Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hello all!

Something that comes up again and again is making how you import/export and share settings better. In some cases it's non-existant. In others it's a overly complex to do. (I'm looking at you Overview.. Especially on a Mac!)

So I've been pondering over it, look around and trying to get a better picture on how it should function within EVE. So here I am and I want your input on it!

Here are a couple of thing I would like your input on, but don't let that discourage you to give general input and feedback on the topic.

1) What settings would you like to have stored?

2) How would you expect the synchronization (import/export) to function? What would the interaction be?

3) How would you go about sharing settings with other players? (directly or in-directly)

These are just some basic questions to get the discussion going. Feel free to add any more within the realm of sharing/import/export of settings.

Best
CCP Fear

The first thing that would make import/export of settings a lot more convenient would be to remove the need to ever do that in the first place for situations where this is possible. When there is no reason for a setting to be intentionally set to different values on different computers, it should just be stored on CCP servers and be synchronized automatically. I have EVE installed on three different computers, manually syncing the overview settings is rather annoying.

If the setting is stored on the server, this would also allow additional methods of exchanging those settings ingame. For example, a permalink to a specific set of settings that you could paste into an Evemail. When clicking on such a link, a player would get a dialog with the option to import this set of settings. This might be especially useful e.g. for FW corps and RvB where fixing the overview of new players has to be always done, then this could just be sent in the welcome mail to new corp members.

Being able to have several profiles that contain separate sets of settings is always nice.

The main things for me would be to ensure that certain things do not cross over between different machines, for example the settings I use on my GTX580 at 2550x1600 are of no use at all on my 1080p laptop which doesn't have a great GPU in it, which would melt.

Overview settings for sure, but I think if it's being done, it's worth doing properly and the overview settings editor itself is in drastic need of some work. The underlying problem is that the overview setup is so complex in the first place that sharing overviews becomes a matter of necessity... configurations which get lost if you change a single field, no auto saving, things like that.

Now personally, if I were going about the problem of saving settings, I'd probably consider something like a primitive web API which the client would just upload the configuration to, with a label, character ID, and MD5 of the configuration. Let people download / share the configuration and have it loaded directly into their clients by pasting in the MD5 code in a similar manner to how you paste in an ETC... "This configuration was provided by... XYZ Name. Proceed?"

In general though, I'd rather have some kind of interactive sync process than fully automated. While I want my left hand toolbar to stay the same, I might not want my window positioning to same (especially when dealing with multiple resolutions).

1) What settings would you like to have stored?
Super Important
Keyboard Shortcuts
Overview Settings
Not as important
Chat channels
Window Layouts and stacking
Ship module grouping and button layout
Suppressed dialog messages
Saved fittings
Inventory filters

2) How would you expect the synchronization (import/export) to function? What would the interaction be?
Use XML, JSON, etc to build a single config file that contains the configuration of some or all of the configurable items.

In the ESC menu, have 'Save Configuration' and 'Load Configuration'.
'Save Configuration' pops up a window with a set of checkboxes, allowing you to choose what things you want to save in your config file.
'Load Configuration' opens a config file from disk. It pops up a window with a set of checkboxes, allowing you to uncheck components of the config that you don't want to import. (So maybe I export my overview and chat channels, but you choose to only load my overview.)

Guess it's a whole different animal, but if you define API key permissions "Configuration - Overview; Configuration - Shortcuts" etc, and allow read and/or write access through CREST, my friend and I might not even need to share files. I could just give you an appropriately permissioned API key, and you could click 'Load Configuration from API' and paste my info.

3) How would you go about sharing settings with other players? (directly or in-directly)
see above

QFT.

So while automatic service sync often is nice, there must be an option to switch it off.

Being able so save all settings (including UI settings, windows etc) and being able to import the ones I want would be gold.

Being able to export just part of the setting for sharing with friends would be nice bonus.

Sticking to established standard and use xml for import/export would also be good.

What:
* overview settings
* channels and channel settings
* neocom - (please put contracts there by default)
* hotkeys
* other UI element settings
* fittings ?
* filters for inventories.
* suppressed dialogs
* tutorial state (disabled)
* ...

How:
Let players in the launcher create a template based on account they are currently authenticated with. Perhaps with some drag/dropping/clicking checkboxes.
* add export/import to xml/yaml function to launcher


For each new character that logs in;
* allow a player to apply entire template, or select certain categories from template (checkboxes) to that character

=> make it easy to add more settings for more areas in future
=> Optionally allow players to store settings on server
=> While you are at it; allow launcher to maintain authentication tokens for multiple accounts.

Yes please! Optimally, I'd love if I could export *all* the settings, so that if I'm running two clients, say, I could set one up, export the settings and have an identical overview on each (spacing, tabs, overview details+order, window positions, neocom icons, etc.). I'd love if this would extend to bookmarks, too, but they are somewhat easily transferrable, so it's not so bad as the overview and other settings are.

It's just really difficult to get identical clients, which I'm sure what many people like who run multiple "mains."

1. All settings, especially UI and workflow related settings. This means window sizes, positions etc.
2. Import/export buttons in the Esc menu, with a pop-up window that contains checkboxes for all the settings that you can import/export.
3. Emailing the exported file?

Settings which will be relevant to all computers (overview settings, scan filters, market quickbar, etc) should be stored on the server and available whenever I log in, regardless of what computer I'm logging in from. Possibly also shortcut key mappings.

Settings which won't be relevant to all computers (resolution & other graphics settings) should not be stored on the server, as I may want different settings on different computers.

Where it gets sketchy is things like window positions, which will sometimes be useful across different computers and sometimes not. Maybe have an option for that sort of thing?

General Feedback: CCP Marry me. This is one of those little things that I would LOVE to see fixed

Aside from what was posted in the third response to the sticky about saving our stuff server-side (which is spot on), I think that the sharing of overview setting should be focused on something linked (like a fitting).

This way it can be linked in corp/alliance bulletins and be shared en masse.

This should probably also include a screenshot of the screen configuration when you click the link or show info, so you know what you're getting.