Guns Of Icarus Online
Info => Feedback and Suggestions => Topic started by: Piemanlives on October 29, 2015, 07:02:19 pm
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With the release of the recent patch a launcher can be seen, this launcher displays recent news, server status, patch information. All that good and useful stuff.
Bit of an issue, the launcher as it were, displays AFTER all the open videos and logos. It makes little sense to me as to why it would appear there of all places.
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The launcher doesn't actually launch the game. It's just a convenience for when announcements need to be made or servers go down, as that section can contain more detailed information than the old "connecting..." screen could. Launcher is a bit of a misnomer in that regard.
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Then it should probably be renamed if its just a glorified load screen.
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This is how you launcher:
(http://i.imgur.com/zwyupWZ.jpg)
It's compact, helpful, and happens before the game goes full screen.
(http://i.imgur.com/cX5ESUI.jpg)
Why does pressing the play button take like 10 seconds to take me into the connecting screen?
Why is this all surrounded by grey nothing? Just have this as a window.
If the servers are down, why do I sit through the full screen logo before you tell me?
Why is the only news listed from 2005?
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I am utterly baffled by how useless and disruptive this is.
If this is broken, it needs to be fixed. If this is working as intended, the person who planned the feature has no idea what the fuck they are doing.
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This is not a launcher, nor a decent pin board.
-Anakin_ posted a great example of what a launcher should be: an external application, sleek, elegant and more importantly good loking.
If you don't know how to make a launcher THEN DON'T DO IT. I couldn't care less that this is "not a launcher", this is junk.
Either REMOVE IT, or create an external (still unwanted) app that acts as GoIO's launcher.
Third option: embed in the main menu a box with news, in 16:9 screen there's tons of wasted space.
Muse, please, stop ruining your own game.
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I think the issue here is, once again, they did not give themselves time for us to fully test EVERY part of the new patch before release. This is the reoccurring issue Muse keeps performing. Putting these things on the dev app less than a week before scheduled release is not testing, it's a preview. The other issue is that they really haven't valued our feedback, which leads to the previous issue.
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Hey Guys,
The reason we do testing a week in advance is it does give us enough time to remove a feature or rework parts of it in the given time.
I personally received no feedback on the launcher or I would've rushed it to Jerry (our database manager) and gotten it fixed.
If there's something you hate about the launcher or want improved. Send me an email about it at feedback@musegames.com. I seriously beg for feedback on all these features and I'm disappointed when I receive the hate after the fact. If you send in feedback and we decide not to change it feel free to bring on your hate and send me an email and I'll tell you why we did it. We've removed or vastly edited many features based off player feedback because you guys are pretty damn insightful.
The launcher can definitely be edited and changed, but here's the reasons I really really want to keep one.
1) You guys host awesome events and have very few places to show it off. Using a launcher it gives us the best way to put your awesome events right in front of the players. For too long many events have just been for the forum goers and many players don't even know about the Cogs, Blood and Brass, SCS, or any of the other events that have really defined the highest skill level of the game.
2) When we got DDoSed it showed a major issue with our system. Tens of thousands of players turned on the game and got "can not connect to server." There are many people who didn't come back after seeing that especially new players who we would've loved to have in the game to become vets. Using this we can show emergency maintenance, scheduled downtime, DDoSing, or any server closing issues that come up without a player having to dig through our facebook or twitter.
Again, if there's something you don't like about it, let us know, tell me which parts bother you. Size, look, anything, I take every piece of feedback and weigh it heavily.
I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again.
EMAIL ME
As for this forum thread, I'm not going to spend a lot of time here. I've got a lot of work to do and this isn't the best way to communicate with the community (We've got some better ways we're testing out right now.) I am definitely happy to talk to any of you about any of the changes, ideas you want shown off more/less/anywhere inbetween. As always:
EMAIL ME
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I'm actually with ya keyvias, I think the launcher is a great idea, because it can promote events better. I don't really care if it's before or after I start the game, but it seems to be a large criticism so it's worth considering the objections. I didn't see any issues so I didn't email.
However, I did raise concerns about the minotaur buff on the feedback forums. And no, I still don't think less than a week is the proper amount of time for public testing and feedback gathering. And no, I didn't email my concerns. I'll be blunt as to why; I think emailing is fine as a choice, but not as a requirement. I think if you have a test server, and a test server forum, it's the dev's responsibility to read the feedback there, and measure their response from that feedback as strongly as they would from an email. I don't like emailing you guys. Partially because in general I hate emailing. I also think that the emails can be disregarded easier, I know this probably isn't true 95% of the time, but that's the general view I have of emailing any customer service ever over my lifetime. And I do believe that over the course of this game's life, the devs have gone from a place of attentively listening to forum feedback to outright ignoring it, because of the negative criticisms they have seen. I think that's a bad stance, a bad behaviour, and I would prefer to see you guys gauging our feedback here as strongly as from emails. So basically, I can't be bothered to email, because I don't think it matters or would make a difference, and I know you guys don't care to make decisions based off of forum feedback, so my desire to even give feedback at all is quite limited.
