Which User Interface should be Overhauled next?

Recently the new CEO of MindArk told us in his letter that they will be working on overhauling 'legacy' systems and various user interfaces. Here's an excerpt from the letter:

"One of these focus areas will be system interaction, modernizing some of the legacy systems we have today, and upgrading others to conform to industry standards. These efforts will improve avatar interaction with the universe and feel much more engaging.

"Some of you may have noticed that we are inviting a group of participants to MindArk headquarters to help test and provide feedback for some of the upcoming improvements to the client camera system. These changes are something we believe will benefit newcomers and veterans alike.

"A similar overhaul will be performed for the various user interfaces, where the aim is to create a more visually appealing, unified and responsive experience."

There's no doubt that many of the 'legacy systems' and user interfaces in Entropia are in need of a major overhaul and I thought we should try and get some feedbacks on this from the community to find out what is most urgently needed. I'm guessing the best way to do this would be through a public poll so here we go:

Which 'Legacy' system and/or User Interface do you feel needs to be overhauled most urgently after the Camera system (please select the 1 you think is most urgent):

1. Carried Inventory, Planet Storage and Storage Containers
2. Chat & Message Center (including sticky notes)
3. Society management interfaces & Society Terminal
4. Land Area marker & Event List interfaces
5. Auction & Market History
6. In-game Map (& radar)
7. Skills & Professions interfaces
8. Hall of Fame
9. Deeds & Estate Terminals
10. Hotkey Mapping & Action Library
11. Pet interaction (including Info & Status)
12. Mission Log & NPC dialog interfaces
13. Beauty Profession interfaces
14. Coloring/Texturing interfaces
15. Mentoring/Discipleship interfaces
16. Contacts & Player Register
17. Team interfaces
18. PED Flow Center & Deposit Center
19. Manufacturing
20. Skill Insertion/Extraction interface

If I forgot something, please pick the one choice above which is the closest to what you think is most urgently in need of an overhaul, 20 is the maximum number of choices I am allowed in a poll.

EDIT:

If you vote for MA to just skip all the overhauls and concentrate on giving us new content then reply to this thread and say you vote for #21: None - Just give us New Content!

I'll tabulate your votes and report them here in this first post.

2nd EDIT:

So far, having just re-read all the comments in this thread, I count 3, possibly 4 votes for #21, so about 4% of votes.

Cheers o/

Legends

U forgot one very important option

# None of them

But if MA really wants to pretend they do something,let them mess with soc terminal.

New content or updated content instead?

I was thinking maybe adding or expanding content would be a better use of the time and effort. What ever happened to the plans for Estates building things for example. Or making wood harvesting more useful.

Crig said:

U forgot one very important option

# None of them

But if MA really wants to pretend they do something,let them mess with soc terminal.

Click to expand...

Yeah sorry, I was too busy trying to make sure I didn't forget any of the interfaces, but you're right, we'll make that #21: None - Just give us new Content!

I'll tabulate the votes for #21 and report the numbers in the first post.

o/

Legends

what about the pet interface

juicy001 said:

what about the pet interface

Click to expand...

Choose 11. Pet interaction (including Info & Status)

Legends said:

Choose 11. Pet interaction (including Info & Status)

Click to expand...

done my vote and ty xD i missed it

Awesome, thanks JuicyFruit!

I picked "6. In-game Map" because I think that is one thing that everyone in this game uses, no matter what their profession is or where they are, everyone uses the map, but the one we have is so primitive, there so much that could be done to improve it. For one thing, we should all be able to zoom in closer then we currently can, it's hard to find something sometimes, the waypoint on the map is covering a very large area. Another thing is there should be more layers, Land Areas, Teleports are fine but what about all the mission waypoints, Team members, Society members, etc... I wish the map could become a real tool for me, why not make it so you can save waypoints and save notes, so that way when I log in I can find mob spawns more quickly (like Longtooth Mature for example that I was hunting a few days before, I don't remember where they were...) or I can save waypoints when I find a rare resource that I want to mine for again in the future. (I know I can save waypoints in a sticky note, I'm just dreaming about a much simpler way of doing it ^^)

Make the in-game map a more useful tool please.

