Discuss: Your Input - Icon Shape

Wed, 01/04/2017 - 07:46

#272

Izzy

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Joined: 10/09/2013 - 11:09

lets not kid ourselves, the

Lin,
Are you Trying to agro me, 'cause You're getting Better at it!

let's not kid ourselves, the "Icon Makes the Power". Should be a slogan.
So, naturally each AT's powerset will NEED to have unique Icons for all the powers.

This also means other power-set's can reuse these Icons, with a few variations, when appropriate.
This is very similar to what CoH/V had, so i'm not looking for this to change.

In the end, Icon reigns Supreme! ...or was that the Iron Chef? ;)

When i started playing CoH, i think it was on Issue 3, when Fire/Ice tanks reigned Supreme, I never learned what the little grooves meant on 98% of the powers, and i still don't care, like i presume 90% of the other players! I don't care, and never will about those grooves on the powers outskirt, as long as I have a distinguishable Icon. ;)

I don't want my gaming experience to feel like WORK, trying to research what does what. If it isn't intuitive enough without reading docs or watching a tutorial, it should be left out as a default (in options maybe).

I'm sorry if the Art team was hoping to reduce the number of Icons needed for Powers, but different Archetypes will most likely not be able to reuse a handful of Icons from other AT's powers. :/

Players should be able to distinguish each power in a set, just from the ICON. Nothing More! Everything else is Icing on the Cake. :)

Wed, 01/04/2017 - 09:25

#273

mrultimate

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Izzy wrote:

Izzy wrote:

When i started playing CoH, i think it was on Issue 3, when Fire/Ice tanks reigned Supreme, I never learned what the little grooves meant on 98% of the powers, and i still don't care, like i presume 90% of the other players! I don't care, and never will about those grooves on the powers outskirt, as long as I have a distinguishable Icon. ;)
I don't want my gaming experience to feel like WORK, trying to research what does what. If it isn't intuitive enough without reading docs or watching a tutorial, it should be left out as a default (in options maybe).
I'm sorry if the Art team was hoping to reduce the number of Icons needed for Powers, but different Archetypes will most likely not be able to reuse a handful of Icons from other AT's powers. :/
Players should be able to distinguish each power in a set, just from the ICON. Nothing More! Everything else is Icing on the Cake. :)

I agree whole heartedly with this.

Izzy by the way I have been digging your icon designs.

MU

Wed, 01/04/2017 - 10:55

#274

Huckleberry

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Let us not forget that there

Let us not forget that there will only be a finite number of powers sets.

We will have a primary and secondary and tertiary and maybe some temporary and movement icons. As I understand it, all of the hundreds of different powers from CoX are not coming back. I don't know how many different power sets there will be, but there could only be one power set for each classification (primary) and specification (secondary) for a total of twelve. A large number of those will be duplicates, however, with the only difference being the effectiveness differences between being primary powers and secondary powers.
With aesthetic decoupling, they will all look different, though. And when you add in masteries, augments and refinements, I expect that those finite power sets can be made to look and perfrom in far from finite variety.

Then there would be a few tertiary powers that could be adopted no matter which class we play.

So it is not like we have to plan for a way to graphically represent what multitudes of different anonymous or arcane icons will do. We will know them by looking at them without needing cues as to what they do.

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Wed, 01/04/2017 - 11:11

#275

avelworldcreator

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Joined: 12/04/2012 - 12:19

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Well, since the OP doesn't want to explain the (conceptual) game mechanics of nimbus and dots yet, it's really hard to suggest any designs that aren't potentially self-defeating. E.g. it's one thing if the nimbus is either four triangles or none, if they appear and disappear or they're always on and just change colors, if they build up from zero to four ... or ten, or if triangles are used because that evokes something not yet disclosed.
Izzy, the problem I have with the icon base shapes/markings (mostly the markings) is that they're not differentiated enough, and if they were they'd probably interfere with the button art. Quick, tell me which is which:

Versus the frame versions:

BTW, I think you're trying too hard to shove the activity indicator into the button. Did you notice how it obliterates the cone in the right-hand example? Kick it out of the 52 pix diameter.
Izzy wrote:
But i would like the ability to change specifics power Icon.. from Punch01, to say, Punch02. ;)
That means the art folks have to generate several times more art, though, and players will only rarely see the non-base forms, making them harder to remember and differentiate ("Is that a 3-pump or 4-pump?"). Discrete markings like nimbus triangles make more sense, if you have any indicators at all.

