Can we be rid of unrequested popups during space flight, please?
Often, I'll get a mission update popup, while I'm still fighting, or at the very least trying to fly away from a ship that's about to explode.
Maybe we can have little comic book voice bubbles coming from our boffs in the boff tray, or have a queue of messages that we can acknowledge when we're ready -- in the same place that's already used for *some* messages and options down the right side of the screen?
Thanks!
Comments
What I don't like is the timing, which in a way is what you're complaint is about. For example, my tactical officer hits me up with three pages of dialogue on how to proceed with the next important phase of my mission - which includes joining in the epic battle that had started the moment the first dialogue box popped up. Except I'm missing it.. because I'm busy reading the next two pages of script.
That is highly annoying. It is difficult to take the time to read the material that is written when events are unfolding around you (events that are obstructed by the large dialogue box). The timing there is, honestly, TRIBBLE. I suggest either delaying the events until the final dialogue box is closed, or (in the case of fleet actions) delay the next stage for X number of seconds to give everyone a reasonable amount of time to read through the new mission objective dialogue (and heaven knows some players could certainly benefit from reading those objective dialogues).
Now, some missions operate this way but a lot of them ignore this setup, particularly in fleet actions, but the problem isn't limited to them only. Please consider doing something about this.
We never saw Riker run up in front of the main viewer and get in Picard's face about the mission... I suspect he'd have been swabbing the torpedo tubes with Wesley!
Do you mean that he and Wesley would be swabbing the tubes, or that he'd be using Wesley as a mop to swab the tubes?
I agree with the suggestion to freeze the mission until the dialog box is dismissed or minimized. Exception for DSEs, of course.
Pop-ups in combat are the single most intolerable feature of the game for me. To have a bunch of text block your vision the instant you kill a ship... a ship which can badly damage or even destroy you by exploding in your face... is appalling interface design.
Moreover I would LOVE to actually read what the pop up is saying, whereas in reality I am hammering a key to make the damn thing go away as fast as humanly possible before I either get killed by a warp core breach or attacked by a second wave of enemies spawning within gun range but obscured by the damn pop up... all that creative talent put into writing story text which I dare not read because it appears in the middle of the damn fight :mad:
Please Cryptic, rethink the UI generally and in particular make "Death-By-Dialogue-Box" a thing of the past
either way would be amusing tbh, though if i was Picard i would wait until Wesly was in one of the tubes and then give the order to fire................
i wonder what colour Wesly would glow when fired though, Photons = red, Quantums = white, Wesley = ........
I completely agree, which is why this isn't actually supposed to happen.
Your "in-combat" state is supposed to persist for a few seconds after anyone has targeted you, to give time for ships to blow up, etc. before interactions or contact dialogues appear.
Can you give specific examples of maps/missions you're seeing this on, or is it always happening? Do you recall if you were actually in combat (does it still say "Condition Red" at the top of the screen) or were the contact dialogues just appearing too quickly after combat was over?
I'm afraid I can't give specific examples, but this happens to me all the time. I'll keep an eye out for whether I am still technically in combat when it occurs.
If it helps, I think it happens more often during star cluster missions than storyline missions.
it tends to happen the most when more combat vessels are jumping in at the same time or right after you beat the first ship. A great example is the star cluster mission where you defend the astroid base from agressors, you defeat the first ship then the mission updates to say defeat the XX/XX squadrons or waves of ships, after each group is destroyed the dialog box pops up telling you more are coming (the default ui design moves you into a full stop while the enemy ships warp core breaches) and when you tend to finish these missions the gold text flys up filling the screen right after the last ship is defeated.
exploration mission.
approach base.
base gets attacked by four-five waves of enemy SHIPS.
each time a ship blows up, the next wave comes instantly.. no waiting for the 10 second timer.
and it appears that the communication popup is tied to when the enemy ship shows up, rather than to when you get out of combat.
but... waiting 10 seconds for the next ship to spawn would also be annoying.
actually, come to think of it.. the comm popup is kind of superfluous in that type of mission. I know I'm getting attacked, and I can see that a new ship has popped up on the minimap... so just rip them out of the mission completely.
also.. and this is only kind of relevant.. why can't we loot items while the popup is ... up?
"I'm right next to the loot.. but I Can't pick it up cause there's a popup, but I can't close it, cause my buddies want to leave right away / or closing the popup without choose 'yes, warp me to the next pace' may bug the mission so I'll have to redo everything..."
What has happened to me on explore missions (Fed) is I kill the final bad guy and the dialog box for Ops or Starfleet instantly pops up. It's infrequent, but often enough to cause me to change the option to keep my ship moving during dialog boxes (so I wouldn't get "warp cored" on).
This also happens in the "defend-the-helpless-X" missions, where you get a dialog box between each wave of attackers.
I also have never seen the level-up animation because of the pop-ups.
Could you guys give us an opacity option for the boxes so we could at least see through them? An option to keep them minimized but flashing at the lower right of the screen? Anything...?
Z
I believe it still happens in Kerrat Borg Warzone (open space PVP), while combat is still active.
Every "Secure System" exploration mission has these pop-ups occur after every wave, just to tell us to "defeat enemies", as if we're too stupid to understand we still have more to kill based on the mission objectives window still showing more to kill. These pop-ups happen as soon as we defeat the last ship of the current wave, even though we're still at Red Alert.
I've filed bug reports about this while in those missions. IIRC I filed at least once before launch and again after launch sometime, However, that report is no longer listed in my open reports and the closed reports appear to have been clear of all but the most recent. So it seems my report of this issue was closed and deleted, without ever getting fixed.
It happens ALOT in the Fleet action: Klingon scouting force and DS9, so much so that you can die from it because it pops up in the middle of fights.
This also has happened in every Mission i have ever done in a Space Cluster or Nebula. Me and every one i know assumed it was working as intended, if it is not then i think everyone in the game would have bug reported it.
I have not tried any other FA other than Starbase 24 and the only popup there is the one for the ground mission and i have not tested it to see if it pops up in battle
I have never seen an example of where a dialogue box has popped up while I was still in combat. All destroyed ships have finished exploding several times over by the time these interfaces pop up. That part, to me, seems fine.
However, I have seen several examples of combat beginning within seconds of a multi-page dialogue box appearing. That part is very frustrating, because given the choice of taking action or reading multiple pages of dialogue, I think most players end up clicking through the dialogue as quickly as possible to join the fight. This occurs all the time in fleet actions where new instructions are being given after every stage.
Another recent example that comes to mind is the Doomsday Device mission, where your tactical officer informs you that the Federation fleet has entered the battle with the Klingon fleet and needs your help. Sure enough, the fleets start slugging it out within spitting distance of you while your tactical officer goes on for several pages explaining how to properly use your torpedoes to destroy the Doomsday Device. Don't get me wrong.. I need these instructions; I even want to read what my tactical officer has to say because I enjoy the writing. But not while a huge space battle is happening right next to me.. I can only read so fast. I want to participate in the battle, so why start the fight with the first dialogue box? Wouldn't it make more sense to hold off on spawning the ships until I close the final dialogue box?
Obviously this isn't supposed to be happening, so I suggest we all bug it in-game.
Z
Constantly!
Killing the last enemy in a wave in a mission gets an instant popup. Even if his secondary (warp core?) explosion hasn't happened yet.
If I manage to sneak around and scan a computer in a ground mission while there are still enemies, popup.
Mission segment change, popup, even if I'm trying to maneuver around something -- there's usually interesting terrain at the end of mission segments!
Somebody starts to warp down to a base, different popup, but still a popup, with the same screen-blocking going on. (I'm the crafter in my group of friends, so I'm the guy who goes out to pick up anomalies in team missions! I usually get caught on this one while trying to get one last nom.)
If I'm typing a chat while the popup arrives, I can't dismiss the popup with the frantically-pressed F key, even after I finish the chat and send it, returning to control mode. I have to maneuver the mouse to someplace it probably isn't, to clear the popup.
Having thought about this quite a bit, especially recently, here are my favorite ideas:
1 - set all incoming messages in the queue that appears in the lower right, until we're ready to acknowledge them. Give us a keypress to use to pluck the next one out of the queue, so we can keep hands on controls.
2 - give the various boffs, team captains, and the hailing icon little voice bubbles. Also give a slightly different voice bubble to the transporter icon, when it's time to beam down. These voice bubbles can either relay short message whole, or can prompt for captain's attention when he's ready. Let us acknowledge messages in priority or order with a keypress, so we can keep hands-on-controls as much as possible. (good for the wrists, you know)
3 - have all popups' information be relocated to a small, dedicated chat window, which is in all ways like a normal chat window, except for the ability to click OK/more/next sorts of buttons. We can then review when we have a chance, and acknowledge "nexts" as we go to keep the pace up.
Look, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm really not, but seriously? Do you even play Star Trek Online?
Every time I warp into a Deep Space Encounter I'm being shot at while that window conveniently pops up blocking my view. In other missions I warp in, I'm reading the story in the window and before I'm done I'm taking enemy fire. Because of this I have been unable to completely read many of the stories.
During other missions that window pops up DURING COMBAT. That's right. Right in the middle of combat, like when I get too close to the base I'm supposed to beaming down to. Or when I reach any other objective someone hails me often during combat and often times I have to hit that X multiple times just to convince the window that I really want it to close.
It doesn't happen in every mission, but I'd say that window popping up right before/in the middle of combat happens in probably 50% of the missions I've played. It's that big a problem.
This happens on ground missions too, but it doesn't seem to interrupt combat nearly as often as it does in space encounters.
The one I find this happening on the most is the 'secure system' missions where you have to defend a disabled ship from several waves of attackers. Basically, every time you kill a wave, the BO spams you as SOON as you nail the last ship in that wave, generally leaving you caught in the warp core breaches as it dies.
I think I have a screenie of one of the missions, showing the mission tracker. I'll check my FRAPS archive and link it for you in just a few.
::EDIT::
Ok, here are links to a pair of screenies showing the mission type in the tracker, and the name of the system involved (CodeRanger told me some problems are system specific, so this may help).
http://home.comcast.net/~valethar/images/secure_system_001.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~valethar/images/secure_system_002.jpg
As I mentioned earlier, the mission types that I find this happening on the most are the ones shown in the screenies above (in fact, I just found a typo in the first one LOL).
Star Cluster missions... Defend the Base or Defend the Ship missions... the ships come in waves and after each wave the INSTANT you kill the last ship of each wave, the Pop-Up-Of-Death works its evil magic and, er, pops up right in your face quite literally the split second the ship is killed (i.e. BEFORE the final warp core breach), so just a second or two before the breach, you lose sight of everything (and if you have not set "keep moving during dialogues" to YES, you have the extra added joy of your speed dropping to zero right next to the dying ship :eek: ).
Even with it set to keep you moving, you're almost always in the blast radius. The big issues are not being able to see where the next enemies are if you use a speed boost to jump clear, and not being able to turn with the mouse because of that window being in the way. You can literally run right into the next wave before the Alert status is canceled and have no opportunity to regen, etc before you're back into the fight.
Running smack into a battleship like this can be a real invigorating experience! :eek:
Yes, I do play.
I have seen this happening occasionally but not to the frequency that some people are reporting. We have to fix this on a case by case basis and obviously we missed some cases. We do appreciate the help in tracking down the ones we missed, so thank you to everyone who gave specific examples.
Depending on what missions you like to do you'll be seeing this more or less often, as you can probably tell by reading the other responses to this thread.
I want to make sure everyone knows that you *can* move the contact dialogue window. You have to click on the title area above the contact picture, or on the picture itself, to grab the window. Then it will be draggable.
I also wanted to make sure everyone knows that the button in the top left corner of the contact will minimize it and turn it into a button that appears on the lower right of the screen. That button will be present for as long as the contact dialogue is available. This has always been the case, but I think that having that button be an "X" must have been misleading. So I changed it to a standard "minimize" symbol. If you want to put the guy on hold, just click the "-" button in the top left corner (the image change should go live with the next update).
I have also made this window remember its previous position, so it will reappear in whatever location you dragged it to, rather than always reappearing in the centre of the screen (this should also go live with the next update).
We are trying to make sure all the contacts know not to appear during combat, but I hope this information and these changes help in cases like when you're reading the dialogue and *then* you get attacked (obviously making you unattackable whenever the contact dialogue is up would be, um, unwise)
Of course you actually mean the "_" button here, right?
The standard minimize is an underscore, not a hyphen.
:cool:
That would be unwise, but (I at least) am just simply looking for better timing. Many times the contact window will pop up and the information given will suggest an attack is about to start. And sure enough, it immediately does. Of course, we're still reading page 1 of 3 at that point and want to finish reading the dialogue while it's still relevant information, so putting it off to the side until later doesn't really help us. Can't the timing just be improved in cases like this?
Right now we see this:
Sec.
0:00) Page 1: Captain, Romulan vessels are inbound on an attack course!
0:01) Enemy ships spawn and attack your ship. Player attempts to move through dialogue quickly.
0:01) Page 1 continues: blah blah details the player should know.
0:10) Page 2: more details the player should know.
0:20) Page 3: Closing details and the actual point of this conversation.
0:30) Player has finished dialogue and can now finally defend themselves.
What you're suggesting is this:
Sec.
0:00) Page 1: Captain, Romulan vessels are inbound on an attack course!
0:01) Enemy ships spawn and attack your ship.
0:02) Player minimizes dialogue and can now defend themselves, but isn't getting to read the information relevant to this part of the mission yet.
2:00) Player finishes combat, opens dialogue box and reads information relevant to a fight that just finished.
What we want is this:
Sec.
0:00) Page 1: Captain, Romulan vessels are inbound on an attack course!
0:01) Page 1 continues: blah blah details the player should know.
0:10) Page 2: more details the player should know.
0:20) Page 3: Closing details and the actual point of this conversation.
0:30) Player closes the dialogue box and can now defend themselves.
0:31) Enemy ships spawn and attack your ship now that the dialogue box has been closed.
It's just a matter of better timing on triggering events when scripting out these missions.
All the Star Cluster "Defend the Base/Defend the Ship" Missions do this every single time, no exceptions. i.e. 100% of the time type frequency
Unattackable would be bad clearly as it could be exploited, but *NO* pop-ups should appear if Red Alert is still in force, or some less intrusive way should be found at such times...and frankly why are enemies spawning magically within gun range when you are trying to read a dialogue box anyway? :rolleyes: