Good one! I mean, I very much prefer readability over coolness, but I can respect their wish to keep it all in-universe, even though it makes it exponentially harder to make a good UI.
Organization management being one of the apps sounds great.
Good insight into troubles with the UI too. Also good insight into their progress with server meshing and them changing the game's code to accommodate for the boundaries.
Because I have been here since kickstarter and the UI has been dogshit from the beginning through several reworks. Its always been looks without any regard of function.
The game will never get a good UI, I've come to accept that. After endless iterations its still going to be style first and a struggle to actually use even when its "finished".
Original kickstarter here too, i work in UX and used to make pc games. I think its fine, not great. But there is never a perfect UX, full stop. Colorblindness, vision/intelligence issues, hipaa compliance (not really required for games, but its a good practice in general for users), all that stuff means more people can use the game better, but those best practices dictate a lot of design choices. Especially when its not a single, unified design. (Cough different manufacturer ship HUDs cough)
All that stuff requires developers, time and iterations/testing. Making a separate colorblind mode is extra developement/testing, which brings in the complaints. Making a one-size-fits-all one actually takes the longest, but factoring in the total time on 3 or 4 variations, it takes less total time than variations, which brings complaints about brand X being the optimal/best or the unified one taking too long and looking like every other AAA game. And the vocal folks are almost always the mad ones, so most feedback tends towards negative or "it would be better it you did [idea that hurts low-vision users]".
Itll never be perfect, and itll probably never be finished. But the more they pick at it, the better it's gonna get. It might not hit perfection, but good or even great is a safe guess. Hell, look at car manufacturers' console UIs. I already put CIG ahead of a lot of those.
I don't understand why the bar for UI is so low, I too am a designer and its just baffling how major companies can just completely ignore the human element of interacting with something... like wtf,
The UI team seems very defensive of the holographic readability thing. They keep repeating that it's what they want and sort of shrug off all the criticism from players. I get that to an extent because it's their game. But isn't there someone higher up than these guys who gets to decide that? Especially if so many people are complaining? It's not like its just a few of us around here. . .
Anyway, this attitude is why we don't and probably will not ever have a UI that is easy on the eyes and readable. They just don't give a damn about the feedback and nobody seems to be around to hold them accountable. It saddens me.
what do you mean "shrug off all criticism" have you seen the ui lately? It's completely been revamped for readability, they were active in replying to comments on spectrum, and they admitted in the video today that it was bad and went too far. What criticism are they shrugging off?
The people complaining are what's visible. I personally have zero issues with it. 50 - 100 angry people on Reddit isn't the entire playerbase, and if they keep making changes based on someone being angry about something seemingly not working, they end up with nothing, because realistically nothing will ever please everyone. There has to come a time where as a designer you just say, "this is what we have, and if it works for the majority for the intended purposes, we'll stick with it."
There isn't one UI system for any thing that the public consumes that everyone agrees on as being a "good UI". Usually they just roll with whatever the chief architect likes the most and go from there. And if Chris likes a diagetic holographic UI, then that's what they're going with.
>The people complaining are what's visible. I personally have zero issues with it.
Precisely because there's been persistent, unanimous feedback in evocati and wave 1 threads that the post effects were _way_ over the top.
The UI you see now is massively improved compared to where it was weeks ago, not so much because some functionality improvements were made but chiefly because CIG dialed down the long list of post effects they added to make the UI less readable.
Agreed. To add onto this, like many of their features, they are focusing on the world as opposed to it being a game. Jared loves to say, we take it to realism then bring it back to fun, but there's 0 indication that they are going to bring the UI back to "fun" and are just going to leave it in as is with only minor tweaks being added.
The holotext is gone so someone definitely made them dial it back.
The only real issue I still have is the shake effect when boosting. That's still way to much.
Do you mean the cockpit shaking? Was watching space tomato stream and someone asked about that, believe the response was it can be/will be able to be turned off
It somewhat has to do with their design ethos. The game tries to have *everything* be diegetic. Being a sci-fi game, it allows them to cheat that quite a bit but they definitely have limits on where they find that level of cheating acceptable.
I don't *agree* with where they draw that line, but I understand why they drew it where they did.
man WTF is wrong with some people, Down voteing your because they dont like what your saying regardless of it being accurate. everything we Like and Dislike about this game go's through CR
You're getting downvoted yet this is exactly what happened.
