Thursday, June 12, 2014

Crius Industry Stream - June 11th - Initial Impressions

I cheated and dropped in on Ali Arias's day-of stream to get a first look before my first scheduled stream.  Thanks to Salpun and Ali, got to work through the biggest bugs.

The goal of this first stream was just to stretch out and try the new features.  No particular stress test, no grandiose goals... just see how it works, and jot down some first impressions.  Also, it's been quite a while since I've done any significant beta testing, so it was an exercise in getting notes set up out-of-game.

Bug Report

Being so fresh, everyone should expect the experience to be a little choppy.  I'm going to keep my report to the things that might stop you from testing something yourself, or is otherwise a glaring known issue.  To keep up on rollout, I suggest EVE Manufacturing's blog

Numbers Are Wrong

:Math: is not to be trusted right now.  Currently everything is in a "does it work" status.  I ran into a bunch of hilariously wrong numbers, but don't take those values as truth.  I expect that as the mechanics work themselves out, the devs will focus on the actual balance of stuff.  Also, I noticed things like POS bonuses were not applying, but that might be fixed sooner than the rest.

Also, it's worth noting the job cost equations are not properly seeded either.  I have an expectation that the "earn more geckos" event in May was to seed the internal databases with activity levels.  We should see "mostly right" numbers coming to Singularity.  I wouldn't cry fowl about the price of things being screwy due to Singularity prices being 100isk for everything.

Installing Personal Jobs Is Broken

There is a bug that personal industry jobs can't be installed due to wallet weirdness.  I expect this bug to be fixed very soon.

Teams Are Not Usable Yet

The Teams UI is in the industry tool, but bidding/acquiring/using teams is not enabled yet.  Also, utilizing Teams with the math is broken does not give us enough useful data right now.

First Impressions

The new UI is very pretty.  I think it's by-and-large a step up.  There are a lot of little weirdness that I can't tell if it's bug or feature, but I expect the mechanical portions of installing jobs to solidify rather quickly.  I am hoping they smooth out a lot of the asset update hiccups, because last night's build did not like moving things around.

Compared to the old UI, I'm extremely impressed.  Most of the 1-step kind of work is a much improved.  There is a lot of information available for the amateur or tinkerer.  I still worry that high activity industry is going to be obnoxious.  I want to push through the initial novelty and put the new UI through its paces so I can better judge how industry will feel in the long run.

Also, I'd like to put kudos out there for the facility selector.  I liked how it slurped in POS equipment, and shows everything everywhere with a pretty simple HUD.  Again, I am worried how it will play with heavy-activity work, but at first glance it's a big step up from the old UI.

As for things I didn't like; the job UI is huge.  It doesn't fit well in a minimum-height window layout, and will make industry on a laptop kinda obnoxious.  Also, I would like to see a few more readouts for price information.  They are currently hidden in mouseover tooltips, but I would prefer if the estimated value was displayed along with the charges.

Feature Requests

Didn't get a chance to push all of this to the forums like I intended, but I'll go ahead and post my notes.
  • “In use” BP’s should filter to the bottom?
  • Need better means to force refresh on the industry pannel
  • Design Lab: Copy/Invent
  • Research lab: ME/TE research
  • Hyasyoda: ME/TE research
  • Moving BPOs around is painful:
    • Cannot start job with BPO in container
    • Cannot update inventory when BPO moved to another hangar location
    • cannot “drag and drop” BP’s around inventory
  • Facility infopane:
    • Don’t like the text being so small
    • Also don’t like the spacing between icon/text
    • Would like click to highlight in facility list
  • Skill requirements:
    • Shows green book when zero skills are required
    • Does not show affect of skills on outcome (does on mouseover)
  • T2 outcome selection
    • Not a fan of drop down. Perhaps side-by-side icons?
  • Would prefer if ME/TE adjustments happened in circle like the outcome probabilty
  • Decryptor icons are ambiguous. Should show text in BOM window
  • Skills should differentiate between ‘required” and “current”
  • Jobs report: should show materials being used (help differentiate jobs)
  • Jobs report: should still have text of output, not just BP icon
  • Install delay is pretty long (>10s). Should be <1s
  • Invention needs an “outcome” column
  • No way to sort original/copies in blueprint view
    • Would like sort-by-valid-activity
  • Would prefer view to show both mfg/research jobs utilized/remaining

Watch The Stream

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