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Mitticus Jnr
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Posted - 2003.08.08 17:20:00 -
[1]
Firstly : well done. Eve is a great technical achievement and is improving all the time.
Now for the bad.
What exactly did the beta testers do other than check for bugs? There is very little tuning or concistency in the Eve UI which assists gameplay. As someone with a SW background, one of the first things to get to grips with is a concistent UI for the user. In addition, the provision of game features at any and all reasonable situations in the game. In no particular order:
(1) Drones. The Drone bay UI and the "launched drones" UI are totally different. In one you can only select all by hovering mouse in empty space, in the other over a drone. The lack of a "mine repeatedly and dock" option is also a major bugbear. Playability.
(2) Autopilot : the inability to set destination to a location in the current solar system is simply nuts, because -
(3) Warp to Destination breaks after the first warp if the destination is further than one Warp burst. Aargh. And in addition, you can't
(4) Dock to a space station in another solar system. Why the hell not? Do the game designers like us sitting bored to death in our ships not being ablt to access any ....
(5) Market Data during flight? Why on earth is thi snot available? its one of the few constructive things a pilot could be doing while sat bored to death wondering if the warp or autopilot are going to fail during the next 15 jump voyage. We could be plotting trade routes or ....
(6) Using the Channels. Come on guys!!! This is nothing short of amateur. You can't cut & paste. You can't save. You can't tag individual conversations. You can't get a handle on a contributor because of the those stupid expanding icons. Oh and if you click on a scroll bar, the screen should scroll down, not scroll to the very end. Oh, and of course the logs clear if you change to window mode .. ??!?. All the little things that help make a help channel usable. So maybe instead we can use the in game browser? ...
(7) In game Browser : not even half of what it should be. hardly any help. No way to see ship or weapons trees. Basically no in game info to help the newbie construct a skills and profit path in order to progress. Need to go to the help channel. See (6). Even they have done the tutorial...
(8) Well : the least said about this the better. Buggy as hell. Id say one in ten questions on the ingame help channel are from frustrated noobs whose agents have shut up shop.
(9) Agents. Pathetic. They don't tell you what they are going to pay before you accept the mission. You can confirm comlpetion from a remote location, but can't accept a mission from a remote location. What the hell is that about. Who is responsible for making that a game rule. So we have to get back in our ship, struggle with the map, hope autopilot doesn't break or hope its not more than one warp away , sit there like an idiot (unable to access any market info), and hop back to be given another sixpence mission. great gameplay folks.
(9)  
Thanks for your patience.
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Mitticus Jnr
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Posted - 2003.08.08 17:51:00 -
[2]
On the same rant : skills. I just read the articles on skill queueing. Why anyone would object to be able to queue a couple of days worth of skills is beyond me : a player might need to go away or something. Sure, not 100000 skills in a queue but a couple? Come on.
Oh, and did no one notince that there is no easy way to see how long a skill takes without actually starting it? Example : you finally saved up for you new indie and buy it. But, horror of horros you realise you need Race Indy Skill 1 or whatever. You buy it BUT you are 8 hours into training a 2.5 day skill. How long does the new skill take? Can I train it in 30 minutes and then restart the other not so important skill all over again? OR will it take a day too thus delaying the restart of the original skill for a full day? There is no info on this in the show info data. And why do skills training get reset when you interrupt? Hardly real world is it?
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Aronis Contar
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Posted - 2003.08.08 23:18:00 -
[3]
Skill training doesn't get reset when you change a skill. When you switch to another skill (for example because you want to check how long it is going to take) then the original skill will keep all skill points it already has, and you can continue with it exactly where you left.
No skill points are lost when cancelling an active skill training.
Ciao, Aronis!
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Wild Rho
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Posted - 2003.08.09 02:01:00 -
[4]
Not exactly true. There seems to be a bug where sometimes if a player opens a skill pack while learning another skill and confirms they wish to learn the new skills the skill that was being trained is reset back to the start.
