Board Game Arena

just tried the game out on hotseat, and something that occurs to me is that some of the card powers aren't immediately obvious what they do, so would it be possible to either do a glossary for terms like jail (and trash possibly), or allow people to hover over cards for the info? Some people new to deckbuilders and/or this game might find it useful to get some kind of help as to what the actual powers do. Jail confused me, but I've only played Star Realms and Paperback

EDIT: It may also be worth adding some descriptions to cards where you get points for buying them etc. It wasn't immediately clear what the stars meant on some of the letters in the solo game

Writing a post on bugs/suggestions would be faster to get a response.
Hopefully the developer is quite active.

I've also submitted the point in a review, but was only offered that option once, so not sure how I'd do another suggestion

As for the bugs/suggestions forum, I've had very mixed responses with trying to submit stuff through there previously so thought I'd try having it as a discussion in the game forum - it's kind of a problem with BGA in that there are generally a few ways to try something, each with their own preferred audience, and pros and cons.

The bug report system (https://boardgamearena.com/bugs?game=1354) is really the best place. It sends me an email whenever someone creates a new report or posts a reply, it keeps everything in one place for me, and it lets me assign a status to each report to mark it as under review, confirmed, fixed, etc. This lets me prioritize the work -- most developers are working as volunteers, so we have limited time for these games. I use the number of votes on a bug to help prioritize which things to focus on first.

While I do eventually read through all of the "ratings" (those things you're sometimes prompted to enter at the end of the game), these are much less useful for both players and developers. For players, you have no way to go back and review what you wrote. For developers, there is no page that lets me reply to the comments or track them with statuses (in progress, confirmed, fixed, etc.). Also, unlike bug reports, I don't get emails or notifications about new "ratings", so I only check this once in a while when I remember to go look it up manually.

Anyway, I've edited the "How to play" page at https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Gamehelphardback to add basic explanations for how double, trash, jail, uncover abilities work. I don't think this information really belongs in the game itself as a tooltip, for example, but putting it in the "How to play" section makes it available by just scrolling down below the game. Note that anyone can edit these "how to play" pages for any game, not just the developer, so feel free to make corrections or add something that you think would be useful to other players. The "How to play" is visible both within the game itself (underneath the play area in one of the tabs) and also before you start a game (one of the "Show more" buttons on the game detail page).

quietmint wrote: ↑04 April 2021, 03:46Anyway, I've edited the "How to play" page at https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Gamehelphardback to add basic explanations for how double, trash, jail, uncover abilities work.

Thank you - something I didn't realise is that the hover over functionality seems sketchy on tablet devices, so it's better in the rules section. I've been showing my sister-in-law and nephew games like Stone Age where they have that kind of tool-tip approach to the civilisation cards and my sister-in-law finds it a real pain trying to figure out what each card does as she does have that hover over option.

The other option would be to include a list of Card Abilities in the "Rules" section of the page.

I think that would be much easier/quicker to add in the interim, until the devs are able to add the tooltips.

I definitely agree, the card abilities "Jailing card" and "Uncover wild" isn't immediately obvious.

mooken wrote: ↑08 April 2021, 20:20 The other option would be to include a list of Card Abilities in the "Rules" section of the page.

I think that would be much easier/quicker to add in the interim, until the devs are able to add the tooltips.

I definitely agree, the card abilities "Jailing card" and "Uncover wild" isn't immediately obvious.

That is exactly what I did.

"jailing" a card is just reserving a card; why not just call it that?

Also, when you can "preview" cards (Romance R, I think), you also get an option to discard those cards, which is much more useful. Maybe that should be in the wiki too - or maybe it's getting too long as it is.

admiralspunky wrote: ↑28 April 2021, 13:33 "jailing" a card is just reserving a card; why not just call it that?

Jailing may trash a card from an offer row instead. Can't call it 'reserving'.