Up until earlier tonight, I failed to ready up in every single game of SS14 because the ready up button is confusing.
What the button currently is:
When it displays “Not Ready”: You are Not Ready. Click this button to change to Ready.
When it displays “Ready”: You are Ready. Click this button to change to Not Ready.
What I thought the button did:
When it displays “Not Ready”: This is the “Not Ready button”; you are Ready, click to make yourself Not Ready.
When it displays “Ready”: This is the “Ready button”; you are Not Ready, click to make yourself Ready.
I was confused as to whether the button communicated the current state or the to-be state, and misunderstood them as standing for the to-be state.
This also made it difficult for others to help me ready up, since when I asked people “why can’t I spawn on roundstart, how do I ready up”, they would tell me to click the ready up button; I of course took that to mean “click the button saying ready”, causing me to unready myself.
The button should be redesigned to make it less ambiguous.
I understand you do not find this confusing, but please try to see from my perspective and understand why I was confused.
If you read the Stack Exchange thread I linked, there is existing literature analyzing why these kinds of flip-flop buttons are confusing to users. The thread also contains many solutions that can be implemented to address this issue.
A problem i’ve had too is readying myself, then tweaking something in my character, and then forgetting to get ready again lol. I took me a couple of times to remember that editing your characters takes you out of ready mode (Guess next time i’ll source my cigarette pack on station lol)
Honestly like, I get the argument that it’s to prevent you from misconfiguring your character, but maybe it would be better to just warn the end user that’s a possibility and then leave that button accessible in the editor?
You know, your right. I only have my own lens to view things from and just beacuse I think its clear doesn’t make things clear. I think @Nancok solution to this problem is very good though. it uses UI elements that are often used in smart phone apps and menus and if we used the bottom right set with the cross and tick it can be extremely clear to the user when its selected or deselected.
Yeah this would be a decent easy solution. That said, I do feel like even then, a simple checkbox is too mild. Being ready or not is quite a significant toggle that should probably have more UI tells.
While this would probably be overly ridiculous, just think about how many UI flares modern lobby-based AAA games have for “YOU ARE QUEUED FOR MATCHMAKING”, etc.
Edit: hmmm I guess the round start timer goes somewhere in there… but still, you get the idea. An indicator separate from the button and the button just toggles the indicator. Indicator can go anywhere obvious on the Lobby GUI.
@DrBadvice suggested (or maybe this is an existing PR somewhere) a quick fix would be to just make the button more obviously communicate that it’s the current state, not the action:
I like that, i did not consider it an option.
Maybe a giant, pulsating, yet faint READY overlay over the entire lobby.
Ik you said not overtly ridiculous. But i would actually love for it to be extra flashy. This is an RP centric game, conveying emotion should also be a goal.
Yeah, second option falls victim to the ambiguity when there’s only two options in a set of exclusive toggle buttons. When there’s three+ options, the ambiguity is less of a problem. I like your first option better for that reason, but I think we go further and just add a third row to that pane that has a big, wide indicator.
Like PJB said, we should make the indicator big and obvious. I think it shouldn’t be part of or look like a button, so that it clearly indicates the current status only. Making the button the toggle control and indicator in one element is overloading it.
Ready
Not Ready
