No realistic sorting/filtering of queues you want to see is possible. Ridiculous amount of clicking for what under the old system took one double click. Because of this people aren't going to go trying different things, because they won't have the patience to sift through menus, drop-downs and confirmations. Then you can't join one queue and decide to queue for another, you have to back out and restart the process. Even when you are queued for something after a while the green highlight vanishes so you can't see what you're queues are anyway. And when it does finally pop the countdown box is not there so you have no idea if the clock is counting down or not. I've even had a queue pop without me even acknowledging the a hail to start it, I was only in the waiting area.
nothing sorts and you have to click what seems way to many times for such a simple act - did they decide to turn it into a mini game in itself or just a time sink
I think this new system looks good BUT is the one that made it fraking actualy play the game ? For the love of god why so many clicks just for playing one ISA ? If i do a simple ISA/CCA rotation on 8 toons all this clicking is driving me mad. I do enough clicks with admirality ( please some autofill; can exclude crits for balance) and 10 rep 1h project.
ALSO if you pick advanced and then tab out for a sec it does not show if you are still in the list or you had the confirmation expired and you have beed kicked out
Please change this to require less clicks and maybe remember player options. To be honnest as it is right now it discourge players to enter queues. This need to be changed ASAP imo.
We had to click 3 times to join a queue... now it's 6.
This could have been solved easilly with just a simple drop-down menu "choose your marks" to filter the queues.
I don't understand why Cryptic would take information away from us. The cooldown window contains important information, especially important when you have alts and run multiple queues and reputations.
Sadly I think we are stuck with what we have for the moment. I have no issue with how its presented visually. It looks smart. But it seriously lacks the functions that old UI had. Maybe they will eventually add those features back overtime however its likely to be over many many months.
I'm already missing the daily mark cd window as I plan my PvE runs around those and no longer have that feature. Its an extra 640 dil for the daily mark box
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
The new UI appears to have been rushed out the door. The first Tribble patch notes about it appeared two weeks ago. It was a work in progress then, and apparently, it's still a work in progress.
Queuing for a PvE or PvP queue has been changed.
Players must check the box to the right of the queue then press Join Selected Queue.
This is a work in progress and what is on Tribble is not the final result.
The following queues are missing (I'm not sure if others are as well):
Starbase 24
Federation Fleet Alert
Klingon Fleet Alert
Federation Starbase Blockade
Klingon Starbase Blockade
Federation Starbase Incursion
Klingon Starbase Incursion
If you sort by "Skill" and change the difficulty level using the drop-down in the "Skill" column, then the queue whose difficulty you just changed is moved to a different position in the list in order to maintain the sort order. This is horrible UI design, because the queue appears to vanish right before the user's eyes.
If you close and reopen the PvE window, then all the drop-downs in the "Skill" column reset to normal difficulty. You can't tell if you're queued for an advanced or elite mission without changing the drop-down. Most likely, you'll forget which queues you've joined, so you'll have to go through the drop-downs one by one. Again, horrible UI design.
Please reduce the minimum number of players required for "The Big Dig". You really don't need more than 5 players for that mission.
EDIT: Some text to get past the post-eating spam filter.
The new UI appears to have been rushed out the door. The first Tribble patch notes about it appeared two weeks ago. It was a work in progress then, and apparently, it's still a work in progress.
Queuing for a PvE or PvP queue has been changed.
Players must check the box to the right of the queue then press Join Selected Queue.
This is a work in progress and what is on Tribble is not the final result.
The following queues are missing (I'm not sure if others are as well):
Starbase 24
Federation Fleet Alert
Klingon Fleet Alert
Federation Starbase Blockade
Klingon Starbase Blockade
Federation Starbase Incursion
Klingon Starbase Incursion
If you sort by "Skill" and change the difficulty level using the drop-down in the "Skill" column, then the queue whose difficulty you just changed is moved to a different position in the list in order to maintain the sort order. This is horrible UI design, because the queue appears to vanish right before the user's eyes.