Just my personal stance so you guys know why at least I don't email feedback very often.
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Oh one other thing Matt. You mentioned that we didn't give any feedback during the week of testing. I think the issue there is that you guys never give us any test server patch notes! So we tend to look at whatever big change or addition is being hyped, because the only details we get are from you tell us to look at. I didn't hear anything on the fireside about the launcher, and we have no patch notes to know any better! I bet a lot of guys who went on the dev app didn't think anything of it, because they either didn't know it was going in, or forgot about it.
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I second this, though I haven't been involved in the testing for a while what few times I have all I know is added is what had been discussed previously. Adding extensive test server patch notes will certainly assist us in our endeavor to help test things and provide feedback. If we don't what's been changed we can't test and examine it, and that doesn't help anyone once we realize what has and hasn't been changed the moment it hits public release.
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Agreed with the necessity of notes. It's really hard to give feedback on changes if we don't know exactly what those changes are
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@Anakin
- Press play as in press play from Steam? Or press play from that screen? If from the screen, it is an extra security thing we're doing. Given what happened, felt like the trade off of a little bit more wait vs extra security is acceptable. But we can try to audit the process to see if we can make it more efficient.
- Gray nothing is a good point. We'll note it.
- The full screen logo resides client side. If that is a bother, we can try to adjust it.
- News from 2005 is a typo. We'll fix that asap.
- Personally I think War Thunder's UI here is a tad busy, but that's subjective on my part. Yeah we can try to add more info and adjust layout in the next rev of design.
It would be great if you could give us feedback earlier. With this screen, we would have had time to make adjustments during testing.
Thanks so much! Howard
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Sure, we'll do better with test notes I agree. But, in this case, there would have been no way you guys could have missed this. If this is say AI commands, I get it. But this is a screen that you could not have avoided, and you know it's new. So not sure what to do there. Also, of the times when you guys give us feedback, it's been usually independent of whether something is releasing or not. It's usually the case where we get feedback on things that are not releasing as well. So, my point is, let's do try to give feedback earlier if the goal is to help us make things better. Thanks guys.
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And here, we see muse experiencing a psychotic break, tired of not getting feedback.
(I kid. And deeply sympathize. I'd like to do more dev-app stuff, but it's hard to find people on, and I tend to be busy Saturdays. But the lack of feedback has to be frustrating.)
So, having said that, here's my suggestions:
The launcher's not a bad idea, but traditionally, launchers happen in a "pre-game" pop-up window that doesn't fill the full boarder of the screen. If there's a way to make sure it's in a window much like
(http://i.imgur.com/8Pu2H3R.jpg)
or
(http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/9/90/Launcher-streaming-status-4_3_2-15148.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120104022059),
it'll look more familiar to most players. On the familiarity note, the "play" button being on the left side is counter to every launcher linked above.
The launcher should contain recent patch notes, community events, a link to the forums, and most importantly-probably on a "splash panel," with STUFF ABOUT ALLIANCE. I've met so many players in-game who don't know the details about Alliance, and this would work as a good advertising tool, and a way to get the word out. Have a link to the bundle store, as well.
Anyway, that's my quick feedback. Again, not a bad idea, just needs improvement. Right now, it looks very unpolished, and jars the flow between launch, and game.
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@DrTentacles Noting this down as well. Thanks!!
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I think the "launcher" is fine. Ironically it will show a lot of its worth when the game is down, and assuming natural progression, it'll populate with more news/events/ect. I'm with Bubbles too when it comes to keeping it clean. Most launchers are way too busy and all I end up caring about is the big "play" button.
My only complaint with it is that its, not actually a launcher, lol. Bulletin Board? Status Page? Idk. You decide.
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Yeah, we talked about it as well. Calling it a launcher isn't the greatest either. Noted.
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What puzzles me is I have to go through 3 screens to just start the game.
I click the game and I have the option to start workshop tool or start the game.
then I load in and find this "launcher" ho's function was to give me an extra button to click for no reason.
Why not fuse the first two steps and have an option to pick between launching the game (with a tick box for the direct x 11), the dev app (hint hint), and the workshop tool thingy.
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@Ceres, yeah because workshop and dev app are separate apps, the launching of those are controlled by Steam (that screen is Steam's).
The screen offers 2 advantages right now. One is the communication of community events and news, and the other is the communication of server downtime, which we think is pretty valuable even though it doesn't happen often (fingers crossed).
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I hadn't heard anything about this launcher in the dev app. I would have let you guys know how I felt about it before if I'd seen it earlier.
