TaleSpire Dev Log 458

Greetings all!

We're currently working on wrapping up the scary pack, so we'll have a slightly belated Halloween. Expect it in the first half of next week (if everything goes as planned)

(Banshee by Ðwarf)

A bit about new player UX and Seats.

As I briefly mentioned during the latest Stream, we're looking into how seats are introduced to players. There has been a lot of confusion surrounding the purpose of seats and how they work in general. This is partially because of user expectations but probably more significantly because of how Seats have been introduced. Some problems come from how Steam handles demo clients, and others are related to how we communicate seats in-game. Unfortunately, we can't do much about the first. The latter we have more control over.

What are seats anyway?

Seats are a way for someone who owns TaleSpire to bring people along when they play. It can be different people every time, different campaigns, but limited to the number of seats you bring to the table, or the combined number of seats at whatever campaign you're in. So, it's an alternative to gifting individual people a copy of TaleSpire, opening up to buy the number you typically have in a single group. Of course, if they own TaleSpire, they're good regardless.  **The fact that I used a sizable paragraph to explain that is also a problem **

What can we do to better communicate seats?

We'll experiment with where seats are located and where you are first introduced to the concept of seats. Currently, looking at the Campaign Screen for first-timers, it seems like the only way to invite someone to a campaign is via seats. This is most likely caused by invites being hidden inside board menus, while seats are visible next to the "player header" on the Campaign screen. 

As shown here:

There is also no clear way to see who is bringing seats, who is online, etc. No way to invite others. There is some room for improvement. 

So, the first update related to this we'll be pushing out is a revamped campaign screen. It will look something like this:

This will allow for the generation of invite codes from the Campaign Description Panel, showing new "Game Masters," one of the ways to invite players before showing seats. And by showing a little more information on whose seats are currently at the table should hopefully communicate their purpose more. So seats are introduced as a concept, but buying seats is introduced after knowing how to invite another regular player.

Seats were never meant to be a new purchasing model but to make it more flexible for Game Masters, bringing players in and running with multiple groups/games. 

Some other things we're considering:

Demo/Guest Edition

I did mention we can't do anything about how Steam handles demo clients. But there might be something we can do here to make it more valuable. We have been discussing potentially creating a "starting campaign." This is for new players to get something to play around with rather than being met with a completely blank "canvas." The way this would affect the demo client is that we could enable people to try the game out and evaluate if TaleSpire is for them. 

Guided Tutorials:

In addition to a starting campaign, we're also considering a guided tutorial system to help new and old players familiarize themselves with the systems. 

These are all things I've been thinking about and working on recently. The Campaign Screen will be coming soon, and some other tweaks to player presence etc will follow. All to make things a bit clearer. I am also working on more exciting features, but more on that another time.

Thanks for listening to my random thoughts and ramble!

Disclaimer: This DevLog is from the perspective of one developer. It doesn’t reflect everything going on with the team.