If you close and reopen the PvE window, then all the drop-downs in the "Skill" column reset to normal difficulty. You can't tell if you're queued for an advanced or elite mission without changing the drop-down. Most likely, you'll forget which queues you've joined, so you'll have to go through the drop-downs one by one. Again, horrible UI design.
Please reduce the minimum number of players required for "The Big Dig". You really don't need more than 5 players for that mission.
Sadly I think we are stuck with what we have for the moment. I have no issue with how its presented visually. It looks smart. But it seriously lacks the functions that old UI had.
This is a pattern I've noticed with all of Cryptic's UI revamps. They seem to be overly concerned with looks and not enough with functionality. UI design is not only about UI layout and cannot be conveyed solely through mock-ups. You also have to consider what happens when the user clicks on various buttons and controls and under what conditions. What are all the cases? the corner cases? the edge cases? What happens if the user changes tabs and comes back? What happens if the user closes the window and comes back? What state needs to be preserved and what state needs to be reset? Answering these questions is also part of UI design, and they should have been discussed beforehand and as the UI was being developed.
Selecting the difficulty is excessively ambiguous. When I did my first run for the competitive rep last night I didn't even realize there were difficulties for them at all. Only today I noticed they don't list advanced and elite separately anymore and have to click those little arrows in the list. That should be taken back, or at least give option to show them the old way. It's much more useful to be able to see all levels at once, and also less clicks to queue.
The "choice of marks" tab should be replaced with an "all" tab. It lists almost all of them anyway.
The old system was MUCH faster to operate, for essentially the same functionality. If i wanted to play ISA i'd open the window, double click it and then click engage when it popped.
The new system requires, just to play ISA, to open window, select reward type from left pane, select difficult from drop-down, tick Join box, click Join Queues button, click engage when prompted. That's twice the button clicking....for what gain?
Everything resets if you close the window or move to a different tab, so you have to keep restarting the process each time.
Sorting by one criteria using the top of the columns will cause crazy resorting if you change a difficulty drop-down.
Once you have clicked Join x queues using the button the green highlighting vanishes, so you no longer know which ones you are in the line for.
Once you click the engage button you have no visual indicator ANYWHERE IN THE GAME that you are actually in a countdown for a mission to start.
On several occasions there wasn't even an option to engage, it just yanked me out of whatever i was doing to switch maps, no warning at all.
When he above ^ happened, often the team leader said they got the option to engage, but nobody else did.
When in a team, pre-formed before the missions starts it will often leave people behind, despite them being in the same queue as you. Don't know if this is a bug, the PPS system or whatever but it's infuriating. This seemed to be alleviated by being on the same map as teammates initially, but this might not be connected.
There's no way to remove ground/space queues or x-difficulty from the lists if you have no interest in playing them, the old system had a great filter for this.
For pre-made runs, you can't even select the map you want until you have enough people in your team, which is going to totally knacker creating runs if it's not fixed soon.
The timers for daily bonus marks etc. are missing.
This new UI is the complete opposite of improved. It's clunky, overly complicated, and doesn't offer anything the original didn't already have on it.
I get the sickening feeling this is an attempt to push some sort of console UI system onto the PC version and i can safely say it's not welcome by me and a large number of players i spoke to in game. Bad move Cryptic...bad move.
warpangel wrote: »
The "choice of marks" tab should be replaced with an "all" tab. It lists almost all of them anyway.
They don't reward competitive marks or gear. Remember, there's an additional filter besides a type of mark (gear/dilithium). "All" is too encompassing (and a bit misleading), so I don't think the language should be changed here.
frtoaster wrote: »
This is a pattern I've noticed with all of Cryptic's UI revamps. They seem to be overly concerned with looks and not enough with functionality.
I don't think this is right at all. You may count functionality by clicks and accessory features but think about what the UI's primary job is: efficiently presenting information to the player. The new UI is tremendously better at that because it uses [concise] categories. It doesn't present the player with sequential master lists (the abject lesson as far as bad UI designs in gaming go) including the filter (it was a master list of all reward types, up to individual elite marks.)
