As an UI designer you must decide if it's worth it. Calling the UI "advanced options" does not relieve you from that responsibility. If an option is not important you should not add it to any UI, regardless if you call it "advanced" or not. And I'm noticing a condescending attidtude in your last post. Drop it. Yeah, that makes it ok. Why wouldn't it? Again, all I am really asking you for is to provide example of how exactly it is "not worth it", who does it specifically hurt - apart of the pride of the UI designer. I just refuse to accept being deprived of an option just because somebody thinks that it's mere existence is hurtful, without providing real reasons. Again, let me clarify, because you have mixed those things in the previous discussion: I am not talking about options that should be elsewhere - those if are burried in a place that is difficult to access, that's a bad choice. I am talking exclusively about options that you would not put in because you consider them not important and you do not want to clutter you options UI. For these options, I just do not see how not having them is superior to having them in a sub-optimal location and you have still not provided a single argument. I am not "condescending" and I do not like your line of defense there. You are committing logical fallacies and I am pointing them out, you do not get a free pass out of criticism just by saying that you do not like to be criticized.
I agree with your point, but I also feel you are overly stiff in your argumentation here. 
I mean... you must realise that there is a drawback to adding a large number of options? In the extreme case of having many hundreds of options all on the same page, most of which 95% of the users will never want to touch, it can worsen the experiences for casual users a fair bit, if he needs to change that one setting, but can't find it, or don't bother to look through all of them in the first place as they are so many.
Adding one more option will probably not make a big difference in general, but if it's changed by few users, and it makes a larger number of other users not find existing (more important) options they'd like to change, you can easily argue that it's a change for the worse.
You can of course mitigate this by structuring the options better, and I guess it'll always be subjective exactly where the options become too many. It'll also be the usual tension between casual users and more serious forum-going users I guess.
So while I, like you it seems, wouldn't mind an option for the workers, I find it a bit silly to pretend that there is no drawback at all in having more options.
And you could also argue that it is a bit mean to try to force other poor forum posters to formulate coherent logical arguments as we discussed earlier in the ABT. :D
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On September 20 2016 15:52 washikie wrote:
As a programmer I understand the desire for simple ui. But as an sc2 player who is familiar with the game I want more options. If options arnt to hard to add, and are useful why not include them, even if you have to hide them away. Also I think the whole casuals won't understand argument is dumb. Just because some one plays video games casually does not atomaticly make them an idiot or unable to translate basic skills. Often if you've seen one or to option menus in your life it's usualy not hard to peruse another one. Also if some ones bought this game and enjoys it I doubt a crowded options menu will scare them off. Most casuals probably won't do much with options except mabey tinker with sound/graphics. As long as they can find these I don't think more options is a problem. In game ui is another story, this does need to be clean for casuals. But allowing us to turn on more features is not a problem. Some of these features are very helpful for gameplay like the clock and grid settings, and should be there even if they are not defualt.
There seems to be a myth of stupid casuals in the gaming community I think this myth is more elitism than reality. Casuals arnt stupid they just don't play games as much as us. they can figure out basic stuff. They just don't have the same skill set as hardcore gamers, I doubt that having this skill-set dramatically impacts your ability to use an options menu.
This has nothing to do with "causals are stupid". It has to do with usability and acessibility, and I think you are just making things up when you say that "causals" (whatever that is, this community is not divided into two groups) won't touch any other options than sound and graphics. Ignoring usability for options is just bad, and hiding them to get away with it won't exactly increase usability.
I can't see any arguments here, other than "I want it and people can figure it out". No, that's not an excuse to make a cluttered UI. Sorry.
Feature creep is very very common among software developers, and it is hard to get an understanding when you try to fight against it. "If a few good features are good then many good features are even better". No.
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On September 20 2016 16:48 IMSupervisor wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2016 18:33 Mendelfist wrote:On September 18 2016 18:22 opisska wrote:Yeah, that makes it ok. Why wouldn't it? Again, all I am really asking you for is to provide example of how exactly it is "not worth it", who does it specifically hurt - apart of the pride of the UI designer. It hurts the users of the UI, obviously. For every option you add it becomes less usable. If it's ment for users, usability is important. We already have an example, SC2 and the worker/army counter. This option would belong in the Gameplay tab. It's not worth the added clutter to have it there, because it's not an important option. We have options for how our control groups are displayed in game, and an option to display experience points earnt, how would this be any different? Are you really arguing that this specific option would be a bad one to add because it would seem that the precedent has already been set by Blizzard that they like making these things customisable. They want people to be able to interact with the game however people choose (completely customisable hotkeys, mouse sensitivity, sound levels, privacy settings etc) and allow people to see as much or as little information as they choose (health bars, flyer help, build grids etc) I think that when Blizzard are confident that the vast majority of people want something, there's no reason to make it an option, but when they aren't sure, what's the harm in making it an option?
I'm not sure what your point is. Not all options are equal. Some options have a large impact on the game, and are also very individual (mouse sensitivity). Other options are not. Maybe some people would like to have slightly thicker window borders? That's a silly example, but there is a wide range of cases between those too. In the latter case Blizzard should just make a good design and leave it at that. I don't think my position is very remarkable.
