Also I noticed, in the character select, when you put your mouse over the 3 different "Classes" of Engineer, Sci, or Tac, the Sci and Tac aren't exactly accurate parentheses descriptions. While on the ground a Sci can be a healer, an Engineer is hardly a tank. And these roles also change Dramatically in space. This is more of an observation. I'd almost call Engi more of a buffer/Debuffer.
Thing about the engineer is that it's easily the most viably diverse class. You can make them somewhat tanky (they used to be way, way tankier). You can also build them to be buffers/debuffers, shield healers, a pet class, or even mad bombers, and all of them work very well.
I would talk about class balance more extensively but that isn't the subject of this thread.
♪ I'm going around not in circles but in spirographs.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
The primary reason I haven't been playing KDF is entirely due to the red UI, a lot of people, myself included, get massive headaches from it, if it doesn't affect some that way good for them, but for me I prefer at least the direction the new UI is taking, for one thing I will not miss the neon glow of the previous UI. I don't much care for the burnt amber color of the KDF controls not so much for the color itself but for the poor level of contrast for any icon changes, ie arming weapons for autofire should show a visible green border in the button and enabling and disabling Boff ground abilities should be green or red but is currently subdued to the point of being nearly invisible with the amber buttons. I would recommend replacing the green border and Boff icon shading with some kind of border graphic that would be visible regardless of the button color, like a transparent chevron or x watermark that overlays the icon. That said, It is still a great improvement over the red on red with more red that KDF used to have.
I will agree though that this incarnation of the UI looks very primitive and incomplete, the detail and gradients of the live UI are all but missing in this version, the black backgrounds of the control boxes would not be my first choice and scaling the UI results in a poor looking display with missing borders. I would certainly hope that the finished version is going to offer us a selectable palette of colors or at the very least enough variety of premade templates to choose from.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
Just please... PLEASE... put a lock option on the UI Windows so that I'm not dragging one of them across the screen. This one simple option is the only thing with the new or old UI that I would love to see.
I as well feel the new UI is a bit too much like Champions Online's cartoonish UI. I think the current UI is fairly well done, it could use just a little bit of tweaking.
Vel'Drin (AKA Romulan Dukat) R.R.W. Novus Legatum - Romulan Republic (Fed Aligned) Original Join Forum Date: August 2008
The new UI is trying to be more like star trek and they are doing a good job on that. I think the colors could be better but the icons and the view screen when you do a mission is a good change
I like the UI, however, I do have a minor issue with it. The transparency can be a little annoying when you have multiple windows open. I'd like to suggest that there be a "transparency" meter added to the options so that you can customize the transparency of a window. that was you can have windows that aren't as transparent as others.
Aside from that, I am loving what is looking to be a great update/expansion.
I really hope this is a work in progress.. because as it is, it looks rather bad in my opinion
It's like being thrown back to 1995 or something. In space the small buttons such as for the
power levels and "fire all weapons" are really quite ugly, and the throttle, ship hp and shields
ui looks pixelated and cheap. The same goes for the minimap and the icons there, and probably
a lot more stuff that I haven't gotten round to yet. I will continue testing and get some more
feedback - this was just my initial impression.
lol you say that like the old ones look good or had anything to do with star trek.
Issues/suggestions View Screens:
View screens shouldn't be the same for all ships: There's a limited amount Bridges, you should be able to use that. Admittedly, there is an issue for certain ships (Jem'hadar), they have no viewscreens, but there is a replacement: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Virtual_display_device The item in question is in game and players can wear it: http://www.stowiki.org/Loriss
When the player on the ground, make communications look like that "factions" PADD. Since you can use a console in some missions, Have the "view screen" in the style that matches the console. I can see that you'll need to work on a Tholian design for "Enterprise C" mission. Seriously, how do you translate "...aSck..tsZch...aSsCK..." ? I'm not sure if that "Borg are weak" or "Your Mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries."
