Did not read through all of the previous comments to makes sure if this had already been asked, but are Romulan characters finally going to get the same icon for the science team abilities as kdf/feds?
I don't think so, as the Romulans are effectively a faction in their own right..unless you're referring to Strike Team/Engineering Proficiency/Scientific Aptitude (Rear Admiral/Major General abilities).
Also, I'm shocked that the overall feedback appears to be positive..who are you all and what have you done with the ragers?!
I don't think so, as the Romulans are effectively a faction in their own right..unless you're referring to Strike Team/Engineering Proficiency/Scientific Aptitude (Rear Admiral/Major General abilities).
Also, I'm shocked that the overall feedback appears to be positive..who are you all and what have you done with the ragers?!
No, I mean the icon I have showing for a Boff with the actual "science team" skill (regardless of I, II, or III), KDF and Feds are real and separate factions, yet they share the same icon for these skills, yet for some reason roms have never used the same icon for this ability.
As an Engineer, I'm more or less happy with the changes except for one thing: Fabricate Drones icons. I would NEVER guessed that it's a drone on that icon.
Also, the class-specific ground team buffs should have some indication that they are team-wide. Right now they look like any other ability.
PS. Grenade on Tac ground icons looks like a potato.
The new ones are much more self-explaining which is good IMO as far as icons go. What I really do not like are previous neutral icons now show star-fleet typical ships (ramming speed etc) which IMO is very, very bad & (sorry) looks dumb when playing a Romulan or Klingon Empire character.
Can't say I'm unhappy... it will take some getting used to, but that's true of all UI changes.
Some of the icons are still going to look abstract, because "gives you an invisible numerical advantage in the combat calculations" is a bit hard to visualize and design as a graphic.
The point others have made about Medical Tricorder needing to look more obviously medical - I'd agree, there.
While those of us who have been here long enough to memorize the old iconography may think that it's a perfect situation, to the "average new player", of which we theoretically have piles of roaming in, they are not intuitive or easy to understand at all... And, as others have said, the UI art team doesn't exactly contribute to fixing game bugs (unless it's a bug with the artwork of the UI) so this is a perfect project for them.
Now, in my opinion:
1. TSS could be demonstrated via a shield icon in the lower left, an arrow to another shield icon in the upper right. By shield icon, I mean that new, nifty 4-sliced circle that represents shields on every other artwork...
2. Do you really need that "up arrow effect" on the EPtX abilties? Combined with the "self body", they make the icon look a lot different and/or confuses the intent of the ability some. I'd have gone with a "+" in between the lightning bolt of "emergency power" in the head to the standardized weapon/shield/engine/aux icon.
3. Can we get an in-game explanation of these body/hex/circle silhouettes? They are a nice method of classifying the target the power effects, however, as demonstrated by some of the confusion in this thread, they're not really explained in-game so only the astute or told usually catch on to them.
4. RSP's icon has always screamed RSF to me, and neither do a telling job of explaining the effect. Isn't RSP a sort of "shield heal" in that it takes incoming damage and turns it into stronger shields - artwork could be a beam coming down from the top of the head, hitting the shield graphic, with the "heal" cross in the lower right - letting RSF get the rotation around the shield effect, and the rotation effect scattering a beam coming from the top of the head, indicating that it's hardening the shields...
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
I went on tribble and the Boff Icons are a little bit too bright for me. They feel like they got the 'uber' glow on them. >.>
The Rising of the Delta is the best expansion ever, and people love it to death because it is a good day to die in the endless struggle for supremacy of your own conviction. (A spin off of the Delta Rising is the best expansion ever and all the players love it.)
Realy. is this such a need to change them. I'll bet that the loadouts, which have been broken for ages will be broken again. I realy wonder if there any kind of a descend management watching upon the hands of the devs at Cryptic. They should better put their efforts into a serious patch that fixes a load of bugs that are still around after years. Like the annoying bug that keeps players of retaining their display settings. None of your devs have yet noticed after those years that "Full Display Mode" is reverted to "Windowed Mode" when changing a map, yet keeping the full screen vision, resulting in lagging of the game. And when player log out and reboot the game, it's always start into "Windowed Mode", forcing them re-evaluate the "Full Screen Mode", each time. Those are your priorities, not the bloody icons. :mad:
OK, if I have to stay here for a while, your cieling ... looks idious.:D
Realy. is this such a need to change them. I'll bet that the loadouts, which have been broken for ages will be broken again. I realy wonder if there any kind of a descend management watching upon the hands of the devs at Cryptic. They should better put their efforts into a serious patch that fixes a load of bugs that are still around after years. Like the annoying bug that keeps players of retaining their display settings. None of your devs have yet noticed after those years that "Full Display Mode" is reverted to "Windowed Mode" when changing a map, yet keeping the full screen vision, resulting in lagging of the game. And when player log out and reboot the game, it's always start into "Windowed Mode", forcing them re-evaluate the "Full Screen Mode", each time. Those are your priorities, not the bloody icons. :mad:
Those don't seem like art problems, so why would the art people have anything to do with fixing them?
