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I think that would be neat too. |
Originally Posted by Peacemoon
Character Selection:
i) I always thought it would be cool if our characters used a power or performed an emote when we selected them. |
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| I would also love it if the game remembered the order in which our characters are placed. If I go to a different server, the order is messed up. |
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Character Creation: i) Tab 1 should be devoted to just origins (fix'd), going from left to right across the screen. Above it should be some text which states this is how your character acquired their powers. It should also state that origins, like gender, have no impact on your characters ability. |
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| ii) Tab 2 can now be fully devoted to AT selection with a vertical list like currently used. To the right it should have a good description on what the AT can realistically excel at. Underneath this description should be the inherent power for that AT and what it does. *fix'd to, you know, avoid NDA stuff* . I think it would fit better here when people are still selecting their character. |
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| iii) Tab 3 + 4 can again be primary and secondary powersets, but it should also include the level which they are available from. The short description for powers is generally fine. I think a better way of looking at the 'detailed info' would be nice. |
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| iv) Character bio, again this whole interface could use a massive update so its much more shiny and modern. The way it lists powers should be improved because after the first 4 it becomes very noisy and unreadable. It would be nice to have the text editor fixed as well so it isn't so frustrating to use, its not as bad as it once was but I find it still eats letters, bounces the cursor around and generally makes it more taxing then it should be. You could add more fields which are devoted to the characters age etc, but that would require more feedback from others. |
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Ingame: Lots of room for ideas here, but here are just a few off the top of my head: i) Again, under power selection or when you train your character, it should tell you at what level powers become available. |
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| ii) Update the city map so its much more interactive customizable. For Paragon City for example have a pulsing green and yellow line which shows what zones are connected. Make it so if you right click on a zone it tells you what level range it is, what task forces are available in that zone. If you left click on the zone it takes you to the zone map. Let it show you where teammates are in other zones (if possible?) |
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| iii) When you get to level 6 and can choose power pools, it should be much more flashy and informative. Power Pools should have to subgroups, "Travel" pools and "Utility" pools. I think with power pools, there should be much more description to them as well. Have the power pools listed vertically on the left side of the screen with a drop down revealing the powers contained within it. Then on the right taking up most of the screen should be a much more detailed description of what that individual power does. |
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iv) When leveling up, allow you to select unavailable powers. A red tick instead of a green one, just to allow you to better check them out beforehand. v) Allow you to look at your power options and power pool options at the trainer, even if you haven't leveled. |
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| vi) Slightly more controversial.. but perhaps disable brawl, sprint and rest from accepting enhancements. Lower the recharge for rest at the same time. |
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| vii) Sort contacts by zone. (Personal opinion here), Let you access all contacts when you arrive at a zone without being introducted to them, let you do old missions without visiting Ouro. |
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| viii) Sort Salvage by common, uncommon and rare. Get rid of the base tab, that doesn't exist anymore right? Improve the UI for the whole invention system so that it is so simple and easy even my mother could make a damage IO if I asked her nicely. |
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| ix) When you join a task force, there should be some cool flash that tells you that you are now in a task force. The contacts face could automatically appear near the nav bar and pop up with the mission dialogue for -all- members of the task force to read. |
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Really? Is that common? I've never had any of that and I'm usually running really low end computers. Only problems I've ever had there was the "deletes blank lines" bug thing that was going around. Did they ever get that fixed? I've been scared to edit old ones for the longest time because I didn't want them "collapsing" on me.
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Peacemoon has trouble there: It would be nice to have the text editor fixed as well so it isn't so frustrating to use, its not as bad as it once was but I find it still eats letters, bounces the cursor around and generally makes it more taxing then it should be. |
Dec out.
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I'm pretty sure that minimum level is included in the detailed info for each power.|
Originally Posted by Peacemoon
iii) Tab 3 + 4 can again be primary and secondary powersets, but it should also include the level which they are available from. The short description for powers is generally fine. I think a better way of looking at the 'detailed info' would be nice.