There is a lot more background shown than before, while the head is brought closer to the screen. The old background was ok, as there was so little.
I am aware that most Missions need a change to accommodate the changes. Adding at least some Foundry options to the main game now, should help reduce this when it does go live.
The new UI is trying to be more like star trek and they are doing a good job on that. I think the colors could be better but the icons and the view screen when you do a mission is a good change
I agree, it actually looks like a Star Trek game now. Before it looked so bland constant blue, not color variation, everything had a light outline..it looked cheesy.
I would like the option to pick create my own UI color schemes with this new look though.
I think it needs to be a little sharper, more refined. It's the right direction to go but looks like a cartoon or childs game. Needs more definition to its appearance...
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] ***Disenchanted***
Real Join Date: Monday, 17 May 2010
Just occurred to me while I was working on my own UI improvements to STO, how come there isn't a Tribble slot or Tribble Storage added with the new UI?
After today's UI update I have to say that I think it is stunning. I really feel that it's more "Trek" feeling.
My only suggestion is for the "interaction" windows: In the TNG and Voyager color schemes they have white text on light backgrounds, and are difficult to read until mouse-over. I'd personally like to see these buttons changed in color to blue, but simply[TM] changing the font to black would also suffice.
To Thomas, and whoever else worked on this, PLEASE come to Las Vegas for the convention and let me buy you a beer!!
The color of names above peoples heads is very poorly choosen.. had a couple people running by with their dark green names.. i can't read it. this is much better on holodeck in blue.
The new UI layout, colors and template design are horribly done in my opinion. For example..in space, the outline shape of your ship where the hull percentage is displayed, the image appears crooked, jagged, and not centered, the font, lettering and numbers look generic, cheap.
I really do prefer the old UI, a color change would be a nice option for the old UI, for example, getting rid of the Klingon red color when im playing a klingon. The red color makes me feel angry, and almost puts me into a rage mood.
This new UI Template, Color scheme, and general layout just feels cheap, non polished and quickly done with no thought or effort put into it.
I may actually leave the game if it is launched this way. I can understand a new UI would be a welcome change for some people, but im sure they would agree to some extent, this does not appear well thought out and implemented if this is the way its going live..
I hope this design does not make it past tribble.
One other thing..the color of friendly's and other non hostile names are set to a dark green color..very hard to read, feels cheap and sort of puts me into a bad mood. the holodeck blue was fine and would not mind it staying that way.
I have to agree the interface ui is very simple and not as nice and functional as the current one imo. I do like the 3d ship in players ship interface window tho instead of a static image. Also the character selection screen is kinda nice to see ur ship but at the same time meh the bridge looked really nice and will be a shame to remove.
As far the interface goes on tribble right now, it looks like not even 50% done. If this is true then fair enough i will judge when its near 85% or better. But so far its not very nice and i really wouldnt like to play this game if it looked like this imo.
Gotta say tho i do like the new contact window when in space, it now has a bridge showing around the contact your talking to like your chatting via viewscreen. VERY cool. Tho the text and rewards sections need alot of moving around to make this work better as it stands is very ugly in design. I think one way i can try to help advise this is to seperate rewards info and images away from the mission description box i.e text should be in top, mission rewards underneath in a seperate with a clear line showing its seperate and then interface choicse on the bottom right or hell if u can another bottom seperator box and stick them in there. Would look far nicer imo.
I agree, this new UI looks like it is only 40-50% complete. It feels cheap and non polished. I would prefer to keep the old UI that is on live right now.
I really hope this build does not make it to holodeck
I really hope this is a work in progress.. because as it is, it looks rather bad in my opinion
It's like being thrown back to 1995 or something. In space the small buttons such as for the
power levels and "fire all weapons" are really quite ugly, and the throttle, ship hp and shields
ui looks pixelated and cheap. The same goes for the minimap and the icons there, and probably
a lot more stuff that I haven't gotten round to yet. I will continue testing and get some more
feedback - this was just my initial impression.
lol, it does look like a throwback for sure. I hope this does not go live, because as it stands now, its very cheap looking, looks like im playing a game from the past.