I don't see any activity indicator in either image.

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Wed, 01/04/2017 - 11:55

#276

Izzy

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Joined: 10/09/2013 - 11:09

and another thing i HATED

[img]http://i.imgur.com/DyQ4maW.png[/img]

and another thing i HATED from CoH/V, the Macro's, row 4, 1: 'rawr' in the image above.

instead if text, i rather have an ICON of my choosing.
and when players start to complain not enough icons exist, add the feature to use a Emoticon font character(s). One should Suffice, but i've seen people combine 2 to make special meanings. :/ Whatever works for everyone! ;)

ex:
[img=640x480]http://download.gannett.edgesuite.net/detnews/graphics/2016/me_emoji_definitions_022016.jpg[/img]

Wed, 01/04/2017 - 12:18

#277

avelworldcreator

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It may be possible. I'm right

It may be possible. I'm right now trying to define the markup language for UI customization. We are hoping to be able to do this easily.

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Wed, 01/04/2017 - 19:36

#278

Tannim222

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Joined: 01/16/2013 - 12:47

Huckleberry wrote:

Huckleberry wrote:

Let us not forget that there will only be a finite number of powers sets.
We will have a primary and secondary and tertiary and maybe some temporary and movement icons. As I understand it, all of the hundreds of different powers from CoX are not coming back. I don't know how many different power sets there will be, but there could only be one power set for each classification (primary) and specification (secondary) for a total of twelve. A large number of those will be duplicates, however, with the only difference being the effectiveness differences between being primary powers and secondary powers.
With aesthetic decoupling, they will all look different, though. And when you add in masteries, augments and refinements, I expect that those finite power sets can be made to look and perfrom in far from finite variety.
Then there would be a few tertiary powers that could be adopted no matter which class we play.
So it is not like we have to plan for a way to graphically represent what multitudes of different anonymous or arcane icons will do. We will know them by looking at them without needing cues as to what they do.

We are launching with 5 Primary Power Sets per launch Classification. There are 5 launch Classifications.
We have plans for more in out post-launch future. Some of these sets will harken back to the old game to at least repesent a machanical familiairty.

Some Specifications will have Secondary sets which only appear as Secondaries for the foreseeable future, but are part of post-launch-future-planned sets.

Our Tertiaries are based off primary and secondary sets, but will also have unique sets themsevles (like sets containing different Super Senses).

We have travel powers with 5 (possibly 6) for launch, and more planned for the future.

Then there are powers that may be associated with earning certain badges. And there will be crafted temp powers.

Mastery powers don't change how powers function themselves, they may add functionality, but in anway to provide a style of play. We are starting with 3 sets of Mastery powers for each classification, with more planned for the future.

Even just looking at launch, we have many different power sets and types of powers.

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Thu, 01/05/2017 - 07:28

#279

Lin Chiao Feng

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Joined: 11/02/2013 - 09:27

Izzy wrote:

Izzy wrote:

Lin,
Are you Trying to agro me, 'cause You're getting Better at it!

:) :) :)

/em taunt

Not just you, honestly. I just went into Design Review mode, wielding my Red Pencil of Fix That +2, like at work. "If it's not tested, it's broken!" Mostly I was just wanting to make sure you could see what I was talking about.

And yeah, you're hard to aggro. :P

Izzy wrote:

let's not kid ourselves, the "Icon Makes the Power". Should be a slogan.
So, naturally each AT's powerset will NEED to have unique Icons for all the powers.
This also means other power-set's can reuse these Icons, with a few variations, when appropriate.

CoH did that all over the place. Lots of powers had the "explosion" icon that was on the damage enhancement as well. The only difference was the power-related color set. Though some sets had several with the same icon, with the frame being the only difference. For example, Archery had:

[list][*][img]https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//0/04/Archery_ExplodingArrow.png[/img] Explosive Arrow
[*][img]https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//6/65/Archery_ConeArrow.png[/img] Fistful of Arrows
[*][img]https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//d/d3/Archery_RainofArrows.png[/img] Rain of Arrows
[/list]

Assault Rifle had:
[list][*][img]https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//8/8c/AssaultWeapons_ARM30grenade.png[/img] M30 Grenade
[*][img]https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//d/d2/AssaultWeapons_ARFlamethrower.png[/img] Flamethrower
[*][img]https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//1/1a/AssaultWeapons_ARFlamethrowerIgnite.png[/img] Ignite
[/list]

Izzy wrote:

In the end, Icon reigns Supreme! ...or was that the Iron Chef? ;)

It is now! At least here you don't have Bobby Flay standing on the cutting board like an ape.

