If you were Beamdog, would you revert back to the pre-beta UI for BGEE and BG2EE now?
JuliusBorisov
Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,754
It's a hypothetical question. The developers have always said that their intent is to make all the EE games (with SoD in mind) consolidated in style.
I see a lot of feedback on the new UI, the code of which comes from SoD into the patches for BGEE and BG2EE. It is becoming one of the most discussed themes here. So, what do you suggest? If you had all the power, what would you do?
Revert back, maybe adding some changes, but not drastical ones? Have in mind that it will mean a step from the consolidation line.
Continue with the new UI? Some players will never agree with the change of the UI, be it because of a nostalgia, because of personal tastes etc.
Improve the new UI based on the feedback? It may look like the best option, really, but in the same time it would mean a lot of additional work should be put into it, a lot of hours of work and subsequent discussions both in the company and with the community.
Anyway, for me one thing is certain - it's not easy to be a developer of an enhanced version of a such iconic game as BG.
I see a lot of feedback on the new UI, the code of which comes from SoD into the patches for BGEE and BG2EE. It is becoming one of the most discussed themes here. So, what do you suggest? If you had all the power, what would you do?
Revert back, maybe adding some changes, but not drastical ones? Have in mind that it will mean a step from the consolidation line.
Continue with the new UI? Some players will never agree with the change of the UI, be it because of a nostalgia, because of personal tastes etc.
Improve the new UI based on the feedback? It may look like the best option, really, but in the same time it would mean a lot of additional work should be put into it, a lot of hours of work and subsequent discussions both in the company and with the community.
Anyway, for me one thing is certain - it's not easy to be a developer of an enhanced version of a such iconic game as BG.
- If you were Beamdog, would you revert back to the pre-beta UI for BGEE and BG2EE now?111 votes
- No, including "I would try to improve the new UI"69.37%
- Yes, maybe with some changes to the pre-beta UI28.83%
- Other1.80%
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Comments
I don't think there's even a slight chance the devs will go back to the previous UI. I'm willing to bet SoD hasn't had a UI similar to 1.3 BG:EE since several builds (and months) ago.
It would also be a PR disaster of sorts. I wouldn't want to see them validating the opinion of everyone who's got their panties in a bunch right now.
By the way: the current state of BG and BG2:EE is not necessarily an indicator of the state of SoD. As far we know the new UI was being backported and may be much more stable in the expansion. Worst case scenario is SoD comes before the patch and whoever doesn't buy it right away has to wait a bit longer for the new features.
I would also be prepared to push out deadlines (just a little) to get this right, while it is so prominent and polarizing - but I'm not sure how much the requirements of bringing SoD to market dictate the timetable.
They can then take their time to finish the new UI and release it as a patch later.
Btw, it is not without a precedent to have a several dynamically changed guis. HOMM2 have one, controlled by ingame option, as also MM7, which was controlled by plot.
What we see in the homm example is change of styling, not layout and functionality. From 1.3 ui and 2.0 ui there is change though, it's not just smashing other artwork on the same skeleton below.
You proposed to provide two different interfaces to please everyone.
This means branching that part of the game into two different directions, and everything following will be said hell.
Testing two interfaces: waste of resources.
Bug reporting and fixing: confusion ahead on both sides.
Adding new features later: double design work and testing again.
Being proud about the new interface: yeah ... So convinced of it that we kept the old one around just in case ...
If those are trivialities to you, then it's because it's so easy to argue against such a split.
And what you showed with the screen shots of homm is exactly what is not the case here: it's smashing different styles on the same interface. That's easy but does not fit the case here, so why bring it as an example this was done before?
Modding of games that are still actively maintained always is a pain, that's the nature of things. I can see that currently over at cities skylines ... Mods are endorsed by the devs and they make a good part of the game, but still each time the base gets new options the mods break and every one is crying until seeing the new opportities provided.
Not breaking mods means not bringing the platform ahead anymore. We can either have this or that, not both now. but once abandoned by beamdog in far future, we will have the state again where only a final official version can be the base for all mods to come then, without any danger to break anymore. I'd love to see this final version ina state where great mods can be done, and I'm willing to wait and see current mods break now and then while the platform gets ahead and more flexible.
Second, if suddenly proposed idea sounds like hell of a testing, bug reporting etc, than my personal opinion is that is something wrong with development process itself, in part of QA and support. Although there are another probable reason for such fears - architectural. There is one ui variance and there is another, and if swapping them suddenly sounds like a dev/qa/support/extending nightmare - well, than probably they are not so much customizable and mod-friendly as this was stated since EE prelaunch.
About mod stuff - I believe backward compability is a question of willingness and resources, not some fundamental obstacle, but it just my opinion.
If you see fit to have a game with 'enhanced edition' label (15 years old, and 4 for a label) where every patch makes you consider, should you patch and ruin your game expirience or stay on non-patched version than it's fine, I totally understand, but for me it's a hostile approach, I am upset about 'breaking things' in 'enchanced edition' title. I'm not go for 1.3 poll option as efforts were made and I'm not go for "try to improve" poll option as it already four years of 'enhancments'. I'm only saying what would be an 'enhancment' for my liking.
Although I would like the option. Even if a more detailed and faithful UI were available as a non-default (legacy UI setting?) selection then I would feel like that caters to both crowds.
