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continuum4t7
Member Posts: 7 Arc User
Was creating a display image for my account showing my characters and thought it would make for a nice character selection screen. (Expanded below)
I don't like how the current character selection screen works. So how can it be improved?
There's a fair bit of space that's unused, UI wise at least. The background looks absolutely stunning for sure, but it leaves little room for your list of characters. By moving the characters, crew and ships a bit to the right you can fit in more space for your character names on the left which would let us get rid of, or at least reduce the amount of scrolling needed to select your character.
Speaking of selecting your character, The current screen has too many elements it has to reload every time you select a different character. Your character, your crew, your ship, and the UI and background itself all change and have to re-load all the information every time you select another character, which makes scrolling down through a long list (especially on console) very slow. The easiest solution for this would be to have the game only load the most recently played character. Scrolling down does not reload the entire screen, but a "View" button between the Back/Play buttons would let you reload the screen specifically for that character if you want to see what the ship/crew are before clicking play.
I'd also like to be able to drag a character onto another character would create a group, letting you easily order your characters to your liking. By default the original list would still be there, but creating a group would create it above the default list. This would allow personal customization to match your own playstyle like organising your characters by Affiliation (Fed, Kli, Rom, etc), Career Path (Tac, Eng, Sci), or even more personal groups like Levelling, Dailies, Recruits, Roleplay, Meta Builds, etc. Being able to change the order the characters appear in is important too, as well as the ability to arrange the order of the groups themselves. Most importantly, logging in/out of any character will not change the order you've set it to.
Every character or group should also have customizable buttons. Being able to select a colour, pattern and background shape. For colours I added purple for the Dominion, gold for Recruits and Grey for Bank or old neglected characters but I could imagine having several shades of each of these to choose from. Want a red background for your Federation character to show he's darker than your standard Starfleet officer? Why not. Make your main character's name appear gold to highlight it's important? Sure.
For the shape, all the current buttons are pretty much identical, Discovery has slightly rounder edges and whatever character you select may have a slight accent on it's left hand edge, but I imagine having a much greater variety. Blade style designs for Klingons, A fading stealth shapes Romulans, Melting liquid shape for Dominion. Of course just because a shape might look like it would be best used on a specific affiliation doesn't mean it has to be. Nothing wrong with having melting nametags for Klingons or sharp edge nametags for Federation, etc.
Patterns would simply be faint textures you could choose to go alongwide the colour and button shape. I enjoy the current button textures with a slight gradient or curved light reflection at the very top of the list, but would love to see it expanded to include textures like metallic, worn, damaged, lighting effects, maybe even adding some animation like a pulsing or flicking light, holographic or transporter effect, etc. Basically the combination of multiple colours, shapes and textures for any character's name would look amazing.
I don't like how the current character selection screen works. So how can it be improved?
There's a fair bit of space that's unused, UI wise at least. The background looks absolutely stunning for sure, but it leaves little room for your list of characters. By moving the characters, crew and ships a bit to the right you can fit in more space for your character names on the left which would let us get rid of, or at least reduce the amount of scrolling needed to select your character.
Speaking of selecting your character, The current screen has too many elements it has to reload every time you select a different character. Your character, your crew, your ship, and the UI and background itself all change and have to re-load all the information every time you select another character, which makes scrolling down through a long list (especially on console) very slow. The easiest solution for this would be to have the game only load the most recently played character. Scrolling down does not reload the entire screen, but a "View" button between the Back/Play buttons would let you reload the screen specifically for that character if you want to see what the ship/crew are before clicking play.
I'd also like to be able to drag a character onto another character would create a group, letting you easily order your characters to your liking. By default the original list would still be there, but creating a group would create it above the default list. This would allow personal customization to match your own playstyle like organising your characters by Affiliation (Fed, Kli, Rom, etc), Career Path (Tac, Eng, Sci), or even more personal groups like Levelling, Dailies, Recruits, Roleplay, Meta Builds, etc. Being able to change the order the characters appear in is important too, as well as the ability to arrange the order of the groups themselves. Most importantly, logging in/out of any character will not change the order you've set it to.
Every character or group should also have customizable buttons. Being able to select a colour, pattern and background shape. For colours I added purple for the Dominion, gold for Recruits and Grey for Bank or old neglected characters but I could imagine having several shades of each of these to choose from. Want a red background for your Federation character to show he's darker than your standard Starfleet officer? Why not. Make your main character's name appear gold to highlight it's important? Sure.
For the shape, all the current buttons are pretty much identical, Discovery has slightly rounder edges and whatever character you select may have a slight accent on it's left hand edge, but I imagine having a much greater variety. Blade style designs for Klingons, A fading stealth shapes Romulans, Melting liquid shape for Dominion. Of course just because a shape might look like it would be best used on a specific affiliation doesn't mean it has to be. Nothing wrong with having melting nametags for Klingons or sharp edge nametags for Federation, etc.
Patterns would simply be faint textures you could choose to go alongwide the colour and button shape. I enjoy the current button textures with a slight gradient or curved light reflection at the very top of the list, but would love to see it expanded to include textures like metallic, worn, damaged, lighting effects, maybe even adding some animation like a pulsing or flicking light, holographic or transporter effect, etc. Basically the combination of multiple colours, shapes and textures for any character's name would look amazing.
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