116 replies to this topic

[Molossian Dog]

Appogee, on 21 February 2014 - 12:43 PM, said:

They're not "struggling". They have said point blank ''there is no problem''. They have no intention of fixing it.

Edited by Molossian Dog, 21 February 2014 - 01:01 PM.

[Cest7]

^{These are the fonts you are looking for}

[GalaxyBluestar]

Appogee, on 21 February 2014 - 03:16 AM, said:

Here is a comparison of the size+font of the MWO Forums to the size+font of UI2.0. (I screencapped some sample text from the forums at, and pasted a screen cap from UI2.0 directly on top of it.)

Observations:

• UI2.0 font seems to be about 80% the size of the standard MWO web font, reducing legibility.
  
• UI2.0's kerning - that is, the space between the letters - is much less than the forum, reducing legibility.
  
• UI2.0's leading - that is, the vertical space between lines of text - is much less than the forum, reducing legibility.
  
• UI2.0's ALL CAPS makes the shape of each word a rectangle. Because our brains first try to decode the shape of words, this too reduces legibility.
  
• UI2.0's semi-transparent background behind text means that background colors sometimes bleed through, blurring the edge of some letters, reducing legibility.
  
• UI2.0's white text on bright color backgrounds (notably, the white on green of STREAK SRM) reduces legibility.

Tell me if you are seeing this differently. Because, to me, all of the above combine to make UI2.0 hard to read. Yet, Russ says ''there is no problem''.

graphic design 101 here and pgi doesn't have it.

though listening to bryan about it it looks like their squares of info are set at the lowest {common denominator} res and they haven't figured out how to make these sacle yet. you can only hope they haven't bothered because they're going to change the layout anyways and then work on multiple res scaling of infor boxes but really this sounds like a lack of talent lack of planing fiasco.

[Ch0nTr0n]

I wouldn't even be paying attention to this forum if it wasn't for the issues I have with the recent UI changes..

It hasn't enhanced my game-play experience.. It's gotten in the way..

I haven't changed the equipment setup of my Atlas since the UI change because it isn't fun anymore. It's awkward..

Thats 1/2 the fun of this game for me seemingly broken and the shallow gametypes arn't enough by themselves to keep this game interesting. I really want to love it.. I really do..

[Noxcuse]

always the same pgi told you..there is no problem..and ignoring the shit the make...but ok the UI2.0 is heavy shit at all..and so the font is the little problem..the big problem is..there is no good coder at pgi for exelent work...every time we get an amateur-like work to play with..

[Naduk]

i wish i had a 2560x1440 monitor so i could have this problem

[Kojin]

I play on 1920x1080 on a 21" screen and at 1440x900 on a 17" and not had any issues with eligibility of the fonts. I'm betting this is a dot/pixel pitch issue. Pixel pitch for larger resolutions on "smaller" screens are what is going to lead to aa being not used in future 4k+ displays. Using aa on tight pixel counts would cause blurring and fudging of fine detail rather than enhance it as is currently the case on most consumer/average PC user displays.

[jackal40]

Kojin, on 21 February 2014 - 06:39 PM, said:

I play on 1920x1080 on a 21" screen and at 1440x900 on a 17" and not had any issues with eligibility of the fonts. I'm betting this is a dot/pixel pitch issue. Pixel pitch for larger resolutions on "smaller" screens are what is going to lead to aa being not used in future 4k+ displays. Using aa on tight pixel counts would cause blurring and fudging of fine detail rather than enhance it as is currently the case on most consumer/average PC user displays.

Glad you're not having problems.
I play on a 24" @ 1920 x 1080 in full window mode - it's the main display of 3 at that resolution and is the native for all monitors. I am having problems reading the fonts on all screens and short of playing at the interface designed resolution fo 1024 x 768 the fonts are hard to read.

I suppose you would say "then play at that resolution". Sorry, that's not the solution. This issue needs to be fixed soon.