Izzy wrote:

When i started playing CoH, i think it was on Issue 3, when Fire/Ice tanks reigned Supreme,

/em gigglesnort

Izzy wrote:

I don't want my gaming experience to feel like WORK, trying to research what does what. If it isn't intuitive enough without reading docs or watching a tutorial, it should be left out as a default (in options maybe).

I want to put that on a plaque and send it to Dr. Tyche. Not that he needs it in particular, just that it'd be good to have and he's the boss.

Izzy wrote:

I'm sorry if the Art team was hoping to reduce the number of Icons needed for Powers, but different Archetypes will most likely not be able to reuse a handful of Icons from other AT's powers. :/
Players should be able to distinguish each power in a set, just from the ICON. Nothing More! Everything else is Icing on the Cake. :)

Bold move.

Which is my only dig on your background designs: if they're not differentiating enough, why have them at all? Personally, the frames didn't do much for me, either, in CoH, though I wonder if that had to do with their small size. I would up identifying powers by icon and color set.

avelworldcreator wrote:

I don't see any activity indicator in either image.

The images were comparing power-effect-area backgrounds and frames, not activity indicators. Regarding indicators, right now (prior to knowing anything substantial about nimbuses, dots, or anything else you'll indicate in the panel) I'd prefer the same king of orbiting satellite indicator as seen in the video I posted earlier, or the "pulsating outward" indication you mentioned before I joined the thread.

If you want me to mock up the activity satellite with the new icons, I can. It'll take a while because my GIF-fu is limited; I'd probably wind up doing the whole thing in Python and/or ImageMagick so I could quickly twiddle size, color, rate, etc.

Izzy wrote:

instead if text, i rather have an ICON of my choosing.
and when players start to complain not enough icons exist, add the feature to use a Emoticon font character(s). One should Suffice, but i've seen people combine 2 to make special meanings. :/ Whatever works for everyone! ;)

I'd love to see this, too, and IMHO, the TTD (time to dick) problem is ameliorated by the fact that custom icons would be client-side only, so the only time others see them is in third-party screenshots and videos, which hopefully can be covered by "MWM is not responsible for players being dicks" disclaimer.

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Thu, 01/05/2017 - 11:30

#280

Cinnder

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Joined: 08/26/2013 - 16:24

Izzy wrote:

Izzy wrote:

let's not kid ourselves, the "Icon Makes the Power". Should be a slogan.
So, naturally each AT's powerset will NEED to have unique Icons for all the powers.
This also means other power-set's can reuse these Icons, with a few variations, when appropriate.
This is very similar to what CoH/V had, so i'm not looking for this to change.

I'm afraid I strongly disagree with this. As I've pointed out on this thread, our old city linked icons to their action type, not their power set (that was conveyed by colour), and I would like to see this approach in CoT as well.

If you have unique icons per power set, then not only does that overburden the art team (often resulting in inscrutable images like the ones from SWTOR I posted), but it means we players have to learn a new 'language' for each power set. That goes entirely against the scheme used in our old game.

The one flaw of the old system of identifying power set by colour was the issue of colour-blindness, but I would argue that the power set to which a button belongs is actually less important than its function.

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Spurn all ye kindle.

Thu, 01/05/2017 - 12:09

#281

Izzy

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Last seen: 7 years 5 months ago

Joined: 10/09/2013 - 11:09

Cinnder wrote:

Cinnder wrote:

Izzy wrote:
let's not kid ourselves, the "Icon Makes the Power". Should be a slogan.
So, naturally each AT's powerset will NEED to have unique Icons for all the powers.
This also means other power-set's can reuse these Icons, with a few variations, when appropriate.
This is very similar to what CoH/V had, so i'm not looking for this to change.

I'm afraid I strongly disagree with this. As I've pointed out on this thread, our old city linked icons to their action type, not their power set (that was conveyed by colour), and I would like to see this approach in CoT as well.
If you have unique icons per power set, then not only does that overburden the art team (often resulting in inscrutable images like the ones from SWTOR I posted), but it means we players have to learn a new 'language' for each power set. That goes entirely against the scheme used in our old game.
The one flaw of the old system of identifying power set by colour was the issue of colour-blindness, but I would argue that the power set to which a button belongs is actually less important than its function.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind if an AT shares some icons for many Primary sets. Like the Tank AT.

