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Dev blog: Stay on Target!

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Torch Toomb
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#761 - 2012-10-16 12:43:42 UTC
Is it just me, or does this resemble the very old Shield/Armour indicators as shown in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX8BxTLzpf0

I believe there was a reason you moved away from that...
GeeShizzle MacCloud
#762 - 2012-10-16 13:42:17 UTC
Tippia wrote:
Atomic Option wrote:
Point being I prefer to see rad/s rather than m/s since I'm used to it from Pyfa and the number of digits displayed is more consistent so I can set a less forgiving width for that column in the overview. But others may prefer m/s. Add both. There's room.


Yes, I'll agree with you there: rad/s is generally a better measurement since it's the same unit as the towers themselves use to measure their tracking ability. Transversal (usually measured in m/s) doesn't tell the full story and uses a completely different unit as well, so it's not nearly as handy for evaluating your turrets' chance to hit.


Agreed! why we have the others i dont know... its information sent to us that as far as i can tell we dont need, dont use and doesnt apply to any form of combat or space related activity in the game.

rad/sec, distance and velocity is all you need to know if a targets coming at you, away from you orbiting you, stationary etc...

cut out the superfluous BS from the overview, and if its info being streamed to us from the servers then great! less lag, if its stuff our own comps are calculating in the client, then great better client performance with less CPU cycles working out redundant info we DONT NEED!
GeeShizzle MacCloud
#763 - 2012-10-16 13:45:50 UTC
addelee wrote:
This may have been mentioned but personally, I'd like to see a change which makes any form of electronic warfare obvious.
Knowing who is scambling you is key to some decisions when in combat (whether this be PVE or PVP) and right now, it just doesn't work.

I dunno, perhaps put a pulsating blue ring around things that are scrambling and what not. Even an extra column on the overview (with a tick box) would be better than the current system.

Or even better, make it customizable so in theory you could have different setups for PVE and PVP as in reality, you do want to see different information.

However, this wasn't me criticising as I like the new designs, just adding feedback Big smile


http://www.eveonline.com/inferno/effects-bar/

read it...

understand it...

open up eve more than once every 6 months...

log in...

play the game...

... receive cookie.
GeeShizzle MacCloud
#764 - 2012-10-16 13:53:21 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
Myriad Blaze wrote:
If it isn't “too much” information with regard to PvP you might think about adding a numerical DPS meter for incoming damage (maybe instead of the flashing red circle). Just make an overlay over the ship pictures in the (old style) target icons. Outgoing DPS could be displayed near the bottom of the targeting bracket of the currently selected target.

Instead of using absolute sizes for shield, armor and structure bars in the circular targeting bracket you could use relative sizes (again, if that isn't “too much” information). That way a ship with 1000 points in shield and 500 in armor and structure each would show a shield bar from 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock, armor bar from 6 to 9 o'clock and structure from 9 to 12.

It would be nice to get information about the damage type of incoming damage. In case you think about the above mentioned DPS meter you might preset the value with the icon of the damage type dealt by that target (or in case of mixed damage types the type that represents the biggest portion of the damage).

I personally think that telling you exactly how much the other guy has in shield, armor and structure is giving too much info.

I like the idea of show the damage type, but I don't know, maybe that's giving too much info? (we did actually discuss both these things at our meetings on Friday)


:) im glad you think this way about enemy HP info karkur!

im sure you've noticed im not a great fan of giving everyone all the information all the time for everything. To me the shroud of war is a vital component of the tactical gameplay. Plz Plz PLEASE let someone at CCP realise that advances in data retrieval and collection (whether covert or not) is always followed by more advanced ways of encrypting and shielding data from being propagated, especially sensitive information that can give tactical advantages.
Zahn Seul
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#765 - 2012-10-16 14:06:55 UTC
Oh HELL yes.! This is gold, humans are just awesome at interpreting intuitive information like this, we'll be ablle to make the judgement about how a fight goes so much more easily this way.. "My flashy damage is flashier than his flashy damage, damn, I'm losing," etc.
Vertisce Soritenshi
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#766 - 2012-10-16 15:39:00 UTC
This looks awesome! Good job guys!

Bounties for all! https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2279821#post2279821
Herren Varno
Steel Dust Heavy Industries
#767 - 2012-10-16 16:04:17 UTC
To the apparent majority who like the new circular targetting system purely on looks alone, I hope that you can appreciate that for small gang FCs and Logi pilots, this is going to be a bad thing; and even though it is likely that you don't partake in those activities, you may benefit directly or indirectly from others who do.

Some criticisms of the proposed system and suggested amendments from a functional perspective:

-Circular hp bars will never be as intuitive or as scannable as a row of stacked hp bars. More attention will be required, errors will be made. Those who need to make snap judgements will suffer. Think about quickly scanning half a dozen targets and quickly assessing which has most shield/armour damage - a row of stacked hp bars is ideal for this.

