General feedback on the new patches

[GoodOl'Ben]

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!

I'll try to keep this short and sweet.

Nicely done.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

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.

This seems like a very odd bit of feedback that seems like more of a you problem, then a UI problem. Maybe just too used to the way the old things were? I personally think its very clear where the buttons are, as the shapes are different for the main buttons and they're in clear and consistent locations. Things like the settings menu have a clear section that functions as tabs, and a clear section that functions as sub groups for those tabs. Buttons in the class menu have a clear and obvious rings, transparent white, etc background.

However, if you don't like it, it is now more easy than ever to create your own custom UIs and if its good and somewhat fits MB2, I have no problem including it within MB2 officially as an option for people to switch to. I know frenzy wanted to create other variations but I don't know how far along that is.

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.

This is a problem of wanting to support something that works for 720p, and something that works for 1440p and 4k. Things like the timer is smaller than the old timer, but then we added more info, as well as room for info for upcoming stuff. My two options are to create two variants of the HUD, one for low res screens and one for high res screens... or use some math to scale the elements manually by trying to put in anchor points. Right now there's an error somewhere with the way I did the current anchor points so itll need another look through of I go route. Also the colors are for color-blindness, which we don't exactly have an option for in setting and chosen by Frost. I can probably adjust the colors a bit to make them less flamboyant but pure red/blue wont work, simply because default blue can be hard to see/read on occasion.

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.

The scores are for CTF which is coming very soon, as well as things like conquest down the line which makes the score more important. I also want to make individual rounds more important so the score itself in regular open means more down the line. Sure you can see that stuff in scoreboard, but this design matches other games. Number of alive players instead is a maybe, but at the same time I feel like that will have to depend on what your setting for g_competitive and stuff are.

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.

Adding click depth seems like it would make things even more confusing. If anything I think I would rather try and make a way to be able to scroll within a certain context, so things don't require multi-pages but that will require a new UI element. Which is probably possible but a bit of work. Adding depth to the menu would honestly be really annoying to do within the UI files themselves because the settings menu is already really annoying to deal with.

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.

Are you talking about the minimap itself and not the radar background? The radar background is customizable, where as the minimap isn't. I can probably make that possible but I would have to check. I probably wouldn't want it tied to the large map opacity, especially with the current shader sorting issue between jamp and openjk.

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?

Further improvements and changes will be made to the team overlay. It wasn't quite finished, but was in a good-enough state before release. Still has some of the same issues as the 720p vs 1440p display kinda thing though.

 

[Spaghetti]

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.

I discussed this recently and also thought about just extending the vent farther toward the back of the room. Then all it would take to dislodge dekas would be dropping pulse nades in there from a safe distance. Not really a way to counter that other than pushing, but the timing would be very tricky for the Sith and take away their focus from nades that might also be coming from the door.

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.

Neither of these I've noticed anyone remarking on and neither was explicitly changed that I'm aware of.

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.

I think you need to give this more time. Convergence has a significant impact on shots hitting their mark. So much so there has been discussion about nerfing dual pistol damage/FP drain to compensate. That will need more gamestats to see if there really is an indicator of more effectiveness, but still. Regarding the setting, that might be an oversight as that option was technically only intended for beta. It might not be set to archive (save).

 

[RogueWookiee]

This seems like a very odd bit of feedback that seems like more of a you problem, then a UI problem.

mace:

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

This seems like a very odd bit of feedback that seems like more of a you problem, then a UI problem. Maybe just too used to the way the old things were? I personally think its very clear where the buttons are, as the shapes are different for the main buttons and they're in clear and consistent locations. Things like the settings menu have a clear section that functions as tabs, and a clear section that functions as sub groups for those tabs. Buttons in the class menu have a clear and obvious rings, transparent white, etc background.

Button discoverability is never a "you" problem. If we follow your train of thought, any bad UI is a "you" problem because they can be learned eventually. Good UX removes the "you" problem entirely.

Things boxed in red are some things I find most issue in.

Background UI elements overlap with the foreground elements. The background elements should be disabled when the foreground is active to reduce noise.

The "Okay" button has the same level of emphasis as the "Back" button despite the other one being the primary action button in the flow. The central action button also loses in font-size with the "SPECTATOR" text. The button is also situated at the very bottom corner of the screen, which not a focal point in attention. The lack of a highlight color makes it hard to discern.

I have selected Trade Federation, but it is in no way highlighted as active. The only way for me to know what is active is by understanding that I'm looking at the imp classes, which requires prior knowledge. The selected model is highlighted neatly with a blue outline, but this is not utilized for the team selection. I forgot to redbox the selected button tab on the right above the model. I don't know which tab I am on currently. Funnily the hover text for "Builds" remains active even though my mouse is not over it. This adds to the confusion.

I believe the flat design is inspired by Battlefront 2?

They follow simple top-to-down flow and utilize an orange highlight color for active UI elements. I would still even argue that even they could've done better with the Start button by increasing its size relative to the other buttons. However, discoverability is better for people who read from left to right since the button is first from the left and next to the last thing you'll click in the flow before starting.

Here is a good example of visual hierarchy. The big yellow, thicc "PLAY" button is literally asking for it.

If one of your counter arguments is: "we have more things on the screen that need to be shown". Consider if they should be shown all the time. I do not need to change the model every time I enter the class loadout menu.

However, if you don't like it, it is now more easy than ever to create your own custom UIs and if its good and somewhat fits MB2,

This is something I sadly don't have the luxury of time or energy to do. However, I'll happily share my professional experience on the matter to help you improve.

