General feedback on the new patches

GoodOl'Ben

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Came back for a bit to see how the game's going. Loving it! There's so much new stuff to experiment with and explore.

Felt like I needed to jot down some of my discoveries just to see what others are thinking. I'll try to keep this short and sweet.

Maps

New map updates are good. Nice focus on adding new avenues of attack and introducing verticality by giving all classes access to areas previously only reachable by select few.
  • Deathstar in particular felt better great to play on the attacking team
  • Corellia is superb! So many fun places to play in
Next map I would revisit is Smuggler. The only thing it requires is making the datapad room impossible to camp with 5 droidekas. Decreasing the room depth back to its old proportions is all you need, this way it's easy obliterate with explosives. Camps in that room go against what the map is all about.

Keep up the good work! I'm sure I've missed some changes as I haven't had the benefit of playing all maps yet.


Gameplay

I was fairly suspicious of this coming in. It's in a slightly different direction than I would've gone. One thing we clearly were in agreement with was FP drains. Shots pack a punch and it's not possible for jedi/sith to just hang back. They need to make choices. So far I've had the feeling that there might be very little sith/jedi can do at times when they run out of FP except die. Considering how fast it happens, it's a bit tricky. Perhaps explore lowering FP costs for some abilities? Looking at you Speed. Or a maybe slightly faster FP regen in certain situations? Perhaps even something like killing someone granting a brief regen buff?

There are some curiosities too. I feel like Jedi/Sith are knocked down for shorter than they used to. I'm talking 200-400ms, but it's there and noticeable. Perhaps reduce it for other classes too if you're going this direction? Push and Pull could knockdown for shorter for example? Which in turn could warrant reducing FP costs.

Lightning seems to have knockback, which is mad oppressive. The counterplay used to be to flank to the sides up close, but it's not possible when you're being pushed back. Lightning is already strong in its utility, adding this has really made it way too strong.
  • Secondary nerf is great, introduced variety through reduction, just buff the damage a bit to reward direct hits
  • Mandalorian rocket nerf is whatever, didn't seem to affect my Mando play, managed to stop a few rockets from firing, but they seemed like misses anyway
  • Pulse grenade AOE nerf seems unnoticeable in regular mode, didn't see how it affects launcher pulses yet
  • Lightning knockback is awful
  • Knockback in tandem with high FP drains really increases the skill requirements for Jedi/Sith. Good players are still amazing though.
  • The Westars/Clone pistols having center focus is whatever, after a while I reverted back to using the original way since it's easier to fire straight that way, the jumpy double crosshairs is confusing. Disabled it in the options, but it always seems to revert back at launch.
  • Wookiee point changes are whatever, didn't notice how they changed things
  • ARCs getting Dex 2 for free is annoying as someone who hates how it works. I used to play Dex 0/1 and having to do those slow high jumps instead of the short ones is annoying and killed me all the time. Give Dex 1 for free and make Dex 2 cost like 1-2 points or something.
I focused overall on things that caught my attention in some way, but overall the gameplay was great fun. I was enjoying myself a lot.


UI update

This is sadly a part where I think the mark has been missed by quite a bit. The improved user flow is there, it's fast to use when you get accustomed to it but... There is a big BUT. Keyword I would have is visual hierarchy. I had a hard time distinguishing where the buttons are. You need to indicate buttons to the user much better. I had a hard time finding the buttons even after repeated uses. The choice of using flat design combined with a monochrome color palette really limits your options as a UX designer. Either don't adhere to flat design as hard or introduce more colors.

Some elements are oversized and take up too much space. Most noticeably the team scores and timer. It's a combination of the choice of fonts, sizes, colors and positioning. The element is too big, the text is too thick and the team colors are too flamboyant and eye-catching. It's almost competing for my focus with the gameplay.

In terms of function, I already have the TAB button to check what's the score. Funnily enough there is one thing I always keep hammering TAB for during gameplay and it's not that. I use TAB to check how many enemies are alive and who are they. Perhaps the number of players alive would be better indicated there instead. This might also help mitigate the problem of teams getting out of balance from time to time by increasing player awareness of the team balance.

