Two clicks for the price of one, please.

[ahostofissues]

• First and most egregious, when getting into the pilots chair one has to click it twice.

No, because I might want the ship staying still without pilot control.
That's why there should be two options:
- take control (immediately sit to the chair), currently this takes two clicks and delay
- ask the captain to leave the chair without taking control; this happens currently after first click

I don’t know how others feel, but I’d be 100% fine with this. The issue is the click target on second click: rotating chair, pilot moves to obscure most of the chair, etc. It’s the “dynamic situation making it harder to do second mouse click as intended, given that you have to shift around to hit the right target.”

Make it so 1-click on chair runs the whole thing, and add a dialog option for “get up”.

The cases where you’re trying to get into the chair often involve “take over because captain is being stupid, and I gotta fix this fast.”

The cases where you want to leave the chair open, it seems, rarely involve a need for making this happen fast.

But I think the issue from Egosoft’s side is that there’re are three actions, which are completely separate:

1. Tell pilot to give up, the first “activate” action.
2. Chair rotation and pilot-gets-up visual animation action.
3. Sit down in chair action.

I’m obviously uncertain as to whether it’s possible, without undue effort, for Egosoft devs to merge those three actions into one (fast action) and still leave 1+2 as a separately activate-able action.

They could obviously rip the whole implementation out and start over, but who knows if the work involved in that would be with it.

So given need to prioritize resources, I would advocate “just remove 1 and 2, make 3 — sit in the chair — the only action”.

There’s nothing you need to do in the game that requires an empty chair. There’s no game mechanic tied to it in any way. Remove the possibility of an empty chair entirely from the game, and your ability to play the game changes not at all. Nothing — nothing — in the game requires an empty chair as a prerequisite.

Empty chair is all about “I, the player, want to pretend that X”. Which, fine, I’m 100% ok with.

But if developers can only do one quick fix or nothing, that quick fix should be “eliminate the empty chair.” What we lose is in no way comparable to the benefit this would provide in UI.

[ahostofissues]

For me the main issue is not that I have to click twice, nor the delay, but more the inconvenience that I have to carefully realign the mouse cursor with being able to click on the seat, because once the pilot turns around to move the chair, the pilot is in the way and clicking then would result in me talking to the pilot instead, so I have to find a new spot to click on.

I feel sorry for suggesting this disgusting solution:
After first click I used to look down and move toward the chair (there are not many of clip testing so you can stay with the chair at the same place).
And there's always visible part of chair where I do second click to occupy the chair.
This way I used to avoid clicking npc captain.

My “solution”: look at the base of the chair, triple-click as fast as I can. 85% of the time this turns the whole thing into a single user action. But it involves slowing down, intentionally targeting one small specific thing, and still 15% of the time I end up in a conversation with the pilot… while my shields are being shredded, the ship I’m chasing is getting away, whatever (whatever Bad Thing my pilot is letting happen that I’m trying to boot him out of the chair so I can fix).

[Nanook]

...

So given need to prioritize resources, I would advocate “just remove 1 and 2, make 3 — sit in the chair — the only action”.

There’s nothing you need to do in the game that requires an empty chair. There’s no game mechanic tied to it in any way. Remove the possibility of an empty chair entirely from the game, and your ability to play the game changes not at all. Nothing — nothing — in the game requires an empty chair as a prerequisite. ...

You know, having a closed mind about how others play the game is not helping your cause. I've given a number of reasons for having an 'empty chair' and you've chosen to discount them because you don't play that way. I'm sure others have reasons, too. In your games, you may like to have an NPC pilot in every ship all the time, but I don't, for obvious reasons. Too many times I've gone for a spacewalk and had the NPC pilot jump into the seat and 'continue with previous orders', flying away leaving me stranded. It's the main reason that none of my ships not currently active do not have a pilot. Having to constantly check and remove past orders kinda negates the whole click saving thing.

And for the record, there's one very important instance where that empty chair is a prerequisite: during the HQ mission when Boso Ta tells you to make sure no one is in the ship that's about to explode.

[ahostofissues]

You know, having a closed mind about how others play the game is not helping your cause. I've given a number of reasons for having an 'empty chair' and you've chosen to discount them because you don't play that way. I'm sure others have reasons, too. In your games, you may like to have an NPC pilot in every ship all the time, but I don't, for obvious reasons. Too many times I've gone for a spacewalk and had the NPC pilot jump into the seat and 'continue with previous orders', flying away leaving me stranded. It's the main reason that none of my ships not currently active do not have a pilot. Having to constantly check and remove past orders kinda negates the whole click saving thing.

And for the record, there's one very important instance where that empty chair is a prerequisite: during the HQ mission when Boso Ta tells you to make sure no one is in the ship that's about to explode.

