Visibility of Uncaptured Portals
Someone in one of my chats said it well:
[...] I tried to use Prime on Saturday, with the looming deadline coming for Redacted shutdown. I was hunting for grey portals for unique captures. For the life of me on the Prime screen I couldn't see where the portal I was looking for was, but it was so obvious on the Redacted screen. It was such a tiny white dot/whisp on Prime it was pretty useless. I gave up on Prime once again.
[...]
My definition of parity would not be just is the feature implemented, but is it implemented in a usable way, that also doesn't make me want to gouge out my eyeballs.
(My own words below)
Every time there is a prime release and the notes talk about better visibility many of us eagerly fire up Prime, play until the eyestrain gets unbearable, and then go back to Redacted. New players ask how anyone can play for more than an hour and lust after the better interface old timers enjoy.
It's not just familiarity and muscle memory that needs to be retrained. Visually parsing the screen on Prime is enough work that, for many people, the game stops being fun.
This is not an Anime that people sit and watch. It's an activity that people do.
So, yeah, neutral portals are really hard to pick out in a cluttered area and that's a specific tangible UI failure that needs to be addressed. But it's also just a small symptom of an overall graphic design that many people feel was optimized to be looked at instead of played with.
(And why isn't there even a tag for the visibility issues that so many players are struggling with?)
Comments
I forced myself to use Prime a few weeks ago, realized that I was getting over the muscle memory issues easily enough, but I've realized that I'm another person joining the ranks of 'OMG, I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING'. I went back to redacted. I'll try again when they claim that they've worked on it again. #SAD
A further comment -- this past Saturday was First Saturday events held in many cities around the world.
First Saturday was originally promoted as a way to help newer players learn and level up; levels gained is still one of the core statistics measured in every location. It's a chaotic event with many players from both factions playing hard in a relatively small area. ("Many" and "small" are relative, of course.)
These events are designed to draw new players into the game and the community, but yet they viciously highlight the failings of the new client.
Walking around your neighborhood alone making fields is not the same game as fighting over portals. The client needs to make all styles of play accessible.
Prime is really hard on the eyes generally, grey portals should be large but grey or other wise very distinctive, not the tiny specs that they currently are.
I have decent eye sight I cant imagine what it would be like for someone with impaired vision, please dont sacrifice usability for style.
Yellow would make them stand out far better than grey, IMHO. With map elements grey, and XM grey, neutral portals should be some other color, then size wouldn't matter so much. I'm always for smaller things to have them more on screen than for larger + zooming/panning a lot.
Visibilty of portals is the top thing, to repair back, if niantic wants to shutdown the old client.
Portals are the one thing with which we interact in game. And if they are not visible i will not play the game anymore.
One of the things i like about ingress, is exploring my environment. And ingress showed me nice locations. If the new client cannot give me that, then i am out of game.
Google maps is now more and more better in showing me attractions.
The whole opr thing with not giving us good quality attraction into the game and not accepting perfectly legitimate historic locations is just pissing me off. Every where only chappels are accepted, and a historic roman camp is being denied.
The opr should be revamped, niantic needs to make this game playable and that we also have a gain from playing it besides capturing portals and doing fields.
xm still not visible enough
neutral portals u cant tell from xm or not.
glyph hacking is still bad
etc etc
and all these issues little over 1 month redacted dies doesnt sound fun :/
@NianticScot Read above. Please put this up HIGH on your dang road map. Actually, go create the ticket right now, mark it as critical and assign it to someone. I would say mark it as a blocker, but that might be overdoing it. =)