...
First a repost from the UHall that I made after the Town Hall, then a few additions after:
I want to take a few moments to give a comprehensive look at the problems with the EC from a dedicated user of the EC. Normally I do a lot on Stratics to support the EC, I’ve dedicated a lot of hours to helping others be able to use the client either through posting answers, macro concepts, or through the User Interface projects I have worked on.
I generally try to stay away from “state of the game” type of posts because they’re generally written by someone disgruntled with a very narrow view of UO as a whole, so don’t consider this one of those type of posts.
This is more an “I play the EC almost exclusively, so let me take a swipe at the issues I see with the EC in regards to what was said at the Town Hall” type of pot to go aside (or opposite) of the one made by non-players.
First of all let me say that just because I play and favor the EC doesn’t mean that I don’t think it has problems. In fact quite the opposite is true. I think the EC has a LOT of problems and issues from many different directions. That is what the post is about, not blind defense of the EC, but an honest look of what I see are problems with it.
So what are these problems?
Artwork Resolution: Leaving out any arguments over the artwork style of KR vs Legacy, one direction that was correct in that regard was making the new artwork in a higher resolution. Quite simply, outside of a 640x480 resolution (1:1), Legacy graphics simply do not hold up well. Furthermore, the EC’s default zoom setting is much closer than the 1:1 setting of Legacy to adjust for higher resolution displays to show a roughly equal play area under default settings as the Legacy client. Because of that, new users’ (or potential converts from 2d) first look at the game screen can be a distorted mess. Zoom out carefully enough and you might be able to find the magic 1:1 level that makes everything clear, but even this does not seem to be consistent across all pieces of artwork. Zoom in and the pixilation is almost embarrassing. In the KR client, you could zoom in and everything would remain reasonably smooth even showing facial features on your character ingame. In the current EC, a character’s face is a pixilated blob. Yes, there was the argument for client performance, but even then, simply downgrading everything was the quick and easy way that solved little.
UI downgrades from KR: Crafting menus, the Atlas customization system, and the Animal Lore gump are all downgrades or outright removal of more popular and useful KR UI elements. The Crafting Menus in KR were larger than the Legacy versions, however, they also had the Make X and Make Max features on the main page rather than 2 or 3 sub-menus deep. The Atlas customization allowed players to define what the various map pins looked like, the color, and the size of those pins. It also allowed the players to define what the waypoints looked like in the game window giving different options players could set to define those waypoints differently as needed. This was ENTIRELY stripped out and I have yet to see any rhyme or reason as to why. The Animal Lore gump wasn’t big in itself, however in KR it was moddable and a VERY popular mod was developed that put all of the information from Animal Lore into a single gump. Attempts have been made to replicate this, but as with the crafting menu, it has been relegated to the internal gump system untouchable by modders.
EC “abandonment issues”: While I don’t share the pessimism of another poster here that plays the EC, I do have to mention that the LACK of continuing development on the EC and the attitude of “when we get back to it” does not help the image of a client that has remained in “perpetual beta”. Yes, we had an “EC Sprint” not too long ago, but it was more of a 40yard dash than a 400 meter race. Too quick and too little to make much of a difference. Much more needs to be done and the EC REALLY needs a team that can be dedicated to not only finishing the job but improving what the EC is and can be.
“You cannot pick that up”: This has to be my BIGGEST pet peeve bug. Drag and release something either too quickly or with just the right timing and you are stuck unable to move anything else or Recall until you log out and back in. This is but one of many nagging bugs that have been present since the client was released.
Freeform backpack issues: I think everyone knows about these whether they are users or not. First of all, I am still very much of the opinion that the Legacy freeform container is simply abysmally small in size and area, but that is only the first of many problems. Items are not as sharp as they should be inside the legacy backpack (which I believe is a function of the resolution issue above), they change size depending on your UI scale when you move them which can be disconcerting, precise placement of items in freeform is difficult, and displays of items in freeform containers can differ between clients making running a vendor in the EC difficult.