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| iv) When leveling up, allow you to select unavailable powers. A red tick instead of a green one, just to allow you to better check them out beforehand. |
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| vi) Slightly more controversial.. but perhaps disable brawl, sprint and rest from accepting enhancements. Lower the recharge for rest at the same time. |
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| vii) Sort contacts by zone. (Personal opinion here), Let you access all contacts when you arrive at a zone without being introducted to them, let you do old missions without visiting Ouro. |
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| viii) Sort Salvage by common, uncommon and rare. |
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| Get rid of the base tab, that doesn't exist anymore right? |
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| Improve the UI for the whole invention system so that it is so simple and easy even my mother could make a damage IO if I asked her nicely. |
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| ix) When you join a task force, there should be some cool flash that tells you that you are now in a task force. The contacts face could automatically appear near the nav bar and pop up with the mission dialogue for -all- members of the task force to read. |
@Roderick
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This is in every MMO ever made. If we're looking to add it here, I would very much like to have the choice to opt out of it. Was never a fan of it in other games, and it just reminds me too much of Lineage 2 and WoW and Aion and things like that. Can't really argue against it, but do not want.|
Originally Posted by Peacemoon
Character Selection:
i) I always thought it would be cool if our characters used a power or performed an emote when we selected them. I would also love it if the game remembered the order in which our characters are placed. If I go to a different server, the order is messed up. |
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Character Creation: i) Tab 1 should be devoted to just origians, going from left to right across the screen. Above it should be some text which states this is how your character acquired their powers. It should also state that origins, like gender, have no impact on your characters ability. ii) Tab 2 can now be fully devoted to AT selection with a vertical list like currently used. To the right it should have a good description on what the AT can realistically excel at. Underneath this description should be the inherent power for that AT and what it does. Much like what you see in the new praetoria tutorial. I think it would fit better here when people are still selecting their character. |
Beyond that, I have to ask "why?" I mean, is Origin important enough to devote a whole step in character creation to it? What is there to talk about that it requires a full screen just for that?
I guess if your point was to add in more details for AT and that that would require its own screen so Origin would have to be put somewhere else, I could see that. We can use a bit more info on ATs at character creation. But then why not just push Origin off until right at the end on the Hero/Villain ID Card?
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| iii) Tab 3 + 4 can again be primary and secondary powersets, but it should also include the level which they are available from. The short description for powers is generally fine. I think a better way of looking at the 'detailed info' would be nice. |
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| iv) Character bio, again this whole interface could use a massive update so its much more shiny and modern. The way it lists powers should be improved because after the first 4 it becomes very noisy and unreadable. It would be nice to have the text editor fixed as well so it isn't so frustrating to use, its not as bad as it once was but I find it still eats letters, bounces the cursor around and generally makes it more taxing then it should be. You could add more fields which are devoted to the characters age etc, but that would require more feedback from others. |
For the rest, though, yes, very much. Power listing is just BAAAD, with its untabbed messy list that runs out of its field, anyway. First of all, it shouldn't list inherent and tempermanent powers. There's really no need. Restrict it to just Powerset, Power Pool and Epic Pool powers. Secondly, go with power icons that show a tooltip when you mouse over them.
As for the text editor, I'd say "fix it" but at this time it looks like they should just junk the whole thing and either start from scratch or bite the bullet and grab someone else's more functional text editor. That thing is abominable. It's better than it used to be... Slightly, but it's still just BAD, and it keeps insisting on inserting text tags. This needs to improve.
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Ingame: Lots of room for ideas here, but here are just a few off the top of my head: i) Again, under power selection or when you train your character, it should tell you at what level powers become available. |
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| ii) Update the city map so its much more interactive customizable. For Paragon City for example have a pulsing green and yellow line which shows what zones are connected. Make it so if you right click on a zone it tells you what level range it is, what task forces are available in that zone. If you left click on the zone it takes you to the zone map. Let it show you where teammates are in other zones (if possible?) |
I'm pretty sure there are technical limitations on actually showing real-time maps of other zones, though. The game can't seem to pull detailed status off people who are not in your current zone, such that you can't even see their ATs until you meet. I don't know if it's an intentional limitation or a technical one, but it is something to consider.
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| iii) When you get to level 6 and can choose power pools, it should be much more flashy and informative. Power Pools should have to subgroups, "Travel" pools and "Utility" pools. I think with power pools, there should be much more description to them as well. Have the power pools listed vertically on the left side of the screen with a drop down revealing the powers contained within it. Then on the right taking up most of the screen should be a much more detailed description of what that individual power does. |
I'm also not sure what more you need to know about the powers. None of them do very complicated things, not complicated enough to not fit in the description box, and for the ones that are a bit more tricky, there's always Real Numbers.
