EVE General Discussion

oooooooo

YES

wow

Yes and people whined and whined about it so CCP scrapped it.

They can do way better than this, Dust seems to have a pretty sci-fi UI.

Wow that video makes Eve's UI really look dated.

Certainly looks nice.
What does it offer strongly that a good 2D interface design doesn't?
If the answer if more fluff over substance, then it's an automatic fail.

You're playing EvE Online, you know, a Game full of spaceships, lasers, lights and fluff!
Fail game?

0.0

How would it be implemented over EVE, though. The active menu tilting looks like it would be cumbersome. I think, since we are tucked in our pods matrix-style, it would be great if they added just a little bit of tilt to the display, to simulate it being displayed over that transparent layer that covers us (as seen when one examines one's pod in the CQ). And incorporate the keyboard more thoroughly into the interface scheme.

Let me guess, you're mildly annoyed at the 3D UI bashing because you can't find a solid reason where it would be MORE useful than a good 2D UI.
Let's hear some convincing arguments for it, I'm all ears.

To work that into the game in a meaningful way, a few things would need to happen to EVE:
1) better defaults - right now, the only default window positions are a too-small overview in the top right, a too-small chat in the bottom left, and the station window on the right. All other windows open in seemingly random places, and unless you configure stuff special, don't like to stay where you put them. If the default settings were good enough that there would be no real need to customize window locations for things to be minimally functional, the game would not only be more approachable for rookies, but would allow for some fancier UI things.
2) Better ways of communicating information - the overview can communicate a lot of data, and cannot be completely done away with. The Selected Item window and the targeting boxes on top, and the target box HUD overlay, and the ewar progress bar in the bottom center of the screen, and the damage notifications all try so desperately to separate all the useful information about a specific target and explode it all over your screen.
3) better keyboard/UI interaction - the new shortcuts suck noodles. Period. They wiped out all our custom ones, most of them do not make sense, and most of them do not do what you want them to do. They are Bad™. If there were a real 3D Ui, to get the most out of that UI there would need to be a way to manipulate it in 3D. A mouse is limited in that it moves the cursor in 2D, and only has 3 ways of interacting with anything (click, double-click, right-click.) Keyboard and mouse working in tandem, in a natural way (lolincarna) are needed to make the most out of a 3D interface.
4) better mouse/UI interaction - with a 3D interface, you'd have the advantage of being able to compress information by moving it further away, i.e. making it smaller. That will be especially needed if all kinds of flashy borders and useless fluff is added, which it definitely will be seeing as CCP tends to care more about useless fluff these days than actual gameplay and functionality. That means there needs to be a way to quickly (i.e. mouse) bring informational elements to the fore and have them automatically return when you're done with them. That doesn't sound too hard either until you realize how hard it seems to be under the current UI to both chat and do ANYTHING ELSE.
5) revert all the so-called "ui improvements" over the past 3+ years - 9 out of every 10 changes to the UI have been shite. Most of the time they have steadily removed functionality. My favorite example is the ctrl-tab window where you used to be able to easily identify the information you needed and act on that information (i.e. change windows,) now you have to pore over each single icon in turn and try to interpret the meaningless labels that no longer show up automatically. This is anathema to GOOD UI design. Why did CCP do it? For more graphics on the screen. Yup, more freakin' meaningless 1980's style icons crammed into the screen is more important to CCP than their game working properly. It's so frustrating to see UI functionality steadily stripped away for no good reason, and functionality needs to INCREASE not DECREASE.

UI is one of my pet obsessions, and with EVE the devs have failed with it so badly and so consistently in the past. I hear they hired a UI guy. I really hope he's good and I really really hope CCP doesn't let anything go out the door without his stamp of approval. Even more so, I hope he's allowed to create a broad but detailed overview of how he wants the User to Interface with the game, and that he actually plays the game enough to know what the users' needs actually are.