Beitrag von: Aura am Juni 18, 2013, 10:45:22 Nachmittag
That scares me on a couple different levels.
The first concern is CCP's usual practice of releasing and iterating on features it delivers to customers. Take the unified inventory as an example. It works great now, and is certainly a better system than the old inventory, but it took CCP six months to reach that mark. What was initially released to players was definitely not fully-featured, and definitely not as feature-rich as what it was replacing. To CCP's credit, they worked hard and fast on bringing the unified inventory system up to speed, but while that was happening, players had to use something buggy and feature poor for a period of time.
Is that how we would want a replacement system for the overview released? I wouldn't. The overview is so integral to the gameplay of so many players, that a release and develop strategy similar to the unified inventory would be disastrous. Any replacement for the overview would have to be released fully-featured and (nearly) bug-free at release. This is not an area of the UI that could withstand something half-finished being released, and then CCP iterating on it to a finished state during the following six months.
The overview is so integral to the game, that player input would be needed at many stages of the development. Not simply the input of a handful of players, but a much larger base of the players, such as (potentially) all of them. If CCP were planning to release such an overview replacement for expansion X, then they should actually release for expansion X+1. Between expansion X and X+1, they should release the replacement system to Singularity, let the players play with the new system for six months. All the while CCP can heed player input and improve and refine during that period. By the time expansion X+1 rolls around, something fully-featured is ready for Tranquility. Not too mention, something that also isn't a complete and total shocking surprise to the players.
Any development on an overview replacement would need a different mindset from CCP on how to integrate players into the development process earlier. Rather than the norm of integrating player feedback after a feature has been sprung on them.
The second concern is why do we need an overview replacement at all? What exactly is wrong with the overview? Certainly it can use some improvements, but why replace? Because it looks like a spreadsheet? The thing about spreadsheets, the overview in particular, is that they convey a lot of valuable information in a very concise and compact presentation. There are complaints that the overview takes up too much screen real estate, but first consider the amount of information that is packed into that screen real estate. Consider if there are other UI designs that could pack as much information into as small (or smaller) space? I can't think of any (which, of course, doesn't mean that there aren't such designs.) Would CCP be trading something that looks pretty and movie sci-fi for something that has a lot of utility and function?
The overview system we have now is quite powerful. If you've ever played with Sarah's Overview Pack (as an example, there are other overview packs that are similar), you begin to realize just how powerful the overview is as a tool that delivers information. Certainly improvements can be made to the current system (I can think of several), but are there other designs that could replace the overview and be as usable and effective a tool for players?
My concern is that any replacement might actually make EVE Online less playable, more difficult to interact with. Which would be disastrous for the game. Again, any new system to be developed should require player input early, from the thousands upon thousands available, all of whom play the game in different ways. From the solo PvPers, to the large nullsec fleet commanders, to the miners, to the explorers, to the mission runners, to the relic and hacking hunters.
Any development on an overview replacement is probably a long way away from entering the development cycle, but CCP needs to seriously consider the implications of replacing the overview. They should consider involving the players, from the very start of the process, perhaps even showing them prototype images and videos, get a sense of the initial impressions -- whether going forward with development will be a case of shooting themselves in the foot, or actually vanquishing a bad guy.
Source: Every Time CCP Mentions That They'd Like To One Day Replace The Overview, It Scares The Crap Out Of Me (http://)