Wow... That was a bit of a stealth release! Multi lane solo play ... Kerching! Also saving of solo games Thanks!!
"Unfortunately, the UI is still a bit troublesome and a pain to navigate" - Pockettactics (after most recent update) Again (and again), my biggest gripe...
Give them some useful constructive criticism and they might be able to address stuff. They really seem to be open to feedback and your series of posts confirming they didn't have the greatest launch doesn't help, does it?
So, after the update, is the game worth purchasing? Is there any tactical/ strategical depth in this game? Must say that I am planning to play this game in solo offline mode.
I'm only playing solo offline at the moment. The worth will depend on your expectations and type of card games you like, but I think so. The pocket tactics review is worth a read to see what you think. New 4 land solo increases tactics - it is more tactical than a simple card battler.
New update includes yet another $1 IAP expansion, the Hive! 18 unique cards (including 3 new bosses). Only bit unclear to me is that when looking at the baddies in the card gallery, I have no clue which wave they're assigned to.
Hey LordGek, just filter all the way down to "The Hive Expansion" -> "Enemy" and you'll then be able to filter by Waves as well! Enjoy!
Doh, I managed to stumble onto the fix soon after posting this and THOUGHT I already mentioned it, must have only been on another forum. Very fun addition to the game. Any chance some of the KS Backer bonus equipment might eventually be released digitally? Also I love how so many of these monsters can scale effortlessly to the toughest troopers possible by simply using said trooper back against the player.
Actually we're working on the experimental items as I type! There's more to this upcoming expansion too, I'm sure you'll like it.
Comments after Latest Update: "Unfortunately, the UI fixes that keep getting pushed out in these updates are like band-aids on a gunshot wound and the UI is still, generally, terrible. It’s passable on a tablet, and the game is good enough that it’s worth fighting through it, but I would love it if they went back to the drawing board and redesigned the UI from scratch." - Pockettactics, 10/21/15 and Gek, initially i pointed out what i thought was wonky with the UI and was chastised (ridiculed!) by the developer for not playing the game as intended or the way he played it. each time i offered issues I THOUGHT needed addressing he basically dismissed them. poor approach to player comments in my mind. but rather than worry about what little ol' me thinks, the developer should heed the CONTINUED NEGATIVE COMMENTS from a renowned and widely read mobile game website.
Sigh... You were responded to, quite politely, when you made a comment that you "heard somewhere it was a finger manipulation game". I corrected that wrongful impression of yours. Then you promptly proceeded to respond in a childish manner (which you obviously cannot let go) and hostilized myself and other forum users until you had a post censored by the forum mods. Then Pocket Tactics, surprisingly, "validated" your concerns of a person-that-never-played-this-game-and-keeps-coming-back-I-wonder-why. Before your comment (by someone who, again, had never played the game) and Pocket Tactics' review, we literally had gotten zero complaints about the UI in and of itself. And not one person had been so brash in their criticism, using words such as "horrible" and whatnot. Point being: Our UI follows the industry standard set by MTG and Ascension and Star Realms. It is literally EXACTLY like those interfaces, you will be hard pressed to find anything that works differently in any of these games. The difference of course is that in XenoShyft you need to have upwards of 30 different cards on-screen at all times, it is a necessity of the game itself, it has nothing to do with UI. If you assemble XenoShyft to play on a table, you need a very large table indeed, much larger than any of the other card games people keep comparing this to. Could it be better? Of course! What cannot be better in this world we live in? I'm affraid we cannot risk reinventing the industry standard of mobile card games though. And there's the kicker: The most negatively vocal people (namely you and PT) have presented no suggestions on how it could be better either. As anyone else that actually bought the game and bothered to provide constructive criticism can point out, we are very actively implementing suggestions and fixes in an extremely efficient manner. Bottomline and the only reason I've stopped ignoring you entirely for this post is: If anyone has any suggestions on how this UI could be better we are listening, as always. Oh, and one more thing: We are working on an alternate camera mode for the game, but it's very challenging making it work without being completely inefficient gameplay-wise. In fact, it may make the game better on phones especially, but experienced players will still not prefer to use it I bet, because it's more efficient to have the whole board on the screen, even if the cards are very small. Again, thank you all for your constructive feedback, we aim to please.
