ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

"Attack Speed" in (the second tab of) the character sheet and on items is misleading, as lower is better. Renaming it to "Attack time" would remove that ambiguity.

Or perhaps "Turns per Attack"?

Also, write character Mental, Attack,Spell, Movement speeds always with signs (such as +0%), and Global always without sign (100%), to indicate that first is additive, and second is absolute.

Or even better, just write them the same way, so base attack speed is 100%, etc.

I support lukeps idea, its really confusing to new players.

It would be a much bigger rework, but I wonder if it would make sense to combine global speed and attack speed. The concept of global vs. attack speed is confusing to many new players. I'm not sure just changing the name of attack speed will help a great deal.

Combining attack and global speeds doesn't work in the engine, as they are very different from each other. Attack speed reduces the energy you use for an action, while global speed increases the energy you regain per tick.

lukep wrote:Combining attack and global speeds doesn't work in the engine, as they are very different from each other. Attack speed reduces the energy you use for an action, while global speed increases the energy you regain per tick.

That's true, but the way they're written could be less confusing to n00bxorz.

110% global speed is GOOD.
110% attack speed is BAD.

This is needlessly confusing. If they're both "speed percents", then the GOOD direction should be either up or down, not both.

Maybe display the "percent of a normal turn" so the GOOD direction is consistent ("Combined with your global speed, your attack actions take 62% of a normal turn.")

Attack "time" or Attack "effort" would make a lot more sense. Alternatively, it wouldn't be too hard to just reverse the formula in dialogs to so that higher is better.

I think the "reverse in dialogs" option is the best one, personally.

I suggest, if no changes above are implemented, at least paint it in red? In this game, everything that is good when bigger is green (like, say, save or power) and everything that is bad when bigger is red (like, fatigue). So, why not at least do that?
Of course, better rename it all together, as proposed above, because "speed" measures "unit of quantity per unit of time" meaning it should always be "faster" if bigger, whichever quantity is measured.

Making it green when below 100%/white when 100%/red when above 100% would be a good idea if nothing else is done, I agree.

I've submitted a patch to DG that changes the display of character sheet numbers so that higher (and green) numbers represent better than normal speeds and lower (and red) numbers represent worse than normal speeds. Similarly updated healing factor plus life regen and updated the tooltips.

That'll go a long way towards simplifying things for new players. Much more internally consistent.

Hachem_Muche wrote:I've submitted a patch to DG that changes the display of character sheet numbers so that higher (and green) numbers represent better than normal speeds and lower (and red) numbers represent worse than normal speeds. Similarly updated healing factor plus life regen and updated the tooltips.

Cool!

Since the deltas will also be expressed in red & green, maybe make the base number "dark red" or "dark green" just so it's visually obvious that they're expressing different things.