Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Above is a conversation generated by a complex algorithm I designed to simulate CCP ~actually~ communicating with its player base, and not just a select few of them known as the CSM. The CSM, a group of players not voted in to relevance because of their vast knowledge or understanding of game mechanics.. but because of their popularity.. yet these players have CCP's ear and continue to whisper devastating suggestions into the malleable CCP Dev's ears. The worst offender of course would be Goon CSM members pushing for changes to the game that would benefit their causes in-game and cater to their play style and overall stratagem.

I have been playing this off and on for a long time, since 2004. I have seen every UI update they have ever applied to the game and experienced it first person through playing. I can confirm your suspicions, yes.. they have been incomplete, bug ridden and less aesthetically pleasing than the last. Each new UI update brings less functionality and more eye sores. This is surprising to me because the average player age must be at least 25-30 at this point so making the game harder on the eyes makes me question CCP's thought processes (not that I haven't already done that as they're managing to kill the game slowly but surely).

I post threads after some updates that really make me question why I bother playing this game anymore as CCP make it harder for me to justify spending my time on it with each and every update. No one relevant will ever read this, you have to wait a week to get a response from customer support on IMPORTANT issues, let alone complaints or subjects they don't deem worthy of a hasty response. When you finally get a response it will be from a Junior GM who presents you with a copy-paste response which will prompt you to escalate the petition to a GM who actually has the power to do anything about your problem.

On the topic of customer support and ticket response times, I'd like to make a few points.

If I report someone for saying a "bad" word in local I will receive a response ~5 minutes later telling me action will be taken if necessary or something like that. If I get punished or banned for saying a "bad" word in local it takes CCP at least 1 week to respond to an appeal or petition in regards to the ban/punishment.

I was banned once a long time ago for 1 week because my friends and I were dropping jettison containers (not secure or standard) on a gate in an effort to prevent people from cloaking on jump in, equal amounts of cans were jettisoned per player, probably 10 each among 5 people.. only 2 of us however received any punishment and the other player that received punishment got a 3 week ban I believe. Naturally we appealed these bans and mine was lifted early as it was deemed by a Senior GM to be too severe, but the majority of my sentence had already been served because of the slow response time to Ban/Suspension Tickets. I would have been unbanned a lot earlier if live support for EvE Online was available.

I ask anyone who bothered to read this post to name an organization or service that you pay for monthly that makes you wait 1 week for a response to technical/billing/account based issues.

Now I want to outline my complaints about this UI "update".

1. The fact that when you focus a window it becomes the only window that becomes more filled with a darker background. This is very irritating if you have multiple windows stacked on top of each other as you can see nothing but text behind the text you're trying to read and can be hard to distinguish making it harder on the eyes. I want the option to pin my windows or unpin them to make them opaque or transparent like it was a month ago, PLEASE.

Screenshot example: http://i.imgur.com/ARHXezy.png
Wtf is that about?

2. When you receive a global message for example; a downtime notification, undock warning (suspect warning) or message that your conversation was rejected, this message obnoxiously and offensively prevents you from clicking anything else on the screen until you dismiss it. Not only is this exploitable but its possibly the most annoying thing that I have EVER experienced. Why should this notification window prevent me from interacting with the UI until I dismiss it? This is not even a NEW issue.. this has been an issue with the downtime notification for YEARS. If you're in the middle of a fight and you get the 1 hour downtime notification, you have to CLICK "OK" to dismiss the window before you can issue commands to your ship again. I CANT EXPRESS HOW UTTERLY RIDICULOUS THIS IS! Just send me text on the screen that fades in and disappears again without PREVENTING ME FROM DOING ANYTHING.

3. Window blur, thank god that CCP finally implemented a change that was OPTIONAL. Normally changes like this would be forced upon its players with no possibility of turning it off. Thank you CCP for implementing a feature that is optional because NO ONE is going to use it. If only you could've figured out doing this before and more frequently.

That's all for now ill update the post if I think of anything else that makes me utterly disgusted about this game I loved so much.

tl;dr

This UI update sucks.

IMPLEMENT LIVE SUPPORT FOR YOUR GAME CCP, ITS THE FUTURE YEAR OF 2014, PLEASE. ATLEAST FOR SOME CATEGORIES OF ISSUE SUCH AS ACCOUNT/BILLING.

If you read all this I applaud you, and I still naively hope that CCP will actually take action when the players are begging for it, as they have never done in the past, or on rare occasions have.

I like the UI.

Also, no one cares about your opinion.

Hello! I am Canada's foremost eye doctor and I can tell you a lot about how many people destroy their eyes by looking at bad things. Some people are worried about the new UI BREAKING THEIR EYES. How many more eyes must be broken before people understand?!?!?!?

Thank you,
Friendly 'Uncle" Uncleson, M.D. F.D.A. B.B.C.

the worst one i've encountered is when you try take things from a wreck, and a popup happens that tells you there isnt enough space

and then you can't warp off or do anything until you press ok on the dialog

the motion sickness stuff people are complaining about is obviously a problem and i hope it gets addressed

If the UI is causing sea sickness then I do have to question how exactly you have been able to handle the rest of the game like turning the screen or tracking all of the other ships or the starmap.

The new icons suck, but I guess I will get used to them. "That represents corporation? Really? Okay..."

I'm sure there's a thread for this discussion already.....

I think this is worse and perhaps even more trivial than the sun is too bright thread. Good work, I'm overjoyed to see my opinion of people plummet even further.

Also, there has been a transparency slider since time immemorial, use it. If that is insufficient, then you have bigger health concerns than video games.

I agree with OP, I'm just far less upset about it than he obviously is. Lol. Then again, I haven't been playing for 10 years like he has.

The new UI is a little too flashy and is kind of hard on the eyes. I haven't played with the color schemes on it at all yet, though. I'm hoping that I can set the colors so that the UI is a little easier on the eyes, but I don't know if that will do anything about the transparency. I liked the old pin/unpin function so that I could choose which windows were transparent and which were opaque.

As far as the Neocom icons go, I wish they had more contrast like the old ones did. Now I have a brownish tan Neocom with slightly lighter brownish tan icons, which makes it difficult to find things quickly because it all just looks f-ing brown. And I have a sneaking suspicion that when I change the color for the Neocom, the icons will be changed to that color as well.

More contrast on the Neocom, the ability to choose which windows are transparent and which ones are not, and the ability to change the UI appearance back to how it used to be would be nice to have, CCP.

I was told once that if you make a big deal out of the little things, the big things will more easily fall into place on their own.

I've also heard a lot of people say that CCP has been trying to expand Eve too quickly. Case and point, Phoebe was out for what, like a month before Rhea was released? I think they need to slow down and take more time to fix things that actually NEED to be fixed. I have limited experience, so I can't really speak on a lot of the things that need to be looked at. That's why I never really post on threads about sov, capital ships, etc. But I can say that the UI didn't really need to be fixed. Not that it didn't have it's problems, but we were all accustomed to its problems. Now, instead of being rid of the old problems, they have simply added new ones. And it seems to me that the players who DO like the new UI don't like it for its functionality, but rather because it looks cool. Kinda like the CQ. The people who like it sure as hell don't like it for its functionality.