Re: Camera controls.
Conceded. However, the default keys as stand are a nightmare and this company has a long history of sub-standard UIX design. Sorcerer King would have been an all-time classic if they had just quit jerking the UIX around. Same goes for Sins (which I do love)...their empire browser / tree thing actively fights you in big battles ( I could describe exactly how to fix the issue but they don't care).
Does everyone not see that this is basically Sins of a Solar Empire redesigned? There must be a ton of code reuse under the hood. It even play at the same deliberate pace (a big positive, btw).
The menus along the bottom are jaggedly aligned, this is not conducive to good reading. Look at starcraft 2...the bottom, while not 100% linear layout is very clean and exposes controls in a symmetrical manner. This is done for a reason, the same reason I have called out before. Human brains process edges first and foremost. Jagged edges work against you for reading information...do not do it.
On the other hand interesting outlines work well for masses of objects, especially small ones. Look at Radar displays, each kind of aircraft and situation is very distinct and clean. You're basically asking someone to look at HUNDREDS of items and make pretty quick decisions, so bland or similar outlines between craft is not going to aid this on bit.
I challenge the design team to go back and look at Sins. Every ship is clearly defined on each team. The outline of each ship is very distinct and it's clear beyond a doubt at almost every scale what is what. Another game that does an excellent job of this is TF2, the UIX in that game is highly underrated...one of the best you'll encounter.
Look, I own almost every game these guys sell on steam but I am constantly disappointed by decisions the company makes. It's very disappointing to see the same patterns being followed in the beta.
Latest example (not on topic, but it proves my point):
Stardock sells a nice desktop background animation tool for windows. I wanted to try it out. So I click the download trial link to check it out. And...get this..it takes me to Download.com. Download.com has long been known for injecting malware into their downloads / installs and has a terrible reputation online. So the product will never be downloaded to my machines, ever! The company builds the product, then puts it out on one of the WORST download sites possible. AWS and Azure offer excellent / inexpensive containers for your downloads, but instead they make a blindingly stupid decision like this.
I won't be responding any more. It's not an argument and I'll hold my steam review for the final 1.0 release...perhaps they'll surprise me in a few months.
