margins in overview (THE most information dense element) are WAY too wide
likely all margins in most windows are annoying but these are the most critical
UPD: okay i found the compact mode by reading the forums but otherwise its existence is not obvious
without icon you can’t easily see what type of item is selected (i.e. station, stargate, beacon, etc)
speed indicator is too low contrast to be read at a glance
not sure why PI extractor buttons appear almost as disabled when in fact they aren’t, improperly telegraphed status or bug?
Another one: In the old Drone UI, hovering over a drone would tell you whether or not it was assisting. While I like being able to see the new information, I would also like to be able to see if my assist command went through.
At first this whole thing really confused me, mostly because i didn’t see it coming. There was some annoyances about some things having disappeared, but it was more of a case of it being moved.
For the most part it was a net positive since most of those locations are now in a better spot.
Just a heads-up, “the old code made us do it” (or not do it) is the oldest excuse in CCP’s book (well that plus “the problems are due to players exploiting our code improperly”).
Basically it means “we wrote crappy code back then, and laid off all the folks that understood it, and now we have all new crappy coders who can’t be arsed to understand the old stuff, They want to write all new buggy code instead of learning and updating the old buggy code”.
But, on the off-chance this isn’t just the same-old same-old story from CCP, the first thing they should be doing if it must be re-done is replicating the old UI with a few, significant improvements.
(Note: forcing me to toggle all my windows into Compact mode, hiding the X option, and adding windows that don’t even have a compact option isn’t “an improvement”.)
It’s also got performance issues and bugs - significant ones so far in the Drones window at least. And on my setup in DX 11, it’s got lag, performance issues, pauses, missed button clicks and occasional short screen freezes.
It’s one thing to say, “this needs to get done”. It’s another thing entirely to shove it in everybody’s face when it’s still (IMO) beta version.
I understand your points, there’s some stuff going wrong right now that will have to be fixed.
I was from the industry by the way, certain projects are not even a problem regarding the code itsself, but its related to the project’s architecture.It’s like mixing Lego with Mega Bloks, they won’t fit unless you rewrite and if you rewrite then something will break somewhere. It’s hard.
CCP has to do this new UI, it’s important otherwise they won’t be able to do new things as we and they want
Bulky borders
large icons
lack of distinct grid lines for separation of information.
It’s just all around bad.
Also, it feels like it responds slower than the old UI.
One thing I know for certain is that when launching drones, it launches 1 at a time instead of 3 at a time like the old UI did. And it tries to do that for all drones in the bay if you launch the entire bay, so you get spammed with error messages for every drone in the bay beyond 5 (or whatever your ships drone bandwidth capacity is).
Frequently receive “Slow Down” notifications for menial tasks.
UI doesn’t like to stay in one place between client sessions.
Lots of clipping problems where the UI clips icon and selection graphics.
Capacitor graphic lost contrast between elements, which makes information in it less distinct.
No bookmark folder separation in the right click menu - goes with ‘lack of separation of information’
This is called A/B Testing and is pretty standard in any industry. The big rub is that it’s usually done to a subset of users first, and a more refined product is tested on the whole pop after. This product doesn’t feel refined at all.
I personally wouldn’t have minded a UI update. And seeing varying changes since 2003, not a super uncommon thing for CCP to do for some random reason. But what does irritate me is that now I have to resize, re-place, fine-tune and adjust every placement of the UI that I spent a fair amount of time over an extended period of time fine-tuning to my preference. If y’all would have NOT messed with that, I would accept it more. But now I have to opt-out, restart and find out that my fine-tuned placement is all buggered to Heaven and back. These kinds of setbacks to your perceived “updates” is what irritates me. Please be better.
CCP doesn’t have to do this new UI. They should do a new UI. This new UI is only going to hamstring them into a badly designed, badly laid out, poorly implemented and constraining UI. CCP has not had any issues coming up with new UIs for different windows in the past that were purpose-made for each individual task. Each new UI was made to fit the intentions that the menu or in-space action purported. With this new UI, they can’t do that anymore.
That’s on top of all the shortcomings, bad compromises and outright bad design choices that have been made so far and continue to be made because that is CCP tradition, and CCP does not break with bad traditions.
Personally, for me it’s not even a problem that I have to re-adjust my UI placement a bit if a new UI is being introduced. It’s only natural that some things change. My problem is that I have to adjust my UI placement and design because CCP introduces waste and unnecessary things for no good reason and removes, hides, obstructs other things for no good reason that I use on a regular basis.
I have no problem making my windows a bit bigger to see more information in a better designed, new UI. I have a really big problem with having to increase window size to see the same amount of information as before and/or lose lots of information just to have the same number of icons visible. That is not good UI design. It’s crap. Plain and simple. No amount of fancy new, flat design can cover that up.
too flashy - it tired my eyes after less than 5min (yes, I know I am not the youngest player, but I am the type of player that can pay CCPs game fees - does that matter to any of the developer?)
contrasts are off - white characters on a bright green text highliting (which seems default for many windows now) is just not readable
shiny borders everywhere without apparent function distract the eye and makes it wonder to places there is no need to
transparency seems to be not possible to reduce anymore, that causes a highly reduced intake of information from a window due to distraction to the underlying background.
Did you devs ever consult a GUI-psychologist on this new GUI?
conclusion: I wil not let my son play EVE anymore. He is slightly epileptic and this GUI will mean endless torture each night. I can only hope that it gets massivley changed or has an opt-out forever - which I doubt.
