Higby Tweets new Loadout Screen WIP

[Hamma]

http://www.planetside-universe.com/media.php?view=2293

http://www.planetside-universe.com/media/album/mp52rz6sp6/20130207_511466025f122.jpg (http://www.planetside-universe.com/media.php?view=2293)

https://twitter.com/mhigby/status/299708808664584192

[Mietz]

They desperately need to hire a (better?) UI designer.

Well, at least they are adding numerical weapon stats...

[Hamma]

Armchair game designers..

Gotta love it. Have anything constructive to contribute? Something that may be actually useful for devs reading this thread?

[bpostal]

It looks pretty and it's undoubtedly an improvement over what's currently available. Any idea if we'll be able to select loadouts by hitting a corresponding number?

[Wahooo]

um... on his screen there is a change to the order the classes are in. Not that I couldn't get used to the changes but *IF* it is being *fixed* why? Why do things that are not broken always get tweaked? The order they are currently in makes the most sense to me.

I like the load out screen/weapon selection mostly but yes it could use improvements.

Anyway they are working on true preview for the cosmetics? Like how it will looked when equipped rather than the same thumbnail a little blown up? Especially camo's?

[MaxDamage]

I like it A LOT, doesn't look very newb friendly for "modern gamers" though.
The numbers seperated by a /slash would benefit from being in table style boxes, for clarities sake.

Asked my friend what he thought:
"xD
wow
that looks like a giant mess"

Personally I think it's an improvement, I like having the numbers available in-game; maybe some simpler way of describing their efficiency in areas could work alongside the numbers somehow / have the bars toggleable.

[Mietz]

Armchair game designers..

Gotta love it. Have anything constructive to contribute? Something that may be actually useful for devs reading this thread?

No, professional, thank you very much (also graphics designer).

Anyways, yes, I do. But at 4am I have no inclination to post a 3 page dissection of the PS2 UI and how it has no flow and is graphically messy/unfocused.

I would start by reducing button size and removing double-information and double-links in the UI. (Different buttons that take you to the same place f.ex. cert screen, weapon cert button, attachments "menu", cert displays, resource display, etc. pp)

Its essentially the problem of having 4 screens with the same function(s). Store, cert page, loadout, vehicle loadout provide essentially the same functionality and its extremely annoying to jump in between these screens to get shit done.
All of those separate screens could be condensed into the loadout screen, providing adequate workflow from a UI perspective.

This is for starters, and I don't want to go into more detail because frankly I don't feel inclined to do SOEs job for them.
They have (should have) a UI designer on staff that does this shit for a living and he should be competent enough to see these very basic flaws.

When I heard "UI redesign" I didn't expect them to just shuffle around some buttons/menus and add numerical stats.

[kcirreda]

Love it. 10/10, would customize load outs.

[Palerion]

Thank god! Love it.

I noticed they moved the class order around.

Is this supposed to be a more logical order, or are they doing it just for kicks?

[Dkamanus]

Finally, numerical stats. Love em. Can do some min-maxing sometimes.

[Beerbeer]

Better late than never I guess.

They need to simplify the crap out their UI.

[OCNSethy]

Looks nice and useful but I will reserve final judgement until it hits our screens :)

[ChrisLand]

Eh not too bad.

It looks like they are changing the icons for the classes...? (Left side) maybe I'm wrong.

I still wish they would make it so it would select the camo automatically based on what continent you're on for the tactical nuts like me.


Either way I'm not going to may a final yay or nay on the new loadout until I can try it out. I love seeing all this progress though...I am starting to forget about the 2012 PS2 Holiday season issues.

[EVILPIG]

MAX gets the Cyclone!!

[bishopau]

Some nice changes on the way. This and the new buggy.

[DirtyBird]

Looks cool but I think I'm going to need a bigger screen!

[CrystalViolet]

Not bad. Might be nice to have arrows on either side of the 3D model to quickly cycle between available weapons for the slot.

