Player Features and Ideas Discussion

With the latest change coming in for Phoebe I was looking into the overview again and reminded that the types tab is kind of nutty. While customization using types is fairly critical it's kind of crazy the way that the types are broken down. I'm not sure who needs Angel Asteroid Belt Large Wreck separate from Angel Mission Large Wreck separated, but I can imagine a new player coming into that will feel overwhelmed and any gain for the small number of players who actually customize it down to that level isn't worth the loss to the new players or the players who simply don't feel like scrolling quite so much.

I'm sure that the overview code much like the other original code for the game is really messy, but this is something that would be nice and very NPE-oriented. I think it would be very possible to simplify down the types to a point that will give the vast majority of players what they need in terms of customization without going overboard and irritating those looking for a simpler experience.

I see so much discussion around the overview and sharable overviews was a good step forward, but I think it demonstrates that setting up the overview is something that often requires additional skill to get right not because people are trying to think about what should be there, but because getting it to do what you want is difficult.

-1 absolutely not.

I understand the critical nature of the Overview and that changing it is somewhat controversial. My intention is not to remove the power of the overview, but to reduce the number of entries down where it makes little to no sense to turn one on, but not the others.

Is someone going to turn Mission Khanid Cruiser on, but leave Mission Mordu Cruiser off? How frequently? Have you ever done it intentionally, with forethought, and kept that setting because it had value?

Why is there an entry for Tutorial Drone? Could that not be rolled into Tutorial objects and, frankly, when would that even come up outside the tutorial?

There are almost 200 _types_ listed in the overview settings. Just going through that list take a lot of time. It's also not like there aren't a lot examples of players getting confused over similarly named objects: Large Collidable Object and Large Collidable Structure anyone?

Is it a terrible idea that we create groups like:

Starbase Defensive Structures
Starbase Offensive Structures
Starbase Industry Structures (possible broken up into 3 or more groups)
Starbase Storage Structures

instead of the 26 items we have now. I'm not even suggesting we be that aggressive in grouping, but it seems like reading through, understanding and managing 200 or more types in the overview just isn't good for the new player.

I can see that there are some edge-case points, such as the aforementioned "tutorial drone", an entity you will likely never see again after your first day. I just don't like the risk of them going under the hood with the overview of all things, only to possibly mess things up (no offense, CCP, just saying) just to make something that takes an hour or two at most the first time around take a little less time and a few less mouse clicks.

Now, if you were to have to rebuild your overview settings from scratch each expansion release, I would side with you, but you don't. And, once you have some basic ones built, you can even add and remove entities on the fly without even having to open the overview settings to make those adjustments (CCP even added some default ones that are pretty good to start with). So, adjusting and/or creating new filters takes considerably less time.

If I were to be perfectly honest, I'd say I have no problem with them giving the overview objects lists a slight trim here or there, but A) merging or removing some "unneeded" parts of those lists may not hurt you or I, but might hurt others and B) runs the risk of creating glitches/bugs on a pretty central part of the game, which would adversely affect potentially everyone. I hear "don't fix what isn't broken," a lot here, and I honestly think this is one of those occasions.