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Colored icons would be nice.

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
edited February 2012 in Controls and User Interface
This may have been brought up before, but I realized today that the icons on the powers bar are all white and look very similar in some cases. I find myself clicking abilities that I think are one thing but end up being another, only because I didn't take a half second to focus on the power bar to make sure. Then again, in a PvP match a half a second can be a matter of winning or losing.

When you look at other games of this sort, they all have colored icons to speed up point-n-clickers like myself. I have the 30 slot power bar all set up how I want it, it's just that when I'm dragging a mouse across the screen I don't want to have to hover over three similar looking icons to get the right one. For example, I drive a science boat and the 4 "Target Subsystem" abilities all have similar shape.

It would be nice if players had the option to color the icons how they wanted, both the foreground symbol and the background. For example, if I wanted to make the background of offensive abilities red, I could do that. Or I could make them green, blue or purple to denote which tier of ability it is. Icons could be color coded so a blue icon might mean it's a shield related ability, where a red icon is weapon related.

File this under "It would be nice" if need be, but the U.I. could be more user-friendly.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited August 2010
    Great Idea! That would be so helpful!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited August 2010
    Darren Kitlor brought this up earlier (gestalt psychology IIRC). The idea is perfectly valid, and it is pretty easy to do. Darren may even have it up and running.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited August 2010
    Good idea.:D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    I suppose there's a couple ways they could do this... one would be for them to actually add color to the abilities themselves... sort of like how devices, tribbles, power cells, weapons, etc... have color to the art. That would be a great option, but would require a good amount of effort on the developer's side to have to go into every icon and add some extra art... but it would be nice.

    Another options would be to simply add a color slider on the description area for each skill when viewing them on the "available skills" window (when you hit P). That would theoretically be much less development and allow users to customize it themselves.

    An inbetween would be for development to simply change the colors of each icon to represent what they think the best hue would be for that sort of ability.
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