This is a problem of wanting to support something that works for 720p, and something that works for 1440p and 4k. Things like the timer is smaller than the old timer, but then we added more info, as well as room for info for upcoming stuff. My two options are to create two variants of the HUD, one for low res screens and one for high res screens...

The timer is not smaller, the font is much thicker. Sizing of course for a game as old as this has a lot of scaling baggage. If a procedural scaling system can be implemented, it's perfect, but otherwise having something for 1080p and below would be good.

Also the colors are for color-blindness, which we don't exactly have an option for in setting and chosen by Frost. I can probably adjust the colors a bit to make them less flamboyant but pure red/blue wont work, simply because default blue can be hard to see/read on occasion.

Pure red and blue would be equally flamboyant. The colors should be less saturated, but this of course can affect the color blind. I'd probably just add a small icon to indicate team instead of using colors. A lighter font-weight would already do wonders to make it less demanding of my attention.

The scores are for CTF which is coming very soon, as well as things like conquest down the line which makes the score more important. I also want to make individual rounds more important so the score itself in regular open means more down the line.

Add it when this becomes relevant instead? Until then it's unnecessary.

Adding click depth seems like it would make things even more confusing. If anything I think I would rather try and make a way to be able to scroll within a certain context, so things don't require multi-pages but that will require a new UI element.

Sounds good.

Are you talking about the minimap itself and not the radar background? The radar background is customizable, where as the minimap isn't. I can probably make that possible but I would have to check. I probably wouldn't want it tied to the large map opacity, especially with the current shader sorting issue between jamp and openjk.

The top right map. It's not customizable from what I've tried. All I can do is remove it from the old options, which I'd rather not do, since it does provide good info.

All that said, just keep on improving it. You've clearly got a good foundation going now. There've been several steps in the right direction. Biggest issues are a matter of sizes and colors.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

I discussed this recently and also thought about just extending the vent farther toward the back of the room. Then all it would take to dislodge dekas would be dropping pulse nades in there from a safe distance. Not really a way to counter that other than pushing, but the timing would be very tricky for the Sith and take away their focus from nades that might also be coming from the door.

That'd be somewhat enough for scrims, but I think it would still restrict regular open play. Even so, I think we'd still see camping that room be the prominent scrim strat. Best would be to ensure that having 5 players inside of it is suicide. This is ideally a small room that makes all explosives fatal.

Neither of these I've noticed anyone remarking on and neither was explicitly changed that I'm aware of.

The sec nade/blob knockdown I'll have to check with a code diff, I guess. Lightning I'm 100% sure now has knockback. Has Lightning 3 damage been scaled up or something of the sort? Has something changed in the damage receiving code that could apply a larger knockback scale?

I think you need to give this more time. Convergence has a significant impact on shots hitting their mark. So much so there has been discussion about nerfing dual pistol damage/FP drain to compensate.

Might be. It was good in situations where your target is stationary, up close or you know you'll land your mark. Otherwise it lent itself to very unpredictable behaviour. I can see it being good versus people who run in a straight line relative to you.

 

[Spaghetti]

The sec nade/blob knockdown I'll have to check with a code diff, I guess. Lightning I'm 100% sure now has knockback. Has Lightning 3 damage been scaled up or something of the sort? Has something changed in the damage receiving code that could apply a larger knockback scale?

The way damage is applied was changed so it didn't override itself (the math worked out to damage not scaling properly) and the damage output had to be lowered to compensate, but nothing should have changed beyond that. No knockback was explicitly added.

Might be. It was good in situations where your target is stationary, up close or you know you'll land your mark. Otherwise it lent itself to very unpredictable behaviour. I can see it being good versus people who run in a straight line relative to you.

Might just be a question of unlearning what you're used to (or not if you prefer the old method). I've never mained dual pistols but find them tremendously easier to use after the change, since they pretty much work how other weapons do now.

Things boxed in red are some things I find most issue in.

Background UI elements overlap with the foreground elements. The background elements should be disabled when the foreground is active to reduce noise.

The "Okay" button has the same level of emphasis as the "Back" button despite the other one being the primary action button in the flow. The central action button also loses in font-size with the "SPECTATOR" text. The button is also situated at the very bottom corner of the screen, which not a focal point in attention. The lack of a highlight color makes it hard to discern.

I have selected Trade Federation, but it is in no way highlighted as active. The only way for me to know what is active is by understanding that I'm looking at the imp classes, which requires prior knowledge. The selected model is highlighted neatly with a blue outline, but this is not utilized for the team selection. I forgot to redbox the selected button tab on the right above the model. I don't know which tab I am on currently. Funnily the hover text for "Builds" remains active even though my mouse is not over it. This adds to the confusion.

This seems like reasonable feedback, but I will note that this is not *new* as far as MB2's UI goes, which I think would be the fair point of comparison here. Sure would be an improvement to help new players with flow to have those things, but the old UI was just as 'flat' as far as indicating where you were and what the focus should be. Its only saving grace was having less information spread over more screens, but that also had its own problem (many more clicks to do simple things like joining).

I did a detailed comparison back when the new join UI was added: MovieBattles II V1.7.0.2 Released

As well as a video for the click count (this was before an option to default to build templates instead of model on the right pane was added too):

 

[MaceMadunusus]

Button discoverability is never a "you" problem. If we follow your train of thought, any bad UI is a "you" problem because they can be learned eventually. Good UX removes the "you" problem entirely.

button discoverability is a problem yes. If the big button at the bottom right (normal location and matches progression flow within the menu) that is separated from the main panel that says OKAY, APPLY, CANCEL, etc is hard to properly flow through that is a you problem. If you can tell the difference between the tabs at the top that have a background, different bolder text, and little indicator on hover, that is a you problem. There is a reason the PLAY button is large and in the center of the escape menu, because it is an important part of the flow and needs to be obvious, and something people have always had issues with.