-Due to the horizontal bias of human vision processing, the proportions of the hp bar at the top and bottom will appear to be disproportionate in length to those at the sides, this means it would be more difficult to accurately judge the proportion of a hp bar that has incurred damage, than it would with a straight bar. This could be rectified by making each bar symmetrical in the horizontal or vertical axes, but would require smaller bars (e.g split into quarters and leave the top portion unused). However...

-While large amounts of spacing between the shield and structure bars would greatly enhance intuitiveness, it would entail reducing the available bar length, making them less scannable.

-While differentiating by colour can assist those with the prerequisite colour vision, it is still an arbitrary assignment that doesn't approach the level of intuitiveness that the stacked bars provide.

-Text labels are not scannable without introducing excess screen clutter (i.e. making them large and prominent) to the detriment of other UI elements.

-Shoot-and-see is rarely a viable tactic for FCs and Logi pilots. Additionally, any situation involving active tanks, and relocking of targets introduces the possiblity of, for instance, an active shield tanked ship being identified as having its shield depleted, when in fact its armour has been depleted and the shield has fully restored.
Covert Kitty
SRS Industries
#768 - 2012-10-16 16:57:31 UTC
I like that your looking into this, it is probably due for some cleanup. However I would point out two things:

1. The brackets themselves should be redone to help add some differentiation between ship classes. In this way if your in fleet fight you can have a better visual sense of whats going on spatially as opposed to not being able to tell whats a bomber and whats a titan when your zoomed out a bit.

2. For the new target icons the shield/armour/hull bars should probably be coloured differently instead of all being grey. Moving to a circular layout is fine, but without the coloring it makes even less sense than the old system (which probably also should have been colored).
Soden Rah
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#769 - 2012-10-16 17:46:26 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
First Big smile

Edit:
We know that people are a bit confused what is what in the HP circles around the targets. We will be looking into what we can do to make it clearer.
We appreciate your feedback, and please keep it coming, but there is no need to keep repeating what many have said before you, we are aware of this confusion Smile



I may have missed it but I haven't seen this asked so far so...

I have a question...

Sleepers don't have shields... Just armour and hull.

So what do their brackets look like?
Opusmind
Echelon Research
Goonswarm Federation
#770 - 2012-10-16 18:34:57 UTC  |  Edited by: Opusmind
I have an idea on how to show who is doing the most damage to you.
I skipped from page 4 to this page 39, so I don't know if anyone already suggested this:

When you hover your own shield/armor/hull indicators, it would be awesome if a popup box would tell you who did what damage to you. Just like when you hover your guns, a popup box tells you information about that.

The popup box should contain the TOP5 or so damage dealers on you in hitpoints and % - with an option of showing the whole list maybe. Because in 0.0 blobfleets you might get a really long list.

So the popup text could look something like this, when hovering your shilds/armor/hull:

TOP DAMAGE DEALERS:
2.530 HP (12%) mrniceguy (Maelstrom)
834 HP (4%) Sir Gankalot (Drake)
490 HP (2%) CCP Punkturis (Hurricane)

or

TOP DAMAGE DEALERS:

  • 1. mrniceguy 2.530 HP (12%) (Maelstrom)
  • 2. Sir Gankalot 834 HP (4%) (Drake)
  • 3. CCP Punkturis 490 HP (2%) (Hurricane)


This way you can easily see who is doing the most damage to you since the fight started, which can be very usefull.

The list would only be reset/removed when shields got back up to 100%.
Oh, and of course there would be a small button to "export list to clipboard" (or simply drag an icon down from the popup) as well, so you could share it easily and fast with your buddies in fleetchat :)

Opusmind
Major Trant
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#771 - 2012-10-16 18:35:18 UTC
Hate the new targeted icons. Much prefer the current stacked bars.

As for the stuff on the main screen:

a. Lag!
b. How do you tell what is going on behind you.
c. What happens when you zoom out in a 200 fleet battle?
d. Who the hell looks at, nevermind targets objects in the main screen? My eyes are all over the overview, the targetted icons, my ships health and cap bars, my active module icons and the fleet chat window. I only glance very briefly at the main window to get an idea how many people are on field.

I get that you are trying to give us something exotic, but I fear this is one of those great ideas in theory, which turns into an absolute disaster in the implementation. Please quietly kill this and put your resources on more important stuff.

And I'll say again LAG!
Soden Rah
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#772 - 2012-10-16 19:21:29 UTC
Major Trant wrote:
Hate the new targeted icons. Much prefer the current stacked bars.

As for the stuff on the main screen:

a. Lag!
b. How do you tell what is going on behind you.
c. What happens when you zoom out in a 200 fleet battle?
d. Who the hell looks at, nevermind targets objects in the main screen? My eyes are all over the overview, the targetted icons, my ships health and cap bars, my active module icons and the fleet chat window. I only glance very briefly at the main window to get an idea how many people are on field.

I get that you are trying to give us something exotic, but I fear this is one of those great ideas in theory, which turns into an absolute disaster in the implementation. Please quietly kill this and put your resources on more important stuff.

And I'll say again LAG!


d. I can't agree more with d.

Even with two screens I have only a small area left in one screen that is not covered in windows.
The overview is THE method of knowing what the hell is going on and targeting things.

