Having locked options mixed in with unlocked is a poor choice, in my opinion, for the following reasons:
- It looks cluttered. It’s difficult to mentally sort options, especially across multiple tabs (btw, it’s weird to have pages and scroll in the same view).
- It’s difficult to see what it is you have unlocked. You might not be interested in all in other supplements but you’ll always have to scroll or click through several pages to see what you do have unlocked. Unless you unlock 100%, there will always be those green unlock buttons in your face. It just makes the entire experience really tacky if you feel as if you own the material you want to own but always have to work around stuff you don’t want.
- I’m about to run a short campaign for some coworkers and to me it makes the most sense to direct them here for making their characters. However them seeing a green “Unlock” button that is, in some cases, 75% of the options, is going to be a bad first impression. I know I’ll be mitigating fallout from comments about it trying to keep people hyped about the game.
I understand the strategy of exposing the customer to the product. However, I would argue that people coming to a TTRPG are already interested in playing the game and will eventually make purchases if the experience is enjoyable. By cluttering up the UI you’re not creating the impression that the experience is first and foremost to the user. Already this site has to compete with pathbuilder and VTTs. The polish and official support are what people are going to come here for as it’s the only place this game costs money. If that’s not what’s on offer this tool won’t be as popular as it could be.
For bonus points, you’d likely have better luck by removing locked options entirely and replace it with a button at the bottom of each scroll view that says “Want more awesome options!? Click here!”. People can satiate their curiosity when they feel compelled, and can digest the options in a view that is custom made for selling product. People that are testing out the game can enjoy their free options in a clean UI, and if they get hooked they’ll see that prompt every time they edit/level their character and eventually be curious and click.
But I digress. The request here is to sort unlocked content to the top of each list of character options. It’ll still be obvious there are multiple pages and more content unlocked, but it’ll be an overall better user experience.
