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Carnyx release - General feedback

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Pavel Klucov
Bohemian Veterans
Pandemic Horde
#1201 - 2015-06-05 13:24:53 UTC
Extremely ugly, confusing overview. Please let players choose between old and new version.
Draleth
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#1202 - 2015-06-05 13:26:45 UTC
Captain Pada wrote:
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/ui-modernization-icon-strategy/

These icons were much better.

Indeed. Clear role and class distinctions, and an annotation that doesn't get in the way to differentiate NPCs. Compare the latest icons vs. the earlier concept compared against the originals. See also that alternative on-grid.

Natya Mebelle wrote:
Usability is more important than looks. Sadly, this mantra seems to be forgotten more and more each passing year, on a global scale.

A thousand times this. Simple is better than complex, complex is better than complicated. The new map crashes more often than not for me.

CCP Claymore wrote:
All I can say at the moment is please take some time to get used to the new icons if this is the first time you are seeing them. It has been a while since they last changed, if ever, and it will take a while to learn them again.

Isn't that what SISI is for? To test things out without impacting the overall user base?

CCP Claymore wrote:
We are aware that the new icons do not look great with 90% UI Scaling. This is an issue we are looking at but is a bigger project due to the nature of UI Scaling.

Then why release a known defective update? Who "pushed the button", so to speak, on releasing something that was 100% guaranteed to anger and frustrate a large portion of players, with no option to fall back on the original icon assets? Change is hard, of course, and gamers are fickle mistresses, but compared to the previous attempt linked above the new icons are nearly unreadable, and abysmally confusing, with too many icons that are visually indistinct. The older proposal, on the other hand, is still reasonably distinct at 50% scale.

Ralph King-Griffin wrote:
This is the second iteration of the icons, the first was put on sisi pushed on us and tested then rolled back due to player feed back and redone.

Are the links above the ones tested and rejected before? I suspect some may change their tune about it after seeing V2.
Sgt Ocker
What Corp is it
#1203 - 2015-06-05 13:35:27 UTC
ARMED1 wrote:


Do we need a new map, new icons, dirt on our ships? Maybe it does make for a more immersive experience in some ways.

But I think there are other bigger things that CCP can do to improve the game first.

This new uptempo schedule of expansions is nice - but we dont need junk just for the sake of CCP being able to claim they added stuff with the latest patch.

Hey CCP - its quality over quantity that we want.

I wouldn't really care if all my ships were pink with purple dots -The only immersion that is important for me is finding content.
The new icons, a map that just doesn't cut it and dirty ships don't make that any easier, so less immersion for basic game play.

Want to fix the new map?
Set the old map to window mode (best part of the new map), add the new maps universe view, with the old maps search indicators (like numbers in system, kills ph, etc) leave the system view as is in the old map (it just works) for scanning. Done.

My opinions are mine.

  If you don't like them or disagree with me that's OK.- - - - - - Just don't bother Hating - I don't care

It really is getting harder and harder to justify $23 a month for each sub.
Draleth
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#1204 - 2015-06-05 13:37:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Draleth
CCP Surge wrote:
The 90% scaling problem is engine-level. Specifically our UI renderer doesn't support any texture filtering or anti-aliasing, which makes any non-100% scale texture look pretty bad across the UI. It's particularly blatant when scaling single-pixel wide strokes as in the new icons.

And unfortunately re-writing the UI renderer, or bolting on some AA tech is just an item that hasn't made it to the top of the engine team's priority list. But we're aware of the issue.

Then it seems updating the renderer should have been a higher priority than updating the icons that would be guaranteed to break 90% scaling. Actual problem vs. nice-to-have. Vector UIs with proper subpixel hinting resolves this issue rather handily. Since fonts are antialiased in the UI, why not follow the modern trend of using icon fonts?

CCP Surge wrote:
I'm also curious to hear more from, and maybe wasn't aware of how many users played with a 90% downscaled UI (as opposed to scaling up for accessibility reasons.) What are your reasons for doing so?

Even on large displays (my main monitor is 2560x1440) the UI is cluttered enough with various highly important windows that the only way to have all the windows up while still having the in-space brackets be useful is to reduce the UI scale. Interestingly, to compensate for smaller click targets, I also increase the menu font size to the maximum and have re-bound the radial menu to left click with zero delay. (This makes many actions more of a swipe than a click.) There are enough windows that I also use the tab-based window stacking, and still have difficulty getting the UI out of my way.

CCP Surge wrote:
We've taken seriously the calls to include a "use classic bracket icons" option. Originally we thought having two sets of icons in the client might just cause confusion and miscommunication among players, and tough learning/teaching decisions for newbros as well as vets welcoming them in. However these concerns might be overblown, especially in regards to little bracket icons. In any case its definitely a debate worth having.

