Photon UI - Now in Beta (Opt-Out)

Tried the new UI for a little while before ultimately reverting back to the old one for the present. I very much liked a lot of the changes to the new UI - the color options feel more vibrant, which makes it easier to see changes in things like the D-scan window, and the option to make windows “compact” is a huge benefit.

The reasons I switched back are largely because even with the compact mode, some windows’ margins are still too bulky. Space is at a premium on my screen, and I don’t like having to enlarge windows to show the same amount of info. The biggest offenders are:

– The drone window. At the moment I can see 5 launched drones within a set height, but in Photon with compact mode enabled it still only showed 4. Drones aren’t complicated, I’ve never had issues clicking the one I want, I’d rather have the smaller margins.

– The population bar in every chat window. I keep these as thin as possible to leave as much room for the chat as possible. In the old UI, thanks to how corp/standings and contact symbols overlay, I can still see enough of the name to know who’s who. In Photon, the margins have been increased just enough to push all but the first one or two characters out of view.

– Local bookmarks. This window is always open on my screen. It needs a compact mode in Photon, please! <3

That said, there are a lot of ways it improved upon the old UI, and these aren’t meant to be complaints, just the QOL things that make enough of a difference for me to swap back to the old version.

I’ll likely go back at some point this week and see if 90% UI helps at all, but when I got on today I just wanted to play, not spend an hour messing with settings.

If you want complaints… plz give a version with smaller margins pointy corners on all the boxes :rofl: :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

It wastes way too much space. It really looks like it is designed for touch screens (mobile?), which I find just bad for this game. Opted out - I hope at least the option to not have this will stay in the game.

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While I’ve been mostly focusing on negatives here, I do want to say… I like SOME elements of the photon UI. Some buttons which were just neutral colours with a border before, now have a more obvious highlight of “this is a button” - I wish this was CONSISTENT for buttons to actually look like buttons (which is isn’t in photon or the old UI), so there are steps in the right direction in that sense. I like the overall colour palette. I do find photon’s text to be more readable in some spaces because of the change in background, so while the borderless-but-bigger-deadzone thing is really frustrating, I’d like SOME of the photon UI changes to be imported into the old UI.

And while I don’t like removing “places” from the “people and places” menu, I DO like more functionality being added to the “local” locations page allowing it to also access other locations. My problem isn’t “don’t add it there” it’s “add it there but don’t remove it from the other place” - so half that change is good, and it’s only the other half I’m objecting to.

Some people do like the mobile/touchscreen interface look. Some might even have PCs with a touchscreen setup (not many) where it’s more functional. But this should VERY DEFINITELY NOT be the default. Keep it as an OPTION for people to enable, but let us keep more tightly-grouped information so we can actually have the functionality which more players WANT out of the game’s interface.

I had to opt out of the Photon UI as the contrast between the super bright white text and dark everything else was too great. It was giving me a headache. I tried turning down the brightness but it made everything else too dim.

To start with some context

(TLDR: ree I hate it, but will give it a go)

I have spent countless hours optimizing my UI over 4 Omega accounts and 7 alpha accounts.
I do various things, PvP, PvE, huffing, scanning, hunting, salvage, loot, industry and other things.

I do not complain about things too much but when I do to the right ears, they understand that I am very upset about something and usually it’s about my corpmates actions. Today after downtime was the first time I cursed CCP for forcing this UI upon me (everyone).

Let me explain. When downtime hits you sometimes are in that unique situation that you MUST log in after downtime to be able to keep a battle going. Today was that time among many others when we hunt in wormholes. And to log in, expecting to be able to go straight into a fight and be greeted by this. I told them on coms that CCP can go [insert curse words] themselves, turned off my clients and walked away from my desk. After about 10 minutes I went to Facebook, made a post which didn’t get through moderators of the EVE group there, REEEEed on discord and walked away again.

How I feel like they should have done this update is:
BIG WARNING WHEN YOU LOG IN NOTIFYING THAT THIS IS COMING AT DOWNTIME TOMORROW
I’m not big on reading up on updates.

After calming down, accepting that it is what it is and reading a little bit of reasoning I logged back in and found the disable button. Ahhh good old UI is back.