Re: emptying ship for Boso Ta: you think most players accomplish this by being in the ship, telling the pilot to work somewhere else, then leaving the ship in space suit, flying off to a second ship? Vs being in second ship, doing "get info" on target ship and using Crew tab to reassign the person? Or emptying the crew first, flying the ship yourself, and leaving by space suit? Two approaches that in no way involve chair behavior.

There are (at least) two alternate ways of accomplishing this that do not involve chair behavior at all. So it's hardly "needed".

I'm not dismissing that your "reasons" exist, technically. I'm dismissing their weight as serious assertions with regard to the issue at hand (the UI behavior problems).

Your “reasons”, so far as I can see, consist of:
1. Not blowing up a pilot in main plot point
2. Not selling a pilot with the ship
3. Wanting seat empty because… reasons? … when you park the ship.

# 1 is just comical. A one-time event, lasting 10 seconds, in a game that takes 100 hours or more to play. With two alternate ways to do it. Hardly compelling. Borderline not even serious. In another context I would have thought this a funny joke.

#2 is such a tiny little edge case… And you’re not even on the ship when you do it! You evacuate the ship, including yourself.

You're telling me that to prepare a ship for sale you need to be on the ship, initiate conversation with the captain, move him. Then go to the crew roster and promote another captain, so you can talk to him in the chair and move him, then go to the crew roster... I have trouble believing anyone empties a ship for sale by doing this. Again, giving the extremely limited nature of the "use case" here and the fact that this is much more easily accomplished by another mechanism, asserting this as a reason appears to hold little weight.

#3 is a personal preference. It has zero effect on game mechanics. None. You just prefer it for aesthetic reasons. Fine. Good for you. But it’s not a gameplay mechanic where you “need” an empty chair. (You think it's for gameplay reasons, but your "reason" here is that you're unwilling or unable to turn off the "abandon me in my spacesuit" behavior via game setting. You're in effect choosing to set your game to behave in the manner you find objectionable, then saying "but I have to be able to have an empty chair to avoid that!" I submit that instead what you really "need" is to make use of a game setting provided for exactly, specifically, this purpose.)

Again, every single player, every one, who plays X4 has to deal with the UI and control issues presented by the current operation of the chair. That issue exists, and is non-trivial.

If you’re presenting #1 - 3 above as in any way a serious counter for that fact then your brain just works differently then mine in some way that we are never going to get past and agree on.

Do people exist who have some sort of roleplay use for the chair? Yes. Are there ways of accomplishing "empty the chair for sale/destruction" that involve making use of the empty chair as a mechanic? Yes. You are right that they exist.

The question is do they matter? are they necessary? do they add value that justifies the UI pain point? You're right that I'm dismissing them because (a) they're extremely specific, limited in scope, use, and value, and (b) there are alternative mechanisms that work quite well and are easily available.

If it seems like I'm being dismissive of "how other people play" it's because no one who plays that way has chimed in to offer an "I need this because..." reason that holds any water. A few poeple feel like they want it. No one has come up with any reason why the need it.

Plenty of people have come up with reasons why they need the behavior to go away, foremost among them being the frustration of simply trying to operate the game mechanic the way it's intended.

So I'm not dismissing your reasons. I'm saying "I heard your reasons, I took a close look at them, and I'm having trouble believing you're serious about their actual value to most players." They're simply not compelling enough to merit being actual arguments for keeping the current UI behavior as a requirement for them to exist.

[Edits: heavily edited. My first version was way off-the-handle obnoxious and I apologize to anyone who read it. I was being even more of an ass than usual, and it was not called for. This version is still pretty agressive, but that's intentional.]

[ahostofissues]

In your games, you may like to have an NPC pilot in every ship all the time, but I don't, for obvious reasons. Too many times I've gone for a spacewalk and had the NPC pilot jump into the seat and 'continue with previous orders', flying away leaving me stranded. It's the main reason that none of my ships not currently active do not have a pilot. Having to constantly check and remove past orders kinda negates the whole click saving thing.

Uh… you DO realize there’s a game setting that controls this behavior, right? That you can turn it off…?

If you’re hanging your hat on this, then… Whew. Ok. I have to admit, I have no response. Other than to just stare at your text sort of dumbfounded. You got me. I’m flummoxed.

Maybe you started with X4 before the anti-stranding settings were introduced. Maybe you’re genuinely unaware that they exist. Gonna give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume that’s the case.

[Nanook]

You're either misunderstanding or misconstruing what I'm saying. If you go back a ways in this thread, you'll see that I agree that there should be a one-click option. The main thing I'm disagreeing with you about is your claim that having an empty seat, for whatever reason, is a worthless feature. Despite your rather dismissive 'Great Wall of Text', it's not.

(And for the record, that 'setting' does not always work the way it's described. Too many times, 'previous orders' seem to supersede that setting. )

[ahostofissues]

You're either misunderstanding or misconstruing what I'm saying. If you go back a ways in this thread, you'll see that I agree that there should be a one-click option. The main thing I'm disagreeing with you about is your claim that having an empty seat, for whatever reason, is a worthless feature. Despite your rather dismissive 'Great Wall of Text', it's not.

