I apologize for my late return to this thread, cought some bug and been stuck in bed. Thankfully I got TNG on blu-ray to keep me company!
Anyways. I love the feedback. It confirms some of the things I had been thinking but also has provided me with great insight into how to use such a feature from your perspective and for that I'm thankful!
So to sum up, I think it's important to store the following (plus more).
- All relevant settings in the ESC menu (excluding Graphical settings as they are reliant on the computer (might bit way around it though, want to investigate that)).
- Overview settings
- Ship module grouping and layout
- Inventory filters
- Fittings
- Neocom
- Drone groups
- Chat Channels and their settings
- Market Quickbar and settings
I would really like to have the sharing/import interaction very simple. Not sure I can get development time to make a big website feature where it's a public voting up and down, or something very complex and implementation intensive. Key is to have it simple to use.
I think the key elements that I think are important here are;
- Multiple saved profiles which are easily switched between.
- Everything stored server side. Synching is automatic to the profile being used. (this obviously has to be smart enough so it doesn't just always change. But the assumption is that it should be the same if you log in to a character on a different machine.)
- Sharing between players is easy, link that can be posted through eve-mail, chat etc.
- accepting sharing is easy, simple dialog stating what the shared profile is, you can select which "sections" you want.
- CCP's changes to default settings do not override, but you get some notification on if they have been changed, and you have some way to import it. If you use CCP's default settings, then this change is automatic (perhaps?)
- Can save/load from file locally if you wish to have hard copies (sharing through that is obviously possible as well.
- Corporation shared profiles is great! I like any feature that allows for players to be masters of the complexity that is our UI settings and help others!
There also needs to be some simple management view on this, probably in the ESC menu. Complexity of that needs to be considered though. But if it's simple to use, then a novice should be able to accept and apply without problems or need to have a degree in EVE settings. Others that have mastered that can then share with others.
I'm quite excited to get this in! :)