Then I started thinking, this is what is coming and I better start using it and get used to it or I’ll have to do it later and what better time than now. So Photon UI - Enable. And here we are.
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FEEDBACK SECTION:

Simple computer setup:
I5. 1070Ti, 2x 1080 monitors (1017 in windowed mode), 4 clients using Evo-Preview

I deleted all game and client settings from the local folder to give comparison. (I have many copies of my settings because things do tend to bug out for unknown reasons)

First I need to change to windowed mode and turn “music and world level down”

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1) User Interface

*I don’t like all these small icons on dropdown menus, they make them too cluttered and too distracting to find the correct thing. But the I like the “show info” icon, its highlighted and is very useful (would keep that but lose the other icons in dropdown menus.

*I feel it is distracting to show what you have selected as default “orbit / keep at range” in the drop down menus

*When you use the “look at” option and then you “left drag” in space to free look, there is a delay and the camera centers on your ship before rotating the camera. I don’t know why this is like that by default and I find it extremely annoying (I know it can be turned off but can’t figure it out, have it turned off on my main settings)

*Fonts and line height seems to be a little to large, high in most if not all windows

*Warning popups that require you to press OK to keep playing the game. (jump a wormhole and polarization isn’t finished) should just be a flashy warning like drone commands.

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2) Windows:

*I don’t like that I must turn compact mode on for each and every one of them

*The top bar is way too bulky

*I don’t like the glow over the selected window.

*Tabs feel too large and tab selection invisible due to the colored glow and not highlighting the tab

*No compact mode for chat windows

*Not possible to X out in compact mode

*The screenspace the window title takes up is to demanding on screen space

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3) Inventory:

*I don’t like that the est. price is on the left now and is not visible in compact mode

*By default takes up 1/6th of the screen space

*No loot all option in compact mode

*When in station you can’t see the ship type for the name and UI takes up much of the space

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4) Probe scanner:

*Hate that it opens in full screen by default and unclear where the dropdown menu it to change it to floating

*Recover probes and solar system map buttons are too hidden in the UI for their importance and even worse in compact mode

*It feels more natural flowing to have formation options and selections on the top of the window

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5) Directional scanner

*Angle and range slider tabs are and sliders feel to small and I would prefer them to be the other way around (range on right and angle on left)

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6) Drone window

*Not necessary to see drone icons while in space

*Space used for the window is to invasive and excessive for what it needs to do

*Drone health bars are too high contrast to everything else

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7) Locations window

*In the old UI the shortcut was ALT-E for agents, contacts and locations and the shortcut for “Local locations” was L … now L opens Locations (but does not close it again unless you click in space, dscan window or chat window)

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Bare in mind the first image is on default settings when you log in for the first time and you can see on the screen shot, there isn’t much gorgeous graphics left to enjoy (yes I can close the inventory), and by the way making these 8 or so windows compact mode does not do much for space, though it does help. There is practically no space to have your locked targets, hope you’re not a LOGIBRO (yes I did copy paste images together)

So after fiddling with the UI and doing the best I can to make it work for me which took me about 6 hours to figure everything out and be on the mindset (this is as good as it gets, hope it won’t get worse). So far I’m far from happy with the Proton UI, but I’m gonna give it my best shot.

Things I have done to improve my experience:
I copy my client/game settings on all my accounts

Selected the “carbon” color scheme
Transparency 100
Enable window blur
Compact mode all windows possible
Resized all windows
Manually set where locked targets appear
Changed drone window for minimalist appearance (those health bars!! )

If you read this far, thank you and I hope you work for CCP.

3 Likes

I have another issue with the drone window… can’t collapse BOTH drones in bay and drones in space anymore… once drones are launched… you are unable to collapse both… when I collapse drones in space, the drone is bay auto expands… and visa versa… I don’t like this.

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Almost all the feedback was ignored and CCP kept trucking on and insisted on wasting space instead of creating a good UI. For 20 Euro per month, I expect more than “more do-able”.

The only window that is actually a step forward (while also a few steps back) is the Drone window. It is now somewhat usable (still wastes space and has bad design features) and has actually new featurs that are somewhat useful. However, CCP needed weeks to make this tiny, simple window work somewhat properly. If they need the same amount of time to make all the other windows as usable and improve them as the drone window, Photon will be in a useful state by 2030. This is not what I consider a step in the right direction.

You do realize that, instead of your bootlicking, giving them negative feedback is actually helping to make EVE a better place and Photon an actually useful and good UI, right? Theey do not need to read how good the UI is, they hear that all the time in CCP HQ, otherwise they would not make this trainwreck OPT OUT for the players. What the UI devs need to hear is as much negative feedback as possible so that they fix the issues.

