If you are now positing that there is a conspiracy within the company to doctor the results in their favour then it would not make any difference if they got an answer from every player of the game as they would just doctor that result too.
The point is that whilst the forum user base is much smaller than the total player base, the fact that many people dislike the icons and give varying answers as to why, be it colour blindness, visual impairment, artistic style, difficulty understanding the shapes, difficulty determining the differences, necessity to learn a new icon scheme etc, whatever their reasoning the sample size that dislike and the sample size that like can be determined and using statistical analysis a reasonably accurate determination of the game population opinion can likewise be determined.
In addition, I would further add that as the forum user base are generally those players with more interest in the game than the average player and therefore more likely to spend real money on it than the passing player that the forum user base opinions can have an additional weighting assigned to it's opinion if we are discussing feedback:income ratios.
No, please see my other post (#29).
Debating the icons will ultimately serve no purpose they are here to stay. We had all of this with the new UI with the launch od LoR, all various points were raised like in this one colour blindness, impairment etc etc etc, but was the old UI brought back, no. This debate will continue for a week or two more before it fizzles out (just like the UI one did) because people will evently get used to them or get fed up raising the point they don't like them.
Next time they change them, the whole I hate the new icon debate will start all over again, and there will be calls to have these current ones back again. It will just be going round and round in circles.
Debating the icons will ultimately serve no purpose they are here to stay.
Unfortunately, yes. We can only hope that there are no plans to improve weapon, shield etc. icons.
While some Science consoles look nice the whole background (red for Tac, yellow Engineering, Blue Science) and general looks don't go together well. Have often a hard time to discern if a sci console drop is green or blue quality.
What bugs me the most is that my disruptor coil "sixpack" got changed to look like 4 candies in a row!
So far it seems most people dislike the icons in fleet, with the exception of one or two people. Is it a matter of getting used to the icons? Not sure of that, the old ones were distinct, these are just badly coloured copies of each other.
With the game is such an awful state of disrepair you got to think is this what we needed? And are cryptic employees so limited in function that a UI artist can't do anything else? The UI has some major major issues with it, they are reproducible and need to be fixed.
I've already stated my dislikeness towards the new icons, but seeing how many people doesn't like them either, i'll say it again.
Maybe you should make the new artwork optional. I know it's not the same thing as the UI , but if so many people don't like it... Making it optional would satisfy those who like it AND those who don't.
PD: I also agree the Cryptic team should fix operational bugs before implementing aesthetic changes.
The problem is, when you own a company with different departments like music, art, food, ... you pay each employe every month. Means, every department has to work every day each month. You can't close the food department and ship them over to the music department when they don't know how to create sound.
The Art Department in Cryptic does paint jobs. They create graphics, pictures, textures usw.
Then they send it over to the Programm Department. The use the pictures, give them a function and build them into the game.
So every department does something the whole year. The programming guys dont know how to paint, the painters dont know how to programm and search for errors.
- Coloured backgrounds detract from the ability to identify at-a-glance by colour. We don't need coloured backgrounds to tell us that a Tactical console goes in a Tactical slot, right?
- Rarity colour overlays further obscure the colour, which was not an issue previously because the consoles could be identified by their unique shape.
- While the new consoles are more detailed and technically of higher quality than their previous counterparts, the detail present in the original-resolution icons is lost when shrunk to the size icons are seen in-game. This is a serious problem particularly for Tactical damage-type consoles which rely on identification through spotting fine details as opposed to the overall shape.
Forget the possibility of PvP, for so much has become pay-to-win, never to be balanced. Forget the promise of exploration and research, for in the grim dark future of Star Trek Online there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting publishers.
Unfortunately, yes. We can only hope that there are no plans to improve weapon, shield etc. icons.
While some Science consoles look nice the whole background (red for Tac, yellow Engineering, Blue Science) and general looks don't go together well. Have often a hard time to discern if a sci console drop is green or blue quality.
What bugs me the most is that my disruptor coil "sixpack" got changed to look like 4 candies in a row!
Never looked at the disrupter coil that way ohhh errr what do the others remind players off ..... keep it clean please:)
So every department does something the whole year. The programming guys dont know how to paint, the painters dont know how to programm and search for errors.
I also agree with you, but lately it seems they're doing just that. lol
I actually like the new icons a lot, they look a lot more "trek" and tech like.
And for those of you complaining about "jam jars" have you actually looked at what the starship components actually look like?