The only activity that I can count as taking more time and effort (including reading, scrolling, and mental processing) is joining several different adv/elite queues (which before was just my strategy of minimizing UI bloat with the easiest tool to hand). But I'd consider that a secondary concern to casually browsing queues (hell of lot easier now) and joining a single queue (hell of a lot faster now.)
What I'd change is:
1. Add a difficulty preference right at the top.
2. Bring back mark cooldowns.
Otherwise, it's a great improvement.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
warpangel wrote: »
The "choice of marks" tab should be replaced with an "all" tab. It lists almost all of them anyway.
They don't reward competitive marks or gear. Remember, there's an additional filter besides a type of mark (gear/dilithium). "All" is too encompassing (and a bit misleading), so I don't think the language should be changed here.
That's why I said "almost," duh. And I'm not talking about changing the language I'm talking about replacing it with a tab that actually shows all of them.
frtoaster wrote: »
This is a pattern I've noticed with all of Cryptic's UI revamps. They seem to be overly concerned with looks and not enough with functionality.
I don't think this is right at all. You may count functionality by clicks and accessory features but think about what the UI's primary job is: efficiently presenting information to the player. The new UI is tremendously better at that because it uses [concise] categories. It doesn't present the player with sequential master lists (the abject lesson as far as bad UI designs in gaming go) including the filter (it was a master list of all reward types, up to individual elite marks.)
The only activity that I can count as taking more time and effort (including reading, scrolling, and mental processing) is joining several different adv/elite queues (which before was just my strategy of minimizing UI bloat with the easiest tool to hand). But I'd consider that a secondary concern to casually browsing queues (hell of lot easier now) and joining a single queue (hell of a lot faster now.)
Except the new UI doesn't efficiently present the relevant information. Even seeing anything Advanced or Elite requires an inordinate amount of manual labor now. It's basically impossible to visually compare queues because they are so badly subdivided. And joining any queue single or otherwise is most definitely much slower now. Where previously you could simply scroll to the right spot in the "sequential master list" and doubleclick it, now you have to go through all kinds of buttons to set the category and difficulty and pointless checkbox.
The only activity I can count as taking less time and effort now is searching for a queue to match a mark type you want...for new people who don't yet know that. And I have no idea what you mean by "casually browsing queues." The only bit of information I'd be inclined to "casually browse" in there is queues which are about to pop and that's impossible because it takes forever to manually check every difficulty of every queue.
But of course, there's no reason they couldn't give us the best of both worlds, by including an all category and an option to display the difficulties on separate lines instead of a clicky dropdown.
I do like that the Alerts are now in the list and the ability to queue more at once in one go after selecting them.. However, once you queue for the selected you can't alter the list.
Finding Advanced can be confusing at first. I liked the old one and not sure why it changed. It went in the right direction showing the cooldown times.
Selecting the difficulty is excessively ambiguous. When I did my first run for the competitive rep last night I didn't even realize there were difficulties for them at all. Only today I noticed they don't list advanced and elite separately anymore and have to click those little arrows in the list. That should be taken back, or at least give option to show them the old way. It's much more useful to be able to see all levels at once, and also less clicks to queue.
3. If you sort by "Skill" and change the difficulty level using the drop-down in the "Skill" column, then the queue whose difficulty you just changed is moved to a different position in the list in order to maintain the sort order. This is horrible UI design, because the queue appears to vanish right before the user's eyes.
4. If you close and reopen the PvE window, then all the drop-downs in the "Skill" column reset to normal difficulty. You can't tell if you're queued for an advanced or elite mission without changing the drop-down. Most likely, you'll forget which queues you've joined, so you'll have to go through the drop-downs one by one. Again, horrible UI design.
Apparently, no one considered display order or state preservation during development, and no one thought to test it.
This is a pattern I've noticed with all of Cryptic's UI revamps. They seem to be overly concerned with looks and not enough with functionality.
