The new character ordering is good for some, terrible for others.
Give us a toggle on the character page. With a click it opens down showing options in how to order. Then click, we can get which one we want and if the Devs decide to add other ways or organize the setup is already in place.
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Why ENFORCE this change, ignore the feedbacks and not give us options
I feel like the answers to this question are so obvious that it should be rhetorical, but on the off chance that it's not "We couldn't do it at the time" or "We can't do that" are the likely answers.
Also enforce is the wrong word, even if you bold and capitalize it. "Make" would have been better, but I know you were trying to be dramatic.
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Congrats, Devs! Your "Quality of Life" change has likely caused issues for people with developmental disabilities.
I'll throw my full support behind any thread that says "take this crappy character sorting change and bury it in the deepest, darkest hole you can find." Then drop a nuke in after.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHdgUg02Llw )
im going to get a little personal here.
I was diagnosed with High-Functioning Autism at the age of 3. I currently work as a UI software engineer.
Cryptic has no idea how much ineffable pain this update has caused me both on a habitual level as well as from a professional standpoint.
UI-designer side, what exactly is the intent of this change? Is it to encourage players to play one character more? How does this benefit this standpoint? Already, prior to the change, the login screen would start you on the same page as the last character you played, so this wasn't an issue. It doesn't benefit the creation of new characters, either, because each time you log in, you're put on the same page as the last character you played - and that's always page 1. You have to always go to the last page to create a new character.
Is it for consistency between games? Because if this is the case then the login screen would also necessitate listing of actual character names in a large scrolling list instead of individual-loading icons - which, by the way, is also a need to keep the order of each character's hex in a consistent, static order in the list. This is beginning to get into the personal points.
Prior to the update, whenever Smash day would roll around, my usual gameplay routine would be to go through an entire page of alts, update their builds, track which ones would need respecs accodringly, all based on whichever page had the largest last-log-in periods (something that was shown prior to the update).
This picture above? That's my roster, prior to the update (it's even larger now by the way, that last page got filled). Notice how it was consistently sorted by page. Chisoku, Lady Anubis, Inspector Steel, they're always on page 1, and then characters like General Grief, Meltdown, and Apostate are always on page 8. When Smash day rolled around, I'd go through an entirety of 13 characters based on page position to do Smashes. There was an order to this.
This update has thrown my ability to do this in a time-effective way out the window. That is now about half my playtime I usually devote to the game removed, because I now cannot follow this procedure, and I also can't keep track of which characters I still have to respec because I wasn't slavishly keeping track of all of my alts and their status in a fully-filled out Excel sheet. No, I was just doing it casually in a crappy text file because I didn't have Excel back when I started playing and also despite the above I'm not really great at organizing myself. This is literally what it looks like:
Also, if I just want to mess around in the tailor, this update means that each time I log in or swap characters to do it from the login screen, that's 13+ pages I need to go through to reach an empty slot. That's just inconvenient from a number-of-clicks/efficiency standpoint, even outside of my weirdo non-neurotypical habits. True, it's not even possible for people to get 13 pages anymore, but for some players (especially those with lower-end systems) there's actually a massive performance drop between the login screen Tailor and the ingame Tailor. I've heard some other players complain that CO outright crashes sometimes if they attempt to use the tailor in rencen for example.
So okay, laugh at me for having a developmental disability, or how I keep yelling about how I hate this change and am being a huge inadaptable baby retard, fine, that makes me want to play with this community less each time you say I just need to roll with the punches. And I do wish that Cryptic or @kaizerin would actually listen to me about this issue but due to me being slightly too rough with how I've voiced my criticism on the game in the past, they've more or less put me on ignore for every method of contact I've attempted. Part of that is how I've recently been employed with this UI work, realizing how simple it seems to do, and questioning myself: 'how is cryptic so slow at what they do?' Part of it is gaining more disposable income to put into the game, trading off less time to farm for events, and perhaps expecting more from them as I put just a fraction of my paycheck - to a game that I truly want to see succeed in every sense of the word, and with the only way I can do it right now.
People who have followed my guides on steam might notice they're missing now, and for that I'm truly sorry, because I need to make my presence known to the developers somehow to tell them that they I feel they've made a costly mistake by doing this.
I probably would've put my thoughts into words like this earlier if I had made the connection as to exactly why this change was affecting me so deeply, but Shortbus' comment there only really allowed me to put two and two together now.
Anyways, I might still drop in on the game, again because I do like bits of it, but with what is essentially a core method of how I've played the game for about 7+ years now entirely uprooted and dismembered I simply can't find it in myself to do it as much as before. If you made it here through my E/N TLDR nerd rant about a game online and read the whole thing, I commend you and thank you for your consideration.
With how familiar this playerbase is with mental disorders, I doubt anyone who has been here for a while is laughing about that.
Like I said on PTS, giving players an option is best.
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I am riddled with dyslexia
?narm I tahw wohk uoy
* Sometimes, seedy design decisions are made to increase in-app time, but this really doesn't seem like one of them.
