1095 replies to this topic

[Drathek]

Klattu, on 05 February 2014 - 01:29 AM, said:

I am so disappointed. Not a SINGLE change based on test server feedback. Nothing. This is making me angry more then missing mech overview or constant sound biping. I am really starting to loose the faith.

So sad.

BR
Klattu

Exactly how I felt. It was bad enough that we had so little time to submit problems with the UI in the first place, only to not even have anything changed from the test.

[Photec]

I like what you are trying to do, and UI2.0 looks very good. I literally drooled at the prospect of using it.

However, as you may or may not be aware, ht UI is less than perfect.

Instead of whining about reality vs. my expectations I've decided to try to be constructive and give a few hints to which changes I'd like to see implemented in the future.

My list of things that I hope you will change to improve the interface:
1.More space allocated to what is actually on your mech instead of 30+ identical(or nearly so) images of an engine/weapon blueprint. The same goes for heatinfo, tonnage slots, etc. Smurfy does this well. Maybe have the option of using a smurfy like interface for more control over what you have and want on your mech?

2. A list that shows you where your modules, engines etc. are. Perhaps with a small search engine?

3. "Esc" in addition to a backbutton.

4. Change fontsize on weaponry/engines/ammo/equipment, and make the backdrop more of a contrasting colour.

5. Give me, for the love of <Insert deity of choice> an option to mute that infernal beeping when I mouse over items without forcing me to turn of all effects.

6. Consumable modules --> insta refill option. Changing/adding modules takes a long time, so anything that makes that redundant is a good thing.

7. Bring back the highlighting of the mechcomponent you are working on.

8. Have a HS/Ammo counter available. Knowing how many shots you have is more valuable than the vague notion that you may have added 2 tons of ammo to the legs, may have forgotten an unused ton of gauss in the head, etc.

I hope you keep up the good work and that we may soon have a UI2.0 (2.1?) that works even better

- Photec/DHB

[Victor Morson]

Klattu, on 05 February 2014 - 01:29 AM, said:

I am so disappointed. Not a SINGLE change based on test server feedback. Nothing. This is making me angry more then missing mech overview or constant sound biping. I am really starting to loose the faith.

So sad.

BR
Klattu

Not listening to the community? Russ has your back!





Oh wait is that dated January 6th?

Oh.

Ohhhhh.

[Mycrus]

Not playing. I would rather tryhard in real life

[Razimir]

UI 2.0 looks pretty but, using the one is tedious work.


Few things to mention:
- switching modules is way worse that it used to be and it was bad before UI 2.0.
- still can't see how many tons of ammo is loaded in mech
- finding weapons from the huge icon menu is harder than from scrollable list
- while loading equipment on mech, seeing mechs "tonnage left" is very hard
- social menu needs rework
- almost every function in UI 2.0 needs more clicking to get it done

Pretty but disfunctional.

-Raz

Edited by Razimir, 05 February 2014 - 02:42 AM.

[Thermal]

There is simply no design to it. No flow. No idea.

I have no idea, after so much time waiting for it, how PGI can think this is ready.

Starting with, supposedly, a clean slate, how can it be this bad?

[Firenze]

Im loving this at the moment. We always knew there were tweaks to come, that was a given. They did say they are trying their best to get it out on time as well as the fact that there will be some small issues.

Currently the things I would like to see done:
- fix the graphics settings bug
- Increase the size of the social menu a little to make it a bit easier to read through (especially when using fullscreen)

To me, thats all that needs real work. That and implmenting the smurfy style loadout screen (which I think is WIP).

Other than that, loving it. Its a new UI from something we have been used to for a while, give it time. We have been using it for LESS THAN A DAY. It took me about 4 days to get used to the old one when I first played. Treat this the same.

[Corvus Antaka]

Thermal, on 05 February 2014 - 03:04 AM, said:

There is simply no design to it. No flow. No idea.

I have no idea, after so much time waiting for it, how PGI can think this is ready.

Starting with, supposedly, a clean slate, how can it be this bad?

its ready because of the back-end.

what it looks like means almost nothing, like a website it is the database & back-end that is important, the visuals, boxes/interactions are all better left for after the fact, and will be adjusted based on user feedback in coming weeks & months no doubt.

[sabujo]

Firenze, on 05 February 2014 - 03:08 AM, said:

Other than that, loving it. Its a new UI from something we have been used to for a while, give it time. We have been using it for LESS THAN A DAY. It took me about 4 days to get used to the old one when I first played. Treat this the same.

No.

One thing is using an UI at full efficiency - and that may require training (even though it shouldn't). The other thing is using it at normal efficiency (close to the old UI level). And that isn't happening. There are pieces of information MISSING completely from Mechlab. The number of clicks tripled on common tasks.

