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I started playing again recently after taking a break and was struck by the number of smaller changes and tweaks that had been made to improve quality of life in game - in particular, rejoining after DCs, auto refill on consumables, not having to pay for changes to mech layouts until everything is complete, and the 'mech details' button. These are the little things that just didn't get done the first six months I was playing, but little things add up. I also note that since separating from IGP, PGI seems to be aiming at a more aggressive and nimble development cycle, which I support. This started me thinking, though, about all the other small quality of life changes that could be made to make the game that much more incrementally playable with (presumably) relatively little dev time.
So, I have a suggestion for PGI. Once the personnel changes from the IGP transition settle down, hire or assign a developer (or ideally, a team) specifically to 'little things'. Let them work up their own priority lists, consult with players, post their own forum updates with changes being made in upcoming patches, and not get sucked in to whatever the big bugfix or feature development piece being worked on is. Even if doing so marginally slows down the work on the next big game mode or huge balance pass, I can promise that you'll get more community support for frequent, visible and noticeable changes to everyone's pet peeves than you will by shaving a day or two off a given big-ticket feature.
Here are a few of my ideas for small changes that would make a noticeable difference in my play experience; I'm sure plenty of others have more.
- When I overheat, why does my mech always revert to normal vision mode when it powers up? Presumably, night/heat vision is just a toggle; there's no reason for overheating to switch it back. I get that while overheated, the overlay will be gone, but could we get it to automatically return once power is back?
- In the mechlab, there are two little icons under the 'filter' that look like the list and grid display options in Windows Explorer and other file management systems. They don't do anything now, but it would be wonderful if they did. Engines in particular would be mucheasier to handle if we didn't have to sort through 60+ identical wireframe images.
- On each mech, have a button that takes you straight to the skills tree for that chassis (I'd place it right above the 'mech details' button in the mechbay). Alternately, change it so that when you click on the skills tab up top, the list opens already scrolled and expanded to your currently occupied mech.
- On the skills page, mechs that are mastered have a yellow insignia, while those that have been elited but not mastered have a light green one. In the mechbay, both have the yellow insignia. It would be nice if I could see from the mechbay whether the mech I was working on was fully mastered or not.
- In the 'Select Mechs' window, mechs are listed alphabetically. In the mechlab, they're listed by tonnage. Under skills, they're listed by weight class (but not tonnage). Could we pick one and stick with it?
- I'm sure there are good reasons to have trial mechs mixed in with owned mechs in terms of getting new players to try them out. For those of us with 30+ owned mechs, however, it makes it a bit bothersome to have so scroll that much further to find the mech we want (especially since we're stuck with grid view rather than list ...). It would be great if you could a) create a subtab for 'owned' similar to how there currently is a subtab for 'trial' and b ) give us an option in Game Settings to make that subtab the default when we open the mechlab.
- This would be a little more work, but it would be nice to be able to buy modules and such outside the mechlab, perhaps from the inventory screen, and to be able to do so in bulk. If I know I need four radar deprivation modules, it would be nice not to have to go to each individual mech and buy them, especially if I'm stocking up for mechs I haven't yet purchased.
- In the faction tab, could we possible get the ability to sort players and donations by name/rank/status/date by clicking on the respective categories at the top?
- If I hit escape while configuring a mech, it counts as having hit the 'back' button at the top. If I hit escape while in the mech trees, it does nothing. Would be nice if that functionality was universal. Bonus points if you also make 'back' mappable for those of us who have forward/back buttons on our mice.
- Can you make the social button on the bottom not flash every time a unit member logs on? Or at least create a different, more obvious cue (audio?) for when we get a group invite or a message? Right now, it all looks the same. (unrelated note; give whoever came up with the 'group leader/in a group' icons in the social window a raise. Those things are slick).
- In the mouseover tooltip in the mechlab, could you add current engine class to the details shown under 'loadout'? 'twould make it far easier to find that pesky XL310 that I know is lying around here somewhere ... Possibly do the same for weapon/mech modules.
- Show current GXP in the home and mechbay tabs the same way its shown in skills, so if I'm grinding for a particular target, I know right away when I've reached it.
- Probably would require talking with a different department, but it would be super sessy if you offered a discount on mechbays purchased in packs of three ...
- In the consumables list (both in the store and the mechbay), put a separator between the cbill and MC versions. I know it's technically good for you if we accidentally spend our MC on cool shots and need to buy more, but it also makes us sad pandas, and occasionally, sad pandas stop playing the games that make them sad.
- I love how we can see the current percentage of players by weight class; is there any way we could set that mouseover to still function while the game is looking for a match?
- I can't remember if this was in UI1.5 or just in Smurfy's mechlab, but being able to double-click a component to add or remove it is pretty snazzy. Can haz?
- I've heard tell that you've said at some point you want to make it possible to work on all mech components on a single screen, like on Smurfy or an interactive Mech Details screen. I hope that's true, but if you're looking for a stopgap measure, adding a 'configure' subtab for armor where you can change values on all components at once would be a great first step.
- From the mechbay module screen, it would be nice if the label 'locked' on a module not yet bought with GXP came with a button that took us straight to that screen to do so.
PGI, is this something you might consider doing? Other players, are there other little tweaks and adjustments that would make an impact on your play experience?
Edited by Bandaron, 21 September 2014 - 08:52 PM.
