Improvements to how the game communicates to the player

The game looks awesome, but I feel you could do some significant improvements to how it communicates its ideas and details to the players. Here's a bunch of examples.

1. Pirate special abilities aren't really explained well and it feels silly that you have to try them first to get at least some kind of an idea:
   • "Berserker" isn't entirely self-explanatory as a word and "arms and legs flail" doesn't explain it.
   • "Stay on target" (the gunner special ability) doesn't really match the explanation of "rapid fire" shown for the same thing in the Tavern context, and rapid fire doesn't really tell how rapid the fire is. I understand the idea of trying to make things simple, but saying "double fire rate" or 50% increase to fire rate wouldn't really make it more complex.
   • What does "increased damage" or "boosted damage" mean? This unclarity is even stronger regarding the exploration skills: if you don't really see the effect and you aren't told the figures, how are you supposed to know how big the effect is? Just seeing an icon in the victory window doesn't really cut it.
2. Other pirate details could be better communicated too:
   • Why are the thief speed additions in percentages? That feels like it's made different from the others just for the sake of it being different. It's also ambiguous whether those percentage additions are on top of each other or on the original value.
   • The thief and and brute have favorite buildings, right? Would be nice to see these clearly in a stat. Not seeing this is particularly interesting since defencive buildings DO have a "Favorite target" stat even though as far as I know it's always "All". What's up with that?
   • Do the bomber's bombs differ from eg. the gunner's gun in other ways besides having a different damage and range ( and fire rate)? If they have a splash damage, it could say that.
3. Guild Perks aren't explained very well. And you also only see the active perk in the guild menu, not in the perks' targets (eg. the pirate or wall intel windows). At least adding the latter would be very trivial and would really make things much more clear to the player.
4. One of the things you've chosen to do a bit differently compared to the obvious inspiration (Clash of Clans) is that for pirates and defenses you're saying "damage" instead of damage per sec. Looking at the figures it seems that this indeed isn't a "per second" figure, but there is indeed a separate fire rate, you just don't see. What's up with this? Why? To me this doesn't make any sense. This just means you have no way of comparing these figures between the defence buildings! Why don't you either:
   
   • A. Do it like Clash does, and use Damage per second?
   • B. Show the fire rate?
5. Witch doctor can "protect his comrades"? What does that mean? I don't see any stat related to this and trying him in battle it wasn't that clear what he did. The troops inside the bubble were getting damaged and didn't get healed so I guess they take less damage, but how much is less? Or is that even what he does? He also has a damage stat, but I didn't see him attacking.
6. It's confusing that the pirate amount figure shows the amount of pirates and not the amount of slots. This means that eg. 36 can mean a full tavern even though the capacity would be 50.
7. This more a matter of taste, but I don't think the long list of new decorations you get from upgrading the pirate hall is that interesting to see when checking what to expect from the upgrade. I understand that they are there, but maybe would make more sense to have them shown grouped in just one bubble (+5 new decorations!).

All of these would be very easy to change and I think would make the game experience a lot more clear and pleasant.

 

Answers For 2,and5 Are Easy If U Click Info On The Troops And Just Want To Know What Theyre Abiltys Are Click Info And Read The Red Texting Only And The with doctors Says Once Trained So U need To Unlock Theyre Special Abilty First To Revive Ur Troops That Are Dead

Here's A Example Lets Say One Of Your Brutes Is Dead And His Skeletons(Bones) Are In The Are Of The Ring It Will Revive I HAVENT Do It But Thats What It Does Apparently

 

I completely agree with points 1,4, and 5.

1) If it could just show the exact details like cooldown, duration, if a stat is boosted then clarify the %, etc., it's not asking for too much.

4) As mentioned, Its difficult to weigh the differences in damage rate of defensive buildings. Which has more DPS, a bunker with 4 damage that shoots "fast" or a cannon with 30 damage that shoots "average", I have no idea. Also on this only "damage" topic, what about Pirate classes? Such as the Brute's " 35 damage" I'll assume that's per hit, Brutes clearly attack slower so how can a relative DPS comparison be made with the other classes, or even the Thief which possibly has more attack rate than say a Gunner.

5) I haven't tried the Witch Doctor yet, I've seen some gameplay and the WD follows other units, puts bubbles on them, those units die relatively fast, and for the finale...the WD stands still and dies. A lack of a clear description has convinced me not to invest 425k grog for the tree house just yet.

 

Any comments from the staff to these? Chris?

 

Do you think anyone would oppose if eg. checking a wall would say "500+200" for HP with 200 colored and explained that the 200 comes from guild perk or the same thing for pirates? Or would someone oppose if the explanations for pirates and their special abilities were more explicit?

Regarding prioritization, almost all of these are just text/localization changes or simple changes to a formula that tells a figure in a specific place, so hardly significant efforts, when decided to make the change. Actually it seems like the only one that would require a bit more is having a favorite target stat for pirates as that might require some UI tweaking. In other words, possibly excluding the UI tweak, not much to prioritize.

In any case, could you give some comments at least to the questions in 4 and 5? What is the reasoning behind your "damage" stat? Why is it done like that? And what does the witch doctor's "protection" mean?

 

I'm bumping this thread, because it has great points and needs more attention

 

I completely agree with number one and three, very well thought out suggestion there. Yesterday I upgraded my academy and was able to see the Gunners special ability "Stay On Target" and couldn't for the life of me figure it out until I YouTubed it. This vagueness might be intended to a certain extent, maybe they are forcing us to learn what abilities do and what certain troops do, but some descriptions are just over the top uncomprehendable.

 

I Understand All Of Them Except The Bombers one

 

The bombers are an interesting character, I am quite unsure of its AI and find it very unreliable to use.. The tried reading the description for it but had no clue how it relates to it in game :/

 

Nr. 4 is very important and I haven't actually thought about that.
Brutes for example have 30 base damage, but they attack at a very slow pace so its hard to tell.
How about a Damage, and a Damage per second info on each unit?

 

I think is 30/3 sec IF the base is 30 and a brute

 

I think my brutes have 35 and my gunners have somewhere over 20. 22 or something.
How fast do the gunners attack? Isn't it like every second?

 

i think it's damage/1,5 second
But if use stay on target 2shots/second

 

Ok. Would be nice if this game had some kind of a Wiki page where you could look it all up. RIght now some things are a little bit confusing.

 

If I have a little bit help On Like PH 6And 7 I can Probably Make All The Information Here But With Some Missing Items And It Will Probably Take A Couple days