To check the degree of usability of an interface you don't need half a day - you need half an hour. In 30 minutes you can identify most problems of most interfaces. I know what I am talking about because I conducted several website live testing (with eyetracking and task oriented goals) and wrote a bloody dissertation for my master's degree.

PGI doesn't have anyone with UI/UX experience as their work would fail under a large number of common heuristics. If they did, not only they would done things differently but they would LISTEN to the comments made during the three tests. They would compile them and give priorities based on the quantity and pertinence of each complaint. This is the abc of usability school...

[Ssamout]

Ui 2

- When shoppin new mechs, would be fun to see the hardpoint distribution..
- Ammout of Ammo
- Searchin for that mech, that had specific engine / weapon, if u don't wanna buy new ones.
- Disabling The Bleebing SoundFX
- Used / free slots dont' show?
- Make a Filter to find "ready to use mechs" from the ones that are stripped.

Edited by Nils Bohrman, 05 February 2014 - 03:59 AM.

[Rokollus]

As early as August 2012 closed beta there were pleas from the community concerning the ability to know the hardpoints before making a mech purchase.
18 months later - new UI - no hardpoint recognition.
This tells me that PGI really does not listen to the consumer- Something that was critical 18 months ago, is still important, yet somehow overlooked.
Not taking the time to repeat the plethora of already stated, obvious issues with this abortion.
Sad to see something with so much potential continually fail.

[Thermal]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 05 February 2014 - 03:41 AM, said:

what it looks like means almost nothing, like a website it is the database & back-end that is important

Bad UI is bad UI.

For example, the menu on the left of the mechlab. When you click on one of the sub-items, like "loadout" - why doesnt the menu expand - its a tree structure after all. There should be no need for a goddam back button.

Its not like the branches are so think that there isnt room for it, given the tiny fonts and buttons used.

When you finally drill down to hardpoints, you get cryptic icons for what hardpoints are available, no text, no hover-over tooltips.

New users would have no idea of what the hell is happening, or be able to deduce the actual rules of what loadouts are allowed.

The UI fails on basic readability with the size of various buttons and fonts. It also fails on contrast - the orange on white is crap.

There is a million things they could have done differently. But basic usability testing has metrics for the number of clicks to get from A to C. UI2.0 fails.

Its rushed, its poorly thought out, it doesnt have feature parity with the old one.

And frankly, the whole thing has all the hallmarks of being designed by someone that doesnt actually have a clue what they are doing. Given the mass of feedback from the various public tests, its a pretty big management failure to not be able to deduce this.

And I am sure there is some poor ******* at PGI reading this and cursing me and my family, but its the truth - this is terrible UI design. Can you think of any game where you need to navigate such a maze of menu's and boxes and icons and stuff to configure your "thing"?

Everyone thinks Smurfy's is, at minimum, usable. Surely the design bar must have been "Smurfy's or better". But no. Forge PGI's own path, have a bunch of lambasted public tests, and push forward regardless.

What on earth were they thinking?

[Rokollus]

Thermal, on 05 February 2014 - 04:30 AM, said:

What on earth were they thinking?

Hey, the Store works! and they can have "flash sales" w/o brining the server down! So, there is that....../

[Thoummim]

Pretty much everything as already been said but here are my thoughts anyway.

Clickfest.
Nice looking.
Mechlab worse than the previous. Cant click on the mech anymore, hard to navigate, hard to see important info (free slot weapon, engine...). Clickfest. Thank god smurfy exist, without it I would spend hours just to configure one mech.
No saved loadout button, strip all...
GET THOSE TRIAL OUT OF MY OWNED MECH !!!!!!
LET ME REORGANISE MY MECH BAY !!!!!
DONT PUT MY HERO/PHOENIX MECH ON TOP !!!
Inventory dont show owned item in mech, it could be in a filter. Clickfest.
Module and equipement are more annoying to search than ever.
I actually like the new pilot tree, except for one thing... Clickfest.
Message send to other player/group disapear after a match.
Selecting game mode before every game. Clickfest, and annoying.
Fullscreen, I dont like it, here is why : before I could launch the search and browse the internet, and when it find a match the game would get fullscreen by itself. Now if I alt+tab I have to check if the game has found something.
Social button too small.
Buy mc button too big.


In the end this UI is worse than the previous. What's sad is that a lot of the complain have already be made before during the public test (click fest for example).

I'm forgiving you the mechlab since you're working on a new one. My biggest problem are the mechbay, the inventory and clickfest.
Reduce the clickfest (game mode selection like in previous ui, two click to buy efficiency in pilot tree instead of 35, reload consumable checkboxes...), let me reorganise my mech bay like I want, stop segregating my hero/phoenix and GET THOSE FRAKKING TRIAL OUT OF MY BAYS !
Also make a "used in mech" checkboxes in inventory to know which item/module is used in which mech.

