UX improvements (color coding and Icons for cards)

[Waterplouf]

Hi guys,

Love the game so far, I'm about 12 hours in and I'm starting to get comfortable with most of the mechanics I've seen in the game so far. The UI in general feels very slick even if it takes a while to get used to (especially Negociations). There is one point though that I feel could be very easily (depending on the assets at disposition) made to improve card readability, as well as greatly improve users memory retention of the many keywords, stats and status that the game offers.

What I refers as "keywords" in the following are the likes of bleed, cripple, burn, etc...

The problem:

The current system is far from bad don't get me wrong, the tooltips are very detailed and give you all the information you need. However they are very verbose (inherent to the fact that a lot of the keywords are generally more complex in comparison to other card games). Some keywords also can have ambiguous meaning such as cripple and wound (maybe it's because I am not a native speaker, but I always need to recheck the tooltip to make sure which one is which).

Adding to this that you have two entirely different decks / ways to play, it makes the whole process of learning the game cards/keywords quite tiresome and arduous for the users. Having to reread tooltips (even partially) while focusing on playing the game is not the best.

The Solution(s):

I think there are two elegants (in my opinion of course) UX solutions to the problem mentioned above, which would greatly help (especially visual learners) people starting the game without having to worry too much about rereading what does what in the first few dozen encounters.

1. Color Coding keywords in the card text the tooltips, especially important stats ones such as Resolve, Health, Composure/Defense.
2. Adding icons at the start or the end of the keywords. for the stats ones (see above), they already exist in font icon format (meaning they can be inserted in a text like a normal character) from what I've seen (except maybe the shield for Composure/Defense). The Combat Icons also already exist, so a simple [cutout and rescaling of them] or [adding them to the font] would be all that is needed (Please be free to correct me if I am wrong). The "harder" ones to represent as text icons would be the Negotiation arguments, as they are images rather than icons. This would probably be where the heavy lifting would need to be done (creating icons for said arguments).

As an example, the "Lacerate" card would read "apply 4 Bleed "

(Of course it would be done by someone who actually knows how to properly detour the icon and would size it correctly with the text )

There is actually already a few buds of those suggestions present in the game, like the "head" or "snails" icons present in some of Rook's cards, the boldness applied to all status/stats in the cards, or even the text events description for regaining health and resolve.

Here is an excellent example of how the clarity of the text can be easily changed with those UX improvements, courtesy of the Pillar of Eternity mod "Enhanced User Interface" (Normal UI is Left, Modded is right)

Thank you for reading, hope you like the suggestion(s) (players and devs alike!), feel free to discuss and have a great day !

Waterplouf