Hi BlackLotus, I own the game and the expansions, so would like to chime in. First off,as pocket tactics are saying - the game is great. If it were less good, there would be less feedback about the UI Initially I'd prefer to see a less confrontational post from devs, it might be just me, but keeping it professional will ensure I keep buying. I have included some suggestions for UI updates below, but I must admit it is not solely the responsibility of the user to do this. I mentioned before that I do UX and UI testing for sites, and responses about issues users encounter are all valid - we tend not to challenge the user to solve the problem. We've discussed how people who know all the cards etc. may use it differerently - that does not negate the UI feedback from beginners or those who don't play regularly. You did mention that user testing was done by those familiar with the game, so it is not surprising that users outside that group will highlight different concerns. The issue is not Mack the Knife and pocket tactics, I can see a number of others in this thread and PT who have fed back on UI. Anyway here is the feedback suggestions collated from thoughts and others posts. The first 3 alone would help considerably, I believe non regular users do not want to view cards individually or commit them all to memory. Thanks for listening and hopefully some of these could be addressed with the great updates you are adding. Zoom on pinch location not centre of screen Single finger move screen Less responsive move screen (very fast) Cards in hand and discard should be shown in full and sorted by type. How about a "play all" button for XS cards kinda like Dominion Online has Does the app need to show both boards at once. This means that the app requires constant zooming and scrolling. Does the app need to show hive decks? There is a lot of unused space at the edges During combat cards take up full screen but don't give view or access to equipment, you’ll need to shrink both cards and then tap on the attached equipment card to see what it does and/or activate it. Not sure of remedy. Done button is your main mode of input to the game, and you’ll continuously hit the “Done” button. Unfortunately, it will do different things depending on what’s happening in game. Sometimes, it will just zoom in on the current conflict and other times initiate fighting - better / contextual labelling would help.
it's laughable you took that much time justifying yourself to me when you really should be dealing with issues pointed out by the critics and that guy below you who seems to have a laundry list of what's wrong with your perfect UI. your product is in the public domain and always subject to public scrutiny, grow up a little and deal with it.
Good point, will do. Already implemented in the next version, 1.4.2! I think we missed scaling the scroll speed with the current zoom level, will do. Cards in hand are much more visible since 1.4, we still can't really show the text, otherwise they'd cover the whole screen, but you can now see every individual art up to about 12 cards in hand, oh and they've been sorted by type for a few versions. On the discard pile we can't really sort it, because the order of cards in there is relevant at all times. That being said 1.4 also improved the discard pile and if you have an ability targeting cards in it the UI will now filter for the appropriate types! We kinda ran out of real-estate for buttons, since this was a minor issue we decided not to worry too much, will look into ressurecting the idea though. We tried to convey the board game experience as faithfully as possible, so we laid out the table as you would when playing the physical game. Like I mentioned above, we are working on an alternate camera mode that will show each dashboard separately, with you toggling between them. That also requires alternate ways of accessing your discard pile and division card(s) though, so it's a lengthy process. I'm not sure either if shriking the cards in combat would actually be better. A couple of extra taps to maybe use equipment attached sounds like a fair trade to view full-sized cards in combat, no? At some point we did have this button say "FIGHT!" before the actual combat started, I'll investigate why we had it changed and possibly put it back in! Thanks a lot for taking the time Skoptic, Let us know if have any other great input.
Thanks for the reply @BlackLotus For the last 2 points (which were stolen from pockettactics review) - I think the UX issue is that the attached cards (attached to the full screen troop) are hidden behind the top nav items and unactionable. So I'm thinking that reducing scale slightly makes them visible and allowing them to be actionable if relevant all from that pop up. Like you say it's a couple of clicks... But it's funny how a couple of clicks can make or break an often repeated workflow! - The done button could be done or fight or anything, but the issue is that it does more than one task and the single label can cause confusion as a result. If it says fight when it means 'action the combat' - then great. A few times I was unsure and it initiated combat when I thought I was getting to reaction phase. (But I appreciate it tells you at the top which phase) hope that helps
On my iPad 2 the game is quite crash happy. I can't seem to make it through the tutorial without a crash. Have cleared the cache and rebooted multiple times but it doesn't seem to help. Darn it too, as I think I'd really like the game.
