Test Server Feedback

Icons: a bit over-simplified, and could use a dash of color here and there unless you really like 50 shades of grey in the UI.
Pro: some are more intuitive than the old versions.
Con: grey is grey and very unlike the EvE universe, not even sci-fi like in appearance. Some are not intuitive (fleet, corp, market, to name a few). But then icons are not easy to design, and some will be better than others.

Aura: someone has poor taste... Aura is and should remain iconic yes, but this icon isn't. I can imagine the accompanying soundscape, banging pots and pans instead of that wonderful, detached voice (wonderful voice actress btw). What's next ? Stick figures walking in the CQ, lol ? Talking about overdoing, this would be a prime example. And don't you dare to touch our beloved Empress ! Amarr Victor etc. On a more serious note, Aura really is the first contact of a new player. She should remain how she is currently and keep her old icon, which is at least scifi in appearance, in my opinion. (If it were my choice, I would use her as inspiration to design all other icons, not the other way around).

So for the icons: okay if you add a splash of color and respect Aura in her scifi splendor instead of turning her into a mashed, impersonal Robocop thingy. As someone else wrote, ur scaring the fresh meat away.

The UI itself. I am puzzled...

- You have swapped the old (current) options in the ESC>General Settings tab with a number of presets. There were presets in the old version as well - and probably even more than in the new list? -, via the check box "easy theme selection", or the pull down menus, which basically do the same thing and even have fancy names).
- The old options are far more flexible than what is on offer now. They came with a total of three different sliders. This resulted in users being able to tweak the readability of their UI for just about any color setting on their screens (different models, different properties, different response to contrast, brightness, hue etc). With what you suggest now there are only a few of these presets that pass a readability test. I'm afraid this "new and modernized" version is actually worse than it was before and far less flexible. It's simplified, yes, but a lot worse than before.
- The Black preset is half okay-ish but not of the same quality as the old one, so is one of the blues. Readability is poorer than before. Colors on the windows also distract, while their backgrounds clash with the colors in space.
- Every window looks foggy because of the unwieldy window backgrounds, visibility in space with low opacity is worse than before.
- Moreover, windows with buttons like the probe scanner window have another issue, the light background inside the buttons totally nukes the contrast and makes the colors in the button icons fade. In the selected items window there is not enough brightness on the buttons that can be activated. Plus they have this annoying mouseover background illumination which again make the icon itself less readable (white on light grey) e.g. in the Black preset.
- The buttons in the selected item window are not sufficiently scalable (to counteract reduced visibility and overall contrast)
- Why the difference in brightness between the (active) buttons in the Selected Items window and any other text on any window ? Or is that, again, an effect from the backgrounds ?

So, for the new UI: no. I'd say keep the OLD UI window/background/header/subheader options, because 1) it is actually a lot more flexible than the suggestion, 2) already does (almost ?) all of the modernized version , 3) has superior readability, 4) had presets built in too. I might say that the only thing you would need to do is to make a short devblog/video about the use of the old General Settings options for the windows and save a lot of players from having issues with the "modernized" version. Or you could consider making an extra tab in the ESC window for just these options and modernize it with a responsive example.

Btw, I'm impressed with the new shader.

De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum, but there are limits to everything.

Pretty much this.

UX and UI design need to be done at the same time, what we have now is a mess caused by "What we want the useer to experience" at the cost of "How usable the interface is". UX itself is a horrible concept which should be done at game design level instead of at the UI level; UX has always been the main choice of words to those who provide UI as content opposed to the game as content. In applications where you cannot use the underlying technology as the content, you need to pay attention to the UX. For e.g. military software, the UI is functional and UX is neutral due to the content being the only information which needs to be made available. There is no need for flashy colours or convoluted animations because those can distract your eye from an incoming threat.

