Change the icons of Dual and Single Origin Enhancements
By
A Man In Black,
Posted on: 2010-06-25 13:09 in Suggestions and Ideas
Try and buy DOs or SOs on Wentworth's to see how awful the current system is.
I don't understand why neither enhancement names nor enhancement icons have a clear link to the enhancement effects. There are three things you need to know in order to use an enhancement: level, origin, and enhancement type. Unfortunately, only two of these are available on a cursory inspection. You need an additional step, either the (sometimes-glitched) mouseover or right-clicking through. Instead of getting a clear idea of the enhancement type, you get some useless, somewhat-interesting flavor in the form of the name and icon.
Color coding doesn't work well with more than about nine options. (Primary colors, secondary colors, white-grey-black.) People generally cannot easily tell the difference between grey-blue and grey, or reddish-purple and neutral purple, without extensive practice or memorization. Color-blindness is also an issue.
Icons can work, but the current ones do not. The current icons do not convey the type of an enhancement for two reasons. They often have no logical link to the effect, particularly in the case of natural and science enhancements. Why is the natural SO run-speed icon a stylized gunsight? They also do not serve because they are shared between different types of enhancements, often completely unlike enhancements.
To illustrate how this system fails to serve the user, let's use natural SOs as an example. Each of these icons is a different enhancement.
- A gunsight on a bright green background.
- A gunsight on a pea green background.
- A gunsight on a slightly-bluish-green background.
- A gunsight on a light grey background.
- A gunsight on a slightly reddish dark grey background.
- A gunsight on a grey background.
- A gunsight on a dark-grey-gradiented-to-black background.
The effects of the corresponding enhancements include, in no particular order, disorient duration, healing, range, recharge reduction, run speed, sleep duration, and taunt duration. Two of them have no logical link to the gunsight (healing and run speed), and there are three more enhancements with grey or green backgrounds with a different icon (flight speed, knockback, and slow).
The names would be another place to fix this problem. There's no reason enhancements couldn't be given names which describe the game effects of the enhancement clearly. Mutation SOs already do that in most cases, with names like "Awakening: Extended Range". The other origins and DOs aren't nearly as clear: "Neodymium Irradiation" and "Isotatic Inversion" are meaningless even when you know what they do.
TOs do not have these problems. TO icons are unique to each enhancement type. These icons are logically connected to the effects, both in that the picture makes sense with the effects and also in that similar icons are used in related powers. (The icon for a slow duration TO and a slowing power is the same, for example.) The names are also straightforward descriptions of the enhancements' effects.
The problems with DOs and SOs do not make the game unplayable. The necessary information is available with a click-through, and it's possible to memorize any number of obscure keys (names, colors, orders) to operate without needing to click-through on every single enhancement you buy. However, by simply applying either advantage of TOs, either clear names or clear icons, you remove an unnecessary memorization obstacle to new players interested in learning to play COH.
And be careful to not listen too carefully to players who feel entitled because they've already put the effort into memorizing the relatively-obscure keys.
/signed
There's no harm in changing the icons to better accommodate most players. It's a QoL improvement, not a very hard swap, and just simply makes things easier.
Yes you CAN learn to work around, yes you can sit there and right-click every single enhancement until you fine the one you want, and god forbid you don't have good memory, you can do that AGAIN every 5 some levels.
...or you can make it slightly easier so you don't have to do that. I don't see a negative to just swapping icons. The flavour text and descriptions stay, and colors stay, the borders stay...
"It never used to be that way, stop being lazy and use the long way" is not a valid counter-point to this. Nor is "get over it and memorize the locations".
...I infact double-sign this until the mouse-over glitch is fixed, as I'm also afflicted by this.
Something also to consider when reading opposed posts in this thread. From this interview:
And gamers can become rather protective of interface quirks, even if theyre not intuitive.
I have seen that attitude, of asking if the flaws in a system arent good because they contribute to the feeling of the game the designers might have been going after, even if unintentionally. I disagree with that. In Resident Evil 1-3, the control scheme is really super clunky but if you asked those players what they wanted, they probably not ask for a different control scheme.
I think it takes real vision to look at every detail of something and see the possibilities of what could be. Someone said, If we have different control scheme maybe it would open up the market, maybe more people will be interested. Even though the core base would say it didn't want it, Capcom took an exact risk with RE4, and they made that control scheme less clunky and it paid off. RE5, in my opinion, took another step forward to being a bit more useable. In each case like the pro-clunky crowd as proven wrong, there is better ways to give a feeling in a game than bad control, even if it might take some vision to see that.