If they keep hearing the same lies that they keep getting fed in CCP HQ, Photon will remain a trainwreck like the new map. We really do not need more of that. Your instistence on positive feedback is not helping to make Photon better at all because Photon does not need fine-tuning, it needs a complete rework.

I was responding to the other guy.

All you are doing is focusing on the negative and unable to see the positive. So I won’t explain, since your likeness is more likely to still sit and bicker about it.

Welcome to the club! Doesn’t it feel nice to have an input and mold your game?

That isn’t constructive criticism. That is just naysaying. CCP doesn’t care if you think it is bad, they are asking for us to say specifically what is bad, and if we have suggestions about it.
“I don’t like the new thing” and “This thing is bad” is on par with being in a fleet and saying “There are lots of people here and I am being attacked, please help”, it is neither informative, concise, and nobody in that fleet is gonna help that dude.

If you elaborated on how you are fighting the interface, you would actually be doing everyone a favor and providing the information requested here.
And it isn’t my job to sift through all of your message history on the forums, if you have already been helpful and elaborate, I don’t care, I was responding to the other dude above and others who just whine without understanding the purpose of this forum post (likely a lost cause for me to due so, but damned if I don’t try) and am responding now to your message above, where you also gave 0 constructive communication and failed to understand the essence of my message.

Again,

I have. If you follow the link in my original post in this thread, you’ll see that every one of the issues of wasted space I have either persist or actually get worse in compact mode.

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Well, that’s a lovely bit of evasion, isn’t it?

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What is positive about Photon? What does Photon actually do better than the old UI? Give some examples and then we see if they hold up to standards. So far you have not provided a single good or better aspect of Photon that is not already present in the old UI or that the old UI does better.

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I have tried Compact and it does not make the UI more compact. What it does is remove important ui functionality from the primary interface level and moves that into sub menus (like hangar display settings or close button) or removes them completely (like hangar volume display or active overview setting name). It leaves the one and only thing almost unchanged that makes the UI actually bloated and a waste of space: The ridiculous padding. It almost feels like CCP thinks of Photon UI as a rubber room with the amount of padding they shove into our faces.

Compact Mode is not the solution, Compact Mode is just another problem.

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мне он почти нравится для меня мелкие значки захват цели , варп ,войт в док .

I said earlier the compact mode was great. And it is.
However, I have just realized that I play already on 90% scaling. Any other scaling and the windows are HUGE. Massive wastes of space.
Calm down on the window sizes CCP. Most users want more space on their screen, not less. Compact mode gets rid of lots of the useless names and borders, but NONE of our windows need to be restricted to a minimum size.
PLEASE give us the option to make any window whatever dimension WE choose.

3 Likes

+1 on the “please ensure Photon compact mode is as compact as the old UI” - space is at an absolute premium in many people’s setups and things like the probing window, d-scan window and overview columns (probably the three most important windows in the game?) all require greater scrolling if you use Photon. Bunch of other things like information disappearing out of the edges of windows like volumes and going behind drop down menus is also not ideal.

Ideally, if/when the old UI is removed completely, migrated client profiles will use compact mode by default as well.

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Why was this added as the default now? I enjoyed my smaller icons with the old… Now, I have a damn arrow that I don’t need because I had all the icons while they were smaller.

Also… Why can’t this new Photon UI be disable before launching an account in the Launcher?

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How would one fix their icons after turning this off? That is my only issue with this crap being the default… I have bigger icons on the left and the arrow after disabling this Photon UI…

I want my smaller icons back.

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If you mean the size of your NEOCOM menu icons, you have always been able to resize it. Drag the edge of the menu bar.

Positive feedback:

The disable button is the best part of Photon UI!

Great job CCP! :+1:

Aside from that:

  • Window borders are huge.
  • Transparency is inconsistently applied; some windows are unaffected.
  • Everything seems huge. Unplayable on my 15 in. laptop.
  • Overview icons are ugly, and overly large. The most information dense part of EvE doesn’t need to be HARDER to read!
  • There is no way anyone doing GUI work looked at the industry or market windows on a 15 in. laptop screen.
  • I’m tired of having to hunt around for the close / minimize / etc. buttons. Top-right and prominent please on every element.
  • The launcher is still broken when it comes to the character screen.
    ** Clicking on the items window sometimes logs in a random character.
    ** Dragging items to a character still appears to be random whether it will take multiple attempts to actually work … or login the character.
    ** Clicking on a character often logins another random character.
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Right now, I can not make them smaller; can’t even resize them after going back to how it was, yesterday.

1 Like