Move the lower-right ? help thing to a more prominent location, like next to the game-speed button.
Then upgrade it to a modal window, rather than a mouse-over.
this window would have the current information (shortcut keys, road things) as well as all of the help contracts in a "booklet" layout, arrows to flip pages.
contracts would be in numerical order so that helpers could reference a page number easily.
This solves a couple of problems, in my eyes. Players, myself included, don't tend to read the help contracts very carefully, and they are often presented too early for the implications to make sense. There's an initial skim-through, then a quick "can i complete the town it wants me to complete" and then either complete it or ignore it for a while.
It is not intuitive, to go back and read old, completed help contracts when you want to better understand a game mechanic. It is also not very easy to FIND old, completed help contracts. They are not listed in an intuitive order (they're in order of discovery), and if you don't know about the filtering, late game they may be in a mess of 8 pages of other contracts.
rayanth
commented
3 years ago
Summary
Upgrades to the Help system
Use case
All players
Detailed Description
This solves a couple of problems, in my eyes. Players, myself included, don't tend to read the help contracts very carefully, and they are often presented too early for the implications to make sense. There's an initial skim-through, then a quick "can i complete the town it wants me to complete" and then either complete it or ignore it for a while.
It is not intuitive, to go back and read old, completed help contracts when you want to better understand a game mechanic. It is also not very easy to FIND old, completed help contracts. They are not listed in an intuitive order (they're in order of discovery), and if you don't know about the filtering, late game they may be in a mess of 8 pages of other contracts.