suggestions

Could we get an option to change the text size specifically for the links at the end of a battle. Something like a slider would be great, or just a dropdown with whatever intervals up to 300%, or the font size value itself, something like that. Could have smaller values too I guess if somebody is masochistic. All scaled together of course (so it can't be easily abused via ac or whatever if only the correct link was larger). I think this would be a good accessibility option, and general QoL for anybody.

 

+1

Suggested this before but was met by the "Bots4 Neanderthals" with their usual negativity, so nothing ever happend. Let's see if they come in here aswell.

 

+1, especially on mobile its shit.

 

Suggested this before but was met by the "Bots4 Neanderthals" with their usual negativity, so nothing ever happend. Let's see if they come in here aswell.

Where exactly did you suggest this? Couldn't find it.

 

On this forum, but as it is really user unfriendly I am not gonna bother finding it.. it was like 2 years ago or something like that.

 

I looked for it, couldn't find it.

Regardless. Seems like a decent enough ask.

Also, I wish Ender would also add the ability to reduce the frames (top and left side). Screen realestate is nice when trying to do other things and play bots on the side.

 

iirc correctly this was indeed mentioned some years back tied into a mobile support thread. Some heating discussion around it making it easier for clickers ensued & it died a death ...

Regardless, anything that makes the gaming experience better for the player gets a thumbs up from me.

 

Seems reasonable, but I want to understand the motivation more to figure out what the best solution here is. Below this post, I'm going to leave a series of posts. Click the 👍 emoji if you have that problem (trying this informal poll approach to give people who read this thread but may not care to write out a text reply a way to quickly vote). And of course feel free to write out replies too if you have more to add.

(Side note: As I shared last year, I personally find the overall game UI too tiny as I've gotten older. I usually have this site on 125% or 150% browser zoom.)

 

React with 👍 to this post if you agree:

The "fight/train again" links are too small to see/use.

 

React with 👍 to this post if you agree:

The overall game font is too small to see/use.

 

React with 👍 to this post if you agree:

Font size being too small is an issue for me on mobile.

 

React with 👍 to this post if you agree:

Font size being too small is an issue for me on desktop.

 

understand the motivation more

Mobile link clicking would definitely be one thing, that is not exclusive to the fight and train again links though. Changing equipment, selecting fight targets etc all pretty much require zooming in to click accurately/reliably (at least in my experience).

The other reason that more or less prompted me to suggest this is when using multiple bots. When swiping across the screen clicking 4-5 different windows, it actually requires a fair bit of precision hitting the fight again links, more so the faster you go of course. There's certainly been plenty of times I accidentally hit the wrong link just from inaccuracy, and it's never fun needing to re-navigate multiple times for one target in a minimal sized window! This can probably be said for handful of people playing on one bot as well, but I typically use hotkeys when single logging.

I figured a cheating concern would come about this kind of change, as rose mentioned, which is why I added the caveat of the links at end-of-fight to only be scaled in unison. I'm sure you would have came to the same conclusion with that regardless though.

 

Interesting poll results so far: 3x for fight/train again links being too small, 7x for font on mobile being too small, 0x for the other 2 - thanks for the feedback. My takeaway is that mobile layout/readability just needs to be improved overall (inclusive of fight/train again links, of course). What Gpof is saying about other game actions on mobile being challenging matches my experience as well. I find myself pinch zooming basically every page on my phone (usually checking forums).

There are some other things I want to get to before digging into mobile layout/readability further, but I agree that this area can be improved a lot. Hopefully there are some inexpensive wins to be had. Stay tuned.

 

I generally turn my phone to the side, to landscape the links, which typically results in them filling more space (getting bigger) and making it easier. Larger text, more readability while playing on mobile would be good.

 

The other reason that more or less prompted me to suggest this is when using multiple bots. When swiping across the screen clicking 4-5 different windows, it actually requires a fair bit of precision hitting the fight again links, more so the faster you go of course. There's certainly been plenty of times I accidentally hit the wrong link just from inaccuracy, and it's never fun needing to re-navigate multiple times for one target in a minimal sized window! This can probably be said for handful of people playing on one bot as well, but I typically use hotkeys when single logging.

This is my experience as well.

 

Playing on mobile can we have a setting to choose in a targets range "show bots only with energy"

 

in android, i just set this game at x300% zoom in chrome. even though the other texts is so big to look at, the links for fight again and train again is manageable to click that way (since is bigger now and the spacing between the links is bigger) rather than doin it normally without zooming (the links too small and close to each other that i misclick it).

 

Playing on phone you need to pinch zoom basically everything, including fight links.

Not sure how you would change that without an app or mobile version different to browser. Also seems like a different issue than wanting bigger links for QoL.

