Hey everyone! We wanted to give you all a heads up that there are some art changes incoming for certain console item icons in STO.
"You mean to tell me that with all the TRIBBLE that's broken on this ship,
you start with the f***ing ice machine?!" ~ Cmdr. Chode, in 'Tripping the Rift'
Plus, the new icons are HIDEOUS. They look like Candy Crush.
I judged them a little bit too quickly. Upon careful inspection, the icons look pretty good. Nice work to whoever at Cryptic did them. They look well polished and properly marked.
I sort of like the new designs in that they seem more appropriate than the originals, but I really don't like how they blend into one another. It's extremely difficult to tell them apart, especially for color-blind players. The Rarity blends in with the color background and the Mark # blurs together that it's unreadable.
With all due respect TTC, I wish the team spent time fixing these nasty UI Bugs than tinkering with new Icons.
This is the first time i am posting something like this, but these icons are just over the top!
I really dont know what were you thinking Cat, but the icons are just so ugly and confusing that its unbeliveble you put something like this ingame. They are just hideous, and when i look at my inventory now i want to scratch my eyes out.
If there is any mercy in you Cat and if you dont want to revert to the old icon please give us at least an option to choose between new and the old icons!
Jesus.. the problem is they differ now to much from all the other consoles and items we have in the inventory.
But it seems like, slowly coming to the end of the year, that the Interface Department did something to show that they are actually doing something the whole year, just to avoid that PWE cuts the budget short for them in the next year.
Sorry to the guys who did the icons, but either you change all item icons to have a similiar feeling, or you leave them be.
Why not using, for example, the old Weapon Energy Console pictures and pimp them up? Retrofit Console like. Polished design, minor changes.
consoles are awful. can hardly tell them apart now.
i'm baffled that they made it to holodeck. how did no one not notice how bad this was?!?!
People did notice how bad they were -- even in the preview thread where Cryptic went to great lengths to prime everyone by talking up how great the new icons were before they let anyone see them, the feedback was overall negative. Cryptic promoted them to production anyway though.
Has anyone made a mod that will revert to the old icons yet?
1. Obviously the guy who made these icons has no clue about what he's doing. Or the guy who told him what to do.
2. Apparently there's also an incompetent guy who ignored any negative feedback and thinks this improves either looks or usability
Cryptic/PWE, you should change that.
Guys, on paper (direct comparison graphics) these new icons may look nice. However, has nobody ever tested them in the actual game? I mean... geez, this isn't subtle. This is god awful horrible, for crying out loud!
The smaller graphics get, the more they depend on all possible distinguishing marks. That would be shape, texture and color, which isn't much to begin with.
Many of these new icons fail to be easily distinguishable or even being different at all, in two out of these three categories!
On top of that (background) coloring is interfering with the rarity coor marking on the lower left corner.
How could this ever make it through QA? Ok, you don't have any serious QA, do you? Admit it. Might be the only saving grace left.
Or maybe Cryptic's QA is just pointless, because some superior likes to ignore valid reports..
-edit-
Why did you change them in the first place? There are other issues you could've worked on!
Why do you change them? It was not necessary, a waste of time. Now we have to learn this new icons. There are more important things in that gome you have to fix.
These icons look to similar, especially in the game on high resolutions. The department colors (red/blue/yellow) are to strong. Also color was used to mark rarity of an item.
Color-blind people have also bigger problems to differentiate the items.
Why do you change them? It was not necessary, a waste of time. Now we have to learn this new icons. There are more important things in that gome you have to fix.
These icons look to similar, especially in the game on high resolutions. The department colors (red/blue/yellow) are to strong. Also color was used to mark rarity of an item.
Color-blind people have also bigger problems to differentiate the items.
Thomas isn't responsible for bug fixing. He's the go-to "UI guru" for Cryptic. And the new icons are a MASSIVE improvement. Get used to it, get over it.
Jesus.. the problem is they differ now to much from all the other consoles and items we have in the inventory.
But it seems like, slowly coming to the end of the year, that the Interface Department did something to show that they are actually doing something the whole year, just to avoid that PWE cuts the budget short for them in the next year.
Sorry to the guys who did the icons, but either you change all item icons to have a similiar feeling, or you leave them be.
Why not using, for example, the old Weapon Energy Console pictures and pimp them up? Retrofit Console like. Polished design, minor changes.
Like I said, the rest of the icons now need an update too. :P
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Thomas isn't responsible for bug fixing. He's the go-to "UI guru" for Cryptic. And the new icons are a MASSIVE improvement. Get used to it, get over it.