Background UI elements overlap with the foreground elements. The background elements should be disabled when the foreground is active to reduce noise.

Bug vs intention, and not being able to figure out which parts of code need which thing since I had to program a lot of the HUD things myself. And you know I am not a programmer. Also the UI is not intended to be that transparent especially since we cant background blur like modern engines, and you're asking for conflicts even with map-background when you do that anyway, which is a choice you made.

I have selected Trade Federation, but it is in no way highlighted as active.

It does properly highlight the button when you're actively selecting a team and class to start off with. The problem comes in the class config menu AFTER you have already chosen your team and joined the game where it no longer knows that information and requires coding to fix. That is a small issue though as you should know what your damn team is after you have clicked okay and joined the game as that method it highlights properly.

I forgot to redbox the selected button tab on the right above the model. I don't know which tab I am on currently. Funnily the hover text for "Builds" remains active even though my mouse is not over it. This adds to the confusion.

That's an engine bug, and not intended. For some reason it is not hiding certain elements when I tell it to on hover/unhover. I have no idea how to fix that issue. However we expect IQ to be more than 10 in this case as which tab you are in should be obvious. So yes its a problem, but not a problem that should impact anyone that is human.

If one of your counter arguments is: "we have more things on the screen that need to be shown". Consider if they should be shown all the time. I do not need to change the model every time I enter the class loadout menu.

This is an intentional choice to keep the UI backend simple, not the complex bloated nonsense that was impossible to maintain before. IF you want to code a full new UI system, that would allow for more dynamic UI then you are welcome to. If you want to see templates by default instead of model in the UI, there is already an option for that. It was also a choice by other UI designers in the team that came before me that I copied, some with professional experience (Frost) to keep all of the class selection stuff on the same 'page', rather than having 3 completely separate pages especially since it caused confusion for people not knowing the points menu would pop up after round restart, or that they needed to hit the class config button to get it to pop up. This streamlined all of that immensely.

It was an absolute year long like level of pain to get this UI even working because of how broken the backend is and how arse the UI system is.

The timer is not smaller, the font is much thicker..

Old timer takes up 110x40. New timer is 110x36 @ 1440p even with the font being thicker which was intentional because so many people don't pay attention to the timer. If you don't include the background. If you include the background the old timer is 195x151, where as new timer is 178x60 and it has 2 new element additions. It only becomes larger when you include the score and other features since it has room/components for: Payload, Conquest, Progressive Siege, CTF which you can disable if you want to. I also personally hate how games like CSGO make the timer so damn tiny when that game often comes down to the wire. We have the ability to allow timer to be more dynamic now, which increases the importance of it. Progressive siege allows for more varying round time, same with CTF. We can also adjust the timer mid-round now if we want to. No maps do it dynamically yet but I want to try it with DOTF where it will start with a lower timelimit, but add time when you complete secondary objective. I also want to make the game put more emphasis on the timer when the timer is running down especially for things like CTF where we are going to have announcer notifications for 30 seconds remaining and stuff. Things like Payload can also add to the timer when completing checkpoints. You gotta prep for future additions

However, its also something you can change yourself now as its no longer hard coded. MBassets3.pk3/ui/mb/alpha/hud/mb_hud_timer.menu

I'd probably just add a small icon to indicate team instead of using colors.

That forces it to take up more space, when you already said it was too large?

Add it when this becomes relevant instead? Until then it's unnecessary.

Its literally next release where it becomes relevant. Literally like a 2-3 month period where it wasn't fully relevant but gives people time to adjust to new UI in time for a bigger gamemode release. We're already testing CTF publicly. I'm not gonna spend the extra time to disable, reenable or keep track of which file is present on the svn and stuff for beta testing for the two releases. That is extra work that is unneeded and stupid.

The top right map. It's not customizable from what I've tried. All I can do is remove it from the old options, which I'd rather not do, since it does provide good info.

MBassets3.pk3/ui/mb/alpha/hud/mb_hud_radar.menu. Just like the other elements, a few things are no longer hard coded. The background is controlled by your HUD color settings in the UI menu, the actual positioning, location, size, is controlled by that .menu now. I can possibly make the minimap itself take an opacity setting here into account as well since we cant be adding new cvars for these things cause engine limits. Depends on how the code handles the multi map layer opacity code stuff.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

button discoverability is a problem yes. If the big button at the bottom right (normal location and matches progression flow within the menu) that is separated from the main panel that says OKAY, APPLY, CANCEL, etc is hard to properly flow through that is a you problem. If you can tell the difference between the tabs at the top that have a background, different bolder text, and little indicator on hover, that is a you problem. There is a reason the PLAY button is large and in the center of the escape menu, because it is an important part of the flow and needs to be obvious, and something people have always had issues with.

This response indicates that you are understandably married to what you've created, due to spending a lot of time on it already, and are not that open to feedback. Nor are you interested in finding ways to improve it. Insinuating that anyone having trouble using the interface is an idiot kind of puts that out there.

So I'll just leave it at what I've already said. Do with it what you will. I hope you take it into consideration as you work to improve it.

I did a detailed comparison back when the new join UI was added

The basic flow has greatly improved. My critique is directed more towards the accessibility and intuitiveness.