(And for the record, that 'setting' does not always work the way it's described. Too many times, 'previous orders' seem to supersede that setting. )

Ok. I still don’t agree with you. As you said, perhaps I’m misunderstanding something.

But I’ve had more than a fair chance to state my view, and I thank everyone for indulging me as I ranted.

Peace.

[Endealon]

Your request is valid, but useless. For what it's worth, you have my +1.

When I read this forum (and the comments on Steam) it's more apparent to me that from the developers' perception things are perfectly fine with this game, including of course the worst interface I've ever seen in a game. in 30 years.

[Endealon]

Great company for designing game mechanics. Third-rate-at-best company for designing UI to effectively interact with those mechanics.

But I’ve played 1000 hours and will probably buy any expansion they release. So maybe they’re the ones laughing, despite how frustrating it all is on this end.

...and this is why EgoSoft has absolutely no reason or motivation to improve or change something that desperately needs to be improved or changed.

Why lift a finger if buyers continue to buy our junk and also express it publicly in our forums?

Go on, go on.

[ahostofissues]

Great company for designing game mechanics. Third-rate-at-best company for designing UI to effectively interact with those mechanics.

But I’ve played 1000 hours and will probably buy any expansion they release. So maybe they’re the ones laughing, despite how frustrating it all is on this end.

...and this is why EgoSoft has absolutely no reason or motivation to improve or change something that desperately needs to be improved or changed.

Why lift a finger if buyers continue to buy our junk and also express it publicly in our forums?

Go on, go on.

Disagree. I think people take pride in their work, want to put out good software, are embarrassed by not being able to do another job. There’s motivation other than pure balance sheet bottom line considerations. But maybe you work at a place where this isn’t true, and so are assuming everywhere works that way.

If you think they like seeing people constantly complain about their software in their forums, then you’ve never been on the receiving end of publicly releasing software and sitting back to see what reaction it gets.

[Submarine]

Individual programmers may want to take pride in their product but when bound by an employment contract developing company owned IP they are constrained in what they may work on and the decision about what that is lies with other personnel also employed by the company to get the best return on investment and development will proceed based on what they believe will bring that about.

Some managers seem to believe publicity is more important and thereby sales than looking after playability and garnering a reputation through gamer to gamer recommendation, which can be significant on the web.

The question becomes how does one convince decision makers that the interface is letting the game down and makes it very annoying to play.

I would point out two things to them.

Mixed recent reviews on Steam (at the time of writing) are a direct result of annoyance felt by players and hurt sales.

Ignoring playability and qol works least well for returning customers which is the nature of the DLC customer base, which is a subset of the original player base. If the game is frustrating to play and stays frustrating to play, that subset will be smaller.

That to my mind is the math which demonstrates playability has to be addressed if you care about X4's success.

[jlehtone]

... the worst interface I've ever seen in a game. in 30 years.

I can think of many from that time period. Perhaps our definition of "good interface" differs drastically?

[Maebius]

People are too quick to defend existing UI design decisions that, if changed, will be better suited for 99% of your interactions.

I'm sure if that one time you need to do that semi-rare thing, an extra click on the "usual action", to do that "other thing" can be added somehow.

Not talking just about keeping the chair empty. Almost every proposal has such replies and it's pretty annoying to observe.

[Submarine]

Its not just about two clicks where one would do, that is the tip of the iceberg, its about lack of ergonomic refinement relating to the tasks players want to carry out when playing.

If egosoft are willing to give it the attention it deserves then I would be willing to make more of an effort to point these out and help them refine the interface as an unpaid beta tester and I am sure I am not alone in being willing to help. Its just not worth it if they are unwilling to engage.

e.g. I previously posted to ask for two additional improvements, which I first did for Split Vendetta feedback and recently rerequested for ToA because the X4 interface has not changed at all regarding these needs.

• Please add shift click to move order to top or bottom.

viewtopic.php?f=146&t=449829&p=5146708#p5146474

• Please provide global and ship setting to disallow boost in attack.

viewtopic.php?f=146&t=449827&p=5146438#p5146438

These I think are an absolute minimum necessity and to my mind act as something of a litmus test for egosoft's awareness of this kind of issue and more to the point their willingness and ability to engage with the much needed refinement of the interface.

Interface has been a big hurdle for X games since at least X2 and is part of the reason the niche appeal of the game is restricted because it adds to the barrier to entry which adds to the pile of disgruntled negative reviews. IMHO rather than giving up on it and leaving it with unrefined minimum functionality, as it has been, it needs to be addressed as a priority because it does matter and will make a difference.

[Endealon]

... the worst interface I've ever seen in a game. in 30 years.

I can think of many from that time period. Perhaps our definition of "good interface" differs drastically?

It's very easy to answer: if you consider that X4 has a "good interface", yes, of course, we have radically different opinions about what is (and what should be) a "good interface".