Review from a beginner: what was difficult to grasp, ui tweaks suggestions

[tictac]

Hi tynan, great game!

instead of just giving yet another idea for a fantastic feature such as  making zombies out of rotten potatoes, or constructible uranium toilets, i'll focus on what was harder to grasp as a first experince. Being an old fart, i did not watch a bunch of videos before diving into the game.

• I got a major issue with the whole area/zone interface. its not obvious that you can have authorised area,at all.  When you are on the animal screen wou can create one, but it will be empty until you go back to architect /zone; then choose expand authorised area,  and then select the correct zone.
  This zone interface itself puts together disparate notions: home zone, which acts as an allowed zone, but with a special twist (cleaning/firefighting),adn its own buttons; growing zone, dumping/storing zone (whats the difference ??), roof/no roof zone with their very own button to grow/shrink them.
  even after i grasped how to tweak an authorised zone, i had forgotten the day after
  It would be nice to be able to select a zone direcltw fro,m the restrict or animal zone and have button to shrink it / grow it,
  On the same subject unselected zones are not so easy to view if there is a bit of grass on it
• workbench/bills: its anoying to click on a workbench then go the tab on the left and click 'bill' when its the only intersting thing to do: mayb double clicking on a workbench sohuld open the bill tab ? or shift clicking ?
  Instead of a radius to grab ingredient in the detail tab, being able to select an area and/or a stockpile ?
  -When there is a lot of bills to choose from (ie smithy), it would be convenient to have access to info directly from the select screen instead of having to select qn item, go to details, then clicking info
  -its no always obvious what activity a workbench is a part of: ie component building is smithing not crafting.
  ALL workbenchs should explain what skill they use and what type of activity  they belong to directly in the description, it will be a lot easier for beginners.
  
• Research: its possible to research charge rifle  without having researched smithing, but then you can't  build them. charge rifle  should have a dependency on smithing same thing for miniguns ?
• being able to select a character tab (ie needs or health), from the main window and then choosing another character to switch the display to him is nice, but it doesnt work for things in the info display (ie stats tab). Very hard to compare stats of all characters. Some info, but not all, are duplicated between the tabs from main display and tabs the info menu, its confusing
• The blue overlay to see the power cable network is very nice, but you have to click on architect/power/cable just to see it (+ furniture that needs power but not all i think); it would be nice to be able to toggle this overlay like zone visibility
  On the subject of power, having a summary somewhere of all devices that eat power (total+ current, ie active ones) and peak/current production of all generators would be really useful
  
• When you try to give priority to a task, but there is not material in the authorized zone, but there is outside  a message says "no materials", it would be clearer to add "on authorized zone area1"
• sometimes I nervously right-click on an event by mistake and it is gone forever, i can't check its location, its annoying if its a mad animal. a journal of recent events would be nice, plus it would add to the storytelling of rimworld
• a lot of things on the main menu are  used very rarely if at all  (world map, faction standing), whereas the architect menu is very busy. i think the 'order' and zone commands should be on the main command bar, and the less usefull commands could be grouped into a single 'world info' menu or something
  
• pemmican is the only manufactured food with nutrition 0.05, like raw products, so its confusing in the stock view/ you might think you are ok, but if you have 30 pemmicans instead of 30 meal, its no good. Seems a useless distinction/ lets have all raw fodd at 0.05 nut and manufactured food at least 10 times that.
  is it on purpose that cooking a meal actually creates nutrition ? ie a simple meal is 0.85 nutrition out of  0.5 of raw (10 units at 0.05), doesn't seem logical.
  
• scouring the map for the last trace of steel/compacted machinery is not super fun, maybe an overlay  to show in bright colors  tiles of a given resoruce to mine (visible tiles; no undiscovered ones)?
• Prisoner tab is not easy to find the first time, the recruitment chance is not obvious at all to see,
  and the fact  that you have to capture the crashed spacer to be able to force him to join is non intuitive

Thanks again for the great game!

i am in a team that develop a desktop gui so I might have taken revenge on all the user feedback we sometime have... but i understand the difficulty of making a gui that is clear to a beginner without an explanation. To me the only big point is the first one

[asanbr]

1. Storing and dumping zones are the same, they just have different names and initial settings for what is allowed in there. You can change both to turn one into the other, but usually you'll set them up completely custom. It's mostly for a quick start with 1 stockpile and 1 corpse pile, at least that's how I do it.

9. It's actually logical. Cooked food becomes more useful for humans in terms of the nutrients our body can get out of it. Some historians / anthropologists argue that learning to cook food rather than eat it raw was one of the main reasons humanity developed into what we are now (short version). Recommended reading "Guns, germs and steel" and/or "Sapiens"

Other than that, mostly agree with all you said.

[tictac]

thanks for th reply, i understand the difference between dumping/stockpile, but it was puzzling the few first hours, could be made clearer i think.
Make sense about the cooke food giving more nutrition i guess

[b0rsuk]

ad. 9: It is logical, because cooked food is not only microbe free, it's also easier to digest. With raw food and vegetables your body often spends extra energy to digest it.

[milon]

Everything tictac said it's valid IMO. Especially #1, 2, & 7.

+1 from me

Remember, (s)he isn't talking about a veteran's perspective but a beginner's perspective. The UI etc is pretty good, but there are still improvements that can be made.

[Serenity]

#8 is spot on. There is too much stuff crammed into that menu. Build and non-build orders should be separated. Things that you need all the time like hauling and mining need to be accessible more easily.

[DariusWolfe]

So, what about possibly combining dumping stockpile and regular stockpile under the same button, but with a drop-down menu, like with items that can be made from different materials. This way you could even potentially have more than just the two default stockpiles.

I'd originally thought that the primary difference was that dumping stockpiles didn't count toward your colony's items, but then I realized that most of the default items for dumping stockpiles are simply never counted (chunks, corpses, etc).

[b0rsuk]

Good feedback, most of them. I'm desensitized to a lot of these because I've played Rimworld a lot. I especially like the suggestion to make "bill management" the default screen when clicking on work tables. It's true people mostly click on tables to add extra bills. Table condition and so on can be moved one level deeper (click on an extra button).

An option to fulfill bills in areas would be nice, but radius is good for simple cases.

I'll add to the thread.

When you try to prioritize smithing/crafting and can't because colonist doesn't match skill requirements, you get no message at all. This looks buggy. Instead, the game should display "Cannot prioritize ACTIVITY, COLONIST_NAME doesn't meet the skill requirements."

[tictac]

When you try to prioritize smithing/crafting and can't because colonist doesn't match skill requirements, you get no message at all. This looks buggy. Instead, the game should display "Cannot prioritize ACTIVITY, COLONIST_NAME doesn't meet the skill requirements."

yeah actually i thought so too but forgot in the OP (which was too long already anyway), thx for bringing it up.

Indeed you get used to all of this but first impressions are important.
I am already at 60 hours after 2 weeks (and I have a job... i need to sleep and get out a bit..) so i did enjoy the game obviously and did get used to the quirks, but i kept the first hours feedback because most forum posters are past it and new players are important to please.

The stock  of former DF players who didnt try rimworld yet is probably dwindling, its imporant to be accessible I think

[b0rsuk]

I wouldn't count on DF players too much. DF will remain a free game and you can't beat that. A LOT of them won't try Rimworld just for that reason.