by PointGuard » Sat Aug 20, 2022 1:22 pm
[Copied from the Suggestions List thread]:
by Bryan » 20 Aug 2022 06:39
Returning after many years away, I have sort of a fresh perspective on the game, and I have a different perspective on games/design than I used to. With that in mind, I suggest in the strongest terms a major focus on the UI for the next version or two. I think this is more important than any feature additions; making DDSCB easier to use will result in fewer people who are willing to try it bouncing off of it. ( I think for a ne) Visually the interface looks much more attractive these days, so that's been excellent to see. It's more functionality/ease of use that I'm concerned with. My primary 'first re-impression' was that 'yep this is still a good game' but also 'I'm fighting the UI at every turn. I'm not so sure this game actually wants me to play it and enjoy it'.
Don't mean that at all to be rude, but it would be dishonest to be less direct about it. Examples I've run into in the first few hours:
- Sliders in the association setup for giving your coach ratings are slow to respond at best and it's very hard to set the number to what I want it to be.
- Things like save dialogs, changing your coach picture, and so on bring up a standard 'windows interface' that would be best removed. Using buttons to cycle through the list of pictures, a save/load dialog with visuals consistent to the ingame interface, etc. would be better. That last bit is more of an aesthetic and not functional, but still a good idea. Along with the that I would put elements like the minimize/maximize/close windows controls in the upper-right look tacky/out of place, the three lines in the upper left that you click to get to menu/save/options/credits are not intuitive IMO. I think it would be much better off with a icon for those broken out into the main display. Esp. for settings, maybe not room for all of them on smaller resolutions.
- It's not always clear what you can click on and what you can't. I saw this mentioned on other sites as an issue with the game fwiw. Looking at the player 'cards' on the Dashboard, needing to click on the player name and not on the photo or in the brief bio are below to bring up their detailed card was not at all apparent and doesn't make sense to me - you can't click on those other parts to go anywhere else, so why not just click anywhere in the whole area?
- I spent 10 minutes on the Depth screen, I know what it's trying to do, and I still can't figure out how to do some basic tasks. How to just remove a player from a time slot in the game - I can set them to a different position but there's no obvious way to just take them out. How to move a player from being a reserve to starting. There's nothing I can find to drag-drop or such that accomplishes this.
- When advancing through the summer, camp weeks requiring multiple clicks isn't optimal. When you arrive at those weeks, I would suggest running all the camps at the start of the week and giving the player the results, so you can just review the information and then advance to the next week. Otherwhise you just end up either ignoring the camps, or advancing an extra time to see the info, then making your recruiting choices, then advancing again ...
- When texting players, you need to do about 7 clicks to ask the basic questions. It would be far better IMO to just have options for that right on the screen where you've just click text. I.e. 'ask about these topics' Even better to just say 'always ask about family if you haven't already, always ask what they think about your school' and so on. The little blurbs they say get repetitive very quickly and I don't think add much.
- When there's only one option for a combo box, it should be autoselected. For example, when trying to have a meeting with the AD for scheduling. You have to select AD, but there's literally no other option. Just pick it automatically instead of making the player do it. Other similar situations are clicking Continue after an association is created (you have to do that anyway, so just eliminate the button and enter the association when it's done creating), the login popup for singleplayer is just a clickthrough that doesn't need to be there - you can change which coach is loaded after you get into the game if you want, when going to the Roster screen there are two options, ratings and bio, but neither one is picked so it just defaults to not showing anything which is another bit of unnecessary work for the player and the initial impression is actually that the game isn't functioning properly.
- I don't know what the reasons are behind the scenes, but the loading time to go between screens seems excessive.
- Clicking Advance to Buy Reports or Schedule Camps is counterintuitive. Let's just be able to click on where it says Buy Reports etc. and go that screen right away.
- Some screens require you to save such as practice time, others don't such as strategy. Doesn't seem to be a consistent approach here. I think consistency is important that so that users can feel they are quickly getting a grasp on how the interface works.
- I am befuddled at which screens are linked from the left-side controls, and which ones use the small icons at the top. Recruiting, Coach Assignments, Practice Time at the top; Almanac, History, School Info on the left which are not as commonly used I wouldn't think. Recruiting, Recruit Class, Recruit Ranks are nowhere near each other. The core format of 'go to any screen from any other screen' is an excellent adoption of modern UI techniques. But the specifics of the implementation leave me thinking 'wait ... what?' I think the Staff and Coach Assignments screens could easily be combined into one. The information they have is mostly redundant.
- The green action buttons being on the far right of the screens feels out of place as left is where most of the rest of the action is and where the user attention is pushed. 'Advance' on some screens, 'Play/Sim Games' on the Play/Sim screen, etc.
- Playing out games, everything there pretty much looks really sharp and excellent to me. I also could not sub a player in at dead ball situations to save my life. I followed the instructions but I think I don't know how to select a player, because no matter what I clicked on, then clicking the photo of the player I want to bring them in for did nothing. I think this is really a microcosm of what I'm referring to. I want to like how all of this works. Good options for controlling how the team plays. Matchups, crashing boards, 2-for-1, etc. I follow the action on the court. Ok, time to bring in a reserve ... well, I can't figure out how to do it. And if I can't figure it out, I guarantee there are a lot of other people who couldn't either.
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