EC still needs improvements

[georgemarvin2001]

The EC does have some improvements over the CC, but it still needs several improvements to usability.
1. Hotbar numbers are too small. I would like to be able to see my current battle stats: hit points, mana and stamina, displayed in MUCH larger numbers. I hate having to lean forward to see them in the middle of a battle.
2. My horse doing the "electric slide" and other really choppy graphics are annoying. Also, being in one place and suddenly appearing several tiles away during a battle is disorienting, and the offsets of a few tiles while you're a ghost aren't fun.
3. Worse than annoying, the EVs and flamestrike cast have really bright white lights as part of the effect. These hurt my eyes after a few minutes of battles. I have to switch to the CC if I plan to play as a mage for more than a few minutes.
4. PATHFINDING! GET RID OF IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, or at least make an "OFF" button!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is so far beyond useless that it's unbelievable that any dev who had ever played the game would FORCE us to use it. It gets my stealth mage killed constantly; that template is practically unplayable in the EC. My t-hunter has to switch back and forth between CC and EC because of it. It gets my pure mage killed on a regular basis by exposing him immediately whenever he casts invisibility. It gets my treasure hunter killed so often that I have to switch back and forth between the two clients like a half-dozen times per chest. It's supposed to only turn on when you double right click, but it turns on at random times when I haven't even touched the mouse, or when I've single clicked to cast something.
5. I've never once gotten the "target nearest enemy" action to work. In fact, quite a few of the "new, improved" targeting system either doesn't work right, or doesn't work at all. For instance, my mage targets a monster and hits it with a flamestrike. I hit the "last spell" icon, set to "current target" to hit him again, and it casts a flamestrike on my own character. Makes for a suicidal mage.
6. The atlas is great. BUT I have to reset the map to atlas every single time that I log in. EDIT: FIXED
7. Same goes for the paperdoll. EDIT: FIXED
8. I can't lock the hotbars.
9. The default container background makes it hard to see a lot of items. I found a mod that changes the color of the container backgrounds so that I can see the items in my containers in the grid view, but there should be either an option to change the colors in the default client, or the default background should be the legacy color like most of the modded clients. New users might not want to spend hours trying to find mods to fix the problems with the EC. Quite a few of them will expect the EC to be plug and play like the CC.
10. I guess it's just me, but I have to switch back and forth between clients a lot on my Treasure hunter, and the single click/double click issue is confusing. EC needs an option to double click to cast. I have to switch continually when treasure hunting; I'm having a hard time trying to figure out which treasure map I have in the EC. I log into the CC to figure out which T-map I have, stay with it until I open the chest, because the EC tries to pathfind all the time and reveals me every single time when I cast invisibility just before all the monsters appear. After I pick the lock, I switch to the EC to see what's in the chest, then switch back and forth between the EC and CC so that I can see what to loot with the EC and can fight with the CC so that the EVs and flamestrikes don't hurt my eyes while I'm killing the monsters. When I'm done, I switch to the EC so I can tell which items I need to enhance to get relic fragments, then back to the CC to figure out where to go for the next map.
11. Not an EC issue, but Item ID is broken again. It shows "essence" for a lot of items that will unravel for a relic fragment. Since the EC now has a mod that shows the details of an item's score and what to enhance with to get a relic, and item ID doesn't tell you what an item will enhance to with as much as a 40% success rate, how about either fixing it and improving it, or just getting rid of it? At the very least, warn players that it's only about 35% accurate after the last patch, on a news page.

 

[deadite]

Definitely some good points there. I think they said in the HoC that there will be a big EC patch after the holidays. Can't wait!

I hope they also work on some of the graphical glitches - like seeing both of my legs while riding my Charger, and the fact that my Samurai Helmet (maybe other helmets?) doesn't animate with my body when I'm riding a mount. It just kind of floats along while my character's head bounces underneath it.

Glad to hear they are still committed to the EC though. It has been my main client for a while now, and I can't imagine trying to use the CC on my new monitor anymore.

 

[Evlar]

Very good points raised.

There's clearly still a lot of work to do yet, as the EC is still oficially "beta". Bugs and issues aside though, I much prefer it to the classic client.