To simplify into a few bullet points:

• Lack of distinct and functional active indicators in tabs (template/model/hilt, team, class)
• Lack of hover indicators in certain clickable elements (point bubbles)
• Heavy font weights used everywhere diminishes emphasis on key elements such as the "OKAY" button in the build config
• Look for ways to reduce cognitive overload by limiting what's shown on the screen or by introducing more whitespace
• Reduce font weights on elements that are meant to be read only

Whether these are caused by bugs or anything else, they affect accessibility. Since the color blind are considered in the UX, it would also be great to consider sub 10 IQ types like me.

 

[FrenzY]

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.

High, Ben-San!
Thanks for the detailed feedback. Really think this kind of post is a great example for how to give some good constructive feedback. Also, I hope you are well and am glad to hear from you.

I'll try to keep this short and sweet.

Short and sweet - famous last words for the MBII forums.

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.

Yeah, Smuggler is definitely a map which needs a few adjustments. I mainly think it just needs to be made a bit larger in some areas, while still keeping that tight/compact feel. I don't necesarrily mind the obj camp as it usually gets completely pwned with a few good nades, Wooks and teamwork. But for scrimmages with a smaller crew it is a pain.

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?

Faster FP in which situations? Killing to gain FP is a decent idea, but for smart jedi using swingblock and qseudo-q3, this could make them nigh invincible.

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.

I don't think I have noticed a getup speed increase. I don't mind Push and Pull knocking down for less if we are doing a global change to things, but admitedly I feel like things are in a pretty decent place right now and hope we can focus in other areas (new features, modes, etc).

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.

Lighting is going to be adjusted, it's pretty borked.

Secondary nerf is great, introduced variety through reduction, just buff the damage a bit to reward direct hits

The damage is now 40. Pretty significant against Jedi/Sith if you land it. Keep in mind it is a cookable nade, so in some ways it can be even better at surpressive if you are skilled in the same way as you could be with concs (i.e. you can now bounce secondaries off walls for maximum lols)

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

It's a suble-but-much-needed tweak for more competitive play, being able to stop some insta wins from happening. Especially dive-bomb attacks.

Pulse grenade AOE nerf seems unnoticeable in regular mode, didn't see how it affects launcher pulses yet

yep, this is a pretty subtle one. Should feel like it is in a good place, also keep in mind the .efx needs to be tweaked to more accurately show the radius.

Lightning knockback is awful

Aye.

Knockback in tandem with high FP drains really increases the skill requirements for Jedi/Sith. Good players are still amazing though.

Yep, especially smart ones who swingblock so they can block shots while swinging. I really think we need to find better ways to inform players of the value of Defense 3.

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.

I'm happy it's in, but haven't noticed a huge difference with how players are using it. They both could use a small (10%?) damage reduction though, I think.

Wookiee point changes are whatever, didn't notice how they changed things

How wude. But, I get it. The changes and point costs are subtle. Faster speed at Caster 3, more power to Fury 1 for hybrid builds (try Caster 1) and changes to rof all helped Wook play a bit better and offer more versatility with what builds you can get. Still think we need to change caster more, or add a new weapon for Wooks.

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 think if you hold use while jumping it will allow you to jump a level lower. I have it bound to ctrl.

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."

In general, I agree with you. But with 50 chars per team, and EACH character offering a lot of ways to play / counter, the truth of the matter is there are many ways to beat even the most powerful of characters. The biggest meta would probably be healers healing eachother or tanks. Team heal and energize need to get tweaked to be a bit more skillful to aim and less AOE. This is something I want to focus on next for Legends as well as a few other more fun abilities. There are a LOT of micro adjustments coming to Legends for each character in the next patch or two. So far I am noticing the Legends development go like so:

Patch 1: New features, wow, excitement! Yay!
Patch 2: Refinement to new features and a few (lot) of the various bugs or typos getting fixed. Sigh.
Patch 3: Complete burn out and abandonment of Legends (someone else usually pings me about issues or fixes and sends to me)
Patch 4: Return to drawing board and removing this-or-that.
Patch 5: Repeat

:'D

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.

Care to elaborate more? Are you suggesting a few builds per character? That could be cool.

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.

Yeah, same. I have taken a bit of a break from it, honestly. It's good to see it flourishing (in a heavily modded way) in EU, but keep in mind that EU Legends server is heavily modified from what I created!

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 bounty hunters 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.

Yeah, I have also mentioned this with him and believe we could continue to fine tune things. It ain't too bad, especially with the new team icon overlays which really help you from TKing if enabled.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

I don't think I have noticed a getup speed increase.

Yeah, I actually ran a code diff. It's all in my demented head in that regard. Besides some nice clean-up, nothing has changed.

The damage is now 40. Pretty significant against Jedi/Sith if you land it.

40 sounds significant yeah. So far only one has died immediately. Most don't even die to the lasers I pump them full of during getup. Is damage reduction applied to the nade? Is there still an FP drain on hit? I haven't felt that it was worth the risk compared to just draining FP. Albeit I haven't had the chance to abuse it yet by chaining multiple direct hits in a row yet.

Is the cooking timing the same as for concs? It felt different to me.

Bumping the damage to 50 or 60 might still be acceptable considering how difficult landing a direct hit generally is. Might help setting it apart from Concs as well. Tighter AOE, higher damage.

Yep, especially smart ones who swingblock so they can block shots while swinging. I really think we need to find better ways to inform players of the value of Defense 3.

Funnily enough I never use Defense 3. Same might apply to many opponents that have been easy to pulverize, just can't tell. From what I've seen from the best though, is that it might be partly responsible for their powerspike. Could maybe even consider scaling the Defense 2 pricing a bit differently if Defense 2 builds appear significantly weaker in the statistics to open up more force powers and other perks for those who opt to forego Defense 3?

