Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The Directional Scanner, the Probe Scanner and the New Map are the most important tools in the game aside from chat. I think they deserve close scrutiny and discussion.

The New Map

Why use staticly sized colour drop-down on the new map? It's cumbersome to move the scroll bar up and down. Some categories don't even fit inside one window.

The most recently used doesn't really help me either, because I still look where I found it last - and I think most others do too. An option to favourite categories would be better.

However I like how you can quickly get a layout of map vs. universe (and chat, etc), though sometimes the layout really squeezes a lot of the chat etc together into a real mess until you turn it off.


The Probe Scanner

What's up with underlining the sigs and anoms? It takes away focus from the actual text thus making things harder to read, or even know what line is connected to which sig-name. I know some people with red/green colour blindness have problems looking at it, but that's easily fixed by choosing another colour scheme.

What's the point of being able to roll up the proble results? I don't get it, and I think it'll only confuse people who are not aware of it and suddenly "lose" the list of results. Removing it would be better.

I always minimize the probe window as much as possible, though I realize some people (for incomprehensible reasons) like to use this window to give proves individual sizes. Probably doing away with it completely would make more sense.

On that topic, I wish there was a way to quickly set the size and distance between all the probes from the menu window, rather than hoping to find the right spot on the probe map. Yes, I know this counters the above argument a little, but IMO you don't need the list, only the option. I know it's possible to click a probe in the list, hit ctrl+a to select them all, and then right click to change their size, but that doesn't change their distance, only their size. The same goes for hitting ctrl+a or shift-marking them. The only way to change size and distance is to try to find the right spot on the map. However that doesn't always work, especially in a sig/bm crowded environment. Not being able to resize or move the probes on the map is really frustrating.

Why put ignore and un-ignore sigs in a drop-down? It's an extra movement we don't have time for. I'm all for the customizable filters, however this stuff needs to happen fast. The old system was IMO better. However I do like the ignore result and ignore other results options in the right click menu, but why must there be a drop-down to get the results back? It just takes extra time to go into the drop down, pick the top category (clear all ignored results) and hit it. Clear all should be a one-click button. The drop-down should be for special asperger-head-cases that need super-customizability.

Still, I really like how you can hit numbers to quickly filter and unfilter what sigs, anoms and bm's are shown trough the probe scanner menu.

The Directional Scanner

Why use so much realestate just to have a scan button? And why-O-why must it be on the left side? I wish it could be customizable to make it fit better with a "left handed" or "right handed" map-to-screen layout. It's possible to customize the tool bar of most programs today, and also the ship modules in-game, and I wish the same was true for the tool bars on the scanning windows.

Why use so much realestate to put the overview filter in a row under the other. Isn't there a better way?

When trying to make sense of a long list of scanned stuff without having to resort to scrolling, realestate matters. If it sounds like I hate drop-downs, I really don't. Drop-downs are for things that are cool, but not needed that often. In short it's for special cases where you have time to ponder a bit. You don't have that time when combat probing a frigate in your system.

I like how you can now link the universe view with the map view for d-scanning. I also like the visualization. I just hope it'll be just as fast as the regular old way of doing it. Additionally I really like how you can hot-key scanning, albeit that may have been an earlier addition.

Oh yeah, and clicking Focus Current Location, you get a blank map in wormholes. Took a while to figure out that you need to right click the map and choose Select Current > Solar System. Think that's a regular bug (reported as such), so hope this is fixed soon.

The things I probably hate the most about the new map and scanners:
* Lines instead of bars on probe scanner signatures. Holy crap, I hate that!
* The 'Color by' menu on the new map, because of the scroll bar.
* That you have to look in a drop-down menu to un-ignore signatures.

Other than that, I can probably get used to the scan button positions, and live with a little extra UI space on the d-scanner, though I'm still hoping for a revolution.

This is what I freaking love:
* Hot key for pressing scan
* Result hot-keys on the Probe Scanner to quickly filter probing results using number 1-5

This is what makes me hopeful:
* The Align with camera feature of the new map, to connect it with the universe in conjunction with the the d-scanner

Haven't tested it much, but it looks like a good feature. Just waiting for the ability to turn off the d-scan range sphere, as it's kind of in the way while probing.

The New Map covers the modules when fullscreen. If that were fixed, it would be okay-ish.

The new probe scanner doesn't respect filters applied. I stopped using it after that since that makes it worthless to me.

When I wasted 15 mins trying to figure out why, for some unknown reason, my cross-hair was missing and I couldn't move my probes, I quit the new scanner.

Your repeated attempts at improving the probe-scanner interface have yielded awful results.

Love, love, love the new dscan. It needs to be a different color than probe results but it is a very nice tool.

That being said, the new map and scanning interface is near unusable.

What I did: Warped to planet in wormhole and launched probes

Issues:

• Probes were centered on the sun (not unusual, normal behavior) but I could not move them because every-time I tried to grab the side of the probe box, it moved the name of the sun or some other UI element instead of the probes. I was only able to move them by zooming in very far to move the directional arrow off the sun.
• Once moved, further moves were more difficult than the "old map" as it was not easy to "snap to" the side of the probe box which is normally how I move the probes
• I could not "pan" the map to the side, it always snapped back to center making it hard to center the probes on the target because it was off center and I had to work zoomed out more than usual.
• After first probe hit, I could not move the probes again. The probe box would not select. I kept grabbing the "Probe 4" label and moving it instead.

Spent about 5 minutes wrestling with this and logged off and re-logged with the new probe window disabled.

Further comments

• The labels lag behind the rest of the interface when panning around the map.
• The new indicators for moons vs planets without moons is confusing and not as easily distinguished as the old map

Probe Scanner:
- results looked better when the whole name highlighted, underlined results looks bad.
- also the in-space signatures looked better with the circular % icons.

D-scan:
- Not much issue with this. Except when map is set to 'align with camera', its hard to tell the range on the dscan.

New map:
- Probe select box/arrows is bugged. They dont show up until you press a key.
- The 'align with camera' should just be on on/off button. No need for a drop down menu.
- When tracking camera is on, if map is set to 'align with camera', moving the view in the map pans back to tracking view. Moving view in map should auto-turn off the tracking camera same way moving view in space does.
- map should auto-close when you dock-up and open again when you un-dock. If you have it open when you dock, its just a...

blank space.. baby! (can i write my name?)


Final thought:
- People have mentioned about changing the position of the analyze/scan buttons.. what if there was a seperate box just for the analyze/scan buttons. Or even if those buttons were available IN the new scan map?

Wow I am so excited! I just found the button general settings > experimental features > try the new probe and directional scanners

Thank you so very much CCP!

One relog and my old map and scanner works. I wish the new shortcut still worked for hitting dscan but I will live with it to be able to use the old setup for probe scanning.

I agree, this annoys me greatly. I would like to know that I'm still cloaked while scanning in a wh.