Voy: Vis a Vis, in a scene you will see what a "Coaxial Induction Drive" looks like.
And it pretty much looks like a jar with metal cylinders in it.
Like it or not, thats trek. :rolleyes:
I personally think this is one of the facelifts needed when they first launched Season 7, so I love them. I wish they would remodel ship skills and even expand weapon types so this game feels really fresh, but that may be asking too much.
Maybe that might be on the cards. Who knows what is in store next.
And yet "Change for the sake of change" is a constant in every industry be it dishwashing detergent to car tires. It is what keeps things fresh and new, being fresh and new brings more customers and more old customers who left back.
Also wait until you get married and the wife wants to paint something just to have a change. That attitude will just get you in the doghouse lol. But is an example that people want things to change and grow rather than be stagnant. the same thing forever just makes it dull and boring, change for the sake of change, changes all that.
Bad analogy. The wife wants things repainted because there's nothing else left to do. In this game, however, revamping an icon system that was about the absolute very last thing that needed working on, is indeed just a sign of someone making some very bad management choices.
A more apt analogy, btw, would be the wife who wants to repaint the wall, whilst you're in the middle of some major remoddeling: first you fix the half-finished wall, then you paint it. In that order. Anything else is, well, what we're seeing today.
I actually like the new icons a lot, they look a lot more "trek" and tech like.
And for those of you complaining about "jam jars" have you actually looked at what the starship components actually look like?
Voy: Vis a Vis, in a scene you will see what a "Coaxial Induction Drive" looks like.
And it pretty much looks like a jar with metal cylinders in it.
Like it or not, thats trek. :rolleyes:
Hehe. One of my favorites are the Isolinear chips. They reminded me of giant Pez, or plastic blocks.
A more apt analogy, btw, would be the wife who wants to repaint the wall, whilst you're in the middle of some major remoddeling: first you fix the half-finished wall, then you paint it. In that order. Anything else is, well, what we're seeing today.
Except it's not. It's more like the wife repainting the kitchen or bedroom while you're working on fixing the AC. Or her swapping out the steering wheel cover for the family car while you work on the engine.
It's two completely separate issues that can be worked on in parallel even though they affect the same assembled object.
Any complaints about the icons are more like complaining to the wife about the color she picked out because she wasn't helping you with machinery she didn't understand.
Bad analogy. The wife wants things repainted because there's nothing else left to do. In this game, however, revamping an icon system that was about the absolute very last thing that needed working on, is indeed just a sign of someone making some very bad management choices.
A more apt analogy, btw, would be the wife who wants to repaint the wall, whilst you're in the middle of some major remoddeling: first you fix the half-finished wall, then you paint it. In that order. Anything else is, well, what we're seeing today.
Flawed analogy.
Artists are not responsible for fixing everything thats wrong with the game.
Nor does updating artwork interfere with actual bugfixing.
If your wife wants you to repaint the wall whilst you're in the middle of major remoddeling, then not only is there an inherent physical conflict between the two, but your also reallocating your own manpower from the one task to the other.
But to be on topic again, looking at the Energy Type Consoles something came into my mind: People do have trouble identifying the Damage symbole on the console picture.
My suggestion is to remove/copy the Energy symbole, enlarge it and put it topside down on the top left of the icon.
Any STO icon can easily remind anyone of pizza, an automobile component, Christy Brinkley, or any other <insert random text here> -- it's all in the eyes of the beholder. The problem occurs when the icon look so generic that no one can identify it without using tool tips. At that point, the icon might as well be a generic geometric shape since it has lost its ability to communicate what it represents.
The old icons had one major advantage over the new versions: they were all unique, making them easily identifiable. Even if they were not photo-realistic representations, they still got their identity across.
What Cryptic is trying to do with revamping the icons is great, but the execution ignored too many functionality considerations like unique picture representations and graphics rescaling, not to mention over-dependencies on color while ignoring other visual cues like in-picture-icons.
Cryptic should standardized item icons formats without standardizing their images (because the latter just leads to even more confusion). If you've ever played any card-collectible-games (like MTG, Yugio, Pokemon, etc... yes, please bear with me), you'll notice that every card had unique images, but their relevant game information was presented along the frames of the card in the form of text and other small icons:
STO can so something similar with their item icons. Some format suggestions:
1) Use a unique image for every item -- no generic cut/paste! Old icons can work here too, allowing a gradual transition from the old to the new format.