FWIW, I do think that the stores could do with a once-over. Certain stores carry way too many enhancements to scroll through (for example, in RWZ you have every origin SO at every 5 levels for every enhancement type from 35-50). It'd be nice to have collapsable lists, or making it searchable, or something along those lines.
Say, for example, you can select Mutant SOs, and put checkmarks on Damage, Accuracy, and Hold. You'd see all the levels for Awakening: Improved Accuracy, Catalyst: Improved Damage, and Catalyst: Stasis Amplification.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
From an anonymous negrep comment:
"Or maybe the system actually works if you pay the least bit of attention."
Sure, the system works if you're willing to make a certain investment of time and effort. It's functional, if less than optimal. This isn't a broken-plz-fix issue, it's a Quality of Life issue. There isn't any need for a greater investment of time and effort, either on click-throughs or memorization, to do so, other than the fact that it's always been done that way. The problem is simply exacerbated by the (apparently recent?) mouseover bug.
I'm...intrigued...by the amount of vitriol for what seems to be a rather common sense QoL change.
I think Fleeting Whisper has the right idea and I think it can be taken even further. Make a modified version of the sale screen in Mission Architect. It allow you to eye it by name and color while also allowing you to collapse origin and enhancement type as you look for specifics.
I don't think they should change the middle of DO/SOs. I think they should fix/update the stores instead.
Paragon Wiki: http://www.paragonwiki.com
City Info Terminal: http://cit.cohtitan.com
Mids Hero Designer: http://www.cohplanner.com
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Originally Posted by Dispari
I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.
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Leave the icons, fix the mouse-over bug and all should be good. If it's still an issue, getting rid of the cutsie names and just naming them for what they do would go a lot longer way than changing the icons. All changing the icons would do is make people have to learn an new bunch of them, which would likely be no more intuitive than the ones we have.
Dec out.
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If the icons were the TO icons, they'd all be icons that both had a logical link to the effects and also were icons everyone already knew.|
Originally Posted by Decorum
All changing the icons would do is make people have to learn an new bunch of them, which would likely be no more intuitive than the ones we have.
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That said, removing the cutesy names does the job just as well.
True enough. I don't much look at the icons, I guess. Once the mouseover was gone, I'd pretty much memorized them through repetition by color and position in the menu.
Dec out.
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No, IOing out a character for permadom, PVP IO farming, etc. requires a certian investment of time and effort. The Enhancement system is something you're going to encounter continually throughout normal gameplay. Colors will retain meaning (again, exception given to the case of the colorblind) by repeated exposure, as should location in the store list. |
Originally Posted by A Man In Black
Sure, the system works if you're willing to make a certain investment of time and effort.
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This isn't something you have to go out of your way to do. Hell, I'm pretty sure that - with the addition of "Invention" and "Memorized" to the list - even the IO recipes that drop follow that very order in your recipe list. It's literally delivered to you. If you go to the Auction House and click "Recipes," "Other" (so you're looking at plain IOs, not sets,) they're in the same order - right after the costume pieces. Open up a worktable, either in your base or in the university - they're listed the same way (with "Convert" added.)
I just can't buy that it's some incredibly difficult process you *have* to do, some arduous task that takes oh so long to learn. The order is put in your face with stunning regularity. The colors are consistent across TOs, DOs, SOs and non-set IOs. You're continually exposed to it.
You want to add a little line of text under the name that says "damage" or some such? Less of a waste of time than altering all the artwork - and, in the case of the colorblind poster and others like him, probably more effective. But don't try selling me on getting used to the order they're in being some horrific trial only Stephen Hawking and Einstein together could work out. It's just not that hard.
(Edit to add: I would, however, agree with Fleeting about organizing the "Superstores" better, the ones that carry every origin. That list is just unwieldy, and IIRC that *is* inconsistent - Ghost Falcon, for instance, carries the 40-45-50 IOs grouped together, where the Vanguard QM lists the enhancements in order for 35-40, then starts over for 45-50 before going on and doing the same to the next origin. That really is rather slipshod.)
At the risk of either sounding like a broken record or like I'm backpedalling, Memphis, I never said it's an unsurmountable issue.
When I started playing this game, we still had mouse-overs and before that bug showed up I switched to regular IOs myself, so for the longest time this hasn't been an issue for and I haven't thought about this, as is the case for about everyone on this forum, I imagine.
But that's because this isn't a change intended for long-time vets or those that like the game enough to regularly post on its forum. It's only after a couple of my friends started playing and pretty much all of them became a bit confused when they got to DOs.
So I've been thinking whether the enhancement vendor as it is is really optimal and I figured there's room to improvement to make it a lot more accessible to newcomers to the game.