One that I most would like to see fixed, is the drag-item bug. This happens when you're quickly dragging items from your pack to another or your paperdoll and they either dissapear or the game thinks you're still dragging the item. Only "fix" is to log out/back in. Not very good if you're somewhere nasty of course.

Clearly there's a long way to go with the graphical glitches. Watching your character "moonwalk" or run backwards while mounted (clever horse ) was funny at first, but that's got old on me now. Also agree with the choppy and jumpy nature of positioning. Nothing worse when you think you're somewhere and you're not, especially whilst in combat. This also makes me consider what I think are line-of-sight issues. Is there a problem in general with line of sight, or is it all to do with the graphical movement glitches? Far too often I find that casting creatures are amazingly able to see and cast around corners, where as I of course, cannot.

Targetting is still an issue for me and I'm still working my way through the options to see what works best for my play-style, but overall it's still far from perfect. Pathfinding is most certainly a pain in the bum though.

Overall though, I love the Enhanced Client and see the great potential it has. Graphically I believe it retains a lot of the "charm" of the classic client, whilst providing a much better user interface.

Long term, though I'm sure this would cause a stirr amongst a lot of players, it wouldn't bother me the slightest if the Classic Client is eventually phased out completely, so long as the EC is at least 90% there. My reasoning quite simply, is we should appreciate that it's likely far better EA/Mythic are focused on working with something they've had the most input creating, than maintaining something they didn't originally create.

I've also always been of the opinion that if you do away with the classic client, you get rid of a huge chunk of cheats, exploits and "illegal" 3rd party prog use, in one fell swoop. Although EA/Mythic say they are working on preventing cheats/exploits, I'm only confident they can do that with a client they've had most input in creating.

My tuppence anyway

 

[deadite]

I've also always been of the opinion that if you do away with the classic client, you get rid of a huge chunk of cheats, exploits and "illegal" 3rd party prog use, in one fell swoop.

And sadly, you also get rid of a huge chunk of the player base.

I hope UO will continue to support both clients until the very end. Unless by some miracle they hit that 95% adoption rate...

I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Fink]

as the EC is still oficially "beta"

KR never got out of official "beta", let's hope they don't abandon EC also.

 

[Miriandel]

It this a troll?

You've obviously never played the EC for more than 2 minutes.
The client has issues, granted, but definately not what you're talking about, even if you end your sentences with !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

0/10

 

[georgemarvin2001]

Yeah, I agree. I wouldn't bother posting my opinions about what needs fixing if I thought the EC wasn't worth the trouble.

It's a great idea but it needs a lot of work to make it a viable alternative for most of the player base.

I don't think getting rid of the CC would affect the cheats, macroers and resource farmers much, if at all; there are like a million macro programs out there, and any of them can be adapted to any client ever made. If all you have to do is walk in a set pattern to chop trees or mine for resources, any keystroke/mouse logging macro program will do it for you. Do the job once and hit play; it will repeat your route for infinity. And there is no way for a program like UO or WoW to stop them, because they have a lot of other, legit purposes. Like word processing, for instance. The only way to get rid of a lot of them would be to make resource gathering a lot more dangerous, so that repeating the same route ad infinitum wouldn't be possible, or profitable. UO went a long way toward that end when they made the rare woods and ore rotate from place to place. It made mining and LJ macros a lot less profitable. Adding a few low-grade monsters that require killing every few minutes while mining/LJ to every single mining and LJ area would pretty much solve the problem. But it would have the undesirable side effect of making a lot of home owners in that area mad when they came home and were killed while in recall lag at their door. In my opinion, the easiest way to stop the resource mining unattended macroing is to just make the regular minng/LJ areas limited to the lowest level resources and put the rare woods and ores in the dungeons, in really dangerous areas. Players would have to put mining on a character that would be able to hold his own in the dungeon, but it would both be more fun and less tedious for those of us who mine/LJ by hand, and it would stop the scripters and macroers from making a fortune just leaving their computer running while they go to work or sleep.

