Alright, now for the design portion and my follow-on notes…
1) What is it that you like about the UI 2.0 Preview? (Please enter as many items as you wish.)
It’s pretty. I’ll outline the good and bad, below.
2) What do you like least about the UI 2.0 Preview?
There are parts which are not user-friendly, or are obscure. As much as I like to see a huge preview of my ‘Mech, I would rather have access to a chat feature across the entire front-end, where I don’t have to click a tiny social… oh, wait, that’s the next question.
3) What are your impressions of the Social system in the Front-End?
Again, it’s pretty, but overall it’s terrible to use. The social system should be prominent across all pages and tabs, as if it’s in its own frame. First, you have me clicking a tiny little square, not once, but twice EVERY time I want to get into it, then I have to select a friend and, rather than opening a box automatically so I can chat with them, I have to click their name to open a menu and then Chat. Counter-intuitive. Next, I cannot select my friend, after I have formed a group, to invite them, whether they are in-game or not, so they might have an invitation waiting when they get out. The Group blocks that come up when I form a group are radical, and it allows me to ready up from there, rather than having to close the social tab and ready my ‘Mech, so that’s nice. Also, the chat should remain functional until a game is found, after Launch, until we’re ready to drop into the match. I don’t know whether or not the horrible chat bugs from the old UI were fixed in this one, as only one other friend was on at the time; I’ll try again this afternoon.
4) What are your impressions of the Store menus in the Front-End?
I’ll outline these, below.
5) What are your impressions of the in-game interface?
It looks the very same as the old interface. I would like to see the position of my teams’ ‘Mechs on the mini-map, even as nothing more than little blue or red dots.
6) Any other comments or concerns?
Oh, you’ve had it, now, buddy… 
- FULL-SCREEN MODE
- The large ‘Mechs look awesome, and gave me a full-on robot chubby, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to revisit these, again. See below…
- LOADOUT CONFIG
- The Invalid items, those that cannot go on the ‘Mech, should be toggle’able, so we cannot display anything other than what’s in our inventory. That being said, if we toggle invalid items off, and we remove something from our ‘Mech, say an energy weapon, then energy weapons capable of fitting in the available tonnage AND space should suddenly become valid and, thus, displayed;
- I want to see all of the locations for my ‘Mech, at the same time. This {Scrap} where I have to go down the list and open various weapon, equipment, and engine types to see what I have is… well… {Scrap}. The current UI is far more intuitive in this regard, and if you can’t make it so I can see all of the locations on my ‘Mech, and be able to choose from drop-downs proceeding from the location slots themselves, at least re-skin the current process and put it into the new UI;
- There are too many noises, period. Yes, they may be soft noises, but I don’t need to hear them. There are other locations, which I will get to, soon enough, that require noise, and don’t have any;
- I want to be able to filter out the trial ‘Mechs, please? Currently, they are positioned on the Owned ‘Mechs list, and I don’t want them there, it makes life confusing. The only people who need to pilot trial ‘Mechs are new folks to the game, and those looking to try something new. Make it a choice on the drop-down menu, above, but remove them otherwise. It surprises me that you show the trial ‘Mechs, but not the empty new ‘Mech bays;
- I will give you this design idea… the ‘Mech should show in the middle of the screen, using about one-half of the total screen area, and split into three sections. From left-to-right, the screen should be outfitted as follows…
- The menu’s you have on the far left should remain as they are, they’re excellent, about one-fifth the width of the scree;
- The Head, Right Arm, Right Torso, and Right Leg should be the next section, about one-fifth the width of the screen;
- The chosen BattleMech should be displayed in the center, but in the background, so it underlaps the critical spaces of the ‘Mech on both the left and right side;
- The Center Torso, Left Arm, Left Torso, and Left Leg should be the next section, about one-fifth the width of the screen;
- The chat/social section should cover the right-fifth of the screen.