 

Yeah, I did broaden the scope of this thread a bit because I wanted to think about the problem more holistically than just the fight/train links. My suspicion (now proved by the votes) was that it's more generally a problem of mobile layout/readability. I plan to first evaluate whether there are any general fixes for mobile layout/readability that would also improve the fight/train link size issue before adding (yet another) workshop toggle for their size. This should be doable with device-specific CSS, which I believe is the typical way websites implement "responsive design" (i.e. adjusting layouts based on what screen it's being viewed on). Stay tuned.

 

I didn't play for a while in my phone, but today the fight again links where smaller than they used to be in the past. Their font was even smaller as the normal text of the fight log, but in the past I think these links behaved in the opposite way (they showed in a big font than normal text and they were easier to click without zooming).

I feel like the links are more separated too, which could help clicking them, but this might be because they have a smaller font now.

I don't know if this is particular to my phone or can be reproduced by others. Anyway, today it was harder for me to play than I was used to.

 

Same here esv. Very small font for the fight links. Making the default font size bigger on my phone, doesnt help either.

 

Simple fix might be to just be able to change the fight again link by itself in the workshop. 100%, 200%, 300%, up to 500% or so. That way people on mobile can change it to 300% or something and browser can keep it 100%. Mobile stuff tends to have to have a specific app made for it though since the text frame itself would be different.

Another way might be having workshop settings for different resolutions for mobile like:

360×640: Often found in budget smartphones.
414×896: Common in newer iPhones.
601×962: Seen in some high-end Android devices.
1280×800: Typically used in tablets and large-screen phones.

 4:3: Found in older tablets and some iPads.
3:2: Common in older iPhones.
16:9: Standard for many modern smartphones.
17:10: Used in some Android tablets.

That might be able to change the game to usable mobile definitions without destroying the browser based people too.

 

How about this Ender? Would be nice if mobile clicking would me more comfortable :)

 

I do plan to make some changes to improve mobile layout/readability more generally based on the feedback in this thread. Full disclosure is that this is lower on my list than a lot of other stuff, so it'll take some time to get to.

 

Can't you do a small fix for the fight links? See this screenshot from my mobile how small it is, also compared to the normal text

https://imgur.com/a/HgvmF6D

 

Oh, thanks for that screenshot - I didn't realize the links were a totally different size than the rest of the battle output. That should be a smaller quicker fix for that specific issue. I'll look into that.

 

I'm actually unable to reproduce "battle links are significantly smaller than the rest of the battle text" on either of the mobile devices I have easy access to (Chrome on Pixel 8, Safari on iPhone 15).

Some questions for you (and anyone else seeing the specific behavior shown in that screenshot):

1. What device / browser are you using?
2. Is there anything special about your setup that might lead to this happening?
3. Do you see this kind of issue of greatly varying text size anywhere else in the game?
4. Have the battle links always been like this or is this a new issue?

 

I can assume you on the pixel 9 using chrome, the fight again text is very much smaller

 

What device / browser are you using?

I have a samsung a55, android 14 and using chrome. Have tested it with the standard browser and the brave browser. Same results.

Is there anything special about your setup that might lead to this happening?

i dont think so, also increasing text size in android doesnt make it bigger. Other battle log yes, nog the fight links.

Do you see this kind of issue of greatly varying text size anywhere else in the game?

No. Text is very small tho in for example the fight list.

Have the battle links always been like this or is this a new issue?

Been an issue for years.
 

Thanks for the extra info. I'm able to reproduce this now with some of the device simulation settings in Chrome desktop developer mode, so I should be able to fix it now.

 

That would be great, thanks!

 

I think quite a few people play the game on mobile Ender so maybe pushing it up the list of priorities might be a good idea.

 

tl;dr: The mobile experience should be much better now for battling and forum/bmail-reading.

Thanks for the nudge. You're right - the usage stats do confirm that there are a lot of mobile players, even with the current sub-par experience. Based on this feedback, I ended up spending more time learning some basics about how mobile devices adapt webpages for their smaller screens - I've never really done mobile-focused development, so I'm pretty ignorant about this. There's good news and bad news. The good news is that there is some low-hanging fruit that can significantly improve things - this is doable. The bad news is that fully adapting the game to support a true mobile-first game experience would require a massive investment and rethink of many aspects of the game - this is likely infeasible, at least on any reasonable timeline (but could be something I work towards over time).

For the low-hanging fruit, I've just rolled out a few things:

• The "battle links are significantly smaller than the rest of the battle text" issue should be fixed. I figured out that some devices were trying to "intelligently" adapt the page for their smaller screen sizes, but whatever heuristic was being used wasn't ideal and deprioritized the battle links for some reason. I've now added explicit instructions that the original size should be honored, meaning the sizes should stay consistent.

• The battle log (including links at the end) text size is now doubled on mobile devices. Playing around on my Pixel 8, this feels to me like a comfortable size (much more so than before), but let me know what folks think.

• Perhaps selfishly because this is the area of the game I personally use most, and often from my phone, I also made some mobile upgrades to the forums. Post texts (including emoji reactions), thread titles, and sub-forum names all now have doubled size on mobile devices. This applies to the public forums as well as clan forums.

