Pilot Dima
Permeability Of Free Space
6
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Posted - 2012.01.26 21:26:00 -
[1] - Quote
+1 to the OP's idea
+1 to the OP for providing criticism that is coherent, constructive, and appears to be well thought out rather than simple bitching and moaning.
-2 for CCP for not consulting with the people who have to use the product to see if someone might have a better idea that whatever it is the team in charge of this came up with (which is another half-baked CCP style beta-quality solution to a problem)
Team Questionable Decisions CCP Edition: please review alternative solutions to the problem of module names. Module names needed improvement, it's hard to deny that. You think you saw an easy way to solve the problem and rolled it out in this update, in lieu of other complicated UI improvements (S&I interface, for instance). I don't think you fully understand all the reasons why module names could use improvements, because if you did, you wouldn't have considered such a trivial and ineffective solution.
The big issue that makes the whole module thing complicated (rather than merely complex): It's hard to search for what you want (by the way, it still isn't really much easier)
In part this is due to naming conventions
a) names are inconsistent across categories (Magnetic shield amplifier--which resist? 250mm as a small for projectile turrets but medium for hybrids, etc.)
b) names often don't give any clue to the properties of the module (Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive--sounds like it's better than the Upgraded 1MN Microwarpdrive to some, I'm sure... oh wait, it's not better? derp)
c) a lot of names for the same property (EM missiles of old: Gremlin, Mjolnir, etc.; Heavy missiles of today: Nova, Trauma, etc. similar alignment of different paradigms). Search for "Gremlin" pre-Crucible 1.1 and you are implicitly searching for both "rocket" and "EM damage". Search for "Mjolnir" today and you're searching for EM damage. If wanting "heavy EM missiles" you must search for "Mjolnir heavy" which incidentally won't show you the "Fury" and "Precision" variants.
Another part, no less important and arguably even more critical is the implementation of module look up in game. How do you find a module? Well, the Market is probably the easiest in-game way, applicable in most situations. You go to "Search" and type in words in the search bar, or click through categories and look at what's there. The "Compare" tool is a very useful augmentation to both of these. This is just not a good way to address searching for modules in a game as complex as EVE! When your search is limited by the name (i.e. the "Search" option) or by your knowledge of which market category the module is in, you're not taking any advantage of all the other info that's very important to a module. Meta levels, sizes, slots for one, which is all info already available in places like Items and cargoholds. To make the search process less complicated, you can't just paint over the old ugly structure with new drab and boring colors, you have to revuild it. And that is what didn't happen.
The OP's solution still doesn't address the restructuring of the way module lookup works, but it's providing a better solution for mitigating the issue through name changes, since the names encode some useful information in them, in a way that's pretty straightforward (and not obfuscated like "Upgraded"... wtf does that really mean?). And yes, I think the new names are boring, bland and kind of a let down considering what could have been done on the whole. |