Default UI is an eyesore: While the default KR UI wasn’t well liked, looking back, it was at least a lot less bright and garish in appearance. If there’s one aspect of the EC where I can see people getting eye strain, it would be with the brightness of the default UI. In fact that was why I created the Copper UI skin, just to tone down the UI to a more subtle colorset. People should want to change their UI based on personal preference not because the default is difficult visually.
Magic Users: Ok, I'll be the first to say that I don't play magic users that much (at least not as a main skill), so I don't have all of the inside tricks and skills involved. I've seen plenty of posts about how a Mage is more difficult to play in the EC and while a BIG part of me wants to say "You have to walk before you run" meaning that you really do have to take some time to adjust to the way the EC handles everything, I think there's more to it than that. Because of that, what we need is a Magic User's EC Focus Group so that people who DO use magic-based skills can work with the devs to redevelop the EC to handle casting at least as well as the Legacy client does and actually have something come out of it.
Random movement in combat Anyone who has at least played melee in PvM in the EC will make note of times when their character randomly "jumps" a tile (sometimes more than one in a short period) occasionally ending up out of range of a corpse they just killed.
Beyond the problems with the EC itself is the fact that there has been little to no further development since earlier in the summer and none apparently on the horizon. Because of this, I have gotten word that we have effectively lost more than one of our active modders due directly to the lack of activity and vision of the EC.
The current path by the devs and/or Mythic/Bioware/EA/whatever-it-is-today does NOT bode well for the future of the client and by extension the game itself. If the devs REALLY want everyone to be playing the EC, then they REALLY need to start acting like it and get some focus put onto the client and STOP listening to the naysaying trolls who aren't going to like the new client REGARDLESS of what they do.
I can understand failure... so long as the chance is at least taken, and at the moment, we have a dev team that while doing well in some regards, does not seem willing to take that chance when it comes to bringing the game forward technologically. Instead we've had aborted attempts and then fruitless compromises and as a result, the current status of the modding community (small as it is already) has suffered which is a shame in my opinion.
I think everyone here knows that I'm a BIG proponent of a new, updated client. I WANT this to work... I just wonder sometimes if the devs do as well.
First a repost from the UHall that I made after the Town Hall, then a few additions after:
I want to take a few moments to give a comprehensive look at the problems with the EC from a dedicated user of the EC. Normally I do a lot on Stratics to support the EC, I’ve dedicated a lot of hours to helping others be able to use the client either through posting answers, macro concepts, or through the User Interface projects I have worked on.
I generally try to stay away from “state of the game” type of posts because they’re generally written by someone disgruntled with a very narrow view of UO as a whole, so don’t consider this one of those type of posts.
This is more an “I play the EC almost exclusively, so let me take a swipe at the issues I see with the EC in regards to what was said at the Town Hall” type of pot to go aside (or opposite) of the one made by non-players.
First of all let me say that just because I play and favor the EC doesn’t mean that I don’t think it has problems. In fact quite the opposite is true. I think the EC has a LOT of problems and issues from many different directions. That is what the post is about, not blind defense of the EC, but an honest look of what I see are problems with it.
So what are these problems?
Artwork Resolution: Leaving out any arguments over the artwork style of KR vs Legacy, one direction that was correct in that regard was making the new artwork in a higher resolution. Quite simply, outside of a 640x480 resolution (1:1), Legacy graphics simply do not hold up well. Furthermore, the EC’s default zoom setting is much closer than the 1:1 setting of Legacy to adjust for higher resolution displays to show a roughly equal play area under default settings as the Legacy client. Because of that, new users’ (or potential converts from 2d) first look at the game screen can be a distorted mess. Zoom out carefully enough and you might be able to find the magic 1:1 level that makes everything clear, but even this does not seem to be consistent across all pieces of artwork. Zoom in and the pixilation is almost embarrassing. In the KR client, you could zoom in and everything would remain reasonably smooth even showing facial features on your character ingame. In the current EC, a character’s face is a pixilated blob. Yes, there was the argument for client performance, but even then, simply downgrading everything was the quick and easy way that solved little.
