That was a customer service request initially and GM responded by suggesting I post it here to discuss the issue. So, I’ll copy-paste my original message with a few minor edits.
The game has a following very annoying behavior:
When you hover your mouse over some random skin, immediately (and I want to emphasize this: IMMEDIATELY, WITHOUT ANY DELAY) appears a pop-up window, offering to activate that skin. As in the screenshot:
If you were about to click somewhere on the screen and happened to hover your cursor over a random skin located nearby that spot, and then this window suddenly appeared exactly where you were supposed to click, there is a high probability that you will unintentionally click the large “Activate License” button inside that window, which will naturally activate the skin and consume it in the process. Even if that wasn’t your intention at all. What I mean is that it can happen by pure accident and player won’t be able to undo this on their own. Personally, I’ve fallen into this trap twice already, activating skins that I didn’t want to activate on that character.
And here’s what I tell you - I see this behavior as extremely user-unfriendly. A button like this, suddenly appearing in a place where user might not expect it and performing an action that cannot be undone, should at least be DISABLED initially for 3-5 seconds to prevent accidental pressing. This is a common practice for a good UX/UI.
They’re not allowed to tell you the problem is entirely your fault, so they direct you here so we can tell you.
Adjust your tooltip slider to max and pay attention to what you’re clicking on. I have 15 characters, and since skins were introduced to the game, I have never accidentally used a skin, because I look where my cursor is before I click.
It’s not the job of the game devs to save you from your own mistakes.
Yeah, you can do everything slowly and carefully, avoiding all the pitfalls of a poorly implemented UI, telling everyone around you something like “That’s your problem, this is a skill issue, etc.”
It would also be really cool if the user had the ability to deactivate the skin and return it to their inventory as the original item within a certain amount of time after activation (lets say 1 hour).
Your problem exists between your chair and keyboard. Blame whatever you want for that, it doesn’t change that fact.
Have you tried not blaming everything else in the world for your mistakes? You’d be less of a crybaby if you learned from them instead of demanding your helicopter parent protect you from ever making them.
You’re telling CCP to change their game because you can’t learn from your mistake you’ve already made twice.
Controlling my emotions, which you clearly are not.
News flash, everyone is not always going to agree with you. You should really learn to handle that and not throw tantrums.
You’[re not trying to make the game better, because what you’re suggesting isn’t fixing anything. There’s no problem here with the game, the problem is 10,000% between your ears. The problem is that your blaming a UI for your mistakes. A UI that behaves the exact same way under the exact situations for 20+ years, but only now that you’re here is it a problem that must be fixed.
Whoever told you the world works that way lied to you.
Well, уes, but only partially. Because there’s not only an initial tooltip delay (which is controlled by the specified setting), but also a tooltip reappearance delay (which doesn’t have an in-game setting). You can test for yourself what I mean:
Set the delay setting to the highest possible value.
Place two skins next to each other.
Hover your mouse over the first skin and wait for the tooltip to appear. It will take a long time, as expected.
Then hover your mouse over another one and watch how quickly the second tooltip appears after the first disappears.
This is basically the default behavior for tooltips in Windows. But Windows allows you to control reappearance delay, while game does not.
In any case, even if this setting helped solve the problem, it would not be the best solution, as it would slow down the appearance of any other tooltips (those that don’t contain dangerous buttons inside).
Because the issue isn’t the delay itself, but the button, which can suddenly appear under the mouse cursor and cause an “unsafe” action to be performed. What I suggest is to show the button in a disabled state first, and then enable it after a few seconds. Optionally, UI can display the time before button become enabled in form of some progress bar or counter. Which is, in fact, pretty common behavior for such things.
It means if you wait long enough for the tooltip to appear, i.e. you are interested in reading the tooltips, you won’t have to wait all that time again for the next tooltip, and the next.
Anyway, I tried it a bit with a few skins in my inventory and don’t see why I would accidentally click the ‘Activate Licence’ button as the tooltip is far above where my mouse is.
More annoying is the appearance of the tooltip itself, but with increased tooltip delay that can be solved during regular gameplay.
Personally I don’t like the pop-up tool-tips and would rather not have them active, it’s just more techno crap to load up on the client causing more undue stress…
Definitely don’t need tool-tips constantly popping up on screen and getting in the way when the mouse just happens to move over an item…
Those same options listed in those tool-tips are still available just by right clicking the selected item with the mouse… Man, talk about redundancy… I actually prefer the old R-click method, it’s stood the test of time and has proven itself to work great with no issues whatsoever…
Sometimes tooltips can be useful, like for example when you hover over an item to check its estimated price. And so, you don’t want to make them all appear slowly. Again - not all tooltips are “dangerous”. It seems quite controversial to fix one local problem by worsening the performance of the entire system as a whole.
TBH, I don’t understand why you all keep discussing the mechanics of tooltips in general, when the core of this issue lies elsewhere. The issue is the button inside the tooltip.
You keep making a mistake. No one else is making this mistake. CCP does not need to devote Dev resources because you can’t learn from your mistakes. If you can’t control yourself long enough to not click before you know what you’re clicking on, delay the tooltip so it doesn’t pop up. It’s a slider bar, for fu¢k’s sake, experiment to find that balance of it popping up fast enough to use for your market info but slow enough your inability to control yourself doesn’t make you click things you didn’t want to.
You have the tools you need to resolve this situation entirely on your own, use them.
You can adjust the timer until the popup appears in the settings, but this affects ALL popups, also those where you really want them to see very quickly. Furthermore, this is an old problem with CCP’s understanding of what a good UI is. These popups should not appear where they do as they interfere with scrolling and clicking in hangars and containers and other item lists.
Don’t worry, the issue is not between your chair and your monitor. It’s entirely between CCP’s chairs and CCP’s monitors.
Also true. I’d give a lot just to remove this particular tooltip from the game, but there’s no such option. You can always activate skin via the context menu — there’s no obvious reason to duplicate that functionality in this way.
