Tried it when it first came out. Clunky and very hard to read, hurt my eyes. Very cheesy to default it on the last update, thought my video driver was going wacky. Thank goodness for the opt-out. Please no more.
1 Like
The problem is that this kind of change shows that the designers are not used to play the game.
The goal really looks like making the UI touch friendly - a common trend in SW design - which is in fact nonsense for this kind of game.
The worst problem, that every /player/ experiences immediately, is the loss of screen space due to excessive waste for button sizes, window borders, item spacing etc.
Compact mode does not solve the problem - it is still worse than the original.
If CCP wants to introduce new technology for the UI and improve performance, great. But it should not compromise usability.
I wish they take the time to resize dimensions, padding and margins all around - the good news is that they have an excellent reference: the current UI (i.e. before Photon), so it’s not that hard.
3 Likes
Howdy,
An interesting new look but everything is bigger, I see less information on the same screen space as before. Compact mode in the inventory removes the search bar which kind of forces you not to use compact mode. Can’t work out how to remove the drone thumbnails, Drones now needs to be made larger to see them all in the same space. Everything needs to be smaller IMO.
Thanks
1 Like
It turns out that my issue with going back to the old UI is of my own doing; I had “Locked” the Neocom Menu to prevent myself from making it ‘go bigger’ by accident.
With the Directional Scanner window; why is Range and Angle now next to each other? With the old UI, Range was above Angle…
Also, with the Probe Scanner; why is the “Recover Active Probes” at the bottom just above the “Launch” button?
So, looking back a bit into the explanation of what Photon is meant to do:
“the Photon UI project aims to create a unified style for EVE Online’s user interface.”
It fails. Some windows can’t be made compact, others are only compact mode, arbitrarily and inconsistently with no reason behind the limitation. Within the Photon UI, the compact and non-compact versions aren’t consistent with one another in layout, functionality or style. Even within the same version, some windows are different from others.
“While not drastically different from what you may be used to,”
The feedback about “wtf?” from people seeing the new interface tells me this is also a failed goal.
“consistency is the driving force behind these new designs.”
NOPE. This is, like the rest, the exact opposite of what you’ve achieved. Compact mode doesn’t have consistent button inputs which match the non-compact design. That would be how to make the interface consistent.
The spacing between interface elements is an actively BAD design decision for this game, and NEEDS to be rolled back. At best, you can MAYBE justify adding it as an option - labelled as “touchscreen mode” - but even that would be unhelpful.
Similarly, the removal of one-touch close and minimise buttons from some windows, and from compact mode in general, is actively harmful to accessibility of the game’s interface. This is NOT something you can make any kind of compromise on. Ever.
The old UI loads faster, this is more important than “looking modern” ever will be. EVE’s interface was good because it was FUNCTIONAL and this is a massive compromise of that functionality. You can’t afford to make the game directly harder to play by forcing an interface which impairs the usability of everything by loading slower and causing chat to load and update slower. That’s harmful to play experience, regardless if the player is new or old. These problems are, however, happening to a lesser degree - but more than they used to - on the old interface as well. The game is functioning worse now than it was. And one of my biggest compliments to the game was that it runs well on my aging laptop. It looks pretty, but the interface doesn’t feel like it’s being lagged out in exchange for good graphics. Except now, it feels like things are taking longer to show up than they should. And turning the graphics down (or off) isn’t fixing the problem. I’ve only been here a few weeks, but I’ve gotten used to things loading at a consistent speed when I click to do something, and they’re not working on the same time scale they used to, right after the update pushing the new UI live. If this is the result of some other change in the background, try and find a better way, because that’s a problem.
Some people have noted that certain elements of the old UI have started breaking since the change, some players noticing local chat not showing up for sometimes almost a minute after moving into a new system, and others noticing that contracts aren’t available in the old UI. There are other problems, but those are a couple of specific examples I’ve seen people commenting on here, in game, or both. It feels like the game client is having more trouble with communication, and that trouble started perfectly concurrent with the UI update. Some of these issues might be unrelated, or coincidental in their timing, BUUUUT they hit right when the change to the UI did, so whatever else was changed, if it was something else causing this, roll that back urgently because it’s harmful to the game.