[Hamma]

Anyways, yes, I do. But at 4am I have no inclination to post a 3 page dissection of the PS2 UI and how it has no flow and is graphically messy/unfocused.

Awesome then wait till another time and post constructively.

Everyone on the Internet is a professional ;)

[Brusi]

Nice. I'm guessing that those numbers mean that there is now more than 3 customisation options for each class now. Hopefully they also correspond to hotkeys so that we can grab out loadouts quicker.

Slowly, slowly... we will get back original Planetside elements ;p

[Tatwi]

Armchair game designers..

Gotta love it. Have anything constructive to contribute? Something that may be actually useful for devs reading this thread?

I think it should be pointed out that professions do/should expect to be paid for their work, so really all should have around here are arm chair folks. I mean, I don't work for free, you don't work for free, so why would a professional designer spend more time here than to say, "that stinks, do better"? :lol:

[Sturmhardt]

I think it should be pointed out that professions do/should expect to be paid for their work, so really all should have around here are arm chair folks. I mean, I don't work for free, you don't work for free, so why would a professional designer spend more time here than to say, "that stinks, do better"? :lol:

Are you serious? Who wants to have discussions on that low level? In with Hamma here, if you criticize something you can't just say "that's shit, I hate it". you need to give reasons.

.sent via phone.

[Climhazzard]

Looks like someone needs to spend some of those Infantry resources.

It looks like they are changing the icons for the classes...? (Left side) maybe I'm wrong.

I wouldn't get too hung up on the class list. It looks to me that it was just quickly thrown together because it's probably not going to change. I mean, Infiltrator with the Combat Medic symbol? Nah.

[Tatwi]

Are you serious? Who wants to have discussions on that low level? In with Hamma here, if you criticize something you can't just say "that's shit, I hate it". you need to give reasons.

.sent via phone.

If one actually is trained in the area, than like it or not that is their professional opinion and they're really not obligated to spend their time solving someone else's issue in their field for free. Now for the rest of we mere mortals, indeed it should be expected and encouraged that we wax figmental about all issues here, in the hopes that a nugget of usefulness can be formed around our collective, often colourful, creativity. :groovy:

[Ruffdog]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BCjHktTCEAE4hu8.jpg:large

One comment - I would not have 2 tiers of alternate weapons graphics - just one but still scrollable. Makes the stuff on top i.e. the attachments more useful perhaps.

OR keep the 2 tiers with the option of having the same gun with savable locked in favorites
i.e. CARV-NV scope, CARV-SILENCER

rather than 1 gun per slot

[Vashyo]

Looks really great + I love statistics

[ChrisLand]

I wouldn't get too hung up on the class list. It looks to me that it was just quickly thrown together because it's probably not going to change. I mean, Infiltrator with the Combat Medic symbol? Nah.

Ya good call. I'm looking too close at the details :ugh:

[Sturmhardt]

If one actually is trained in the area, than like it or not that is their professional opinion and they're really not obligated to spend their time solving someone else's issue in their field for free. Now for the rest of we mere mortals, indeed it should be expected and encouraged that we wax figmental about all issues here, in the hopes that a nugget of usefulness can be formed around our collective, often colourful, creativity. :groovy:

You are right, no professional is obligated to work for free, but this is the internet, nobody knows who you are. You could be Kim jong un and say you are a professional game artist. In an internet forum all that counts is what you post. It doesn't matter what profession you really have or claim to have because there is no way to know if it's true. And because of this, the quality of your posts is not determined by your claimed profession, but by the quality of your posts.

Btw, there are many people who are really terrible at their job, so just because someone is a game designer it does not mean he is a good game designer. Respect of one's opinion has to be earned and can not be given instantly just because some guy on the internet says he is a professional whatever.

Tldr: if you criticize something, give reasons, no matter who you are. If you can't do that, don't criticize.

.sent via phone.

