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[kalaratiri]

Prepare for the longest post I have ever made!

Source 1.

Greetings space pharaohs.

As you may have heard by now, we are working on a complete player experience overhaul for Industry in 2014 and plan to release the first iteration of it this summer. To cover all the details we have six blogs lined up in relation to Industry:

• ✓ The first blog of this series tackled Reprocess all the things!, where we explained the overhaul to the reprocessing formula, skills, starbase reprocessing array and compression in general.
• ✓ Building better Worlds focused on manufacturing system changes, mainly damage per job, extra materials, slot removal and starbase improvements.
• ♥  Industry UI -  In this blog CCP Arrow covers the extensive UX research we did to reinvent the Industry UI in EVE Online.
• Researching, the future - CCP Greyscale
• The price of change - CCP Greyscale
• Teams - CCP SoniClover

INDUSTRY PLAYER EXPERIENCE
To understand how we could improve the overall player experience of doing industry, we had to investigate how players use it currently and get to the root of the issues they were having with it through different use-cases and examples. We then looked at how it was initially intended to work and set specific goals for how we would take that initial idea and make it better by focusing on a few key elements. Here are those elements, what they mean and what we did to fulfill each of them:

Discoverability of the feature is key
We wanted to make sure players could open up and view the Industry window from wherever they were in the game, from any location or at any stage, even during their first-ever play session. This will not just help new players get introduced to the feature; it will also help the industrialist who wants to investigate his ability to produce something before acquiring the materials for it, or anyone who wants to find a suitable location in which to do Industry before going through the logistics of doing so.

The Industry window will be available anywhere in New Eden, so even if you can’t start a specific job from your current location, nothing will stop you from visualizing it and making sure you have what you need before acquiring that lucrative blueprint you have been saving up for or before you take that long haul with your minerals to manufacture the next large war chest batch of ships.

The Show Info for blueprints will get an overhaul in the same fashion as the Ship Show Info got when we released the ISIS (InterBus Ship Identification System). The Show Info header will display the skill requirements icon in the same manner as we did for ships, to allow you to see at a glance if you have trained all the required skills to use it. We plan on adding certificates for Industry as well, but it will be done in a later release after we have given players good time to digest the potential skill changes needed to do to make a solid hierarchy for Industry certificates.

The attributes tab for blueprints will be cleaned up and made more to the point where only the baseline information info is displayed. We want Show Info windows generally to show base stats only, which are the same for all players, but then show the end results of modified values in the appropriate interface -- in this case, the Industry window. That being said, research ME/TE will however show time for next level rather than an absolute time, which will then change depending on current research. We want base values when possible, but if we need to display it differently we will message it clearly in the UI. It also has the capability to be “finished” for fully researched blueprints. This is not the case with all Show Info windows today, but in the case of Industry, we had a chance to make this modification to guide all inquiries about end results into the actual window where the actions are taken.

A new tab in the Show Info called simply “Industry” will have a visual selection menu in the same style as Certificates and Ship Masteries, where you navigate between the supported activities for each blueprint. You will be able to add a blueprint into the Industry window by simply double-clicking on it in the inventory, and there will also be an option for it in the right-click as well as at the bottom of the blueprint show info, “View in Industry”. Other improvements to skills and requirements will follow many of the visual updated we did for Ship Show Info windows.



Consistency across all Industry activities
We did some extensive investigation to check what type of Industry activities players were engaged in, and were able to group together the ones that made sense to have together. This would ensure players could start doing one of those activities and, without much effort, understand how the other activities work in the process.

(We realized that certain things could not be addressed this time around, like Planetary Interaction and Starbase reactions. That doesn't mean we won’t address them; we are just prioritizing things based on what fits together.)



Our initial investigations based on the results of the Industry survey and other case studies showed that players saw a clear difference between certain Industry-related activities, while other activities seemed more similar even though the UI for them didn’t work the same. The matrix above showed how we mapped the current state of various industry activities before we started looking into what to modify.