- Each section of the ‘Mech (Right Torso, Left Leg, etc.) should have a listing for armor, on top, the hardpoints, below, and then the critical spaces. Each critical space that is Empty or Dynamic should have a drop-down menu with a text listing of each item capable of going into that space. As the item is scrolled over, it’s stats come up in your little pop-up information box, including statistics and inventory. If there are no drop-downs, or drop-downs containing nothing, for whatever reason, the MechWarrior would have to pull something from that section to get a drop-down containing items available for the current restrictions of that section.
- HARDPOINTS LIST
- Where? I finally went into selecting a ‘Mech in the Mechlab and found the images for these, but they’re not easy to decipher. Either put text back in, or a text pop-up, or at least give us a key to read them in that page somewhere. If you go with a full ‘Mech crit sheet, like from the tabletop game, and which should represent in this one, with the ‘Mech standing beautifully in the background, put armor points on top of a section, followed by hardpoints, below, and then the critical locations. Each critical location could have a drop-down as for what can possibly go in that location and, once the location is filled with something, the ability to get a drop-down goes away, unless/until the weapon/item/engine is removed, and then the drop down can return.
- ‘MECH UPGRADES
- This is nice and easy to use, and it’s not packed to the gills with useless boxes I’m not going to thumb or scroll through to read. Most of the ‘Mech loadout is full of huge boxes that are unnecessary and get in the way.
- ‘MECH TREES
- The ‘Mech Tree selection list, where ALL of the ‘Mechs are listed, should default to the ‘Mech you have chosen in the ‘Mechlab or Home;
- The ‘Mech Tree selection list should show ONLY the ‘Mechs you have put experience points on, whether trial or owned.
- PILOT TREES
- These are tolerable, but again a bunch of large boxes, no images even inside the boxes, and they’re sort of useless. Pretty, but not functional in the intuitive sense, like much of this UI.
- CAMOSPEC CUSTOMIZATION
- I LOVE the way this was done, but would also like to be able to choose from a list of the things I own straight away.
- COCKPIT CUSTOMIZATION
- Not enough light in the cockpit to see what I’m mounting where. My oldest son pointed out… ‘that’s because we’re in a hangar’ …but if I were mounting something in my ‘Mech’s cockpit, I would have turned on the dome light, for heaven’s sake;
- Others have pointed out the lack of the mounted items in the cockpit, and it’s true these are not present, but then there are none present, to the best of my knowledge in the current UI, either. However, it would be nice to see some of these things, please?
- BOOSTERS STORE
- You should come up with a name other than Boosters. Augments or Enhancements, or something else along those lines would work, but we’re not dealing in drugs, here, nor immunity, so something else would be better;
- The text across all headers, across all of the UI, at the top of each box, is way too small.
- ‘MECH BAY STORE
- I don’t want to see the empty ‘Mech bay off to the side, in a little box to the lower left, I want to see it at the end of my ‘Mech list in the store and the Loadout area. I like the way the current UI does things, it’s intuitive and, if you have too many ‘Mechs, you get to look through them all before you get to that bay.
- BATTLEMECHS STORE
- Why don’t the BattleMechs filter by a dropdown for ‘Mech types and classes? You do the drop-downs in the Loadout ‘Mech Bay, why not here, too? (Trial, Light, Medium, Heavy, Assault, Hero, Champion, AND Owned)
- SOCIAL TAB
- The Social tab has plenty of room on that bottom row, and it SHOULD be larger;
- The Social tab should flicker AND give the noise you have typically associated with mousing over an item throughout the rest of the UI. Get rid of the mouse over for most of the UI, and make it into something useful for the social tab. This should have been common sense…
- As I said in the beginning of this post, the Social are should be prominent across the entire UI, as if it were a separate frame on a web page. The menu’s and queue’s to the far left of the UI are intuitive and good, but to the right of those, you have a humongous area for parts, supplies, weapons, etc., which is wholly unnecessary, and could easily be cut by a full third. The BattleMech should be shown behind all of the menu’s but should have about a third smaller left-right area as well, and then you could fit in a chat box.