It gives me a headache to play the game with this UI. I would prefer an option to switch back to the classic UI if this is what the polished live version is going to look like.
Note: On the TNG and Voyager color schemes, some of the highlights are so bright you cannot read white text. E.g. "Disable Astrometrics" (whatever) is almost unreadable.
Also, Chat no longer shows channel names, even if you check "Show Message Categories".
_________________________________________________ [Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth] [Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk] [D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
The HUD for some reason looks much better this time around. I think fixing some of the sharp corners into rounded edges helped tremendously.
And I also think the entire game is running a bit more on HD-type graphics than on Holodeck. Everything seems crisper, brighter, more detailed. Is that just me?
I would like to provide feedback on the character selection screen.
It looks low resolution. The old selection screen looked much better, much higher quality images.
I hope this is really a work in progress alpha version that is on tribble now. I have my video settings at 1920x1080, very high 8x as well using a GeForce GTX 690 Titan video card.
The character model is low resolution, the background image with the red glowing light around her and the UI in general all look low res.
Please tell us this is going to be polished up or something so I can make my decision on my continued support for this game.
Didn't get a whole lot of time to check out the UI before I managed to crash the game client, but I wasn't impressed with the overall look of it. It does have some nice abilities, like the ability to resize some of the windows, and of course the ability to select from multiple color schemes. (That would be much cooler if you could actually customize a particular color scheme.) The scale slider is nice too, don't recall if the regular UI has that.
Some of the UI elements that have transparency in the current UI (like BOFF slots on space UI) didn't seem to have it in the new UI which made them seem to take up more screen space. Not sure if that's part of the new UI style or something else going on. As I mentioned, I managed to crash the game not too long into it.
What really bugs me are the popup windows, like the sector change or DS9 docking prompt. Those are humongous, intrusive, and actually made me wonder if somehow the game was playing in 800x600 or something. I barely noticed the viewscreen addition thing and frankly don't care much about that. I would rather the popups be smaller and less intrusive then in the current UI.
Character Selector: Even more of a disappointment with the light added. Reminds me of the original STO screen. Stick with the current one with the ship's bridge.
UI Color: Said we can change colors now, don't see anywhere to do it.
New Map Icons: New icons make me want to play connect the dots. Better to keep the current version on Holodeck.
Trait Window: Sucks, so they have additional instructions, but it does not explain what traits are currently selected compared to what needs to be chosen.
Event Reputation? I feel like facepalming. I don't want to be forced to play events.
Warp Cores: As Explained in the other thread, I understand there are placeholders, but there needs to be different icons. Also be nice if the Ship Page was redone so it's more intiutional. Like you got the ship from the top view with the Warp Core in the center and the Impulse Engine below it.
Also, there are bugs with the power. If it says +5 to power, it should show it.
PvE Queues: We can once again see the number of people queued and improved that we can see how many are playing. So props here.
All in all, I am disappointed with the majority of UI changes.
Text is still hard to read (especially the clock and the buff clock).
The Replicator needs to be seperated into the different parts than have me scroll down through a bunch of foods to get to the Consumables and Commdoties.
There needs to be an area to store Pets and Tribbles.
UI was not improved, but just redressed.
Mission Page, you cannot hide missions that you don't want to see.
Character Selector: Even more of a disappointment with the light added. Reminds me of the original STO screen. Stick with the current one with the ship's bridge.
Agreed.
UI Color: Said we can change colors now, don't see anywhere to do it.
I dislike the following about the new NPC/Viewscreen communication window:
1) It's TOO BIG and can't be resized (the ability to resize it would be nice)
2) It ALWAYS pops up in the center of my screen; and if I move it to a location I find less annoying; it doesn't remember when I placed it (IE it always pops up in the center of my screen.