Oh wait a second. Please take the time and elaborate on that.
Why are they better? Because they're not. There is no objective and factual argumentation backing that statement.
Shape, texture, color. They don't differ enough, They clearly differ less than the old icons. And when it comes to icons, that's actually all that matters.
Thomas isn't responsible for bug fixing. He's the go-to "UI guru" for Cryptic. And the new icons are a MASSIVE improvement. Get used to it, get over it.
Color blind players and players with bad eyesight would greatly disagree with that statement.
Please, change the console icons back to the way they were. With the exception of maybe a few science consoles, *everything* looks pretty much the same now: like a tilted barrel of some sort. That's a very bad design choice.
The old icons were clear, and easily distinguisable from one another. These aren't.
Thomas isn't responsible for bug fixing. He's the go-to "UI guru" for Cryptic. And the new icons are a MASSIVE improvement. Get used to it, get over it.
The purpose of icons is to be able to differentiate the things they represent at a glance, and these new icons clearly fail that test -- which is the only test that really matters for UI icons. The old icons were MUCH easier to tell apart, and generally more representative of the devices' function as well.
This "Thomas" -- if he's the person responsible for these -- may be a talented artist, but if this is the work of "Cryptic's UI guru" it's definitely time to short their stock.
I'm not a great artist and as pictures, these icons don't look so bad. As art, there are good work. But as small icons there are unusable.
At university i've learned, that for making GUI design it is important to implement the GUI with users feedback, because the GUI is for the user, not for the programmer. The user have to live and to work with it. Usability, User Experience User Centered Design are very important things and in all these concepts, the user is a very important element. Making changes on a GUI, you must be very carefully.
But Cryptic ignoring this very often and then we have threads like this.
This "Thomas" -- if he's the person responsible for these -- may be a talented artist, but if this is the work of "Cryptic's UI guru" it's definitely time to short their stock.
The same guy also did the Legacy of Romulus UI revamp. Some people praised it, some people hated it. I suppose these new icons are par for the course. I am not color blind, nor do I have poor eyesight. I see the new icons as an improvement. Are they perfect? No. But they are better looking (in general).
We decided that it was time to give them a refresh with a couple goals in mind:
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.
Sorry , no success here .
I look at the first row (hull plating) , I imagine that these icons will show up even smaller on my screen , and I cannot imagine I will be able to tell the difference between them based on the subtle changes in color .
These icons were drawn on a much larger scale and then shrunk , and it does not work .
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.
Same thing with the Alloys . Not clear , and not "Trek" .
The Power Level Boosters have more in common with the thingy that charges the Green Lantern's ring then anything on the shows .
And from the Misc category the only thing that's vaguely Trek-ish is the Emergency Force Field -- but that is again too small and will get even smaller , which = pointless , to me .
What in the name of all that is sane was the graphic designer thinking? Had it ever crossed his mind that there might be partially sighted players, like me, playing this game?
Obviously not.
Painfully obviously .
But since ego driven stupidity OK'd this , don't expect changes until new players start having problems .
Hull planting, Alloys and the tactical energy and torpedo bonus consoles are the problem in the icon sets. Please implement more differents between the types.
I remember the schematics of the hull of the Enterprise-D in my manual. Your icons looks pretty similar. But on the small icons you dont see the difference between the types. The schematics was bigger in that book.
With all the other icons i can live with it, because they look different. And reduce the dominant background color, its to dominant.
Some of the icons i love it. Like the biofunction monitor. But as i said: lot of them are great work but have too much details for small icons in the game.
The same guy also did the Legacy of Romulus UI revamp. Some people praised it, some people hated it. I suppose these new icons are par for the course. I am not color blind, nor do I have poor eyesight. I see the new icons as an improvement. Are they perfect? No. But they are better looking (in general).
Yeah, the UI full of bugs and memory issues. :rolleyes:
Anyhow, people can learn to live with the UI even if they hate it. But when it comes to the Icons, you can't work around your visual disabilities.
Did I miss the going back to grade school console art contest? Sorry, I didn't have my virtual crayons ready to compete!
In a nuttshell the new artwork was unnecessary and looks god awful...As some have posted above the learning curve to retrain the eyes to something new which takes away some of the appeal of the previous art work.