As an Engineer, I'm more or less happy with the changes except for one thing: Fabricate Drones icons. I would NEVER guessed that it's a drone on that icon.
Also, the class-specific ground team buffs should have some indication that they are team-wide. Right now they look like any other ability.
PS. Grenade on Tac ground icons looks like a potato.
The changes are generally good and I understand why the devs want to make things easier for the theoretical "new" people, since us older cynical players aren't forking over the cash like we used to, but there are a few things that need improvement.
:cool:
- I'll start by saying I agree completely with the post above. Unless you are changing the look of the drones in game the drone icons are bad... completely counter intuitive. It may look like NOMAD, sort of, but it does not look like the drones in the game.
- Auxilliary to dampeners doesn't work. It implies a diversion of power, but not what that power does. I would suggest something like an arrow into a barrier would be better.
- Nadion inversion goes back and forth? Something akin to the reverse shield polarity would be better with a single semicirular arrow, but with a different symbol at the centre so that you know it is nadions rather than shields. What we have makes me think of frequency rather than rotation.
- if you are going to do this then rotate shield frequency could use a change too. A large semi-circular arrow around a horizontal frequency pattern (like the one tuvok drew on that cake) would seem obvious.
- Vascular regenerator looks like an attack power that makes people bleed in spite of the up arrow iconography... and if you are changing the icon, why not change the name of the power to "Dermal regenerator" like they actually say in star trek and give a picture of one of those.
- I would recommend de-emphasizing the tricorders and increasing the visual impact of the alternate symbol for both medical tricorder and tricorder scan. What you have is too similar to distinguish in the split second I want to choose one.
- Don't change hazard emitters. The old image of sending away Xs fits your new iconography better than the new image. The new one looks like the name sounds, ie. something that emits a hazard rather than prevents it.
- The entire icon should look dimmed for the mask energy signature, not just the front of the ship.
- photonic officer is singular and a single image of a photonic being would be less confusing. Why is it related to subnucleonic beam?
- Why do you have three photonic officers shooting the subnucleonic beam?
- Please explain to the artist that a matrix is a kind of mathematical grid in two or more dimensions and circles don't convey that. Perhaps a grid of some kind for viral matrix?
- While I like the new lunge, it really should be the Kirk two legged drop kick we have in game; so the right leg is misplaced.
- oh look... three holographic people standing around a table is called "tactical initiative". nah.
:P
I get why, but please never do this again. If the artists have peaks and valleys in their schedules then have them make graphic art and sell it at the nearest mall... or just pay them to sit on their hands. Change for the sake of change is just relearning for no reason. Given that your business model is based on frustrating your players into spending money, pointless frustration seems unprofitable.
Some good changes (like the target subsystem, the old icons made no sense or beam fire at will which makes more sense with the multi beam artwork)
Some changes that really don't do anything (tachyon beam, that looks like someone was forced to change it without reason, so they just added a line)
But many of the changes, particularly the science space abilities are just more "busy" than the original which will make them harder to see.
Please explain to the artist that a matrix is a kind of mathematical grid in two or more dimensions and circles don't convey that. Perhaps a grid of some kind for viral matrix?
It's not a circle as much as it is the "power button" symbol denoting that the viral matrix is attacking power.
Really? Another thing that wasn't broken but felt like changing?
I'm at a loss Cryptic really I am it's becoming ever harder to understand your strategy and accept this is something you need to do as a business. If there weren't more pressing things in game I'd be positive about this "Sure go Cryptic" but with the state things are in and you're actively looking for things that have been fine for 5 years and decide let's shake the dice and see what happens?
Where exactly has the community been vocal about this? When did this become a must do? Sure art people may not be of much help with bug fixing but this to me just reinforces my perception that Cryptic is in a world of it's own and not listening to the community and addressing the problems that exist.
