1.7.0 UI Overhaul Feedback

I have gotten a lot of feedback that people have issues with the new UI. Many seem to find it clunky and confusing. Please bear with me as I work on this. I hear you all and want to fix it.

Here's some of my thoughts on the new UI:

• You can add more modifiers at once now. Armor and protective amulet and wings all at once for example.
• I can add more categories of modifiers without needing extra rows. For example, vampirism/lycanthropy no longer needs a dedicated always-visible row.
• With the new UI, what you have selected to spawn is always very visible at the bottom of the screen. With the old UI, you have to look through each tray to see what's selected.
• The old UI was odd on desktop, and I would rather have one UI that works well for both mobile/desktop.
• I did do playtesting, and people seemed to say good things about it. But they were not core fans of the game, and that wasn't enough.
• I wish I could watch you all play so I could see precisely what actions/steps are confusing or difficult. I would appreciate hearing in specific detail, which steps suck.
• I can agree it feels a bit unorganized. Having units, terrain, erasers, wrench all in the same menu, I probably need to do something to make that feel more organized.

Many have asked, but I am very hesitant to bring the old UI back. I do not think it would scale as well as more options are added. But I clearly do need to change the new UI.

I am still mulling things over. Here's my current plan:

• More playtesting: I'm going to get this in the hands of more people who I can watch play it, so I can understand where they struggle with it.
• QOL work: I can put an eraser back in the top-right corner. And maybe a button that reselects the last thing you used, so if you have to erase something (or do something else), it's easy to quickly get back to what you were doing.
• More listening, and more thinking things over.

One piece of game design advice that I hear VERY often is "Always believe your players when they tell you something feels bad. Never believe them when they tell you how to fix it". I apologize if that sounds rude, I bring it up to stress that I am listening, and that just because I am hesistant to bring back the old UI, does not mean I do not see there are issues. At this point, I want to make sure I understand the issues well. Maybe the fix is to make things more like the old UI, but I need to learn more (through playtesting, etc) to be sure.

Thank you for your patience and your feedback. I would be happy to hear your thoughts, either by emailing feedback@sandboxzombies.com or by joining the Discord.

- Elliot