I don't think this is right at all. You may count functionality by clicks and accessory features but think about what the UI's primary job is: efficiently presenting information to the player. The new UI is tremendously better at that because it uses [concise] categories. It doesn't present the player with sequential master lists (the abject lesson as far as bad UI designs in gaming go) including the filter (it was a master list of all reward types, up to individual elite marks.)
I'm not talking about the number of clicks. By "functionality", I mean what actually happens when the user clicks on stuff. The primary job of the UI is to allow the user to execute actions. The UI isn't a static picture; it's a dynamic piece of software. It has to actually do stuff. Specifying what actions to execute when the user clicks on various buttons and controls is also part of the design. Cryptic is overly concerned with layout and not concerned enough with what happens when the user clicks on the buttons and controls. For example, what happens if the user sorts by "Skill" and then changes the difficulty drop-down. What happens if the user changes the difficulty, closes the window, and then reopens it? They didn't think the user would do those things? Well, they should have.
But of course, there's no reason they couldn't give us the best of both worlds, by including an all category and an option to display the difficulties on separate lines instead of a clicky dropdown.
The normal, advanced, and elite versions of a mission should be displayed on separate lines, and there should be a difficulty filter at the top. The difficulty drop-down doesn't belong in the "Skill" column; it creates too many problems.
EDIT: Some text to get past the post-eating spam filter.
Thanks for all of the feedback. The devs have been listening in and are looking into some tweaks to the Queue UI that will appear in a future update. We'll let you know when we have more info.
Thanks for all of the feedback. The devs have been listening in and are looking into some tweaks to the Queue UI that will appear in a future update. We'll let you know when we have more info.
Very nice sir!
This last season came with lots of good changes and quality-of-life improvments, but this one problem is so annoying that overshadows most of the good things.
Thank you!
AMBASSADORKAEL That is great news thank you. As I've said a few times the ui looks nice it's just missing a lot of features and functionality we took for granted with old one. If the Devs can get that functionality intergrated that would fantastic
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
1) I can no longer queue for both Normal and Advanced (was waiting like half-an-hour for Tzenkethi Front Advanced to queue, so I figured I'd queue for Normal too then, but coukdn't).
2) It is no longer possible to see what you're queued for (unless you selected each mission you're queued for, LOL). This is annoying.
Comments
No realistic sorting/filtering of queues you want to see is possible.
Ridiculous amount of clicking for what under the old system took one double click.
Because of this people aren't going to go trying different things, because they won't have the patience to sift through menus, drop-downs and confirmations.
Then you can't join one queue and decide to queue for another, you have to back out and restart the process.
Even when you are queued for something after a while the green highlight vanishes so you can't see what you're queues are anyway.
And when it does finally pop the countdown box is not there so you have no idea if the clock is counting down or not. I've even had a queue pop without me even acknowledging the a hail to start it, I was only in the waiting area.
ALSO if you pick advanced and then tab out for a sec it does not show if you are still in the list or you had the confirmation expired and you have beed kicked out
Please change this to require less clicks and maybe remember player options. To be honnest as it is right now it discourge players to enter queues. This need to be changed ASAP imo.
This could have been solved easilly with just a simple drop-down menu "choose your marks" to filter the queues.
I'm already missing the daily mark cd window as I plan my PvE runs around those and no longer have that feature. Its an extra 640 dil for the daily mark box
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
no i meant que as in "queues" pve queues, or as szim said "new UI", but there is better topic about this any way.
EDIT: Some text to get past the post-eating spam filter.
This is a pattern I've noticed with all of Cryptic's UI revamps. They seem to be overly concerned with looks and not enough with functionality. UI design is not only about UI layout and cannot be conveyed solely through mock-ups. You also have to consider what happens when the user clicks on various buttons and controls and under what conditions. What are all the cases? the corner cases? the edge cases? What happens if the user changes tabs and comes back? What happens if the user closes the window and comes back? What state needs to be preserved and what state needs to be reset? Answering these questions is also part of UI design, and they should have been discussed beforehand and as the UI was being developed.
The "choice of marks" tab should be replaced with an "all" tab. It lists almost all of them anyway.
Yes, absolutely need the cooldowns display back.
This new UI is the complete opposite of improved. It's clunky, overly complicated, and doesn't offer anything the original didn't already have on it.
I get the sickening feeling this is an attempt to push some sort of console UI system onto the PC version and i can safely say it's not welcome by me and a large number of players i spoke to in game. Bad move Cryptic...bad move.
They don't reward competitive marks or gear. Remember, there's an additional filter besides a type of mark (gear/dilithium). "All" is too encompassing (and a bit misleading), so I don't think the language should be changed here.
I don't think this is right at all. You may count functionality by clicks and accessory features but think about what the UI's primary job is: efficiently presenting information to the player. The new UI is tremendously better at that because it uses [concise] categories. It doesn't present the player with sequential master lists (the abject lesson as far as bad UI designs in gaming go) including the filter (it was a master list of all reward types, up to individual elite marks.)
The only activity that I can count as taking more time and effort (including reading, scrolling, and mental processing) is joining several different adv/elite queues (which before was just my strategy of minimizing UI bloat with the easiest tool to hand). But I'd consider that a secondary concern to casually browsing queues (hell of lot easier now) and joining a single queue (hell of a lot faster now.)
What I'd change is:
1. Add a difficulty preference right at the top.
2. Bring back mark cooldowns.
Otherwise, it's a great improvement.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Except the new UI doesn't efficiently present the relevant information. Even seeing anything Advanced or Elite requires an inordinate amount of manual labor now. It's basically impossible to visually compare queues because they are so badly subdivided. And joining any queue single or otherwise is most definitely much slower now. Where previously you could simply scroll to the right spot in the "sequential master list" and doubleclick it, now you have to go through all kinds of buttons to set the category and difficulty and pointless checkbox.
The only activity I can count as taking less time and effort now is searching for a queue to match a mark type you want...for new people who don't yet know that. And I have no idea what you mean by "casually browsing queues." The only bit of information I'd be inclined to "casually browse" in there is queues which are about to pop and that's impossible because it takes forever to manually check every difficulty of every queue.
But of course, there's no reason they couldn't give us the best of both worlds, by including an all category and an option to display the difficulties on separate lines instead of a clicky dropdown.
Finding Advanced can be confusing at first. I liked the old one and not sure why it changed. It went in the right direction showing the cooldown times.
It's worse than you think:
Apparently, no one considered display order or state preservation during development, and no one thought to test it.
I'm not talking about the number of clicks. By "functionality", I mean what actually happens when the user clicks on stuff. The primary job of the UI is to allow the user to execute actions. The UI isn't a static picture; it's a dynamic piece of software. It has to actually do stuff. Specifying what actions to execute when the user clicks on various buttons and controls is also part of the design. Cryptic is overly concerned with layout and not concerned enough with what happens when the user clicks on the buttons and controls. For example, what happens if the user sorts by "Skill" and then changes the difficulty drop-down. What happens if the user changes the difficulty, closes the window, and then reopens it? They didn't think the user would do those things? Well, they should have.
The normal, advanced, and elite versions of a mission should be displayed on separate lines, and there should be a difficulty filter at the top. The difficulty drop-down doesn't belong in the "Skill" column; it creates too many problems.
EDIT: Some text to get past the post-eating spam filter.
Thanks for all of the feedback. The devs have been listening in and are looking into some tweaks to the Queue UI that will appear in a future update. We'll let you know when we have more info.
Very nice sir!
This last season came with lots of good changes and quality-of-life improvments, but this one problem is so annoying that overshadows most of the good things.
Thank you!
They have however removed basic functionality from it that shouldn't have been, like the daily cooldown or filtering.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
1) I can no longer queue for both Normal and Advanced (was waiting like half-an-hour for Tzenkethi Front Advanced to queue, so I figured I'd queue for Normal too then, but coukdn't).
2) It is no longer possible to see what you're queued for (unless you selected each mission you're queued for, LOL). This is annoying.