Getting rid of the CC before the EC is fixed won't hurt the script kiddies a bit, but it would get rid of a lot of the non-cheating population, though. They shouldn't even consider removing the CC unless the EC is fixed, it's clearly better than the old client in almost every way, and at least 80% of the players are using the EC. Right now, it clearly has some major issues that will prevent the majority of the player base from using it. When those of us who have dual core processors with 4 gigs of memory, a 1 gig video card and a top of the line 1 terabyte hard drive are complaining about jumpy graphics, I can imagine what the people with older, slower computers would see when they try the EC. And even if they fix the graphics problems, some of the other bugs in the EC are definitely bad enough to be a deal breaker.

 

[georgemarvin2001]

Was agreeing with Fink, not Miriandel. I DO play the EC some. But I do play the CC a lot more than the EC. I'm listing the problems that I have with it which prevent me from using it all the time. I hate having to switch back and forth between clients to get the features I want from each. I would like to be able to just use the EC all the time, IF they can fix the major issues I have with it.

 

[canary]

It this a troll?



0/10

Are you asking a rhetorical question about yourself...?

 

[Divster]

UO went a long way toward that end when they made the rare woods and ore rotate from place to place. It made mining and LJ macros a lot less profitable. Adding a few low-grade monsters that require killing every few minutes while mining/LJ to every single mining and LJ area would pretty much solve the problem.

No it didn't, all the randomised resources did was actually make it much easier forn the afk miners to get ahead, as the average miner isn't on as long they have a faaar better chance of getting more of the valuable resourse types. As for adding small spawn, no no no and no, miners have enough trouble against script miners and this will simply make it more annoying to mine, while the scripts can be updated to deal with the spawn

 

[Divster]

You have made many posts about problems with the ec, but i have only seen you ask about compartmentalised containers within the enhanced client sub forum, considering many of your macro buidling options have been solved by players on these forums maybe you should post on that forum before citing need for improvements that don't need to be made? (although there are many that do i admit!)

 

[georgemarvin2001]

@Divster: If any of them fixes the problems with the containers, I will just direct people to that mod. However, I've used two of the better EC mods which both help with the hotbar problems to a small degree. The Copper Enhanced changes the background to the old bag color. The Dar_Zared one turns it to a bright blue color. I prefer the Copper Enhanced color, but I've found that the Dar Zared is more useful for ease in finding items to loot for my treasure hunter. However, neither of them fixes any of the big problems with the hotbars:
1. Size of the numbers
2. Locking the hotbars
3. The ability to use the vastly useful, dynamic CC bags for the player backpack, house storage and vendors, but still use the compartmentalized bags for monster loot. Remember that maybe 90% plus of the players are using the CC; if you try to stock vendors with the EC, everything just gets jammed at the very top of the vendor's bag in the CC; the vast majority of the players can't even see what you're selling. As it is, I have to pull up the main menu and switch between legacy bags and EC containers like every 5 minutes while I'm playing using the EC. It's a big hassle that is totally unnecessary. Monster loot containers are very likely given a different ID than player bags, chests, etc.; a simple option to choose compartmentalized loot instead of grouping all bags together into one option would take any halfway competent programmer less than 30 minutes. And it would save all of us players hours of hassles changing back and forth. I don't think there is a way to do it from the modders' end, though, or somebody would have probably figured out a way to do it by now.
4. The actual size of each of the compartments in the loot bags and hotbars. Being able to resize the compartmentalized bags and hotbars would make them easier to see.

Yeah, I really don't have any totally effective way to deal with the macro miners. I do think that the idea of putting the best ore in dangerous areas would stop most of them; it's easy to make a macro to endlessly repeat a set amount of mouse clicks and keyboard strokes in the order they were recorded, until the end of time, but it's not so easy to make an actual program that can react in real time to the stresses of a battle. If you'll notice, something as little as a mongbat will often kill a macro miner who just keeps mining while it attacks. An occasional ogre or troll wouldn't be much of a problem for 99% of the miners out there, but it would make life difficult for the macro miners.

But I agree that it would also make life a little more difficult for the people who have all crafters on their accts. Of course, the majority of them left after AOS killed crafting as a lifestyle. Some of them are coming back now just to make an imbuer and make all that neat armor that they were promised they would be able to make before AOS went online.