It's definitely not a big issue and it's something one can get used to after a while. I just don't think "get used to it" is a good way to sell this game to unconvinced people. The devs repeatedly ironed out kinks to create a smoother game experience, after all, like the decreased travel distances in starter arcs or earlier access to phone numbers to blue-side contacts. I just figured this would be another way the devs would smooth out the game experience.
I'm not dead-set on an icon change, either. I actually think Fleeting Whisper's idea is far superior to mine, and your idea of putting the enhancement type under (or next?) to the name gets the idea across just as well while preserving the flavour icons.
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Those are tasks which require greatly more effort, and they require that effort by design. I assume it isn't meant to be a cumbersome task to purchase DOs and SOs from a vendor.|
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
No, IOing out a character for permadom, PVP IO farming, etc. requires a certian investment of time and effort. The Enhancement system is something you're going to encounter continually throughout normal gameplay. Colors will retain meaning (again, exception given to the case of the colorblind) by repeated exposure, as should location in the store list.
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This isn't something you have to go out of your way to do. Hell, I'm pretty sure that - with the addition of "Invention" and "Memorized" to the list - even the IO recipes that drop follow that very order in your recipe list. It's literally delivered to you. If you go to the Auction House and click "Recipes," "Other" (so you're looking at plain IOs, not sets,) they're in the same order - right after the costume pieces. Open up a worktable, either in your base or in the university - they're listed the same way (with "Convert" added.) I just can't buy that it's some incredibly difficult process you *have* to do, some arduous task that takes oh so long to learn. The order is put in your face with stunning regularity. The colors are consistent across TOs, DOs, SOs and non-set IOs. You're continually exposed to it. |
In rebuttal to the idea that color memorization comes naturally, here are four enhancements in no particular order: Attack Rate, Disorient, Interrupt Duration, and Sleep Duration.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect players to memorize the difference between these colors.
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| You want to add a little line of text under the name that says "damage" or some such? Less of a waste of time than altering all the artwork - and, in the case of the colorblind poster and others like him, probably more effective. But don't try selling me on getting used to the order they're in being some horrific trial only Stephen Hawking and Einstein together could work out.[I] It's just not that hard. |
I am all for this! I brought this up in another forum section and I agree.
We need to accommodate NEW PLAYERS or else we risk losing them from over frustration. Yeah we all know it NOW but it should be easier to help keep new players in any small way possible. I suggest that they use the same icons as the non-typed sets, but with different boarders just to keep it easy and clear like Mids.
Yes we all know these by repeated exposure, but for ANY reasonable graphic design stand point, the amount of effort required is unacceptable. The game NEEDs to focus on getting and keeping new players and a little thing like this should have been re-done a long time ago, or never made it this way to began with.
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Very good example, actually. Some of the Origin Enhs I can remember; others are something of a chore to slot, to make sure I dont buy the wrong dan one.|
Originally Posted by A Man In Black
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This is the thing; Buying them should not be even remotely close to being a chore. For something that is fundamental to the actaul gameplay, it could really use a QoL upgrade.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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No, it isn't. Show me one place in game where all you have to go by is color and origin. Even with just those two pieces of information you can discard three, if not all four, of the enhancements in the example shown for any character ever made, as you know the origin. |
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Very good example, actually
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It's like me showing you four swatches of red and asking you to tell me which is the stop sign, which is part of a yield sign, which is from a "hazardous materials" quad and which is from a Coke can. All other information that goes *with* that to make the system work is missing. And that's precisely what the SO icons and names (and alphabetization in stores) are - part of a system. The pieces combine to tell you just what you're looking at.
The only argument I've seen made here that has convinced me, in any way, that something needs to be changed or added is that of the colorblind person earlier. Why? Because their (not uncommon) issue breaks one of the pieces that makes the system work. And the solution, IMHO, that would be (a) least work intensive (as I believe we've been told "art time" is one of the most expensive to get,) (b) universally effective, and (c) least disruptive would be to add a line that says "Damage" or "ToHit Debuff" or some such. (Coming in second would be to get the popup help working again.)
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Every time I look at an enhancement and want to decide whether I can use it, quickly. Instead, I have to either (in most places) mouse over it and wait for the tooltip to come up, or (at the store) right click it and choose "info", and then read.|
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
No, it isn't. Show me one place in game where all you have to go by is color and origin. Even with just those two pieces of information you can discard three, if not all four, of the enhancements in the example shown for any character ever made, as you know the origin.
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
It's like me showing you four swatches of red and asking you to tell me which is the stop sign, which is part of a yield sign, which is from a "hazardous materials" quad and which is from a Coke can.
