[UX] The biggest flaws of Gwent's player experience (outside of gameplay)
I’ve decided to write down and share with you my opinion on some of Gwent’s user experience problems. Hope you’ll find it useful.
Disclaimer
1. Launching the game
During the time the game loads, before I reach the actual game menu, I have to click through THREE separate screens:
2. The Menu: structure and layout, miscellaneous
3. The Cards (and kegs)
The biggest issue with Gwent is the fact that card layout design suggests it’s an Collectible Art Game, not a Collectible Card Game. While I agree great art is important for a game, and that Gwent really has some gorgeous artwork, I strongly feel you have crossed a line here.
And I’m not saying it just to be mean, I really feel that this is a serious design error that should be fixed. I’ve outlined the main issues below:
I’ve decided to write down and share with you my opinion on some of Gwent’s user experience problems. Hope you’ll find it useful.
Disclaimer
- This is not a complete list (obviously).
- Those are my opinions, based solely on my experience as a UX designer and gamer, but not backed up by any user research.
- I’m aware a lot of design decisions may be influenced by Xbox platform limitations, and I try to point that out whenever I feel this is a case.
- I may not be a very experienced UX designer, but I am an avid gamer and have played a lot of video and card games (and video card games too).
- This is based on the Polish PC version of the game, so the English names of stuff might not quite match reality =).
- This does not include first login experience, because I am already an active player. I’ll look into it after the open beta reset.
1. Launching the game
During the time the game loads, before I reach the actual game menu, I have to click through THREE separate screens:
- “Hi, this is closed beta” with a single “Continue” button. Why do I need to click through this every single time? If this is enforced by some weird legal reasons, at least provide me with a “Never show this again” checkbox.
- Login screen with “Login” and “Exit” buttons. I am already logged into my GOG account, and I launched the game - why make it harder for me to proceed? While this screen may be needed for console players, can you remove it from the PC version? Or, at at the very least, provide me with a “Always login automatically” checkbox?
- The progress bar (showing rounds won this day) with a single “Continue” button. While this is an important information, it is displayed too early (since it’s not of interest to all players): it should be shown only after picking one of the relevant multiplayer modes (Skirmish or Ranked).
2. The Menu: structure and layout, miscellaneous
- The “Exit game” button is too prominent, it’s too easy to click it by mistake while moving around the game.
- On the “Invite a friend” popup screen the closing “x” very small and displayed way outside of the popup. It should be removed, and a “Cancel” button should be added next to the “Invite” button at the bottom of the popup.
- In the “Single player” section the Campaign tile should be first as the most prominent option there (although I do understand it’s not yet implemented).
- In the “Cards” section the “Deck creation” should be renamed to “My decks” - since it’s not just the creation, it’s also editing, managing and simply viewing.
- In the Card Collection, the new cards marker keeps resetting, so every time I open this section I see a lot of “new” cards, and that is simply not true.
- “Open a Keg” tile should be moved to the "Cards" section from the “Shop” section (it makes more sense here for opening kegs obtained outside of the shop).
- Opening the “Shop” section should directly open the shopping interface, and a button for opening kegs should be added there (to accompany the previous change).
- Another solution is merging Collection and Shop into one section, "Cards", with the following tiles: "Decks", "Collection", "Shop", "Open kegs".
- Similarly, opening the “Options” section should directly open the settings interface, forcing me to click twice (Options>Settings tile) serves no purpose other than annoying me.
3. The Cards (and kegs)
The biggest issue with Gwent is the fact that card layout design suggests it’s an Collectible Art Game, not a Collectible Card Game. While I agree great art is important for a game, and that Gwent really has some gorgeous artwork, I strongly feel you have crossed a line here.
And I’m not saying it just to be mean, I really feel that this is a serious design error that should be fixed. I’ve outlined the main issues below:
- The basic card layout only includes the following information: Card affiliation, card STR, card colour and rarity. That’s it. Everything else is invisible at first. Which would be fine if Gwent was about cards of STR 8 beating cards of STR 6, or golden cards beating bronze cards, or beautiful cards beating ugly cards, but this is not the case here.
- Text boxes need to be an integral part of the cards layout, even if it means making artworks smaller. Name (Geralt), optional variant (Igni/Aard - BTW, is it possible to play all three in one deck and have all three in play at the same time? I can’t check by myself, but if that’s the case, it is extremely confusing), traits (witcher, permadeath) and card text should be always (with the exception of thumbnail minatures in hand or in play) visible without me having to mouse over the cards.
- This is an even bigger problem because the game lacks any kind of battle log. The only thing shown is the ART of the last card played by my opponent. So in order to know what just happened (if I accidently stopped looking at the screen for 5 seconds) I need to learn EVERY SINGLE CARD’S art and text by heart. I really, really don’t want to do that.
- Another problem here is the fact that a pretty common situation in the game is a card causing a chain of events ended with multiple targets being affected (First Light spawns Rally that summons Trebuchet that hits two targets). But all I am left with is... card art for First Light. Now I know what happened when I wasn’t looking!
- The focus on art causes the following problems when opening Kegs:
- For cards with multiple illustrations (like Nekkers), the indicator only shows how many copies of that particular illustration I have - which can cause me to “waste” a card choice on a card I already have a playset (x3) of. You’re forcing me to remember my card collection by heart, and I don’t want to do that. Solution: there should be either only one instance of those cards, but each with a different illustration, OR there should be three instances, each with a different illustration, but capped at x1 instead of x3. A playset is one of each illustration.
- There is no indicator showing me if I already own the same card in the other variant (regular/premium). Again, you’re forcing me to remember my collection by heart. Solution: there should be an indicator showing count of both regular and Premium versions of a card (if the card has a Premium version, that is).
- On the side note: crafting a Premium card is much more expensive than crafting a regular one, but destroying it yields the same amount of scraps. This is unfair and should be changed.
- Another side note (I’ll be writing more about the actual gameplay later, but I feel the Mulligan screen is more tied with the layout than gameplay): the Mulligan screen is horrible. I have to scroll to see all the cards in my hand, I have to memorize what I’ve got, and I have to check and recheck what appeared after replacing a card (and, guess what, memorize it again). Why are you making me do this? Why can’t you show all the cards on the screen at the same time? There sure is more than enough screen real estate! Solution: show the full hand on the Mulligan screen at once.
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