crafing Current Crafting System/UI

[Vergaerd]

I don't think it's a stretch to say DU crafting system is not up to par with almost anything out there. Documentation, UI and Codex leave much to desire. Yes it has depth, which is awesome, but it lacks structure and it's not intuitive at all. I like the color scheme they went with for the UI, but even simple color coding of text in the recipe trees, etc would help. All the menu's are the exact same colors!

 

Tips and hints on how to progress through the crafting system are missing across the board. It's an absolute pain to have to keep going back and forth between the pages, machines and inventories just to figure out what you need. Contextual mouse-over information could easily solve this. It currently does not have the right visual representation to say the least.

 

The crafting queue system is not intelligent at all. Even if you queue things up in order, the system will not recognize the previous completed items to continue to the next. So you are constantly deleting and then re-queuing the same components. The best example of how I think this should work instead, is what Empyrion did. You queue a product and the system will try to make as many components to complete that product as it has available. And if you don't have enough it should tell you what you lack. That system also continues crafting when you add materials after it ran out, i.e it has a simple memory function. DU's crafting comes across as soulless and dead. I guess what I'm saying is that even if NQ wants/needs to figure it all out from scratch there are prime examples out there of what works well in games like this.

 

I just hope NQ add/rework and improve this drastically, because even for someone who's got plenty of experience with these types of games its all incredibly discouraging.

[Velase85]

There are some things that can be improved, but its better than the initial menus we had, but there are some idiosyncrasies to get used too; but still not to bad.

 

in the nanocrafting menu if you have something in que and its missing something. hitting the down arrow on that item tell you what and how much is missing. Also if you do get the items, even if it says missing it will usually refresh on its own, otherwise just add some random item or move the que items around and it should refresh and go. Also when you look at recipe that can't be crafted in nano-crafting it will tell you what you need such as a medium assembly line. Eventually if you get industry set up, your nano-crafting basically becomes obsolete until you need to make some quick fuel or random item. 

 

also as for setting stuff up, say you wanted to craft a item container, when you click on the sub items, if you look top left there is White Text for the item and sub item you are in, you can click on these to move back to the item you were in before. I tend to que the items in the nano-crafting and work my way down to the base components and then just rearrange the que then go work on other stuff.

[Kezzle]

On 9/1/2020 at 1:00 AM, Vergaerd said:

I don't think it's a stretch to say DU crafting system is not up to par with almost anything out there. Documentation, UI and Codex leave much to desire.

The Documentation and Codex are pretty average, I reckon. And for a game at this stage of development, actually they're way above average. They also don't actually speak to the quality of the system itself.

On 9/1/2020 at 1:00 AM, Vergaerd said:

Yes it has depth, which is awesome, but it lacks structure and it's not intuitive at all.

It does have structure, you just have to find it. It's not an obvious system, but once it's there, it's actually a bit of a downer, IMO. Things are too structured. Every Element has "one from colum a, one from column b and one from column c" (that's a total approximation; there's four columns, and there are exceptions). Isn't it obvious that there must be some structure to it, when people can build automated industrial complexes? "Crafting" is only the beginning of it (and the name of one of the Talent trees that applies to the Art and Science of Making Things in DU); Industry is where it's really at.

 

Why should something like this be "intuitive"? Why shouldn't you have to actually put some effort in to learn something and discover how the system works, rather than just seeing how to do it from the off?

On 9/1/2020 at 1:00 AM, Vergaerd said:

I like the color scheme they went with for the UI, but even simple color coding of text in the recipe trees, etc would help. All the menu's are the exact same colors!

They could definitely improve the UI, that's for sure. I'm also hoping that the lists of things aren't complete yet, and the numbers attached to many of those things could do with some serious massaging. Colour isn't necessarily all of the answer though. Shapes and textures should also be used.

On 9/1/2020 at 1:00 AM, Vergaerd said:

Tips and hints on how to progress through the crafting system are missing across the board. It's an absolute pain to have to keep going back and forth between the pages, machines and inventories just to figure out what you need. Contextual mouse-over information could easily solve this. It currently does not have the right visual representation to say the least.

Just checking: you have discovered that you can drill down into a recipe if you look at it in the K interface, to find what the subcomponents need? You can't come back out of the "drill" stepwise, but you can come back to the requirements for the thing you're planning to end up making. 

On 9/1/2020 at 1:00 AM, Vergaerd said:

The crafting queue system is not intelligent at all. Even if you queue things up in order, the system will not recognize the previous completed items to continue to the next.

Really? It does for me. Unless I'm not understanding what you're saying.

On 9/1/2020 at 1:00 AM, Vergaerd said:

...if you don't have enough it should tell you what you lack.

The recipe will tell you you have "0/25" in your nanoconstructor, and if you look in the containers for an industry device, the missing items are distinctly highlighted.

On 9/1/2020 at 1:00 AM, Vergaerd said:

That system also continues crafting when you add materials after it ran out, i.e it has a simple memory function.

You really need to get out of your nanocrafter and build some industry. It's like Empyrion's Constructors, only more involved, to give you "something to do", rather than automagically running all the subsidiary production runs like Empyrion does by default. But you can build Industry to do what Empyrion does, if you can handle LUA, I imagine. Bear in mind that this is an MMO, which Empyrion isn't really. The system is designed to give a niche for "crafters" (aka Industrialists) to have something they can do and understand better than others. This isn't a niche that's practicable in Empyrion.

On 9/1/2020 at 1:00 AM, Vergaerd said:

DU's crafting comes across as soulless and dead.

I found Empyrion's "crafting" to be so vacuous and trivial that there's no way it had enough complexity to support a soul or life. It was just a magic dispenser. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's "dead".

On 9/1/2020 at 1:00 AM, Vergaerd said:

I guess what I'm saying is that even if NQ wants/needs to figure it all out from scratch there are prime examples out there of what works well in games like this.

The only other game like this is EvE. And the industry/crafting in this game is very much more like EvE's than anything else, for very good reason, namely the creation, as I mentioned above, of a niche for crafters to be able to do something that the pilots and miners and builders and technicians can't do as well as they do.

On 9/1/2020 at 1:00 AM, Vergaerd said:

I just hope NQ add/rework and improve this drastically, because even for someone who's got plenty of experience with these types of games its all incredibly discouraging.

You probably haven't played a game like this before. If you're thinking you have, and it's not EvE you're thinking of, you're coming at the game wrong and need to take a step back and consider what your goals and aims for having fun in it are.