Performance = good, UI = GARBAGE

Babyfark McGeez · 2013-11-12, 02:02 PM

Why SOE, oh why do you insist on changing things that worked perfectly fine? And allways making it worse in the process?
I really would like to know who looked at the simple and clear health/shield and ability indicators and thought "hey man, you know what this needs? To be less clear and visible and be more thin with some pseudo artsy indicator stuff so that players can't take a quick glance at their situation anymore."
It boggles my mind why they go out of their way and devote resources to such a change, while at the same time the hard-to-see directional arrow on the mini-map is still as useless as it allways was (atleast for me on my smallish monitor).

Atleast have the goddamn courtesy to make these new bar designs OPTIONAL, so if you were perfectly happy with the way they were you can change them back.

GAWD. Rant over.

Timealude · 2013-11-12, 02:03 PM

the only thing i dont like about the UI is the power and ammo bars everything else i like

Babyfark McGeez · 2013-11-12, 02:08 PM

Well that's fine. I don't. On my screen they're hard to see.

I'm all for adding new options. The key word being "options" here. Removing a part of the UI that was perfectly fine is just annoying.

Carbon Copied · 2013-11-12, 02:36 PM

Agreed - points I noted:

Icons - Doritos, names, vehicle icons: on screen when they're on the other side of the map or not in view. Fucking pointless.
Friendly names - some stay there all the time, some appear on mouse over, some not at all. Backing colour is also weird as it moves with every single little flinch and isn't even mirroring with the name it's being used as an underlay against?! Some aren't even displaying name characters correctly.
Centered HUD - whats the point in duplicating information if you're centralizing the HUD? F class ability is on the bar and on the bottom of the screen - why?
Low-res - icons look lo-res and jagged in places to me.
Cluttered - clutter clutter clutter. Look at other games on how to reduce clutter and make things more "intuitive" they don't have to immerse; just make sense and seemingly not unwieldy would be a great start.

Failing that now they've optimized the HUD just let the community do it right and start inputting their own versions with the .xml and .dds files as far superior overlays.

Sturmhardt · 2013-11-12, 02:46 PM

Yeah... whoever is their artguy is not really doing a great job. But the performance seems nice, I'm impressed. There are a few bugs left through, many people pop in and out of existence, but it's on the right track.

Edfishy · 2013-11-12, 03:03 PM

Failing that now they've optimized the HUD just let the community do it right and start inputting their own versions with the .xml and .dds files as far superior overlays.

They'd talked about that capability for some time. Personally though I love the new UI throughout the PTS testing. =\

Phantomdestiny · 2013-11-12, 03:12 PM

the UI HAD to be redone because it was using third party software which was awfull for performance .So they had to do it in-engine; so they did the best they could also it's way better than during testing

Babyfark McGeez · 2013-11-12, 03:18 PM

Originally Posted by Phantomdestiny

the UI HAD to be redone because it was using third party software which was awfull for performance .So they had to do it in-engine; so they did the best they could also it's way better than during testing

Sorry, i don't buy that. It would imply that their engine can't draw clearly visible big bars, and that's just ridiculous. Besides the old art style is still being used for hacking.

Also as mentioned in here, the clutter got increased, what's up with that? Why do i need additonal icons on my screen for friendly turrets for example?

GreyFrog · 2013-11-12, 03:37 PM

Actually the GUI did need to be redone to address performance issues. Don't buy it all you like, doesnt mean its not the truth. Almost everyone I talked to gained 5-10FPS simply turning the old GUI off.

IIRC it was built using flash and was a resource hog.

camycamera · 2013-11-12, 03:43 PM

i dont mind it at all.

and mind you, they were put in to make the game run better, the old ones made the game run worse.

Taramafor · 2013-11-12, 03:51 PM

I actually like the new UI. Took a bit of getting used too at first but it's easy enough to work with.

Babyfark McGeez · 2013-11-12, 04:12 PM

Originally Posted by GreyFrog

Actually the GUI did need to be redone to address performance issues. Don't buy it all you like, doesnt mean its not the truth. Almost everyone I talked to gained 5-10FPS simply turning the old GUI off.

IIRC it was built using flash and was a resource hog.

Don't get me wrong here, i'm not saying that the way they implemented the UI before was not a performance problem. But the way people argue in this thread make it sound like the actual design was the problem, not the way it was implemented.
And that would be ridiculous and is what i am not buying. The engine cannot draw more visible bars without dropping in performance? What?

And even though i didn't know the old UI was a performance problem and i understand they took the opportunity to "redesign" it, it's still garbage in my opinion and i would have appreciated atleast being able to switch back to a similar clean and easy design. Give us options, not redesigns.

GreyFrog · 2013-11-12, 04:25 PM

Ah yes, agreed.

GeoGnome · 2013-11-12, 04:28 PM

I like the new UI.

Really isn't that bad of a change IMO.

Hamma · 2013-11-12, 04:40 PM

Someone should post a screenshot..