-bring back the spacing which actually allows necessary information to fit on the screen.
-make the compact mode not waste more space than the old non-compact mode does.
-stop breaking the old interface with updates (I’ve seen issues happening with it on several occasions since the photon UI became default).
-make sure it doesn’t impact performance negatively. Revert whatever changes have been made which are impairing the game’s performance in the past couple of days.
-realistically, roll the new UI back into alpha until it’s ACTUALY READY THIS TIME before pushing it out onto everyone again.
-if you actually do the above, GIVE IN-GAME NOTICE THAT IT WILL BE HAPPENING this time, instead of relying on players being heavily invested and active in the community in specific spaces you share this information to hear that change is coming. I know this game has a community who tend to be more invested in it than a lot of other games, but it’s still not the right way to handle a rollout of a BETA TEST FEATURE like this. Have a notification that pops up on login on the day before the change happens, telling everyone “there’s a big change coming tomorrow, just to let you know in advance” so it’s got some warning for active players.
Adding to that final point, you could even change the “feature preview” page to allow players to OPT OUT OF ALL BETA TEST FEATURES and have no forced individual opt-out on future updates like this one. If users are ok with getting the beta test version of the new interface thrown at us - I will be as long as you only do it when it’s ACTUALLY BETA-READY - then they can leave it on the default. If they want to see all the shiny new pretties and risk the interface being broken because of it, they can permanently opt-in to the feature previews, and have to manually opt out of any specific changes that get rolled out over time. And for those who AREN’T willing to pay for the privelege of being beta testers, have the “permanent opt out” so you only get the final feature-complete end result thrown onto your screen once it goes live properly.
There’s a lot you could learn from looking at other companies and how they beta test things, and how they’ve done it wrong and you should AVOID making the same mistakes. But you didn’t, you’ve just made even bigger mistakes than a lot of them are making. This is something which you’d do better to roll back EARLY rather than leaving it live while it’s not nearly in a beta-ready state. Because it isn’t.
13 Likes
Maybe most painful problem - TOO SMALL icons. size not changed in normal/compact mode. For new players it will real hell.
Teddy Gbyc pretty well nailed it.
Bloated UI with no info added in exchange. It means wider eye movements to take in info.
Drop shadows don’t add info to the pilot, but add visual processing time.
Locations are now harder to pick out.
In-space drone status was for some reason placed as lowest priority in the window. I don’t need to know what the drones in my bay are doing, I need to easily see my drones in space.
Adding padding to the tables is an absolute waste. Again, it increases eye movement needed to take in info and that means less efficiency of motion and slower reaction times.
A useful in-flight UI should be dense in information, compact in size so much of it can be taken in at a single glance, minimalist, and high contrast with active threats ceded highest priority for visibility.
The fancy buttons in “Selected Item” window just take up space without adding more info than the smaller, more efficient ones in the older UI. They detract rather than adding to the gameplay.
It looks nice, but in a counterproductive way. The effort to make things look nice/cool would be better spent on ship skins, and the UI should be focused on relevant data and efficient use of screen real estate.
4 Likes
Adding to that again: Opting out and not opting in to Test features should also mean that they don’t spill over into the default experience. Photon spills over regularly into the default UI experience and deliberately makes it worse. This is not how a Dedicated Test Environment is supposed to work.
2 Likes
Can you please explain the problem with just reducing the padding and making the header bars thinner like the current/old UI?
It would do a lot to help us understand the design philosophy if we had some explanation, at present due to the lack of 2 way dialog the player base is feeling ignored, considering confidence in CCP is quite low right now it would be a great time to interact.
So many of the comments in this and the previous threads going right back to conception on sisi have repeated the request to make it smaller, at every opportunity to reduce the space used you seem to have just made more problems, to acknowledge it you added compact mode rather than just reduce the padding, now you have to tinker with compact mode because its still not as good as the current/old UI, if you had just reduced all the padding in the first place we wouldn’t need the compact mode at all.