I picked society the system is ancient and interaction with soc is horrible with current system.

I know it's not ingame UI/UX but I would start with the website. It really needs a facelift. since it's the first thing a new potential customer is seeing when coming in contact with the game.

It is a matter of perspective and everyone has their own issue with the UI, but I would be OK with all of them if player retention and would improve drastically as a result of some good campaigns and some website updates

I replied Auction and Market History.

In particular, Market History must be broken down by markets (duh) and not be universal. This is essential for the smaller planets, where any meaningful data about what actually sells, and what local markup is, does not exist. Breaking out the data will make it much easier to use those markets effectively, therefore stimulating local economies, which is critical to the success of independently developed planets.

Peace, Miles

If it's only visual updates I don't really care. The game needs functional improvements.

voted auction/market history.

by extension also shops and generally overhaul trading mechanics on the whole.

It's pathetic that some big crafters simply have to resort to creating alts to sell their shit.

the importance of an up-to-date society management in a Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game [MMORPG] cannot be overestimated.

active and bustling societies do compensate and make up for alot of (removed, missing, never implemented, unattended, broken, boring, gammy, bugged or obsolete) game and story content.

Current society management is limited more or less to "hire and fire".
this state of developement was outdated already over a decade ago, compared to all competing MMORPGs i know from back then.

knowing Mindark, i dont expect PE to be capable of competing with the present MMORPGs of 2018.
but in the fast developing market of MMORPGs i expect MA to at least match the standards of 2008.

seriously, in the fast progressing and advancing competitive environement of online games we can demand PE to not lag behind more than a decade.

I am against re-design for the sake of re-design however if MA wanted to improve an interfaces functionality the manufacturing terminal would be a good place to start. The auto-sell system could be improved greatly. This would tie in with improvements to the ordering system to create a good and easy to use commodities market. Also I would like to see one unified auction without all the separate tabs for random places such as ark underground. In general the orders menu on the auction house is terrible. We need to be able to search through items in the order menu.


If i need an item I want to be able to search through all the listings regardless of planet.

My guess is MA will spend the next 6 months changing the colour, adjusting corner roundness and positioning of the buttons without actually "improving" any of the interface but I hope i'm wrong . History suggests MA is the master of pointless superficial changes

I'm not voting on anything because there are other issues more urgent to be fixed. But chat interface it sucks anyway so if I had to choose I would say chat should tottaly change how it works.

PS. I just guessing as far I see it now that many lag issues it might been solved if chat system change.

I'd rather they didnt change anything because as any coder will tell you, there will be bugs, and in a real cash economy, we dont need bugs.

They can cost money.

If you want a RL example read up about TSB bank.

Get on with the missed deadlines and look at the wishlist features instead. Keep the players happy.

Fix bugs?

That's a good point that redoing an interface has a lot of potential to add more bugs, especially since there are many current bugs that aren't being handled. Like the falling through shops bug. There are shops I refuse to go to because there is no carpet or central display or anything easy to stand on to not fall through the floor. On Ark especially I can't even see the merchandise without standing on furniture. I've fallen or gotten trapped in multiple mall walls and also fallen out of the Monria towers. Also, the not being able to stay in a channel after logging off without creating a new tab is very detrimental to community channels. I primarily use the Monria channel because it was saved before the bug kicked in. Even though I am not usually physically there, I like most of the people there. I see chat and sometimes I join the conversation or answer questions from new players or people new to the area. I very rarely log into other channels because I usually forget about them. Also, trees and land obstacles popping up after you've already passed them on a vehicle and then getting rubber banded back to that object... Though that one I'm not sure how much of that is from my setup and how much is from MA.

They shouldn't have to choose which to make a priority.... The CEO should allocate resources in such a way that a TEAM lead be chosen for each of the interfaces mentioned, and a full blown team of coders and artists be allocated to that particular objective. ... scaling up the number of employees for each project with outsourcing if necessary, until each project is complete... then downscaling work force as needed as each comes to completion, creating many partnerships along the way that can be utilized later on, as needed in the future... much like how the movie industry does things these days, handing off particular scenes or animations to different companies to help out, etc. (get Kim to do something with all those Mexicans and Compet Devs, and Neverdie to do something with all those interns he let help out for a month or six... Get upper management to do, you know, things that should be done by upper management, but all too often are not, etc.)

