New Social UI: First Impressions

I am so damn sick of the forums. All everyone does is scream and cry. MA adds a ton and redoes the chat interface, everyone starts bawling. The game goes down for less than a day, everyone flips out. Come on... this UI isn't bad at all. Sure it is quite complicated I agree, though it has a lot of new things I am very happy to see.

The last UI was very simple which was pretty nice. I feel this update was unnecessary though I feel it does have a little bit going for it. The change only takes a little getting used to. I'm sure MA now knows that there is no pleasing the playerbase. Also, I haven't had any trouble reading things. Chat and words can be highly customized, change the color and stop whining.

To sum up, yes the new chat is more complicated which has pros and cons. The words are fine to me, not sure what everyone is complaining about. The new chat actually looks kind of cool and provides new channels, profiles, and all sorts of customization. I'm happy with the update.

Svarog said:

Yes, but only System can display damages and skillgains so if you want something similar to the old chat you have to use System with Local & System switched on. But it's not possible to disable Local on Main! So you either have a useless tab that dubs System, or have to switch between 2 tabs to see all the info you used to see at once.

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Frankly, I use two chat windows, one over the other... but this is so I can see my soc chat, and then whatever other chat I want to see.

With regards to seeing system information in other chats...

It is entirely possible. I've added system info to my society tab (only added the system messages, not damage or skill gains, but that's my preference)

I get that you want to change the main or system tabs, but there really are workarounds for this.

I've spent hours playing around with the chat and at first it was awkward but now I really like it. I think most of the criticism here is due to people not knowing how to do something (understandable since there's not a tutorial for the system yet).

Of course, there are some issues like text visibility etc that they need to adjust (and get a good tutorial out), but the features we have now will help improve communication radically. Any change has drawbacks but I think the positives far outweigh the negatives in this case.

All you need to do is to learn to hunt without radar, its cool that MA left this possibility intact.
For additional confort you can use ventrillo, mumble, skype and some tracker shoving you damage recived and damage done.

You can always press F to see hof list if you cant live vithout that.

Had some time to think it over.. i think i like the new system.. it is not as user friendly as last one, but it has much more options..
Maybe small update to make it more user friendly? Most of users dont like "/set" "/create" etc commands.
Turn on Auto Fade, turn off auto keep focus (Options, HUD menu) and it looks quite nice.

To DO:
*Fix the bug where enter text box dissappears when changing tabs, so you can write in the active tab.

*Do something with Rookie chat... either rename it "Universe wide trade chat" or make it available only for players started in last 2 months and mentors with more than 5 graduated disciples... Currently it is just used by Ubers for advertising their items that are being sold simultaneously here on forum and on ingame auction and now on rookie chat

* PMs shouldnt be in that window, they should be new windows (as previously).. currently very hard to notice when someone PMs or even if you notice it is very hard to reply.

* Add more colors for the text options... And more contrast to the text, very hard to see some of the colors arm.


Other than that, i am sorry that i clicked I dont like it in this poll, as actually i do like it.

Neil Stockton said:

I've spent hours playing around with the chat and at first it was awkward but now I really like it. I think most of the criticism here is due to people not knowing how to do something (understandable since there's not a tutorial for the system yet).

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Actually there kinda of is...............
http://www.entropiauniverse.com/bulletin/release-notes/
And
http://www.entropiauniverse.com/entropia-universe/beginners-guide/desktop/

The little I tried it yesterday I quite liked it but after about 30 minutes of using it I had the mother of all headaches and had to log out and lie down in a dark room after trying to decipher the green of Pm's to the green of skills whilst hunting. I finally made another tab for Pm's but it was too late by then.

It desperately needs larger font size options as well as bold, italics and stronger font colours to choose from as well as options to separately change the Channel colour eg. Rookie as well as the actual chat text itself.

I do hate those tabs on the screen though. The left one interferes with my list of loot as I don't have a loot window. I want to be able to move them around to where I want them. The Hof ticker needs to be separate from the chat window and moveable as well. I can't even read it where it is now. An option to turn it off or even select what we'd like it to show would also be nice.

The one thing I do hate is being 'Me' in the chat and more so when I mouse over myself. I know I'm Me but I want my name!

Where can u see like friend requests and stuff? the little squares in the bottom right of the chat are gone. I cant see any of that crap. Wth. Then I try to add the person and it says in yellow they already requested me. So yeah idk this like triggered me. :C

What bothers me even more than this design and usability disaster is once again the feeling of an absence of a devoted customer relationship management.

Dan59 said:

All you need to do is to learn to hunt without radar, its cool that MA left this possibility intact.

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I wish to have an option so the radar will NOT be in the same layer as chat. Why it is anyway, beats me.

So I can send all that new interface covering 40% of my screen into oblivion, while keeping only radar on.

First impression was, F..K this. Playing with it for a few hours I found out it's an improvement so I like it.
There are few bugs that need to be addressed, we need more colors, what we have atm is all the same, very hard to distinguish between channels.

I would love if there was an option to see date of last message in all chats or just the one's you want.
Like from mail.

Option of adding icons to people on FL, "Skull" for foes etc, and possibility to sort based on icons.
Option to disable icons in chat, seeing people on FL with a heart gets weird fast.
Also you should be able to see how many are in all channels even rookie.

So, I played last night and I like the new chat. I played around with it and figured some stuff out, it's all good. The part that I don't like is whatever you type in chat doesn't disappear after you hit enter but with all the other great features I can live with that. I like the rookie channel

I see people begin getting Stockholm syndrome with the new UI

Actually put at hate it, but maybe a bit strong.

But it feels like this new thing has not really been tested that well. Or perhaps on certain screen resolutions etc. I find the flashing global thing annoying, specially if I dont have auto fade turned on the actual global flash is hidden behind the top icons of the chat box. How could you miss a thing like that? Back to the UI workers and learn to test things before delivered. Also my chat got "stuck" multiple times yesterday where no new info came up in the chat.

Otherwise I think this new setup has a good prospect and like a lot of the stuff, takes a bit getting used to but see a lot of possibilities. I would love to make my chat box background more solid etc, change text type and size. A bit better control of the chat tabs.

Derid