I like the previous style of artwork and found it simple and easy to distinguish as for the new style it looks grainy and the similarities to the others makes it even harder distinguish now. Atleast refine the grainy look and smooth the object in the picture. Artwork change is good but make it look cleaner and sharper than the current version. I don't want to look at the current version and always think "I should have listened more to Mrs.Agnew in Art class and refined my inner art talent" LOL :P
Keep up the good work but please REFINE the current artwork
H 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.
With that in mind, please reference the linked images to see Old vs. New, along with a reminder of what each console does. You'll notice that I've grouped them together to demonstrate similar function, and hopefully you will be able to start to learn the visual language of these new icons quickly.
The most clear example of this new language is the items which give bonuses to certain weapon energy or torpedo types - they are now all color coded to the energy type they buff. Items that buff shields will have a shield bubble on them and all of the items that buff a science skill will have a little skill bar featured on them somewhere. We've also color coded the console icon backgrounds so it's very clear whether something is a tactical (red), engineering (yellow) or science console (blue).
There are two contradictory goals when it comes to the design of the console icons:
(a) Make consoles within the same category appear similar so that one can tell at a glance that something is a energy weapon console, hull plating console, etc.
(b) Make consoles within the same category distinct so that one can easily distinguish a polaron console from an antiproton console, etc.
Obviously, these two goals occupy opposite ends of a scale, so one must choose which goal is more important. It seems that Cryptic decided that goal (a) is more important. The question is why. From the comments in this thread, it is clear that many players believe that goal (b) is more important. I think that is the crux of the complaints.
Ummm, yeah, so all the new "Art" you did for consoles...
...why?
Why spend all that time and effort to change them? It looks like a 10yr old did it, plus the playerbase has to re-familiarize themselves with their equipment visuals.
What was the point? Why do you guys change things that don't need changing? Don't "fix" stuff that isn't broken.
Comments
you start with the f***ing ice machine?!" ~ Cmdr. Chode, in 'Tripping the Rift'
Plus, the new icons are HIDEOUS. They look like Candy Crush.
And that's all I have to say about that.
pls do a new line in option menu to switch between them.
With all due respect TTC, I wish the team spent time fixing these nasty UI Bugs than tinkering with new Icons.
I really dont know what were you thinking Cat, but the icons are just so ugly and confusing that its unbeliveble you put something like this ingame. They are just hideous, and when i look at my inventory now i want to scratch my eyes out.
If there is any mercy in you Cat and if you dont want to revert to the old icon please give us at least an option to choose between new and the old icons!
https://youtube.com/user/MyBalkanGaming
But it seems like, slowly coming to the end of the year, that the Interface Department did something to show that they are actually doing something the whole year, just to avoid that PWE cuts the budget short for them in the next year.
Sorry to the guys who did the icons, but either you change all item icons to have a similiar feeling, or you leave them be.
Why not using, for example, the old Weapon Energy Console pictures and pimp them up? Retrofit Console like. Polished design, minor changes.
People did notice how bad they were -- even in the preview thread where Cryptic went to great lengths to prime everyone by talking up how great the new icons were before they let anyone see them, the feedback was overall negative. Cryptic promoted them to production anyway though.
Has anyone made a mod that will revert to the old icons yet?
Much has been said before, so i put it in short words:
You want to make it look more like Star Trek. But it now looks even less like it!
Why cant humans leave things alone that work?
T'Prin
(1st vulcan supply fleet)
Rabble! RabblerabblerabblerabbleRABBLE!
Now my bank is full of candy, lol
http://s13.postimg.org/h1cv10naf/candy.png
makes my eyes sting
Oh my god...
1. Obviously the guy who made these icons has no clue about what he's doing. Or the guy who told him what to do.
2. Apparently there's also an incompetent guy who ignored any negative feedback and thinks this improves either looks or usability
Cryptic/PWE, you should change that.
Guys, on paper (direct comparison graphics) these new icons may look nice. However, has nobody ever tested them in the actual game? I mean... geez, this isn't subtle. This is god awful horrible, for crying out loud!
The smaller graphics get, the more they depend on all possible distinguishing marks. That would be shape, texture and color, which isn't much to begin with.
Many of these new icons fail to be easily distinguishable or even being different at all, in two out of these three categories!
On top of that (background) coloring is interfering with the rarity coor marking on the lower left corner.
How could this ever make it through QA? Ok, you don't have any serious QA, do you? Admit it. Might be the only saving grace left.
Or maybe Cryptic's QA is just pointless, because some superior likes to ignore valid reports..
