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I actually quite like this idea. I would like to see a circle around the icon to represent a npc rather than that + sign. someone mentioned it before be nice if we were allowed to choose our own colours for the icons as well.

As i said, CCP should allow us to use our own colours then thats up to us isn't it. Problem solved. TBH you could do a hundred different icon sets and there will always be some that don't like it.

The only problem is with having so many icons is trying to remember them all, the last thing you can or want to do when in space is trying to figure out whats what!

We're aware that the [+] for NPCs is a rather tiny sub-indicator that might be hard to pick out at a glance, but a rather important one at that. We're looking at ways of making it more prominent or change NPC indication to something else entirely.

The overview is already fairly horrible as-is. Especially when things start moving about trying to get situational awareness from it is extremely difficult, and I don't see adding another text column (which is what I suspect you were thinking?) would help that.

If anything I think another icon would be appropriate to show ship capability and then use the II, III tags in the corner to highlight their speciality, grouped by things such as disruption cruiser, tackler etc. Especially if we could click to sort by them.

That will work, add more stuff to an already over stuffed overview

That sounds nice on paper, but falls flat on its face when it comes in contact with reality.

Of the things you listed, only one is of any real importance: ships. The others can be mashed into the same category of “stuff you might want to see, but no-one really cares and they'll all be properly marked at all times anyway”. As such, using a single shape for each of those categories is an immense waste of visual communication, and you've assigned by far the worst one to the one that, also by far, needs to be the most obvious and clear. You don't want them to be unified because that defeats the purpose of being able to spot the differences immediately.

So, again, pick a better shape than a thin triangle to represent ships. Then pick two or three more. Then let all of them represent various types of ships. Use the triangle for something where relative difference isn't particularly important (celestials come to mind, or hey: deployables — wrecks are already triangles so just expand that theme to apply to all kinds of containers). Whatever shapes are left over can be spread out over the stuff that lacks representation.

For ships, you must have a more complex language than just relative size and minute markings to create the distinctions you're after. Using different shapes trivially achieves this. Or pattern repetitions. Or increased polygonality. Anything, really, except thinner and thicker triangles with tiny decorations.

Also, the invader guys for drones are cute, but I get the distinct impression that it will clash to easily with the many other chunky icons that you have to create. In all honesty what was wrong with the thin ‘X’? Compared to the boxes and +:es, It communicated fairly well that this was something related to ships, but smaller. The invaders might conceivably work like this in relation to the triangle-ships, but the triangle-ships have to go because they don't work…


One problem with that strategy: they're not familiar. Another problem: they are almost completely unsuited for the kind of busy environment that the overview and in-space brackets offer. They work well enough when kept clearly separated against a carefully chosen monochrome background and when they can be allowed to be shown at full size.

None of those conditions hold true for where the icons have to show.

So what you should be doing is start in space, make them work there, and then put those icons in ISIS. If this means dumping the current ISIS icons, then so what? They're a very recent addition that holds no real significance or value, and they can replace without any loss of familiarity. Everyone will have to relearn anyway, so you might as well start with something good rather than cling to something that doesn't work.

Are you quite sure? If it doesn't scale, how come you can fit more if you turn the scaling down?

Anyway, the thing is that allowing scaling doesn't actually solve the problem: that they are indistinct and that ostensibly crucial markings are lost in the cluotter at their smallest size. This is still a problem you have to address, and it's yet another reason why scaled-down ISIS icons are not the way to go. So honestly, suck it up, dump the old and create something new from the ground up — something that is actually designed with this purpose in mind — then put that into ISIS to achieve the recognition you're trying to achieve.

Poorly.

