Why?

[unmerged(133722)]

First impressions of Designers Cut:

Why have you done this? The interface, I mean. You had the beginnings of a good, smooth UI, with drag and drop to load and unload the cargo. The problem was that you mis-prioritized the actions so that a mouse drag was 1 quantity, instead of the max quantity. The problem with the rest of the interface was that you did not extend that concept to the other parts of the Strategic view, for example, fleet management - the building of new ships and placing them into a new fleet, or moving a ship from one fleet to the next, etc....

With Designers Cut, you have removed those first steps at a good user interface, and replaced it with a horribly tedious multi-click, multi-mouse-movement, multi-tab, very unnatural and overly complex interface. You have released a product that has changed the interface, and committed the cardinal sin of not improving it, but instead making it worse. It is very clumsy, very amateur, and it really detracts from the experience of the game.

What is maddening from a user-perspective is that underneath this horror, you have a really fantastic game. And creating that game is the *really* difficult job, the huge cost overhead, all of the hours put into coding and testing and debugging. You did a great job.

But after you have painstakingly sculpted this Venus, you slapped a couple of buckets of the cheapest paint on it and added a price tag. You've insulted your own work.

Please, for the love of Pete, hire someone who knows how to design an interface.

PS - The Port Information page - you can't run the clock with this dialog up? That's just cruel!

 

[unmerged(175927)]

I agree

I agree. The new 2D port interface is not intuitive, and not very easy on the eyes. Even worse is that the removal of the old 2D ports detracts from the visual beauty of the game. I find now that shifting to this ugly 2d spreadsheet like interface every time I enter a port ruins the ambience of the game. Furthermore, it seems that we are no longer treated to the entire soundtrack of the game, forced now to listen to the main theme ad naseum. On top of this there seems to be no way to switch back to 3D versions.

It's just not as much fun anymore. I felt that the old port interface was fine actually. Moving goods onto the ship by clicking and dragging actually made more sense to me, and once you got used to the key commands it wasn't difficult to add the amount you wanted. The part that was annoying was the amount of time it took to get from the strategic screen to the port view in 3D mode. I would gladly put up with the delay rather than have to deal with this clunky, throwback of an interface.

I too, cannot understand why the devs would have thrown away all the good work they did, and then replaced it with something so awful.

Please bring back the old 2D interface, or tell us how to mod the game to bring back the 3D versions, or better yet both. I know they are still there, as I can access them in Pirate Bay.

 

[Pauvrelieu]

Personally, I like a lot about the new interface. You can access all of your ports and ships in port from one screen, which makes things handy. That being said, I do miss the option of being able to enter the 3D ports and listening to the music. I feel bad, because someone obviously worked long and hard on both of these things, and now they're inaccessible in the main game.

Oh well, hopefully in the future, we can keep the convenient 2D/multi-port screen while having the option to visit the ports in 3D if we wish. All in all, I quite like the changes in the DC.

 

[unmerged(175927)]

Well I think the best solution would be to address the shortcomings of the old port interface, but the second best would be to give us the option of choosing which of the 3 interfaces the player wants to display: New 2d, old 2d, or 3d. Since the code is still in there, this should be simple enough.

 

[unmerged(153936)]

Personally, I like a lot about the new interface. You can access all of your ports and ships in port from one screen, which makes things handy. That being said, I do miss the option of being able to enter the 3D ports and listening to the music. I feel bad, because someone obviously worked long and hard on both of these things, and now they're inaccessible in the main game.

Oh well, hopefully in the future, we can keep the convenient 2D/multi-port screen while having the option to visit the ports in 3D if we wish. All in all, I quite like the changes in the DC.

That is exactly my thoughts on it. While the new interface is very usefull the ambience of the 3D or 2D ports is an integral part of the game for me. Seeing they were removed in Privateer is the major reason I haven't registered with Impulse to download the designers cut, along with the endless battle bug and the new captains' voice that sounds more like a cabin boy.

 

[unmerged(175798)]

I also prefer this current interface, however the process of adding ships to the fleet is labourious. Also how do you remove or transfer a ship from a fleet? Cant seem to find it anywhere?

 

[Azugal]

From a port view, click on the captain of the fleet. Then click on the individual ship. Bottom left-ish is the same icon they use to transfer a new ship to a fleet. Click on that and you can transfer it to another fleet in the same port. Or presumably create a new fleet, haven't tried that.

 

[unmerged(159865)]

I want my 3D port view back!!!! I agree, it added to the game, the ambiance, the ability to see your ships at the docks, the music...it was just all...nice. at least give us the option of re-enabling it. I think I'm getting carpel from all the mouse movement in the new interface!

 

[Forster]

From a port view, click on the captain of the fleet. Then click on the individual ship. Bottom left-ish is the same icon they use to transfer a new ship to a fleet. Click on that and you can transfer it to another fleet in the same port. Or presumably create a new fleet, haven't tried that.

I don't think it always appears. I did it a couple of times, then I tried it again, and the icon wasn't there.

 

[Azugal]

Don't know, it was there the few times I tried to use it.

 

[AcidBath420]

you know, you dont have to use DC if you really dont like it that much. just back up your save games, reinstall EIC and patch it with 1.6 or w/e,put your save files back into the appropriate folder, and there you go no DC. DC is entirely optional, not a required patch.

i personally love DC. the extra 3 seconds it takes me to move the sliders around while loading up ships is worth the 20 minutes of loadscreens per hour of gameplay that it saves me from. i dont miss the 3d port views that much, they were ok to look at but i bought this game for the naval combat and trade, not to sit and look a couple buildings sitting next to the ocean.

but eh, do what you want. =)