Sadly, a major part of UX for game designers is dictating how everything works without any possibility of customization because this is the only way to actually measure the parameters listed in the standard (yes, UX has an ISO standard, ISO 9241-210). Allowing people to make adjustments to the UI causes the data to be too splintered or even corrupt to a point where the effects of the UI on the UX cannot be measured and only avenue of feedback is the 1% of population which posts angrily on the forums. Whatever is currently on the test server is 95% of what we are going to receive, including:

- The blur which limits all visibility behind windows
- Lack of RGB controls
- Poor readability on most choices because no testing has been done with people who are not color blind or have less than perfect eye sight (corrected or uncorrected)
- The opacity change on windows when you mouse over, activate, mouse off or deactivate so that we will have effectively blinking windows when we swap between focus rapidly
- The icons are final and will not receive any dolour distinction in the forum of a faint background or a slight hue separating themselves, only minor changes are going to be made to how the look (journal now has a pen isntead of just being a box with lines in it)
- HiDPI support will not be implemented for anything else than the new vectorized icons

I'll revisit this post once the UI gets pushed to live to check off things which actually got changed, but I'm fairly sure I'm not going to have to change any of these.

I did mention the changes on icons, but they will not be made more readable than what they are now is the point I made.

I really like the majority of what you've done with the new iconography. I often hit the wrong button because the current icons do not resonate, and I've been playing for 5 years! Two pieces of feedback:

1) Please make distinctive sidebar icons for D scan and probe windows.
2) Aura sidebar icon is fine but leave her old appearance in the pop-ups. Icon Aura is in the uncanny valley.

So it seems from the lack of dev feedback, those with less than perfect vision are not being considered in these changes?

Single color icons, that were described by my neighbours 11 year old daughter with, "you'd get failed if you handed those in for computer studies at school".

Little hint, with my less than perfect vision, color is often the easiest way to identify commonly used icons. Shapes when all the same color just becomes a blurr.
We've slowed down capital movement, now were slowing down icon selection.

A slider to modify transparency, an option to add color to icons. Then you may have something that is usable by the majority.


NB; The new "Personal Assets" icon, looks like a 1980's webcam and reusing the old Assets icon for Inventory, with color removed, is just pure laziness and uninteresting.

UI updates and improvements should be "visual improvements"; not result in something that looks like it was drawn by a 6 year old with just 1 pencil and no imagination.

Its pretty disapointing that despite receiving 20 pages of feedback,in this thread and 26 pages in the annoucment thread, CCP have yet to make any significant changes to the customization ability of the UI. (Aside from a transparency slider that omits key areas like tabs from the slider's effect)

EvE players are not one size fits all !

When the forums explode with rage when you release ur non customizable 'simple theme selection' ui onto tranquility, you cant say you were not warned.

This really strikes me as one or two senior ui design people in CCP refusing to admit their vision is not "perfect"

I'm sorry but the new monochrome icons are just terribad.

Yes, some of the icons we have now kinda look alike, but at least they don't look like something I'd put on a tomb stone!

IMO the right way is to just change those 2-3 existing icons that look samey, with more distinct ones, while keeping the current theme.

Icons we have now looks sci-fi-ish, colorful and most importantly lifelike. So please please, rethink those new dead monochromate ones!

And don't get me started on Aura..

Is this new UI final? The lack of colours for neocom buttons horrible. Why make things worse than they are? Colours + shapes = faster association with something than just colours and a buncha stupid shapes. It seriously looks like a 1980s apple computer. Please, for just once let us keep the originals for something.

You do this massive UI overhaul, but dont let us shrink that useless area above station services with the undock button?

I have found the new UI a little quicker to hunt things down, but as has been mentioned many other times in this thread, the colour choices for the UI are terrible. The existing UI is a lot nicer to look at than the blocky stylings that the new UI is going for, which is currently "in vogue" because of people using touch interfaces.

The Sensible Way to go would be to give us two options: Classic UI (the one we are using) and Modern UI (the one you are developing). Give it a few months and check the data. Then you can see how much the uptake is before actually rolling it out. To give the Modern UI a chance, make it the default, but add in a check box so that we can go back to the Classic UI if we like.


For the love of God don't pull a Microsoft.

If You think old icons are better use new ones more than single log in ffs... give them few hours and then go back to old ones, You will see why new ones are better