Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Just catching up on the fanfest stream, watching the panel about UI modernization. It seems that there are a lot of potential problems with adopting one specific icon set. So why not just push that whole shebang to the player base?

Make some icon set, stick it in the client. Perhaps throw a couple of alternatives in there and let the end user pick the one they like. Absolutely 100% make one of them identical to the the current icon set (with the three red crosses being used for all NPCs etc)

Then just make the icon set a USER decision. Much like you can import overview settings, make it so you can import an icon sheet. A single png file in a single colour with alpha (or whatever is required) - a sprite atlas.

The player base WILL come up with the right answer. CCP has <500 devs, <10 focused on icons <2 that will make the final decision. There are > 100,000 design savvy players. Democratize the whole thing and let the player-base come up with the ideal icon set - its all client based anyhow right? MY icons don't affect YOUR gameplay... so it doesn't need to be a central CCP sanctioned decision. (Someone like) Chribba will probably even make a site dedicated to sharing icon sets.

One (or a few) icon set will win out - much like there are popular "overview setup" downloads - and it will finally remove the paralysis that they are understandably feeling about getting it "wrong" - as wrong is a subjective term.

SK

(Full disclosure - I'm over 3/4 of the way through a bottle of very fine scotch. If this is a shat idea then be gentle with me)

I like the latest iteration they proposed: Hollow icons for players, solids for NPCs. I much prefer the 'arrow-like' icons over the last version (which was a unique icon for each class).