Photon UI - Now in Beta (Opt-Out)

[Al_O_ehI]

Having switched between the two a bit more, part of the problem is the “compact member list” in chat windows is huge compared to what it replaced, so you really feel the dead space a lot more for chat windows where you’re trying to be space-efficient (all of them, in my case).

The in-space icons for gates/moons/belts being wiped out by the scrollbar is just silly.

@Omnis_Decline

The density of information in the UI is a necessary feature for EVE gameplay, not something to “fix”

This. I’m genuinely unsure how hard it is to check all the old UI windows and just make sure compact mode is a) available in Photon for ALL of them and b) is as compact and informative as the old version. I REALLY think it is worth the dev time to do this though.

[Dyver_Phycad]

@Al_O_ehI

This. I’m genuinely unsure how hard it is to check all the old UI windows and just make sure compact mode is a) available in Photon for ALL of them and b) is as compact and informative as the old version. I REALLY think it is worth the dev time to do this though.

That’s very easy. You just remove all the new padding and slap some of the new flat color design onto the windows and you are done. That would not even violate their new design principles because they already use tiny buttons in lots of places now. Reintroducing the button bar for hangars and adding the search box there instead of the window header and removing 10px of padding around the icons while using the new design that has no separators anymore would be as compact as the old UI and still look like Photon.

[Dyver_Phycad]

Since Photon touts itself as a fix to information overload and untangling of information, I wonder why this tooltip still exists in this form. This is a fleet advert tooltip.
It’s a mess in terms of design. Text is flowing all over the place, text is not staying on the same line (see the Scope line.

To fix this, text should be aligned in the middle. You have the data name on the left and the data values on the right, all aligned on one central line. That would introduce actual calmness to the data and remove eye strain. There should also be 1 or 2 more Pixel of padding between the individual data rows to actual help with the readability. You know, good, helpful padding, not useless padding on the edges. With a central alignment of the data columns, it would also make sense that some aspects like Scope have their values below the data name and not next to it.

[Dyver_Phycad]

The war dec icon is now way too dark compared to the old UI. This likely because you darkned the red in the health bars, which shared the same red hue. Incidentally, the red in the health bars of the HUD is also way too dark.

And why is the icon white here instead of red? And why is the text almost illegible?

[Dyver_Phycad]

Big disappointment in the drone window today: You cannot drag drones out into space or from space into your drone hold if you hover your mouse over the health bars. You can only do that on the name of the drones, which is partly hidden by the buttons. So 60% of the drone row is now non-usable and you either have to aim well at the tiny buttons to recall a drone or use the remaining 20% of the name to drag them. Great. This is so going to make the usability of drones better. NOT. I just lost a drone because I could not drag it to recall it… Seriously, this trash UI gets worse and worse with every hour that I use it.

[Myfy_Black]

Straight up echo of everything this person said.

Using this UI makes me physically ill.

[Dyver_Phycad]

Another long-standing issue:

The color difference between a newly added, yet unavailable corp bookmark and available corp bookmarks is almost unnoticeable. The old UI does a much better job at displaying this very important distinction.

[Wadiest_Yong]

1. Could you please re-introduce a directory based structure into the drop down menus of the Photon UI ?
   In condensed mode (I do not use non-condensed mode) any semblance of a directory structure is gone: e.g. in the Local Bookmarks window (already mentioned this in some other post), and in the industry interface as shown below. Shown is the dropdown pick list for the blueprints, as an example. The unstructured lists are a common occurence in other Photon UI elements.
   
   Giving the Category elements (“Celestial”, “Charge”, “Construction Component”, “Module”, “Ship” etc) more prominence to separate them from their elements, via indentation, giving them a color, or turn them into a collapsible list would be extremely welcome.
2. In the above picture it is almost impossible to see any difference between the drop down list and the background of the main panel, bar a very faint grey frame. With a lot going on in that part of the interface, it is not eye-friendly. I can’t imagine how it looks in “transparent mode”.
3. Curious as to the reason to lose all the color in the buttons of the industry interface. What makes the artist think that shades of grey are superior to color as an element of information ? It’s grey… or white… Great feature for cats, not so much for humans who use the interface.
4. Please make the skill training window available in condensed mode. It’s the one that has been controversial from the day of its introduction before Photon. It needs it badly.
5. The ones that are always excluded from the “no transparency” option: the ribbon, and any extra info panels on the left side of the screen (autopilot, event, daily, mission info, etc etc). Any possibility to give them their own “no-transparency” option ?

[Dyver_Phycad]

Next batch of Photon issues:

The Confirmation button for Stop Production is not RED anymore, which is a major design flaw compared to the old UI.

For Notifications and Mails, there is no visual separation between the mail list and the mail text content field anymore. This make this window confusing and the experience worse than in the old UI.

The selection highlight in some windows is ridiculously faint and different than in other windows. In the industry window you cannot see at all that the 50 is highlighted. The selection highlight is much more pronounced in chats. More inconsistencies.

[Anton_Skylark]

Well I have tried it. I changed it back. Its an unnecessary change and a disruption to my gameplay. I really don’t want to be looking for stuff or settings. It is to spread out (takes to much space). Again as the saying goes ‘‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’’

[Dyver_Phycad]

Just a reiteration on more inconsistencies and bad quality in Photon:

Compact Brackets list in space:

Same bracket list in the F9 System map:

Same list width (41 px) but one list does a better job at being helpful than the other.