Faster FP in which situations? Killing to gain FP is a decent idea, but for smart jedi using swingblock and qseudo-q3, this could make them nigh invincible.

Kinda just spitballing there. My early experience has been that Jedi/Sith are pushovers with the odd exception and it'd be interesting to find a way to give them a small olive branch to work with at lower skill levels that doesn't necessarily ramp up the best players. Outright FP gain might be a bad option as you pointed out.

There are a LOT of micro adjustments coming to Legends for each character in the next patch or two.

Looking forward to it!

It's good to see it flourishing (in a heavily modded way) in EU, but keep in mind that EU Legends server is heavily modified from what I created!

Ahhh, I wasn't aware of this part. Might be a factor in what I'm saying here.

EACH character offering a lot of ways to play / counter

I think that could be a detractor if I understood your meaning. Ideally you'd want a setup like League of Legends or Overwatch in terms of how your heroes are handled. Very exaggerated characteristics both in the way of weakness and strength. Palpatine for example could solely be Jump 3, Push 3, Lightning 3, Sense 3, Drain 3 and a large FP pool. While Palps canonically has used a lightsaber heaps, his defining attributes have always been his Force Lightning and foresight. So in that sense, a lightning powerhouse could be more interesting and unique than the Episode 3 rendition. Leaving him without a lightsaber would make him stand out and weak to direct confrontation in big crowds. Which also lends to his fantasy in a way with him always lurking in the shadows, manipulating and usually only taking on direct confrontations when he thinks he has the advantage.

Of course a build like that would in turn require many characters to be tuned in terms of their Force Block level. Ideally most Jedi would have Force Block 1-2 to kind of sell this idea. By giving Palpy access to Drain, he could also bypass Force Block

Care to elaborate more? Are you suggesting a few builds per character? That could be cool.

I mainly meant in terms of design principles. When setting out to create a character build, assign point values for each ability.
For example:
Lightning 3 = 30 points
Sense 3 = 20 points
Force Block 3 = 15 points
Force Drain 3 = 20 points
Jump 3 = 5 points
Saber Offense 3 = 15 points
Saber Defense 3 = 15 points

and so on...

Then establish a rule that all characters can have a maximum of 100 points applied to them. Kind of a way to try and keep balance in check and restricting yourself as a designer. Generally restrictions help come up with compelling results as they force you to leave things out that you might otherwise want to add.

So then when you'd set out to design Palpatine for Legends, you'd first pick the most prominent traits of his character fantasy, which would be Lightning and Sense. Now you're down to 50 points left to spare. Where do you want to put those? Do you want to bring emphasis to the Lightning aspect? Perhaps add traits that complement those first? Push and Jump help a lot here. Drain also gives interesting options. Is a lightsaber necessary to feel like Palpatine?

However, I do see the vision your going for with Legends currently, which is to provide a power trip with any character. I think that's equally valid. Players seemed to have a lot of fun with it, so you're on the money already.

I think I'd be interested in hearing more opinions from the community at large before making any sweeping changes where all characters are toned down in strength by weakening aspects they're not particularly famous for.

It ain't too bad, especially with the new team icon overlays which really help you from TKing if enabled.

Yeah it's in part on me for disabling the overlays. "I never needed 'em before, man!" and all that

Though I think if players need the overlay to distinguish friends from enemies, there's a bit of a challenge there, which should be accounted for as much as possible without getting in the way of player fun. Ideally you'd want a situation where you can show a character's silhouette to someone and they will immediately tell you what class it is and what weapon they're using. Understandably MB2 will never fully reach this ideal due to sacrificing some of this to enable player expression and lore accuracy, which I think is more important in our case.

Really think this kind of post is a great example for how to give some good constructive feedback.

I'm a bit grumpy in parts. Could do better.

 

[RogueWookiee]

finally! someone who knows how to take feedback.

 

[Duckshark]

Yeah, I actually ran a code diff. It's all in my demented head in that regard. Besides some nice clean-up, nothing has changed.


40 sounds significant yeah. So far only one has died immediately. Most don't even die to the lasers I pump them full of during getup. Is damage reduction applied to the nade? Is there still an FP drain on hit? I haven't felt that it was worth the risk compared to just draining FP. Albeit I haven't had the chance to abuse it yet by chaining multiple direct hits in a row yet.

Is the cooking timing the same as for concs? It felt different to me.

Bumping the damage to 50 or 60 might still be acceptable considering how difficult landing a direct hit generally is. Might help setting it apart from Concs as well. Tighter AOE, higher damage.


Funnily enough I never use Defense 3. Same might apply to many opponents that have been easy to pulverize, just can't tell. From what I've seen from the best though, is that it might be partly responsible for their powerspike. Could maybe even consider scaling the Defense 2 pricing a bit differently if Defense 2 builds appear significantly weaker in the statistics to open up more force powers and other perks for those who opt to forego Defense 3?


Kinda just spitballing there. My early experience has been that Jedi/Sith are pushovers with the odd exception and it'd be interesting to find a way to give them a small olive branch to work with at lower skill levels that doesn't necessarily ramp up the best players. Outright FP gain might be a bad option as you pointed out.


Looking forward to it!


Ahhh, I wasn't aware of this part. Might be a factor in what I'm saying here.


I think that could be a detractor if I understood your meaning. Ideally you'd want a setup like League of Legends or Overwatch in terms of how your heroes are handled. Very exaggerated characteristics both in the way of weakness and strength. Palpatine for example could solely be Jump 3, Push 3, Lightning 3, Sense 3, Drain 3 and a large FP pool. While Palps canonically has used a lightsaber heaps, his defining attributes have always been his Force Lightning and foresight. So in that sense, a lightning powerhouse could be more interesting and unique than the Episode 3 rendition. Leaving him without a lightsaber would make him stand out and weak to direct confrontation in big crowds. Which also lends to his fantasy in a way with him always lurking in the shadows, manipulating and usually only taking on direct confrontations when he thinks he has the advantage.

