Photon UI - Now in Beta (Opt-Out)

[D_Kins_Cider]

@Dace_Cad

We were notified about a year ago, and again blatantly at Fanfest, and again in updates since then. We are now in the final stages before it becomes the norm. If you cared, you waited a long time to speak up since this is your first time posting.

I’ve spoken against the recent UI changes repeatedly. But thanks.

@Dace_Cad

A general recommendation to all, instead of naysaying the inevitable (and from a design point of view a general move forward), this is a great opportunity to give input and help shape the future of your EVE.

Please explain how it’s a step forward. There’s more wasted space, there’s no additional functionality, and much of the interface seems a regression to being less useful, not more. Not all change is good - and this change is NOT good.

Regarding shaping the future - CCP have repeatedly failed to listen to the players on this. What makes you think they’ll listen now?

I’ve given plenty of feedback - both here and in support/bug fix/etc tickets. I can count on the fingers on a single hand the number of times in the last ~12 years that I’ve had a direct response to that feedback, or seen changes to the game that reflect the fact that the changes or bugs are relevant.

@Dace_Cad

I personally made an effort to try out Photon over the last many months, I had a lot of conflict with the original design (and still do), but after input many positive changes have been made, and it is at least a lot more do-able.

So did I. And I’ve always gone back to the original interface because the Photon interface is either a retrograde step or requires more effort than a paying customer should be asked to make to make the game playable. I am all for the game mechanics being challenging, but the interface changes are making even just sitting in a station and spinning your ship harder (because the new interface hurts your eyes.

CCP have been told repeatedly that the direction they’re taking their interface in is a backwards step. It’s nowhere near ready - it’s unfinished, it’s inconsistent, it has glaring problems - and now they’re thrusting it down everyone’s throats - sure, they’ll get feedback now, but I suspect the feedback they need most will be the number of people who make an effort with it, then just go back to the classic interface.

One of the joys of Eve is that it’s a complex game. On a given ship I might have ~10 modules to activate at various times in various combinations in response to a variety of inputs. I get that making decisions about what to do to a particular input should be challenging - but that should be in terms of mental stimulation, not in terms of fighting the interface.

Yes, there are other games that have bold, space-wasting, in-your-face interfaces - but in those games you’re generally dealing with less complex situations and have less options to worry about (choose a weapon, blast away with it, or run).

How about we reverse this - if you like it, you say so, then shut up. Let the rest of us who have genuine issues with it try to communicate them, and hopefully see some improvement.

[Moonlight_Mernher]

I 2nd this. Why change the color pallete of something that works?
These color values simply carry information for anyone who played this game long enough.

Understand that most people with color vision deficiencies can still distinguish a lot of color hues when given enough time and practice. And if you change that, especially for colors that are closer together in the color space - you make a disservice to everyone. And to people with those anomalies (myself included) especially.

Just don’t.

[D_Kins_Cider]

@ForsakenSquire_gamer

Dont lie it looks like a mobile game and if you think that way sorry to say it nice to see CCP doing updates like this

You’re entitled to your opinion, and so is he.

Why does it look like a mobile game? Because they’re dramatically increasing the size of elements on screen, as if they’re designed to be touched on a touch-screen with fingers, rather than clicked on with a small mouse cursor. There’s a reason that mobile/touchscreen interfaces have large fonts/buttons/etc - and it’s because fat human fingers combined with most touch-screen technologies are quite imprecise.

[Self_Ctrl]

Your first suggestion is possibly the most annoying thing ever about eve UI, especially when you have very little available space and windows are all over each other. I don’t even bother locking my windows because I have to reposition them so often.

[D_Kins_Cider]

@ForsakenSquire_gamer

First off most of the eve player basically hate changes but that life you go buy a new tv a new mobile phone a new game consoles but when eve put new elements in to there 3D engine then you hate it that why you lot killed the idea of walking in the station

I don’t hate change, not at all.

I hate change for the sake of change though. There are challenges with the current interface, no doubt, but I don’t see anything in the Photon UI that addresses them, and what I do see is a number of changes that make the game worse, not better.

Please explain to me for example why when I hover my mouse over a drone in the drone window I need a pop-up information screen for my drones (which I could already get by right clicking and selecting “Information”, assuming I hadn’t already learned most of the traits of my Warrior IIs - fast light drones that do explosive damage) rather than information about what the drone is doing (assisting/guarding fleet member X) - which I can no longer get at all.

[D_Kins_Cider]

@Alyss_Rentori

Thank you for letting me opt out. The additional clicks just to close the planetary industry view was annoying.

Because the existing PI interface didn’t already require far too many clicks and wasn’t already complicated enough…

[Rufus_McFarleigh]

This too. I used to be able to see all the buttons with the window as small as possible. Now you cover the text with the arrows in compact mode. CCP Plz.

[GothicNightmare]

Opted out because of the horrible contrasting is actually painful to the eyes
The windows resizing I have to stretch my drones and overview out to see my columns properly and my screen seems to have vanished.
The lag… by the goddess the lag, just typing there’s like a 2 second delay trying to type in the chats, even on potato mode there’s just no relief here.
The only plus side is some of the stuff is easier to read, that I’m alright with but… it’s not worth the rest, I’m out.