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
All other information that goes *with* that to make the system work is missing. And that's precisely what the SO icons and names (and alphabetization in stores) are - part of a system. The pieces combine to tell you just what you're looking at.
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
The only argument I've seen made here that has convinced me, in any way, that something needs to be changed or added is that of the colorblind person earlier. Why? Because their (not uncommon) issue breaks one of the pieces that makes the system work.
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
And the solution, IMHO, that would be (a) least work intensive (as I believe we've been told "art time" is one of the most expensive to get,) (b) universally effective, and (c) least disruptive would be to add a line that says "Damage" or "ToHit Debuff" or some such. (Coming in second would be to get the popup help working again.)
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None of those things rely chiefly on color coding. In fact, they all use red because it's eyecatching. Even in greyscale and at a tiny size, they are identifiable.|
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
It's like me showing you four swatches of red and asking you to tell me which is the stop sign, which is part of a yield sign, which is from a "hazardous materials" quad and which is from a Coke can. All other information that goes *with* that to make the system work is missing. And that's precisely what the SO icons and names (and alphabetization in stores) are - part of a system. The pieces combine to tell you just what you're looking at.
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The SO image above, treated similarly.
The same four TOs, arranged differently, also in greyscale.
The third image is superior to the second, for its similarity to the first.
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| The only argument I've seen made here that has convinced me, in any way, that something needs to be changed or added is that of the colorblind person earlier. Why? Because their (not uncommon) issue breaks one of the pieces that makes the system work. And the solution, IMHO, that would be (a) least work intensive (as I believe we've been told "art time" is one of the most expensive to get,) (b) universally effective, and (c) least disruptive would be to add a line that says "Damage" or "ToHit Debuff" or some such. (Coming in second would be to get the popup help working again.) |
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And still you miss the point while making much the same one - that they're part of a system that tells you what the individual item is.|
Originally Posted by A Man In Black
None of those things rely chiefly on color coding.
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For enhancements - color, icon, name.
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| Nobody present has any need of an armchair developer to declare which one is best suited to Paragon's available resources. |
You don't want to read that, don't read my posts. But you *don't* get to say what I can or can't post. In other words - don't be an armchair mod.
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Two of those are non-systematic, and one is useless to me.|
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
...they're part of a system that tells you what the individual item is.
For enhancements - color, icon, name. |
How many times does this have to be said before you accept it?
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Have you bothered reading? From one of my very own posts:|
Originally Posted by Vornotron
Two of those are non-systematic, and one is useless to me.
How many times does this have to be said before you accept it? |
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| The only argument I've seen made here that has convinced me, in any way, that something needs to be changed or added is that of the colorblind person earlier. Why? Because their (not uncommon) issue breaks one of the pieces that makes the system work. |
So what are you ******** about when I've already conceded that weakness in the setup?
i think his color blindness is giving him selective vision...kind of like selective hearing 
i think what people fail to see is that, while a QoL issue of some sorts, if the game keeps getting easier no one will want to play it. adding a tag to the enhancement is probably the easiest way to go. changing the graphics would not be. if you make them all the same icon, you will now have to rely on the border around the enhancements to tell you if it is a to/do/so/io. wanna know how many people will ***** about that?
i still find it funny that people are ******** about taking a few seconds to read something also. it doesn't take that much time at all out of your game play. and if you are using just so's from level 22-50, if you don't understand where the type of enhancement is yet that you need then you need to pay more attention to them.
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"Some sorts"? It's totally a QoL issue and has no bearing on the game getting "easier" at all.|
Sharker_Quint confuses me: i think what people fail to see is that, while a QoL issue of some sorts, if the game keeps getting easier no one will want to play it. |
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Dec out.
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Aside from you? Nobody. The borders were explicitly designed for use in identifying origins, and are mentioned as such.
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Originally Posted by Sharker_Quint
if you make them all the same icon, you will now have to rely on the border around the enhancements to tell you if it is a to/do/so/io. wanna know how many people will ***** about that?
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The joke with you using the word lazy like it defeats everything people here said is that the devs never really intended for you to right-click and select info in the vendor list to find out what an enhancement does, or memorise the order that enhancements are listed.
That's why we had/have the mouse-over feature. You just hover over Thallium Exposure and see, ah, it increases your hold duration! It certainly was convenient to have such easy access to the information (which we also had to read but never had an issue with that. Nobody here had an issue with reading).
And like I said earlier, if this bug had been fixed, and it had been around in a long time, mind, we wouldn't be here, either.
So sure, let's keep the icons the same. I would still love to see this bug fixed so everyone can get mouse-over text again.
And I hope you won't find it outrageous and "lazy" to ask the devs to fix a bug in their system.