Improving the Default Overview

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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When going through the comments on the brainstorm the CSM put together of the problems in the game, one thing I was reminded of by u/der_rey was the state of the default overview, and how poor it is for new players, as it fails to show some potentially important information. As such, I thought I’d reach out to you guys and hopefully try and put together a small selection of overviews that best empower a new player with the information they need to play the game.

The first thing I wanted to tackle was the ‘tabs’, for which the default has to be some form of ‘general overview’ that’s suitable for traveling, PvE, and most importantly, running through the tutorial. Beyond this however, what tabs do you think new players need to be able to properly navigate and interact with the game?

You can answer with as many as you wish, but it’ll likely end up being only 2-3 additional overviews on top of the general one.

Personally, I think a General + Mining + PvP + Travel overview package makes the most sense, but I want to get as many opinions as possible on this, so that no options are overlooked in terms of helping signpost things for new players.

After we decide on the best tabs for the overview package, I’ll do my best to create an overview that reflects these options, and present it to you guys for any testing and feedback on improving it, and after that’s done, I’ll throw it to CCP directly. Even if it’s not something they wish to test, the overviews created from this will likely be of great use for new players in the Rookie Chat anyway, so I see a positive goal here no matter CCPs decisions.

Thank you for your time

EDIT: If you have any other overview related suggestions, or specific things that should be included, feel free to suggest them here as well!

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The most asked ‘how to’ question regarding the Overview I see in Rookie Help is how to make a tab that shows only hostiles. Guess that would be the PvP tab you mentioned. So a big yes vote for that one from me.

Thinking about it, Rookies are probably looking for a tab that shows hostile NPCs as much as it shows hostile players. I think the main goal is to be able to quickly sort the most immediate threats from the non-threats, without having to wade through Stargates and Asteroids and so on.

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Personally, I don’t think the planets and asteroid belts have any use in the general overview.

I have a tab for
PVP (shows player ships except blues, sun, stargates and stations, and citadels for easy navigation and warp outs without too much clutter
PVE (shows player ships except blues, sun, stargates and stations, citadels for easy navigation as well as all sorts of mission and exploration related NPC entities (no gate NPC or gate guns) and some collideable objects
Mining (player ships with blues showing, NPC ships, asteroid belts, sun, stargate, station and citadels)

I think the Warp To tab is good as it is.

The thing that needs fixing the most, however, is the continuous screwing up of overviews by CCP when they add new things. How hard can it possibly be to setup a dialogue telling you which new overview items CCP introduced and giving you your list of overview settings with checkboxes to easily add all these new overview items to the settings where they should show up? The current way of doing this is atrocious.

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1st: small simple overview with stations, gates and pocos + rats for pve and ships from players
2nd: mining … thats clear what to show i guess
3rd: salvaging … new players can make good isk with that YES
4th: like a GTFO so show nothing but stuff to jump to
5th: a pvp maybe but for a newbie its not really needed i guess … if he get shot he has other problems than switching the overview to get shot mode :wink:

i think thats enough

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TEAR-ABLE , MODULIZE overview
Overview items are broken down into groups in difference tabs, and can be view simultaneously.

Not only the default overview pack, the whole overview may need a rework as well

Would the tabs be tear-able, such as showing both ‘ship’ tab and ‘celestial object’ tab simultaneously.
for tearable overview, we can deliever an overview pack - numbers of tab are already been loaded by default, such as ‘structure and gate’, ‘rats and ships’, ‘ore & wreck’, ‘LCO’, etc. .
no longer “Add LCO in your overview” popup, in newbie mission.

i hv seen many newbies had their overview showing POCO, gate, wrecks, rats, and lots of things within a small sizes overview lists. Each time they need to scroll up and down to lock rats and scroll again to find the gate for mission. Breaking items in group and presenting in difference tabs SIMULTANEOUSLY.

both veteran and newbies can be benefit from TEAR-ABLE and MODULIZE overview as well
no long checking “station” in both “PVP-without blue’ and 'PVP-with blue” tab.
Since you can show more than one tab on screen, you may also have one tab showing fleetmates and one tab showing “other bad guys”,
have one tab showing cap ship and other tab showing sub-cap. Oh you can always having a tab for ‘warp the fxxx out’

it may also a good idea to show in space bookmarks in one tab, appear as same as an other tabs (in layout)
(if technically feasible, We all know that overview takes care what public can see)

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As nice as that would be, that’s a huge, huge development step that isn’t in the realms of what I can push here.

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at least mention it to some relative guys, though it would be forgot 3mins later.

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The people who’d deal w/ this =/= the people who could revamp the Overview. That’s New Player Experience vs UI.

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I think that the New Player Experience should have a small section dedicated to the overview, explaining in general: the tabs, the fact that you can customize your overview, brackets, the fact that there exist many player made overviews for use currently and any other thing that would go with overviews. Just have the new guy warp out to some point in space and show how the different tabs affect what the player sees.

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Totally agree!

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Another option would be to link the new players to a set of widely used overviews, I know the first channel I join on a new character is the Z-S overview channel.

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The Z-S overview is super veteran focused however, which is why I didn’t want to do that.

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The mining tab mentioned above sounds like a good idea for the new players because of the career agent missions in the beginning that have the player mine resources from a set of asteroids. However, one thing that might be a little confusing is that the asteroid icons might not display in space. Mentioned here: Little things / Small QoL suggestions

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Imagine in the newbro experience suggesting Z-S and then trying to explain it.

