Feedback Thread: GUI Changes

[Nakahara]

I'd really like an option to switch back to the old skill view.
Only good thing about the new one is that you can now see if you got a skill not maxed post 200.
The rest (look, feel, time to appear, ...) isn't really an improvement imo.

[deniska]

So shift+click on "+" and "-" buttons are useless?

[Octopuss]

I don't give a damn about how does the UI technically work. I could even live with the terrible delay upon opening IF you make it look NORMAL! Something visually similar to the old one. This is 1) hurting my eyes and 2) unreadable (meaning I am getting lost in it). At least put the skills in one column.

[Satisguard]

Silirrion plz understand, the new skill window is completely new code with nothing else using that code, takes long to load and hard to read vs old one. If it was say, pre-loaded fomat, say most gui elements, npc windows, etc. used same base code as the new skill "tree" window, it would help it load a bit faster if it was not an "all in one" code, say like the quest npc windows have 4 elements, outer shell the base rest built inside, the chat options, text, buttons.. those load fast, why dose the "new skill window take so long? It's all new code that's not loaded as game loads? But even if you just have had it opened, still takes a bit to open again an freezes pc's less than 2.3 Ghz. I'ld say you need to spead the code out use the new gui element window as base for all the windows, and give it a preload on start with a temp folder to cashe data, it pulling all that data the way it does at same time regenerating that window like that is well...

[deniska]

What Octo said.
Put them in one column, place them in the original order, the order they were pre-patch because we are used to it that way and return bodydev and nanopool back to abilities.

[Minge]

I'd like to mention again how slow the new skill window is, it takes 15-30 seconds to open and if I keep it open while rezzing everything freezes for a second every time the skills update.
The code for this new skill window has got to be the worst ever, it's beyond me how you can work for a commercial game company and write something this stupid.
Just fix it and stop embarrasing yourself Funcom, if someone finds way to crack the game so we can get our old skill window back until funcom fixes their new features (which shouldn't be there until you've fixed the bugs that are already in the game, so please stop adding new ones) I'm sure you'll be rewarded with a couple lock-picks.

[Healyhatman]

Yours freezes during rezzing? Every time skills update? I must say I've never seen or heard of that one before..... What have you got running in the background? I know that I was having the worst chat lag once, all fixed by removing xFire (no idea why I even had it to begin with)

[Minge]

I usually only have firefox, a putty and winamp running in the background

[Healyhatman]

A putty?

[Minge]

What does it even matter, it's a nearly 6 year old game and it runs worse than Half Life 2 which means there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

[Healyhatman]

There you go, 6 year old game on new hardware it wasn't coded to run on, compared with the latest tech designed for the latest tech.

What's putty, is that your pr0n finder? That why you evaded the question? lewl...

[Darkbane]

What's putty, is that your pr0n finder? That why you evaded the question? lewl...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PuTTY

[Pajaaa]

Octo wrote somewhere good idea.
It's possible to do that abilities are in 1 column? Now with 2 is not so good for orientation.
Plus will be good, when you open skill window that basic ability will show, not that "blank" page

[mentholbox]

bump for old IP window back plz!

[bungerman]

another bump for old skills window back.

[Octopuss]

Not old window itself. New window looking like the old one.

[Rewo]

bump for one column and window opening to abilities page.

I prefer the old version but can live with/get used to the new one with the above suggestions.

[Credat]

Some explanation of why I personally don't like the new skills UI, after having given it a couple weeks to get over the initial omgz-they-changed-something-i'm-used-to thing. Hopefully these observations are reasonably objective, but obviously there's a good amount of personal opinion as well ;P

I haven't read all of this thread, so please excuse if I duplicate something somebody's already posted.

- The opening time is pretty awful, unless you zero-byte the associated ipdist.xml file, which seems like a pretty nasty hack, and doesn't always make any difference anyway. I often flick open the skills window to check my current level of a given tradeskill. Currently, this usually locks me up for 5-10 seconds.

- There is no visual indication of what category you are currently viewing. For example - if i'm browsing the skills from beginning to end, and currently looking at ranged skills, and want to move to the next category, I look back at the list of categories to reference where I am and to click the next one. There is nothing there to show that I'm looking at ranged skills, my current position in the list of categories. To a new user this is probably worse, as they won't necessarily know where they are from the skills visible in the right-hand pane.

- The two-column pairing of skills is pretty confusing visually, and is another property of the new UI that interferes with the ability to easily scan the information with the eye. One single column would be *much* easier to get on with. Alpha ordering might work well for the items in the column. (I actually can't remember what the ordering was in the previous UI, but it also worked well.)

