Preliminary Beta 13 UI Layout/Zooming Stats! (Patreon)

I just recently put out the Beta 12 stat analysis, which you can check out here if you hadn't heard about that yet.

But what I really want to share here today is that after compiling those stats, I couldn't resist the urge to also do a preliminary compilation of user preferences regarding our new interface features! For some players Beta 13 is a major change in that regard, so I've been quite eager to see just what options people are choosing, and whether the reality lines up with expectations. The results are more or less indeed as expected, and now there's data to back it up.

UI Layout Preferences

A little more than half of players are using the Semi-modal layout, which is currently the new default, and as a new setting everyone was switched to it automatically on starting up Beta 13. Thus anyone using a different layout must have changed it manually.

As we can see from the graph, about a quarter of players switched back to the original layout. We knew there'd be some who would want to take that route, anyone with a large display and/or no issues seeing the smaller text and tiles in exchange for a greater visible area and more info at once, what the non-modal layout was built for. Now we can assign a tentative ratio to the number of people in that situation.

Defaults tend to get more usage when it comes to any given option, so it's no surprise Semi-modal is currently used by the majority. It features the smallest map view, but is at least better for new players who can still see log messages which remain permanently visible in their own window, including tutorial messages.

The Modal layout is currently used by the smallest portion of players, but I suspect its usage will grow somewhat with time. It offers a larger map than the default and the same larger text, so it's best for experienced players who happen to need a larger tile size while retaining much of the same map view height the game was designed for.

As usual, we have to keep in mind that this data does not include absolutely everyone, just those who've opted into stat uploads, but based on past experience it's representative enough. To collect this data, in the case of individuals who've completed multiple runs I took the options used in their last-completed run as their current preference.

Map Zooming

So layouts are getting a lot of use, what about the map zooming feature...

If you recall from the dev blog, map zooming was actually where I started the whole interface size accessibility adventure, then paused it towards the end because I wanted to see how upscaling across the board would work out, under the assumption that if that were possible, and implemented, it would end up being much more effective than map zooming alone, and probably end up deprioritizing the latter if necessary. Obviously I did go back to finish map zooming and we got both, but based on the data, it appears that zooming is indeed relatively underused compared to what one might expect without having new layouts available.

A significant majority of players don't use map zooming at all. I believe it's most useful in combination with the non-modal UI layout, but the minority of players who switched back to that original layout rather than using one of the new ones are the same folks who were probably fine with its size to begin with :P

In the end that means not many people are making heavy use of map zooming. Only 10 players had zoom enabled for more than half of their last run, another 22 players used it either occasionally or fairly rarely. The remaining 132 players in the data did not use it at all.

So that's pretty much what I expected to happen, but having map zooming as an option is still very useful for some people and in some situations, plus the other features its development led to are great as well (even for people who don't use map zooming).

That's all for the preliminary user stats, we'll have to see if or how these change by the time Beta 13 is over and its stats are finalized, at which time the data will also likely include a lot more players. That's also more time for people to perhaps switch to a different layout, as it's only been a few weeks, after all.