Matriarch Prime
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
0
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Posted - 2012.08.18 18:09:00 -
[1] - Quote
I recently came back to the game, and the names are definitely something that is very confusing.
I think using a basic mark system would work better. It is time consuming to figure out if an item is better and in what way. The slot symbols (high, med, low, rig) do a good job of conveying basic item information very quickly to the play. I know I'll probably get a lot of flak for saying this, but other games have already figured out other ways to convey information about items very quickly. Using color for the item item text and icon background, along with a mark system and so long as the convention is standarized, you can really go wild with the "quoted" names modules.
I'll use auto cannons as an example, because I'm a mini, so all I know are guns. :)
125mm Gatling Autocannon
125mm Light Carbide Repeating Autocannon
125mm Light Gallium I Machine Gun
125mm Light Prototype I Automatic Cannon
125mm Light 'Scout' Autocannon I
125mm Gatling Autocannon II
Faction 125mm Autocannon*
There are only two components to that name that convey useful information to me across all those items. "125mm" and "autocannon". Auto cannon tells me it is a projectile turret (so its a high slot item) and 125mm tells me the size, and bigger is usually better if you can fit it.
"Light" is useful since it tells me a whole lot of information about signature resolution and the intended class of ship it is intended to shoot and be equipped to. But it is not consistent.
I think its ok to have the "scout" in there, but the name needs to mean something. And preferably it should say something about the stats. This is where I think color could help a whole lot. But the convention needs to be consistent to mean something. And by that I mean that the convention should work across all items, not just within a subset. The new little symbols help, but they only work for faction, deadspace and tech tiers. And don't get me started on pith-a / gist-x stuff, nothing about those names tells you what is different.
What is different about the "carbide repeating" compared to the "prototype"? Could you put them in order of ascending meta level without peeking at the item info? I can't. I pulled that list off a website.
Lets see what happens when we make a few changes.
125mm Light Autocannon I - white
125mm Light Autocannon I Mk. II - blue
125mm Light Autocannon I Mk. III - purple
125mm Light Autocannon I Mk. IV - red
125mm Light Autocannon I Mk. V - orange
125mm Light Autocannon II - gold
'Faction' 125mm Light Autocannon I - green
You now have redundancy in how the information is conveyed to the user. You see green. You know its faction. You can also tell from the name. You can even tack on the flavor names at the beginning if the mark system sounds too bland like so.
125mm Light Autocannon I - white text
'Carbide' 125mm Light Autocannon I - blue
'Gallium' 125mm Light Autocannon I - purple
'Prototype' 125mm Light Autocannon I - red
'Scout' 125mm Light Autocannon I - orange
125mm Light Autocannon II - gold
'Faction' 125mm Light Autocannon I - green
You lose the redundancy of information. Because each different class of item would have different meta names, unlike the mark system. And you want redundancy for color blind players, since the colors only really help players with regular vision. And things get confusing again. Is the tech 2 item better than the faction item? The tech 2 has a bigger number on the end.
If I were doing it from scratch, I'd go with something like this...
125mm Light Autocannon
130mm Light Autocannon
135mm Light Autocannon
140mm Light Autocannon
145mm Light Autocannon
150mm Light Autocannon
155mm Light Autocannon
...
And this is where it gets tricky. If an item has a bigger number, it should be more effective. If I have a "faction 125 autocannon" that doesn't tell me if the 150mm tech 1 is going to do more damage or not. You should be able to tell at a glance how effective one item is compared to the other. In this convention, all the items would need to be renamed based on their basic effectiveness. And things like tracking would need to scale along with this scheme as well. Bigger = slower all the way up to the point where you jump to artillery, which has a different name, so its ok to reset things a bit and have a new scaling base like it is now. One can easily understand the difference between an autocannon and artillery. Those names convey a lot of information.
And skills would allow higher meta levels to be equipped. Meaning to equip 200mm faction autocannons you would need very heavy skill investment into light autocannons. And for consistancy, higher meta levels would require more fitting requirements. So if you can fit something, you'd know to fit a lower item level. This would also allow greater granularity in ship fitting.
So, um, yeah. Thats my 2 cents. Its not completely thought out, but its a thought. |