When you start addressing the bigger problems and then do this sort of thing then I'll get excited.
I gotta agree. this wasn't broken in the least and i have never seen single complaint on the old ones.
regardless of who revamped these, it was, IMHO, a waste of man hours. if it was a programmer, then chasing any oen of a hundred bugs. artist? well, how about completing the intrepid engineering? of fixing the dreadnought neck??
You remember when MS changed their entire Office software interface with no backward path, and everyone hated it?
Well, they stuck to their guns, and now, 8 years later.... people are still complaining they can't find anything.
It's not catastrophic or anything, but, like many others, I would prefer more effort go to bugfixes. I still can't move with the keyboard 5% of the time when there's an interaction button window up, and that's been that was since I started.
They made the DOFF system more work with the last refresh, too.
Thank you for the new icons, and the thread here to announce them. I might have preferred that the work hours were used to working on bug fixes but I do appreciate the effort made here.
I've got nine toons. Each has around 15 boffs more or less. The boff training system was released buggy. It means I have to go to each boff in turn and check their Space, and Ground skills to see what they've got, and on top of that, I have to read the name of each, as the icons have changed as well!
The really stupid thing about this - changing too many things at once - is that this is precisely the same thing that caused much of the grief at the Delta Rising release. I would have thought Cryptic learned its lesson last time. Obviously not.
Please, this isn't difficult: don't change everything in a system all at once!
The really stupid thing about this - changing too many things at once - is that this is precisely the same thing that caused much of the grief at the Delta Rising release. I would have thought Cryptic learned its lesson last time. Obviously not.
Pretty much sums it up. Too much change. The old boff system was fine. All they really needed was a way to get rare and very rare intel boffs and it would have been ok. This new system is just awful.
There now appears to be a delay between hitting a button and it activating. This needs to be repaired so it's back to immediate as it was before the latest "improvement"
Remove the jumpy "old mechanical clock" countdown presentation. This was one of the ways we can tell if we're lagging, the new mechanical clock look does nothing to improve our abilities and removes an early warning system of lag while simultaneously being distracting.
Simplify the graphics. The old ones did this well, it was clear on a cursory glance what something was, the new ones might be "pretty" but ultimately they need to be functional, not beautiful. They're like good housekeeping: if we're noticing the buttons rather than what's happening in-game, then you've stuffed it up.
I've got nine toons. Each has around 15 boffs more or less. The boff training system was released buggy. It means I have to go to each boff in turn and check their Space, and Ground skills to see what they've got, and on top of that, I have to read the name of each, as the icons have changed as well!
The really stupid thing about this - changing too many things at once - is that this is precisely the same thing that caused much of the grief at the Delta Rising release. I would have thought Cryptic learned its lesson last time. Obviously not.
Please, this isn't difficult: don't change everything in a system all at once!
I completely agree! Don't forget the new tray lag they have introduced! :mad:
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Looking for a new fleet? Drop by the in-game chat channel, "tenforwardforum", and say hi to the members of A Fleet Called Ten Forward (Fed) and The Orion Pirates (KDF). If you already have a fleet you are happy with, please feel free to drop by our chat channel if you are looking for a friendly bunch of helpful people to socialize with.
This wouldn't be so bad if the BOffs had remained seated in their usual seats.
I'm fairly familiar with my Main Sci. Trays are set up and fairly memorized. Tray 1 has EPtS, TT, GW, Sensor Scan (Captain), Subnuc (Captain), TSS, HE, ES, Tractor Beam. Tray 2 has the other 5 BOff Powers in slots 3,4,6,8,0. Critical ones here are ET in 3, Polarize Hull in 4, and TBR in 8...
When I saddled up, the captain powers / console powers / etc. were all where they were used to be. BOffs, though, all got the boot.
So, I had to remember exactly what officers went where, and do so without remembering exact power combinations - because while a cursory poke of the tests found me my primary Sci, my tacs, engie, etc. so that they (and their powers) fell back into place with a quick retrain or two (what sci has ES LtCmdr and GW III Cmdr? Find said BOff, "train" right powers in, seat, go.
My TBR BOff, however, remained in hiding for a while. Eventually found him and slotted the rest of my tray to 4th year settings...
I'm eagerly postponing the reconstruction of my Alt's BOff seats (and my Recluse's), because they're gonna be much harder (as they aren't as memorized) to reseat and repower.
