Request for option to set width of The Front Line

[willgamer]

As I play more, The Front Line is increasingly intrusive, calling too much attention to itself (especially after many hours of consecutive play ).

Of course, some players will like it just the way it is.

So I'm thinking a setup option may be helpful.

Please provide a setup option to allow the width of The Front Line to be set, for example, as either normal, thin, or thin plus faint.

[Tomislav Uzelac]

Nenad actually runs a custom version of the code with a thin front line all the time. I suppose this is one of the rare instances where my opinion carried the day on a graphical design issue

My logic for having the front line really stand out is that it's such an important element in the game: it blocks supply and the enemy ZOCs don't extend over it. True it sometimes obscures the terrain, but so do the units!

I must admit my gut feeling is against providing an option for this, especially as a quick tap on the "T" hotkey will show you the terrain instantly. The lakes you mention may be hidden by the front line, but you can easily see them with "T" because they are never obscured by units.

[willgamer]

I must admit my gut feeling is against providing an option for this,...

From a marketing point of view, I don't know what to make of a designer who is against providing options that customers request.

I understand the resources issue, but that doesn't seem to be the reason here. Since you already have the thin line code, all that is needed is the game option toggle.

Your own staff implemented one, at least one customer wants one but it's not up for discussion!

p.s. The terrain toggle (T), is not a perfect solution for me; sometimes I just want to see the map without either units or overlays.

[Tomislav Uzelac]

Your own staff implemented one, at least one customer wants one but it's not up for discussion!

Hm, I'm sorry if this came across as pigheaded or whatever... it's not the case I assure you, let me explain.

What I'm against, almost fanatically, is providing too many options. This is because, once you have an option, people sort of expect it to work.. and just about every option can break something in the code in conjunction with any other option. Basically, if you have N options, you get something like N-squared ways in which you can introduce bugs. And for a small team like ours, things can get out of control pretty quickly.

This is why I believe small modifications like this firmly belong to the domain of modding, i.e. there has to be one option that works for 90+% of the people, and everyone so inclined can use an (unsupported!) mod to get what they want if they really want it. Anyway, I checked and it seems that the front line width is not exposed in any of the xml or json files, so we can at least do that in the future, to enable creation of such a mod. It's not even a question of code, just the one number that sets line width.

Hopefully this clarifies why we must refuse a request for an option like this. It's not a whim or anything, it's a for-real limitation of running things with such a small team.

Cheers!

[willgamer]

.....
Hopefully this clarifies why we must refuse a request for an option like this. It's not a whim or anything, it's a for-real limitation of running things with such a small team.

Cheers!

If you'll indulge a request for a couple of more clarifications...

This was about the smallest request for an option I could think of and your reply was that you "must refuse a request for an option like this". Is it correct to infer that all requests for options are off the table?

How about requests for toggles that relate to the UI? Would they fall into the same catagory for you, or would they have a better chance of being considered?

No problems here; just trying to get the lay of the land....

[Tomislav Uzelac]

Is it correct to infer that all requests for options are off the table?

Not really, we just need to be... careful with what we accept as options (and thus promise to support into the future); and what is more appropriately a mod, or even declined outright.

Re: UI toggles, I assume you mean leaving the supply map display permanently ON (?) as discussed recently on the matrix forums. We've had such requests in the beta too, although for terrain and/or weather. However, our experience there has sort of shown that players adapt after a while.. certainly the rest of the UI doesn't tax players' "adaptation budget", so it looks as we can avail ourselves to some of that in this case.

Anyway, we will be adding the single-action undo, even if it's a relatively big change. This I think shows that we are indeed listening. But for minority requests, such as the frontline issue, we will at best be able to expose them to modders. Toggles are tricky for various internal reasons I will look into it when we're working on the update and see if that can be exposed for modders too.

Cheers