Posted 08 February 2014 - 05:26 PM
Okay, I'd been taking a break with warthunder and tf2 for awhile but I came back for the much trumpeted UI 2.0 release. At first, my opinion was that it was strange, but that over time I would come to be as familiar with it as the previous interface. However, as more time passed, more and more things jumped out at me just while trying to play the game that this release has been the most frustrating in recent memory. Long story short, I'm disappointed, and concerned you pushed this out even now- not so much for the bug concerns, but simple issues with the design.
How many heatsinks are inside this engine? How many do I need to launch? How many do I have equipped? These are all questions that I should not have to ask, because you know better than to leave that data out- it was, after all, in the old UI. "Not enough heatsinks!" trumpets the game, but it never actually says you need ten, and as far as I can tell it never tells you how many are in the smaller engines. Considering how big a deal the mechlab is in making this game different from your competitors, I'm stunned. You've made modification and design a a chore to go through, and the basic build rules aren't explained to the player anywhere in game.
You're drowning us in a plethora of minutiae, yaw angles and acceleration rates, and leaving out the damn basics that are actually important to the player during modification. And the important information you do display? Like max tonnage, for godsakes- is displayed in tiny text way off in the bottom corner of the screen as though it's entirely unimportant, instead of a number we need to frequently reference. You know better than this. You've done better than this. Things like turn rate and arm range are interesting details that are fine to include, but aren't going to be constantly referenced by the player, where things like current ammo count, heat sinks and to an extent, current engine size are core facts that should come up on rollover, with the same kind of emphasis you show for armament- these are values the player looks to frequently, they shouldn't be obscured behind comparatively unimportant reference values. Why were the essentials pushed from this initial release when you took the time to include so many enhancements?
Calling this incomplete is not an excuse- it is riddled with design mistakes- not functional bugs, but fumbles in understanding what's actually important to display to the player- that make it cluttered, unintuitive, and a step backward in creating a cohesive game experience for your players. You've left off or de-emphasized core information while putting the focus on minor details. You've even made the current C-bill count yet smaller than before- seriously, this is the player's budget that drives both how much progress they have banked, how much modification or advancement they can afford and you've shoved if off into the corner in what looks like twelve point font!
You may have made progress on the capabilities on the back end, but you have failed to capture what's valuable on the front end. I am disappointed because you know better than this, you've delivered better than this, you've had this in design and development for over a year, These are things that should have been dealt with for the first release, not mopped up afterword. The game is not in beta anymore- new players are coming in with the expectation, right or not, that the interface they deal with before they start playing should work right now- not in a few weeks, not after another iteration, but now, with the assumption that if it's live it should be ready to be used. Yes, we can launch a match, but everything up to that point has become a negative user experience. You are hurting your first impressions and the immediate future of this game and that, beyond anything else, is what is so frustrating to me, because you damn well know better, you are capable of better, you deserve to be better represented by the project you've sunk so much effort into and this is the sort of stumble that should not have happened.
Now, I realize I've gone on a rant over what are essentially defects in the look and feel of the UI, but to put it another way: What you wear to work may not define how well you do your job, but there are certain expectations of professional attire that exist if you want to work in a corporate office, especially when you're showing up to your first interview. Please consider that when going over the lessons learned for this release.
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Alekzander Smirnoff, on 08 February 2014 - 09:25 AM, said:
