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Is the new queue UI really /that/ bad?
daiph
Member Posts: 149 Arc User
I attempted to type some feedback up previously however that thread disappeared when I tried to add/amend some tags and as yet I've had no further response to finding out what actually happened to it... To Notepad! 
Personally, I hate it so far. It's a huge step backwards in usability and overall intuitiveness and on top of that seems to have bugged the whole queue system over all, even to the point that the 'accept' popup and countdown timers don't work properly anymore.
First things first though, let's be honest and draw up some pro points for the new system. The old queue menu system needed an overhaul and some TLC, it looked dated and was becoming too large and unwieldy in state it had gotten to. The ability to limit the list of queues to those of a given mark type is a huge improvement in that area, and the pictures being used to represent and draw attention to highlighted missions is a substantial improvement. Not to mention actually showing the list of potential reward types for a given mission being properly expanded.
Aaaand that's it for positives. Even with those, the highlighted queue pictures make the window sizing a bit of a pain and, personally, seems somehow disjointed to look at, especially when you've half a picture showing while trying to shrink the window on lower resolutions. Further, the implementation of these new filtered lists is horrible, but more on that in a second because that's a true negative and not merely a compromise...
So now, to negatives.
The older window was stupidly intuitive and quick to use.
To start with, this allowed you to very quickly scan the queue list and see which queues you were likely to launch quickly in, comparing different difficulties in a single mission or multiple missions against one another. Now you can't even see the queue lengths or number of people queued for two different difficulties of the same mission next to each other much less for different missions whether they're of the same difficulty or not.
That's just comparing mission queues, it gets worse when actually joining them. So previously, you got your team formed if you want one, scroll to your desired mission and double-click it or click the 'queue team' button in the bottom corner; job done, perhaps clicking on a couple more queues if you have a choice of missions to get through and want to launch quickly as possible. The new window requires you to find one of the reward types and click into it, then change the difficulty (because really, how many people just run normal difficulty indefinitely?), then click the check box, then probably go off to find another reward type, then change that difficulty, then click that checkbox, then probably do it all over again, AND THEN click the join button. I mean, seriously?!
What's more fun is if you've forgotten one of the queues or want to go and check what you're queued in or you've added something accidentally. It's nice to have the 'leave selected queues' and 'clear selected queues' buttons, but when you have to go and find them to sort them, trying to do so means going through each reward type and changing the difficulty in every possible mission you've selected all over again. I'd say I'm sorry for this considering the amount of time someone probably took to design and implement this but I'm really, really not; that's just stupid.
Now come the two main kickers of all of this:
1st up, I'm almost 100% certain that the older queue system was easier to use not only on PC, but also on console. Open the mission menu, scroll to the mission you want and press a button (whether it's 'a', 'x' or 'click') is a damned sight easier no matter how you try to look at it.
2nd. All that needed to change in the old window in order to have the same degree of functionality provided by the newer one was to change the menu headers from 'sort' to 'filtered checkboxes' when clicked on, and add in the various marks/rewards under the reward column. Well, that and the addition of the highlighted queues having pictures instead of the small explosion icons. Something tells me this would've been easier to implement for the developers and easier for players to actually use as well...
I'm almost certain that the majority of players would prefer to see a return to the old queue menu system for the intuitive manner in which it could be used, the speed that it provided for getting into a game and for the bugs which would be so easily mitigated by ditching this horrific interface (or should that be 'inter-farce'?).
To reiterate before I sign off on this. There are some nice touches here and it's clear that some thought was put into this but the implementation of those ideas is horrific for the player and some of those ideas (how many damned clicks and checkboxes, and how much less visibility of queues?!) really should have been more closely examined, probably to be flat-out dropped.
Personally, I hate it so far. It's a huge step backwards in usability and overall intuitiveness and on top of that seems to have bugged the whole queue system over all, even to the point that the 'accept' popup and countdown timers don't work properly anymore.
First things first though, let's be honest and draw up some pro points for the new system. The old queue menu system needed an overhaul and some TLC, it looked dated and was becoming too large and unwieldy in state it had gotten to. The ability to limit the list of queues to those of a given mark type is a huge improvement in that area, and the pictures being used to represent and draw attention to highlighted missions is a substantial improvement. Not to mention actually showing the list of potential reward types for a given mission being properly expanded.
Aaaand that's it for positives. Even with those, the highlighted queue pictures make the window sizing a bit of a pain and, personally, seems somehow disjointed to look at, especially when you've half a picture showing while trying to shrink the window on lower resolutions. Further, the implementation of these new filtered lists is horrible, but more on that in a second because that's a true negative and not merely a compromise...
So now, to negatives.
The older window was stupidly intuitive and quick to use.
To start with, this allowed you to very quickly scan the queue list and see which queues you were likely to launch quickly in, comparing different difficulties in a single mission or multiple missions against one another. Now you can't even see the queue lengths or number of people queued for two different difficulties of the same mission next to each other much less for different missions whether they're of the same difficulty or not.
That's just comparing mission queues, it gets worse when actually joining them. So previously, you got your team formed if you want one, scroll to your desired mission and double-click it or click the 'queue team' button in the bottom corner; job done, perhaps clicking on a couple more queues if you have a choice of missions to get through and want to launch quickly as possible. The new window requires you to find one of the reward types and click into it, then change the difficulty (because really, how many people just run normal difficulty indefinitely?), then click the check box, then probably go off to find another reward type, then change that difficulty, then click that checkbox, then probably do it all over again, AND THEN click the join button. I mean, seriously?!
What's more fun is if you've forgotten one of the queues or want to go and check what you're queued in or you've added something accidentally. It's nice to have the 'leave selected queues' and 'clear selected queues' buttons, but when you have to go and find them to sort them, trying to do so means going through each reward type and changing the difficulty in every possible mission you've selected all over again. I'd say I'm sorry for this considering the amount of time someone probably took to design and implement this but I'm really, really not; that's just stupid.
Now come the two main kickers of all of this:
1st up, I'm almost 100% certain that the older queue system was easier to use not only on PC, but also on console. Open the mission menu, scroll to the mission you want and press a button (whether it's 'a', 'x' or 'click') is a damned sight easier no matter how you try to look at it.
2nd. All that needed to change in the old window in order to have the same degree of functionality provided by the newer one was to change the menu headers from 'sort' to 'filtered checkboxes' when clicked on, and add in the various marks/rewards under the reward column. Well, that and the addition of the highlighted queues having pictures instead of the small explosion icons. Something tells me this would've been easier to implement for the developers and easier for players to actually use as well...
I'm almost certain that the majority of players would prefer to see a return to the old queue menu system for the intuitive manner in which it could be used, the speed that it provided for getting into a game and for the bugs which would be so easily mitigated by ditching this horrific interface (or should that be 'inter-farce'?).
To reiterate before I sign off on this. There are some nice touches here and it's clear that some thought was put into this but the implementation of those ideas is horrific for the player and some of those ideas (how many damned clicks and checkboxes, and how much less visibility of queues?!) really should have been more closely examined, probably to be flat-out dropped.
What everyone buying Zen are really saying while all these bugs are still floating freely:
Stop new content until quality returns
Stop new content until quality returns
Is the new queue UI really /that/ bad? 21 votes
Yes
57%
12 votes
No
0%
It's worse than paper cuts having salted vinegar pumped into them; hugely irritating and painful but not life threatening
42%
9 votes
0
Comments
Stop new content until quality returns
I know the forums likely come across as a train wreck of complainers, but in this case someone truly screwed up.
It wasn't the person who gave outfits the leathery shine. Amazing work, and always a great idea to improve an older games graphics.
The new ground mission with the invisible path? Also great work. Very creative and unique work.
The new PVE queue design? Put the other one back ASAP. You just downgraded that part of your game. Why would you downgrade part of your game? It makes no sense.
Stop new content until quality returns
My sentiments too.
But with the queue UI we have right now, It takes much more work to get into a queue, much more work to even find the queue we want, and then there is the issue of the cool down timers now only visible if you click on the queue instead of having all cool downs in a single window.
Honestly, I would like an explanation as to why the developers felt the need to rebuild the queue UI when it seemed to be working perfectly fine as it was. Making changes such as this to the game and calling it progress isn't really progress at all... at least from my perspective.
If anything good came out of the new UI so far, it would be that it is pretty.
Join Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Like I said above though, there are some plus points and I can only hope that further changes in the future (like returning to the old menu system while retaining the extended 'rewards' list and the ability to filter from column headers) could result in a much better system overall. From there, the newer interface design could be applied so we can keep the 'pretty pretty' too
Largely I think everyone I've seen comment on this topic in game, out of game and on the forums seems to be in agreement on two points.
Firstly, this change was completely unnecessary given that the queue menu was working well, which is an ever increasing rarity in STO.
Secondly, the newer UI is unwieldy and a huge step backwards for players interacting with the game.
Stop new content until quality returns
Yes it is. It may be prettier, but it's harder to use and you have to choose all the queues you want at one time instead of just clicking on the ones you want when you see them. And you can't leave 1 queue w/o leaving them all. You can't hide the ground ones that no one does. You can't SEE the Advanced queues w/o drilling down on ALL the ones you are interested in. You can't see just the Advanced or Elite queues if that's what you want. You can't see just the queues that give whatever "Mark 2 marks" you are interested in.
Any new UI should have more options than the old one, not less.
If this is how Cryptic does 'better', then please! don't fix the Exchange! It's horrible now, but I'd not want to see their idea of better! I've seen better programs people have made in their free time as free add-ons to WoW than some of the garbage Cryptic as been paid to do.
TRIBBLE, forgot about that! YEAH! Where's our F/N TIMERS! I now have to use my daily Rep cooldown to have a sense of when I can go again! WTH Crpytic?!? Do I have to use a piece of paper to log this stuff!?
Double Join, Join check-box, join button. how many times should it take to join, the checkbook should be enough by itself
without having to leave the ones your already in.
Pita to join same queue on multiple difficulties, please lose difficultly drop-down and add each diff like before.
No warnings for joining ques/accept buttons, some ppl might like to change their specializations before actually joining
I am getting tired of this. I need a break. Perhaps if they can actually see logic and fix this stupid system it would be less frustrating to try and play this "game."
Have fun all.
Pros:
- it divide the stf by the reward making easier to find the marks you want.
- I think it fixed some invite problems with the creation of private stf match, sometimes in fact the "invite to challenge match" was not working
Cons:
- difficulty is hidden, the interface always open on the "normal" even if you queued for advanced or elite
- elite and advanced are hidden requiring more work to find them
- you have to join all the stf at ONCE (as somebody has already mentioned)
- you cannot leave ONE stf if you queued multiple but you have to leave them all at once
- there are many submenu but no submenu for "Ground mission" or "Space mission", some people would like that
- I have the feeling that, compared to the previous version of the UI, you get launched in the stf without the "accept" option much more often
- for private stf match I really miss "invite to challenge match" option with the right click on the name (it seems to me it was removed, am I right?)
Pros:
Cons:
The original queue was a nice, simple tool. Now they've thrown so many bells and whistles onto it, that it takes more time to work out what you want to do than it takes to actually complete an stf.
I don't know if everyone's getting the below issues, but here are mine.
I join a 5 player queue with 4 people already queued. The number of people queued doesn't change. I can accept that there's a small chance that someone leaves just as I join, but every single time?
You join a queue, get the join box pop up, you select join and instead of the old countdown, it's just gone. You're left sitting there wondering if everyone has joined or if the timer is running down to the point where it tells you someone has left the queue.
The queue times are invariably N/A, even when a 5 player STF has 4 players already queued.
Possibly in my opinion the worst one. You queue up for something that has a player range of 10-60. Everything goes smoothly and you jump into your stf. Only to find out you're 46 levels above all of the enemies there. You get stupidly low levels of XP and all of the gear that drops is 46 levels below you and totally useless. This has only started happening since the new "upgraded" queue system was brought in.