An Industry UI For The 21st Century

I know the title of the post will annoy roleplayers who will insist we are in the 2nd century (or 23rd millennium, depending on how one counts these things), but I'm glad that CCP has updated EVE Online's industry user interface to compete with games developed in the 21st century.

The old industry UI harkened back to the time in which EVE was developed.  Many may not realize that CCP was formed back in 1997 and its first successful product was the board game Hættuspil.  Back when EVE Online was conceptualized and developed, Everquest was the king of the MMO world, using third party sites was frowned upon by both developers and many gamers, and presenting information in table form was not only acceptable, but what many gamers had grown up with.  Is it any surprise that with the amount of information needed to play the sci-fi game that EVE quickly earned a reputation as "spreadsheets in space"?

But times change.  I don't play a lot of Wildstar, but one thing I like about the game is the crafting user interface.  Everything is nicely laid out, with the information presented in an accessible format.  I was able to get into making items quickly.  I'm glad to say that after playing with the new industry UI last night that CCP has taken that clunky late 20th century UI and created a new one that compares favorably, if not surpasses, one from the latest AAA MMORPG.

Making Tech 2 Ammo

First is the manufacturing UI.  I like it.  No more having to flip between two windows.  I can select my blueprint, see what materials I need if I don't have enough, and see what I will output.  I can even change the number of runs and watch the materials needed change on the fly.  The interface is really convenient as I can read off the materials used on the screen, enter them into my spreadsheet that stores the amount I spent purchasing the materials, and quickly calculate the price.  I can then figure out how much to charge.  The above example is for tech 2 ammunition.  Remember I said I planned on doubling down on low sec Monday?  The graphic above was the first batch of Barrage S I'm producing in a low sec station.

Searching For Researched BPOs

One thing that used to drive me crazy was getting my researched and non-researched blueprints mixed up.  Just because I'm a casual industrialist doesn't mean I want to waste material by building something with the wrong blueprint.  That should never happen again.  The UI shows how much, if any, a blueprint is researched.  As the graphic above shows, I did pretty well with my material efficiency research, but horribly with time efficiency research.  With the new UI, I can easily tell which blueprints need some research love.

Finding Station Activity Levels

One concern I had with the new industry system and the removal of industry slots was how to determine if a station is really busy or seldom used.  Turns out that the information is displayed graphically in the "Facilities" tab.  The information doesn't give numbers, but a tooltip will pop up that displays a bar that shows the system cost index.  The shorter the bar, the less the service costs.  I think each notch on the bar is 10%, but I'm getting old so I'm perhaps reading the display incorrectly.  But I like the display as a way to quickly tell the favorable and unfavorable stations apart.

Testing Invention Outcomes

One of the nice features of the system is that one can experiment with outcomes, even if a player doesn't have all the items.  In the above example, the UI lists the possible decryptors and meta items that can influence the success and output of an invention job.  No more having to find a third party site to get the information.  Just play around and when I find a combination I like, just click on the "Start" button.  Of course, in the example above I'm running the maximum amount of jobs my skills allow, so I'll have to wait until a job finishes.  Did I mention the UI remembers the inputs if you accidentally close the UI?  Or if you need to wait for a job to finish?  That is very nice.

The industry changes only went live yesterday, so the jury is still out on how the whole industrial revamp will eventually turn out.  But I really like the UI changes that came out with Crius.  I wish we had this five years ago when I first started playing.