[ho1mes]

I used to love tinkering in mechlab, but straining my eyes to do anything has sucked the fun out. My solution is basically stick with one build per mech and dont go into mechlab if I dont have to. I'd be more unhappy if I had a new chassis I was grinding on though.. PGI please fix the font so the average user can read the thing. Thanks

[Ximius]

THIS JUST IN: PGI to start selling bionic eyeballs. 2,400,000 MC per eye. Sale starts now, eyes to be delivered mid 2015.

[PineappleKush]

"PGI owns a version of the CryEngine, but did not elect to get support from the CryEngine company to help it evolve along with their work. Cheaper in the short run, but puts all the work on the engineers who both have to learn how to change/adapt the CryEngine AND progress MWO itself."

I'm filing this excuse under "not my problem." This is a situation where a business decision screwed the engineers and the customers. They licensed CryEngine 3 and elected to not get a support contract from Crytek (the creators of CryEngine) to help them learn how to properly utilize and modify the engine (likely with the exception of the engine's documentation).

Now they're in a situation where they have to heavily modify the engine to actually deliver what they said they were going to deliver, and we're supposed to sit back and fund this educational process, while their engineers modify the CryEngine and the game code and are dealing with two disparate and (assumed) large codebases, the former of which they didn't even create.

Are you serious, PGI? You locked yourself into these engineering contraints, I'm not paying for your lack of foresight and preparation.

As an IT consultant, I can tell you when I show up on site to implement a datacenter consolidation, I already have the product expertise for the various "parts" of the consolidation, VCP (VMware), CCNP (Cisco), MCITP (Microsoft), etc. I don't go on site and expect my client to pay me to figure out how to implement the project sold to them, that's my firm's and my responsibility.

That notwithstanding, you guys had time prior to closed beta, time during closed beta, and all of this time after closed beta to deal with your shortcomings (over 2 years now since closed beta). You really expect us to sit around and pay for your engineers to scratch their head at the issues they cause when they crack open CryEngine and modify it without having the knowledge themselves (or professional support from Crytek)?

This isn't how you manage projects, it's not how you develop software that people are currently paying for as "released", and it's not how you do business in the IT world unless you're intentionally cutting corners.

I've worked for two companies that do exactly this: sell a project that the engineers don't have the expertise going-in to actually do, whilst charging the client standard hourly rates while the engineers scratch their heads and try to figure out how to actually implement it properly. Then the client either continues shelling out more on labor than was initially planned, the project takes longer than it should to implement, and the resulting product ends up being of epically poor quality and the client is unhappy. Or the client just dumps the firm and spends more to have real professionals come in and clean up the mess. Either way, the client loses.

TL;DR: No, just no. Get out of here, bad business practices. Your community here is not stupid and we will call you out and we will continue to make posts, here, on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and anywhere else to make noise for media outlets to pickup and shed even more light on what's happening.

Edited by PineappleKush, 22 February 2014 - 03:41 AM.

[aniviron]

PhoenixFire55, on 21 February 2014 - 01:40 AM, said:

Fonts always been rather ******. I've raised a question of being able to customize font color for general / team / server message in-game messages back in CB days, even sent them a couple support tickets to no avail. They just don't really care. I mean ... look at that wall of engines at same screenshot. Everyone with even half a brain understands this looks like crap, but I guess pro UI designers know better. Most of the MWO text is easy to read on my old 1024x768 15-inch, but some text is just impossible to decipher.

It's funny you should mention that- in the Eckman interview with NGNG that aired the last two days, they said that their target resolution for the UI design is 1024x768, so that makes sense. It's funny, because their reasoning for this is that they don't want to break compatability and create issues running this resolution. It's funny, if they'd taken the time to do a hardware survey or even some basic research, they'd have figured out pretty quickly what a silly idea this was. Take a gander at the Steam hardware survey, which provides a pretty good idea of what the average gamer is running. A keen reader will note that users running 1024x768 number just 2.92% of all respondents to the survey, while 1920x1080 reaps 32.51% of all screens, the leading resolution by quite a fair bit. The second and third highest tallies were 1366x768 and 1600x900 with 7.63%, all of which are widescreen, 16:9 aspect ratios. Perhaps it would have behooved PGI's UI team to look at these numbers before deciding that everyone is not only running 1024x768, but very few people are even running non-widescreen resolutions.