I often found myself fumbling around the settings trying to find everything. With there being so many tabs to navigate, I kept losing my focus. Things that have more options, I wouldn't have 2 tabs, eg "Crosshair Options 1" and "Crosshair Options 2", instead I would add some kind of subtabs to navigate within that context.

What I do like, however, is the customization! Being able to decide the colors, opacity and everything of most elements was a big save, considering how heavy everything felt with the default settings. My biggest gripe here was that I was not able to lower the opacity of the top right minimap. Having it absolute black and white really makes it a dominant and eye-catching element. However I'm not supposed to be looking there so often. It's there when I need it, but it's not that important.

The team overlay improvements were a good idea. It still takes up quite a bit of space. Do you think it could be possible to reduce the size even more?
  • Faster flow when learned
  • Weak visual hierarchy
  • Great customization
  • Too large elements

Legends

It's cool to see that it is a popular mode. It's not quite like I originally envisioned it when I started it, but amazing nonetheless. Frenz has added his unique bombastic flair to it by going far more over the top with the characters. You can feel the passion that's gone into it. I think that has lent itself to something unique and fun that was previously only available in UMad to the people who went out of their way to download that mod.

I would still like to throw out the classic design quote cliché ;)

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

So in that vain, I think many characters are a bit too strong in all the things. A good example of this is Palpatine. He 1-shots everyone with his crazy AP modifiers and has all the Force Powers and all the stances and everything. What's his weakness?

This in turn reduces the fun in choosing between characters. You're not considering trade-offs, you're not considering the map, you're not considering team composition or character synergy. Characters could be reduced to having one super strong aspect. Perhaps one way to begin balancing would be to assign a point value to every ability and have a point quota.

What I do love is how actively the mode has been patched and it feels like the community has made it their own. Frenz has surrounded himself with people that help him in and out of the team to push the mode further and that's exactly what I wanted to see when programming it on top of the easily customized FA templates. I have a feeling that Legends will offer players a way to mod the game in the future if there ever was a catastrophic event where all source code was lost.

Models

A lot has been added! So many characters to play as and it's almost stretching my knowledge of the lore at times. There's certainly something for everyone. At times it feels like there are characters that I don't think are worth the bandwidth, but then again I'm seeing people play as them so what do I know? :)

I had a talk with Unguided about this already, but some models seem to share silhouettes and key features and are in different teams. Especially had this happen with a lot of the models that were from base. Some bountyhunters look like they could be elitetroopers or some rebel soldiers looked like they could be imp commanders. This led to me shooting teammates a lot more than they deserve.


Overall

Heaps of improvements and changes have really refreshed the game. It's hard to believe how far we have come since 2003. The team has done an excellent job pushing the mod forward. It feels like the game has upgraded itself to the 2020s nicely. I can't wait to see 2030!

An idiot said:
I'll try to keep this short and sweet.
Nicely done.
 
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I don't fucking know, ask for the professional UX designer that designed it in the first place that I just copy pasted his settings to, that abandoned it and forced me to finish it.. You know more than him apparently. Also you can make it not transparent in settings.



Whatever you need to justify your logical failures. You just said knowledge/experience negates the problem with the UI, the same applies here.
Yeah no SHIT the UI can be negated with knowledge, I have NOT been arguing that isnt the case. The ENTIRE time i've been arguing its unintuitive for new players. I am be logically consistent you just dont know how to handle criticism.

I'm also arguing based on default settings, which is what, you know the NEW player experience is like. My UI is changed to red so i can be rid of the default boring gray.
I don't play league and I don't know what its telling me outside of: I cant afford this item in the shop menu. The Items top left look like common consumables, but would I know that not having played dota? Fuck no. What the fuck is the left middle grouping. What the fuck do each of the icons mean? Damage types, defense types, character types, what?
glad to know we agree on my gripes with your current default UI :).
I need a fucking tutorial for that shit.
yeah cause league is infinitely more complicated than spawning your character in MB2. Spawning in should be the easiest thing you can do in the game.

also remember that while i may say that league is doing things better than your UI doesnt mean its flawless. I have my own issues with that but theyre irrelevant cause you dont dev league of legends.
 