I do think the general concept of a launcher is an okay idea, I like the idea of listing news and community events in a very visible way and I understand you guys wanting the server status visible too.
The problem is more the execution. It honestly seems unfinished, with the grey border, and the fact it adds so much time to game launch. Before, your game was one of the quickest to launch and load in my library.
I agree with tentacles about the content it should display too.
Thanks for your replies, devs.
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I noticed it in dev app, but didn't think to give feedback since nothing was mentioned about it. It's probably fair to have the launcher on by default, but have an option for players to turn it off.
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@zanc, I don't think having that option is good, because then we'll have no way of notifying you directly if the game is down when you are trying to get in game.
And interestingly, I just assumed that you guys are giving us feedback even when we don't need it or outside scope :D I know I'm making a joke but it's actually pretty true based on past test sessions. So I'm responding based on this context, that since the launcher is unavoidable, and that we get feedback on everything all the time, if there was some serious concern or dislikes about the launcher, we would have known about it during 8 days of testing period. But no matter, this is besides the point. The focus really should be, let's collect the feedback you guys have, and let's move forward and improve the screen where makes sense.
Thanks everyone.
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To clarify my own post as well, the issue is that instead of it actually launching the game, they just shoved the screen later into the process where it feels out of place. If it functioned correctly it's a fine idea, and an avenue Muse can use to promote community events (if they choose to).
It clearly was designed as a launcher and even has launcher in the "window" title, so I do wonder where in development they ran into problems with the proper implementation, and said "fuck it, put it in anyways".
yeah because workshop and dev app are separate apps, the launching of those are controlled by Steam
Why can't those applications be launched by this launcher instead?
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@urz, yeah totally get you about the flow. With the label of launcher, we labeled it really looking at what content we want to display, and less about it being an executable vs a client scene for example. And to your point, we should not have called it a launcher and should have followed more strictly of convention in this case in terms of flow. I personally didn't really think the wording matter as much, but I was clearly wrong. No need to speculate here. I do think that, we implement based on what we think we need. I think for what we are trying to do, the implementation itself serves the purpose, but the flow and presentation can be better for sure. Thanks!
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My 2 cents: when I saw the big patch go down, I loaded up the game and saw this launcher. The servers were down but I didn't know they were, so I immediately messaged ayetach to let him know the servers were down. He let me know that it was planned and there was a server maintenance update on the new launcher. I had used this launcher and somehow completely missed this server status part. So I feel that part doesn't pop enough. I'm not even sure why, by the rules of visual hierarchy it works but it just doesn't jump at me.
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Byron, ok noted. We'll look at that as well. While I definitely wish we had gotten more feedback sooner, definitely better late than never. So still very appreciative of everyone's feedback today. We'll get cracking on improving this next week. Thanks a lot!
Happy Halloween everyone! Be safe and have fun!
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Oh for sure the launcher idea is good. I like that it shoots the news first and foremost before joining into the game. Sure theres info in game but often times people can't be bothered to push a button. Splash screen launcher with the news solves this and frees up screen real estate once loaded in.
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Maybe you could use the matchmaker waiting time to spread news ? Everyone goes through that. Might as well read something while waiting for a lobby.
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But I use that time to play civ5...
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But I use that time to play civ5...
(http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/brilliant.jpg)
I've already given my 2 cents on Release Notes:
- nay for launcher, I believe you've had some reasons for it but it just makes me wait another few seconds to get into the game. If you really 'have' to have it I'd recommend make it more like EU IV launcher, just a small window on the desktop:
(http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/920145210249140320/9DDCD2A508FDFA7FD8F264275227F68D685CC503/)
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Hey Guys,
We just made a start screen (Aka not-launcher launcher aka starscream (as it's known in the office))
It's in the dev app right now and I'd love your feedback.
Thanks!
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Way better than before.
Still not a launcher tho, but one can live with it. It's decent now.
One suggestion tho...perhaps add a quit button to it as well, so you can just leave, if the servers are down for example.
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I'd like the news feed to be bigger, and have sections for more community events, but it's an improvement. Contests, screenshots, that sort of stuff. Things that make people feel involved. Add a section for the Iron Fork, Dev Matches, and SCS, along with advertisement for fireside chats.
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It's much better.
Agree about an exit button from derwaechter and potential community stuff from tentacles.
I still don't love the extra time and steps in between launching through steam and getting in game but I think it's worth it for the community event exposure.
Also, nitpicking, the pixelation on the background image bugs me.
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I let the team know, adding an exit button will be a priority before we release this updated version. We can add more community events and stuff on there that part is changeable without a patch.
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I got trapped in the start screen just now, since the server is down. :P
Add in an ESC option as well as an exit button.
Will email.
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New start screen is neat and much improved.