So yeah, it seems incredibly dumb that the target for the UI design was for a screen resolution that hasn't been common for about a decade. One of the hosts mentioned people complaining about "having screens that are 10 billion pixels wide" having issues, but really, if you look at the data, it seems like he's on an island.

Appogee, on 21 February 2014 - 03:16 AM, said:

Observations:

• UI2.0 font seems to be about 80% the size of the standard MWO web font, reducing legibility.
  
• UI2.0's kerning - that is, the space between the letters - is much less than the forum, reducing legibility.
  
• UI2.0's leading - that is, the vertical space between lines of text - is much less than the forum, reducing legibility.
  
• UI2.0's ALL CAPS makes the shape of each word a rectangle. Because our brains first try to decode the shape of words, this too reduces legibility.
  
• UI2.0's semi-transparent background behind text means that background colors sometimes bleed through, blurring the edge of some letters, reducing legibility.
  
• UI2.0's white text on bright color backgrounds (notably, the white on green of STREAK SRM) reduces legibility.

Tell me if you are seeing this differently. Because, to me, all of the above combine to make UI2.0 hard to read. Yet, Russ says ''there is no problem''.

You also forgot to mention that the new font seems to be a condensed font (i.e. it has been squashed horizontally) which really seems pretty unnecessary, and in general hinders readability.

[Kojin]

jackal40, on 21 February 2014 - 07:15 PM, said:

Glad you're not having problems.
I play on a 24" @ 1920 x 1080 in full window mode - it's the main display of 3 at that resolution and is the native for all monitors. I am having problems reading the fonts on all screens and short of playing at the interface designed resolution fo 1024 x 768 the fonts are hard to read.

I suppose you would say "then play at that resolution". Sorry, that's not the solution. This issue needs to be fixed soon.

See I would have thought at 1920x1080 on 24" or even larger the pixel issue I suggested wouldn't be an issue as you'd have less pixels per inch than I do. It would be screens with 2560x1440 res on 20" or less that would cause the issues I mentioned.

I'm not saying there isn't an issue and I do agree there is definitely a problem with the fonts for many users. If I set myself back from my screen the fonts characters begin to smurge and I think there should be an option for UI/Font sizes somewhere regardless.

[Werewolf486 ScorpS]

Ultimately Russ and Bryan are responsible for this game and with in it UIconsole2.0 so rather then blame the staff put it on Russ and Bryan where it belongs.

The drunks at MWLL did better.

[DeathlyEyes]

Werewolf486, on 22 February 2014 - 04:06 AM, said:

Ultimately Russ and Bryan are responsible for this game and with in it UIconsole2.0 so rather then blame the staff put it on Russ and Bryan where it belongs.

The drunks at MWLL did better.

This is so very true. Russ and Bryan are responsible for the game, they need to evaluate the talent they surround themselves with and if it is sufficient for the task at hand. If it isn't then they need to consider replacing said talent. Great leaders surround themselves with great people.

[PineappleKush]

SLDF DeathlyEyes, on 22 February 2014 - 04:32 AM, said:

This is so very true. Russ and Bryan are responsible for the game, they need to evaluate the talent they surround themselves with and if it is sufficient for the task at hand. If it isn't then they need to consider replacing said talent. Great leaders surround themselves with great people.

Russ' decision making is what caused the talent to be insufficient. I can't say anything bad about the talent themselves, because they're working within the confines of the hand Russ, et al., have dealt them. Expecting their engineers to be able to become CryEngine experts without Crytek support, while simultaneously developing MWO and heavily modifying the CryEngine (without expert support) and trying to reconcile all of that together into a good final product in a timely manner is an unreasonable expectation. No wonder everything they try to implement ends up being so difficult and time consuming...