[Arrendis]

@Dace_Cad

I personally made an effort to try out Photon over the last many months, I had a lot of conflict with the original design (and still do), but after input many positive changes have been made, and it is at least a lot more do-able.

So, the ui is ‘a lot more do-able’, but there are still problems… but people should stop ‘whining’ about the problems because they had plenty of time to bring up the exact same issues we’ve been bringing up since literally the day it was unveiled, but we’re contributing nothing.

Sure, ok.

[Yolad_Presindo]

It would be SO appreciated if you could fix the window displays. The drone tab takes up a ton of the screen (who needs to see them anyway??) and the Wallet tab is way too small. Also, I don’t like blue a whole lot, so it would be appreciated if it could be white again?

[Zimmerious]

Good luck.

[Sophie_Celestria]

Really don’t like how the UI is so focused to be applicable to standard apps & games on a phone or tablet. It’s an awful eysore. I managed to get around this on the last major UI update and revert to my old settings. However this time even removing the Photon UI it has trashed all by user profile settings and reverting to backed up older settings 5 months ago makes no difference because the new UI is defaulted to be on the moment you login over writing all your settings.

The main side bar is massive. Why is it 2 times larger than before. The window information is always so oversized and most of my screen is taken up with too many windsow prior to this update. Why have you changed the font again to something that doesn’t look right in the context of it’s surroundings. All in all I shall now be leaving EVE. I managed to stay around after fixing it last time but this is the final straw. I don’t think the EVE UI has been going in a good direction for a long time. The previous updates to windows such as the skills section started it all and evertything is flowing in the same big blocky square mobile game look. Dreadful. I shall not be supporting it’s future developments.

[Anah_Karah]

I honestly thought I had broken my UI by playing around with my graphics settings. Turns out its a feature.

Also, my graphics card (2080) is going nuts with this turned on.

Constructive feedback.

• Border shadows on windows are huge, and I hate that they go neon when selected. It draws focus from what’s going on in space. An option to disble would be nice, as I’m sure some find it helpful.

• The original fleet window should not have anything removed from it. There is no reason to hide the fleet finder tab whilst in a fleet. I don’t want to have to drop a fleet to be able to find another one.

• When a destination is set, the security colours of the star systems in the onscreen route are hard to discern. the old, brighter colours were better.

• Please add transparancy to the star system map. Also the background colour of the star system map is not matching the theme (amarr is purple?)

• I find the white on black where ship speed is shown harder to read

Please add custom colour schemes. These are kind of gross

Now for some things i like.

• COMPACT MODE IS GREAT. PLEASE ENABLE IT FOR EVERY WINDOW. LIKE EVERY WINDOW. EVEN THE SOLAR SYSTEM MAP WHEN IT IS UNDOCKED. YES I KNOW THAT MEANS I WILL HAVE TO PRESS F9 OR GET IT STUCK.

• I also like that the neocom can be made smaller than before.

I like the broadcast buttons in the fleet tab. They are much easier to discern.

[Timmy_Chan]

I love Photon. You guys need to try compact mode before you complain about it.

[DarkanZ (Darkan451)]

thank god there is a way to disable that crappy UI. it looks like like “kaka”. just keep it simple as it was. And please please do not FORCE people to try “■■■■” after patches. i thought for a moment that i have to unsub from that hellish looking interface

[QuakeGod]

You are in the vast minority. This thread has had maybe 10 positive reviews versus 200 negative…

[Omnis_Decline]

@Timmy_Chan

I love Photon. You guys need to try compact mode before you complain about it.

So… you didn’t read the several dozen “even compact mode isn’t as small as the old UI’s NORMAL size” comments? Because most of the feedback is actively addressing that compact mode doesn’t fix the problems. Because… and this is really important to realise…
COMPACT.
MODE.
DOES.
NOT.
FIX.
THE.
NEW.
UI.

[Tainted_Walnut]

garbage ui. you cant even make the side tool bar and the extended option window that pops up solid color so all the words behind it bleed through and make it hard to see the options.

[Burnin_Jays]

New UI is trash… if this fully releases, please retain the option to disable it.

[Posh_Wynoa_Spice]

Photon UI is still miles and miles away from being ready enough to be launched with the game.

Solving the ‘technical’ issues IS NOT ADEQUATE WHEN THERE ARE SIGNIFICANT, SYSTEMATIC ISSUES WITH HOW THE UI WAS DESIGNED.

It was clearly designed by people who don’t play eve, and have at best a surface level idea of which part of the UI is used to do what.

Adding layers of extra clicks to do PI, open/adjust the find fleet window, significantly fewer list of names in local, etc… these “ideas” stink of UX development by people who have not invested a significant amount of time in the game to know what the UI is supposed to be doing for the user, and tested to the point of “clicking the button no longer crashes/freezes the game, and clicking it does what it is suposed to do!”.

The key underlying issues seem to be ignored. I don’t give a flying ■■■■ if the text is off center, what I care about is the same types of information being available to to me with same or greater quantity in a means which I can process in the same or less time.

This has already plagued the new AIR window, as well as the agency tabs, which are in dire need of an overhaul to use LESS space to provide the same amount of information.

TL;DR additional polish on the turd will not make it stink less. CCP is failing to realize the underlying issues – the issue is the design team and the test team for this UI horse ■■■■ having very little experience playing Eve, and it is badly showing.