3) It uses a TNG Galaxy Class viewscreen as a backdrop (Note to Thomas the Cryptic Cat -- Last time I checked this game wasn't called "TNG Online" and not all of us are major fans of TNG as there were there were 6 Star Trek series (including TAS). I'd rather get a 'theme choice (IE make a backdrop that fits one of the 5 hero bridges from the various eras TOS - TNG - DS9 - VOY - ENT or scrap the Galaxy viewscreen motif altogether. I can choose many brides in this game and their viewscreens all look different.
I'm usually not one to complain about anything immersion breaking BUT the other thing to consider - WHY would one of my Bridge officers (sitting WITH ME on the Bridge) - be speaking via the main viewscreen to me. The old character portrait/interact setup was fine as it allowed the player to figure out how an NPC was speaking to him. I get the intent - but I think you guys have lost sight of the the old development principle of "K.I.S.S." -- "Keep It Simple, Stupid" (no offense intended, that's the name of the principle.)
4) it's too busy - and the actual text a player needs to read now look REALLY small (and hard to focus on) because the Viewscreen backdrop and the Face in it is SO HUGE.
This is one aspect of the UI where I think the NPC portrait/interact window of the 'original' UI we're had for 3 years is MUCH better.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 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..."
I'll try not to be too negative, but at the same time, get to the point:
The color schemes are beyond horrid. Every single one of them hurts my eyes. The colors clash with each other badly.
I worked in printing for many years and was certified by Canon as having superior ability to see color, so I hoe this feedback is being taken into account. The color schemes look they they were designed by someone who is at least partially color blind.
Constructively:
The amount of green tones in everything is WAY over the tops. Green is an extremely hard color for people to look at for a long time and it seems almost impossible find one of the color schemes that isn't on the green side.
It seems as though great effort has been made to have multiple colors everywhere in every scheme. It would be a lot more palatable to have multiple shades of one color family, much like the current scheme.
Dialogue boxes are WAY too big. They take up at least a third of the screen on my monitor at resolution 1400x900. 1/4 of the screen is the standard benchmark I would recommend.
On a positive note:
The general look of the game graphics seems improved and a lot sharper and more reflective.
Summary:
When we play the game we want to be focused on seeing the GAME. As it stands right now the UI and dialogue boxes are distracting at best, painful to look at at worst. Please do not ruin this magnificent loking game by modifying the UI to be loud and clunky.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I know the dev and art teams are working hard as heck and I hope this didn;t come off too harsh.
Comments
Thing about the engineer is that it's easily the most viably diverse class. You can make them somewhat tanky (they used to be way, way tankier). You can also build them to be buffers/debuffers, shield healers, a pet class, or even mad bombers, and all of them work very well.
I would talk about class balance more extensively but that isn't the subject of this thread.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
what i don't like is the geometry of some buttons.
Why just don't allow us to texture the stuff by modding?
I will agree though that this incarnation of the UI looks very primitive and incomplete, the detail and gradients of the live UI are all but missing in this version, the black backgrounds of the control boxes would not be my first choice and scaling the UI results in a poor looking display with missing borders. I would certainly hope that the finished version is going to offer us a selectable palette of colors or at the very least enough variety of premade templates to choose from.
Just please... PLEASE... put a lock option on the UI Windows so that I'm not dragging one of them across the screen. This one simple option is the only thing with the new or old UI that I would love to see.
R.R.W. Novus Legatum - Romulan Republic (Fed Aligned)
Original Join Forum Date: August 2008
Aside from that, I am loving what is looking to be a great update/expansion.
Would like to have the option to search for individual items in the bags
Health bar could use some more work.
There is to much yellow mixed in with blue.
lol you say that like the old ones look good or had anything to do with star trek.