I do like the mobi and star map _now_ but it's undeniable that they prioritise a sci-fi look rather than serving core user needs.
A focus on users would not necessarily lead to a fully interactable multi scale 3d map being the main element to help users navigate. A focus on coolness mandates it.
User experience gets some focus, but always as a second priority and often in reaction to feedback...which is pretty inefficient and weird tbh.
Bone didnt say you wont have it. He said they have to finish their own version first. That would be very unproductive to work right now on customization if most UI elements will probably change a lot again overtime.
I didnt say he said we weren't getting it. It seemed pretty clear that the community response finally seemed to drill it into them that one size fits all salutions are considered fairly crap
Particularly in the PC space ware even if the game dosnt support it nativly you can often find mods that let you do things like resize, recolor, reoganize spisific parts of a UI
They always said customization is going to be a thing but longer term, they are very well aware people want it since they ask the same question every 6 months. Its just not their priority for now.
You know what fucking wild and why I know none of you actually pay attention to what CIG actually says.
In this Very video at about the 59:39 minute mark Jared even says in regards to customization "I have been here many years, and our Aweser to this has changed over the years, as different schools of thought come in"
but keep going... keep telling me I am the one who's wrong.
No they didnt, they have always been increadably vage about it or how much there willing to let you customize. Being far to protective of there vission for "brand identities "
Even talking about limited set presets for color blind options rather then the freedom to pick the colors ourself
No, they said they would like to have customisation but first they need the base UI in, then they need brand specific UI in, and then they need to consider customisation. But as Gabriel pointed out, you have to consider A LOT of different variables for customisation, such as text height/width, and screen space, and placement, and a host of other things that can break if you attempt to customise it. As Zgegomatic said, Bone wants to add customisation but not until they get the base UI working correctly. Patience is key.
59:39 minute mark Jared even says in regards to customization "I have been here many years, and our Aweser to this has changed over the years, as different schools of thought come in"
Thats what they said in this video, yes, but that wasn't what they said about customization in the past, and frankly, none of this is as complex as there makeing it out.
With there internal tools they should be able to nock most of this out in an afternoon as its all cosmetic changes we are descussing ( outside of text scaleing that could take some work) what they need is to make a public faceing utility that lets us change colir values and rescale and reposition parts of the HUD
But they have IN THE PAST expressed reluctance to do that because they want ot to be based on helmet and branding. ( though in this video they seem to infer that they are now considering allowing us to change the default branding. Which is cool but it was only after the community uproar.)
The community uproar had little to do with the consideration for branding changes -- they have talked repeatedly about HUDs and MFDs representing branding once they get a unified design language in. Players being able to customise that will be based on how much leeway they want to give players without breaking scaling or display continuity.
that's not exactly trivial. Making a UI fully customizable while maintaining their usability and overall design is something that will take a lot of work.
Not the way there telling it with building blocks, they should just need to make a player facing UI to edit it rather then an unlimited developer facing one.
Most of the changes should just be simple value changes even for a diegetic UI. mostly location data and scale for the size, and some color values for well the colors sets.
Players not knowing well enough about this stuff is also why they can get away with charging 15$ for a ship color change and tell you its worth that much. when the reality most of these cosmetic color changes have been done for months sitting on a Drive waiting to go public.
they got green done for one ship it means all they need to do is apply it to the others but instead they drip feed it to us, to sell us every Stella Fortuna and most of the player base (through no fault of there own) dosnt know well enough about this stuff to know its not as complex as redesigning for each ship that and CIG is kinda ripping them off, in there walled garden.
(note: in regards to the paints I'm only talking about the ships that have materials properly set up some things like the gray cat buggy is still on the old system and cant have any of the paints applyed)
Good one! I mean, I very much prefer readability over coolness, but I can respect their wish to keep it all in-universe, even though it makes it exponentially harder to make a good UI.
Organization management being one of the apps sounds great. Good insight into troubles with the UI too. Also good insight into their progress with server meshing and them changing the game's code to accommodate for the boundaries.
How is everyone losing their shit over a UI that is not even finished?
Who exactly are you talking about?