Of course, we all know that won't likely happen because, well, history is known to repeat itself over and over again with this company... let down after letdown.... We can hope it'll change, but the more that it seems like it might, the more it reveals itself as just another repetitious letdown.

I voted for upgrade to message system.
Why cant we have tabs in the message centre so we can file (drag and drop or similar) those messages we may need to refer back to and especially sticky notes, in a way that enables us to re-find them easily.
Many older players and in particular officers in societies, traders and service providers to name a few get literally dozens of pm's a day they may need to refer back to easily.
They may also have many Stickies with information they need to use or cut and paste to others

So please MA give us some means of organising our messages, and the bonus for you will likely be more messages that don't need to be retained actually getting deleted. The overhead on the system of undeleted messages must be huge at present

Fix the god damn bugs in this game.

• Chat Bug
• Shop redraw bug
• Space Landing Bug (need to relog before missions refresh properly)
• ect..

Plenty of work without messing with things that are not broken.

Mega said:

I'd rather they didnt change anything because as any coder will tell you, there will be bugs, and in a real cash economy, we dont need bugs.

They can cost money.

If you want a RL example read up about TSB bank.

Get on with the missed deadlines and look at the wishlist features instead. Keep the players happy.

Click to expand...

So is that a vote for:

#21: None - Just give us New Content!

???

I chose auction but the ui of the game is one of its strong points and I don't need any overhaul there. much more important to work on functionality and bug fixes (and no, the fact those are handled by different teams DOESN'T MATTER as the boss of ma can hire and allocate as many people as he wants for one of these roles but company budget is limited so more ui people DO take money away that could be spent on more bugfix and game development people!)

ps: think of the last part they "overhauled", the mission tracker. that was HORRIBLE AND TO THIS DAY IT IS STILL BUGGED AS FUCK AND UGLY AS SHIT

I was sure we could get at least 100 people to vote ...

43 more votes to reach 100

There are several things I'd like to get fixed.

The first two probably very few people stumble upon:
- Since friend list interface got changed, the worm hole dialogue got bugged so it doesn't list the friends who was logged in when (Before) you logged on.
- Occasionally, when using Rakzum's pouch (revival) to revive someone, if that person get glitched (not sure how it happens. but I guess the person actively revives himself Before dialogue is complete), you get a window on middle of screen with a running progress bar that gets stuck there (and is not movable) until next relog

The third thing is a feature I'd like to get added to auciton:
For offers you can see the person Selling the item and you can select who to buy from.
I'd like to see the same thing for orders: I'd like to see the owners of the orders (if it's a known crafter or a possible reseller alt), and I'd like to be able to sell to a specific order (eg. I want to be able to sell to the 100.00 ped order and ignore the 100.01 order that was created 5 minutes after the first order).

Sionkiewicz said:

Fix the god damn bugs in this game.

• Space Landing Bug (need to relog before missions refresh properly)

Click to expand...

It would be nice if you weren't insta-killed when stepping out of ship after landing from space .) Especially on Calypso where there is a bit of Walking distance between the revival (near North gate of wall) and where ship stands (at top of mall; a Place to which you can't use TP-chip).

And I'd like to get the achievements back I lost in early Days of space. ("Connected" etc.) For the "connected" achievement it doesn't work to re-visit the NPC because the NPC doesn't have any more mission that could trigger it.

Voting auction, even though there are some systems in worse shape or much older (looking at you society terminal).. as someone else said already, it would be best to tackle things almost everyone uses first..

For that reason, I would list missions and map as second and third choices for me..

Anyways, we all ALWAYS want bug fixes and more content.. so I dont think its helpful on this discussion as a choice imo...
Nice poll

+ 1 vote for Auction and Market history.

Thanks for voting

37 more votes to go to reach 100!