Of course a build like that would in turn require many characters to be tuned in terms of their Force Block level. Ideally most Jedi would have Force Block 1-2 to kind of sell this idea. By giving Palpy access to Drain, he could also bypass Force Block


I mainly meant in terms of design principles. When setting out to create a character build, assign point values for each ability.
For example:
Lightning 3 = 30 points
Sense 3 = 20 points
Force Block 3 = 15 points
Force Drain 3 = 20 points
Jump 3 = 5 points
Saber Offense 3 = 15 points
Saber Defense 3 = 15 points

and so on...

Then establish a rule that all characters can have a maximum of 100 points applied to them. Kind of a way to try and keep balance in check and restricting yourself as a designer. Generally restrictions help come up with compelling results as they force you to leave things out that you might otherwise want to add.

So then when you'd set out to design Palpatine for Legends, you'd first pick the most prominent traits of his character fantasy, which would be Lightning and Sense. Now you're down to 50 points left to spare. Where do you want to put those? Do you want to bring emphasis to the Lightning aspect? Perhaps add traits that complement those first? Push and Jump help a lot here. Drain also gives interesting options. Is a lightsaber necessary to feel like Palpatine?

However, I do see the vision your going for with Legends currently, which is to provide a power trip with any character. I think that's equally valid. Players seemed to have a lot of fun with it, so you're on the money already.

I think I'd be interested in hearing more opinions from the community at large before making any sweeping changes where all characters are toned down in strength by weakening aspects they're not particularly famous for.


Yeah it's in part on me for disabling the overlays. "I never needed 'em before, man!" and all that

Though I think if players need the overlay to distinguish friends from enemies, there's a bit of a challenge there, which should be accounted for as much as possible without getting in the way of player fun. Ideally you'd want a situation where you can show a character's silhouette to someone and they will immediately tell you what class it is and what weapon they're using. Understandably MB2 will never fully reach this ideal due to sacrificing some of this to enable player expression and lore accuracy, which I think is more important in our case.


I'm a bit grumpy in parts. Could do better.

Jedi damage reduction is globally 90% of full damage unless they hold block, in which case it is 80% of full damage. This applies to the direct nade as well so a direct hit to a blocking jedi will do around 32 (0.8*40) damage, and to a running Jedi it will deal around 36 (0.9*40) damage. This is still pretty significant since 3 chest shots with E11 secondary will kill them no matter what and 2 headshots with E11 secondary will do the same. Like Frenzy says, it's designed to help against jumping Jedi (old secnade was pretty useless unless you hit the Jedi midair), and around corners by cooking it.

The timer is the same as a conc nade, 3 seconds from the button hold until it blows up.

In my experience, the best "murder Jedi" that run through gunners and kill them in spades all don't use Saber Defense 3 and consider the points better put elsewhere. Typically this is since being shot (mid swing or blocking or running, doesn't matter) allows you to halfswing/counter off the bullet, allowing you to kill people if they shoot you once but miss a consecutive shot. Because of this being able to swingblock more doesn't really help anyway since against a particularly accurate gunner the Jedi is liable to not swingblock, eat a shot of damage and negate knockback by crouching, and get a kill with the non-swingblocked uncancelled hit. This relies on the gunner having suboptimal footwork, but typically being able to swingblock a bunch of times in a row is a nonfactor for an evasive murder Jedi.

I would consider the current implementations of push, sense, and lightning good enough for the newer Jedi players to understand supporting and playing saber v gunner, since those abilities are sort of designed to have low skill floors. When it comes to swingblocking, unless tutorials teach it thoroughly it'll be hard to convey to a newer audience, so I hope the Jedi tutorial is deep.

 

[Spaghetti]

This response indicates that you are understandably married to what you've created, due to spending a lot of time on it already, and are not that open to feedback. Nor are you interested in finding ways to improve it. Insinuating that anyone having trouble using the interface is an idiot kind of puts that out there.

So I'll just leave it at what I've already said. Do with it what you will. I hope you take it into consideration as you work to improve it.


The basic flow has greatly improved. My critique is directed more towards the accessibility and intuitiveness.

To simplify into a few bullet points:

• Lack of distinct and functional active indicators in tabs (template/model/hilt, team, class)
• Lack of hover indicators in certain clickable elements (point bubbles)
• Heavy font weights used everywhere diminishes emphasis on key elements such as the "OKAY" button in the build config
• Look for ways to reduce cognitive overload by limiting what's shown on the screen or by introducing more whitespace
• Reduce font weights on elements that are meant to be read only

Whether these are caused by bugs or anything else, they affect accessibility. Since the color blind are considered in the UX, it would also be great to consider sub 10 IQ types like me.

Beyond the font nitpicks, you're kind of ignoring all the points about the UI system not being up to doing all you want it to do. Basic modern luxuries like resolution scaling aren't present so you have to make things usable at 720p (which is already marginal for small text in some places). The ability to customize the UI was a great new feature but it also ran up against issues with overloading config file space (a HUGE problem for JAMP users which still has no solution because we're fucking married to a 20 year old engine we can't change).

At a certain point things become mutually exclusive. Some of your points were considered as Mace said but just could not be implemented as things are. Some things might be possible with coder work (like writing new UI elements) but that does take away time from other more in-demand features. And of course someone has to be around with the skill and drive to actually do it (this is always the greatest constraint).