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Not sure if this is worth the discussion it triggered. Like, do we have nothing more important to implement? Add the fcking option. DONE. Next please.
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On September 20 2016 17:04 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2016 16:48 IMSupervisor wrote:On September 18 2016 18:33 Mendelfist wrote:On September 18 2016 18:22 opisska wrote:Yeah, that makes it ok. Why wouldn't it? Again, all I am really asking you for is to provide example of how exactly it is "not worth it", who does it specifically hurt - apart of the pride of the UI designer. It hurts the users of the UI, obviously. For every option you add it becomes less usable. If it's ment for users, usability is important. We already have an example, SC2 and the worker/army counter. This option would belong in the Gameplay tab. It's not worth the added clutter to have it there, because it's not an important option. We have options for how our control groups are displayed in game, and an option to display experience points earnt, how would this be any different? Are you really arguing that this specific option would be a bad one to add because it would seem that the precedent has already been set by Blizzard that they like making these things customisable. They want people to be able to interact with the game however people choose (completely customisable hotkeys, mouse sensitivity, sound levels, privacy settings etc) and allow people to see as much or as little information as they choose (health bars, flyer help, build grids etc) I think that when Blizzard are confident that the vast majority of people want something, there's no reason to make it an option, but when they aren't sure, what's the harm in making it an option? I'm not sure what your point is. Not all options are equal. Some options have a large impact on the game, and are also very individual (mouse sensitivity). Other options are not. Maybe some people would like to have slightly thicker window borders? That's a silly example, but there is a wide range of cases between those too. In the latter case Blizzard should just make a good design and leave it at that. I don't think my position is very remarkable.
My point is Blizzard like having options that increase or decrease the amount of information available to the player in their menus and this shouldn't be any different. Are you talking generalisations about UI design or this specific worker supply info?
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On September 20 2016 17:04 Mendelfist wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2016 16:48 IMSupervisor wrote:On September 18 2016 18:33 Mendelfist wrote:
We have options for how our control groups are displayed in game, and an option to display experience points earnt, how would this be any different? Are you really arguing that this specific option would be a bad one to add because it would seem that the precedent has already been set by Blizzard that they like making these things customisable. They want people to be able to interact with the game however people choose (completely customisable hotkeys, mouse sensitivity, sound levels, privacy settings etc) and allow people to see as much or as little information as they choose (health bars, flyer help, build grids etc)
I think that when Blizzard are confident that the vast majority of people want something, there's no reason to make it an option, but when they aren't sure, what's the harm in making it an option? I'm not sure what your point is. Not all options are equal. Some options have a large impact on the game, and are also very individual (mouse sensitivity). Other options are not. Maybe some people would like to have slightly thicker window borders? That's a silly example, but there is a wide range of cases between those too. In the latter case Blizzard should just make a good design and leave it at that. I don't think my position is very remarkable. My point is Blizzard like having options that increase or decrease the amount of information available to the player in their menus and this shouldn't be any different. Are you talking generalisations about UI design or this specific worker supply info?
Why shouldn't this be any different? Not all options are equally important. In this speific case I don't think a new option is justified. It may also be true that some of the already existing options aren't justified. Maybe some options that aren't there should be there. This is one of the things that UI designers get paid for to decide.
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On September 20 2016 17:16 insitelol wrote:
Not sure if this is worth the discussion it triggered. Like, do we have nothing more important to implement? Add the fcking option. DONE. Next please.
Cant agree more
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I feel like all of these people getting their panties in a bunch over this don't even use the feature in the first place.
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I would personally find the feature useful if I were given an option to have it always on, as I don't have the time to play frequently but do enjoy playing well, and having a way to help me train more efficiently during the time I have available is a good thing for me. I'll forget to mouse over but if I can have it always on it'll be easier for me to remember to glance at.
I see cons to including an option for it, however. Any feature Blizzard adds will invariably require upkeep. Since this seems tied into the observer functionality from their description, it is not likely to be an option that costs a significant amount of time to maintain, but the cost does exist and each minor feature that needs a few QA regression bullets each release will add up over time. Even on well-kept compartmentalized enterprise software we still find regressions show up across the codebase even in "simple" places from time to time because of mutability, threading, etc that we did not expect because the product is too complex to keep all at once in any given engineer's head.
The argument for a clean menu/UI is not really holding weight with me, unless we're going to drop unnecessary options from there first. This is a much better training tool than several other options in the Gameplay menu.
I think including the option in the menu rather than a config file is better, since this is a tool more likely to be used by casual players who want to improve at SC2 but may not be technically inclined enough to know to use config files, and not dedicated enough to figure out how to do it. I personally would have no problems with the config file, but I have no expectations that some of my friends who play for fun would know it was even an option, or how to modify it.
Overall, I vote a tentative yes, depending on cost to maintain which I am optimistically guessing is low, as it has improvement utility and is effective, and I have a personal interest in the option.
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This is a feature now? Huh. More stuff like this and I might actually play again.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