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
I'm eagerly postponing the reconstruction of my Alt's BOff seats (and my Recluse's), because they're gonna be much harder (as they aren't as memorized) to reseat and repower.
I only have one main character I play had enough trouble remembering who had what.
Maybe I'm alone in this, but the new icons are damn impossible for me to use. About half of them are relatively indistinguishable from one another. Polarize Hull Plating used to be easy to recognize, now it's confusing to spot. Same for Hazard Emitters. Some of the icons are great and I can still tell stuff like Beam Overload, but others....I have to go by click memory to figure out what is where (mouse-over takes too long in battle). And that's a problem with more than 1 toon, because you're flying different ships, and different BOFF stations means the order of your BOFF abilities is moved.
Comments
I don't think so, as the Romulans are effectively a faction in their own right..unless you're referring to Strike Team/Engineering Proficiency/Scientific Aptitude (Rear Admiral/Major General abilities).
Also, I'm shocked that the overall feedback appears to be positive..who are you all and what have you done with the ragers?!
No, I mean the icon I have showing for a Boff with the actual "science team" skill (regardless of I, II, or III), KDF and Feds are real and separate factions, yet they share the same icon for these skills, yet for some reason roms have never used the same icon for this ability.
Also, the class-specific ground team buffs should have some indication that they are team-wide. Right now they look like any other ability.
PS. Grenade on Tac ground icons looks like a potato.
Some of the icons are still going to look abstract, because "gives you an invisible numerical advantage in the combat calculations" is a bit hard to visualize and design as a graphic.
The point others have made about Medical Tricorder needing to look more obviously medical - I'd agree, there.
While those of us who have been here long enough to memorize the old iconography may think that it's a perfect situation, to the "average new player", of which we theoretically have piles of roaming in, they are not intuitive or easy to understand at all... And, as others have said, the UI art team doesn't exactly contribute to fixing game bugs (unless it's a bug with the artwork of the UI) so this is a perfect project for them.
Now, in my opinion:
1. TSS could be demonstrated via a shield icon in the lower left, an arrow to another shield icon in the upper right. By shield icon, I mean that new, nifty 4-sliced circle that represents shields on every other artwork...
2. Do you really need that "up arrow effect" on the EPtX abilties? Combined with the "self body", they make the icon look a lot different and/or confuses the intent of the ability some. I'd have gone with a "+" in between the lightning bolt of "emergency power" in the head to the standardized weapon/shield/engine/aux icon.
3. Can we get an in-game explanation of these body/hex/circle silhouettes? They are a nice method of classifying the target the power effects, however, as demonstrated by some of the confusion in this thread, they're not really explained in-game so only the astute or told usually catch on to them.
4. RSP's icon has always screamed RSF to me, and neither do a telling job of explaining the effect. Isn't RSP a sort of "shield heal" in that it takes incoming damage and turns it into stronger shields - artwork could be a beam coming down from the top of the head, hitting the shield graphic, with the "heal" cross in the lower right - letting RSF get the rotation around the shield effect, and the rotation effect scattering a beam coming from the top of the head, indicating that it's hardening the shields...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Those don't seem like art problems, so why would the art people have anything to do with fixing them?
These people never learn...
The new subnuke icon is terrible.
The changes are generally good and I understand why the devs want to make things easier for the theoretical "new" people, since us older cynical players aren't forking over the cash like we used to, but there are a few things that need improvement.
:cool:
- I'll start by saying I agree completely with the post above. Unless you are changing the look of the drones in game the drone icons are bad... completely counter intuitive. It may look like NOMAD, sort of, but it does not look like the drones in the game.
- Auxilliary to dampeners doesn't work. It implies a diversion of power, but not what that power does. I would suggest something like an arrow into a barrier would be better.
- Nadion inversion goes back and forth? Something akin to the reverse shield polarity would be better with a single semicirular arrow, but with a different symbol at the centre so that you know it is nadions rather than shields. What we have makes me think of frequency rather than rotation.
- if you are going to do this then rotate shield frequency could use a change too. A large semi-circular arrow around a horizontal frequency pattern (like the one tuvok drew on that cake) would seem obvious.
- Vascular regenerator looks like an attack power that makes people bleed in spite of the up arrow iconography... and if you are changing the icon, why not change the name of the power to "Dermal regenerator" like they actually say in star trek and give a picture of one of those.
- I would recommend de-emphasizing the tricorders and increasing the visual impact of the alternate symbol for both medical tricorder and tricorder scan. What you have is too similar to distinguish in the split second I want to choose one.
