BlackEgg
Recruit
My comments are based on a 1.5.7 playthrough, but I haven't seen any patch notes about the things I'm posting on. The playthrough was trade-focused as I travelled from city to city, buying and selling goods as my primary activity.
* Trade UI: when hovering over the buy or sell arrows in the trade interface, particularly with trade goods, I get two popup screens: the trade rumors/average price assessment popup and a 'Hold Shift to do x5' popup. The Hold Shift popup is always covering some part of the trade rumors popup & often covers the information I'm most wanting to know, which is usually the average price assessment.
* Trade UI: in the trade rumors/average price assessment popup, the range of values covered by 'This item's cost is near it's average price' is huge. I've seen an item go down one denar in value from 'near its average price' and suddenly be 'This item is 50% cheaper than average'. This forced me to restrict my purchases to goods that were 50% or more away from average price if I wanted to be assured of a profit later.
* Trade UI: the information I'm shown in the trade UI implies that the average price is known to the user, but we never actually get to see what the average price is. This is an extension of my complaint immediately above. If the average price range wasn't so broad, it would be easier to know when something was actually close to average.
* Trade UI: the message 'This item's cost is near it's average price' has an incorrect usage of "it's"
* Trade rumors are sometimes shockingly inaccurate. I've sometimes seen trade rumors that were nowhere close to true in the last city I visited, perhaps less than a day's travel away. I stopped paying attention to them altogether because they just weren't helpful to a dedicated trader. (They might be to someone trying to make one big trade)
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I'm not proficient at UI design so my inclination is more to just leave complaints. But the subforum is called "Suggestions" so I'll take a stab at it.
* move the trade rumors/average price popup information to a different part of the screen, possibly somewhere in the middle. It would also be nice if we didn't have to hover over the price in the popup to see what % away from average the price was. I use that specific item of information incessantly when moving trade goods around.
* break the upper & lower bands of the average price range assessment into light green or light brown colored readouts like we see for the price of trade goods in relation to what we bought them for. It might be fine if that was a result of higher trade skill. A very high trade skill might let us know what the actual average price of an item was.
* if I'm being imaginative, I could think of an entirely different system for trade rumors that would replace the average price assessment altogether. Trade rumors would need to be both more prolific and more accurate though. Possibly trade rumors could be something the player might buy & sell in the tavern.
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Not quite Trade UI, but related observations:
* The trade perks list benefits for 'cotton' that I've never seen on any trade screen.
* I had more observations but they mostly concerned the Art of the Trade quest, and 1.5.8 might have changed that.
* Trade UI: when hovering over the buy or sell arrows in the trade interface, particularly with trade goods, I get two popup screens: the trade rumors/average price assessment popup and a 'Hold Shift to do x5' popup. The Hold Shift popup is always covering some part of the trade rumors popup & often covers the information I'm most wanting to know, which is usually the average price assessment.
* Trade UI: in the trade rumors/average price assessment popup, the range of values covered by 'This item's cost is near it's average price' is huge. I've seen an item go down one denar in value from 'near its average price' and suddenly be 'This item is 50% cheaper than average'. This forced me to restrict my purchases to goods that were 50% or more away from average price if I wanted to be assured of a profit later.
* Trade UI: the information I'm shown in the trade UI implies that the average price is known to the user, but we never actually get to see what the average price is. This is an extension of my complaint immediately above. If the average price range wasn't so broad, it would be easier to know when something was actually close to average.
* Trade UI: the message 'This item's cost is near it's average price' has an incorrect usage of "it's"
* Trade rumors are sometimes shockingly inaccurate. I've sometimes seen trade rumors that were nowhere close to true in the last city I visited, perhaps less than a day's travel away. I stopped paying attention to them altogether because they just weren't helpful to a dedicated trader. (They might be to someone trying to make one big trade)
-----------------
I'm not proficient at UI design so my inclination is more to just leave complaints. But the subforum is called "Suggestions" so I'll take a stab at it.
* move the trade rumors/average price popup information to a different part of the screen, possibly somewhere in the middle. It would also be nice if we didn't have to hover over the price in the popup to see what % away from average the price was. I use that specific item of information incessantly when moving trade goods around.
* break the upper & lower bands of the average price range assessment into light green or light brown colored readouts like we see for the price of trade goods in relation to what we bought them for. It might be fine if that was a result of higher trade skill. A very high trade skill might let us know what the actual average price of an item was.
* if I'm being imaginative, I could think of an entirely different system for trade rumors that would replace the average price assessment altogether. Trade rumors would need to be both more prolific and more accurate though. Possibly trade rumors could be something the player might buy & sell in the tavern.
-----------------
Not quite Trade UI, but related observations:
* The trade perks list benefits for 'cotton' that I've never seen on any trade screen.
* I had more observations but they mostly concerned the Art of the Trade quest, and 1.5.8 might have changed that.
