Edit:Ok I have no idea what people were on about, I guess I fly with some special folks. Though I stand by what I said.
I want the old icons back, the one where the wallet looks liked coins and the industry window looked like a scientist wearing a lab coat in front of a blueprint.
Like this!
I completely agree.
But I suspect some UI dev at FCC was all “but colours are so last decade!!” or something.
The FCC won’t let my icons be, so I put the EVE music on MP3…
I only started playing EVE in 2017, three years after the removal of the old UI and as such never had nostalgic feelings for it.
To start I agree the individual pictures of the old UI look more beautiful than the current icons. However…
Whenever I see pictures of the old UI I am reminded of the old internet explorer UIs that went around in the same time as this EVE UI was created:
Of course the EVE UI never was as awful as whoever accepted all these toolbars for their explorer, but it gives me the same feeling:
both are full of buttons begging for attention through icons of different styles in different bright colours.
Frankly, it looks a bit like a mess.
In my opinion a good UI for a beautiful space game like EVE should be functional, but more importantly at the background.
Space and our spaceship should be the things that visually draw attention through their colours and designs, not UI elements. Colour in UI elements can be very distracting, the red dot was a big offender, and the old UI too is much more distracting and in the foreground than the current UI is. Even if individually the old buttons seem more beautiful than the current buttons, their looks drew too much attention for my liking to fit the role of a UI.
I much prefer a coherent unobtrusive UI that’s functioning at the background of the game.
I much prefer the current UI.
If anything, I’d prefer the UI to be even more minimal than the current UI. And the old UI is for me in the opposite direction.
P.S.: If you wish to have colour back in the UI you can since a while give each button it’s own colour!
The circle already has come fully around and it really is time for FC to revert the icons back to their original colorful glory.
Flat icon design is considered outdated by the industry since at least 2024.
IIRC it was introduced to EVE as “we follow industry standard”, so can we now please follow industry standard again and revert back already?
I started playing in 2009, so I used both the old UI and the new Photon UI. There are things I like about both. I like the consistency of Photon in terms of design language and element scaling. I like that it’s a little cleaner with less clutter. However, I prefer the visual distinction of the former icons. I often have to pause briefly when clicking a pinned icon to allow my brain to decode the images. That was never a problem with the old UI.
Even with the new color options, given the limited palette, I mostly just use color to group icons in the Neocom, like so:
So there’s still a degree of cognitive load when decoding the pictographs, but I can narrow down my selection faster than when they were all white. Though I will also say, some colors in the palette actually make the icons harder to distinguish.
I may be weird, but I mainly play the game in the UI. My overviews, chat windows, scanner windows, etc., are all pinned in placed and take up over half my screen. Only perhaps a third of the screen is even open to display my ship and space, so it’s more of a background image for me.
Right, FC added customizable colors…but this is not for me. I don’t want to see a stupid rainbow in my neocom. I want icons that you can tell apart just by looking at them. Like the old colorful icons.
The modernness of flat icon design has already worn of. And this is recognized by the industry since at least 2024.