Multiple icon packs would alleviate the pushback from making changes like this unilaterally. You could also optionally tie it into the existing "active ship theme" as each in-game military power would potentially have their own icon sets.

CCP Surge wrote:
Hey, thanks for sharing your experience. And keeping in mind color blindness :) I agree NPC distinction is rather nuanced with the new icon set - NPC icons have a faint inner fill compared to players ships.

The little superscript crosses in the screenshots I linked earlier were quite visually sufficient to distinguish NPC from non, while preserving the ship class and role distinctions.

CCP Surge wrote:
We also color hostile NPCs red by default, but we don't allow players to change this, or set any color for the icons themselves besides background and colortags.

Anyone else think a custom "icon color" would be a good option to expose to aid in situational awareness?

This would be an excellent feature, with custom colors for things like hostile vs. neutral NPCs, and basically any of the player state flags (hostile, neutral, corp/alliance, fleet, etc.), and customization would also allow those with colour vision issues to correct for them.
LUMINOUS SPIRIT
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#1205 - 2015-06-05 13:44:31 UTC
Natya Mebelle wrote:
Here is the best and most concise report I can do without resorting to excessive graphical explanations c:

Reasons why engine-scaling the old icons wasn't so bad:
  • Crosses and brackets do not have curves, meaning much less apparent blur when scaling.
  • Curved icons were mostly circle based, meaning that scaling wasn't so bad either, as it retained the same base shape.


New Icon BENEFITS:
  • Ability to separate frigate from destroyer and Cruiser from Battlecruiser.
  • Noticing Capital ship differences by icon.
  • Adding icons to things that previously had none.


New Icon FLAWS:
  • Scaling is obviously terrible because icons are so detailed now.
  • You do not use enough icon space on the side for bigger ship icons and you do not keep consistent with the "upgrading triangle / arrow " theme. The distinction is not enough. Especially not when you start scaling things.
  • There are too many icons which barely look different from another. Examples: Batteries. Drones. Containers. One Example to change: put extra icons on batteries elsewhere for better distinction. turret: right. Missile: left. Navigation Ewar: bottom. other Ewar: top.
  • You relied too much on half-transparent fills for NPC entities, which is not a good distinction, especially not when scaled. Tiny abstracts like that are an all or nothing thing. A better choice would have been to increase line strength to fill icons more by 1px, either for NPC or player entities, or completely fill one type out. Same with sun and planet distinction. Even at 100% scaling, the rays don't matter. Old: Sun was fully white circle, Planet an empty circle.
  • Red-blind people cannot rely on a shape distinction between NPC and player ships any more. The minor transparent fill is not enough.


Design Choice MISTAKES:
  • You have not been consistent with the themes.
  • You put too much detail where it was not needed. Examples: Who needs to know if it was a player or NPC wreck? Who needs to know the exact difference between all those containers? This is what the "type" column is for.
  • You do not use enough "fills" in your geometries, and your base shape variety is poor.
  • You don't use asymmetry properly and rely too much on (bi-)symmetrical icons.
  • You have re-used existing shapes which were a common sight for something completely different that was common too. I don't understand why you have been doing that, when you avoided the uses of crosses and brackets completely.
  • There are only two diamond shaped things now, which are carriers and asteroids. This means the difference between containers and batteries and other small square / rectangular things has become too muddy.
  • If containers are squares, why does a wreck with loot have not a square on top of it? Why did you even go away from a filled wreck having loot? That was perfect.
  • A mobile depot should have more similarity with a storage-type icon. In this case square with horizontal "appendages". Or, when reverting, diamond with appendages.
  • Icon association is lacking. Example: Asteroid belts should look like BELTS (horizontal icon emphasis) and not clusters of things.


Development MISTAKES:
  • You knew the engine scaling limitation and did nothing about it. It would have been better to design for 90% first, and then craft the other 3 sets by hand to remain crisp and avoid blur. If that is not possible, then you needed to check why it wasn't. Is the overview legacy code? Then you should have fixed that first, having more flexibility for the future. I'm not getting tired of posting this poopy little mockup that outsources targeting information and colour tags to the sides of the icon.
  • You have not responded to the feedback from months ago with enough information (this is a general problem, by the way). You did not explain to us well enough why certain suggestions or other things cannot be done. You did not provide good enough arguments some things should be kept as planned. You did not talk to us about other obstacles you have to face. The more constructive interaction and knowledge we have from your side, the better we can adapt our suggestions.