2) Color code the outer icon frame white / green / blue / purple / indigo to represent rarity
3) Print a unique symbol on the upper or lower left corner to identify the console type, something like ^ = tactical, # = engineer, and * = science
4) Use Roman Numeral 1-12, or I to XII, on the lower right corner to represent item rank / grade
The above allows players to quickly identify console class, type, rarity, and grade without the headaches of the current set-up.
Just food for thought, though I doubt anyone from Cryptic is even reading this.
Goal 1: Introduce a visual language into these console icons to make it easier to understand at a glance what bonuses that icon grants and what systems they affect. Goal 2: Recreate the artwork based on established props and drawings from classic Star Trek publications, like the TNG and DS9 tech manual, to make these items feel more appropriately "Star Trek" for those who are interested in Treknobabble.
I guess I'll leave my brief feedback here anyway.
1) The tactical consoles achieve Goal 1. They are clear and easy to understand - although I'm not convinced they are "easier' because you do have to look at their distinct color + the color of the quality. However in making them all look the same, they are a bit less distinct or interesting compared to what they were previously.
2) Science consoles: Some are hit, and some are miss. There's a lot of variety here so it will just be a process of memorizing which Icon does what - which is what players did with the original set of icons.
3) Engineering consoles: Some are hit, and some are miss. Consoles like the EPS or RCS are distinct. The armors less distinct and are not easier to recognize at a glance. This feels like traded "console icons we had" for "console icons we have now".
This seems like an odd time to suddenly swap all of the icons, it might have made more sense with LoR as new players would be joining the game or back when F2P launched.
Right now, it just adds a bit of confusion and requires relearning all of the icons so we can "recognize them at a glance".
On the patch day the only one's that were recognizable at a glance were tac consoles because they were all the same with a weapon type color code.
This seems like an odd time to suddenly swap all of the icons, it might have made more sense with LoR as new players would be joining the game or back when F2P launched.
I would assume there were other priorities at those times that needed to get done by those launch dates, whereas now TtC has some time on his schedule to get to them.
The thing to always keep in mind is that any big change we see on any given patch day would have been many months in the planning, it's just trying to find the time in the schedule to get to it, and get it done, so that it can be implemented in a patch.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Any STO icon can easily remind anyone of pizza, an automobile component, Christy Brinkley, or any other <insert random text here> -- it's all in the eyes of the beholder. The problem occurs when the icon look so generic that no one can identify it without using tool tips. At that point, the icon might as well be a generic geometric shape since it has lost its ability to communicate what it represents.
The old icons had one major advantage over the new versions: they were all unique, making them easily identifiable. Even if they were not photo-realistic representations, they still got their identity across.
What Cryptic is trying to do with revamping the icons is great, but the execution ignored too many functionality considerations like unique picture representations and graphics rescaling, not to mention over-dependencies on color while ignoring other visual cues like in-picture-icons.
Cryptic should standardized item icons formats without standardizing their images (because the latter just leads to even more confusion). If you've ever played any card-collectible-games (like MTG, Yugio, Pokemon, etc... yes, please bear with me), you'll notice that every card had unique images, but their relevant game information was presented along the frames of the card in the form of text and other small icons:
STO can so something similar with their item icons. Some format suggestions:
1) Use a unique image for every item -- no generic cut/paste! Old icons can work here too, allowing a gradual transition from the old to the new format.
2) Color code the outer icon frame white / green / blue / purple / indigo to represent rarity
3) Print a unique symbol on the upper or lower left corner to identify the console type, something like ^ = tactical, # = engineer, and * = science
4) Use Roman Numeral 1-12, or I to XII, on the lower right corner to represent item rank / grade
The above allows players to quickly identify console class, type, rarity, and grade without the headaches of the current set-up.
Just food for thought, though I doubt anyone from Cryptic is even reading this.
At 500+ posts is there a point to leaving feedback here?
I guess I'll leave my brief feedback here anyway.
1) The tactical consoles achieve Goal 1. They are clear and easy to understand - although I'm not convinced they are "easier' because you do have to look at their distinct color + the color of the quality. However in making them all look the same, they are a bit less distinct or interesting compared to what they were previously.
....<SNIP>...
Agreed whole-heartedly. Now that the tac console icons look generic and "boring," they have been diminished in both visual and sentimental value. They still work fine from a numbers and performance perspective, but now they just look like random pegs (or baby food jars) in a my inventory grid on a starship stats screen.
