Forums » Suggestions

Duplicate Controls in UI

Jan 22, 2013 Alexiandromor link
Under the Ship tab you can choose "Select Ship" to show a list of ships at that station. When the list of ships appears a 2nd "Select Ship" control appears at the bottom. At this point it is unclear which one to hit to actually activate a ship as both are active at the same time but do different actions (one opens the ships list screen, the 2nd actually selects a ship).

Suggest the 2nd control (above the Set Preset controls) be either:

1. Renamed "Activate Ship" to avoid any confusion, or
2. Disable the top Select Ship control so it is not a viable option.

Hope this helps others who may get as easily confused as I do.
Jan 22, 2013 TheExiled link
"Select ship" up the top is a menu. I actually have not seen anyone but you comment on how hard it is to distinguish.

Select ship down the bottom is the action of selecting a ship.
Maybe perhaps "Make Active Ship" would be clearer, but I don't see this being a big problem.
Jan 22, 2013 Alexiandromor link
I'm sure that if one had been playing VO for awhile it all makes sense. As a new player I'm finding some issues with the UI that distract from the fun parts of the game. The duplication of control names in the same window that do different things being one of them, especially when both are active at the same time.

I am confused by the use of "menu" though when referring to the top control. I don't see it as a menu in a true UI sense, but a control that opens a view with a list of options, not offering a list of items from a drop-down. If the top Select Ship item was hidden in a menu list, the presence of a single Select Ship control in the view would be clear. With two visible on screen, the possibility of confusion exists and tripped me up a couple of times.

Your statement says it all as well, the user is making the selected choice active, not just selecting it. I like your suggested wording better but don't know if changing the control size would be an issue, so I tried to keep mine short so as to fit in the space currently allocated in case the development tool is fussy about resizing things.

I'm just bringing fresh eyes to the game and offering suggestions. The fact that no one else has commented on it simply shows that no one thought to bring it up here as a possible issue.