We decided to group these industry activities:

• Manufacturing
• Research
• Invention
• Reverse Engineering

These activities shared the same characteristics when it came down to how we could improve their UX overall, and fit well together in terms of what our players consider part of using and managing blueprints. Refining, by contrast, was considered by players a separate thing from other core Industry activities, so we concluded that any improvements to refining would have a unique UI.

We did multiple passes investigating how players might do industry activities and always ended up thinking about blueprints. They are the heart of the process, so we decided to frame the core experience of the new Industry window around blueprints and helping players discover them more easily. We also wanted players to be able to “pre-visualize” in the Industry window at any time.



Interactions should be efficient and meaningful
Any interaction in the Industry UI should be a gameplay-related decision done by the player instead of the player farming through confirmation windows and checkboxes. We wanted to strip out any unnecessary interaction unless it had specific purpose for the task at hand, whether that is changing actual input materials or output destination or simply adding more runs to a job. We added multiple ways to efficiently add count on runs (using keyboard shortcuts or direct manipulation on a value slider around the selected blueprint). Speed was another important factor and players will be able to start jobs super quickly and get instant updates on values when tinkering with job runs.

With each feature we’ve been working on, we aim to make the UI as efficient as possible to use. This doesn’t mean we are dumbing down EVE in any way: complexity in gameplay should never be tied to how well our players know how to navigate the UI.

Allow players to learn by doing through clear feedback
We wanted very clear feedback on all elements in the UI, explaining expected or potential outcome when hovering anything that can be interacted with. We also aim to provide clear messages when states or processes would change.

We also knew that although we are making it easier for players to learn by doing, we would not be eliminating all wiki pages and third-party tools dedicated to Industry. Our focus was to allow players to get a good fundamental grasp of the gameplay of Industry and clarify the basics in the UI. But if players want to become masters of the craft, they would need to do some good old reading, as with anything worth mastering in general. Reading is still fun. And cool.

Make information readable and enjoyable using graphical representation
Using the same mantra we used when developing the ISIS feature, we wanted information to be represented in a graphical manner, making it readable at a glance and making Industry activities more enjoyable to do overall. Of course not all things are better represented using visualizations (there is a reason why people prefer spreadsheets for some things). Thus core navigation for things like selecting blueprints or installations will remain in a list view, because that is the most efficient way to navigate, compare, and finally select the one you want. That doesn’t mean we can’t make those lists better both functionally and visually -- which we of course went ahead and did.

Making these improvements also meant making sure all the important information and interaction options would exist in the same view, eliminating the need for multiple steps and windows. This did mean we had to make the default window for Industry larger than most other windows, but the benefits definitely outweigh the downsides, which was that all activities could be monitored and interacted with within that one window. We ensured the window could be used in even the smallest supported resolutions, even though it wouldn’t leave space for other interactions. This was still a bigger benefit than forcing the Industry UI into its own full screen view.

PICKING THE RIGHT VISUALIZATION STYLE AND PATTERN
Whenever we need to supply the player with a visualization to explain a system or concept in the game, we need to investigate what information needs to be displayed and presented clearly and then choose the visualization style that fits the needs. There are many common visualization styles available to pick from and we studied most of them, evaluating the pros and cons of each.

We ended up choosing a combination of styles to represent the visualization, picking the bits that suited best from each. We also decided on a traditional list view below it for selecting blueprints and installations and to manage the jobs and teams working on them.



PROTOTYPING
Once we knew what kind of visualization we wanted, we started working on prototypes to ensure the flow of actions would make sense and that information would be readable at a glance and always give the important information while making sure the screen would not become too cluttered.

An early prototype wireframe:



DESIGNING THE INDUSTRY WINDOW
Once we had taken the wireframe seen above through multiple iterations of design, art concepting and art direction, we ended up with this:



We already teased you with this mockup in our last blog Building better Worlds, but now we will go into the details of what is happening here.

