test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Why are there so many user interface inconsistencies? Lazy programming or actual reasons?
in The Academy
I've only been playing the game for a few weeks, but as a veteran of MMO's (beginning with Evercrack Beta), I notice a lot of stuff that is inconsistent, illogical, lazy, or incredibly non-vulcan at the very least.
1) Why on some screens can I double click "Sol System" from transwarp and it works, while on others double click doesn't work?
2) why can I not tab between fields in some areas, and yet it works in others? KEY example - dilithium exchange. I should be able to tab between the qty price total fields easily, but instead have to click. ridiculous.
3) Why are some fleet areas on transwarp and others not? dilithium mine, for instance, takes trans to starbase then to "other" then finally mine.
There are more I will try to add as I think of them, its just bloody irritating to have a game I enjoy playing keep trying to change my mind.
1) Why on some screens can I double click "Sol System" from transwarp and it works, while on others double click doesn't work?
2) why can I not tab between fields in some areas, and yet it works in others? KEY example - dilithium exchange. I should be able to tab between the qty price total fields easily, but instead have to click. ridiculous.
3) Why are some fleet areas on transwarp and others not? dilithium mine, for instance, takes trans to starbase then to "other" then finally mine.
There are more I will try to add as I think of them, its just bloody irritating to have a game I enjoy playing keep trying to change my mind.
0
Comments
Click "Collect" on the finished assignment screen for duty officers and the results shift up (makes clearing them easier). Click collect on Admiralty tab and nothing moves.
Cryptic seems to use 'brute force' programming and it looks like they don't follow (or have) many 'best procedures' when it comes to features in this game. I agree (for example) that the fact even the beam out interface and prompts can be different from zone to zone at times leaves me scratching my head (IE you'd think they use one unified interface that all zones would tie into, but no. The biggest example is the differences between ESD and SFA.
or a
But yeah, again - they seem more concerned that something gets out, and don't really care about interface consistency, or give much thought to unifying similar functions to make the game easier to use and understand by new players. Cryptic just expects the existing crowd to 'educate' new players on the various inconsistencies and more arcane aspects of some of their UI interfaces. IE - it's a release and forget mentality; and it's been that way since closed beta in 2009 (which I was a part of)
IMO - It's a lack of leadership/control from a few of the Lead Devs (and one in particular - who seems to care more that he gets to go to various Star Trek and CBS media events and conventions and hob nob with various Trek actors than make/maintain the actual game); who've probably been on this project too long, to the point they doesn't understand or care how confusing some aspects of their UI and systems are in places.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
It saddens me to know such a first rate intellectual property resides in such inept/uncaring hands.
I wonder if there is anyone in the Star Trek or STO world that could effect positive change, or if its just a failure that will persist until it dies naturally.
You'd think that something as revered as Star Trek would engender far greater effort toward quality than something which began as off-brand such as EQ or WoW.
The Dev team at Cryptic is many times smaller than that of WoW, so it is unfair to bash them, especially as has been explained that different people have programmed similar systems. It's also grossly unfair to call them uncaring, inept and every other thing you have called them. I can tell you this, systems are looked at and issues do get addressed and considering the game is over 9 years old, still popular and receives regular updates and is a 30GB FREE to play game, you really should give them some slack. Improvements ARE coming, and they have someone working on UI as we speak; add to that, the discontinuation of the 32 Bit system is going to allow many performance enhancements to now be put into the game.
If you're going to make a complaint, please make it constructive and leave out the insults. You'll find it's much more appreciated. As someone who has 9 years of experience in this game, I can tell you that these guys do a great job with what they have.
Well, the game is coming up on it's 10 year anniversary and the entire time people have been claiming it's dying.
If that's how you really feel, then perhaps it's time for you to move on. I can assure you, we'll all celebrate the 10 year anniversary just fine without you.
I had a problem on Tribble that I sent in a ticket on. I was then directed to another team that was supposed to handle that. When I didn't hear back from them I put a thread in the Tribble section here. The people who helped me were thoughtful enough to check back with me about my issue (which is not game-breaking either, just a bit annoying). I thanked them profusely for their help.
Calling them names doesn't help at all.
That being said, I do agree that the sheer number of inconsistencies is quite annoying, not even close to enough to make me even think about ever quitting this game, but annoying nonetheless. Besides things already mentioned, there is the fact that the newest reputations "autoclaim" when you claim each tier reward, while the older ones require you to sit and wait for the claim button to appear. Not a big deal, unless you have a newer toon that's leveling most or all of the reps at once. At that point having some reps act/react differently than others is most definitely annoying and frustrating. Whether it's making the newer ones act just like the older ones, or vice versa, at least make them all act the same.
It would be nice if that could be applied to all areas of the game, to include the most annoying (to me) item which is item interactions. Some items/consoles etc allow interaction as soon as you are within a certain (generous) distance from them, no matter what angle of approach, then there are others that will only allow you to interact if you are within a very narrow distance and only at a specific angle of approach, and there are yet others that require you to be in an exact (unmarked) spot, one step in any direction from that spot and it doesn't work.
Please make a quality of life pass through the game and standardize things.
I can't say that I've ever tried 1 or 3 in all of my years of playing. The transwarps to fleet holdings isn't really a UI issue, though. The ones that don't have a transwarp are the first two smaller (3-Tier) holdings, and they don't have them because there wasn't a project to build one for either of them. It was a decision made back then, for whatever reason, that they later changed their mind about for every holding since. It does reveal another issue with design, though, the issue that once something is out, there is a limited window for functional changes to be made. Once the next season or expansion is being worked on, anything prior is likely to remain as it is for a long time, possibly forever, unless it happens to get caught up in a revamp later.
SFA, like Klingon Academy, has multiple different places to beam to, both ground and space, within the system and without, but has no transporter platform, so they give you a list in low-priority interacts for it. There aren't many other places like that, but you do see it in reverse on a few space maps, like New Romulus and the Solanae Sphere. It certainly didn't take long to figure out on my own when I was new, and it is generally consistent for places that fit all of those qualifications. This really isn't much different in most other MMOs that I've played. You have to play around with the UI, or ask others if you're the incurious type, to figure out what everything does. Every developer that I can think of has problems conveying things to the new player that just get worse over the years of new releases. It's like they expect you to familiarize yourself with what the shiny buttons do.
Both of those games had massive gaming companies developing them, and WoW was far from off-brand, being built as a continuation of their popular Warcraft series. As an aside, both of those have plenty of bugs, and plenty of unintuitive features that you just have to learn as you go, and at least Star Trek has a tradition of buggy video games in the past to fall back on. There are bugs in the Armada series that are so dumb that they make STO look incredibly polished by comparison.
This is the ultimate point of this thread. Not some flame war or fact check on how popular Warcraft was.
The existence of this game for 10 years with continued inconsistency in simple interface issues is a testament to its popularity with its core.
I respect that many of you enjoy the game. I continue playing but keep seeing incongruities that take from the experience in some (often small) fashion.
If each of you that invested time in jumping down my throat for "name calling" instead invested this time in calling for quality of life improvements, or perhaps instead invested that time in writing your praise letters to the STO programming corps, you'd find it much better spent. Your internet outrage at my characterization of hands seems excessive and potentially abusive. Also not worth even skimming.
QoL improvements happen. You are acting like they don't. Bugs and issues are duly reported and the Dev's will take constructive feedback over insulting feedback any day. And as for seeming excessive and potentially abusive....the advice given to you is far from it.