RSS Feed Entropia Universe 14.6.1 Release Notes

The social interface is an important part of the Entropia Universe experience and is something that MindArk is continually striving to improve. Based on feedback from participants, we have made a number of adjustments and updates to the new Social UI that we hope will improve the usability of the new interface. Additional refinements and adjustments to the Social UI will be made in the upcoming platform releases and patches. We thank the EU community for all the valuable feedback received in support cases and on community forums.
Adjustments

• Added shortcuts to chat /tr = trade, /t = team, /s = society, /o = society seniors, /ro = rookie
• The Rookie channel is now available by default in a dedicated tab.
• The Globals channel is now disabled in all chat tabs by default.
• Added two additional larger font sizes for chat windows, which can be managed in the general client Options panel.
• Adjusted text color selection to more primary colors with better contrast. White has also been added and is now used as the default color for the Local channel.
• Drop shadow has been added to all text to enhance visibility.
• “Me” has been replaced with the avatar’s chosen display name in the chat window.
• Tabs no longer flash on new alerts, instead they will highlight only.
• There is now an option for disabling the new alert tab highlighting in the context menu for each tab.
• Changed position of ‘Yes/Okay’ and ‘No/Cancel’ in confirmation dialogues.
• The ‘Send Reply’ button is now activated on mouse button release instead of mouse button press.
• Disciple and Team icons in contacts are now more recognizable.
• The filter in Contacts will now be maximized by default.
• Avatar name links are now correctly displayed in Vehicle messages.
• Renaming a tab or contact will now have input field focus on the opened UI.
• It is now possible to use the Enter key to confirm name changes and other dialogs.
• The HoF Ticker can now be relocated.
• The HoF Ticker can now be set as always visible, or only visible when a global/hof is displayed.
• Thresholds for the HoF Ticker can now be set in the general Options menu, so that only globals over the selected value will be displayed.

Channel adjustments

• Channel names are no longer case-sensitive
• Dash(-), underscore(_) are allowed between (alphanumeric) words
• Help message text for the Create command has been improved
• The /listchannels command only accepts filter strings that contains underscores, dashes or alphanumeric characters, and is no longer case-sensitive
• All previously created custom channels have been removed in this patch as a consequence of the above changes.

Bug fixes

• Tooltips no longer appear for hidden contacts.
• The Mentor icon in Contacts now has a tooltip.
• Using “Keep Main Chat focus when entering text” will now correctly clear the input field after sending a message.
• The action for sending private message through avatar links context menu will no longer be gray when that avatar is in another territory.
• Events will now show rank properly in message received in Message Center.

MindArk and the Planet Partners strive to ensure a smooth and problem-free Version Update. Nevertheless, even after extensive testing some issues may arise after release. Such issues are often addressed via mini-patches directly after a release and in subsequent patches. If you feel that the possibility of encountering minor issues or bugs directly after a Version Update affects your gameplay to an extent that Entropia Universe is not enjoyable, please wait until the mini-patches have been released and any last minute issues have been resolved.



Originally posted here...

 

Super hyped to get back in game so happy that they replaced "me" with our avatar names

 

Yea I just read that funnily enough - I guess the more time they take the less bugs there are going to be, still its killing me as I just arrived at ark late last night so I didn't get to do much exploring

 

Yeah.. I'm amazed too.. But then again, this time its actually felt like they were gonna listen, so only surprised they are this fast..

I'm seeing it as the UI being in alpha/beta and we are the testers.. Actually not a bad idea imo, but maybe should have said something like that from the beginning..

 

Very nice, looking forward to see how it functions in-game. Hopefully the readability will be back to the previous standard.
It's great to see that the most important issues pointed out by the players have been addressed. That, in and of itself is a big thumbs up.

Though to be honest; this whole process has been a bit puzzling.
I never gave much credence to the 'rumors' that "MA never tests anything before releasing it". Since there are test servers, and any game company worth it's salt would of course test.

But after the UI overhaul, I did start to wonder if enough practical testing has been done (with persons who didn't created it, and played around with it for months). Because if this had been sufficiently tested on a non-dev audience, wouldn't the most glaring user unfriendly things have popped up immediately?

Especially the poor readability was quite surprising; considering the previous UI had a font change not too long ago, (presumably to prepare for this UI). From the reactions to that instance, it should have been clear that readability is an important factor (to most). And that making the font smaller, would be a inadvisable.

So the thought that comes to mind: is this a conscious company tactic; to skip a thorough market testing, and for all intent and purposes, let the player base become the beta testers? Or was testing done, but unfortunately just on a too small scale/too low threshold?
I understand there can be content in a RCE that could lead to unfair advantage, and therefore can only be released during a VU itself.
Naturally there are things that you can only see en-mass once live, and little bugs can always happen; but basic things, like the font size and color are not among those.
So for interface features like this UI, (which frankly doesn't contain any new/exclusive/unique functions that could warrant sniping by competition), I can't see why the practical testing eventually comes down on the players shoulders.


Anyway, just trying to understand the reasoning for this practice.
As it somehow seems counter intuitive to spend money on advertising, and then expose the resulting new players to a 'raw' UI. Not to mention adding frustrations to the already existing ones, for the established players.

I.e. not complaining, but genuinely wondering: 'why' and 'how'?
And regardless, still a thumbs up for taking the player's recommendations on-board. View attachment 9183

 

You should read some of the Mccormick threads on calypso forum

They should have you in stiches for hours great remeniscing when you cant log in.