In all other cases this doesnt happen as far as I know.
I have the body of a supermodel. I just can't remember where I left it... |
Mitticus Jnr
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Posted - 2003.08.09 02:16:00 -
[5]
Thanx for the replies. Both of which confirm my original question as to what the beta testers were doing. This is a typical problem with long term beta testers. They become immune to a UI deficiency. The whole point here is that something as central as skills should not leave the questions that the newbie will be asking open. e.g HOW long does this new skill take to learn?
Another bugbear of mine is the inconcistency in Universe "URL" presentation. e.g If I bring up info on a station or solar system I should always be able to Set Destination or "Bookmark" (otherwise known in most other areas as "save location").
The UI is, because I am a pedantic SOB, ruining the game for me.
Almost.
I love it. But wish the UI had been properly beta'd.
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Capt Xpendable
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Posted - 2003.08.09 10:35:00 -
[6]
Edited by: Capt Xpendable on 09/08/2003 11:06:07
I've been meaning to comment on many of these things myself. I find it very hard to immerse myself in a supposedly futuristic game when the UI seems contrived to set artificial limits that I really don't think would exist thousands of years in the future.
For example, I would expect mining drones to be smart enough to already know what their job is when I launch them at a targeted asteroid. I shouldn't have to tell them what to do. Same goes for combat drones, they should launch guns blazing at the target.
I would also expect to have icons in the main interface representing each category of drone I'm carrying. Clicking once would launch everything in that category, right clicking would give you menu of all drones in that category for individual launch.
Another thing that annoys me is the bug where modules a get turned off, mainly because demonstrates how senseless it is for ships not to be able to toggle their own equipment on and off without a station. Engineers in the future would only design ships this way if they are complete morons.
For people 30-40 jumps from the nearest station, this bug should only be a minor irritation, instead, it's elevated to a major, gamestopping, hassle.
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"Let me guess. My theories appall you, my heresies outrage you, I never answer letters and you don't like my tie."
The Doctor |
Xylor
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Posted - 2003.08.09 17:24:00 -
[7]
 Quote:
What exactly did the beta testers do other than check for bugs?
Being a former beta-tester I can answer your question. In actuality there were quite a few forum threads posted regarding deficiencies with the UI during beta. One individual even seemed to specialize in pointing out UI flaws and suggesting various improvements to same. For the most part, very little of that feedback resulted in improvements.
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Mitticus Jnr
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Posted - 2003.08.10 00:41:00 -
[8]
I am probably being a little harsh on "beta" testers, since UI issues should have been caught ebfore a beta. But I suspect that the final months of Eve development was a collection of Fan Boyz oblivious to the obvious flaws in this very special game.
The warp breakdown in a single solar system say the following to me : too much patting on the back and not enough objective analysis of what was being released.
If a dev reads this : congrats - its a super game. Had such glaring errors been pointed out at a suitable time frame, you would really have had a classic on your hands. As things lie, it reminds me of Privateer 2 too much. The last game that I so looked forward to, but whose huge gameplay issues caused me to react in such a similar manner.
Sod fine tuning the Mining v Refine v XYZ modules. Sort out the tutorial, the UI, the map etc etc and let newbies get into the game. As it is, I couldn't, hand on heart, recommend this game to any other than the most die hard space sim fan who has no idea of what an OO UI should be like and who has no problem with issuing multiple hard to find commands to complete the most minor thing.
Mine Repeatedly indeed. pah.
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Gullan Coco
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Posted - 2003.08.10 16:53:00 -
[9]
also a former beta and I mainly was busy retsrating the game every 15 minute. when the game was released and I finally got my game in the mailbox the game was very much changed. There was many threads on improvements of the ui. Drones was changed and then changed again etc.
about to see the market when flying I would rather see a Trading-relay/computer/what-ever-name. A module that can be installed to give you access to market.
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