Announced Scanning Map Interface Changes

On a day when CCP have shown they are willing to listen to the suggestions of the user base when it comes to Citadels, CCP Goliath also announced a series of changes to the scanning map and interface, based upon suggestions in the EVE Online forums, that are now available to test on Singularity.

Heyyyy you guyyys,

So, first off on behalf of Team Psycho Sisters, thanks so much for all of this feedback. We’ve got lots of it from here, reddit, survey, anecdotes, and Corbexx has some more for us too that he’s been gathering through his channels. In the spirit of iteration, we thought we’d share some of the inital changes that have been made to the new interface based on the feedback. Please note that this list, while comprehensive of changes that have already been made, is not indicative of the final shape of the product and we are absolutely looking for an ongoing discussion so that we can deliver a scanning interface we can all be proud of and have fun using.

Before I give you the list though, I wanted to let you know about my own EVE background. I started playing in 2010 and did the oh-so-familiar train-mine-quit cycle. Came back with a friend a few weeks later, hooked up with other friends that had been playing for a while, did some missioning until that got old and then it was off to wormhole space! I’ve lived out of C1-4 holes, never a 5 or 6, since then (barring a brief sojourn into FW, which was fun but lacked the awesome dread that WH space imparts to me – and I’m not talking Moros). I do a ton of scanning, mainly sigs but a fair bit of combat too, so I have a lot of attachment to the scanning system, though who knows – I may use it in totally different ways to many of you. From reading this thread alone, it is clear that scanning styles and use cases vary wildly and that’s one of the reasons it’s so important to the team to have this discourse and iron out discrepancies.

Anyway, enough about me! Here are the changes made so far, in no particular order, based on your feedback. The new interface has been re-enabled again on Singularity, available via Ctrl-Click on the existing Probe Scanner button. Give it another go and let us know how you feel!

– Reverted probe position controls to the old one
– Removed experimental alt-click probe positioning
– Fixed position update on probe markers on init and probe warp
– Tweaked colors of probes and scene, removed starfield
– Added sun marker filter (applies to all new maps)
– Changed appearance and behaviour of probe move/scale controls
– Visibility of scan result in 3D scene reflects selection state of result list
– Decreased min size of probe scan window
– Made standard filters toggleable through 1,2,3,4,5 keys (this only works when the window is active and does not overwrite other bindings, and cannot be rebound)
– Added distance on celesital and scan result markers (applies to map as well)
– Made it possible to scan by hitting RETURN when window has focus
– Added smaller “No probes deployed” hint so its visible if the probes menu is at its min size
– Making ignored result clickable to reset the state, changed icon to X
– Adding help icon explaining probe position modifier keys
– Change Range only accessible while pressing ALT
– Added menu icon on filtered and ignored status texts
– Added support for configurable min height in DockPanelMenu allowing probe menu to be resized to one entry
– Tweaked fadeout distance on bookmark markers (applies to map as well)
– Synced the tooltip delay to inflight-bracket tooltip delay
– Added camera center offset to mapview camera

– Fixed spots in 3D scene for planets and moons- cleaned up scan result entry
– Unified probe, intersection, warpline, movement line colors
– Added map backdrop
– Removed probe status in probelist
– Dimmed the starfield
– Polished icons on formation and probe buttons
– Tweaked appearance of menu resize handles
– Tweaked the layout so all controls are in the sidepanel
– Re-enabled the new probe scan window by CTRL-Click probescan button
– Implemented highlight indication on probes and results

A side by side view of the old and new scanning maps

I also had the pleasure of talking to General Stargazer, a well-known explorer, who has previously written wormhole guides and has a lot of experience with scanning. General Stargazer was one of the few people chosen to test the new scanning interface on Singularity.

Me: I had heard you were fortunate enough to test the new scanning interface on Singularity

GS:

Yes, I was fortunate enough to get a link to test it out on SISI and have been giving it a whirl to compare it to the one we currently use on Tranquility.

Me: So, after your testing,  what would you say are some of the main differences?

GS:

We have had the Beta Map on TQ for a while, looks really neat and shiny, but one of the things that has really lacked with it is the probing ability, we end up having to use the old style map to scan down, which took away from the new map. It looked nice and gave information in a colourful interactive way, but was just not good for scanning. So you ended up in this limbo of people trying to use both.

With the old map, when you’re scanning, one of the more annoying bits was that you lose your perspective of space. Inevitably, people end up clearing all the non essential stuff off of the screen, so you could theoretically have someone hurtling towards you and you just wouldn’t know. the nice advantage of the new map, is its simply a nice little popup window. When you probed previously, you had 2 windows on your screen, one was your map the other was information your scanning results and probe ranges. Now, its all combined in one resizable window. You get your scan results, probe control, analysis, formations and map all in 1 resizable window.  So you can still have perspective on what’s going on around you.

Me: That seems like a really useful feature, allowing you to keep your screen uncluttered.

GS:

You can keep everything else open at all times and actually see out in space around you. Which, ok for the explorers isn’t such a big deal as most will deploy probes, cloak, scan till they find something then warp to it.  Not being able to see in your immediate area was never a big issue for explorers because they were cloaked. But with combat-probers and we see more of now thanks to the bonus’s on the T3 destroyers, having that positional awareness while still being able to probe is essential. People already suffer from information overload with all the windows open at times as it is, Local, D-Scan, relevant intel channels, fleet channels etc.

If you’re in a fleet and you can’t physically see whats going on and where its happening, becomes a bit of a hindrance. However, you can essentially be having a fight, while still keeping the probing window open, ready to move as quickly as you need to. They’ve made lots of little quality of life changes with it too something as simple as just being able to deploy probes, position them and hit return then starts the scan whereas previously you had to click the analyze button each time.

Me: So it makes scouting and fleet scanning much easier in the middle of combat, I’d imagine it also makes exploration easier too, however, it’s still being tested, so there’s obviously some bugs. Is there anything that stands out as being wrong, or awkward about the new feature?

GS:

So you had full control with the probe window on the old style map. You could put it wherever you like because your map was filling the screen. On the new map, locations are fixed because they move with the map. So your scan results, analyze/ formations/ probe info etc is fixed on the right side of the new window, you can’t move it to another part of the screen, or just move it aside if its in the way of something for a moment , you have to resize the whole thing to move it. Balloons are another little annoying thing with it. The map is trying to be informative to give you information sure, but they do become somewhat annoying when you’re trying to scan something that isn’t obviously a celestial object down! Another little thing, is that the initial pings for scan signature, while they are easy to position your probes over on the old style map, on the new one they are a little more difficult to see, but I put that down to the fact its scaling with the map size. One thing I’d like to see as well, that is they are allowing shortcuts to function in the new scan window (like with the enter key just starting the scan) that introducing something like key combos to increase and decrease scan probe areas of influence would mean better functionality too. Like pressing something to make it switch from 32au to 16au for example But in all honesty, I think you’ll get different feedback from  different backgrounds of pilots in eve.

To summarize in a tldr fashion though, the new map is scalable, which is great, however, the scaling can make information hard to read at times.

 

You can see the new scan window in the top left of the screen.

Is your inner explorer satisfied by the proposed changes concerning the scanning map, or are there more changes you would like to see?