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I want to point out you made me switch away from 90% scaling due to the icons looking like vomit when undersampled. Thanks so much

The new map still shows the old icon for landmark beacons, while the old map displays all new icons correctly. I see this as an concession from CCP's side that the new map is crap and they gonna remove it again. Good riddance.

Sry for adding another post to this thread, but part of the problem, why the grid is hard to read is this:

http://i.imgur.com/2lGl0rS.jpg

This is a screenhot taken in the system of Amarr, looking upwards with the tactical overlay enabled. I'm telling you the system, because it is almost impossible to read the system name. There are some places with nebulas which happen to have even brighter spots, making it impossible to see whats on grid. Because bright background + added white value from tactical overlay makes it hard to read _white_ icons/text.

This is atm the biggest issue I got with the eve client.

(and before you ask, the nvidia card is set to sRGB - switching to different profiles or adjusting brightness/contrast/saturation won't change anything - I can also make the same screenshot on a couple of other computers, including the alienware notebook that used to be recommended hardware).

If I should name a single issue that I want to see fixed at high priority, it's how the tactical overlay interacts with the bright spots in the background and nebulas. I think it belongs in this feedback thread because it might be at least part of the reason the new _brighter_ icons don't live up to their full potential.

Let me clarify: when talking about the aesthetics, I am not talking about the choice of shapes and whatnot. I am talking about the technical execution of the original idea. With the scaling I am using (I don't want to change the scaling, as it would mess my screen setup), some lines the icons are made of are thicker than others, which makes the icons look extremely poor. It is as if the game was screaming at me 'the overview icons are not meant to be scaled - change your resolution NOW!'. It's the "MS Paint effect" others have been mentioning. The old icons did not have this problem, for whatever reason.

Part of the problem may be that while the space a ship icon has to fit in is a bit wider than taller (in the overview column), the ship icons are (or would like to be) generally taller than wider. The scaling problem might be somewhat mitigated by changing the direction the ship icons are facing, from bottom-to-top to left-to-right or right-to-left (especially as stretching the icon column by a few pixels would provide more space to work with without adversely affecting pretty much anything - as opposed to adding few pixels to the height of every overview line, which would lower the number of displayable rows).

However, either way... unless you are really clever with the shapes (and no, that's not the case with the new icons - come to think of it, it might have been the case with the old icons), you need to make the icons for different UI scalings by hand - there is no way you can scale something as small automatically without the results being complete trash.

I'd like to repeat that the idea of a new icon set was appreciated for some time now, since ship types were not as easy to distinguish, or had no difference at all (Frigate / destroyer or cruiser / battlecruiser). I think most people would welcome a sleek change to those, but not in the way it has been proposed.

I'd also like to repeat, UI scaling blur does not only happen on 90% it happens with other scales too. Look at this and tell me this is fine and crisp.

Let us disregard the present for one moment and go into the future, one patch from now, and imagine that everybody has learned the new icons and got used to them. There would still be the following issues:

1. Lack of clear indication of what is what, because some types of icons are not different enough from one another, as they do not follow a theme. This is the major point why learning the new icons is tough.
2. Lack of icon sets for the 3 other scales. This also makes it harder to distinguish what is what, since the blur is obfuscating a lot of information.
3. Having removed an easy-to-see difference of what is a neutral NPC and what is a player, because they would not be colour coded. Most of you say that is not important. Now think about the possibility when pirate NPCs would become neutral to you in the future if you had enough standing. Do you see the problem now? And people being colour blind reported this to be an issue too. A solution for that would be shifting it a bit more into the orange hue. Build for the future, or don't build at all.
4. Consequence: Learning the overview as a new player will be MORE DIFFICULT than before, based on this evidence alone.

SOLUTIONS:

• Streamlining the themes of each icon set and keeping this theme. We have too many random offshots.
• Reducing the number of variations. Do we really need to see the difference between an audit log and a secure cargo container? This is what the "type" column is for.
• Colour addition to distinguish between neutral NPC entities and players. I vote for a light teal for either of them.
• Placing the mini-icon-labels like "in my corporation" and stuff BESIDE the actual icon, and not INTO a corner of the icon. You obstruct a good portion of the icon itself that way. By putting those tags to the side, you can start using filters to show TWO tags at once, on top of each other, allowing player filters to show what should be top and what should be bottom. This allows us to have THREE colour and tag indicators ( 2 tags + background) WITHOUT obstructing the actual icon.
• Making "targeted" brackets happen OUTSIDE of the icon. Have an extra 1px border around the icon (that would finally bring it to a 20x20 box, not the 19x19 we have now), where the red, the yellow, and the two white triangles for targeting things appear, allowing more space between the icon and the target boxes themselves.
• Some people could say this is wasting too much horizontal space. So an alternative to this would be: put targeting to the left of the icon, and tags to the right. I know it feels too busy, I didn't put much effort into it. We would need 1 more horizontal pixel per line. But at least icons are NOT obstructed by tags and targeting brackets and we could easily get back to just 1 tag on the right.