UI downgrades from KR: Crafting menus, the Atlas customization system, and the Animal Lore gump are all downgrades or outright removal of more popular and useful KR UI elements. The Crafting Menus in KR were larger than the Legacy versions, however, they also had the Make X and Make Max features on the main page rather than 2 or 3 sub-menus deep. The Atlas customization allowed players to define what the various map pins looked like, the color, and the size of those pins. It also allowed the players to define what the waypoints looked like in the game window giving different options players could set to define those waypoints differently as needed. This was ENTIRELY stripped out and I have yet to see any rhyme or reason as to why. The Animal Lore gump wasn’t big in itself, however in KR it was moddable and a VERY popular mod was developed that put all of the information from Animal Lore into a single gump. Attempts have been made to replicate this, but as with the crafting menu, it has been relegated to the internal gump system untouchable by modders.
EC “abandonment issues”: While I don’t share the pessimism of another poster here that plays the EC, I do have to mention that the LACK of continuing development on the EC and the attitude of “when we get back to it” does not help the image of a client that has remained in “perpetual beta”. Yes, we had an “EC Sprint” not too long ago, but it was more of a 40yard dash than a 400 meter race. Too quick and too little to make much of a difference. Much more needs to be done and the EC REALLY needs a team that can be dedicated to not only finishing the job but improving what the EC is and can be.
“You cannot pick that up”: This has to be my BIGGEST pet peeve bug. Drag and release something either too quickly or with just the right timing and you are stuck unable to move anything else or Recall until you log out and back in. This is but one of many nagging bugs that have been present since the client was released.
Freeform backpack issues: I think everyone knows about these whether they are users or not. First of all, I am still very much of the opinion that the Legacy freeform container is simply abysmally small in size and area, but that is only the first of many problems. Items are not as sharp as they should be inside the legacy backpack (which I believe is a function of the resolution issue above), they change size depending on your UI scale when you move them which can be disconcerting, precise placement of items in freeform is difficult, and displays of items in freeform containers can differ between clients making running a vendor in the EC difficult.
Default UI is an eyesore: While the default KR UI wasn’t well liked, looking back, it was at least a lot less bright and garish in appearance. If there’s one aspect of the EC where I can see people getting eye strain, it would be with the brightness of the default UI. In fact that was why I created the Copper UI skin, just to tone down the UI to a more subtle colorset. People should want to change their UI based on personal preference not because the default is difficult visually.
Magic Users: Ok, I'll be the first to say that I don't play magic users that much (at least not as a main skill), so I don't have all of the inside tricks and skills involved. I've seen plenty of posts about how a Mage is more difficult to play in the EC and while a BIG part of me wants to say "You have to walk before you run" meaning that you really do have to take some time to adjust to the way the EC handles everything, I think there's more to it than that. Because of that, what we need is a Magic User's EC Focus Group so that people who DO use magic-based skills can work with the devs to redevelop the EC to handle casting at least as well as the Legacy client does and actually have something come out of it.
Random movement in combat Anyone who has at least played melee in PvM in the EC will make note of times when their character randomly "jumps" a tile (sometimes more than one in a short period) occasionally ending up out of range of a corpse they just killed.
Beyond the problems with the EC itself is the fact that there has been little to no further development since earlier in the summer and none apparently on the horizon. Because of this, I have gotten word that we have effectively lost more than one of our active modders due directly to the lack of activity and vision of the EC.
The current path by the devs and/or Mythic/Bioware/EA/whatever-it-is-today does NOT bode well for the future of the client and by extension the game itself. If the devs REALLY want everyone to be playing the EC, then they REALLY need to start acting like it and get some focus put onto the client and STOP listening to the naysaying trolls who aren't going to like the new client REGARDLESS of what they do.
I can understand failure... so long as the chance is at least taken, and at the moment, we have a dev team that while doing well in some regards, does not seem willing to take that chance when it comes to bringing the game forward technologically. Instead we've had aborted attempts and then fruitless compromises and as a result, the current status of the modding community (small as it is already) has suffered which is a shame in my opinion.
I think everyone here knows that I'm a BIG proponent of a new, updated client. I WANT this to work... I just wonder sometimes if the devs do as well.