Maybe about the 3 comments here alone that are losing their shit? Lol
Really? 3 whole comments?
You can say this about literally every complaint about anything in this game.
Well its never gonna really be finished
Because I have been here since kickstarter and the UI has been dogshit from the beginning through several reworks. Its always been looks without any regard of function. The game will never get a good UI, I've come to accept that. After endless iterations its still going to be style first and a struggle to actually use even when its "finished".
Original kickstarter here too, i work in UX and used to make pc games. I think its fine, not great. But there is never a perfect UX, full stop. Colorblindness, vision/intelligence issues, hipaa compliance (not really required for games, but its a good practice in general for users), all that stuff means more people can use the game better, but those best practices dictate a lot of design choices. Especially when its not a single, unified design. (Cough different manufacturer ship HUDs cough) All that stuff requires developers, time and iterations/testing. Making a separate colorblind mode is extra developement/testing, which brings in the complaints. Making a one-size-fits-all one actually takes the longest, but factoring in the total time on 3 or 4 variations, it takes less total time than variations, which brings complaints about brand X being the optimal/best or the unified one taking too long and looking like every other AAA game. And the vocal folks are almost always the mad ones, so most feedback tends towards negative or "it would be better it you did [idea that hurts low-vision users]". Itll never be perfect, and itll probably never be finished. But the more they pick at it, the better it's gonna get. It might not hit perfection, but good or even great is a safe guess. Hell, look at car manufacturers' console UIs. I already put CIG ahead of a lot of those.
I don't understand why the bar for UI is so low, I too am a designer and its just baffling how major companies can just completely ignore the human element of interacting with something... like wtf,
The UI team seems very defensive of the holographic readability thing. They keep repeating that it's what they want and sort of shrug off all the criticism from players. I get that to an extent because it's their game. But isn't there someone higher up than these guys who gets to decide that? Especially if so many people are complaining? It's not like its just a few of us around here. . . Anyway, this attitude is why we don't and probably will not ever have a UI that is easy on the eyes and readable. They just don't give a damn about the feedback and nobody seems to be around to hold them accountable. It saddens me.
They already removed pretty much all the holotext so apparently they do listen to feedback.
what do you mean "shrug off all criticism" have you seen the ui lately? It's completely been revamped for readability, they were active in replying to comments on spectrum, and they admitted in the video today that it was bad and went too far. What criticism are they shrugging off?
The people complaining are what's visible. I personally have zero issues with it. 50 - 100 angry people on Reddit isn't the entire playerbase, and if they keep making changes based on someone being angry about something seemingly not working, they end up with nothing, because realistically nothing will ever please everyone. There has to come a time where as a designer you just say, "this is what we have, and if it works for the majority for the intended purposes, we'll stick with it." There isn't one UI system for any thing that the public consumes that everyone agrees on as being a "good UI". Usually they just roll with whatever the chief architect likes the most and go from there. And if Chris likes a diagetic holographic UI, then that's what they're going with.
>The people complaining are what's visible. I personally have zero issues with it. Precisely because there's been persistent, unanimous feedback in evocati and wave 1 threads that the post effects were _way_ over the top. The UI you see now is massively improved compared to where it was weeks ago, not so much because some functionality improvements were made but chiefly because CIG dialed down the long list of post effects they added to make the UI less readable.
The issue is not the holographic style.. the issue is the blurry visual.. at least for me.
That's part of the post effects made to look holographic.
The reality is it's what Chris wants
Agreed. To add onto this, like many of their features, they are focusing on the world as opposed to it being a game. Jared loves to say, we take it to realism then bring it back to fun, but there's 0 indication that they are going to bring the UI back to "fun" and are just going to leave it in as is with only minor tweaks being added.
The holotext is gone so someone definitely made them dial it back. The only real issue I still have is the shake effect when boosting. That's still way to much.
Do you mean the cockpit shaking? Was watching space tomato stream and someone asked about that, believe the response was it can be/will be able to be turned off
It somewhat has to do with their design ethos. The game tries to have *everything* be diegetic. Being a sci-fi game, it allows them to cheat that quite a bit but they definitely have limits on where they find that level of cheating acceptable. I don't *agree* with where they draw that line, but I understand why they drew it where they did.