MaceMadunusus

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Why does league get the benefit of the doubt but mb2 does not? When going into league you need to pick and ban from a fuckton of characters, you need to select runes, select your cosmetics, and I'm guessing deal with starting items and shit. MB2 is way more complicated and in depth compared to basically every other shooter with a basic ass UI, but its apparently not complicated enough to your logic to get that free pass?

Their UI focuses on ease of use once people have learned it, it has a ton of problems for new starting players and I could poke holes in it all day.
 
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Why does league get the benefit of the doubt but mb2 does not? When going into league you need to pick and ban from a fuckton of characters, you need to select runes, select your cosmetics, and I'm guessing deal with starting items and shit. MB2 is way more complicated and in depth compared to basically every other shooter with a basic ass UI, but its apparently not complicated enough to your logic to get that free pass?

Their UI focuses on ease of use once people have learned it, it has a ton of problems for new starting players and I could poke holes in it all day.
its cause you dont dev league of legends and this is mb2 forums and im bringing up my issues with mb2 not league. if you deved for league and this was league forums and this was a thread about league ui it wouldnt get a free pass. nice "what about dis" tho.
 

MaceMadunusus

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league ui it wouldnt get a free pass. nice "what about dis" tho.

Ive played over 3000 hours of LoL and the UI there is very easy.

League of Legends is the second most popular game in the world. To insinuate that you know what you're doing more than a multi billion dollar company thats only purpose is to make their game accessible and easy to play so they can make money is very vain.

I gave league as an example of a complicated UI and you went more in depth into it and debated me. Don't "what about dis" me.

When I start poking holes in your statements / examples, you wanted to get off the topic of league.
 
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I gave league as an example of a complicated and you went more in depth into it and debated me. Don't "what about dis" me.

When I start poking holes in your statements / examples, you wanted to get off the topic of league.
You know what, i'll bite. When banning in league if youre new you have literally no idea what any characters do so you dont know who to ban. Runes are ridiculous to figure out when youre new. items have complex interactions that are hard and there are situation specific items that you dont buy always which is complicated. You happy? I critiqued league. Your UI is still shit though. (weird how the act of me critiquing league didnt make your UI better? WHAT THE HELL?) Just cause league has problems doesnt mean your UI doesnt. Especially since trying to "debate" about league doesnt even fucking matter cause I dont dev league so its not my UI. Mb2 UI IS YOURS. So that's WHY I want to stay on topic. I was bringing about league to COMPARE it to your game. What league does better than yours. What you could learn from league's UI. This is simple argumentative interactions.

 

MaceMadunusus

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What you could learn from league's UI.

Except that isn't what you did. You gave me examples of league doing the exact same thing I did, while saying they're better and what I did was wrong.

I am not saying the MB2 UI is great because it isn't, but its basically the best I could make it with the tools / resources I have. I don't have a lot of modern tools I would use to make things better like in UE4. I think people are unfairly criticizing it and making mountains out of mole hills. There are a lot of things that can improve, like for example taking the idea from games like league where they hide things that aren't buyable. We can grey out point options you don't currently have the points for. But that also requires coding resources which we don't have a dedicated $100k/year dev for. Overall though, it isn't as bad as people make it out to be. Absolutely could use proper improvement to several things, which I agreed to a lot of in this thread. Just because I didn't agree to all of it some aren't happy.
 
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But that also requires coding resources which we don't have a dedicated $100k/year dev for.
Yeah we know you don't have lots of coding recourses. Which is why constructive criticism is important. If you guys had no direction to follow no feedback you'd get caught up in what you think is right with no outside voice.

You just don't know how to handle criticism.
 
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Idiot. It's Ok you don't have to see your own faults. Dipshit. I do concede though that you may have conceded one point or two at some point. Dumbass.

This is basically how you talk to people giving you criticism. which has nothing to do with the UI itself you're just a jackass on a high horse.
 

MaceMadunusus

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Idiot. It's Ok you don't have to see your own faults. Dipshit. I do concede though that you may have conceded one point or two at some point. Dumbass.

