John Banzai
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
0
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Posted - 2016.05.01 06:29:13 -
[1] - Quote
I'd like to request that we have the option to use the old style tactical overlay or something similar to the sphere. I understand that there were folks who were tired of the sphere for range, but it was incredibly useful. Having used this for a few days now in a variety of circumstances, I implore to consider allowing us to revert to the hold tactical overlay or to add a range sphere option to the new system.
I understand that there are people who are glad to not have the sphere, etc. there from an aesthetic standpoint, but aesthetics should not determine the choices for tactical tools at the expense of providing quick information for decision making.
Why:
1) In large fleet fights the curved lines become useless since they just become a jumbled mass that more often obscure parts of the battlefield than assist in determining the range of enemy ships. White lines on top of white brackets quickly becomes a visual mess. When passing above or below and enemy fleet and the curved lines start shifting to the other side of the circle much faster than the enemy ships are actually moving, those lines get even more distracting.
2) In PVE, I now have to choose between the tactical overlay and showing brackets for wrecks--I used the old overlay 100% of the time. Once there are more than a handful of wrecks on the screen, the curved lines to wrecks quickly become a tangled mess and start to obscure the ship brackets. Hence, the new system requires me to reduce the amount of available information on the screen because of the clutter created by the tactical overlay.
3) The old sphere was very handy for quickly determining ranges to targets because it was very easy to sort out visually from any direction. The point of the sphere was to quickly determine in/out of range in a single step. The new system adds an extra step to this process, forcing me to trace out the curved line from the ship (again, nearly impossible to do in fleet fights) to the horizontal plane. Hence, my eyes have to look at two objects (the ship and its range indication circle) to determine the same information I could do by looking at one object (the ship) with the old overlay. For a "tactical" tool, this is a move in the wrong direction since tactical tools are supposed to speed up the decision process, not add extra steps.
4) The circles on the horizontal plane are visually very similar to ship and other brackets. This very distracting in any engagement where ships are moving constantly as there are now twice as many bracket-like objects moving around the screen that my eyes have to sort out. It gets especially distracting when those circles are moving across the horizontal plane faster than the ships themselves (e.g., passing above/below).
I understand you want to update the cosmetics of the tactical overlay, but replacing the range sphere with curved lines adds significant visual clutter to the grid without providing additional information over the old design. Please give us the option to revert to the old tactical overlay or add a range sphere option to the new tactical overlay. Without these, the new tactical overlay may look prettier and more "modern," but from a tactical standpoint is a step in the wrong direction from the old overlay. |