So many players are trying to help you get this right, so many people saying the same things and right from the start. “Reduce all the padding” “Header bars are too big” Sort that out and a huge chunk of the negative feedback will go away, people wont just turn it off right away and then you can focus on details and perfecting. Surely that’s a good thing right?
Please can you just tell us why you are so determined to keep the bloated sizing.
6 Likes
Please add an indicator to buttons when tabbing through fields. For instance, in the old UI, when making a contract, I can enter a name in the Private field, and then tab to the “Next” button. With the new UI I cannot tell if a button has been selected via the tab function.
3 Likes
Opted out.
The wallet window doesn’t resize, and I’m looking at my transactions 5 at a time. Pointless change to something that didn’t need it.
3 Likes
Their goal is to reduce information density to reduce the risk of quitting of gullible new players from information overload. They achieve that by making everything more spacious and hiding information behind additional menus or out of plain sight due to the larger padding. They require people to scroll more, click more, search more, guesstimate more.
Please improve the spacing, everything looks like it’s floating off, let the fonts and colors be adjustable, try to save more space everywhere.
I liked the old UI and keep it is as long as possible, the new one is OK, but I dont want to beta testing, when coming from work and hang out in space, please test it yourselves and also put people 40+ in front of the screen.
1 Like
Strong agree - I’m only a beginner and losing my sisters probes takes a big chunk of my ISK to replace
Yep; the Loot All button is essential for me - I need to get out of there before the sleeper baddies wake up!
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Them testing this themselves is what lead to this UI design. CCP testing things like this themselves is the perfect recipe for disaster.
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Photon UI seems to be another case of “change for the sake of change” rather than an actual committed focus on improving the EVE UI.
Good UI design isn’t about pimplights, neon signs, and flashy bits. The EVE UI already requires having way too much information on the screen all the time - adding more blank space around each line only makes this worse, not better.
Or I can turn on Compact mode - which removes the absolutely necessary _ and X options even though they require no extra room.
Sticking glowing colored buttons in front of me every few minutes simply causes eyestrain, not convenience. Moving buttons to the opposite side of the box doesn’t help when my eyes and fingers have over a decade of training to look on the other side.
I assume it’s already been pointed out, but when I launch drones and the new larger drones lines fill the box before they’re all launched… the launch just stops. 3 drones out, 2 stay in the bay.
Certainly I could go through every UI element on dozens of characters and adjust, tweak, re-size, make some compact and others not… but why would I? Some people have told me they love the new look of the UI and it adds “life and color” to the interface. (Presumably mobile addicts, poor souls.) But for me Photon simply gets in the way, requires dozens if not hundreds of finicky adjustments, and provides zero actual benefit - I haven’t found a single thing yet that’s faster or more efficient. (Admittedly I haven’t looked everywhere.)
I do like a couple small areas, like talking to agents giving a nicer look. But if you want a real UI improvement then let me accept and turn in agent missions remotely after 1.0 standing or something. This flying back and forth simply to accept a mission is nonsense.
All in all, an updated UI needs to offer actual convenience, time savings, better and more understandable information groupings, and less clicking. Flashy lights and neon bars don’t cut it.
And of course, the final killer issue… Photon is obviously a “work in progress”. Kind of like the chat system was on/off broken for like 2 years. If you want me to QA your buggy software then pay me. Otherwise let me get on with my game and keep the UI out of my way.
6 Likes
But the UI has to be changed afaik, because afaik they cant do certain things or improvements in the old one They are stuck with limitations the old project has afaik
The dev team will have to pull this through regardless, they need this
I like the new UI a lot, there’s a few windows that are still messy, but this is Beta, that’s fine
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I’m not too familiar with software development but in my opinion its not a good idea to combine beta status program modules in a productive system and see what happens… but they are doing it.
I will not speculate why CCP decided it to do it that way but it is a bad idea!