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| iv) When leveling up, allow you to select unavailable powers. A red tick instead of a green one, just to allow you to better check them out beforehand. |
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| v) Allow you to look at your power options and power pool options at the trainer, even if you haven't leveled. |
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| vi) Slightly more controversial.. but perhaps disable brawl, sprint and rest from accepting enhancements. Lower the recharge for rest at the same time. |
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| vii) Sort contacts by zone. (Personal opinion here), Let you access all contacts when you arrive at a zone without being introducted to them, let you do old missions without visiting Ouro. |
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| viii) Sort Salvage by common, uncommon and rare. Get rid of the base tab, that doesn't exist anymore right? Improve the UI for the whole invention system so that it is so simple and easy even my mother could make a damage IO if I asked her nicely. |
Not so hot on removing the Base salvage tab, however. Base salvage no longer drops, but I still have characters with base salvage in their inventories. It may not drop, but the pieces that were dropped before and not used still exist.
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| ix) When you join a task force, there should be some cool flash that tells you that you are now in a task force. The contacts face could automatically appear near the nav bar and pop up with the mission dialogue for -all- members of the task force to read. |
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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The text editor in-game is ***. Some of the things it does include:|
Originally Posted by Decorum
Really? Is that common? I've never had any of that and I'm usually running really low end computers. Only problems I've ever had there was the "deletes blank lines" bug thing that was going around. Did they ever get that fixed? I've been scared to edit old ones for the longest time because I didn't want them "collapsing" on me.
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*Not scrolling the screen down when your text goes past the bottom of the text field.
*Allows text to overflow the box width and come out of the box.
*Does not allow you to delete empty lines sometimes.
*Causes your cursor to jump back and forth when you delete symbols (when a word overflows out of the box)
*Spontaneously removes new lines when you aren't looking.
*Allows you to type past the symbol limit and then just auto-deletes symbols from the end.
*Counts new lines as four symbols: <br> causing you to have less symbols available than you think you should.
*Disrespects the Home and End key sometimes and disrespects Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End always.
*Disrespects attempts to position your cursor with the mouse. Click all you want, the cursor will pop up in random places.
And that's just from writing my latest bio.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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As I said in my reply, you can. And you can go by quantity as well, again ascending or descending. I use both quite often.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Don't see why you can't sort by rarity. That would help speed things up at the market. Be nice to sort by stack quantity, as well.
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@Roderick
Thanks for the feedback guys some of it is useful. These are just some ideas I came up with off the top of my head.
My main point is the whole UI could by completely overhauled and improved. I realise the current UI does have a lot of options (I never knew you could sort contacts by zone already, go figure..), but ultimately there is so much that could be done to make it more user friendly and easier to understand.
Games like CoH are constantly updated and things are repeatedly tagged on to the existing format. What happens is it becomes like an onion, with many layers ranging from the stuff that has been around since release, stuff added over the last few years and the occasional stuff that is no longer relevant. If you have lived through all these layers it is fine, but to a new player it can be difficult to get to grips with.
Take the inventions system, it is horribly overcomplicated and even if you didn't change the recipes or the salvage, just irevamping the UI would be a huge advantage. What does a new player do with salvage they have collected, generally they get vendored. Or as my brother did recently just dumped all his salvage/recipes on me because he didn't want to spend time researching how it works.
Ideally some stuff would stay the same, like the power trays. What would be revamped is things like your I.D page, the "power menu", maps, contacts, a list of available task forces for your level.
What triggered this thought is a certain relative of mine got into "WoW Cataclysm" beta, that game which I refuse to play again. Anyway one of the things they have done is completely revamped the UI which makes the whole thing seem new, fresh and inviting to new players. I know they have more resources, but I would love something similar to CoH.
P.S This thread was moved from its original location, the offending line has been zapped.
I'm pretty happy with Paragon's designs, aside from probably hard to fix problems with displaying a text editor in a 3D engine (games that overcome this are very rare).Having been a tester on numerous MMOs going back to some of the earliest ones coming out of Korea in the late 90s, and some of the first American MMORPGs, I've witnessed the genre evolving. For the most part it has been a matter of reduction that got us to such a lean and mean interface as CoX has today (and Paragon seems to be actively refining the interfaces in CoX in that way -- case in point: recent changes to the WentWorth UI).