They get lost against any busy background — say, a planet, or a star field, or a nebula, or a gas cloud, or a station, or an asteroid field. They get lost against each other — overlaps just become a writhing mass of indistinct arrow-shaped noise covered up a smear of colour. They get lost when superimposed on top of the ships they represent. They get lost against colour markings and tags, which almost all except NPCs ships have, and which wipe out or cover up many of the minute distinguishing features they're supposed to have. They get lost anywhere there are NPC ships since they're the same icons. They require a point of reference since they rely on relative size — anything on its own is unnecessarily hard to identify. In the overview, there's a minute improvement over the bracket use since they don't line up properly, and you can use the uneven justification to figure out which ships are bigger than which… but again, since this is a relative difference, any ship on its own becomes needlessly difficult again. And of course, the colouration and tags cover them up just as much in the overview as in open space.

16, 24, 32 - that would be awesome. Increasing icon size also reduces the number of lines of ships that can be crammed into one screen of overview, but the list can be scrolled, and the benefits of quicker recognition might outweigh the lost lines... that I probably had trouble reading anyway, if I'm increasing icon sizes.

Pushing 60 and with strong glasses, I still can't read most of the overview. The new color schemes did not take into account less than perfect vision. Right now Eve is setup for people with 20/20 or better vision, not for someone who is on the verge of visually impaired.

I appreciate the acknowledgement of the issue. I love Eve, but I will probably have to give it up if the interface does not have better options for those people with vision problems.

The way that reads to me:

"Thank you for the useful feedback but we aren't going to change anything. But please give us more feedback after the mass test!"

But seriously, you are trying to put too much, or as much info as you possibly can, into something isn't supposed to contain much info at all. An icon just needs to give you an basic piece of information, enough information that you can decide if you even need more info or not. Telling us there is a frigate or destroyer or cruiser isn't much info at all. It might be a T1 cruiser I don't care about or an AF that I need to clear off the field asap or even a dictor or perhaps even a lonesome thrasher I can ignore. We only need to really know exactly the amount of info the current TQ icons tell us:

Is the ship small, medium, or large? Since every other piece of important info about that ship including it's specific type and hull name are listed in the overview. We really don't need to be seeing the same information in half a dozen different places at the same time. The current icon set for NPCs does a good job of differentiating ship classes by weapons class and it works well.

As Tippia said, just because the new icons are currently in ISIS should not be a major factor for their use in the overview. Can you honestly say that a majority of the player base spends a significant amount of time in ISIS to justify this? Cause I can tell you at most between all 3 of my accounts I haven't spent more than 5-10 minutes total time looking at ISIS since it came out.
Not sure about this guy, but I know a few of us were giving the example of having the T2/T3 info (since you obviously don't think we want to use the Overview to get the same info) as a way to go further and overcrowd the icon with information overload. Might as well include all the role types for the ships like you want to do with drones.

That leads us to these role/use indicators, you aren't giving a role indicator for ships, so why for drones and for structures? Are you planning to add this info to gates and stations as well (since different stations do different things and there are several different sized gates which have massively different spawn distances)? 27 different icons for drones, really necessary?

Sentry guns... are you seriously saying you are making it an ugly little squared "c" because planets and celestials have large circles and you are worried that players will confuse a small circle of the sentry gun with a planet?

Granted you need to make player and NPC icons the same set, but this is not how you do it. At best you really need not even 10 separate icons to differentiate S, M, L, XL ships, M, XL for industrials, shuttle, pod, and drones. You only need a minimal set of different icons because the differentiating information is IN THE NAME OF THE OBJECT as well as IN THE TYPE field as well. Look back at my example of the NPCs, you can easily add this specific hull class info into the Type field like it is for player ships.

Just being able to make them bigger to suit poor eyesight is not the best option, the overview already takes up more space than I like, so making it bigger by having the ability to enlarge icons to gain no further information than is currently available just does not make sense. Color plays a big part in it as well, you can triple the size of the icons but as long as they are all one color, red, it can be hard to distinguish subtle differences. Especially when those shapes vary only by the addition of a cross or a teardrop, or the worst for my eyes, the same red icon split into 2 where the solid icon represents something and a blank space in the middle of the same icon represents something else.

With all the icons in the new UI looking similar, as in same shape, same color, same size, (without getting 3 inches from my monitor and squinting) I mouse over to find what I need.
The icons themselves may as well be silver circles you mouse over to gain information from..