I feel like the left side could be set up differently. There's important info - (total damage, your health, opponent's health, blessings/curses) and there's the not so important info (pet picture/opponent picture, flavor text)

The important stuff is mostly pushed down by the images and it feels like a lot of space is being wasted by them. I'm not saying get rid of them (because no one else would support that..) but maybe things could be moved around. at least total damage would be nice without scrolling. I'm not sure if they need labelled "the arena" and "next turn" - I feel those boxes are self explanatory without the label and that is some room that could be saved for less scrolling.

I still would love a default scroll if possible. I don't like selecting one each time. I'm not sure why people wanted the picture of the scroll so badly because it's not like scrolls have unique pictures.

I'd still like to see hovers on the curses and blessings to tell me what one is what, but that's a minor thing

might think of more later, didn't have too much time to battle/think tonight

Whats the downside to preselecting a scroll? Its a radio button essentially, if you want a scroll that is not preselected its the exact same number of clicks as if you never had preselection on.

But if you do want to use your default scroll, it is an extra click with every single turn. Really its basically the same thing with weapons, turning pre selection off is only ever adding clicks, never saving them.

Also, did you see the suggestion to move that little graphic that pops up while the page is loading to the blank space below the submit move button?

Okay, couple responses to you.

When preselect is off, it is two clicks to select your weapons, then one click each for potions and scrolls. I'm not seeing how it's "a ton more" clicking. It seems like in the worst case it's the same amount of clicking tbh.

As for scroll, here's where I still see scrolling happening and what I plan to do about it:

1. The battle commentary requires you to scroll in order to see total damage/healing. I am working on moving the total damage/healing to the top rather than bottom of the commentary. I was planning to do that in this update, but wasn't able to because the code that generates the commentary is way messier than you'd expect. This is one of those things that sounds simple, should be simple, but is extremely convoluted in reality. But I'm still working on doing this. When this change happens, you will only need to scroll the commentary if you want to read the full commentary (icons and text), and this isn't "a ton more scrolling" than the old layout because you had to scroll in the old layout to do that anyway.

2. The weapon and scroll boxes scroll now and only 2-3 items are visible at once. This one I agree is a problem right now, but what I'm planning to do to mitigate it first of all is to make scrolls stack. That way, you don't need to scroll past a million of the same scroll to get to the next different scroll. This is also something that's harder to code than it sounds but I'm working on it. Ideally I could also find a way to show more items at once in the selection boxes (4-6 items would be great) but the issue here is screen space and I don't have a good solution yet.

There is no downside except that it takes me time and energy to add it back. I didn't intend to remove this, it got removed inadvertently and will take effort to add back.

I'm not sure what you mean here about the weapons. You are correct, and that's why we introduced preselection in the first place, but then people were complaining about it so we decided to offer the option to turn it on or off. I like that people can toggle it according to their preference and it's not something we are going to take away.

As a battler with an infinite use scroll, I'd prefer if I the scrolls were preselected too. However, it would be awful for people with only once per battle scrolls. So maybe there can be a separate option to turn the preselection of the scrolls on and off. I love the weapons preselection option, and the changes to the potions and scroll dropdowns!

And one of the things I'd still like to see, is that the total damage done and total healing gets moved to the top of the battle text box. That way I'll probably never have to scroll again xD

Edit: Oooh, I was writing this as you were posting apparently. Awesome, then I'll wait for you to get around to making some more changes. I'm in love with this new layout :) Thank you for all the work you've put in there!

I want spell pre-selection! I want scroll pre-selection!! I want scroll pre-selection!!!! throws self on floor, thrashes around, holds breath, screams piercingly

I do not like the images of the scrolls. The images of the scrolls are not useful, because all scrolls of a certain Element have the exact same image. You have to actually read at the name of the scroll anyways and the image of the scrolls gets in the way of that. Now if there was an ART change where you could tell at a glance just what the specific scroll was without reading, then adding in the scroll's image is interesting and useful. But now, it ... just isn't.

Okay I'm just gonna clarify for everybody.

We had scroll preselection from the beginning. When I changed the interface from dropdowns to the current version, it became more complex to preselect them, so I left it for now. We really don't have anything against scroll preselection and I'll talk to Jason about adding it back, so you don't need to keep telling me why you want it. It's just that it might take me a couple hours to figure out how to do it correctly in the new selection, so I wanted to push out these changes first, and think about adding that back later on.

I know you posted too quickly to see it, but check out the post right above yours, I mentioned that I am planning to do that.

The scroll images are going to stay to help the more visual battlers.

I meant the scrolling to find a scroll, I don't care about my battle text or how much damage I did in 99% of battles. The scrolling I was referring to was the scrolling that happens with a list of 20 scroll images vs a list of scrolls in a text drop down.

