Let it Flow - About PoE's User Experience

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bigozzie234 wrote:

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Erik wrote:

Thanks for this in-depth feedback, I bookmarked it for later use. I expect that several of the things touched upon will be adjusted.

... That's it? This guy types out some of the most comprehensive, non-whiny, helpful feedback ever seen on this forum, and the official GGG response is the equivalent of "Wow, saved."

Haven't you seen GGG's responses to people legitimate criticism of this game?

It borders on arrogance...

Just look at their responses to why "armor sucks", "evasions formula is counter intutitive" and "CI status effects scale of hidden HP"... They basically respond with "everyone may think it sucks, we don't, deal with it".

Have you read their "Desync Manifesto"? All it is, is excuses. Excuses about how they had a design philosophy, and desyncs are a side effect of that philosophy.

What they basically say is... The game desyncs because we designed it to not be like other games.

Well no shit... Because other game's don't desync.

Want some award for producing the most horrible net-code and desync filledgame ever? Well, congratulations, because you won it.

They're stubborn and think they're smarter than every other developer in the last 30 years... It's too bad the playerbase is punished for that arrogance, meaning the people who shelled out money in the support stages of beta, thinking GGG would actually address the problems, instead of completely ignoring them well into their cash grab microT phase.

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PabloFajita wrote:

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bigozzie234 wrote:

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Erik wrote:

Thanks for this in-depth feedback, I bookmarked it for later use. I expect that several of the things touched upon will be adjusted.

... That's it? This guy types out some of the most comprehensive, non-whiny, helpful feedback ever seen on this forum, and the official GGG response is the equivalent of "Wow, saved."

Haven't you seen GGG's responses to people legitimate criticism of this game?

It borders on arrogance...

Just look at their responses to why "armor sucks", "evasions formula is counter intutitive" and "CI status effects scale of hidden HP"... They basically respond with "everyone may think it sucks, we don't, deal with it".

Have you read their "Desync Manifesto"? All it is, is excuses. Excuses about how they had a design philosophy, and desyncs are a side effect of that philosophy.

What they basically say is... The game desyncs because we designed it to not be like other games.

Well no shit... Because other game's don't desync.

Want some award for producing the most horrible net-code and desync filledgame ever? Well, congratulations, because you won it.

They're stubborn and think they're smarter than every other developer in the last 30 years... It's too bad the playerbase is punished for that arrogance, meaning the people who shelled out money in the support stages of beta, thinking GGG would actually address the problems, instead of completely ignoring them well into their cash grab microT phase.

Just wanna say, for all that I disagree with the way GGG is handling some things, the things you have posted are just angry and wrong. I won't bother going in depth, as it will derail the topic, but please don't derail feedback topics that are actually very good with different discussions that are incorrect, please make your own thread where others can shoot down your stupidity

This is a thread mainly about UI design and interaction with the game. That's got nothing to do with desync. So please move on to one of the various desync threads.

Just a hint - other games DO desync, too. It might not be as bad as PoE, but I experience position resets in Diablo III, too. Never died of one there, though, since DIII seems to try and reset the player to a clear spot.

Please keep this thread on topic. The more polluted it gets, the more likely it is that important feedback gets missed when I have the time to follow up on it. I'm not prioritising UI improvements at the moment, but there will be a time when there's room for fixes. Currently most artist time goes towards Act3x and other updates that have been on the list for a very long time.

A note on inspecting other players' gear. It seems to me there's probably room for a level of information between "no information available about that character" and "describe every bit of gear, every gem, their exact path through the skill tree, the current contents of their inventory and what they had for lunch", something that better matches what an experienced player might be able to determine just by looking. Perhaps when you click on a character you might see what gear they have, unidentified, and without the socket/link/gem overlays. Maybe even knowing that someone's wearing a rare or unique is too much, and you should only see the base type of each item. In-universe, my character seems to be able to guess the rarity (normal/magic/rare/unique) of an item from across the room as soon as it drops from a monster, it doesn't seem crazy that I should be able to determine the same information looking at an item somebody's wearing across the town square.

I dunno, I'm not exactly sure what motivations somebody might have for wanting to inspect my gear. I recall the first time I made it to the Sarn Encampment and saw a bunch of people walking around wearing Sun Leather jackets and wondering what the hell they were, and if I could have clicked on them to find that out, I would have. Maybe there's some other use-case that "see unidentified items" would not cover.