View screens shouldn't be the same for all ships: There's a limited amount Bridges, you should be able to use that. Admittedly, there is an issue for certain ships (Jem'hadar), they have no viewscreens, but there is a replacement: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Virtual_display_device The item in question is in game and players can wear it: http://www.stowiki.org/Loriss
When the player on the ground, make communications look like that "factions" PADD. Since you can use a console in some missions, Have the "view screen" in the style that matches the console. I can see that you'll need to work on a Tholian design for "Enterprise C" mission. Seriously, how do you translate "...aSck..tsZch...aSsCK..." ? I'm not sure if that "Borg are weak" or "Your Mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries."
There is a lot more background shown than before, while the head is brought closer to the screen. The old background was ok, as there was so little.
I am aware that most Missions need a change to accommodate the changes. Adding at least some Foundry options to the main game now, should help reduce this when it does go live.
I agree, it actually looks like a Star Trek game now. Before it looked so bland constant blue, not color variation, everything had a light outline..it looked cheesy.
I would like the option to pick create my own UI color schemes with this new look though.
***Disenchanted***
Real Join Date: Monday, 17 May 2010
A huge leap backwards for me. It needs to be much much sharper and not so playschool looking...
Why could you not keep the option keeping the old UI, but allow us to change its colours instead?
My only suggestion is for the "interaction" windows: In the TNG and Voyager color schemes they have white text on light backgrounds, and are difficult to read until mouse-over. I'd personally like to see these buttons changed in color to blue, but simply[TM] changing the font to black would also suffice.
To Thomas, and whoever else worked on this, PLEASE come to Las Vegas for the convention and let me buy you a beer!!
James/Gettorix
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
I really do prefer the old UI, a color change would be a nice option for the old UI, for example, getting rid of the Klingon red color when im playing a klingon. The red color makes me feel angry, and almost puts me into a rage mood.
This new UI Template, Color scheme, and general layout just feels cheap, non polished and quickly done with no thought or effort put into it.
I may actually leave the game if it is launched this way. I can understand a new UI would be a welcome change for some people, but im sure they would agree to some extent, this does not appear well thought out and implemented if this is the way its going live..
I hope this design does not make it past tribble.
One other thing..the color of friendly's and other non hostile names are set to a dark green color..very hard to read, feels cheap and sort of puts me into a bad mood. the holodeck blue was fine and would not mind it staying that way.
I agree, this new UI looks like it is only 40-50% complete. It feels cheap and non polished. I would prefer to keep the old UI that is on live right now.
I really hope this build does not make it to holodeck
lol, it does look like a throwback for sure. I hope this does not go live, because as it stands now, its very cheap looking, looks like im playing a game from the past.
It gives me a headache to play the game with this UI. I would prefer an option to switch back to the classic UI if this is what the polished live version is going to look like.
Also, Chat no longer shows channel names, even if you check "Show Message Categories".
[Kluless][Kold][Steel Heels][Snagtooth]
[Louis Cipher][Outta Gum][Thysa Kymbo][Spanner][Frakk]
[D'Mented][D'Licious]
Joined October 2009. READ BEFORE POSTING
And I also think the entire game is running a bit more on HD-type graphics than on Holodeck. Everything seems crisper, brighter, more detailed. Is that just me?
It looks low resolution. The old selection screen looked much better, much higher quality images.
I hope this is really a work in progress alpha version that is on tribble now. I have my video settings at 1920x1080, very high 8x as well using a GeForce GTX 690 Titan video card.
The character model is low resolution, the background image with the red glowing light around her and the UI in general all look low res.
Please tell us this is going to be polished up or something so I can make my decision on my continued support for this game.
Thanks
Some of the UI elements that have transparency in the current UI (like BOFF slots on space UI) didn't seem to have it in the new UI which made them seem to take up more screen space. Not sure if that's part of the new UI style or something else going on. As I mentioned, I managed to crash the game not too long into it.
What really bugs me are the popup windows, like the sector change or DS9 docking prompt. Those are humongous, intrusive, and actually made me wonder if somehow the game was playing in 800x600 or something. I barely noticed the viewscreen addition thing and frankly don't care much about that. I would rather the popups be smaller and less intrusive then in the current UI.