[Buggs_LeRoach]

the photon ui group has produced poor , unpopular results . they should be re-tasked to designing capes for our characters , like Minecraft…

[Omnis_Decline]

I’m not sure I’d trust them to match the graphical quality of minecraft with the example of photon showing what they’re capable of…

[Dyver_Phycad]

More inconsistencies that have been a problem for months.

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Why do they still have different hues? More importantly: Who thought that a crappy subdued hue would make readability and usability in any way better than bright, popping colors? Seriously, who could possibly think this would possibly be a good idea?

[Joseph_Cash]

I have mixed feelings about the Photon UI; I both despise and revile it.

Jokes aside, I will admit it’s kinda pretty, but I have some serious gripes about it. As long as these exist, I won’t ever switch to Photon willingly.

First of all, PLEASE bring back the ability to see values in the transparency sliders. This is one of my biggest pet peeves ever in most games. I like being able to use exact numbers I can replicate across multiple clients easily. Normally this would be a relatively minor thing, but I bumped it up to first because YOU TOOK IT OUT OF THE OLD UI TOO. It’s really annoying that unwanted “features” from the new UI are seeping into the old one. Please just allow us to set a value in a text box, or at least put the number over the slider as I drag it so I can see the value. The current sliders are pretty damn useless to me. (EDIT: This goes for all the sliders really. I just noticed I can no longer how long the tooltip delays are. C’mon really? How am I supposed to just arbitraraly know what spot on the slider is 2 seconds? Absolutely terrible design.)

Photon is terribly optimized and this is my main problem with it. When using it, EVE goes from being one of the smoothest games on my PC to the absolute worst. I know it’s not a hardware issue because I’ve played games like Cyberpunk and Halo: Infinite without the graphics issue that many people on older systems were experiencing with those games. While using Photon, every session change is a laggy slideshow of half loaded models. Even just ship spinning or panning in an empty deadspace pocket doesn’t look smooth any more.

As a combat orientated player, especially one focused on PvP, this is entirely unacceptable. It’s the single greatest hurdle to me adopting the new UI. There’s no reason I should be experiencing frame drops and stutters in a two decade old game when I can run any brand new game at 60 or 144hz without those same issues.

There is way too much wasted space. I already run the UI on 90% to save on space. Photon has massive swaths of just empty color in title bars and stuff. Why? Who could’ve possibly thought that was a good idea? With so much information necessary to play the game (especially from a PvP standpoint) I need more compact windows I can fit more easily together, not bloated ones which are going to block out other information I need to see.

Limited color customization options are annoying. I use the Nebula setting on my main, and have each other character set to a different color scheme so I can keep them separate in my mind. I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume the limited choices are due to it still being in beta. What I find more annoying is that even color schemes that used to look very different in the old UI, look way too similar in the new UI, and it makes it harder to keep track of which character client I’m looking at.

Also, I don’t know if this is Photon specific, or a separate issue, but the visual indicators for statistics on the new map are absolutely terrible and virtually useless. They were pretty much perfect in the old map, and I find it really annoying I can’t still toggle the old map on to quickly to see where NPCs are being killed or people a getting podded. Fix them please.

[Dyver_Phycad]

Additional observation to this: Today I noticed that you in fact can drag drones around from the health bar area, but only when you hover over empty space around the health bars. Hovering and clicking directly on the health bars, which are the prime UI real estate to do that to drag drones around because they are in the middle of the row, does not work because that triggers the health tooltip. Really great UI design and UI experience. Outstandingly easy and intuitive to use.

[coppercn]

Not sure if it is intentional or not – the Station Service window on SISI doesn’t have the compact mode option anymore, which made me pretty mad because I used to adjust the window size barely wide enough to show 6 items in one row in compact mode. But now without compact mode I have to re-size the window once again.

[Neokii]

+1 I absolutely can not stand the proton UI. Makes everything larger for no reason even in compact mode. I truly do not understand why the devs insist on putting time and money into things that literally have no issues what so ever. Instead of addressing hard mechanics issues, resource issues, building issues, etc they choose to put their time into bs events and useless “upgrades” like this to “woo” over the new player base. Shameful really.

Reason for opting out:

• Makes everything larger for no reason, takes up massive amounts of screen space compared to before
• PC runs like utter crap when using this UI, it just seems so poorly optimize (I run 10 clients and with all 10 running I have major major major performance issues. When in standard UI, runs as smooth as water flowing down stream…
• Ultimately It shows a poor allocation of resources on CCP’s part to address community concerns. Fixing things that aren’t broken so to speak vs addressing hard line issues that have been plaguing the game for literal years now.
• The UI we have now is simple and intuitive. They claim the proton UI is more intuitive, and as someone who has played the game for well over a decade now I fail to see how the new set up is more user friendly than what is currently out. I had the upmost difficulty navigating the panel and identifying different functions, IE: navigating to the general menu wasn’t a hamburger menu any longer. It is a weird collection of dots (Only eve does this, how is this intuitive for new players or common ones alike when this game is one of the only games I’ve ever seen do something other than the gold standard handburger menu?)

Frankly, I could go on and on and on about the list of little things and how it makes absolutely zero sense. I hope they give us the option to continue to opt out of this crap because I would really hate YET AGAIN to have to reinvent my set up…

// Neo

[Dyver_Phycad]

reiteration on the huge spinwheel issue being just plain bad.

Fixed, just made worse as well.

[Scaugh]

Reading through this thread it is clear the Photon UI just hogs your screen. the UI needs to reduce the the space it is taking up on my screen not increase.

And for the love of Jove, stop making the UI windows unstackable.