Still, though... reverting would be the best option. No sense in throwing good after bad. The best analogy I can think of is when you get stuck with a real dog of a stock. You've become attached to it, and if you just hang on a little longer, it will make a comeback and everything will be great. In reality, that stock is going down the toilet, and you'd do a lot better if you dumped it and bought something else. The hardest thing in life is throwing away something you dedicated a lot of time to, but it's better for everyone in the end...
Of those options though and being put in their shoes right now after the fact that they dropped the ball; yeah obviously I'd change it back in a heartbeat.
Or at the very least implement a toggle option instead of arbitrarily changing people's favorite game and method of accessing information in our UI's on us for what I deem to be for the worse out of the blue without consent like this.
Calling the old one "absolutely fine" is just ignoring the flaws it has, and ignoring may be easy as we are used to them, but not because they don't exist.
There is for example the text blob in the character screen, which was a pain to use in 1998 and 2015. Structuring it with some interface is very very welcome to me, i just would not have hoped to get that when asking.
Also, comparing weapons side by side is something i wished to have 1998 as well as 2016 in my last IWD run (i know the BG weapons in and out, but need to study the IWD ones and comparing there effects would be a great help – same goes for any new player in BG of course).
Those stat breakdowns in the inventory screen are a good idea, but with high level characters and weapons with multiple effects, they always were a mess in 1.3, so freeing them from the little space they have now is only right to do.
Reading and comparing spell descriptions with click - escape - click - escape - ... never was "good", it just was that way. Having that now directly in the spell book without an additional window to enter and to leave is just streamlining the learning process about spells. this even helps me as a veteran, how much will it help a new player?
... this go on and on – i see very little new features where i say the *concept* of 1.3 was superior to 2.0b, and very little that is so much worse it ruins my experience to an extent i can't live with it. What can and should be improved is the *styling* of the new elements – they don't yet look like Baldurs Gate in some aspects.
Having 2 complete UIs side by side that are toggable is something that's very hard to do – not because it can't be done, but if you start with that, you have to support both variants (from having a players handbook to bugfixing), you have to implement new features in both variants equally well wich may be easy for one variant and almost impossible for the other interface wise, etc. etc.
Speaking personally, I do actually think there was nothing wrong with the original and it was fine, otherwise I wouldn't have said it.
When I straight up struggled and spent an age to find things (Rep, Lore, Thief Skills, etc.) in the current Beta that took me literally seconds to beeline straight to in the classic screen, then yeah I do personally take issue and umbrage with what I deem to be arbitrary changes for the worse here, and express and provide the feedback as such. Or, they could just have the classic design that served us well for ~17 years as one option (that obviously wouldn't need any work or updates or bugfixing done to it since... well.. it has worked for 17 years up to now without issue..) and then this new one that they could focus these theoretical patching and features etc. on. I don't see the issue. That seems to be the go-to response when presented with this solution a few times now (Devs did the same retort you did too, I still don't quite understand what if any ongoing bugfixes need to be applied to the original one that haven't already been implemented at this point, making it a moot point to say that it would be harder to work on two)
At the end of the day, I answered the poll and gave my feelings based on the posed question. If *I* were at Beamdog and in charge with working on unarguably one of my favorite games and franchises in history then I would indeed do it with due diligence and treat both it and the Fans with the respect it deserves, including maintaining what I personally deem as being the better option, hence my answers.
I'm not Beamdog though, and they've made it adamantly clear that they wish to change these UI's up for some reason in 2.0 (A reason that has yet to actually be made clear to me honestly), so ultimately what they really should just do is go to 00zim00's thread and adopt that design 1:1 to cover all bases.
It's a compromise I would be happy with I suppose, if change *must* be done for the sake of change for whatever random reason.
The reason they change how the UI works was (if I understand correctly) to make it more mod friendly and more maintainable, in other words, 'future proofing' the code. The old way the UI worked did not leave much wiggle room for what you could do with it, the new way externalizes a large amount of the UI to config files that can be easily changed, updated, and extended upon. As and example, with the old UI code you could never make a movable floating window interface like the current journal has.
You said it yourself, they can (re)build what was originally there again, so what's the delay and problem here? They could very much indeed *Do that* then instead of flippantly handwaving this in the FAQ about how 'Modders will probably be able to change it back' and shifting the task to the community to refix broken elements.
It would only be the polite and respectful thing to do in regards to both the iconic and timeless cult classic game, and the fans who prefer and have been using such a thing for close to two decades afterall, instead of yanking the rug out from everyone and dictating to us change without consent or desire.
Considering the mere fact that all these topics exist and we are having this very conversation, objectively it means that there is contention and a divide here that doesn't even need to exist and really shouldn't be taking away from the anticipation and hype of SoD.
It's unlikely that we'll go back to 1.3's layout design, but improving the current design both visually and functionally is on our list for after v2.0 goes "live".
And I say again, the fact that modders can change the UI layout is not meant as a cop to "if you don't like it, tough noogies". If you don't like it, we definitely want to know why so that we can look at ways to make it better. But if you're feeling ambitious and you just want the old layout back, the new UI system does allow for that. When we get closer I'll put together a guide (maybe with the help of a programmer...) on how to make changes. Familiarity with some programming languages like Lua will be a help, but it really is straight-forward. I was able to fix the Strength display on the Record screen by myself using a trio of if/then statements. Me. I was able to do that.
Will the Redmine system be there after the v2.0 is released? It looks to be a very efficient tool.