There are a lot of things in the game creation panel. So many things everywhere in fact that you might just forget a thing or two when creating your game. This is a trend I've noticed in my own playthroughs and while watching streams of the game. Especially when you get into mid to late-game where you're working on multiple games at once, it isn't rare that while you think you've set up everything for your next game, you'll click "Start" and then realize you forgot to change the game size or forgot to enable online multiplayer.
Analysis
I think the problem comes from the fact that there are just too many buttons at once and you have to click some in a specific order (Like you have to set a producer before setting the game size to Big or AAA, or need to select a platform with online capability before enabling online multiplayer). Thus this suggestion aims to "fix" that by making the player follow a specific order to do things instead, with fewer options for each step:
Step 1
(Do not mind the inconsistencies between the "summary" and the current selection.)
(I realized after the fact that I forgot the target audience setting, so it won't appear in the right-side summary for the next 3 steps.)
Genre selection
Clicking the genre selection button in step 1 brings you to this:
Pretty much the same as the genre unlocking panel but with a few differences.
Clicking an unlocked genre will close the panel and bring the player back to step 1 with this genre selected.
Clicking a locked genre, however, will behave like the regular genre unlocked panel and bring up this popup:
The only difference being that the "Confirm" button has been renamed to "Unlock" to be clearer. If the player chooses to unlock it, they will still have to click the newly unlocked genre to select it; This is in case the player just remembered they could unlock genres and want to unlock several genres at once.
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Conclusion
You will notice that, while being step-by-step, there are still multiple settings in each step. This is because I believe having to click "Next" 10+ times would be tedious and ultimately counter-productive. Thus, I opted for having multiple related settings in each step instead, not too much so as to not lose the player, but just enough as to not be unnecessarily long.
Ultimately, I believe this process could also be applied to development stages, the sliders being step 1, and engine features being step 2, as it is not uncommon for players to forget engine features as well.
However, this suggestion requires a relatively significant amount of work, and I have no evidence that other players would like it or even find it useful at all. I personally believe it would be better, but that is only my word, thus I won't take offence if you decide to pay no mind to this suggestion.
Problem
There are a lot of things in the game creation panel. So many things everywhere in fact that you might just forget a thing or two when creating your game. This is a trend I've noticed in my own playthroughs and while watching streams of the game. Especially when you get into mid to late-game where you're working on multiple games at once, it isn't rare that while you think you've set up everything for your next game, you'll click "Start" and then realize you forgot to change the game size or forgot to enable online multiplayer.
Analysis
I think the problem comes from the fact that there are just too many buttons at once and you have to click some in a specific order (Like you have to set a producer before setting the game size to Big or AAA, or need to select a platform with online capability before enabling online multiplayer). Thus this suggestion aims to "fix" that by making the player follow a specific order to do things instead, with fewer options for each step:
Step 1
(Do not mind the inconsistencies between the "summary" and the current selection.) (I realized after the fact that I forgot the target audience setting, so it won't appear in the right-side summary for the next 3 steps.)
Genre selection
Clicking the genre selection button in step 1 brings you to this:
Pretty much the same as the genre unlocking panel but with a few differences.
Clicking an unlocked genre will close the panel and bring the player back to step 1 with this genre selected.
Clicking a locked genre, however, will behave like the regular genre unlocked panel and bring up this popup:
The only difference being that the "Confirm" button has been renamed to "Unlock" to be clearer. If the player chooses to unlock it, they will still have to click the newly unlocked genre to select it; This is in case the player just remembered they could unlock genres and want to unlock several genres at once.
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Conclusion
You will notice that, while being step-by-step, there are still multiple settings in each step. This is because I believe having to click "Next" 10+ times would be tedious and ultimately counter-productive. Thus, I opted for having multiple related settings in each step instead, not too much so as to not lose the player, but just enough as to not be unnecessarily long.
Ultimately, I believe this process could also be applied to development stages, the sliders being step 1, and engine features being step 2, as it is not uncommon for players to forget engine features as well.
However, this suggestion requires a relatively significant amount of work, and I have no evidence that other players would like it or even find it useful at all. I personally believe it would be better, but that is only my word, thus I won't take offence if you decide to pay no mind to this suggestion.