Going from 1 click to 2 clicks is 2x as many clicks, that adds up. Still much nicer than the old system, but definitely a huge downgrade from the previous iteration.

From a ergonomic standpoint, this latest iteration is much worse than the previous, even if aesthetically it is marginally better. I don't get why people complained enough to make preselection go away. It doesn't add any new clicks for them. I would have just left preselection the same and saved yourself some effort on that part. The giant explanation text box also adds more scrolling to the weapon set select page.

[edit] read your previous post. still the simplest fix would be to roll back this version :P . I think it is strictly inferior to the old one.

i got used to preselected scrolls, so i kind of miss it already, but i'm not fussed about it. just got to relearn my clicks. i'll probably have to put the images back to see the rest of the changes? but having weapon preselections on a toggle is a+. (now i just gotta remember to turn it off when i need to, hah.) thank you kindly, .

Are they 20 different scrolls? I know some scrolls it's common to equip many multiples of, and I think making them stack like potions will help. Otherwise I'm open to suggestions on how to utilize the space to display more scrolls.

As for the preselection thing, I don't see why it matters to you. You can just turn it on then and use it yourself. It didn't "go away", it's still there, just optional now. The people who disliked preselection brought up valid points, such as: it made it more confusing to select different weapons, it made battle less engaging. You can reread the first couple pages of this thread to see some of things that were said on this.

The weapon set select page will get its own revamp in the near future.

[edit] I mean, you may think it's strictly inferior to the old one, but I'm trying to take into account different people's needs and wants here. For instance, I know some battlers are helped by seeing the different colored scrolls even if scrolls of the same element do not have different images. I am not going to remove the images, I understand some battlers are very visually-oriented and it helps them.

Idk, my infinite use healer is the same color as some of my freezers. I didn't like the text only view of scrolls I think because it was a list. The current iteration's scroll list is marginally better but not for battles where I want to use scrolls in a different order than usual. The pictures are going to make for a lot more scrolling because I'm still looking for the name of the scroll, not the picture.

I still like the pictures better for some reason, though everything I just said seems to counter that.

stacking would probably help though not 100% of users want that. 100% of this user wants it though :)

Why would anyone be against stacking?

If preselection is brought back so it picks the top scroll, they could set it up in an order where not all of the same scrolls are together. Personal preference Idk. I think the compactness would outweigh special cases like that

[edit] Example: Shriek Smasher Cobalt Shriek Cobalt Aftershocks

Vs

Shriek x2 Smasher x1 Cobalt x2 Aftershocks x1

if you make them stack that would be amazing thats a feature pretty much everyone had been asking for since the scroll library was introduced. but right now depending on how you order them, you need to scroll a lot potentially.

It doesn't matter to me that its an option, but it seems like a complex thing to have needed for you to program, without any benefit, was just pointing that out, not saying it needs to go away.

I would also argue that while some battlers might be helped by visual scrolls, all battlers are helped by 1/2 the number of clicks on the average turn. If you were to time our DPS of not using a scroll ever vs clicking 2x per turn to add a scroll, most pets are going to do more damage per click without ever using a scroll now. Since clicking the turn button 2x is going to deal about 160 icons, vs clicking a scroll + the turn button is only going to deal about 110 icons.

I would revert to the old layout and roll it out when preselection is back. You sped up the BC so much that its now time inefficient to bother with scrolls.

Hm, good point. Sort of like, you can pre-plan out your strategy of what scrolls you're going to use in what order.

Well, I'm certainly not going to revert to the old layout just because one user told me to :P If a lot of other people speak up, sure, but I've gotten quite a few positive responses so this is staying for now.

Imo scrolls are reactive, you can't really preplan efficiently. You use a healing scroll if you need to heal, if you think you might die or take a big hit the next turn, you use a defensive scroll. If you have a good amount of health and the opponent has no blessing active, you try for a freeze - things that you assess during the battle based on the current situation and what you think is the best for the next turn. Not something you can effectively plan ahead for

I bet if more people did the math and realized that this update basically cuts their DPS by ~30% there would be more protests :P

but thats basically what this change did.

[Edit] :):):)

I'm still hoping to have the battle text for each weapon kinda aligned to the weapon/scroll itself, because even though the weapon/scroll selection being on the right of the screen, there's still enough space for the center area of the battle info to be divided in half so the text is aligned with weapons....

talking about this

However, if this is not possible, can we AT LEAST, [B]please[/b] have the text of weapons and is effects, separated from scroll use and opponent's weapons/effects/scrolls?

Maybe something like this, where a weapon's effects appear right after the weapon text with indentation? --->

Click to enlarge