Hey guys, can this possibly be any more tedious? Who greenlit this?

[Joleoo]

Has anybody from Egosoft acknowledged this issue? It's probably the worst example of UI design I've ever experienced, shouldn't this be pretty high on the fix list?

[BigBANGtheory]

Its not so much the UI its the logic behind the scenes that's either not there or souring the user experience forcing you to do unpleasant tasks in the UI.

I agree with the OP's point though, which to my mind comes down to moments where you think wtf am I doing this where is the assistance or feature to make this x100 times easier.

I would suggest that the best way to deal with these is to catalog and describe cases where it happens to you so that it can be looked at either by:
- Egosoft themselves
- modders looking for improvement projects
- experienced players that might have figured out a better way to achieve the same ends

[mr.WHO]

I find it very sad, because in general, X4 GUI resolved the tedious clickfest from X3 and X-R.

This is one of the last (Extreme) tedious parts of GUI and this stick out as sore thumb. I didn't mind it for 1.0, but we have 2.5 and there is no trace this will even get to 3.0

[samoja]

1) Open the map.
2) R-Click on ship.
3) Select Information menu.
4) Open Personel hierarchy list, possibly some scrolling down involved.
5) Open Crew hierarchy list, possibly some scrolling down involved.
6) Open full crewlist hierarchy list, possibly some scrolling down involved.
7) Open marines hierarchy list, possibly some scrolling down involved.
8 ) Open recruit hierarchy list, possibly some scrolling down involved.
9) R-click on person.
10) Click call.
11) Select "work somewhere else"
12) R-click on ship.
13) Select "Select".
14) Go to the other side of the screen to "select workplace"
15) Click "assign to approve".

Realize you move one marine and you still have 50+ to go where you need to repeat steps 9 to 15 EVERY, SINGE, TIME!


For the love of god, how did we manage to make something far worse than X-Rebirth? How is it that crew movement was a chore ever since X-REBIRTH 1.0 and now we are at X4 2.50 and yet no one find this problematic?

Points from 4 to 11, 14 and 15 should be scrapped and moved to separate menu/window that support mass select and where you can fast move bulk of the crew to other ship or change their role.
Point 13 is completely redundant - why I need to R-click on the ship and select "select" which is only avaliable option? Shouldn't ship auto-select when I just left click on it?
Why I need additional step just to "unlock" the menu to the right side of the screen?

God forbid that you will have great idea to apply virtual seminars via points 1-12 with additional step where you have to open another hierarchy list level for person detailed skill list.

P.S. Why every time you assign new captain the existing one is executed? Is this Warhammer 40k?

Whoever made this system should be sentenced to reasigning the every single crew member of full Collossus.
Just once.
Actually Bernd should do it!
Maybe this will convince them to actually adress this in 3.0?

As a games tech student this is something i studied, usability is a big issue programmers had for a long time, and Egosoft has had a terminal case since X-BTF, they tried to fix it in X-rebirth but sadly made it even worse, i think the main issue is Egosoft is a small team, massive companies invest hundreds of man hours into optimizing the user interface, Egosoft just does not have the resources for that, they prioritized getting everything working, not making it work well.

[zarrazee]

As a games tech student this is something i studied, usability is a big issue programmers had for a long time, and Egosoft has had a terminal case since X-BTF, they tried to fix it in X-rebirth but sadly made it even worse, i think the main issue is Egosoft is a small team, massive companies invest hundreds of man hours into optimizing the user interface, Egosoft just does not have the resources for that, they prioritized getting everything working, not making it work well.

Plus if it's the same group of people making design decisions and doing the coding, you're going to get similar results.

[spankahontis]

1) Open the map.
2) R-Click on ship.
3) Select Information menu.
4) Open Personel hierarchy list, possibly some scrolling down involved.
5) Open Crew hierarchy list, possibly some scrolling down involved.
6) Open full crewlist hierarchy list, possibly some scrolling down involved.
7) Open marines hierarchy list, possibly some scrolling down involved.
8 ) Open recruit hierarchy list, possibly some scrolling down involved.
9) R-click on person.
10) Click call.
11) Select "work somewhere else"
12) R-click on ship.
13) Select "Select".
14) Go to the other side of the screen to "select workplace"
15) Click "assign to approve".

First time I tried Boarding Operation and now I have 53 Marines stuck on the Capital Ship I just Captured with no idea how to get them back on the 4 Hermes ships they jumped from??

Another unfinished feature? It's been half a year now since release and this game is still missing chunks of it's Core Game.

[Killjaeden]

I have the impression egosoft cant see the forest for all the trees anymore.
They tried making rebirth more accessable and made a new interface - yet it was the same issues with nesting and clunky convoluted controll, as it was in X3. Just with console/ controller-intended radial menu that time and (imo) worse overview. Now they made a new interface a second time - but again with serious nesting and clunky controll methods...

The game is marketed and intended towards empire building, yet the controls and features are only really suited for a freelancer/ group-rpg esque game.

