EVE General Discussion

I've seen so many suggestions made in the forums that are QoL UI ideas and in this game, and sometimes others, many people react very negatively to the idea of any change.

One common refrain is that EVE is hard and anyone who doesn't like that should leave or be prepared to be continually disappointed.

Another common refrain seems to be that players should be required to keep tons of minutia details in their heads at all times. This isn't really thinking. This is simply remembering. Admittedly players with a greater grasp of minutia details, but with poorer decision skills may be able to get some small edge over people with little grasp of the details and better decision making skills. But it doesn't particularly feel like compelling gameplay.

It also seems like CCP agrees with that philosophy. They don't seem to want to make a game that too closely resembles Memory: the game.

I guess what I'm wondering, is it just for competitive edge that people object to QoL UI improvements?
Is it the sentiment that I suffered, you have to suffer too?
Or perhaps, we don't like any change we didn't come up with.
Or something else entirely.

In life, I spend a great deal of time designing user interfaces and this particular attitude just feels alien to me as someone who spends so much time thinking about improving UI and trying to help users be more successful using software.

For me, part of the challenge in a game is understanding** the mechanics (including the interface) and how players use it. The more complicated the interface, the more understanding and personal judgement*** that is required.

This is one of the things that drew me into EVE in the first place...everything is so complex (and still is in many ways) that even if you have a firm grasp of everything, played for years and have tons of experience, you can still make mistakes simply because there is so much information coming at you.
The interface has literally has engineered "pilot error" (either in understanding or in execution) as a feature. That's incredible to me!!! That means you can be the best and still fail miserably!


edit:
One last thing... there is a particular "problem" in EVE where there is simply an enormous volume of information that has to be conveyed in a concise manner.
Making it "frilly" or "simplifying it" is not always possible or even desirable in some circumstances as it will cause issues with other mechanics, muck up players' ability to digest said info, or simply give imprecise info (some things are decided down to 0.001 numbers).


This is not to say that nothing can't or should not be improved. Some things could be made better, but they have to be done VERY carefully.



** "understanding" also includes "remembering" but it goes further than that. It is knowing how the mechanic can be potentially used in combination with or against against other mechanics. For example; if you understand how turret mechanics work in addition to the mechanics that govern how a ship can best turn without losing much speed you can use this knowledge to land a good shot on an inbound target... or avoid someone landing a good shot.

*** I disagree with your premise that there are some people who are bad at details and good with making decisions. You can't make sound judgments without understanding the details. I have had FCs like that. They usually get everyone killed.
The RL parallel would be bosses/managers. Bosses/managers that don't understand how the "floor" works (aka "the details") tend to make godawful decisions that do not work well in the long run (even though it sometimes makes pretty good short term gains).

I may have presented that case around poor memory badly. I was more trying to refer to people who don't have command of everything in memory, but need to look it up. Looking stuff up, even things we pretty much know, is mandatory. No one knows everything in their head and if they have to look things up from time to time.

But, to me, good UI is having Google and bad UI is a card catalog or, worse yet, nothing at all. Making good decisions requires understanding systems, and the ability to work with details, but the idea that details should be hard to get it isn't particularly useful. My intention wasn't to say that memory wasn't important, but that a game shouldn't allow it to be a substitute in those rare cases for thinking gameplay.

Complexity can be good for games. Certainly I'm drawn to them. But there is such a thing as good complexity and bad complexity. Bad complexity doesn't bring richness to the game. And good complexity poorly communicated isn't particularly useful either.

I have a friend who absolutely loves complex games. He plays ASL regularly and with it's multi-hundred page rulebook. EVE didn't hold his interest. Much the complexity wasn't revolved around gameplay, but simply the result of bad UI that didn't communicate things effectively.

I know most of the systems in EVE even if I haven't experienced all of them first hand. I've read a ton about the game, but I learned about it outside of the game rather than inside. That's a poor UI. Anytime I see software that requires someone to read a long manual to figure out how to even use the software, I know it's a failure. I'm not talking strategy or meta or fittings. I'm talking about how to get basic information out of the game. Knowing what you can and can't do.

CCP has done a much better job of it the last few years, but I'm always wondering about all the resistance to UI QoL improvements. Can't it be better?

because people have gotten used to the way things are and are too lazy to learn new things.

its always the case. you offer them free candy on a stick with no strings attached and some fool will always come up with a conspiracy theory of how it will kill EVE and then go shooting his mouth off on the forums. As if forum posts ever made a difference in EVE. Lol.

I'm not sure what you're referring to specifically (stealth "remove local" thread?) but in my experience people often object to UI changes because the new design is based on how the UI programmer thinks the interface ought to be used, rather than how it is actually used in practice.

After considerable whining, sometimes the old functionality is restored.

e: after a more thorough reading I see the OP was actually about reactions to suggestions in FID… well, welcome to FID.

Well let's deal with the actual UI issues you have raised:



Done.


And that sums up every UI thread I've ever seen.

stop asking for eve to be easier !
i fell in love with this awkward,finicky,tetchy abomination of a ui because it affords for a massive ammount of information with a lot of potential for customisation .

You seem to have an opinion about UI somethingsomething and memory oh and it's gotta be all about job creation too, but could you give us some actual example of lacking basic information?

I personally find the UI simple and straightforward, as the game mechanics and interactions in EVE are very basic and few in numbers, and absolutely everything you ever need to learn is metagame, (not the nullbeard meaning of the word), behavioral patterns and psychology.

Yes, there is a lot of missing information in the item descriptions, which is an issue. However I wouldn't put poorly written descriptions into UI-category, the user interface to get that info is perfectly functional and consistent across the game.

As what comes to the actual UI itself, the window behaviour is still terrible. Minimized windows pop up on login and session changes, positions are not remembered and in many cases can't be fully resized.

Ralph you adorable fanboi you :)

Having an UI looking like a Fisher-Price toy is not feasible in Eve. If you think that you can make a better job at designing the UI, feel free to do full mockups for CCP and F&I.