Look, I normally play devil’s advocate and try to stop people judging changes too quickly, but… well I’ve only been playing a couple of months but the new skills panel is just… confusing.
It opened to the “Skill Plans” page initially, and it took me a good 30 seconds of staring at it to even figure out what I’m looking at. It’s like… the opposite of intuitive. It’s scary because it’s so utterly meaningless. There’s 4 GIANT buttons across the middle, and I have no clue what they’re for, what they mean, what they do. They’re so big I actually didn’t even realise they were buttons to start with. Not only that, but everything’s got so much glow on it that it’s actually difficult to read.
Then there’s the… tabs? …at the top. There’s zero visual separators or indicators, so I had (and still have) immense trouble comprehending what I’m looking at. Like you’ve got a tab control at the top, with another child tab control below it, but there’s no consistency between them? What? How am I supposed to realise that they’re both tab controls? And then the child tab control is just floating in nothingness with no indicator that it’s in any way a child of the parent tab control. It’s like this was designed by someone who’s never actually used a UI before.
Let’s not even mention the four tiny faction buttons at the bottom or the ridiculously small scrolling section at the bottom that contains bizarrely enormous… things? I don’t even know what they are or what they do.
It’s like they thought that if they removed all the visual aids to comprehension, removed consistency between parts of the interface, made some parts unreasonably large and others incongruously small, and then didn’t add any useful information about what is being displayed that it would make it easier for new players. Was it designed by marketing? Do they realise that EVE is always going to be massive and complex and you can’t simplify the interface without simplifying the whole game?
Better high-level overviews are what will keep players in the game. Explain what the game is, what you do, and give an understanding of what various terms mean. The game has been around for so long that there’s dozens of terms and words that are totally meaningless to new players, and frustratingly difficult to find answers to. These are the problems that need solving.