One simple thing to improve the SFMA experience (or: my "D'OH!" moment)

[cranebump]

There's a few things I do as a designer that I seldom do when I run my normal characters (mainly because I'm running old content). For example, in AE, when I'm testing an arc, I keep 3 boxes always open where I can cleary see them: the default message box (for results from clickies), a separate Clues box (so I don't have to pop into the tab above), and a box just for NPC dialogue (which is often integral to story).  If I'm just tooling around in the actual game, I hardly EVER do this. And, for a while, I carried that habit into SFMA's, and, for some stupid reason, didn't even think about dedicating specific chat boxes to just these things. Once I started doing that, the benefits of just having all that info in front of me while going through the story became obvious.

 

Because of that, I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea to suggest this to others who want to get the most from an SFMA arc. Have the info boxes on display, so you can track them as you go. Now, you all may already do this anyway (because you're smarter than crane ever was and ever will be).:-) But, if you ain't, open them boxes up! Makes all the difference (plus, you can talk sh*t about your stupid past self).:-)

Edited February 15, 2023 by cranebump

[Darmian]

I've advocated for having a "floating box" between the Target and Nav boxes for a long time.  I usually have it filled with NPC Dialog and Cut Scene Captions.  Useful.