Akurion
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Posted - 2006.05.18 17:31:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Gothikia
As a game designer I can only say this..
If masses of people who have used your product had to hack your client in order for your User Interface to be simple and intuitive, then you have failed. You have poorly designed your product.
I'm going to have to disagree with this. Having a customizable UI only means that you recognize the diverse needs and desires of your playerbase, and you are allowing them some creative control in how they process the game.
As a caveat: I played WoW for about a year before finding Eve. Although I don't play WoW anymore, it is impossible for me to claim with a straight face that the Eve UI I use is anywhere near as sophisticated as the WoW UI I used. Why? Because I had a tailored WoW UI that made my life a thousand times easier. It presented the data I needed the most, and gave me easy access to the options I used the most. All with simple key-clicks.
Take the 'tab' key in WoW. Pressing it automatically selected the nearest hostile target.
How do you select the nearest hostile target in Eve? You have to use your mouse to go to the overview, sort by distance, and click on the closest hostile icon. You'd think a space ship would have the technology to make something like 'select the nearest hostile object' a one-button affair. But not in Eve!
Pretty much every key on the keyboard did something in WoW. I got to choose what every single one of those things were. In Eve? the function keys activate modules, holding down the control key makes it so I can click to target something, and holding down the alt key shows celestial objects. That's about all I use it for.
I can't bind a key to 'approach', I can't bind a key to 'mwd' (and no, alt+F1 is not a reasonable shortcut), in short I can't use the keyboard for anything other than chatting. Eve is the first game I've ever played where 99% of the interface is processed through the mouse. It's like it was designed by a person with only one hand.
Someone already mentioned the combat log. The information in the combat log -- how much damage I'm doing v. how much I'm taking -- is very useful information. Right now the only two ways to process it are to leave the log window open (shudder), or try to read it as it flashes across the screen at milisecond intervals.
At any given time, am I warp scrambled? Why can't my ship display a little 'scrambled' icon somewhere on the screen? Why can't it also display which ship is scrambling me, the strength of the scrambler, and his ship's distance to mine? Those are all very useful pieces of information that a starship should be able to easily process and display.
Why can't my HUD display vectors? Straight lines pointing out of ships corresponding to their direction and velocity? Why can't I have seperate targetting mechanisms for friendly v. unfriendly craft? Why can't I tell what my drones are targetting until they're orbitting it with hot weapons?
These are all things that a customizable UI would enable. It would require no work on the part of CCP. It would cause no pain to people like Gothikia, who are happy with the current UI.
All it would do is give us choices in how information is presented to us, and let us spend more time thinking and deciding, rather than wrestling through a dozen right-click menues.
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