-edit-
Why did you change them in the first place? There are other issues you could've worked on!
Why do you change them? It was not necessary, a waste of time. Now we have to learn this new icons. There are more important things in that gome you have to fix.
These icons look to similar, especially in the game on high resolutions. The department colors (red/blue/yellow) are to strong. Also color was used to mark rarity of an item.
Color-blind people have also bigger problems to differentiate the items.
Thomas isn't responsible for bug fixing. He's the go-to "UI guru" for Cryptic. And the new icons are a MASSIVE improvement. Get used to it, get over it.
Like I said, the rest of the icons now need an update too. :P
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Oh wait a second. Please take the time and elaborate on that.
Why are they better? Because they're not. There is no objective and factual argumentation backing that statement.
Shape, texture, color. They don't differ enough, They clearly differ less than the old icons. And when it comes to icons, that's actually all that matters.
Color blind players and players with bad eyesight would greatly disagree with that statement.
The old icons were clear, and easily distinguisable from one another. These aren't.
This "Thomas" -- if he's the person responsible for these -- may be a talented artist, but if this is the work of "Cryptic's UI guru" it's definitely time to short their stock.
At university i've learned, that for making GUI design it is important to implement the GUI with users feedback, because the GUI is for the user, not for the programmer. The user have to live and to work with it. Usability, User Experience User Centered Design are very important things and in all these concepts, the user is a very important element. Making changes on a GUI, you must be very carefully.
But Cryptic ignoring this very often and then we have threads like this.
The same guy also did the Legacy of Romulus UI revamp. Some people praised it, some people hated it. I suppose these new icons are par for the course. I am not color blind, nor do I have poor eyesight. I see the new icons as an improvement. Are they perfect? No. But they are better looking (in general).
Sorry , no success here .
I look at the first row (hull plating) , I imagine that these icons will show up even smaller on my screen , and I cannot imagine I will be able to tell the difference between them based on the subtle changes in color .
These icons were drawn on a much larger scale and then shrunk , and it does not work .
Same thing with the Alloys . Not clear , and not "Trek" .
The Power Level Boosters have more in common with the thingy that charges the Green Lantern's ring then anything on the shows .
And from the Misc category the only thing that's vaguely Trek-ish is the Emergency Force Field -- but that is again too small and will get even smaller , which = pointless , to me .
Painfully obviously .
But since ego driven stupidity OK'd this , don't expect changes until new players start having problems .
Cryptic = breaking STO one day at a time .
I remember the schematics of the hull of the Enterprise-D in my manual. Your icons looks pretty similar. But on the small icons you dont see the difference between the types. The schematics was bigger in that book.
With all the other icons i can live with it, because they look different. And reduce the dominant background color, its to dominant.
Some of the icons i love it. Like the biofunction monitor. But as i said: lot of them are great work but have too much details for small icons in the game.
Yeah, the UI full of bugs and memory issues. :rolleyes:
Anyhow, people can learn to live with the UI even if they hate it. But when it comes to the Icons, you can't work around your visual disabilities.
In a nuttshell the new artwork was unnecessary and looks god awful...As some have posted above the learning curve to retrain the eyes to something new which takes away some of the appeal of the previous art work.
I like the previous style of artwork and found it simple and easy to distinguish as for the new style it looks grainy and the similarities to the others makes it even harder distinguish now. Atleast refine the grainy look and smooth the object in the picture. Artwork change is good but make it look cleaner and sharper than the current version. I don't want to look at the current version and always think "I should have listened more to Mrs.Agnew in Art class and refined my inner art talent" LOL :P
Keep up the good work but please REFINE the current artwork
Thanks
There are two contradictory goals when it comes to the design of the console icons:
(a) Make consoles within the same category appear similar so that one can tell at a glance that something is a energy weapon console, hull plating console, etc.
(b) Make consoles within the same category distinct so that one can easily distinguish a polaron console from an antiproton console, etc.
Obviously, these two goals occupy opposite ends of a scale, so one must choose which goal is more important. It seems that Cryptic decided that goal (a) is more important. The question is why. From the comments in this thread, it is clear that many players believe that goal (b) is more important. I think that is the crux of the complaints.
...why?
Why spend all that time and effort to change them? It looks like a 10yr old did it, plus the playerbase has to re-familiarize themselves with their equipment visuals.
What was the point? Why do you guys change things that don't need changing? Don't "fix" stuff that isn't broken.
:rolleyes:
---- FIRE EVERYTHING ! ----