5 replies to this topic

[Rat of the Legion Vega]

I'm not impressed by some of these changes at all. The worst change is removing the nice big visual grid of all the mechs you own when you log in, and replacing it with stupid little text tabs where your mechs are sorted away and buried.

Firstly, this adds several extra annoying clicks to sift through the various weight and chassis categories whereas before you could just log into your account, scroll down and click directly on the picture of the exact mech variant you wanted in one smooth motion. Minimum clicks, minimum fuss (pictures beat text boxes any day of the week).

More importantly, with this UI change you no longer "feel" like you own an impressive mechbay and collection of mechs since there seems to be no way to view them all together at the same time anymore. This is key for a free to play game that makes its money by cultivating the pokemon "gotta catch 'em all" syndrome. Losing the ability to see little pictures of all my mechs together in one place simply hurts my enjoyment of the game and removes a lot of incentive for collecting new mechs as far as I'm concerned.

The font in many sections of the mechlab is also simply too small, especially in the torso construction section. It feels like I'm putting together an elemental with tweezers. Most of the screen's real estate is not being used effectively for a given task at hand. I heard Microsoft has invented this amazing type of UI that has windows which actually expand and minimize. Google it.

Oh yeah, and regarding the ugly yellow text for weapons in the mechlab. Don't use it.

So I think many of these new "improvements" are actually a major step back. I see a few useful additions (better upgrades information) but several cases of breaking what was working fine.

Edit: I was also put off by the seeming removal of the internal paperdoll torso "maps" in the mechlab in favour of a cumbersome column down the lefthand side, but then discovered it's possible to bring up the old torso maps by clicking "expanded" in a "layout" dropdown menu at the top right. Again, the tiny font didn't exactly make this feature immediately stand out, and it represents more extra clicking just to get back the old UI 1.0 functionality. Undesirable.

Edited by Rat of the Legion Vega, 07 May 2015 - 10:44 PM.

[Mordynak]

I have to admit, I found it odd the switch to the select mech page. I was thinking that we would have the existing view, with an option for a list view and toggles like we have now for owned, trial and whatnot.

I don't understand the mentality beind wanting to buy all the mechs. I have quite a few... but not because I'm trying to collect them all.

I don't see the new mechlab as a step back at all. But I do find some of the changes to be a little odd.

[Timuroslav]

They did say they were testing functionality and not art so...

[Omi_]

The modern Mech Select has never been better than the grid. The grid just needed some better sorting and the ability to show modules/engines without us having to click through each mech one by one to find things.

[Rat of the Legion Vega]

Timuroslav, on 07 May 2015 - 09:29 PM, said:

They did say they were testing functionality and not art so...

UI and functionality are rather inseparable from "art". It's kind of useless to ask for feedback on one without knowing the final design for the other. Besides, going with the text tabs over the grid is a UI functionality change pure and simple. This is a fundamental design decision and a prettier border will not change this.

I also don't see where they said that the art will be receiving a major upgrade. It's not in the test server announcement post asking for feedback, anyway.

.

Edited by Rat of the Legion Vega, 07 May 2015 - 09:46 PM.

[Alistair Winter]

Rat of the Legion Vega, on 07 May 2015 - 09:22 PM, said:

More importantly, with this UI change you no longer "feel" like you own an impressive mechbay and collection of mechs since there seems to be no way to view them all together at the same time anymore. This is key for a free to play game that makes its money by cultivating the pokemon "gotta catch 'em all" syndrome. Losing the ability to see little pictures of all my mechs together in one place simply hurts my enjoyment of the game and removes a lot of incentive for collecting new mechs as far as I'm concerned.

Yes! Totally agree, and this is clearly a case of PGI hurting their own business. The ability to look at the fruits of your labour is hugely important. And if the little thumbnails actually reflected our choice of camo pattern and colour, well... I think PGI would vastly increase their sales of camo patterns and colours too.


Ideally, it would be fantastic to see all the mechs in an actual mechbay, like seeing all your space ships in your Star Citizen hangar. But I can see how that might be problematic, since some players have 200+ mechs and you need to figure out a way to display them without exploding people's computers.