This is basically how you talk to people giving you criticism. which has nothing to do with the UI itself you're just a jackass on a high horse.
This seems like you're way more offended than I am.
 
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This seems like you're way more offended than I am.
who brought being offended into this? Im just calling you an ass cause youre an ass. You're the one that starts name calling and being pretentious way before anyone else in this thread.

You can obviously choose not to change anything about the UI if you want to. Keep it shit for all I care. I was just giving you my criticism of your UI, which you very much need. Im done talking to a brick wall though, so cya.
 

Duckshark

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This is more of a HUD thing than a UI thing, but also, having a "How many players are alive on each team" counter would be very useful during a round. Especially in like a 14v14+, when I have to take 3 seconds of staring at my scoreboard and not playing the game to count if my team has a numerical advantage, I'm pretty much not even playing the game for those moments and just doing mental math. If we can, a "who is alive" score would greatly help as well.

Something like this might signify that there are 3 rebs and 4 imps currently alive? (excuse the poor photoshop)
UI Top.PNG


On the note of an actual UI issue, on occasion, after disconnecting from a duel server and joining an open server, your classes are still locked to Jedi/Sith. Occasionally, going through the class selection menu can allow you to select another class from the side buttons in the point selection menu, but not always. This actually restricts you from playing the majority of classes and should be prioritized over visual issues, especially given the tutorial should cover how new players should join a game.
 

MaceMadunusus

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Something like this might signify that there are 3 rebs and 4 imps currently alive? (excuse the poor photoshop)

Yeah ben, lini, and some others have suggested changing the score numbers to players alive for open mode. I do want to make the the rounds and stuff matter more but that is an option to do. The thing at the top might get too cluttered if there is 4 numbers there, so not sure if thats the best way to handle it. Its probably better to just add a new thing to the scoreboard, have it replace the numbers in open mode, or both.

We shall see, but outside of some of the things being added to the UI for CTF, I'll be stepping back from the UI for a bit to do things that make me happier and less stressed.

That bug is a bit weird but I believe I have seen it before. The server should be sending updates to the values that would prevent that. Idk what is happening and hopefully a programmer can look into that at some point.
 
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before this thread i had no idea anyone would have problems selecting classes when the buttons are giant as fuck like an old person's font size on their iphone.
 

Spaghetti

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That bug is a bit weird but I believe I have seen it before. The server should be sending updates to the values that would prevent that. Idk what is happening and hopefully a programmer can look into that at some point.
I did some changes recently in CTF which may help with that, if it is in fact due to not updating values properly on connecting. IIRC the issue with duel > open mode has been present since at least the new join flow was implemented.
 
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Legends

It's cool to see that it is a popular mode. It's not quite like I originally envisioned it when I started it, but amazing nonetheless. Frenz has added his unique bombastic flair to it by going far more over the top with the characters. You can feel the passion that's gone into it. I think that has lent itself to something unique and fun that was previously only available in UMad to the people who went out of their way to download that mod.

I would still like to throw out the classic design quote cliché ;)

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

So in that vain, I think many characters are a bit too strong in all the things. A good example of this is Palpatine. He 1-shots everyone with his crazy AP modifiers and has all the Force Powers and all the stances and everything. What's his weakness?

This in turn reduces the fun in choosing between characters. You're not considering trade-offs, you're not considering the map, you're not considering team composition or character synergy. Characters could be reduced to having one super strong aspect. Perhaps one way to begin balancing would be to assign a point value to every ability and have a point quota.

What I do love is how actively the mode has been patched and it feels like the community has made it their own. Frenz has surrounded himself with people that help him in and out of the team to push the mode further and that's exactly what I wanted to see when programming it on top of the easily customized FA templates. I have a feeling that Legends will offer players a way to mod the game in the future if there ever was a catastrophic event where all source code was lost.
How cute, you think Palpatine is overpowered with his defense 1. Have you tried fighting anakin or yoda? only Imperial that could be considered overpowered is probably vader, but having his yellow stance removed in the last update he tends to die to skilled duelists
 
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