[Pella]

Much needed Weapon Stats.

+1

[Rolfski]

No, professional, thank you very much (also graphics designer).

Anyways, yes, I do. But at 4am I have no inclination to post a 3 page dissection of the PS2 UI and how it has no flow and is graphically messy/unfocused.

I would actually love that you would walk the talk and post a 3 page improvement suggestion on the UI. That would help the devs and the community a lot. And who knows what might come out of it. You are aware that they recruit from within their own community right? Ask Malorn (http://www.planetside-universe.com/member.php?u=14070)how he got his job.

[Canaris]

ummm could we possible get a shot that's taken from the front so it's a bit more clear? tilting my screen isn't working :cry:

[Sirisian]

ummm could we possible get a shot that's taken from the front so it's a bit more clear? tilting my screen isn't working :cry:
Nah it's just low quality. I made a post on reddit and in my mock-up suggestion made this image trying to correct for the distortion:
http://i.imgur.com/YLsqBmc.png
It's not much better quality. My suggestion was to go for minimal clicks. It's been mentioned a few times on reddit that changing loadouts and other small options like camos takes too many clicks or requires one to navigate to separate attachment pages. I took a human computer interaction course and one of the first things we learned was distance is very important along with the number of clicks or key presses to perform an action.

Ideally they could remove the whole attachment menu system and just let us click on the actual gun and select items from a gallery that pops up. My suggestion was just a simple fix to remove the attachment screen forcing people to go to it then navigate back. Both clicking on the weapon part and clicking the icon with a gallery would be two short distance clicks. That and being able to see the stats change when hovering over weapon attachments and seeing the effects numerically is important. (Showing a +5 or -5 I mean next to the values with a green or red color).

That said I love numbers. The new interface is really going in the right direction.

In their photoshop mock-up they are showing:
Type
Damage
Ammo
Reload
Hip Fire COF
Ironsight COF
Zoom
Scope #
Recoil
Range
Fire Modes
Accuracy
Fire Modes02 (for the grenade launcher I'd imagine)

Coming from a programming background there's probably more variables. I kind of wish they'd find a way to graph and show them all. I know a lot of people are into bullet spread patterns at different ranges. Having an image for that with a scale that's generated automatically would probably impress people. Especially with a slider for the range so someone can go "oh so at 20 meters the pattern looks like X when aimed straight with a silencer. Being able to see bullet drop that way would be nice also. (Then again the VR training should help with that).

[Merzun]

Would be nice if we get a consumable tab e.g. below the class tabs where when you click on it you get to a new screen where you can buy all consumables from instead of heaving to go through each class to buy them.

[Mastachief]

Looks nice will we get this on a testserver so we can make sure it works first.

[Death2All]

And here I was hoping they were adding a loadout system similar to PS1...Silly me

[Thunderhawk]

Looks nice will we get this on a testserver so we can make sure it works first.

I see what you did there

[Rago]

Cool, what else.

[Baneblade]

They stole everything else from BF 3, why not the UI too?

[Mastachief]

I see what you did there

:groovy: I'd hate to see the trend continue and have them introduce this and we NC not be able to attach stuff to weapons for 3 weeks as we have terrible default weapons.

[ShadetheDruid]

Nice to see people following Hamma's instructions to be constructive and not plain negative with nothing added to the conversation.

:rolleyes:

On topic though, i'm curious what that row of numbers is below the class list.

[Thunderhawk]

Nice to see people following Hamma's instructions to be constructive and not plain negative with nothing added to the conversation.

:rolleyes:



No one was being negative to the topic, a revamp of the Loadout system is fine and all, but how can you judge it and provide feedback when you can't click it and use it and see how it works.

Thats hardly us being "disruptive", but a valid request for a test server to check this and provide proper feedback before it hits teh live servers and is limited to the number of revamps it can receive by the number of releases they can do weekly, on a test server they can do things whenever they want)

Here's some critique for you from a twitter screen shot of a plasma screen:-

1. Why are they changing the order of the classes on the left ? Surely a more sensible way would be to group support classes, Assault classes and then Max.