That would actually be enough to satisfy me.

Edited by Thoummim, 05 February 2014 - 04:39 AM.

[Iqfish]

I like it.

I like the new Inventory function and the 3-Light Source System that makes my mechs looks sexy as hell.

Looking forward to the "smurfy" Overview/Mechlab in March

[sabujo]

Anothe thing that bugs me:

• 1. Block friend on friend's list
  
• 2. Unblock blocked friend
  
• 3. Friend DELETED!

This happened on UI1.5 - happens again. How is this possible?

IqfishLP, on 05 February 2014 - 04:40 AM, said:

Looking forward to the "smurfy" Overview/Mechlab in March

I can almost bet it will be just that: an overview - not a Smurfy-like mech lab. It will probably be a static page forcing you to go forward and backward between this summary and the actual interactive screens. Gosh, I really hope I am wrong.

Edited by sabujo, 05 February 2014 - 04:42 AM.

[Featherwood]

I must say that I appreciate punctuality, I still think it was better to release patch raw on time rather to keep delaying. We could see that one year was not enough for PGI to develop UI2.0 front-end and 3 months were not enough to listen to feedback, so there was no point left in delaying. Unfortunately I cannot say if UI2.0 back-end was completed, but I hope so. On the other hand, I was so disappointed yesterday by FPS drop and lot of minor bugs in UI2.0 (which I was reporting for about 30 mins), that I uninstalled MWO once again.
I'm out of negative words for PGI, maybe they just don't deserve it anymore - if UI2.0 was their best try and represents level of competence of this company, than it's a capital sentence to MWO. All I feel now is pity for them, I know there work few really good professionals and it must be awful situation for them to handle. I'm not even sure already that Russ' and Paul's resignation (should Bryan to be blamed as well?) could save situation, though by all means it ought straighten management line and by all means those two stubborn blokes are in full responsibility for all that happen.


Edit: Hmm, I got an idea how to try to fix FPS issue right after posted my grief. Installing that cr@p back then! LOL

Edited by Featherwood, 05 February 2014 - 05:29 AM.

[Fut]

Firenze, on 05 February 2014 - 03:08 AM, said:

Currently the things I would like to see done:
- fix the graphics settings bug

Please do this quickly.
I was so excited to see the new UI, despite all the Debbie-Downers on the forums, and my first thought was simply "This looks like shit".
Seriously... Why is my Mech all blurry and gross in the mechbay? Even the text of the various menus look like shit. It feels like I'm back in 1991 playing a game on my first Personal Computer Machine.

Not sure if it's in my head or not, but I even found the graphics in game to be worse than before, and the aspect ratio seems to have be skewed or something.

[Prezimonto]

Pros:
It looks pretty.
Direct scale comparison of mech sizes.
I don't actually mind the inventory system, as you need filters to find things, though I wish you could drill up a step (remove the filters and group all items together).
It has potential.

Cons:
Tiny font on relatively important data everywhere.
The graphs in the mech pop-up data are very uninformative for the most part, with tiny font, no reference or captions, poorly thought out data displays, and little to no ability to reference that specific mech's abilities against any other mech.
It's a real pain in the rear to actually customize a mech now, as I've got an even larger set of tabs and sub-menus to get through, and no holistic display of the whole mech.
How do I find the mech bonuses for champion mechs (since Founders/Pheonix/Champions are all grouped together)?

Now I know the "smurfy" style view is coming, but this is actually really bad user workflow, and data display in favor of a more functional shop and better eye-candy. The paper-doll of character's inventory is a well established and tested visual method of representing a character. I would have made sense to me that there should be a link between the modeled mech and a paperdoll or at least a set of hardpoints/equipment. Even if it was as simple as an overlay that would point to the correct area/hardpoint of the rotating mech.

In fact, I think the biggest issue is the eye candy rotating mech. To highlight that sucker and make it look pretty it has been divorced from having any actual utility. It eats up 30% of the screen space for eye candy. I LOVE the look, I LOVE the direct scaling. It needs to be incorporated into the information system/mech building process though... OR just given it's own tab/screen.

When design trumps function(and function is an important consideration) you know the design is bad. In this case it seems pretty clear to me that the only function that was really considered from a user stand point was the shop.

Edited by Prezimonto, 05 February 2014 - 06:25 AM.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

Overall I like it. However, there are a few things I think need to be improved and quickly.

- We need to be able to see info on 'mechs we are about to purchase.
- The current load out screen needs to be replaced with that smurfy style mechlab from the mock up.
- In the load out screen too much space is being taken up by pictures of identical weapons/engines.
- For some reason the 'mech in the back ground is deformed, appears to be using the far away model.

I'm sure there are lots of other improvements to be made but these are what I consider top priority.