Another weekend and another update on how the development progresses! Currently in the game, the Skills & Spells dialogue is pretty much a placeholder I made back in the day when there were no spells in the game. It served its purpose but it was time to re-do it.
The Old Design
First things first, it didn't convey much information besides some spells or skills that the character currently possesses. Why do you have a forget button? Can you learn more spells? If so, how much more? Those were some of the initial questions players had upon opening the spell 'book' that the tutorial arrow led them to.
Next, it didn't serve a good purpose for characters of higher rank either. By that time players would have figured out that you can have 7 slots for a total of 4 active spells and 3 passive spells. The only interaction with that window, however, would be if you want to learn a new spell after you have filled all of your slots. This required you to lose any knowledge of one of your already known spells or skills, and if you wanted to use it again, you had to reacquire the skill book and learn it from scratch.
The reason I made it like that back then, was forcing the players to spend currency for expensive skill books or skill scrolls at the later stages of the game in order to spend their piled up fortunes of Shards. How did that work, you say? Not as fun as planned.
The community suggested that it would be nice, especially for completionists, to be able to collect all the spells & skills in the game. You know, do the obvious and give players more freedoms rather than restrictions. Plus, what type of a 'book' UI is that anyway?
So, lights out, enter stage left... The New Deisgn.
You can now learn and store all the spells in your spell book! IF you meet the requirements that is! You still have to safe keep and store your precious skill books until you find a way to increase your abilities and understand how to learn and use what's inside.
On the left-hand side are the ones you learn while on the right-hand side are the memorized ones which you can use in combat.
But once you learn it, it's there, even if you suffer a curse or a temporal loss of an ability.
With the new direction I believe it solves the two outlined issues above.
My aim was to convey to the players that they can find and learn more spells than what they have and how much extra space they can fill. Also, hint that a character can learn skills from other professions too!
And, aside from the neat looks, it gives the best option so far, experiment with different combos! You can quickly switch your memorized active and passive skills to try out different combinations instantly.
Exit stage left
As I observe Snagglepuss leaving the scene, I feel more confident with the presented UI and improved UX. The next part of the spells rework I am planning to is:
1) Add at least one more active skill per profession and an additional passive which will take me to 32 skills in total. I think this is a good number of variations for the initial content on the mainland of Harkuna, preparing the players for the higher stakes across the oceans.
2) Rebalance the skill progression, give access to new skill books via quest rewards for profession specific quests, etc. For instance Slippery Oil is so much fun and I want to give access to it to players the sooner, the better! Essentially it means more options and choices during the tactical combat which is more fun in my book.
As always, do wishlist the game if you haven't yet!
See you next time.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1299620/Fabled_Lands/