Quest mode suggestion: Show best beaten difficulty

[Wuzzy]

I suggest that the quests in quest mode also display the highest difficulty in which the quests have been beaten. This would increase the replayability of Quest mode a bit, especially if a player returns to this game after a while.

This could be done by overlaying 1-4 stars on the quest button, indicating the difficulty:

• 1 star: Easy
• 2 stars: Normal
• 3 stars: Hard
• 4 stars: Brutal

For old savestates where the highest beaten difficulty is not known (yet), just display 1 star (just for backwards-compability; the player can always replay the quest to get a better rating).

Bonus points for also showing those stars on the buttons for the 2 quest sets (e.g. Earth), to be displayed when all quests have been won. It shows the lowest best difficulty in the quest set.
So if you have won all quests on easy, you get 1 star, if you have most quests won on hard but one on normal, you get 2 stars, and if you have won everything on brutal you get 4 stars, of course.

[Andrettin]

This is a good idea And coincidentally the game has just gotten a star symbol (used in the grand strategy mode for provinces with heroes):


What concerns me is that adding the stars on top of the quest buttons might not look so good. One idea is that the information could be in the quest tooltip instead, so that it would look like this:

A Rocky Home (Dwarf)
Highest Completion Difficulty: Hard

[Wuzzy]

Good idea for adding a tooltip. It is not mutually exclusive with stars.
I have made a simple mock-up:



It doesn't look too terrible, in my opinion. But the star symbol might need some tweaks, it does not look good on all backgrounds.
Maybe using a slightly different star image with an outline might help.

Here I tried it for quests 8 and 9:


Probably still not perfect yet, but this is just an example. Maybe it all depends on having a good an clear-cut icon, then it might work.


If all else fails, I have a different idea: Colorize the icons like now, but differently: Blood-red for brutal, golden for hard, silver for normal and bronze for easy. Another simple mock-up:

[Andrettin]

Good idea for adding a tooltip. It is not mutually exclusive with stars.
I have made a simple mock-up:



It doesn't look too terrible, in my opinion. But the star symbol might need some tweaks, it does not look good on all backgrounds.
Maybe using a slightly different star image with an outline might help.

Here I tried it for quests 8 and 9:


Probably still not perfect yet, but this is just an example. Maybe it all depends on having a good an clear-cut icon, then it might work.


If all else fails, I have a different idea: Colorize the icons like now, but differently: Blood-red for brutal, golden for hard, silver for normal and bronze for easy. Another simple mock-up:

Yeah, it doesn't look bad And the space seems to fit pretty well for four stars.

I agree the star symbol doesn't look as good over the icons of the 8th and 9th quests - though I think adding an outline makes it look a bit too "cartoonish". Black semi-transparent pixels casting a shadow from the star would likely work better, though the star as it currently is already looks good enough IMO.

[Andrettin]

The code for saving (and showing in a tooltip) the highest difficulty a quest has been beaten in is now present in the game

[toothbrush]

Colours, graphics are only getting much more attractive, for me! it's amazing