And to be clear this isn't personal for me as I had very little to do with the new system beyond helping at the tail end during crunch time before release. I just don't think it's fair to hold this UI to modern standards given the constraints at play here (which you should be well aware of). It's still a huge improvement over the old one.

 

[FrenzY]

40 sounds significant yeah. So far only one has died immediately. Most don't even die to the lasers I pump them full of during getup. Is damage reduction applied to the nade? Is there still an FP drain on hit? I haven't felt that it was worth the risk compared to just draining FP. Albeit I haven't had the chance to abuse it yet by chaining multiple direct hits in a row yet.

I think there are a few ways to make some subtle improvements to alt frags. Some ideas off the top of the head being buffing the radius if it is not a direct hit, the grand return of nading dead bodies for an explosion or stagger, and also, finally... lowering the price of it a bit to feel more reasonable when compared to conc for sold and fire for ET.

Is the cooking timing the same as for concs? It felt different to me.

'Tis the same.

Bumping the damage to 50 or 60 might still be acceptable considering how difficult landing a direct hit generally is. Might help setting it apart from Concs as well. Tighter AOE, higher damage.

50 Might be ok.

Funnily enough I never use Defense 3. Same might apply to many opponents that have been easy to pulverize, just can't tell. From what I've seen from the best though, is that it might be partly responsible for their powerspike. Could maybe even consider scaling the Defense 2 pricing a bit differently if Defense 2 builds appear significantly weaker in the statistics to open up more force powers and other perks for those who opt to forego Defense 3?


Kinda just spitballing there. My early experience has been that Jedi/Sith are pushovers with the odd exception and it'd be interesting to find a way to give them a small olive branch to work with at lower skill levels that doesn't necessarily ramp up the best players. Outright FP gain might be a bad option as you pointed out.

Defense 3 allows for you to lose a bit more FP but also not get shot, so if you play against someone who is good and conserving their FP and escaping/dodging shots, you are up against a tough opponent, especially if there is saber spam. I tend to use it more in scrims than in Open.

I think that could be a detractor if I understood your meaning. Ideally you'd want a setup like League of Legends or Overwatch in terms of how your heroes are handled. Very exaggerated characteristics both in the way of weakness and strength. Palpatine for example could solely be Jump 3, Push 3, Lightning 3, Sense 3, Drain 3 and a large FP pool. While Palps canonically has used a lightsaber heaps, his defining attributes have always been his Force Lightning and foresight. So in that sense, a lightning powerhouse could be more interesting and unique than the Episode 3 rendition. Leaving him without a lightsaber would make him stand out and weak to direct confrontation in big crowds. Which also lends to his fantasy in a way with him always lurking in the shadows, manipulating and usually only taking on direct confrontations when he thinks he has the advantage.

Palpy being OP doesn't really bother me, considering who he is, but you are again using the EU Legends material for your feedback and I am pretty sure my variant is not as strong.

I mainly meant in terms of design principles. When setting out to create a character build, assign point values for each ability.
For example:
Lightning 3 = 30 points
Sense 3 = 20 points
Force Block 3 = 15 points
Force Drain 3 = 20 points
Jump 3 = 5 points
Saber Offense 3 = 15 points
Saber Defense 3 = 15 points

and so on...

Then establish a rule that all characters can have a maximum of 100 points applied to them. Kind of a way to try and keep balance in check and restricting yourself as a designer. Generally restrictions help come up with compelling results as they force you to leave things out that you might otherwise want to add.

This concept doesn't work due to certain abilities stacking and becoming way, way more powerful. Push + Rockets as an example.

However, I do see the vision your going for with Legends currently, which is to provide a power trip with any character. I think that's equally valid. Players seemed to have a lot of fun with it, so you're on the money already.

After doing a good chunk of competitive scrims where things are super try-hard, I settled back into a comfortable emperor chair and let out a sigh. I don't think balance is achievable nor necessary with how much stuff is packed into this mode. If anything, I think the mode needs expansion in terms of how things are laid out for competitive play if that were to be possible. Perhaps something like what Paladins does for competitive play where you can choose to ban certain characters from a match might be one way to do it.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

I think there are a few ways to make some subtle improvements to alt frags. Some ideas off the top of the head being buffing the radius if it is not a direct hit, the grand return of nading dead bodies for an explosion or stagger, and also, finally... lowering the price of it a bit to feel more reasonable when compared to conc for sold and fire for ET.
'Tis the same.
50 Might be ok.

I think the radius buff would be in the wrong direction. It'll be a conc clone. Ideally it's more unique. I think the price point as it stands is great considering the power of primaries. It just needs to feel good to use. Right now landing one isn't worthwhile also in part because you can't really utilize it much because of how good players have become at performing quick getups when they get knocked down. It's basically just a 500ms stun as it is because of that.

Palpy being OP doesn't really bother me, considering who he is, but you are again using the EU Legends material for your feedback and I am pretty sure my variant is not as strong.

Palpy definitely needs to feel OP, but ideally you want him to not be good at everything. I think one element that could be helpful would be some kind of indicator when the game is running a custom Legends loadout? I'll definitely see if I can find a vanilla Legends server somewhere. You got me interested

This concept doesn't work due to certain abilities stacking and becoming way, way more powerful. Push + Rockets as an example.

It's not perfect by any means, just kind of a rule of thumb that helps examine a character's power level.

After doing a good chunk of competitive scrims where things are super try-hard, I settled back into a comfortable emperor chair and let out a sigh. I don't think balance is achievable nor necessary with how much stuff is packed into this mode. If anything, I think the mode needs expansion in terms of how things are laid out for competitive play if that were to be possible. Perhaps something like what Paladins does for competitive play where you can choose to ban certain characters from a match might be one way to do it.

