Lots of changes to front-end UI in the last patch, not all of them documented in the patch notes and sadly not all of them positive. So here’s another of my rambling posts about what’s wrong with it…
General:
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[li]What’s with the random model movement on every page you see a merc model? It’s adds nothing interesting to the models’ static poses, it just looks like the model is floating around.
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[li]Speaking of models, I hope these new poses are a work in progress. There were issues with many of the old ones, but these new ones being static just feels lifeless and most of them also feel very much fake or posed (trying too hard to look cool or menacing) as opposed to candid natural stances.
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[li]There is a weird problem with the texture LOD management on the models: when the models first appear (when you change page in the menu or select a new merc in the Store page) the texture resolution is fine and all details like logos render clearly, but half a second later the textures resolution visibly drops and these details become blurry. This seems to be occuring randomly and to varying degrees: some times the resolution drop is barely noticeable, only picked up because of the visible transition between LODs, while at other times the change is obvious and the resulting textures a muddy mess.
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Main header:
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[li]Mouse-over info info for “C”/“G”/“P” is incomplete (nothing for “P”) and possibly mixed up (“G” = points?)
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[li]Your UI coders need to get a feel for significant digits, the mouse-over account info does not need to show % progression to next level as xx.xxx, xx.x is more than enough.
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Squad tab:
First off, not sure about the sub-page names “Loadout” and “Store”. We’re talking about people here, I would expect a terminology more in line with that: “Selected” vs “Available”, “Line-up” vs “Roster”, something like that.
Loadout page:
Same problems with merc mouse-over info as on the Store page below.
Store page:
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[li]The merc previews all show the same custom skin, regardless of what is currently active for each one. This appears to be the skin that was last displayed on the customization page, regardless of which merc it was. If you select a merc, the Loadout page will correctly show the skin currently selected for him/her, not the one seen in the Store page (if different). Same thing if you click “Customize” on the Store page for a merc that is already in your squad, the customization page will correctly show the currently active skin for that merc (and when you return to the Store page, that skin will now apply to all mercs).
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[li]The Skyhammer model has clipping between his groin guard, his ammo packs and straps, and his legs. There really is no excuse for that on a static pose you can’t even rotate…
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[li]The “Assigned” indication that shows up at the bottom right when you select a merc who’s already in your squad behaves like a button (turns into a black box when moused-over, flashes yellow when clicked) but does nothing. It should simply not react to mouse-over or clicking.
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[li]Mouse-over info issues:
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- [li]The mouseover popup box needs to scale with the larger descriptions, several of them do not fit properly in the current fixed-size one: Nader’s pistol, Phoenix’s SMG, Proxy’s SG, Redeye’s BR, Rhino’s revolver & Vassili’s MP.
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[li]Nadder’s GL is still not mentionned in her abilities.
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[li]Still no description for Redeye’s smoke and IR goggles, Rhino’s minigun, Sawbonez health packs & Stoker’s ammo station
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Customization page:
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[li]The loss of the ability to rotate the models on this page is pretty sad, especially with some of the new poses that give you a poor view of the result.
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[li]I can’t figure out why the skin lists (both the merc skins and weapon paint jobs) are split in sub-groups (split up by horizontal lines) as there doesn’t seem to be any obvious pattern or logic in these groupings.
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[li]There is still no preview for the Caulden and Selbstadt pistols as well as both revolvers (Simeon and S&W).
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[li]The texture LOD on the MK46 MG (now Thunder’s primary) are still messed up making the preview model look blurry except at maximum zoom (and even then some parts remain blurry).
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Play tab:
I assume the “Find A Match” page is a temporary placeholder for the matchmaking menu or something similar?
Profile tab:
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[li]Most of the issues I raised on the first pass profile stats (http://forums.warchest.com/showthread.php/40074-Profile-Stats-First-Pass?p=496591&viewfull=1#post496591) remain valid with this new version. Items that are no longer applicable are mostly due to stuff that was removed…
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[li]The actual numerical value should be present for any stat presented with a circle, like it was in the first pass version. Just make sure to watch your significant digits. As a suggestion, I would say if the least significant digit is less than 1/1000th of the typical value for this stat, it is statistically meaningless and should be dropped.
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[li]The top right box with the player name, level and avatar is a bit pointless if the same info is already in the main header just above that.
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[li]I personally think that having “Kill / Death” given top-billing with “Win / Loss” is sending the wrong message about the game. I think XP if balanced properly should be a better measure of your contribution as it rolls up together kills, team support and objective focus.
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[li]Grouping of the stats is still disorganized. Notwithstanding what I said above about KDR, the raw stats related to the top graphics should start the list. So as it is now, we should have “Wins” and “Losses” on the first row, followed by “Kills” and “Deaths”. I would also like to see “Health Given” and “Revives” side-by-side, with “Ammo Given” on the row above or below (i.e. medic stats together, team support stats together).