[samoja]

I have the impression egosoft cant see the forest for all the trees anymore.
They tried making rebirth more accessable and made a new interface - yet it was the same issues with nesting and clunky convoluted controll, as it was in X3. Just with console/ controller-intended radial menu that time and (imo) worse overview. Now they made a new interface a second time - but again with serious nesting and clunky controll methods...

The game is marketed and intended towards empire building, yet the controls and features are only really suited for a freelancer/ group-rpg esque game.

Not sure about X4 but back in X3 the game was in fact balanced around empire building.

[Kadatherion]

[Not sure about X4 but back in X3 the game was in fact balanced around empire building.

No, it wasn't. It was actually worse than X4 in that regard. There was no sensible way, in vanilla, to effectively control (or equip) fleets bigger than just a handful of ships, the UI and controls yet again made it virtually impossible, the only difference is the fleet tasks AI behaved a little better and more reliably than it does now. Station building too, was never meant to let you build big enough complexes to support a really vast infrastructure and fleets: the incredibily dumb design with those connection tubes that would always make a mess and make the sector unplayable perfomance wise (to the point of causing crashes) when going over a quite small number of station modules made it yet again virtually impossible and yet again only mods ever addressed that. Station building at least has become immensely better in X4 and it's finally suitable for thinking wide.
And let's not forget X4 is the first game to include actual sector capture and ownership (although in an unfinished state yet), which is arguably the most fundamental needed feature to even begin talking about proper "empire building".

X games are always like this: on paper they are supposed to let you play from a very zoomed out point of view in a more RTS / management role late game, but the game balance, UI, AI and mechanical limits end up making it exponentially more unwieldly the more you go from the Freelancer perspective to the empire building one. X4 has actually made quite a few steps in the right direction, but when it comes to UI and AI we're still way behind what would be needed for a smooth experience.

The issue is really conceptual, most of the times: when you "zoom out", and you are supposed to control hundreds of assets, the game has to offer you simplified tools. What works when you are controlling your ship only or just a little flight group doesn't necessarily work (quite the opposite) on a bigger scale. X games never really managed to get that, to offer you that separate set of macromanaging tools.

[OdinValhik]

I hate the word `problematic`. It`s such a horrible modern buzz word. I just prefer the words `a problem.`

Huston, we have a CHALLENGE!

[photomankc]

I hope they fix this.

Even people in the room just hearing me go through the process are left:

1.) Remarking along the lines of "You have to do THAT"?

2.) Later saying "OMG that's annoying... how many more do you have to do"?


Come on... fix this.

[samoja]

[Not sure about X4 but back in X3 the game was in fact balanced around empire building.

No, it wasn't. It was actually worse than X4 in that regard. There was no sensible way, in vanilla, to effectively control (or equip) fleets bigger than just a handful of ships, the UI and controls yet again made it virtually impossible, the only difference is the fleet tasks AI behaved a little better and more reliably than it does now. Station building too, was never meant to let you build big enough complexes to support a really vast infrastructure and fleets: the incredibily dumb design with those connection tubes that would always make a mess and make the sector unplayable perfomance wise (to the point of causing crashes) when going over a quite small number of station modules made it yet again virtually impossible and yet again only mods ever addressed that. Station building at least has become immensely better in X4 and it's finally suitable for thinking wide.
And let's not forget X4 is the first game to include actual sector capture and ownership (although in an unfinished state yet), which is arguably the most fundamental needed feature to even begin talking about proper "empire building".

X games are always like this: on paper they are supposed to let you play from a very zoomed out point of view in a more RTS / management role late game, but the game balance, UI, AI and mechanical limits end up making it exponentially more unwieldly the more you go from the Freelancer perspective to the empire building one. X4 has actually made quite a few steps in the right direction, but when it comes to UI and AI we're still way behind what would be needed for a smooth experience.

The issue is really conceptual, most of the times: when you "zoom out", and you are supposed to control hundreds of assets, the game has to offer you simplified tools. What works when you are controlling your ship only or just a little flight group doesn't necessarily work (quite the opposite) on a bigger scale. X games never really managed to get that, to offer you that separate set of macromanaging tools.

I actually think the bigger issue was that the game was balanced around you having a player ship with virtually no support, once you got one M2 there really was no reason to expend resources on another, even Xenon core sectors never presented enough opposition to warrant bringing any other asset, at best they would just get in the way, at worst the retarded AI would just get shot to bits in a battle where you as a player could not possibly loose, and don't let me even start on the smaller ships, i once ordered 20 fully kitted out M4s to attack a pirate factory, just to see what would happen, some 20 minutes later i lost over half of them to collision, they were not even getting shot at by anything, they were too dumb to realize they can just sit there and pound on the shields to their heart's content.

[scaco]

As usual with egosoft post-rebirth, their silence is deafening.

[Kadatherion]

As usual with egosoft post-rebirth, their silence is deafening.

I've just seen the steam statistics for the number of players left, and the actual sales estimate compared to the previous titles. I'd keep my lips sealed as well if I were in their shoes.