Untapped potential of OLD ICONS:
Most shapes were bi-symmetrical. A half of ┼ is ┤ and half of that is ┘
This allowed for easy memorization, but they also could use the same base icon three times for three different things, as demonstrated. You could even cut the ┼ Icon in 8 different ways, for a total of 9 symbols of one base shape.
Add to that different lengths of the bars. You only used were three different sizes of crosses. If each of those sizes would have been used to it's fullest potential, that would mean you had 27 different possibilities to chose from, excluding the mixes.

I understand the bottom right corner often has a colour tag which cuts down the available possibilities. You never saw the bottom right player ship bracket.
However, you have missed two things: Line thickness and extras inside. A destroyer could have had the same bracket size as a frigate, but the lines would be twice as thick, meaning 2 pixels.
Or, you could have "raised" the top and bottom brackets, doing the reverse you did with the industrials, which "widened" the left and right brackets". The same "raise" would work with old NPC crosses. Or you could have added extras INSIDE brackets.

I always wondered why you never did that.


"Just don't expect any knee-jerk reactions from us so soon."
Can I ask about improving opportunities then? It has been 6 weeks :c


This. So much this. This puts into proper words my own muddled attempt of feedback.
darkchild's corpse
Rens Nursing Home
#1206 - 2015-06-05 13:45:07 UTC
Draleth wrote:

CCP Surge wrote:
I'm also curious to hear more from, and maybe wasn't aware of how many users played with a 90% downscaled UI (as opposed to scaling up for accessibility reasons.) What are your reasons for doing so?

Even on large displays (my main monitor is 2560x1440) the UI is cluttered enough with various highly important windows that the only way to have all the windows up while still having the in-space brackets be useful is to reduce the UI scale. Interestingly, to compensate for smaller click targets, I also increase the menu font size to the maximum and have re-bound the radial menu to left click with zero delay. (This makes many actions more of a swipe than a click.) There are enough windows that I also use the tab-based window stacking, and still have difficulty getting the UI out of my way.



i also play with a scaled down UI for that reason. i even ended up to play on two full HD screens with the camera centered on the left display. overview, directional, drone window and blabla chat windows are left, local (with compact member list) is streched from the top to the bottom of the right display, next to fleet window, intel channels and other stuff. i don't even know how ppl can play on smaller displays :D

the smaller each information is displayed, the more information you can view at the same time.

Kinda suits the SP trading discussion (lyrics in description)
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai
#1207 - 2015-06-05 13:45:47 UTC  |  Edited by: Ishtanchuk Fazmarai
I was out of the loop for the new icons and only got in after being fourm banned, so couldn't really participate in the discussion.

So here's my (late) feedback: I think I can come to learn and/or ignore the icons as necessary for my gameplay, but what's wrong is the "yellow" attribute.

The first time I encountered "yellow" wrecks and couldn't access them I was like "WTF? Now inaccessible wrecks have the same icon as my wrecks?" It took me a while to notice that there's a subtle, nigh invisible yellow tint to them. Same goes for the "yellow" gates; it's become a matter of guess-and-click because the color cue is almost invisible, at least for me. This already happened with the old smaller icons, so my guess is that now the yelow is even dimer than before. Rather than a color cue, what I get is a intensity cue: yellow icons look slighlty dimmer on the overview.

I already suggested it with the first iteration of the UI: color tabs would go a long way to improve usability for players with visual impairments. I would totally love if the yellow gates had a yellow background on the overview list. And also would be great to add custom color tabs to the Neocom, like this mockup, so I stop opening the Market when I want to check my Wallet and vice-versa.

Roses are red / Violets are blue / I am an Alpha / And so it's you
LUMINOUS SPIRIT
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#1208 - 2015-06-05 13:46:31 UTC
March rabbit wrote:
darkchild's corpse wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/75xJGq1.png

need to say i like the concept


+1 I like.

Rat crosses could be thiker though. In fact, get rid of bracket, just leave crosses.
Elah'n'matir
Vanguard Marines
Absolute Will
#1209 - 2015-06-05 13:48:23 UTC
I am not the first to say this but the new overview icons are terrible, they make it real hard to distinguish between different targets and ship types.

I would suggest to just go back to the old ones or allow for players to choose between the 2 types.
darkchild's corpse
Rens Nursing Home
#1210 - 2015-06-05 13:51:34 UTC
if CCP is concerned about communication problems between players who use new icons and those who use old icons: implement a keyboard shortcut wich switches the icons as long as the shortcut is pressed. this is what guild wars 2 does with localization and it works great. you can easily switch between english and your main language.

