Mournful Conciousness
Special Situations TOHA Conglomerate
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Posted - 2012.05.25 07:22:00 -
[1] - Quote
I went to log on to eve this morning as I normally do to check on skill queues, personnel issues. maybe buy and fit a new ship to bring into the wormhole system. I've done this almost every day for 2 years.
Today something different happened.
I found that I just could not face the idea of navigating the the new unified inventory.
So I didn't log on - check the server logs if you like.
I could sit and write a paper on how the new unified systems does not meet user needs. You could counter it with a well constructed argument about how it does meet my needs, but that I just don't like the way it works.
Both have merit, but what it boils down to is that it turned, for me, an excellent game that I loved into an unpleasant UI annoyance.
I run a small wormhole alliance - probably 100 human beings who regularly log on and fly and fight with me. When I am online, more gets done. More missions, more sleepers, more PVP and so on, and it's been great - I have loved every hour of it.
So 100 players' game experience is directly affected by how often I play.
Right now, my motivation to play has been removed. For me, the UI is just too... difficult. Irrationally perhaps, I spit blood every time I see it. Maybe because until now I felt irrationally positive about Eve. Who knows?
It seems like such a small thing, and yet it turns out that it has affected my play experience to the extent that I no longer wish to log on.
So 100 player's game experiences are about to become less engaging. Some of them will drift off and stop playing. They'll kill fewer ships, produce fewer nano-ribbons, buy fewer PLEX and spend less money on subscriptions.
I know I'm not alone in how I feel about this - I've read the forum and consulted the guys in my alliance.
Out of 30 people's view I canvassed directly last night, 1 was OK with the new system. 29 loathed it - quite vehemently.
I am sorry we didn't like your new baby. Truly, because I was looking forward to using a few of the new modules: drone damage mods - wonderful news for a gallente pilot like me, new possibilities cpu rigs - again, helping enhance gallente drone combat - their advertised strength the new shield booster - giving active-tanked shield roams new angles - great! new armour mod - possibly very helpful in small-scale pvp - I was planning to test that today... but.. now I just don't want to.
No-one likes criticism. It must be very hard to have championed this change through the design authorities at CCP, and to see such vitriol expressed by the player community must be upsetting, not to mention potentially career-damaging. There is a simple answer, please let me optionally enable and disable the new look. This way we all win. CCP becomes once again the feted champion of the players, and we all get to quietly forget that this ever happened.
Here is what I need to see before I am going to want to play with the UI again: 1. corporate division tabs back at the top (a division is not a 'kind of' container) 2. one click, one container opens, and only one. No subscriptions to all containers on grid. 3. Each container remembers its exact position and size in my client cache 4. ISK value removed 5. thin borders. keep the "progress bar" if you like, but make it 2 pixels high. 6. container windows auto-dock with each other - and here's where your inventory tree could be used:
note: I don't mind whether multiple docked containers have horizontal tabs or a vertical tree - so long as I choose how many are in the window cluster. I don't want every loot can, every gun emplacement, every carrier corporate hangar, every ship maintenance array and every assembly array. I never will.
7. separate ship, items, deliveries and corporate hangar buttons in a station. These things are not equivalent. In code I know they are all a "kind of" container, but when I use them they represent very different contexts and use cases.
So, farewell for now. I'll monitor the forums for a while to see if there will be movement on this. If not, you'll probably lose me.
I have played for 2 years, and bought 48 PLEX for my 2 accounts. Equivalent of close to -ú500. I have also lead a corporation and alliance of players who now regularly PLEX their accounts, feeding the Eve PLEX market, creating demand - which means that some wealthy players have been able to take advantage, trading cash for ISK, thus feeding CCP, its employees and directors.
Last time this happened (in-station 3rd-person view), the wise path was taken. CCP provided a check box, I clicked it, and I have never ever once even considered un-checking it to take a look at a man sitting on a sofa. So the precedent is set. You can allow us to undo this UI change, and really you must. The economics will speak for themselves in short order.
Sincerely.
R
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