It feels like I’ve stepped back to windows 95 - the graphics are too small and blocky - On the station panel the icons have gone small when they used to be big - I can’t see them now, and in space the dscan window is hard to read, as is the overview. Don’t even ask me about the drone groups - I can only see one at a time, I don;t know what the others are doing…
Who the hell looked at this, scratched their chin and thought, yeah I like this, I’ll sign-off on the change! It’s awful!
This isn’t a situation where you need the “imo” qualifier. They’re openly saying it’s beta while shoving it in everyone’s face in spite of knowing it’s not finished. And a lot of us (I’m one of them) are saying it’s not even beta-ready in its current state. Some are going so far as to suggest it’s not even in a state worthy of calling alpha and should still be deemed a pre-alpha build, but I think that’s going a bit too far.
The devs have run an alpha test of the new UI with users trialling it. The feedback they’re getting spammed with now is the same feedback they were getting consistently from most of their opt-in alpha testers. They didn’t fix the most commonly-mentioned functionality-breaking problems they’ve been getting since they first started asking for feedback, so they haven’t made the progress that’s needed for it to be beta-ready yet.
The issue of forcing a beta test onto users with an “opt out” status is just making the failure to meet basic expectations for a beta test even worse.
Photon UI: https://i.imgur.com/8Y2hKXL.jpeg
OMG all that wasted fluffy space! I understand that there are compact modes for most windows, but then there are various losses of FUNCTIONALITY which is ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE!!!
Classic UI: https://i.imgur.com/2UVFJa0.png
Little wasted space with clear and distinct color hues (even with my partial colorblindness). I clearly and instantly see that there are 3 jumps before reaching Highsec.
Photon UI: https://i.imgur.com/gLfKWoE.png
More wasted space, and I mistakenly see that I have one(!!!??!!!) jump before reaching Highsec since the color hues are melting together.
Unless Photon UI becomes at least as functional while using no more screen real-estate as the
Classic UI, I will ALWAYS choose the Classic version, period.
I understand that many people do like the new ui, even with it’s problems. Cool, I get it. I’m happy for them.
Do NOT remove the opt-out option, period!
Edit:
I have a single 24" monitor, running up to four clients at a time.
Fixed Window
1920x1080
UI Scaling 100% (cannot use 90% due to poor vision)
The issue is we tried this. Repeatedly. None of the feedback in this thread is new. It’s all been said - and ignored - repeatedly before.
And some (lots) of us are salty basically because we’re sick of being ignored.
I specifically asked for the ability to test this on a single account rather than on all accounts, but that hasn’t been provided. So, I either really mess myself around repeatedly to test it, or I can’t. As a paying customer, if they want me to test, I am cool with that - but make it easy for me. All they needed to do was make the UI selection a per account or per character option, but they haven’t done so.
“AFAIK” how, exactly? Are you part of the dev team?
Anyway, even if this were the case, it is no reason to mess up the UI. If they need to change the drawing engine or whatever, sure they can do it and keep the same layout as the current (pre-Photon) UI. Larger padding does not come from new graphics, it comes from deliberate design.
Why? Do we have a list of the problems that they are trying to address? We have a lot of assumptions and inferences, but I don’t think we have anything conclusive here. This would be VERY helpful when judging the success of the new UI.
I work in IT, I’ve been a developer, and I still work very closely with them. Yes, there are real challenges with integrating new code with legacy code. That’s one reason I believe they’re trying to re-write the UI.
But that isn’t an excuse for forcing unfinished code with clear flaws onto paying customers. Yes, they can opt out - but that’s still just not right. If they didn’t get enough people testing it, the solution isn’t to force customers into it - it’s to find out what about testing wasn’t compelling, and to make it compelling (offer a new skin for spending 10 hours in game active with the skin active, do something to make people WANT to get into it and play with it. Don’t just ram it down people’s throats and force them to get out of it because it’s simply not ready for that.
Beta testing should NEVER be forced on customers (though having been part of coding since before the Internet was a thing, the quality of code released to customers has dropped substantially - because online fixes are easy), and sure as hell not those who are paying to play the game.
A/B testing is pretty standard. But as you’ve noted, this isn’t how to do it. Forcing everyone into it isn’t A/B testing.
Again, is it proven and or accepted that a new UI is really needed? Totally agree with you that whilst a new UI may be beneficial, this attempt (and attempts leading up to it, which have been very widely criticised) is not the solution, it’s only going to accelerate the rate at which players leave the game.
Another issue I had is that characters that never had the Photon UI activated had the neocom changed on them - it was set back to the original default, and that broke their screen layouts (it moved any window next to the neocom over to the right, overlapping it over other windows. I’m not sure why changing the neocom was necessary for the classic UI…
CCP used to have a qualified economist on their books apparently, and they (again apparently) let him/her go. I cannot see any evidence that anyone with any sort of qualifications in UI/UX design has been involved in this new interface.
What would I like to see:
The success criteria defined for the new UI - so that changes can be measured against it.
A universal window design created, and used as the template for every window in the game (where possible, there will undoubtably be SOME small number of edge-cases where the standard design doesn’t quite work.
A secondary design used for those edge-cases.
If CCP are concerned that there’s “information overload” - that’s not a UI issue, it’s a game mechanics/design issue. Eve is a complex game, and to be successful, you need to see a lot of data. Changing the interface to hide information isn’t the solution, hiding necessary information and making it harder to find will only make things worse, not better.
For me adding the icons on drones in the drone window is not a good thing!
now i cant see all the drones in space without making that windo alot larger and that is not a good thing.
and if its possible reduce the space between the rows in the overview by 25 %