Put the friends list on top, put the chat box on the bottom. If you’re in a group, you automatically chat with the group and, if you need to chat with a friend, you select the friend you want to chat with, which automatically switches away from the group, and remains such until you switch back to group. This is not rocket science, and you have completely screwed up chat since the game was announced in Closed Beta. Make it so if a person is not chatting, they can minimize the box, as a side bar that can easily be expanded when it starts flashing when someone’s trying to talk to you, and you get the sound, as well, so you can have larger portions of your screen back for customization and inventory. The Chat section should be the HIGHEST priority of the entire UI, as it’s an ACTIVE portion, with the rest being passive; right now, especially since so much is interrupted if someone starts typing when you are, or drops into a game, or comes out of a game, the chat is amazingly horrible.
BLOCK PLAYER
- This is very intuitive, and it’s good. I don’t suppose there’s anyway to sync up the in-game list with the on-forum list, is there?
- CREATE GROUP
- Why is this not open for between 2 and 12, yet?
- Can you make a way where we can check-mark friends that are online and available to invite them into the group. Yellow and Red would not have the check-mark, but the group leader could check a box in front of any Green name, up to 4 for now, and up to 12 down the road, to invite them. This one’s not a high priority, even for me, but it would be nice to see while we’re waiting for Phase One.
- GROUP CHAT
- I was unable to actually group with anyone, or chat with them, because not enough of my friends were on, though I assume it will work much like the regular chat in the new UI, if the old UI problems have now been fixed.
- TUTORIAL
- I had not performed in the tutorial, before, as I had already mastered movement before I even came to MWO, but this was an excellent tutorial. Each card that came up was succinct for reading, and gave explicit instructions. Well done.
- LAUNCH MATCH
- The Launch mechanism, from Group, was excellent, intuitive, and I found it very easy to use;
- I also noticed there are some sweet changes coming down the pipe, such as my Capture Accelerator and Target Decay actually working as advertised. These were EXTREMELY noticeable straight out of the gate, and I appreciate it.
Now, for notes not covered in the other sections…
1) I share my computer with my oldest son, as it’s the only computer in the house capable of running this game. Would it be possible to have separate account logins available to match the separate profiles we have in Windows, please?
2) You have yet to change your Copyright on either UI opening screen to 2014, they still read ©2012 to 2013.
3) This is an amazing pet peave of mine, but the store updating every few minutes… NOT COOL! It stops everything, and it’s garbage. Put that on the back end, because I don’t care if they’re updating or not. I especially dislike it, though, when I’m working on something, and the entirety of the background goes dark and I can’t do anything for 10-15 seconds while the stupid store is updating. ENOUGH, already.
4) Your module prices are ENTIRELY too high. I can understand paying between 2,500 and 15,000 XP to be able to unlock a module, but I’ll be damned if I’m paying 6,000,000 C-Bills for a SINGLE module. That’s ignorant!!! If I’m going to pay 6,000,000 C-Bills for a SINGLE module, you better be equipping all of my ‘Mechs with that one module, on that one C-Bill load. These should cost no more than 50,000 to 100,000 C-Bills each, if I have to go ‘Mech-by-‘Mech, and especially because I can only fit a limited number of them on my ‘Mech. This is… wow (shakes head).
5) THE NUMBER OF SOUNDS IS UTTERLY RIDICULOUS, UNWARRANTED, AND NEED TO BE MOVED TO THINGS THAT ACTUALLY NEED IT, LIKE THE SOCIAL PANEL.
6) I love what you’ve done with the inventory, it looks pretty nice, and gives me a list of what I own, not everything that’s in the game, and the remainder of the UI, where you’re not trying to purchase new items, or new items are not available for purchase, as per current restrictions on your ‘Mech or for lack of money or item availability, should mimic this.
7) A lot of the buttons in the UI and in the Launch are unnecessarily small, such as when you’re exiting a game; please size these up so they can be read and easily tapped with a mouse?
Okay, that does it for my design ideas. Have fun with these.
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When I finally did open up the social window everyone was offline.
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