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[li]Looks like “Average Accuracy” is still calculated backwards. We no longer see the raw hit / miss data to be sure, but an accuracy greater than 1.0 (i.e. 100%) is not mathematically possible, so it’s either backwards or some weird calculation other than hits / shots.
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[li]“XP Per Min” doesn’t need three decimals, one at most and none would actually be fine. Not sure how it’s being calculated, but if I take my current XP from the main header and divide it by the time played, I get a different value…?
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[li]“Time Played / Mins” reads as “time played divided by minutes”. Make it “Time Played (Mins)” or simply “Time Played” and put the “mins” after the number.
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Mercs page:
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[li]For consistency across the UI there should be a full name popup when mousing-over “WLR” and “XPM” even if what they stand for is fairly obvious. Or alternatively write the whole thing, there seems to be enough space for it (although maybe not in all languages supported…).
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[li]Win / loss attribution is still baffling. My overall stats say 10/6, yet if I sum up the results from my mercs I get 21 wins and 10 losses, so that suggests that any merc participating in a game gets a result for it, no matter how long he/she was used in that game. However my stats also show 13 mins played with Fragger with no results attributed. I’m sure I didn’t disconnect from any on-going game and the one time I crashed out of one I wasn’t playing Fragger, so how is that possible?
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[li]The next few points are cut and pasted from my previous feedback as they all remain applicable:
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[li]How is the “Played” line scaled? Looking at my stats, I would say it’s (number of games played by the merc) / (total number of games played by all mercs). But since all participating mercs seem to get a game result, that total can be as much as 3 times the number of games you played, so that ratio seems a bit meaningless. I would suggest to use one of these two alternate calculations instead:
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(number of games played by the merc) / (total number of games played) (overall account stat)
or
(number of game played by the merc) / (largest total number of games played by any mercs)
The first would show the percentage of your total games a given merc was used in (absolute %), the second would rate the merc’s usage against the most used one (relative %).
[li]As they are currently, the “Won” and “Lost” lines are redundant with the “WLR” circle as they show the exact same info. I would suggest the same alternate calculations as for the “Played” line above, so the info becomes either the percentage of overall wins (losses) the merc played in, or how does the merc compares to the merc with the most wins (losses).
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[li]“Game time” is OK as it is, but if you ever decide to change the “Played”, “Won” and “Lost” lines to be comparisons vs the top merc, then this one should be changed accordingly as well.
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[li]Can we have the “WLR” circle in grey with “N/A” instead of 0% for mercs that have no results on their record?
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[li]Currently I have one loss, no wins with Sawbonez but the WLR circle is green. He does get sorted out properly when sorting by WLR though.
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[li]Sorting by “Games” and “WLR” (the only parameters where sorting ties are possible) is not consistent. I have several mercs with 1, 2 or 3 games played and the order in which they are displayed changes depending on the previous sort I did (name, WLR ot XPM). But the order does not match what you should get if you were to use the previous sort parameter as the secondary sort key. For instance, if I sort “Name” then “Games”, Skyhammer comes out before Nader even if both have 3 games on record, and if I do “XPM” then “Games”, Rhino comes out 3rd of the 1-game mercs, yet he has the highest XPM of all. Similarly with sorting with “WLR”, the previous sort changes the resulting order, always in the same way for the same previous sort, But it’s not consistent with the previous sort being used as a secondary criteria.
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Weapons page:
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[li]This page is pretty useless without numerical values shown.
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[li]Sometimes when I access this page the circles are about 1/4 of their normal size. Once it has happened, it won’t go back to the proper scale despite switching back and forth between pages.
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[li]Sorting by stat should always sort weapons from best to worst first, with a second click giving you the opposite order. Right now it’s the other way around and I don’t think anyone cares to see weapons that were never used at the top.
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[li]Sorting using “TU”, “K” or “A” gives incorrect orders as some weapon lines are listed out of sequence.
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[li]No stats recorded for the melee weapons although I’ve used both the cricket bat and the combat knife. Same for Nader’s GL and Rhino’s minigun.
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[li]The “TU”, “K” and “A” circles are scaled against the player’s overall stats, which is technically valid, but if you play with a variety of mercs this results in a lot of short arcs that are difficult to visually compare to each other. As mentioned for the merc stats, comparing against the best weapon would result in circles ranging from empty to full (best weapon for that stat), as opposed to empty to maybe 1/4 or 1/3, giving more easily visualized variations between weapons.
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[li]I can’t figure out how the “K/M” and “A/M” circles are scaled. Clearly it’s not against the best weapon (at least one would have to have a full circle), and it can’t be against the player’s overall performance either because that’s an average and some weapons would be above that (e.g. if your overall K/M is 3.0, you for sure have weapons with a K/M > 3.0 but you can’t fill more than 100% of that circle…). Honestly I can’t think of any scaling that makes sense for these 2 beside vs the best weapon…
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Badges page:
Still need some sort of description for each badge, preferably a mouse-over popup as for the merc abilities on the Store page.