Is there any way Cryptic can offer users a choice between which icon packs to load? Such a feature would easily satisfy all players and provide better GUI customization.
Agreed whole-heartedly. Now that the tac console icons look generic and "boring," they have been diminished in both visual and sentimental value. They still work fine from a numbers and performance perspective, but now they just look like random pegs (or baby food jars) in a my inventory grid on a starship stats screen.
Is there any way Cryptic can offer users a choice between which icon packs to load? Such a feature would easily satisfy all players and provide better GUI customization.
I think your MTG borders/icons suggestions is a really good one, you might try tweeting it and / or PMing it to thomas the cryptic cat directly.
Unfortunately it's probably going to be lost in this threadnaught otherwise.
Any STO icon can easily remind anyone of pizza, an automobile component, Christy Brinkley, or any other <insert random text here> -- it's all in the eyes of the beholder. The problem occurs when the icon look so generic that no one can identify it without using tool tips. At that point, the icon might as well be a generic geometric shape since it has lost its ability to communicate what it represents.
The old icons had one major advantage over the new versions: they were all unique, making them easily identifiable. Even if they were not photo-realistic representations, they still got their identity across.
there was nothing about any of the old ones that said "this is a tactical console". They were all just random objects with no connection to each other or the damage type they boosted. Memorization was the only way to know that it was even a tactical console.
Comments
Debating the icons will ultimately serve no purpose they are here to stay. We had all of this with the new UI with the launch od LoR, all various points were raised like in this one colour blindness, impairment etc etc etc, but was the old UI brought back, no. This debate will continue for a week or two more before it fizzles out (just like the UI one did) because people will evently get used to them or get fed up raising the point they don't like them.
Next time they change them, the whole I hate the new icon debate will start all over again, and there will be calls to have these current ones back again. It will just be going round and round in circles.
Unfortunately, yes. We can only hope that there are no plans to improve weapon, shield etc. icons.
While some Science consoles look nice the whole background (red for Tac, yellow Engineering, Blue Science) and general looks don't go together well. Have often a hard time to discern if a sci console drop is green or blue quality.
What bugs me the most is that my disruptor coil "sixpack" got changed to look like 4 candies in a row!
With the game is such an awful state of disrepair you got to think is this what we needed? And are cryptic employees so limited in function that a UI artist can't do anything else? The UI has some major major issues with it, they are reproducible and need to be fixed.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
Visit our Youtube channel
The problem is, when you own a company with different departments like music, art, food, ... you pay each employe every month. Means, every department has to work every day each month. You can't close the food department and ship them over to the music department when they don't know how to create sound.
The Art Department in Cryptic does paint jobs. They create graphics, pictures, textures usw.
Then they send it over to the Programm Department. The use the pictures, give them a function and build them into the game.
So every department does something the whole year. The programming guys dont know how to paint, the painters dont know how to programm and search for errors.
Never looked at the disrupter coil that way ohhh errr what do the others remind players off ..... keep it clean please:)
I also agree with you, but lately it seems they're doing just that. lol
And for those of you complaining about "jam jars" have you actually looked at what the starship components actually look like?
Voy: Vis a Vis, in a scene you will see what a "Coaxial Induction Drive" looks like.
And it pretty much looks like a jar with metal cylinders in it.
Like it or not, thats trek. :rolleyes:
- as you can't glance through them due rarity color
- they don't match the UI AT ALL!
Anyway so I am pressing "need" on everything now because I have to learn the icons all over.
If the developers don't have anything better to do give me a call I have 10,000 things that need fixing.
Maybe that might be on the cards. Who knows what is in store next.
Bad analogy. The wife wants things repainted because there's nothing else left to do. In this game, however, revamping an icon system that was about the absolute very last thing that needed working on, is indeed just a sign of someone making some very bad management choices.
A more apt analogy, btw, would be the wife who wants to repaint the wall, whilst you're in the middle of some major remoddeling: first you fix the half-finished wall, then you paint it. In that order. Anything else is, well, what we're seeing today.
Disruptor, yeah, six pack.
Antiproton, reminded me of a Christmas Cactus.
Plasma looked like a giant LED.
Tetryon looked like a forcefield generator.
Polaron looked like a bread box.
My character Tsin'xing
The Quantum Slipstream core on the Dauntless was a really nice peice of work.
