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Annoying validation popups ("Are you sure?")
I understand the want to have validation popups. As an example of what I mean by validation popups, are multiple step validations of where the user needs to click "OK", or enter their characters name/some text, to receive/use their item. I call these the "Are you sure?" popups (insert John Cena meme).
With events, this is common. Upon completing a daily quest, the user would like to claim their prize. After clicking "Claim", they are faced with another popup which asks them if it's the proper character to claim the item on, even though these items are tradable across characters.
After claiming an item, there are some cases where using the item will also create this "Are you sure?" popup. I.e. using a Symbol Selector coupon. Here, the user needs to type the symbol they want to claim followed by their character name.
After receiving the symbols claimed, if the user would like to use these symbols, they are again presented with 2 "Are you sure?" popups.
The point here is, there are many instances of this is Maplestory today. It doesn't seem like much to just click "OK" and carry on, but for someone who plays this game on a daily, this becomes tedious and hard to understand why these checks even exist.
As a developer myself, you do not cater your solution to your consumers incompetence as this can negatively affect those that are competent. If a user decides to click the claim button on an event item (which has no repercussions as the item is tradable across characters on the account), they are validating that they would like to claim the item on that character.
I'd like to open this discussion to get some feedback and thoughts on this. Am I the only one feeling this type of way?
Comments
For items that are tradable within account I still want a validation claim because misclicks can happen and there are times when I would have taken an item far before I actually wanted to, forcing me to use it earlier than desired. This would be a non-issue for items that do not expire, however.
Having to hit a single button (Pressing Y or clicking yes) is not an issue. But having to type out even "claim" is minorly annoying and typing anything longer than claim is extremely annoying.
More dialog boxes than required is also an issue.
There are three dialog boxes for completing a Cernium daily for example.
The first box is a completely unnecessary fluff text.
"You completed the mission," Yes I know, that's why I clicked the quest to turn it in...
"Would you like EXP for this quest?" This is the only required box.
"Here's how much EXP/Whatever you got" This isn't really required as it still shows up in the System log, they could cut this box and put the information about how much EXP/rewards you will get in the previous box.
This alone would cut the number of dialog boxes a player has to see by two thirds when turning in dailies.
If the item description itself mentioned the time restriction (i.e. "Time limit of 5 days upon claiming"), would you still require the confirmation box?
Hitting "OK" or "Yes" (for example in the case of cubing) is not much of an issue I admit, as you can hold "Enter" to bypass these popups. However, if you're just bypassing them, are the popups even needed?
Cubing has 3 popups show up - "would you like to reset?", "The cost", and "are you sure?". This is excessive even if it can be skipped by holding the enter key.
It's what I was saying before, there shouldn't be a system that caters to incompetence or unwillingness to read. It affects everyone else's gameplay, especially for things like cubing which is done on a regular.
It is not because it is not explicitly stated. It is because misclicks exist. Sometimes you click the wrong item without realizing it, in a world with no validation checks there is nothing to stop me from now having an item with an expiration date that I didn't want to redeem yet.
Validation checks fix this but so does just getting rid of the timers on the items. You either get rid of the timers or keep validations on time limited items.
You can set NPC chat to Y, which will skip both NPC and validation checks. Regardless of validation checks requiring text or not, a simple "claim" is more than enough for typing it out. If a player cannot read where it says what item they are claiming and have to be hand held so hard they have to type out the name of the item they are claiming, that is absolutely user error and Nexon shouldn't be making it that idiot proof, because all it does is punish the majority of people who don't need that level of dumbing down.
If there is only one dialog box that contains all information you need to know about the claim and the item and you still redeem it when you did not want, that is 100% your fault. Slowing down to read one dialog box is not asking much of the player. Searching multiple boxes when all the information would have fit into a single box is.
That's exactly why I think these validation checks are excessive. For those who do read and understand what they are accepting, there is no issue. When you cube something, you know you want to cube an item. You know what the change is that you are asking for. There should not be 3 validation checks.
There is a popup today where you type the symbol you'd like to claim + your characters name. This popup has red, bold, and large text which tells the player what to write in the text box. This can be used as a warning when claiming a time-bound item, with a simple "Claim" or "Cancel" button as selectable options which cannot be mistakenly accepted by clicking "Y" or NPC chat.
The idea of UI is to make UI intuitive and minimally invasive. Having 3 popups asking the user if they are really sure if they want to cube an item, or asking the user to use their mouse to click on a text box and type a command to accept an item, are examples of bad UI practice.