"If it's not broken, don't fix it": so was said, so will be said, always.
An outdated saying that leads to the lack of progress. Remember how computer's used to have less than one megabyte of available space?
I don't mind design changes, but yeah, when you put both next to each other and the old one proves to provide the player with more information based purely on visual feedback, then the old one was better.
But then one can come with the following example, a perspective I want to mention and talk for a moment here, but is not required for you to read as the tl;dr is already said above:
Looking at the kill feed is an option, but if I go into your average shooter like Call of Duty and kill a random dude then I know I killed him, because he drops dead, I don't have to check the kill feed for that. In Guns of Icarus you can see guns and engines smoking when they are destroyed, balloons being deflated and smoke coming from the hull when the armor is damaged and I think you can even see bits and pieces of the armor fall of the ship when it is destroyed completely, in addition to that, all these components emit a bright little flash on their ship the moment they are destroyed.
So just like in your average shooter the player is provided with arguably enough visual feedback. If you don't look at the armor you don't see it die without watching the kill feed, no, but if you don't watch somebody get killed in your average shooter than you won't know about that either unless you check the kill feed as well. If the hitmarkers are required on top of all the other current visual feedback then it most likely means the other current visual feedback is not strong enough or designed well enough to transmit the desired information and needs to be looked at.
Newbies may or may not need guidance through the hitmarkers. Shooting ships in Goio adds more depth than killing a random dude in your average shooter and a lot of newbies may not be used to this depth as it may very well be unique to Goio and a selective few other games. Imagine a person in your average shooter would consist of just as many party as in Goio, what would if you shoot an enemy arm or a leg, how does shooting these specific parts impact your fights with other players? Players have to adapt that logic to ships, non human entities that they cannot associate with as the players behind the screen is
probably a human being and not a ship.
That depth itself is easy to understand though, destroy engines and they can't move forward or turn, makes sense alright, but it gets complex with the different damage modifiers which also leads to how guns synergize with each other, which players have to learn by heart or else they will be incredibly ineffective and be on an almost guaranteed losing streak. Now the tutorial would have stepped in here at some point, but you know, tutorials are not appealing to all players that just want to play, and what if they take a break for a bit and forgot some basics? Redoing the tutorial seems boring. The old hitmarkers help these players to understand the game without having to fully understand its depth and complexity, which makes it more appealing to players that are not as dedicated as some of us vets and competitive players. Considering that a lot of them make the game's playerbase, Muse may want to stick with the old system of the old hitmarkers, but they are allowed to make it look prettier if they wanted to.
