Automatic Actions

[DirkDeBelg]

Hello Guys

I'm working to implement shogun. This game has a planning phase where each player plans actions and once that is over, the 10 actions are executed in player order.

There are 3 actions that require some player interactions (like movements and attack) so most of the actions (7) can be executed almost automatically, purely driven by rules. (Since there are no choices anymore for the players.) Of course, as these automatic actions are executed - players should pay attention so that they absorb and understand how the game-board evolves.

In order to keep track of the game and understand what's happening, I feel it's still important for players to "see" and "experience" what each player is doing. As there are potentially many actions to be shown one after the other - I currently intend to put in place a confirmation button so that the active player has to acknowledge the effect of the action. This makes the GUI refreshing itself at a nice pace and players can see how the game evolve.

I'll also plan to add a feature so that these acknowledge buttons are automatically clicked after let's say 1 to 3 seconds. That way players don't have to even click.

What do you think of this approach ?

Dirk

[Tisaac]

From my expérience, the best is : nothing automatic by default, let the user click where he needs to click AND a user preference to change that for those who wants a quicker game (and in that case multiple notifications with setSynchronoust is enough)

[Victoria_La]

From my expirience user hate clicking extra button and want everything to be automatic if possible, maybe preferce would be good such as "resolve actions automatically" (gui preference not game option)

[joezg]

I would also prefer that this resolution is automatic. It would be very slow in turn based games.

But you can try to ensure that players can follow the game:

• Have detailed notification
• if possible provide some hints to show what everybody done last, maybe with some highlighting on the UI or with a dedicated recapitulation modal

[Lymon Flowers]

Think about turn-based games. There is nothing more frustrating that waiting for another player that lives in another timezone to click on the "confirm" button. Automating what can be reasonably automated is a good idea, but make sure to provide clear readable notifications so that people understand what have done on the last turn. Or provide visual hints much like in saboteur where the last tile placed by each player is highlighted in their color.

Maybe a "replay last moves" button that would replay (only to the player clicking) last moves would also be great. But more complicated to implement.

[Tisaac]

You seems to forgot that for turn based table, you can't switch to another table if you are still active on the table.

It actually depends a lot about what exactly are the actions. "Automatic" can designate a lot of different cases, I don't think a generic answer "always do automatic action without user clicking" is actually viable. For instance in the game Marrakech, you must roll the dice at the start of your turn. This is 100% a mandatory and automatic action yet most users asked to have a button to click to roll the dice. In another case of Welcome To, constructing a pool after you wrote a number can be considered as automatic since there is absolutely no reason not do it, yet Dr Click specifically asked to put in to manual by default because in the rulebook it's still described as an action of the player.
Therefore you probably know the game better than us and you will find the best compromise. In any case, letting the user choose with a user preference is always welcomed fro the players.