So the order would be:-

Medic
Engineer
Infiltrator
Light Assault
Heavy Assault
MAX

Again, just my opinion.

2. Stats on the right is a good thing, rather than us going off to that google document to compare bullet velocity, TTK, and damage per shot, so I hope that's what's included. If there will be a comparison page, then green for better, red for worse highlighting the differences would be nice.

3. Certs button underneath is handy (although not a major change from the current loadout screen with he certs button underneath the weapon itself)

4. As you mentioned The numbers underneath the classes intrigues me, could be different loadout options, but then again, really ? we need 10 combinations of each class available to us ?

5. I'd like to have the ability to to link Character customizations with loadouts and Continents. SO that if I zone to Esamir, I get the Esamir customizations (white camo, etc...) I don't see that in the screen shot.

6. I like how the bottom half has the guns per class, limit it to the class you are clicked on not everything, liek in this example it seems they have MAX selected and are still displaying all the guns that have nothing to do with a MAX.

7. Keep the locked and Unlocked options there, so you get to see which guns are locked and which arent.

Not much more to add to that whilst looking at a screen shot.

[Beerbeer]

Their UI was one of the first things I complained about.

It's just not very user-friendly and overly complex. Too many sub menus with an almost looping hierarchy, too many superfluous buttons and just flat-out not intuitive.

Simple is better, especially since this is the first thing new people will see, encounter and interact with.

[Mastachief]

I'd like 3 custom loadouts for each class for each continent and the same for vehicles.

[Boomzor]

4. As you mentioned The numbers underneath the classes intrigues me, could be different loadout options, but then again, really ? we need 10 combinations of each class available to us ?


On my main Heavy Assault, I already have 2 LMGs, 2 shotguns (Jackhammer being one) 3 rocket launchers and two different types of armour. The different combinations of those are already past 10, not that I can't trim that down to a handful of actual favourites that I use more often.

I am of the firm belief that we do need them. Maby not right away, but as more weapons gets released and bought, you sure need more favourite slots. May as well lay the ground work for that right away.

Also

Load out Hotkeys?

[ShadetheDruid]

4. As you mentioned The numbers underneath the classes intrigues me, could be different loadout options, but then again, really ? we need 10 combinations of each class available to us ?

More loadouts would be my guess too. Hopefully that means we'll get more loadouts as we level, at the same rate as the first three. I'm curious about the last button as well, since there's 1-9 and an extra. Might just be an oddly highlighted 0 key I suppose, but it's a lot less clear than the other buttons.

[Thunderhawk]

More loadouts would be my guess too. Hopefully that means we'll get more loadouts as we level, at the same rate as the first three. I'm curious about the last button as well, since there's 1-9 and an extra. Might just be an oddly highlighted 0 key I suppose, but it's a lot less clear than the other buttons.

As someone mentioend above, I think it's just the numbers on the top row of the keyboard for Quick select at the terminal....

So you run up to terminal and hit E-3 and get that loadout without having to actually click anything else...

But this is all assuming its loadouts in the first place.

[MrBloodworth]

http://www.planetside-universe.com/media.php?view=2293

http://www.planetside-universe.com/media/album/mp52rz6sp6/20130207_511466025f122.jpg (http://www.planetside-universe.com/media.php?view=2293)

https://twitter.com/mhigby/status/299708808664584192

Feels like its INFO overkill. IMO.

I did not really think the load out needs many improvement past adding 1-10 for quick select.

[Tatwi]

I'd like 3 custom loadouts for each class for each continent and the same for vehicles.
For some reason I find myself not using the custom load outs. I usually don't change much when I am making a change, so I just change what I want and move on. I did give them a whirl back in Nov. for different camos, but found it was more trouble than it was worth. Again, not sure why I prefer to just use one layout and change it as I see fit. In PS1 I had many custom load outs.