Now this sucks, and you really should be able to work without all these windows and be able to do stuff in the main screen.
But until that is fixed (which this doesn't) the thing that really needs improving is the overview.

Now don't get me wrong I like the look of these (until I see what they look like in big fleet battles.) but the overview is the piece of the UI that is really in need of some love (barring a complete roots up renovation of the entire UI) and will most impact how we actually get information on the battlefield.
Maraner
The Executioners
#773 - 2012-10-16 20:02:59 UTC
Agree with above poster.

I like the 'look' of the new targeting locks, I do really. But the functionality of it is a worry. At the end of the day I don't really feel that what we have is currently broken. The three bars work very well, easy to understand etc etc. By all means if you want to put a revolving round 'active' target dial around what we are shooting at I'm happy with that.

You've asked for feedback and specifics, I think you have received that. I do worry that your responses are beginning to remind me strongly of the unified inventory debacle. I posted in the development thread regularly prior to the launch of that 'feature' and gave specific feedback on it, I urged optionality for it at least and had the same 'we do not want to have to code for two' statement.

To be honest you may want to seriously revisit this. Is it really that big an effort to retain a three bar system over the radial dial look that your suggesting? Really? Much of the rage on the forums was directed at you guys due to the perception that strong feedback was ignored, that this was another moment when CCP went ahead despite a lot of raised concerns, all of that could have been removed immediately if the old system had been largely replicated in new code (as your doing now bit by bit with each release - I look forward to the day when quite frankly we are back where we started with the unified inventory).

By all means add new stuff, we like new stuff but please code for the same degree of functionality as the old. If you cant promise that with the new, make it optional.
Korinne
The Partisan Brigade
#774 - 2012-10-16 20:22:11 UTC
This change is completely pointless; it's as pointless as renaming missles and propmods were. I mean ffs, the missles were COLOR CODED how hard was that to figure out? There was nothing wrong with them and there is nothing wrong with the existing flashing brackets, all it is, is wasting time on **** that isn't broken instead of working on stuff that needs attention. At best, it's just more of a reduction where eve becomes "hit tab, hit 1-9, repeat".
androch
LitlCorp
#775 - 2012-10-16 21:43:31 UTC
this change looks like crap please leave us an option to keep the targeting ui the way it is before you make that change
Tanaka Aiko
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#776 - 2012-10-17 00:27:52 UTC  |  Edited by: Tanaka Aiko
As others have stated the circular health bar is confusing, but what is more is how you did that ; you should make it as ONE bar cut in 3 : in your example, the bar takes red on different side, that's nice to know the damages on each bar, but that's not clear at on glance, you should make red come on a way, and continue like a clock do (in one sense or another, no importance here, but a continuous thing, which is not the case on yours).
on your example I didn't knew which bar was which, and worse I made a mistake, until I looked at the original image.

also the lock time is not clear on your example, you should do something better.
either 360° = 60 seconds
either 360° = total time needed for this particular lock
on your example it's neither or those, so I don't get it.
C DeLeon
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#777 - 2012-10-17 03:44:36 UTC
I don't know if the thread is still monitored by the devs but i'm gonna leave my opinion here anyway :)

On the pictures it seems that armor bar is on the left and shield bar is on the rigth side. I guess the reason behind this is that the damage notification starts at the top (12 o'clock). I think it makes more sense if the damage bar goes a full circle instead of starting somewhere and continue on a different place on the circle. I think that makes more sense even i it means that the damage notifications aren't starting at the top.
Soy Salomon
E.X.O.
#778 - 2012-10-17 04:12:52 UTC
I really hate the circular struct/armor/shield bars in the targetting icons. That's bad bad bad bad.

Other than that, really love the other ideas!! Keep 'em coming :)
Fyrr Deerdan
E.X.O.
#779 - 2012-10-17 04:15:54 UTC
Soy Salomon wrote:
I really hate the circular struct/armor/shield bars in the targetting icons. That's bad bad bad bad.

Other than that, really love the other ideas!! Keep 'em coming :)



+1
Fyrr Deerdan
E.X.O.
#780 - 2012-10-17 04:19:24 UTC
Cordo Draken wrote:
Shiney Upgrades \o/ Approximately when do you guys plan to try to have this done by?


Evelgrivion wrote:
I don't like the circle indicators; the current ordered list of Shield Armor Hull is very good at conveying at a glance information; the rounded bars condenses it, but at the cost of at a glance clarity; not a worthy tradeoff, IMO.

I do like the idea of conveying targeting range and providing a visual indicator on the HUD of who is hitting you. Overall, I think the ol' box is the best way to go, rather than circles.


Actually I like the Circles (i.e. Targets)... As for seeing the Shield, Armor, Structure at a glance... I think it's just a matter of getting used to it. Even w/o knowing what they plan I'd guess that Shields would be on the left, Armor = Right side & Structure on the bottom... It seems rather logical to me. Hell, after having to get used to the new inventory UI, this is a piece of Cake, and it will become "At a Glance" in no time as it's only 3 bars.


Spoken as a true carebear.