Kinda suits the SP trading discussion (lyrics in description)
Lfod Shi
Lfod's Ratting and Salvage
#1211 - 2015-06-05 13:58:11 UTC
+1 for the very cool concept icons in that there Dev Blog from way back.

-1 for what was actually delivered.

...except for wrecks and corpse(s) icons. I love those. Got my first corpse yesterday and I'm terribly excited about it.

♪ They'll always be bloodclaws to me ♫
Tyr Dolorem
State War Academy
Caldari State
#1212 - 2015-06-05 14:10:29 UTC
Someone needs to file a missing persons report for CCP Claymore
Dominous Nolen
The Graduates
The Initiative.
#1213 - 2015-06-05 14:25:50 UTC
Lfod Shi wrote:
+1 for the very cool concept icons in that there Dev Blog from way back.

-1 for what was actually delivered.

...except for wrecks and corpse(s) icons. I love those. Got my first corpse yesterday and I'm terribly excited about it.


Personally I wish the wreck icons were the old filled in/empty upside down triangles. I'm fine with the rest of the icons myself, they just take some getting use to.

@dominousnolen

"Fly dangerously, Fly safe, Fly whatever, just keep Flying." - Lee Blackwood
Ben Musana
Doomheim
#1214 - 2015-06-05 14:29:26 UTC
Now after some time with the new icons - i feel like the first day. Takes me to long to identify wanted items vs. old icons.

CCP please give us the option to choose 'Old Icon Set' and 'New Icon Set'.
Ida Aurlien
HIgh Sec Care Bears
Brothers of Tangra
#1215 - 2015-06-05 14:54:13 UTC
wow maps yea they really suck now..... last update icons etc and null people are upset about you rebuilding a game they have been paying for..... some for years......... and your really not listening to your customers you deserve to fail..... ask yourselves what your customer base numbers are telling you...... a game that takes 10 years to get anywhere may b a bit long...and changes kill interest as you never know what or how to work, or direction as you keep changing direction... visually I totally hate the new icons and really have not been able to scan with new map as it sucks
Crimson Grimslow
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1216 - 2015-06-05 14:56:04 UTC
Those over view icons.... ive been against them form the start. overly complex and impossible to tell a ship from a structure at first glance. that combined with the new slower loading times Im astonished i havent been killed at undock yet. Terrible patch. #CCPFail.
Lo Todako
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#1217 - 2015-06-05 15:07:56 UTC
First forum post here, thought I'd throw in my view on the new icons from the perspective of someone who is very dyslexic.

Personally I dislike them, I've been having a lot of trouble telling things apart. I think important icons like ship icons need to be vastly different from the rest of the icons. At a quick glance, I cant tell say a beacon, from a player ship.

Recently I lost my first astero due to these icons, coming through a gate in null not long after the icons had changed, I was playing it calm as I was deep into null with basically none around, and I did not notice the other two players on the gate. By the time I did, I was already locked and half dead. I know, I should play as if there are hostiles around in null 24/7, but with the old icons, I could easily tell a ship from other icons. Sure, a lot of the older icons where pretty hard for me to make out, but at-least the ships where very distinct and different.

I think the icons need to differ a lot more, not just in shape but in color to. From my perspective, half of the icons blend in together, eve at say 120% ui scale. Also, being able to have a separate overview window that could say, just show other ships in? That would be great.

Anyway, I'll probably stop playing for a while, either until the icons change back/we get better ones, or I figure out a way to tell icons apart quickly and easily.
darkchild's corpse
Rens Nursing Home
#1218 - 2015-06-05 15:19:03 UTC
Lo Todako wrote:

Anyway, I'll probably stop playing for a while, either until the icons change back/we get better ones, or I figure out a way to tell icons apart quickly and easily.


you could set a background for all players in your overview settings (even for neutral players and those with no standing at all). this is what i did myself but i don't consider that a long term solution.

Kinda suits the SP trading discussion (lyrics in description)
Grubgrafter
Fortis fortuna adiuvat
#1219 - 2015-06-05 15:38:41 UTC
I believe it is time that CCP put the heads up and gave a response to the out pouring of dissatisfaction with them and the new Icon set...

The dissatisfaction is real, many peeps feel betrayed by the manner in which CCP force this change onto the player base even after what I believe was negative response from SISI testers...

I would suggest a speedy return to old icon set would be the best way to proceed, the longer CCP leaves it the less credible the CCP Management becomes..
Ida Aurlien
HIgh Sec Care Bears
Brothers of Tangra
#1220 - 2015-06-05 16:01:54 UTC
LOL looking like same crap they are giving alliance tournaments and skins and not addressing concerns.....ccp please pull ur heads out and use them for other things.... ur being paid to keep a good game not destroy it......