Would be nice if we get a consumable tab e.g. below the class tabs where when you click on it you get to a new screen where you can buy all consumables from instead of heaving to go through each class to buy them.
Heck yes brotha!

Something as simple as a button for each that looked like so, where the letter is the icon for the item and the number is the quantity.

[G] 8 [M] 4 [R] 0,

Click the icon to buy more. Takes up very little space and is simple to use.

Looks nice will we get this on a testserver so we can make sure it works first.
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j24/bjagd02/Bazinga.jpg

[NewSith]

ISPY Loadout instant-access "Favorites". WOOOOOOOOOT! You should totally make a remark about that in the OP, Hamma.

(Digits from 1 to 0 under "MAX" tab)

[HiroshiChugi]

Ask Malorn (http://www.planetside-universe.com/member.php?u=14070)how he got his job.

I did and got this response:

So someone said to ask how you got your job...?

I stood at an overpass exit in San Diego with a sign that said "lfg willing to farm". Matt drove by, thought it was a good troll, then offered me a job.

I lol'd for about an hour xD

[Calisai]

For some reason I find myself not using the custom load outs. I usually don't change much when I am making a change, so I just change what I want and move on.


When you start getting multiple attachments for multiple guns, switching them is annoying. This is mainly on my LA and Infil... since certain weapons have certain ranges... IE, Close quarters vs long distance.

For example, having the shotgun and the carbine on my LA, I use the shotty for known close quarter work, but sometimes want to switch to medium/long range for courtyard or tree sniping.

Same with the Infil and sniper rifle/scout rifle/SMG. Nice to have a few loadouts.

I wish we could choose default camos based on cont, Its always a pain to switch all my loadouts when I switch conts.

I guess it goes along with my jack of all trades/master of none playstyle. I switch classes based on what's needed... so i've spread my certs out throughout 3-4 of the classes rather than just 1-2.

[maradine]

For some reason I find myself not using the custom load outs.

I would literally catch fire if I didn't have these. It's probably less of an issue with infantry, but for vehicles, it makes a huge time difference. My air superiority and strike packages, for instance, differ in every possible loadout slot. That's a lot of clicking while your mates are getting farmed. At least for me, anyway.

[Tatwi]

I have a lot of attachments and weapons, I just don't change much. Changing weapons is a tich of a pain, due to the attachments not being remembered, but I can live with 10 seconds twice a day of inconvenience. Different mindset I suppose.

[Sturmhardt]

I have a lot of attachments and weapons, I just don't change much. Changing weapons is a tich of a pain, due to the attachments not being remembered, but I can live with 10 seconds twice a day of inconvenience. Different mindset I suppose.

Yeah, if they just remembered the attachments it would help a lot. I always use each weapon with the same attachments.

.sent via phone.

[VaderDSL]

I long for more loadouts, for my HA I have at least 9 separate loadouts I regularly use, from long range NV to short range silenced, then I have G2A, G2G, Decimator, Concussion nades, normal nades, different armor, either rockets or shield for long range or nanoweave for close in etc.

[Oryon22]

It's not bad

[Neutral Calypso]

Will the new loadout screen allow me to change the camo on all my loadouts simultaneously?

[MrBloodworth]

Will the new loadout screen allow me to change the camo on all my loadouts simultaneously?

Some sort of "Appropriate camo" across all items in a load out would be great, but likely complicated.

[Baneblade]

That's easy, make loadouts continent specific.

[Tatwi]

Some sort of "Appropriate camo" across all items in a load out would be great, but likely complicated.

Check box for "Apply selected camo to all slots in this loadout when I change a camo" would suffice. That way you can change the camo on any piece and it will change it on the others to match. Database wise, a simple thing to program.

[MrBloodworth]

Yeah, but you may not "Own" the camo for the body and gun at the same time.