• The same forum changes have been applied to the post office / bmails as well, which shares a lot of styling.

I see these changes as the start of better mobile support for the game. Definitely more to do, but that should cover some of the most important use cases (particularly the game's core battle loop). The other big areas for improvement based on usage data are probably the showroom, fight list, train list, and online page. Each of those have unique challenges for adapting to smaller screen sizes though that (mostly) can't be fixed by simply increasing text size, so they'll need a lot more thought (and to set expectations, not something I see myself undertaking anytime soon).

 

I can't double tap to zoom in anymore, assuming it's related to these changes

 

tl;dr: Going forward, use "pinch to zoom" instead.

You're right - I confirmed that reverting the mobile support changes restores "double tap to zoom" behavior.

I spent some time reading about this. Evidently, "double tap to zoom" is actually not a standard gesture. What was happening before was that the game was doing nothing to tell browsers/devices that it supports mobile at all, so in the mobile case, it would try to be helpful and enable "intelligent" behavior like "double tap to zoom". This is a browser feature primarily for older websites not optimized for mobile. By the game now telling browsers/devices that it is mobile-aware, this specific zoom behavior changed.

"Pinch to zoom" is still fully supported and is now the recommended way to magnify on mobile. Although double-tapping may still work on some browsers/devices, unfortunately there does not seem to be a way to fully restore that behavior alongside the broader mobile modernizations.

 

How have the battle/forum/bmail mobile changes been working out for people? Not noticeable? Step in the right direction? Much better now?

 

I've noticed the larger forum links and such on mobile which is definitely easier to use. Still would like to resize fight/train again links on desktop though :D

 

Just now tried mobile for the first time since the changes and clicking “fight again” is no longer a hassle. Amazing change!

 

+1 for text size increase. Much better.

 

Thanks for the feedback, great to hear that the mobile change has been positive.

Still would like to resize fight/train again links on desktop though

Can you tell me more about the desire for this? I'm pretty resistant to adding "yet another setting" to control battle link size because my perception is that this is a relatively minor issue not worth "polluting" the settings page for everyone, but I want to make sure I understand the motivation:

• Is it because the links are too hard to see/click even on desktop?
• How do you feel about the game's overall font size on desktop? (my thoughts, for the record - I'm almost always at at least 125% browser zoom personally)
• Is browser zoom (ctrl-plus) not a good fix for your case?

 

Can you tell me more about the desire for this?

Did that but I will expand

The other reason that more or less prompted me to suggest this is when using multiple bots. When swiping across the screen clicking 4-5 different windows, it actually requires a fair bit of precision hitting the fight again links, more so the faster you go of course. There's certainly been plenty of times I accidentally hit the wrong link just from inaccuracy, and it's never fun needing to re-navigate multiple times for one target in a minimal sized window! This can probably be said for handful of people playing on one bot as well, but I typically use hotkeys when single logging.

I like the text size and everything as is aesthetically. Zooming in on multiple minimum sized windows is not something I want as that makes everything else more tedious. Scrolling right for the correct level on fight list, scrolling down for the target, scrolling right again to hit the initial link. That for multiple bots on every single misclick, or I change the zoom every time which is just as tedious. Being zoomed in also obstructs targets remaining energy even more since the text moves physically to the right further.

 

After some attentive testing, I realized it's actually clicks that miss any of the links rather than clicking the wrong one that happens more often. Perhaps eliminating the empty gaps between them could be a potential middle-ground change (be it visually or just enlarging the interactive box of where you can click). Being zoomed in works well enough for win dumping since you typically will go a whole fight limit before needing to navigate anywhere else, but for multiple bot scoring the previous mentioned annoyances still apply. Even for dumping you have to deal with resizing the zoom every time you log a different bot which could be very frequent for lower levels or early in the month when doing smaller amounts of energy at a time.

Another suggestion I wanted to make is to add an "advanced settings" box (additional link?) or however you'd want to go about it in the workshop for all of the more nuanced options. I think your concern for the cluttered settings page is more than fair, so maybe that could be a good way to go about that whether or not the previous suggestion is added.

 

Yeah. Splitting the settings into bot profile/customizaion and then advanced game settings would help differentiate them also.

 

@Gpof - Whoops, sorry for forgetting about your earlier post that had more details. I understand the use case a little bit better now, thanks. It does still sound kind of niche, so I'm going to hold off on committing to any changes at the moment (but can reevaluate in the future).

Note that there's a path forward if you're sufficiently motivated: Custom CSS rules for just you. AFAICT all major browsers support this. A similar option is a simple Tampermonkey script that applies the CSS. This would give you full customization of the display.

it's never fun needing to re-navigate multiple times for one target

No guarantees and I don't want to share too much just yet because it's in the early stages, but something I'm working on right now will potentially make this re-navigation step significantly less tedious than it is now. So stay tuned on that, and keep in mind that some of the "problem" this suggestion is aiming to solve may be eased slightly ~soon.