The minor problem with this solution is, that diamond shaped icons have been used for the longest time as containers, but we could easily adapt if there are no other small diamond shaped things in there, while keeping the square shape for stationary "cargo" things. like the big one for .. well... a station :D and the small ones for containers. This makes sense, and this is currently what we have... except we have TOO MUCH of it. The amount of variations for cargo containers is mindboggling, ridiculous, unneeded and gets lost in the 3 UI scalings which are not 100%.

Very correct. Some people will tell you, their method of preference to play the game is tagging everything with colours, labels and standings which leaves the NPC ships standing out has having "no label." However, this is a fix not everybody is willing or wanting to do, and basing a design on this "fix" alone is not very smart :c

CCP Surge asked if colour indication would improve the thing. I think it would, and so I have said:
"Give player ships AND player structures a light teal, which makes all NPC owned entities keep their white. Or do the reverse. We had a great distinction between player and NPC before due to two completely different shapes. Now you are stuck with only two scenarios: colour one different than white, or fill out the player owned entities, while keeping the NPC ones empty, or do the reverse. "

And again to everyone saying:
"Why did we not use the old suggestion?"

The answer is: they looked nice being BIG, but they got ugly being SMALL.
Now imagine those icons being SCALED. They would have the exact same problems that we have now. A blurry mess where you can't distinguish similar ship types again, just like before. Except... well... being blurry, which makes minor differences in shape be less clear, while still not having a shape difference between NPCs and players.

It is mindboggling how CCP tries to make even-pixel icons into an odd pixel frame (19x19)

I have an idea. This new set of icons is ok. Not excellent. This is how it can be excellent.

Let me define which icons i want for the ship classes. Give us access to all the icons as a grab bag and let me pick and choose what goes to what. Add more icons too. That other set of player made icons gets posyed a lot, i like them, many peoplelike them. Use them.
And ALLOW REDUNDANCY please. Please. I want shutles and newbships to have the same icon, so let me. Its common sense. I want drones to have the same icons. If i want overview defined that way, let me. Let me change the defaults.

Have this, and have the checkbox option in settings somewhere to just have classic icons.

Put classic icons in that grab bag i mentioned earlier, so i can mix classic and new icons if i wish. This gives us the best of all worlds.

So please, go back to the drawing board and make this feature excellent.

You all need to quit complaining about the icons, I still haven't even seen them yet as Eve doesn't work for me any longer.

It might be that new icons are too "similar" to people seeing not so well. How about introducing very restricted "accessibility" set of icons. These would be like rectangle, circle, triangle, cross and x. Something similar to old, but still tuned specifically for accessibility. These would be used to identify group of items. Like all the celestials would be the same icon and all the player ships and so on. This would be really small set of icons. This could help some people who can't use the new "more information" concept as they don't see so well.


I personally like the new icons. but still few ideas:

• NPC frigate is very similar to the PC frigate when they are on the grid (in overview I can see the lightness difference). Could the NPC be fully filled instead of just tinted?
• Could the "red" npc be dynamic in that way it means whether that npc going to attack you or not. So when you are in hisec space with negative security status the NPC police would be red to you. Same would be for npc pirates (if they even can ever be neutral).
• Could the icon color change based on the trust tag (-10, -5, 0, +5, +10), similar to the red npc? This could replace the small rectangle tag. Though, It might not be enough to distinguish fleet mates from enemies. When the PC icons were filled, I though this as a good idea. Basically trust colored class shaped blob.
• Option to give a color to "neutral" or any PC could be a good. This might help to group "neural" (stations, celestial) from players (even neutral player might be problem for me). At least option to give white background to all non trust tagged PC characters (currently there is only for ones tagged as neutral).

Overall this is good direction. I hope you get the UI engine updated someday to help with these things.

Well, calling it an accessabliity pack, is somewhat insulting, unless one believes the majority of the population, other than the very youngest and fittest, with the most effective hardware, is the new normal.

However, the original icons were in fact very effective, whilst there was room for improvement, for example being able to differentiate between destroyers and frigates would have been good, it was mostly clear and concise, and actually a good design language.
Simply half filling in one corner of the cross would have achieved this without the flood of illegibility and complexity we have gained.

So yes give us the old icons back as an accessability pack if it makes you feel superior, but either way let us have it.

"May you stay forever young"
Bob dylan