UI Color: Said we can change colors now, don't see anywhere to do it.
New Map Icons: New icons make me want to play connect the dots. Better to keep the current version on Holodeck.
Trait Window: Sucks, so they have additional instructions, but it does not explain what traits are currently selected compared to what needs to be chosen.
Event Reputation? I feel like facepalming. I don't want to be forced to play events.
Warp Cores: As Explained in the other thread, I understand there are placeholders, but there needs to be different icons. Also be nice if the Ship Page was redone so it's more intiutional. Like you got the ship from the top view with the Warp Core in the center and the Impulse Engine below it.
Also, there are bugs with the power. If it says +5 to power, it should show it.
PvE Queues: We can once again see the number of people queued and improved that we can see how many are playing. So props here.
All in all, I am disappointed with the majority of UI changes.
Text is still hard to read (especially the clock and the buff clock).
The Replicator needs to be seperated into the different parts than have me scroll down through a bunch of foods to get to the Consumables and Commdoties.
There needs to be an area to store Pets and Tribbles.
UI was not improved, but just redressed.
Mission Page, you cannot hide missions that you don't want to see.
Accolade Page still needs a massive revamp.
ESC > Options > Colour Scheme.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
1) It's TOO BIG and can't be resized (the ability to resize it would be nice)
2) It ALWAYS pops up in the center of my screen; and if I move it to a location I find less annoying; it doesn't remember when I placed it (IE it always pops up in the center of my screen.
3) It uses a TNG Galaxy Class viewscreen as a backdrop (Note to Thomas the Cryptic Cat -- Last time I checked this game wasn't called "TNG Online" and not all of us are major fans of TNG as there were there were 6 Star Trek series (including TAS). I'd rather get a 'theme choice (IE make a backdrop that fits one of the 5 hero bridges from the various eras TOS - TNG - DS9 - VOY - ENT or scrap the Galaxy viewscreen motif altogether. I can choose many brides in this game and their viewscreens all look different.
I'm usually not one to complain about anything immersion breaking BUT the other thing to consider - WHY would one of my Bridge officers (sitting WITH ME on the Bridge) - be speaking via the main viewscreen to me. The old character portrait/interact setup was fine as it allowed the player to figure out how an NPC was speaking to him. I get the intent - but I think you guys have lost sight of the the old development principle of "K.I.S.S." -- "Keep It Simple, Stupid" (no offense intended, that's the name of the principle.)
4) it's too busy - and the actual text a player needs to read now look REALLY small (and hard to focus on) because the Viewscreen backdrop and the Face in it is SO HUGE.
This is one aspect of the UI where I think the NPC portrait/interact window of the 'original' UI we're had for 3 years is MUCH better.
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..."
The color schemes are beyond horrid. Every single one of them hurts my eyes. The colors clash with each other badly.
I worked in printing for many years and was certified by Canon as having superior ability to see color, so I hoe this feedback is being taken into account. The color schemes look they they were designed by someone who is at least partially color blind.
Constructively:
The amount of green tones in everything is WAY over the tops. Green is an extremely hard color for people to look at for a long time and it seems almost impossible find one of the color schemes that isn't on the green side.
It seems as though great effort has been made to have multiple colors everywhere in every scheme. It would be a lot more palatable to have multiple shades of one color family, much like the current scheme.
Dialogue boxes are WAY too big. They take up at least a third of the screen on my monitor at resolution 1400x900. 1/4 of the screen is the standard benchmark I would recommend.
On a positive note:
The general look of the game graphics seems improved and a lot sharper and more reflective.
Summary:
When we play the game we want to be focused on seeing the GAME. As it stands right now the UI and dialogue boxes are distracting at best, painful to look at at worst. Please do not ruin this magnificent loking game by modifying the UI to be loud and clunky.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I know the dev and art teams are working hard as heck and I hope this didn;t come off too harsh.