EVE General Discussion

In my opinion your question was fully legit and worth responses. As always it went into derailment pretty fast because you cannot play Eve without proper ISK/hr efficiency or without razorblades taped to your mouse so you could really feel the pain of every click. And you better learn to appreciate that pain!

Main Eve UI - the windows - is rigid, clunky and basically bastion of "spreadsheets in space". We have awesome probing UI, nice although annoying as frakk "in your face windshield wiper" discovery overlay, functionalities are getting better and better (fleet management, multisell, filters/tooltips here and there) but skeleton of sometimes weird rectangles is, well... awful.

But of course I cannot submit full blown mockups to trolling committee so I guess my opinion doesn't matter at all.

I can also tell you that as a UI designer, full blown mockups by other people aren't particularly useful. Often they'll solve some issues, but won't solve all the relevant issues or be compatible with your long-term vision. However, bringing forward problems can be useful feedback so they know where some of the pain points are. And I think CCP has been very good about communicating that they want to hear about annoyances, not solutions.

I do agree that the UI is in a bad place and needs to improve. It, however, has been getting better -- at least to me. It's interesting that the opposition in General Discussion seems to be less than in F&I. It does seem, however, that there is a vocal group of people who either don't want any real change or who feel that the difficulty of navigating the UI makes them better gamers because things are harder. We could theoretically remap all the keys and buttons at random times and that, too, would be something people would have to master, but I don't think that's the game CCP wants to make.

Only major UI change that needs to happen is with the Drone UI.

The layout looks good.. thats about it.. rest is so clunky its rather outdated, since its a Primary weapon system today.

Needs a "Launch drones button" this would be nice (keybind command)
Needs "Return damage drone button" with a smart system that lets you choose what group you want your damaged drone to end up in. Also show the damage % of each drone ( keybind command)

At the minute to return a damage drone, i have to Right click, then change its group to "damaged" then click return. I could just return it, but then i have no clue what drones are damaged

Some extra's "cough"

Able to name drones
Mini stats of how many kills & how long they have been alive
How many times you have left them behind
If the drone was stolen
Repair costs
Bling my drone, ability to paint it

Drone emotes, Bubblebutt drone says: "Targeting the lemon with lazers" ... "I pulled the entire room.. haha... good luck" ... "Time to play dead" ... "i'm gonna Explode... Red Alert, MEDIC" ... "Going in for the kill" ... "Ka-Boom, sucker is space junk"

No.

For most it is not so much a feeling of superiority as it is working with all the various complexities the game offers.

There are different tasks and purposes that require different information. Attempting to distill it down *WOULD* mean a good deal of the complexity of the game would have to be removed.

A single player will use the UI in one fashion. A fleet member is quite liable to use it differently and we're not even touching on miners yet.

The amount of "junk" in space is convoluted so you want to filter out what you don't want to see - for now. Later you want to see these things. At some points you want to clear that list to just a few entries (example: "pod saver tab" vs others).

How much of what you want to see and the details you want on them can make that "spreadsheet UI" into 1/2 your screen.

There are just so many different ways for people to play and what *THEY* find worth paying attention to vs others that it would need to limit more than enable.

The only point you brought up is one that I don't know of *ANYONE* who likes it. That's local being used for intel.

The desire for it means a lot to many while others want that intel gone but no one I've spoken with in 5 years finds the use of a chat channel for intel like this to be a good idea/mechanic for the game -- just "necessary" but not well designed.

Things do get better (like scanning controls). Other things get worse in people's opinions but overall, the amount of detail needed to play is very large but also enables people to choose among the *OPTIONS* to set up a comfortable look and feel for themselves.

The UI should convey the available information in the most efficient way possible. Managing the UI should not be a part of gameplay, that's never something that should be gameplay in a game.

Some players think they are "cool" for defending the status quo which is why you see resilience to obviously needed UI changes. You'll find these same players have a very difficult time posting without being offensive and rude in how they communicate to the person they disagree with.

They just lack proper analytical abilities and in the latter case proper social development, resulting in irrational and immature posts to be spewed through their keyboards. Only made worse by the circle of back-patting they have commenced with one another.

Your best bet is to block these people and continue discussing your prospective ideas, as CCP seems well aware of the above and still enacts most good UI changes I see posted on here.


I know the feeling and it has nothing to do with the changes you proposed. My above point is a bit harsh but I stand by it and it's probably what happened to you.

It's like you're insulting some kids favorite sports team when you make a suggestion to improve the game. Of course that kid isn't going to accept that the quarterback sucks or that the coach needs to be changed, he'll verbally attack you for making the suggestion at all and blindly defend them at all costs.

In reality though it's just the same 12-15 guys and their alts. They just whine so loud it seems like it's everyone.

It's possible to color code things using standing. Add each of your logi buddies to "good standing" and then drag it above fleet. Then you can quickly distinguish them from the other fleet members.

Of course you have limited colors available and you likely use standings for other things. It would be nice if you could have some sort of temporary assignments for fleets that you could custom color code people.