In my opinion Body Dev and Nanopool do not belong in the abilities category, so I personally have no problem with their having been moved, although I know some disagree on this.

- It's much harder to see skill costs. In the previous UI the entire bar was either green / aqua / light blue / dark blue, etc, and it was very visibly clear what skills were going to cost you to raise. In the new UI we only have the colour of the fairly light-faced label font by way of a visual guide, which is really not that clear at a glance - you really have to *look* at the skills one by one to determine the colour, if you understand what I mean by that.

- There are no sound effects! Because of this the UI feels squashy and intangible. The previous UI felt much more positively responsive and complete. Imo sound effects make a big difference.

- The skill bars show the percentage of the skill versus what the skill could be if it were maxed. In the previous UI I'm pretty sure that the bars showed the percentage of the skill versus what the skill could potentially reach by the end of the current title. For this reason, where it was possible in the previous UI to see when you were approaching title caps, in the new UI it is not. Personally I much prefer the old UI's method as it gives a good 'overhead view' of where you are with a particular skill.

Note that the old UI worked a little differently again after level 200. I never really understood exactly what was going on with the bars after tl6.

- There's no indication of how many IPR's your character has left. I hear that it's possible to see *during* the IPR process. This is quite a shortcoming of the UI if I have to get nekkid just to check my IPRs.

Good things:

- Ctrl-click to max a skill is nice. (I have no idea if this was present in the previous UI though)

- Easily visible information on skills' underlying abilities is an improvement. I would never have found it myself in the previous UI unless someone had told me about the shift-click the skill bars thing (which didn't really make a lot of sense in the context of the UI imo, although it was a cool 'hidden feature' to be able to tell ppl about ;P)

- The information given in detailed view is good to have access to. (Although, again, the two-column format is a bit of a pain to process visually)

- The visual indication of which skills have been raised (before committing changes) is a nice touch. I don't think this was present in the old UI.

- The minimised view is the most usable version of the UI in its current state, in my opinion. It would be great if mini % bars were somehow squashed into it though, and it would be nice to be able to have two or more categories open at the same time, since there's unlimited vertical scroll available.

[Lumifly]

- The opening time is pretty awful, unless you zero-byte the associated ipdist.xml file, which seems like a pretty nasty hack, and doesn't always make any difference anyway. I often flick open the skills window to check my current level of a given tradeskill. Currently, this usually locks me up for 5-10 seconds.

- There is no visual indication of what category you are currently viewing. For example - if i'm browsing the skills from beginning to end, and currently looking at ranged skills, and want to move to the next category, I look back at the list of categories to reference where I am and to click the next one. There is nothing there to show that I'm looking at ranged skills, my current position in the list of categories. To a new user this is probably worse, as they won't necessarily know where they are from the skills visible in the right-hand pane.

- It's much harder to see skill costs. In the previous UI the entire bar was either green / aqua / light blue / dark blue, etc, and it was very visibly clear what skills were going to cost you to raise. In the new UI we only have the colour of the fairly light-faced label font by way of a visual guide, which is really not that clear at a glance - you really have to *look* at the skills one by one to determine the colour, if you understand what I mean by that.

- The skill bars show the percentage of the skill versus what the skill could be if it were maxed. In the previous UI I'm pretty sure that the bars showed the percentage of the skill versus what the skill could potentially reach by the end of the current title. For this reason, where it was possible in the previous UI to see when you were approaching title caps, in the new UI it is not. Personally I much prefer the old UI's method as it gives a good 'overhead view' of where you are with a particular skill.

- There's no indication of how many IPR's your character has left. I hear that it's possible to see *during* the IPR process. This is quite a shortcoming of the UI if I have to get nekkid just to check my IPRs.

1 - Yeah, they need to work on this. I'd guess there xml parser isn't too great with something quite as "deep" as this, as it is really the most complicated of the gui widgets at the moment. Even still...simply keeping it resident in memory should prevent the start up lag of it upon subsequent openings.

2 - Good point, it's a small thing, but really should be there.

3 - I don't have any problem seeing the difference in colors. Nonetheless, there's really no good reason to not make it similar to the old ui, with it showing over the whole bar.

4 - Hmmm...I don't really see what this matters, personally. Showing it as a percent of what you can currently max makes the most useable sense, honestly. The other method is "at a glance" information that has no use and can be represented elsewhere.

5 - No, you enable the ip reset menu item, which makes a reset button and shows your number of reset points left. You can either have it open or closed, you don't have to start the reset process. I leave mine closed, if you want to see your reset points, leave it open.

[dak4u]

I agree (fully and completely) with the previous post(er). Spot on.