21 replies to this topic

[Brainden]

How do you make the UI worse than it already is? Make it so you have to select every single mech slot to find the weapons you've equipped.

[Dymlos2003]

Brainden, on 16 February 2014 - 10:02 PM, said:

How do you make the UI worse than it already is? Make it so you have to select every single mech slot to find the weapons you've equipped.

You mean just hover your mouse over the mech?

[627]

Brainden, on 16 February 2014 - 10:02 PM, said:

How do you make the UI worse than it already is? Make it so you have to select every single mech slot to find the engine you've equipped.

FTFY

[SubXulu]

Brainden, on 16 February 2014 - 10:02 PM, said:

How do you make the UI worse than it already is? Make it so you have to select every single mech slot to find the weapons you've equipped.

I think they found every single way possible to make it worse than it was ..

[Dymlos2003]

SubXulu, on 17 February 2014 - 01:43 AM, said:

I think they found every single way possible to make it worse than it was ..

Except that it's not

[627]

Dymlos2003, on 17 February 2014 - 01:44 AM, said:

Except that it's not

Ok so how do you see your engine, Heatsinks and modules? Free slots? Hardpoints and distribution? Weapon placement?

The new UI has it's (few) advantages but it is far away from a modern UI that is designed for Usability and Simplicity.

And I won't even start on the small font size that makes it impossible to read on a big screen without getting a headache.

Edited by 627, 17 February 2014 - 01:55 AM.

[Dymlos2003]

627, on 17 February 2014 - 01:54 AM, said:

Ok so how do you see your engine, Heatsinks and modules? Free slots? Hardpoints and distribution? Weapon placement?

The new UI has it's (few) advantages but it is far away from a modern UI that is designed for Usability and Simplicity.

And I won't even start on the small font size that makes it impossible to read on a big screen without getting a headache.

It has kinks, but it's not worse in every single way. It's going to get better but it's no where near to where it's unusable. I swear... did you guys play games back in the day. I wonder if you cried this much back then too.

[RedDragon]

Dymlos2003, on 17 February 2014 - 02:46 AM, said:

. I swear... did you guys play games back in the day. I wonder if you cried this much back then too.

You mean like... back in 1995? When we had MW2, which had *drum roll* a much better UI?

[Monkey Lover]

Dymlos2003, on 16 February 2014 - 10:50 PM, said:

You mean just hover your mouse over the mech?

Unless you already selected the mech or you didn't click on the screen. This UI has tons of bugs.

[C E Dwyer]

Pro's of new UI nice big mech bay, so you can spin your mech and look at all angles

slightly improved text chat, the old used to cut you off it made a twitter message look long and ungainly.

Now you can say "Hi how are you, did you have a nice weekend, not seen you for sometime", and the chat won't cut you off at nice, but you still can't type in a long paragraph explaining how things work, or your build, without breaking it down into sentences.

The group screen and creating a 4 man is certainly a lot better than the old, no experience of 12 mans, but I would imagine its better as well.

It takes slightly less time to select a mech, than the old style, if they were at opposite ends of the old UI, but longer if they used to be close, but on the whole is slightly less effort, than before, but the old style with a weight filter added would have been alot better than now. (this is the only part that is a worth while addition, unless you think pretty pictures is a major part of the game)


Con's

Sadly the rest, to some degree.

It takes more clicks to get anywhere, even shutting down the game takes two actions instead of one.

The graphs that were supposed to make ranges accel/deceleration torso twist etc more informative, give less information than the old text, information on the old one that was there and easy to find has been missed on UI2

I do have to say that had I not used the old UI, I would probably have given this one a 7 out of 10 pending increase with the 'fixes' talked of, but having used the old it gets a weak 5 out of 10, as over all its worse than the old one on the things this was supposed to do, which was make it easier to use and be more informative.

Its really what I expect from PGI, the idea's and the intention is there, but the implementation is in the end below the industry standard of today, twenty no ten years ago with less competition and choices this would be up there flying (with less graphic goodies of course) but today as the industry is, it struggles, and you can see why.

Edited by Cathy, 17 February 2014 - 03:33 AM.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

I just can't believe how poorly it scales, given that was one of the major features touted.

It burns my eyes on my 63 inch TV that I play on.

[627]

Dymlos2003, on 17 February 2014 - 02:46 AM, said:

It has kinks, but it's not worse in every single way. It's going to get better but it's no where near to where it's unusable. I swear... did you guys play games back in the day. I wonder if you cried this much back then too.

I evaluate a product and the features "as is" and not "as it will be someday" - this is not the Test server, this is the production one and this is a "released" feature.

And I never said it's unusable. The problem is, the old UI hat features that are no longer available. And the usability of the new one is just bad. Not unusable but bad.

[Sandpit]

Once I got used to it, I liked it. They really need to keep up with patches for it though. It's got enough issues to make it annoying for some things. The new strip armor and getting a more smurfy friendly environment will help a lot. Fixing it so the dam friends list doesn't take 45 seconds plus to load.
getting it down to less clicks is a must and finding everything easily and intuitively.

[tayhimself]

Dymlos2003, on 16 February 2014 - 10:50 PM, said:

You mean just hover your mouse over the mech?

Monkey Lover, on 17 February 2014 - 02:55 AM, said:

Unless you already selected the mech or you didn't click on the screen. This UI has tons of bugs.

I didn't even know it was possible to see anything while hovering over the mech. Other than the lousy mechlab, and the hard to find modules, it takes far too many clicks to do anything. Everything doesn't need a confirmation box when you're not spending any MC/Cbills as part of the action.
Exiting the game takes 4 clicks!! Loading and unloading modules requires 6+ clicks. Mind numbing...

[Hoffenstein]

Add in the mouse-hover info feature and it'll be solid. It looks nice now, it just needs a little bit more love down the road. Keep at it PGI, you're moving in the right direction!

[Slab Squathrust]

Cathy, on 17 February 2014 - 03:30 AM, said:

It takes more clicks to get anywhere, even shutting down the game takes two actions instead of one.

I still haven't figured out the exit game command. Not that it really matters when I can just use the Alt + F4. It is however emblematic of the overall issues with the new UI. The thing that makes me most frustrated is the hover over the mech picture to see the stats. Why it takes so long for them to pop up, I will never know, and God help you if you move your mouse and make them disappear. When you select a mech it should show you all of those things.

[Sandpit]

How exactly is this upcoming features anyhow?

[Harmatia]

I have a lot of problems with the new user interface, but I'd really like to know why we have giant "tablet" like icons with tiny text populating 40% of the screen in "Mechlab". When I hit "Mechlab" the most important element of any screen, "what's on my mech", should be the focal point. Related elements (like the equipment window) need to branch from that. This means it needs to be the most visible element on the screen, because it is why the user is there to begin with. That's very basic design principle. How this got created and whom approved it is scary.

I think most can deal with buggy and incomplete features/functions, but a lot of problems with this user interface is its basic design. It does not look as though much thought went into intuition, flow or white space.

And please get the trial mechs out of the "owned" mech filter.

[Jorm]

been away for a while, any news on fixes for the UI ?

[Chemie]

They said they would aggressively patch UI2 but all they did was fix the premium activation and add the warning for no engine. Nothing else fixed (including all the stuff noted in Nov test)