If I was Russ, I would be on the phone with Crytek and begging them for any level of assistance and support, which is likely going to be either not possible or highly expensive, considering PGI engineers have already modified the engine without aid and Crytek engineers would have a heck of a time providing quality support at this point. The engine is no longer "CryEngine 3" that they licensed originally, not to mention Crytek is focusing on the new CryEngine (which is new and not a revision of version 3) which will support the Xbox One, PS4, and Wii U (this new CryEngine is what Star Citizen, Homefront 2, and Evolve are based on).

Edited by PineappleKush, 22 February 2014 - 05:08 AM.

[Vaenson]

I myself find the font a bit large on 1080p. I think its an issue of ui scale regarding to the different resolutions. As the containers are fixed size i can imagine it isnt that easy to just put different font sizes for the different resolutions as them would break the container border.

Edited by Vaenson, 22 February 2014 - 05:24 AM.

[nightsniper]

PineappleKush, on 22 February 2014 - 04:57 AM, said:

Russ' decision making is what caused the talent to be insufficient. I can't say anything bad about the talent themselves, because they're working within the confines of the hand Russ, et al., have dealt them. Expecting their engineers to be able to become CryEngine experts without Crytek support, while simultaneously developing MWO and heavily modifying the CryEngine (without expert support) and trying to reconcile all of that together into a good final product in a timely manner is an unreasonable expectation. No wonder everything they try to implement ends up being so difficult and time consuming...

If I was Russ, I would be on the phone with Crytek and begging them for any level of assistance and support, which is likely going to be either not possible or highly expensive, considering PGI engineers have already modified the engine without aid and Crytek engineers would have a heck of a time providing quality support at this point. The engine is no longer "CryEngine 3" that they licensed originally, not to mention Crytek is focusing on the new CryEngine (which is new and not a revision of version 3) which will support the Xbox One, PS4, and Wii U (this new CryEngine is what Star Citizen, Homefront 2, and Evolve are based on).

This is the entire story in a nutshell I wish I could give it a rating higher then like. Deciding to run this on CryEngine 3 no less was a huge mistake. PGI took off their water wings and jumped into the Middle of the Pacific and are now trying to swim to land. The Sharks are now circling. Regardless of the fact that they wanted to create a game that jumped MW beyond all other games I would have been happy with one step above BT 3025 or even MW4.1 that we could play and see them continue to develop as it stands they are taking 2 steps forward and 5 steps back with every attempt to figure out how to alter the program and make it work. UI 2.0 is a huge example of this with out entering into the other issues related not to the Mechs themselves but to game play. Firing the staff at this point is likely the last act of desperation on PGI's part. The problem stems from the owners over reaching from the start and not having a plan to bring in the staff that could work with out a net.

The Comment about MWLL and how they succeeded with out any real funding other then hard work is amazing they are the real pioneers that have kept this genre alive. Thank you!

For PGI their is only two courses of action cough up the bucks for Support or cough up the bucks to hire those who know the engine inside and out continuing the current path is looking more and more like a slow tortured death.

[Molossian Dog]

Frankly speaking I´m less interested in how this sorry state of things came to be and more interested in when I am going to be able to play this game again.

I have grave doubts that anyone at PGI would listen to advice how to run their business. Irregardlesss how right some of those comments might be.

But I´d settle for not being trolled in the UI. Would be great.

Edited by Molossian Dog, 23 February 2014 - 05:48 AM.

[Caswallon]

Hmm don't usually pass comment on threads like these but the outrageous BS of Russ's statement forces a rethink of that policy.

SImply No Mr B No you are wrong. I have had my eyesight clocked at 22/20 21/20 (after acid damage to one eye I'm still legally classified above normal vision by the UK optometrist that treated me... ) The new font is HARDER to read at all Resolutions my monitor is capable of. (up to 1920 x 1080 20" HD capable)

Now its OK for me but I have (apparently) and advantage... Please rethink the font family in use on the new and devolved UI ASAP.

/rant: Carry on..