New Customization Feedback/Wishlist

[nas1m]

As feedback on the new merged Inventory/Customization introduced by 1.001 beta has been fairly scattered I thought it might be a good idea to create a single thread to collect and (if possible) rate it as well as push motivate Keith to actually implement some of them .

This list is by no means complete (and contains a shameless number of my own suggestions as well). So please feel free to post your own view of what are the issues/ideas that are most important to you.

To keep things (hopefully) easier to parse please only add a single post and edit it if needed.

So the here's my list concerning what are my top three four things that I would like to see:

Store/Inventory integration
Show stat comparisons on mouse-over in Inventory -> added in 1.002 beta
Secondary filter dropdown
Load/Save Loadouts


@Keith: Do you have any word on whether/when further improvements to the new merged Customization/Inventory will happen?

[muttala]

only one for me - to remove parts picture and keep only exo picture and blank slots  to make it less busy / crowded
if possible add a power usage bar

something like below

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/707/mvoj.png/

[ScrObot]

I put some things into Mantis last week but it didn't seem like they were being reviewed at all, so I stopped. *shrug* It also sounds like there's some separate discussions going on in the Steam forums. *doubleshrug*

[keith.lamothe]

*doubleshrug*

How do you do that?  Sounds uncomfortable.

On the mantis stuff, I do glance at it but haven't taken the time to file anything as I haven't had anywhere near enough time to actually work on the game (five-week-old in the house, needing to work on the next project if we're to not fall way behind the revenue ball since Bionic hasn't sold well, etc). 

On the steam forums, I basically respond when I see someone say something I have a response for and for a while more was being said there (at least in a form that was visible to me, I haven't actually gotten updates on this thread for instance).

Anyway, just put in some of the core changes, going to see what else I can manage

[jordot42]

Oh wow, this game hasn't sold well?  I'm surprised.  I'm having tons of fun with it.  I especially like powering up my exos with the incredible variety of items I find.

[Elcs]

I wouldn't mind a Mission Highlight filter for the city screen.

Select 'Factory' under the Filter, All Factory missions are highlighted with a larger icon/snazzy colours/big exclamation mark/arrow marked 'Over here'.

Mid-game with Axis and almost every 'area' on the map is visible, it gets a little chaotic/cluttered to my eyes when trying to find out where to concentrate your remaining days.

[ScrObot]

I wouldn't mind a Mission Highlight filter for the city screen.

Select 'Factory' under the Filter, All Factory missions are highlighted with a larger icon/snazzy colours/big exclamation mark/arrow marked 'Over here'.

Mid-game with Axis and almost every 'area' on the map is visible, it gets a little chaotic/cluttered to my eyes when trying to find out where to concentrate your remaining days.

I also agree with this. I was considering how best to do this, perhaps when you mouse over a mission type (say, Lion's Den), all the other Lion's Den mission icons got a little bigger and changed colors, or an arrow would appear near them or something.

Alternately there could be a list of mission type icons down the side (right next to the bots?), perhaps with the number of those missions remaining on the map, and mousing over each of those would highlight those particular mission types somehow.

(Additionally, the ability to "tag" missions so you can plan out where you want to go would be really helpful: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=12877 )

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, the new screen is going main-branch (and default-on) in 1.005 (which will probably come out Monday).  I've made a few additional improvements like with the instructions moving to the tooltips, etc, but to address the specifics raised here (leaving aside non-customization-related stuff like city map filters) :

Store/Inventory integration

Literally bringing in the buy interface would make this even more of a frankenstein's monster, but I did take ScrOBot's suggestion of making shift+right-click sell an unequipped or archived inventory item on the new interface.

Secondary filter dropdown

I _could_ add that, but there are two main reasons I think it unnecessary:

1) When you do two successive filters, it retains the order of the previous one in cases where the new one doesn't find a difference between two items.  Of course, that doesn't help in cases where you'd like to do something like sort by +Regen but want +10 shields to "count" more than +1 Regen, but honestly I don't see how we can add that much additional info/control without making it even more super-crowded.

2) For loot generated in 1.005 or later, the variant-types (which use the same part name, but different graphics) will no longer have their own effects, effectively reducing the number of effects on most (say, 70%) parts by 1 and thus substantially reducing the need for this kind of advanced filtering.

Load/Save Loadouts

Again, could do it, but I'm concerned that the functionality will be so niche (the only really legit usage is to save, wipe clean, try something out, and then re-load it if you want to scrap the new approach) that a lot of players will look to it to do things it can't really do, like intelligently retain some kind of loadout concept across multiple missions despite some of the parts going to other slots, other exos, being sold, etc.  And when they discover that it doesn't in fact do those things, they will ask why it's there in the first place

[nas1m]

Store/Inventory integration

Literally bringing in the buy interface would make this even more of a frankenstein's monster, but I did take ScrOBot's suggestion of making shift+right-click sell an unequipped or archived inventory item on the new interface.

Fair enough. Being able to sell an item directly from the Inventory should cover most situations that require using the shop for me. Having the dedicated storefront for browsing new parts won't hurt I think .
Just one request: Could you add a the "NEW!"' overlay to new parts in the Shop screen as well? Would be more consistent I think...
 

 

Secondary filter dropdown

I _could_ add that, but there are two main reasons I think it unnecessary:

1) When you do two successive filters, it retains the order of the previous one in cases where the new one doesn't find a difference between two items.  Of course, that doesn't help in cases where you'd like to do something like sort by +Regen but want +10 shields to "count" more than +1 Regen, but honestly I don't see how we can add that much additional info/control without making it even more super-crowded.

2) For loot generated in 1.005 or later, the variant-types (which use the same part name, but different graphics) will no longer have their own effects, effectively reducing the number of effects on most (say, 70%) parts by 1 and thus substantially reducing the need for this kind of advanced filtering.

I think this will suffice given the reduced number of individual effects.

Load/Save Loadouts

Again, could do it, but I'm concerned that the functionality will be so niche (the only really legit usage is to save, wipe clean, try something out, and then re-load it if you want to scrap the new approach) that a lot of players will look to it to do things it can't really do, like intelligently retain some kind of loadout concept across multiple missions despite some of the parts going to other slots, other exos, being sold, etc.  And when they discover that it doesn't in fact do those things, they will ask why it's there in the first place

I can see this causing trouble, sure. I just hoped somebody would be able to come up with something workable . Well, hopefully the new customization is good enough to speed up trying new complete loadouts enough to make it worthwhile...