Discuss about free choice missions

[Romain672]

Hi world,
I regulary saw some messages telling the 'UI' isn't great for them, and I agree.

For the discussion feel free to use those numbers:
1 - for the phase were everyone give their opinion about tasks
2 - for when commander assign those tasks
3 - for when you accept or reject all the tasks
4 - for everything after one reject of task
5 - when all tasks are assigned


Here is my opinion about all that:
1) Bga can often miss some of the click to select tasks because another action is done in the same time. That's mainly a bug, but that make the selection of tasks annoying since if you create a bundle with 4/5 tasks you need to be sure the bundle is right.
2) I proposed a while ago to assign automatiquely some tasks ( https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=49549 ) which has advantages and drawbacks. Since I consider I can't be neutral on it, I will not anything else.
3) Someone else proposed a button to accept all tasks ( https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=50698 ) which look great. And we begin to advance in another question: what experienced players want, and what new players want. Experienced one could totally play with just a 'do you accept all tasks? yes/no' and if there is any no, just pass to phase 4 without putting all tasks in the middle back. But for people who doesn't talk, that's fairly bad.
4) More than half of the time, after one reject, what we will do with the tasks is obvious. But sometimes it isn't. Again, if you play without the chat, you need that phase
5) Nothing to add

One thing which could be doable too, is to seperate those two groups of players by adding another option which appear only for missions 28 and above. That option could be 'accept all tasks all the time'. But then you got a problem if 3players/4 use the chat and one doesn't. But I'm pretty sure someone else can have a better idea for it

[pjt33]

One thing which could be doable too, is to seperate those two groups of players by adding another option which appear only for missions 28 and above. That option could be 'accept all tasks all the time'.

That sounds like a bad idea to me. Captains make mistakes.

[Romain672]

That sounds like a bad idea to me. Captains make mistakes.

It was mainly for 2/3 players, or for Epilogue missions. If this is on for everyone, Captain should wait 5/10seconds (at least) before validating the tasks.
Like I said, if all players use the chat that could be fine, but if one does not, that's not good...

And again, I agree it was a pretty bad idea, but it was to try to find solutions.

[Romain672]

About phases 1) & 2):

https://www.zupimages.net/up/21/46/v0f8.jpg

An other totally other idea, is to have all tasks displayed in the middle, and every player can move them toward them, or add a sign on them.
Signs could be various like:
- a big token of our player (telling we want the task)
- a small token of our player (telling we are fine to take the task)
- a 'you sure?' token
- a 'link' token to put on more than one task
- and so on...

You can even put a 'private space' for everyone, where once a task is here, it can't be put in the middle back, except if the owner do it himself.
That way phases 1) & 2) are mixed.

This encourage more to use chat.
But then, players must be aware some tasks should be assigned first (36/37/90/93). And if there is nothing great proposed, then the team still doesn't know where to go.
Another problem is when you can get two packages of tasks. Like a package 'win most' and a package 'win none' (which happen frequently, when you have 5+cards in one color).

So yeah, telling it like that doesn't seem good, so there should be another thing.
I feel like most of the time that would make players win a small amount of time, and a few portion of the time that will be way worst. And overall that seem worst.


Again, I feel like this idea can be great if everyone use the chat. So an option to it can be great. Like my precedent suggestion.


edit: This is pretty small, but you could even combine that idea with the actual smileys: https://www.zupimages.net/up/21/46/z9i5.jpg
(using ++/+/+-/-/-- seem better though)

[z_watcher]

1. Yeah, definitly a bug. Would be nice to be able to select cards without it sending anything to server. We don't care what the other do while we select tasks, and nothing to actualy tell the server. Just need to notify the server and others when we place an icon on it... and would be nice to have the icons stay there even if someone else is placing icons, at it doesn't change anything on the action itself. (no race condition here).

2. I would suggest against auto-assign preview, unless it is a captain option that can be turned on.

3. Accept all tasks, hell yeah! More often than not, you have to accept each task individually. Accepting all together in one click should be an option.

4. Need a button to reject a task previously accepted once the tasks are changed. Sometime re-assign might conflict with something we thought would previously work. (or at least for captain to take back a task that was previously assigned if it is obviously bad)

[aginis]

Free task assignment - captain often times out during task assignment if possible add some time for example for every assigned task.
proposed tasks should default to accept tasks so you only need to hit confirm, this is the case 90% of the time.
Its not really necessary to confirm task proposal