Is the goal to make people less interested in playing alts? Because that's what it's doing for me...
[Citation Needed]
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Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
NWO is a static list
But two - I find the new login order incredibly disorienting. I have a really really good memory, so this new ordering is probably not actually as bad for me as it is for you, but I do not like it at all. I will adapt, I guess, but I wish I didn't have to. It really throws me off.
I'm a DB guy not a UI expert, but this change... Well. Guess it's been discussed.
Thanks Bluhman and I'm sorry to see your guides gone.
If the old sorting system/a selectable one is put in, then the guides can be quickly restored - they're only hidden for now, not deleted.
Unfortunately the developers still haven't really acknowledged anything yet, so I might have to remove more of my material (specifically some stickied topics/guides I've written in the past years) to make my point more visible. These won't be as easy to restore from what I understand.
Trying to force the devs to do something by taking your ball and going home is sure to work. Good luck.
I don't think so. I think they did it because they felt it would work better for most people. It's worked out fantastically for me, you can look forward to me being bummed if they go back to the previous method.
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I have 20 characters that do vigilance and the change actually made doing vigilances with them more convenient and fun, so no worries.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Well since you don't have enough time to play, the good news is that character will be at the top of Page 1 next time you do have time to play. Yeeeeeeey \o/
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Unless you forget that you hadn't done it and start the next character on the bottom of the list only to realize on the next Vigilence alert that you missed one character.
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
Something that can happen no matter what the sorting method - oops, forgot where I left off, missed a toon! Heck, I used to do that by accident all the time when it was the old sorting method. Hasn't happened since the new sorting method tho.... hmmmmmmmmmmm
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
My characters
Don't blame the change for your own mistakes.
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Here's a computerized radiation machine that gave way too high doses on several occasions.
So saying something like this:
Is like telling the radiologists who worked with the tool "Don't blame this new tool for your own mistakes."
"You were overconfident. The tool does exactly what it says it does. It shows you an error if there's a problem, it's your fault for not knowing what ERROR 34 is. It's your fault for giving the patient a dose 100 times in excess of what they needed. It's your fault for continuing the procedure and trying to do your job."
I can keep drawing up examples of how wrong this way of thinking is, selection screens that don't sort by a constantly shifting metric, and the consequences that can arise from having poorly-designed UI. You can keep saying that we're wrong, because just one statement made said it will not be reverted. But it should, and I will keep drawing from that pool of knowledge, every single time a claim like this is made against someone.
42 40s, LTSer.
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Maybe this should have been brought up at first instead of immediately jumping to conclusions?
To be fair, there is precedent.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
It works for the most part...right up until the point something (reasons are unimportant) requires me to log on a character that hasn't done them yet because I need to get something else from them. Since I logged them on, they get jumped to the front of the top of the list, right along with everyone else who has done Grab for the week. But one should be easy to remember, yeah? Okay, so turns out it was the wrong character, so I check another, and another, and a few more until I finally find what I was looking for. Now my "who's done it and who hasn't" list is all out of whack. So the next day, I sit down, do more Grabbing, reach the end of the list, and while I remembered having bumped a few who needed it out of line...who were they again? This is where I go back, try to get them all caught up, and...hopefully I didn't forget anyone and...oh wait, yeah I msised a few. GG, 2 month wait incoming.
So in short, it looks like I need to start spreadsheeting my weekly custom alerts now because there's no longer any [poop emoji here]ing order I can follow when in the past, this was never a problem since nobody switched positions on the list. It was just an easy top-to-bottom, left-to-right order that worked like a charm.
The precedent is that you always jump to conclusions on the forums. Why change now?
Also just a heads up before you waste your time over-reacting and making an elaborate spread sheet or something, another way to deal with this issue ( if you just have to switch toons pre-3/3 ) you don't need anything big. Just open a Text file, type the name of the character who hasn't finished it, and save it. Add names as needed, delete when you finish them on that toon. There you go, kept track of and no need to open Excel.
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Hence why I mentioned the 2 month wait.
Um yeah, the fact that this change has created the need to do things like this is exactly the problem here.
This change hasn't created the need to do this, people were already making spread sheets this whole time, remember? Way more elaborate than what we're talking about here. Oh no, a txt file with a few words in it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Sorting characters was not broken.
You "fixed" it in a way that makes people think you hate your player base.
I hate looking for my characters.
Terrible saying. Convinces people that improving things is a bad idea. Leads to stagnation.
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You're right, that's a big improvement.
Yeah, a saying that has been around for years...Spinny confirms it's a bad.
For someone who didn't want this change, you sure are fighting your dear sweet heart out, it proves that you argue just to argue.
What am I fighting exactly? People not doing all 3 Grabs in one go? A noble hill to die on, I proudly take this mantle you have bestowed upon me.
Yep, that's exactly what I said.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
If you won't eliminate the behavior for basic human decency after how bluhman effectively demonstrated how distasteful it is, do it for Cryptic's bottom line and survival of the game. It is driving people away.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained