I think from a user-friendly standpoint the splash screens should and probably will change in this game. I know I'm not the only one that gets frustrated by these, because my fleet has ventrilo, and I've been on skype with the fleet of friends I've made in game. I've spoken with a lot of people about this, and I have a feeling once I post this message there will be a lot of 'amen brother' coming after what I'm about to say.
Anyway, the Splash Screens that alert you about what's going on in the mission are highly interruptive. On a few levels. One of the commonly irritating cases is in Defend Missions (Ie: Kahless Expanse, Azlesa Expanse, Defend against Romulans, etc.) It doesn't matter if you're a Klingon or a Fed captain, the problem is the same, albeit worse on federation side. You zone in. While your computre is loading the graphics, 20 ships have already zoned in on you, your shields are down, and by the time you see what's going on you are at half health. You try as you might to click F as fast as you can (lets hope you didn't accidentally click something else or F won't even work) to get your First officer to shut up so you can defend yourself. Boom you are dead. Enemies swoop away at Warp 35.9 and laugh at your dead exploded hull. You respawn, and then play the mission normally.
The second scenario has to do with team play. You talk to your contact upon entry into a mission, Infected, lets say. Then you walk forward. Then another guy talks to the contact, and you have to click it again. Then again. THen clear it again, because each member of your team got it. So, despite possibly fighting, you're being bombarded by the same message from your first officer or mission contact. This is irritating though often not life threatening.
The third scenario is like the one above, lets say you're in B'tran cluster. You move into a randomized mission, and everyone gets the splash screen where some nefarious enemy forces are hailing you and telling you they want you dead. You say no, click F, and try to move on. Because you're in a team, you have to click 3 or 4 more times, meanwhile the enemy gets an unfair advantage to unload on you. Worse yet, one of your buddies was late to the show, zones in, and gets assaulted while he frantically tries to click his way out of the splash screens. Lets hope he's in a cruiser, or his hull might go boom.
Admittedly, I'm using a little rhetoric here to make apoint though. The splash-screen interface can be annoying, and I think there's better ways to handle it. Preferably by putting a face on the left or right hand side of the view-screen. Put some text beside it, and make it smaller than it is currently. That way you can actually see what's going on and still interact with your environment. Secondly, try to fix the problem where the splash screen hits you multiple times when you're on a team. It gets downright obnoxious (or even lethal to some players) when you have to click your way out of that.
Finally this brings up another point. There should be safe load in zones in the Defend Missions. I realize you're being assaulted, but because of the lag time it takes for the screen to come up, as well as death penalty degradation of gear its a little annoying. I simply suggest you throw people in a 'safe zone' till they actually move their character's ship. That way you have a fighting chance. Its never fun to pull into a screen and see your ship blew up before you had a chance to do anything, nor fun to get your ship nearly-blown up for the same reason. It is fun to at least have a chance to react to your foes however. Hope these ideas help.
Comments
Maybe because it annoys me so much, too, I am not sure there can ever be enough until it has been addressed.
Popups are only okay if they happen due to something I did, or because a critical problem arises and the popup is the only way to deal with. When I enter a enemy contact mission, a critical problem arises - ships start shooting at me. But the popup doesn't help me to deal with that, so it needs to stay away!