Hearthstone

[SevenSpirits]

My biggest gripe with the game: I find it absolutely ridiculous that the cards in your own hand aren't fully on the screen. Even if you only have a couple cards in hand, you can't read them without mousing over. Why?

Because after playing for a month you just need a split second to identify the card by looking at the image. Reading the card text becomes unnecessary.

You're trying to convince me it's a good idea?

[Cyneheard]

My biggest gripe with the game: I find it absolutely ridiculous that the cards in your own hand aren't fully on the screen. Even if you only have a couple cards in hand, you can't read them without mousing over. Why?

Because after playing for a month you just need a split second to identify the card by looking at the image. Reading the card text becomes unnecessary.

You're trying to convince me it's a good idea?

I'm with Seven that it's poor design, even if it doesn't bother me at this point.

[WilliamLP]

Oh man, I'm having my first arena run with Jaraxxus! I'm 3-1 so far and it just feels like cheat mode in the two games where he has made it to the board.

[Gustaran]

You're trying to convince me it's a good idea?

I am not trying to convnce you of anything, all I am saying is that it works very well for me and I have yet to discover a review that criticizes the UI, so I assume it is ok for most people. On my laptop screen there is simply now way you could display 10 cards in your hand in the actual zoomed in size with readable font and still have room for board filled with minions.

Now certainly there would be ways to rearrange the whole UI, but I don't see the point. Why take up space to display information all the time I don't really need? I feel the mouseover zoom is an elegant solution, but of course you can disagree. Some people like the Windows 8 UI, some hate it; that's just the way it is.

[SevenSpirits]

Don't get me wrong Gustaran, the Hearthstone UI is utterly fantastic. I said this was my biggest gripe - that's in a game I have almost exclusively positive things to say about so it's not like this is a big thing here.

That said, they clearly made the UI like that for stylistic reasons - which I disagree with - and not because they just ran out of space in a fullscreen UI which uses less than half the space available to it for things related to gameplay. (Again: that is not a criticism, in fact I think it's great.) We are literally talking less than 2% of the vertical dimension. They could just shift the entire interface up by 15 pixels, or shrink things by 1.5%, or some combination thereof, and it wouldn't be an issue. Or they could even just shrink the size of cards in hand by 15% while you're not zoomed in to them. But they obviously want you to have to mouse over the cards to read them, and that is what I disagree with.

[Jowy]

You guys play on fullscreen? O_o
I can't imagine that.. would be so boring if I had nothing to do during opponent's turns.

[SevenSpirits]

I think during my opponents' turns.

[Krill]

You guys play on fullscreen? O_o
I can't imagine that.. would be so boring if I had nothing to do during opponent's turns.

People only have 1 screen?

[Cyneheard]

You guys play on fullscreen? O_o
I can't imagine that.. would be so boring if I had nothing to do during opponent's turns.

People only have 1 screen?

+1. When drafting for Arena I have:
- Hearthstone on 1 monitor
- My Excel spreadsheet for tracking my draft & thoughts (I found the method of explaining my picks to ya'll really helpful, even if I never post it ever again). Also great for data tracking, like W-L records and self-critiquing my play.
- A drafting guide or two

[Gustaran]

That said, they clearly made the UI like that for stylistic reasons - which I disagree with - and not because they just ran out of space in a fullscreen UI which uses less than half the space available to it for things related to gameplay. (Again: that is not a criticism, in fact I think it's great.) We are literally talking less than 2% of the vertical dimension. They could just shift the entire interface up by 15 pixels, or shrink things by 1.5%, or some combination thereof, and it wouldn't be an issue. Or they could even just shrink the size of cards in hand by 15% while you're not zoomed in to them. But they obviously want you to have to mouse over the cards to read them, and that is what I disagree with.

Your suggestion would be a solution if all people played on large computer screen. Even on a small laptop screen, you can't really read the card text due to the small font size.

I suspect the real reason for their UI choice is that the final version will be simultaneously launched on iPad.
This would explain why there is so much unused space on the sides. Given that this is a F2P game, I believe Blizzard doesn't want to use different interfaces, because they believe their dull-witted users would get confused switching between iPad and PC.

At least that's similar to what Microsoft said when asked why users should work with the Windows 8 UI (which is clearly designed for a mobile device with a touchscreen) on a mouse controlled desktop PC as well.
Now, we all know it was a stupid idea, but some of the marketing guys at these large companies are morons...