“When you engage in a fight it’s a very good idea to get an overall feel for what targets you’ll be engaging then right-clicking your preferred primary combat tab and selecting the appropriate preset. Don’t forget to add mobile jammers to your relevant tabs!”

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Dear God … no! :rofl:

We have enough trouble getting past the ‘I used the Skill injector before Aura told me to and now it’s broken’ part of the NPE, lets not add Z-S into the mix, haha

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Glad someone reminded me of this. The first thing I do every time CCP wipes my settings (happens too frequently) is restore my overview settings. Been playing since Quantum Rise. Perhaps my experience can bring some perspective to what a pilot really wants in their overview.

I think the current “default” overview is far too cluttered to be of any use. There are way too many types shown there to be useful. I understand CCP’s desire to show new players what is on grid. So perhaps rather than just one tab, the “default” should be everything about the overview rather than just a single tab. This includes columns and brackets.

I’m think the default overview settings should be 4 tabs with all ships of all standings in one tab, all celestials in a second tab, all drones in a third, and and all structures in a fourth. Order is not terribly important.

As for columns, distance, velocity, ship type, and pilot name are all pretty important. Many people also want to see bracket type, Transversal, Angular Velocity, or Tags. Personally, I have bracket type, distance, velocity, type, and name. I have also reordered the columns to put the numeric data before the alpha-numeric data. Specifically bracket, distance, velocity, type, and name in that order. I also have angular velocity set to go between velocity and type. But I typically don’t have that column enabled. I never felt like I really needed it.

While my personal overview settings may not be ideal in someone else’s opinion, I want to share it as an example of what a career nul-sec pilot might desire.

I typically run with 6 tabs. The first being my hostile PvP overview. This profile consists of all non-blue (including neutral and no-standings) subcapitals, stargates, the sun, wormholes, POS control towers (just the stick), and beacons (cynos). I also have a non-fleet profile for Alliance Tournament practices that only excludes fleet members. Useful for internal practices.

Tab 2 is for blue subcaps. Like my hostile tab, I have a fleet-only (purple) profile available for special circumstances like Alliance Tournament practices on sisi/TD.

Tab 3 is hostile, neutral, and no-standing drones. This is a hugely overlooked overview type. But it is pretty important. It includes both sub-capital and capital drones.

Tab 4 is my drone tab. This one has no ships of any kind. What is does have are common celestials such as gates, sun, citadels, ECs, Refineries, and sov structures. It does not typically include asteroid belts or moons due to clutter.

Tab 5 is hostile, neutral, and no-standing capitals. All caps. Rorq, JFs, everything.

Tab 6 is a utility tab for things like containers, salvage, moons, POSes, biomass, or whatever might strike my fancy.

I also have profiles for things like asteroids, NPC entities, rats, and most PvE requirements. I use these in tabs 4, 5, and 6 as required. Tabs 1, 2, and 3 are never changed except under exceptional and tightly controlled circumstances.

Also, my tab 1 brackets are set to “show all” for two reasons. First is for cloaked movement because when I’m cloaked, I need to see those containers, wrecks, and floating bodies that can decloak me. Second is for spatial/situational awareness in combat.

Also, please enable the tactical overlay by default. Its hugely valuable.

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Just thinking out loud:

  • The fleet overviews used in null restrict allied ships to declutter. But a new person in high-sec needs to be aware that someone in their corp might be in a gank fleet. So a ships only overview/dscan might help introduce them to practices associated with threat identification.
  • I don’t favor a PVE only approach since that leaves a learning chasm for the player to later cross AND eve inherently is a PVP situation all the time. So your PVP makes sense although I’d call it ‘fight’ and have all hostile targets.
  • Maybe velocity and transversal should be part of the default so players start to learn. This maybe is a too much of a hope regarding starting to grasp some mechanics regarding DPS. But lessons such as spiraling and the underlying mechanics are often missed.
  • I wonder if ‘Travel’ is the same as “warp out”. Probably more than possible but it would be great for bookmarks to be available in Travel so warp to safe is mashing two or three clicks max.
  • Remove tag since that’s generally not used by newbies and even in mining fleets it’s a pain to use.
  • The tabs, and also the secondary choices that could be added, should be related to actions (moon mining, asteroid mining, travel, fighting, looting). I wonder if they should be aligned to career agents paths. There are few through lines in eve so I wonder if tutorial + career agents + overview should have deliberate language.

Sorry for the thought vomit but maybe there’s something in there for you to mull.

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Tabs can be configured later; my primary complaint about the default Overview and UI in general is that the windows are too narrow and not arranged properly on screen when the client is first started. And then the tutorial voice-acted mentor starts talking and giving orders, giving the impression that there’s just no time to rearrange your windows and resize the Overview.

Maybe CCP could implement some sort of one-time feature in the first few stages of the tutorial, where the overview window is widened and lengthened based on a percentage of the player’s screen resolution.

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Z-S also adds a ton of choices and odd symbols that confuses a new user. The newbie overview needs to have fewer choices that supports the user’s learning with simple customizations to the default. Since the newbie corps include Z-S in their on-boarding they will get there fast enough.

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Easy way to do it :

Implement Z-S Overview as default and you’re set