My character Tsin'xing
Except it's not. It's more like the wife repainting the kitchen or bedroom while you're working on fixing the AC. Or her swapping out the steering wheel cover for the family car while you work on the engine.
It's two completely separate issues that can be worked on in parallel even though they affect the same assembled object.
Any complaints about the icons are more like complaining to the wife about the color she picked out because she wasn't helping you with machinery she didn't understand.
Flawed analogy.
Artists are not responsible for fixing everything thats wrong with the game.
Nor does updating artwork interfere with actual bugfixing.
If your wife wants you to repaint the wall whilst you're in the middle of major remoddeling, then not only is there an inherent physical conflict between the two, but your also reallocating your own manpower from the one task to the other.
My suggestion is to remove/copy the Energy symbole, enlarge it and put it topside down on the top left of the icon.
...And all the new tactical console icons look like baby food jars:
https://www.google.com/#fp=4988b9b3e7e8891c&q=baby+food+jar+images
Any STO icon can easily remind anyone of pizza, an automobile component, Christy Brinkley, or any other <insert random text here> -- it's all in the eyes of the beholder. The problem occurs when the icon look so generic that no one can identify it without using tool tips. At that point, the icon might as well be a generic geometric shape since it has lost its ability to communicate what it represents.
The old icons had one major advantage over the new versions: they were all unique, making them easily identifiable. Even if they were not photo-realistic representations, they still got their identity across.
What Cryptic is trying to do with revamping the icons is great, but the execution ignored too many functionality considerations like unique picture representations and graphics rescaling, not to mention over-dependencies on color while ignoring other visual cues like in-picture-icons.
Cryptic should standardized item icons formats without standardizing their images (because the latter just leads to even more confusion). If you've ever played any card-collectible-games (like MTG, Yugio, Pokemon, etc... yes, please bear with me), you'll notice that every card had unique images, but their relevant game information was presented along the frames of the card in the form of text and other small icons:
https://www.google.com/#fp=4988b9b3e7e8891c&q=MTG+card+images
STO can so something similar with their item icons. Some format suggestions:
1) Use a unique image for every item -- no generic cut/paste! Old icons can work here too, allowing a gradual transition from the old to the new format.
2) Color code the outer icon frame white / green / blue / purple / indigo to represent rarity
3) Print a unique symbol on the upper or lower left corner to identify the console type, something like ^ = tactical, # = engineer, and * = science
4) Use Roman Numeral 1-12, or I to XII, on the lower right corner to represent item rank / grade
The above allows players to quickly identify console class, type, rarity, and grade without the headaches of the current set-up.
Just food for thought, though I doubt anyone from Cryptic is even reading this.
I guess I'll leave my brief feedback here anyway.
1) The tactical consoles achieve Goal 1. They are clear and easy to understand - although I'm not convinced they are "easier' because you do have to look at their distinct color + the color of the quality. However in making them all look the same, they are a bit less distinct or interesting compared to what they were previously.
2) Science consoles: Some are hit, and some are miss. There's a lot of variety here so it will just be a process of memorizing which Icon does what - which is what players did with the original set of icons.
3) Engineering consoles: Some are hit, and some are miss. Consoles like the EPS or RCS are distinct. The armors less distinct and are not easier to recognize at a glance. This feels like traded "console icons we had" for "console icons we have now".
This seems like an odd time to suddenly swap all of the icons, it might have made more sense with LoR as new players would be joining the game or back when F2P launched.
Right now, it just adds a bit of confusion and requires relearning all of the icons so we can "recognize them at a glance".
On the patch day the only one's that were recognizable at a glance were tac consoles because they were all the same with a weapon type color code.
The thing to always keep in mind is that any big change we see on any given patch day would have been many months in the planning, it's just trying to find the time in the schedule to get to it, and get it done, so that it can be implemented in a patch.
^^ Best post in the thread! Hear ye him!
Agreed whole-heartedly. Now that the tac console icons look generic and "boring," they have been diminished in both visual and sentimental value. They still work fine from a numbers and performance perspective, but now they just look like random pegs (or baby food jars) in a my inventory grid on a starship stats screen.
Is there any way Cryptic can offer users a choice between which icon packs to load? Such a feature would easily satisfy all players and provide better GUI customization.
I think your MTG borders/icons suggestions is a really good one, you might try tweeting it and / or PMing it to thomas the cryptic cat directly.
Unfortunately it's probably going to be lost in this threadnaught otherwise.
My character Tsin'xing