Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hi there...

I would like a few upgrades to the UI and features of the Manage Route option... It shouldn't be too hard and could provide some nice additions to those who do use the features in this area. Obviously others can provide their suggestions.

Personally I would just like to see stuff like -

* - The ability to see the actual color and security level of systems when selecting manage route
* - The ability to select what security levels you want to go through from 1 downward. Currently you can only do this when selecting below 0.5
* - Maybe a better way of viewing your route. The in game map of systems is too hard to use
* - Maybe other options to avoid systems with recent pod kills, etc...

It is simple changes like this that makes a big difference in the game. The recent run of quick changes to the UI and various smaller features has made the game nicer. Good job Devs... keep it up.

Forgive me but it was my first post so a bit lax on how I put it together... Let me restate... And one thing before I do... I live in Null so this is nothing about being a HS only player.

Go select a route to anywhere and bring up the manage route options or just select the "A" by the route. See how old looking and feature lax that area is? It needs an update and is an easy place for some simple updates.

I should be able to select what security status systems I want to go through and which ones I can not across the WHOLE universe (null, HS, LS, etc). Yes I understand there are some areas where you have to go to the lower levels like 0.5 to get places but then your route would fail and tell you this and you could temporarily allow yourself access. This is just basic feature options.

Ganking happens anywhere so this isn't about ganking. This is about "route management" and having options to manage it and a better way to build and work on it... simple as that.

There is meta data that can be mined like pod kills, count of people in system, criminals, etc... There is no reason my Route Computer shouldn't be able to help plan a better way, etc.

CCP is asking for ideas on how to make the game better.. this is just one that focuses on one of the CORE components of the game... route planning and using. Hell goons have Razor and all these other jump planning tools. Why can't the game have a better feature rich route tool?

That is all I am trying to suggest.

I get where you are coming from and I don't want more junk to deal with or problems... I just see a UI area that is rudimentary and could have some basic improvement. I am cool with planning the route manually but a few more options would be helpful to me. It is just TOO basic right now...

And considering the time they have put in to do some nice new features for people like tooltips, etc., I believe this is an area that would be helpful for the new players as well. Within reason mind you... Just a bit of improvement.

Agreed now to brainstorm on how to do this, and I think I have a couple proposals.

You mentioned making use of Meta data and I think it's still do-able in a sense, in giving the player easier access to it by making it available for the set route without opening up the map to fill your screen. You could give each meta data filter a specific symbol that would appear in the solar system's representative box on your route, color coded in the same fashion that it would be on the map. You will most likely have to increase the size of the boxes slightly while this option is enabled but it's still immeasurably better for visibility than opening up the map. An added benefit to this is not having to constantly open the map and check it to see when the meta data has updated. So if you had number of jumps in the last hour selected an arrow would appear in the middle of the box, say white for minimal or no traffic, purple for moderate traffic, and black for heavy traffic, just as examples (it's hard to think of distinct colors that aren't in the security rating spectrum). Hovering over a system's box will give you the exact number just like hovering over the system in the map does, along with the usual information displayed about the system.

Next would be having the ability to save and open different avoidance lists just like we save different overview settings. In this way players can easily set up their preferred routes for doing specific tasks by adding systems to their avoidance list without impacting their ability to do other tasks before either disabling or removing those systems from their avoidance list. Not quite as effective as blocking entire security ratings in high sec, but also not quite as soul-crushing for the map's algorithm to manage, and a busy player will have all of their avoidance list profiles fleshed out nicely in a minimal amount of time for the areas they frequent. Once they reach a certain point I imagine they wouldn't feel a need to alter them significantly for long stretches of time.

Lastly before I call it a night, and this idea requires two different changes to work, is a transparent map overlay. In order to keep it from completely dominating your screen with clutter though you'd need to be able to filter it by parameters such as constellation, region, etc... Giving it a little more thought it might even be better to not make the actual stars and jump lines transparent, just remove the background so that only the lattice is visible. Leave it in a resizable window with transparent borders so that as the size of the area you are looking at changes you can choose to resize the window and/or move it if you feel it is necessary. The option to flatten and unflatten this would also be very handy.

Also, some meta data filters might be manageable for calculating routes. Avoiding systems with ships destroyed in the last hour would be impossible, but giving the algorithm an acceptable amount of deviation from the base in the map settings and then telling it to choose the least traveled path on the route would allow you to use the jumps in the last hour as a manageable filter.

Any other ideas?

A simple but very important change needed to the route:
- The ability to distinguish between multiple waypoints in the overview.

Right now if you set up a handful of waypoints, you will end up with a handful of yellow stargates in your overview. Navigating from the route UI at the top-left becomes the only reasonable solution. Would be nice to have a way to make it only show the next step in the overall route (i.e. only 1 stargate is yellowed; the stargate leading to the next waypoint).