Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I read the devblog on Retribution targeting changes with interest.

Inferno saw some nice big tooltips show up to help you see more about your modules.

Tooltips being more informative is nice - but with one BIG, HUGE DEATHSTAR-SIZED BUT!!! They should not obscure our view of the game when we don't want them. I respectfully submit the following change to the General Settings options:

The default state is to show tooltips as you currently show them. However, a visit to the options screen will show that there is a time delay involved. This delay is set to zero during installation, so it'll be impossible to know anything has changed unless you want to tinker with settings. The delay can me modified, so that you're not continually dogged by needless tooltips popping up all over the screen as you move the pointer around.

http://i.imgur.com/2hs1g.png

For hardcore users, there no tooltips will ever show unless they are holding down a SHIFT key. When SHIFT is held down, tooltips will pop up with zero delay:

http://i.imgur.com/JAs2m.png

What do you think? Looks like you're making some tooltips physically cover up more screen space in Retribution, so controlling this is becoming more important than ever.

The final suggestion to improve tooltips is to analyse the content of the tooltip, and not show it at all if it's not really adding anything to your experience. Example - fly into an asteroid belt, make sure you have asteroids displaying in your overview, then lock onto one of the asteroids. Let's say it's a concentrated veldspar asteroid. The line item in the Overview says "Asteroid (Concentrated Veldspar)." When you mouse-over this locked asteroid in the Overview a tooltip pops up, obscuring some of the other asteroids in the Overview. What does this tooltip say? "Asteroid (Concentrated Veldspar)." This is bogus... the tooltip should never appear if it says the same text that is already on the screen. I see a lot of tooltips like this and I feel like I have to work past them to see what's in the EVE screen. The irony is that it's EVE that's generating the tooltips... sad.