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Real_Wolf wrote:

Spoiler

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Gear -> Some people don't like to share their build. if its something very unique, they dont' want everyone to be looking at their items. I understand this. Sure, it would be convienient to have it be an option, but an option only that has to be changed by the person, not automatically on.

Perhaps the most interesting point brought up (can you tell I have this issue at hear?)

Quite a lot of questions come to mind, but just a few here for now: Are you one of those people that wants to keep their build secret, or are you speaking theoretically? If you are one of those people, do you think someone simply looking at your gear setup will be able to guess what your build is, and steal it from you? What if you could only view people's gear that you are grouped with, or on your friends list (once the friends list is made less stalk-able, mind you)? Did you play any other MMO/ARPG's that had the inspection feature enabled, and did you have any run-ins with people stealing ideas or any other such negative experiences?

To be clear, I am not advocating being able to see people's actual build - although it would definitely be enjoyable to view my friends' builds ingame (via a link they would send, perhaps) rather than only offline. I'm only talking about actual gear worn, which hardly reveals any "secrets", in my opinion, and isn't even visible offline. However, I'm very interested in hearing more on this one also :)

So in this case its not actually me with an invisible build. But I do completely understand. Say you are doing racing practise, you think up this amazingly new build which utilises poison arrow and fire trap. You don't want people to know how you are farming up SO quick compared with them, because it is a competitive situation.

Or say you are tweaking a build as one of the famous high levels, and people always try to check you out. If they could see your items they would start petitioning you with 'heres a better amulet' 'why do you not use this' 'can I buy your shield.

Or even just that you like the uniqueness of your build because there are almost none out there (for example a trap based ice nova build that is working very well), but it is strong. Maybe you don'tw ant to share, why should you have to give them your items and your link setup.

It would also lead to the potential 'i'm better than you' thing, which has bugged me in all games with a ranking system, where someone would check your items and then say "What do you know about level 70+ maps, your gear is so bad you must be a noob"

Like I said, make it optional and disable it by default so as to make it available without forcing the new functionality on anyone. if you want to remain private then never turn the option on and bam, bobs your uncle.

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Jadran wrote:

First of all - OMG, your post is long, one of the longer ones I've ever seen on a forum :)

Thanks for reading it! I'm actually surprised at the lack of TLDR-type response yet to be received (hope I'm not jinxing myself here), since it tickles my nerves in the worst way everytime I see those.

Just a few things to note to the points you bring up :)

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TBH, this is pure nitpicking, IMHO. [...] Uniform doesn't equal good. You're suggesting that the gem icon design should follow some common principles as to where the gem is placed inside the square and how big it is. I say the lack of principle here makes it beautiful :)

Absolutely correct, it is nitpicking! It's what I do! Someone in the thread earlier mentioned that I was being perfectionist/pedantic with my comments - this was taken as a compliment, even though it was surely not meant as such ;)

My angle is always to nitpick, but I am not doing it from a personal-taste point of view here (on most points!) As I mentioned at the beginning on the Skill & Support Gem subsection and as you pointed out yourself, the gem design is quite beautiful and easily recognizable. My comments are made in an objective user-experience mindframe with a perfectionist outlook - "good design" and "beautiful design" are not one and the same.

Uniformity in icon design is absolutely what makes the design good, from a graphic design perspective. Regardless of personal taste and artistic value, icons must be made with readability, rhythm, uniformity, simplicity and with the clear intention of helping users in their task. These are things to consider much earlier in the process than artistic expression or creative novelty :)

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This is not couter-intuitive, this is exactly what's happening to allies after the war is won, with numerous examples in the history of mankind. You gang up to defeat a stronger enemy together, and once he's fallen, you go back to fending for yourself. I don't want to be unsubstantiated, I'll find examples and edit the thread here with them.

Things that can happen (even ones that have a high chance of happening) are not the same as intuition. I have a chance of getting hit by a car today; I don't have the intuition that it will happen, however. From a UI/UX point of view, these two elements are not interconnected in the way your example would show.

To be honest with you, I do understand why the choice was made by the creators to have people "turn on each other" after battle - that doesn't make the choice intuitive. I am simply bringing up the point that many users may be turned off by this aspect without really being conscious of the reasons.


Again, thanks for reading and getting involved :D

I've reformatted the original post a bit, and had a few things to add to the Addendum!

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Phoobrak wrote:

Regarding the concept of vanity: Pants, please. Pretty please?

I made pants (texture) mods and offered to GGG = no answer. Chris already told they do not want volunteers as well.
Here you can see witch and templar on pants and shadow alternative costume: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/202404