What I would dislike is if an AT, like Controllers, primary set, also used icons from the Tanks Primary powerset, which MWM won't ever do, just as an example.

Thu, 01/05/2017 - 23:39

#282

Cinnder

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Joined: 08/26/2013 - 16:24

Izzy wrote:

Izzy wrote:

What I would dislike is if an AT, like Controllers, primary set, also used icons from the Tanks Primary powerset, which MWM won't ever do, just as an example.

Why wouldn't MWM do this? Our old game did it all the time.

was a single target minor melee attack whether the character was a tanker, scrapper, brute, or stalker, which meant the player didn't need to learn a new symbol for each AT or power set.

Tanker-Controller cross-usage examples are rarer, given that most of their powers had differing functions and thus different icons, but there are some: indicated an End drain on enemies and increase on self for both electric tankers and electric 'trollers, because it did pretty much the same thing.

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Fri, 01/06/2017 - 00:17

#283

Izzy

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Joined: 10/09/2013 - 11:09

Exceptions do exist. ;)

But, my memory is very hazy, I do recall playing a few AT's, certain powersets, that used the same Icon image, and what they did was sorta different! That stuck with me, and always felt it was a negative. Don't ask me which power icon it was, no clue now, but it happened only a select number of times for a large span of the games lifetime... so i just "LET IT GO"! :(

Fri, 01/06/2017 - 02:49

#284

Cinnder

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Joined: 08/26/2013 - 16:24

I'll agree with you there: if

I'll agree with you there: if the same icon is used for 2 powers that aren't really very similar, that would be confusing. I can't think of any examples of this from the old game, but I believe you. That's definitely a case where multiple icons would be helpful.

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Sun, 01/15/2017 - 01:51

#285

TitansCity

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Joined: 10/28/2013 - 02:09

Planet10 wrote:

Planet10 wrote:

If you want shared shape iconography, they can use the gray area in the center (either the actual shape or the icon in the center), essentially duplicating approach used in City of Heroes.

I like this idée :) The center either could be have différent glowing color when it's toggled or recharging, or in use etc... :)

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Tue, 01/31/2017 - 14:08

#286

Grimfox

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Joined: 08/05/2014 - 10:17

I see there is still some

I see there is still some confusion on the nimbus? As it was explained to me, a blaster can slot her single target energy blast with an augment. These augments can have a broad range of effects. The specific example given is a cone augment. This changes the single target energy blast to a multi target cone energy "wave." The nimbus plays a roll similar to that of the grey boarder seen on the edges of the icons you posted in #279. So the nimbus would change dynamically from the 4 points (using the COH theme) to an arc as seen in "flamethrower" from post #279. There was a considerable discussion about how these should operate (graphically) and appear to the user in another thread. No conclusion was officially proclaimed but I think the devs got the feedback they were looking for.

That's the trouble with these threads is that feedback is requested but it there's never any closure for the forumites. So, debate continues without further response from the devs once they feel they have heard what they need from us. Also, we like to argue with each other...

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Tue, 01/31/2017 - 14:21

#287

doctor tyche

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Especially as the Nimbus isn

Especially as the Nimbus isn't even part of this discussion.

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Thu, 02/02/2017 - 20:23

#288

Lin Chiao Feng

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Joined: 11/02/2013 - 09:27

It would be nice if they

It would be nice if they tossed out some UI mockups every now and then, like they do for the 3D work, so we could have a starting point that isn't all the way back at CoH...

But yeah, we couldn't figure out what the nimbus was supposed to mean or represent, so we tabled it for later.

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Fri, 02/03/2017 - 08:37

#289

doctor tyche

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

It would be nice if they tossed out some UI mockups every now and then, like they do for the 3D work, so we could have a starting point that isn't all the way back at CoH...
But yeah, we couldn't figure out what the nimbus was supposed to mean or represent, so we tabled it for later.

Yes, it would be nice. The problem is, we lack an experienced UX designer, and no matter how much enthusiasm our volunteers have, this is an area where we have been forced to effectively teach ourselves. The stack of rejected ideas as a result could fill up page after page here.

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Fri, 02/03/2017 - 21:37

#290

Lin Chiao Feng

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Joined: 11/02/2013 - 09:27

Good UX designers are hard to

Good UX designers are hard to find. Great ones are rare as heck.

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