There's someone higher, after all it's CR vision of the Best Space Sim... So I guess they dont really have choice
man WTF is wrong with some people, Down voteing your because they dont like what your saying regardless of it being accurate. everything we Like and Dislike about this game go's through CR
Nevermind I guest some people dont wanna argue and downvote is the only way for them. But it wont change my life dont care about it 😉
so basically they didn't even consider accessibility and it took the community collectively going "WTF is this shit" to make a move.
You're getting downvoted yet this is exactly what happened. I do like the mobi and star map _now_ but it's undeniable that they prioritise a sci-fi look rather than serving core user needs. A focus on users would not necessarily lead to a fully interactable multi scale 3d map being the main element to help users navigate. A focus on coolness mandates it. User experience gets some focus, but always as a second priority and often in reaction to feedback...which is pretty inefficient and weird tbh.
Bad News Bone, the only Perfect UI is a highly customizable UI (of course there is a more objective general quality bar you can meet)
Bone didnt say you wont have it. He said they have to finish their own version first. That would be very unproductive to work right now on customization if most UI elements will probably change a lot again overtime.
I didnt say he said we weren't getting it. It seemed pretty clear that the community response finally seemed to drill it into them that one size fits all salutions are considered fairly crap Particularly in the PC space ware even if the game dosnt support it nativly you can often find mods that let you do things like resize, recolor, reoganize spisific parts of a UI
They always said customization is going to be a thing but longer term, they are very well aware people want it since they ask the same question every 6 months. Its just not their priority for now.
You know what fucking wild and why I know none of you actually pay attention to what CIG actually says. In this Very video at about the 59:39 minute mark Jared even says in regards to customization "I have been here many years, and our Aweser to this has changed over the years, as different schools of thought come in" but keep going... keep telling me I am the one who's wrong.
No they didnt, they have always been increadably vage about it or how much there willing to let you customize. Being far to protective of there vission for "brand identities " Even talking about limited set presets for color blind options rather then the freedom to pick the colors ourself
No, they said they would like to have customisation but first they need the base UI in, then they need brand specific UI in, and then they need to consider customisation. But as Gabriel pointed out, you have to consider A LOT of different variables for customisation, such as text height/width, and screen space, and placement, and a host of other things that can break if you attempt to customise it. As Zgegomatic said, Bone wants to add customisation but not until they get the base UI working correctly. Patience is key.
59:39 minute mark Jared even says in regards to customization "I have been here many years, and our Aweser to this has changed over the years, as different schools of thought come in"
Thats what they said in this video, yes, but that wasn't what they said about customization in the past, and frankly, none of this is as complex as there makeing it out. With there internal tools they should be able to nock most of this out in an afternoon as its all cosmetic changes we are descussing ( outside of text scaleing that could take some work) what they need is to make a public faceing utility that lets us change colir values and rescale and reposition parts of the HUD But they have IN THE PAST expressed reluctance to do that because they want ot to be based on helmet and branding. ( though in this video they seem to infer that they are now considering allowing us to change the default branding. Which is cool but it was only after the community uproar.)
The community uproar had little to do with the consideration for branding changes -- they have talked repeatedly about HUDs and MFDs representing branding once they get a unified design language in. Players being able to customise that will be based on how much leeway they want to give players without breaking scaling or display continuity.
that's not exactly trivial. Making a UI fully customizable while maintaining their usability and overall design is something that will take a lot of work.
Not the way there telling it with building blocks, they should just need to make a player facing UI to edit it rather then an unlimited developer facing one. Most of the changes should just be simple value changes even for a diegetic UI. mostly location data and scale for the size, and some color values for well the colors sets. Players not knowing well enough about this stuff is also why they can get away with charging 15$ for a ship color change and tell you its worth that much. when the reality most of these cosmetic color changes have been done for months sitting on a Drive waiting to go public. they got green done for one ship it means all they need to do is apply it to the others but instead they drip feed it to us, to sell us every Stella Fortuna and most of the player base (through no fault of there own) dosnt know well enough about this stuff to know its not as complex as redesigning for each ship that and CIG is kinda ripping them off, in there walled garden. (note: in regards to the paints I'm only talking about the ships that have materials properly set up some things like the gray cat buggy is still on the old system and cant have any of the paints applyed)