- Don't change hazard emitters. The old image of sending away Xs fits your new iconography better than the new image. The new one looks like the name sounds, ie. something that emits a hazard rather than prevents it.
- The entire icon should look dimmed for the mask energy signature, not just the front of the ship.
- photonic officer is singular and a single image of a photonic being would be less confusing. Why is it related to subnucleonic beam?
- Why do you have three photonic officers shooting the subnucleonic beam?
- Please explain to the artist that a matrix is a kind of mathematical grid in two or more dimensions and circles don't convey that. Perhaps a grid of some kind for viral matrix?
- While I like the new lunge, it really should be the Kirk two legged drop kick we have in game; so the right leg is misplaced.
- oh look... three holographic people standing around a table is called "tactical initiative". nah.
:P
I get why, but please never do this again. If the artists have peaks and valleys in their schedules then have them make graphic art and sell it at the nearest mall... or just pay them to sit on their hands. Change for the sake of change is just relearning for no reason. Given that your business model is based on frustrating your players into spending money, pointless frustration seems unprofitable.
:P
Nerfing is Fraud...
Some changes that really don't do anything (tachyon beam, that looks like someone was forced to change it without reason, so they just added a line)
But many of the changes, particularly the science space abilities are just more "busy" than the original which will make them harder to see.
It's not a circle as much as it is the "power button" symbol denoting that the viral matrix is attacking power.
I gotta agree. this wasn't broken in the least and i have never seen single complaint on the old ones.
regardless of who revamped these, it was, IMHO, a waste of man hours. if it was a programmer, then chasing any oen of a hundred bugs. artist? well, how about completing the intrepid engineering? of fixing the dreadnought neck??
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=21716431&postcount=20
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=21918191&postcount=27
Well, they stuck to their guns, and now, 8 years later.... people are still complaining they can't find anything.
It's not catastrophic or anything, but, like many others, I would prefer more effort go to bugfixes. I still can't move with the keyboard 5% of the time when there's an interaction button window up, and that's been that was since I started.
They made the DOFF system more work with the last refresh, too.
Maybe I'm just a Crotchety McGrumpy, who knows.
And to think, I just got used to the ones we had.
idk but How low CAN you go
But you know this is considered a pvp update as well LOL
Thank you for the new icons, and the thread here to announce them. I might have preferred that the work hours were used to working on bug fixes but I do appreciate the effort made here.
Wrong day to change this.
I've got nine toons. Each has around 15 boffs more or less. The boff training system was released buggy. It means I have to go to each boff in turn and check their Space, and Ground skills to see what they've got, and on top of that, I have to read the name of each, as the icons have changed as well!
The really stupid thing about this - changing too many things at once - is that this is precisely the same thing that caused much of the grief at the Delta Rising release. I would have thought Cryptic learned its lesson last time. Obviously not.
Please, this isn't difficult: don't change everything in a system all at once!
Pretty much sums it up. Too much change. The old boff system was fine. All they really needed was a way to get rare and very rare intel boffs and it would have been ok. This new system is just awful.
I completely agree! Don't forget the new tray lag they have introduced! :mad:
> <
> <
>
I'm fairly familiar with my Main Sci. Trays are set up and fairly memorized. Tray 1 has EPtS, TT, GW, Sensor Scan (Captain), Subnuc (Captain), TSS, HE, ES, Tractor Beam. Tray 2 has the other 5 BOff Powers in slots 3,4,6,8,0. Critical ones here are ET in 3, Polarize Hull in 4, and TBR in 8...
When I saddled up, the captain powers / console powers / etc. were all where they were used to be. BOffs, though, all got the boot.
So, I had to remember exactly what officers went where, and do so without remembering exact power combinations - because while a cursory poke of the tests found me my primary Sci, my tacs, engie, etc. so that they (and their powers) fell back into place with a quick retrain or two (what sci has ES LtCmdr and GW III Cmdr? Find said BOff, "train" right powers in, seat, go.
My TBR BOff, however, remained in hiding for a while. Eventually found him and slotted the rest of my tray to 4th year settings...
I'm eagerly postponing the reconstruction of my Alt's BOff seats (and my Recluse's), because they're gonna be much harder (as they aren't as memorized) to reseat and repower.
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
I only have one main character I play had enough trouble remembering who had what.
:mad:
Before the change I was able to train others boffs with rank III abilities with little cost to myself, grats on making this process a dil sink now.