Yeah, I don't think balance is the end goal. Mainly just that every character has a chance to shine with something unique.

Basic modern luxuries like resolution scaling aren't present so you have to make things usable at 720p (which is already marginal for small text in some places).

Hiding behind perceived limitations limits problem-solving. Visual hierarchy and common UX affordances don't really need resolution scaling to be done right. Raven Software managed to achieve it just fine.

I just don't think it's fair to hold this UI to modern standards given the constraints at play here (which you should be well aware of). It's still a huge improvement over the old one.

Limiting critique to what can be achieved with minimum effort sets the bar low. Imagine how difficult it would be for anyone to speak up if they first have to know what's achievable? The point of critique is to highlight problems and explain why they are problems. Critique can't magically fix the problem, it can just bring attention to one and perhaps bring to light potential solutions.

With that said, however, I am well aware of the constraints at play and that also allows me to say these issues can be looked at. It's mostly a matter of resizing elements, altering certain font weights and changing a few graphical elements. Sometimes maybe showing/hiding elements. Is it quick and simple? No. Are there other things you'd rather be working on? Clearly. Can it be done? Hell yes.

I'm not telling you to change these ASAP. Hell, I'm not telling you to change these. I'm simply pointing out perceived flaws. It's up to you to evaluate how critical they are and consider if they are something that ought to be put in the issue tracker.

Your response of "Fair enough, but we don't have the capacity to work on this further" is reasonable and I can get behind that.

 

[Duckshark]

I think the radius buff would be in the wrong direction. It'll be a conc clone. Ideally it's more unique. I think the price point as it stands is great considering the power of primaries. It just needs to feel good to use. Right now landing one isn't worthwhile also in part because you can't really utilize it much because of how good players have become at performing quick getups when they get knocked down. It's basically just a 500ms stun as it is because of that.

You get at least one free shot at most ranges where you'd directly hit an alt-frag, meaning that one well-placed headshot with P3 is an instakill and with E11 primary they have at best around 15-20 hp left. With a bowcaster they'd have around 10 hp left. That's a crippling amount of damage to any Jedi and virtually any followup would kill them. For a Jedi who has taken any chip damage during a round, that is lethal. It's quite strong now, especially considering a frag soldier has 3 of these.

I'd recommend only looking at point costs for frag nades now rather than changing how they work (besides possibly quickthrow but that's a different story). On the other hand, sonic nades and fire nades need retouching for their price point. Fire nades are insanely oppressive (15 points for 2 fire nades that can instantly lock down an entire corridor and prevent any class besides Jedi from going through it, and with no way to put it out or to counter it since a right-click fire nade is nearly unpushable?) and sonic nades are nearly never taken in higher-level play since dodge and frag nades are far less risky and generally have much better reward with their kill potential. Allowing sonics to put out fire nades is a way to balance both, or possibly letting sonics have a slowing effect on deafened humanoid characters?

 

[Spaghetti]

Limiting critique to what can be achieved with minimum effort sets the bar low. Imagine how difficult it would be for anyone to speak up if they first have to know what's achievable? The point of critique is to highlight problems and explain why they are problems. Critique can't magically fix the problem, it can just bring attention to one and perhaps bring to light potential solutions.

This really speaks to you having no clue how much effort went into making the new UI. If you think this is a minimal effort I'm not sure what to say other than you've never tried something as ambitious as what was done here with the limitations involved. It's pretty stunning to see such a critique with no basis on the technical issues from someone with as much access and experience as you've had with the team.

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

BadOl'Ben.

Simple solution. If the engine is limited, rather than going forward, go backward!

Port mb into a minecraft mod!

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

This really speaks to you having no clue how much effort went into making the new UI. If you think this is a minimal effort I'm not sure what to say other than you've never tried something as ambitious as what was done here with the limitations involved. It's pretty stunning to see such a critique with no basis on the technical issues from someone with as much access and experience as you've had with the team.

I think you misunderstood what I said. Sorry for wording it poorly. The update's been a mountain of work, I have not questioned that. What I meant is that providing critique on the current UI should not be limited to things that can be improved with minimal effort. For example we should not limit our scope by saying "Oh that's a hard-to-fix bug, so why even bring it up? You should know better." This applies to the broken selection tracking for example. It is still a UX issue even if we bury our heads in the sand by saying that it takes too much effort to fix. With that said, I think I have a way to hack around that issue with no C code required, fingers crossed.

I'll find the time to make the visual hierarchy fixes to highlight exactly what I'm talking about. It sounds like you guys are totally missing what I'm trying to say.

I think I'll have an hour or two per week to dedicate to this, considering the time I've spent in this thread already. Did some work on it yesterday, starting by altering the timer's font weight and simplifying the class loadout concept by removing visual clutter and making actions more readable and uniform with the rest of the UI. Since loadouts are done per class, it'll probably take a while before I've updated all classes to follow this. Once I have those done, I'll plop an apk in this thread with some before/after examples to highlight what I'm talking about. It's clear something is getting lost in translation, these are not big changes.

There are some larger issues that will take some time to design and solve, like the disjointed hilt selection and the cognitive overload introduced by the always-on model selection but I have a few ideas I'm slowly germinating on for those as well. My starting idea is to move the point assignment as the right-most panel. This way the okay button is situated more appropriately for the user. I noticed issues with certain tooltips overlapping with back/okay, which I think can be solved with some clever use of new features you've made.

So yeah, watch this space.