Most of your suggestions seem to be adding -- either simple flash or minutia geared to advanced players. Creating all those additional prompts and displaying additional detail is more likely to overwhelm newcomers unnecessarily. CoX right now is easy for anyone at all familiar with third-person video games to pick up and play, and the way things are it has a gentle learning curve that slopes up to the point where you are paying attention to all that obfuscated information.
Zone levels are actually provided by NPCs in many cases, and if a new player is following the lead of contacts giving them standard missions, they will be directed to the appropriate zones for their level. The invention system is not intended to be fully understood from day one; there's a whole economy of non-invention enhancements -- when new players get around to exploring the inventions system it is lack of funds that will more likely impede them picking everything up very quickly (by design, most likely). There is also a mission to introduce the inventions system, and it is thrown in every character's face when they reach the appropriate level. Other information is similarly fed to new players through gameplay.
I do understand the advanced player's desire to understand more -- learning and understanding the game at deeper levels is part of the game's long-term appeal. For this reason I'm in favour of third-party tools (for tracking progress and crunching numbers) and more support in the game for 'mods' to expose additional information and optimize gameplay for the hardcore. But I don't believe the default CoX interface needs such an overhaul.
I have been hoping for a revamp of the games UI for a while now. Even though the current UI has served its purpose for some time now it could really use with a complete overhaul, ditching the old stuff that is no longer relevant; it only leads to confusion amongst new players.
Instead it should be a simple and clear message that conveys the complexities of the game in a way beginners can better understand. It would make the game more inviting and it would also give it a fresh feeling.
Here are some ideas to get people started on what could be changed/improved
Character Selection:
i) I always thought it would be cool if our characters used a power or performed an emote when we selected them. I would also love it if the game remembered the order in which our characters are placed. If I go to a different server, the order is messed up.
Character Creation:
i) Tab 1 should be devoted to just origians, going from left to right across the screen. Above it should be some text which states this is how your character acquired their powers. It should also state that origins, like gender, have no impact on your characters ability.
ii) Tab 2 can now be fully devoted to AT selection with a vertical list like currently used. To the right it should have a good description on what the AT can realistically excel at. Underneath this description should be the inherent power for that AT and what it does.
iii) Tab 3 + 4 can again be primary and secondary powersets, but it should also include the level which they are available from. The short description for powers is generally fine. I think a better way of looking at the 'detailed info' would be nice.
iv) Character bio, again this whole interface could use a massive update so its much more shiny and modern. The way it lists powers should be improved because after the first 4 it becomes very noisy and unreadable. It would be nice to have the text editor fixed as well so it isn't so frustrating to use, its not as bad as it once was but I find it still eats letters, bounces the cursor around and generally makes it more taxing then it should be. You could add more fields which are devoted to the characters age etc, but that would require more feedback from others.
Ingame:
Lots of room for ideas here, but here are just a few off the top of my head:
i) Again, under power selection or when you train your character, it should tell you at what level powers become available.
ii) Update the city map so its much more interactive customizable. For Paragon City for example have a pulsing green and yellow line which shows what zones are connected. Make it so if you right click on a zone it tells you what level range it is, what task forces are available in that zone. If you left click on the zone it takes you to the zone map. Let it show you where teammates are in other zones (if possible?)
iii) When you get to level 6 and can choose power pools, it should be much more flashy and informative. Power Pools should have to subgroups, "Travel" pools and "Utility" pools. I think with power pools, there should be much more description to them as well. Have the power pools listed vertically on the left side of the screen with a drop down revealing the powers contained within it. Then on the right taking up most of the screen should be a much more detailed description of what that individual power does.
iv) When leveling up, allow you to select unavailable powers. A red tick instead of a green one, just to allow you to better check them out beforehand.
v) Allow you to look at your power options and power pool options at the trainer, even if you haven't leveled.
vi) Slightly more controversial.. but perhaps disable brawl, sprint and rest from accepting enhancements. Lower the recharge for rest at the same time.
vii) Sort contacts by zone. (Personal opinion here), Let you access all contacts when you arrive at a zone without being introducted to them, let you do old missions without visiting Ouro.
viii) Sort Salvage by common, uncommon and rare. Get rid of the base tab, that doesn't exist anymore right? Improve the UI for the whole invention system so that it is so simple and easy even my mother could make a damage IO if I asked her nicely.
ix) When you join a task force, there should be some cool flash that tells you that you are now in a task force. The contacts face could automatically appear near the nav bar and pop up with the mission dialogue for -all- members of the task force to read.
Ok, that is all the ideas you are getting from me!