Input requirements
When you drag a blueprint into the visualization area, inputs will automatically be added from the default input location of the installation where the blueprint is located. The default input location is your hangar floor (root) if it's a personal job, or the corporation division where the corporate blueprint is located if it's a corporation job. The input requirements area will have clear distinctions between items that are missing and those where the quota has been met.

When you first drag a blueprint in, the job runs will automatically go up to the maximum amount you can do based on the amount of required items you have; if you don't have enough items for one or more groups, the runs amount will go to 1. You can then easily change the number using arrow keys, mouse scrolling, or direct manipulation on the value slider.



The connection lines will have sections that map to the number of input types in each group. Those connection lines will also have state icons for Ready and Not Ready states and the lines themselves will also have clear indicators of the ready or not ready state of everything beneath it. There is one indicator icon for each group and a single larger one that represents all groups.



To follow through on our goal of making the interface readable with the small screen real estate we had, we knew we had to create icons to represent certain key elements. First off we designed icons for all the Industry activities, making a clear visual separation between Manufacturing activity and the other Science related activities. Manufacturing got a yellow/orange theme and appropriate ambient and UI sounds from an industrial setting. Science activities got a blue tint with more technical and scientific themed ambient and UI sounds. These icons would be used everywhere in the client where we reference these Industry activities.



We also created new groups for requirements to help players identify what requirements are tied together and share the same source location or purpose, doing what we did with the new ship group icons for the ISIS. These groups could then be used to categorize these different items in the game to help players identify them quicker.



THE HEART OF THE WINDOW
Blueprint selection, as well as visualizing requirements, volume and outcome of blueprints, will be the core function of the window. For that reason we wanted blueprints to be at the center of the interface and be the first thing players interact with when opening the window. Different states depending on the availability or type of activity will be displayed with relevant effects (visuals and audio) for each unique blueprint.

If the blueprint can't be used for some reason -- perhaps you don't actually own it -- the blueprint slot will have a Not Ready state. If the activity is manufacturing, the look and feel will be yellow/orange, while all Science related activities will have a blue theme.



Mockup showing different states and activity modes for blueprint input UI element

Empty State



Unavailable State



Players can drag any blueprint into the visualization (even the ones they see on the market) without owning it in order to visualize it in the window. If the blueprint is not actually available, this state will be shown.

Activity selection



When you select a blueprint, it will automatically select the first available activity the first time you do it. After that it will always use the one you had selected in the previous setup. You can also select an activity directly from the blueprint list. If an activity is not available for a specific bueprint, it will be indicated with a specific Not available state.

Jobs tab
Once you have added a blueprint into the visualization area and met all the requirements, you will be able to start the job. Once the job starts it will be added to the Jobs tab with an active state and will be moved to the top of the list.



Job states



Jobs will have different states, and are sorted by default in the order displayed above. Once a job is done, you will get a notification in the notification system that a job is ready for delivery. You then click the Deliver button in the Industry window and get the bacon!

Filters



Each tab will have filters available to help those that have massive jobs lists. Jobs up to three months old will persist in the list. The job tab will have a specific default state, but will persist to the selection you pick once you have changed it.

Blueprints Tab



Apart from being visually different than BPC (Blueprint Copy), a BPO (Blueprint Original) will have an infinite sign in the "Runs" column.

Filtering the blueprints by their inventory location will now be possible, allowing you to include corporation divisions and station containers.  \o/

Installations Tab



Each installation will display the activities it supports. Security status is now displayed directly in the list.

Installation and Destination



The installation gets picked automatically when you select a blueprint. It will select the installation where the blueprint is located and use a default location for inputs. If you used a personal blueprint the default location is your hangar floor (root) but if you picked a corporation blueprint you get the first available division of the corporation in the installation where the blueprint is located. You will be able to change the input location for required items by clicking on the installation frame and pick, for example, a specific container.

For destination, you will get the same defaults and will be able to pick a new one, a specific container, different division, basically any inventory location you have access to within the installation where the blueprint is located.

ME & TE (formerly known as PE)



For ME (Material Efficiency) and TE (Time Efficiency) visualization we will have two specific boxes to display it next to the blueprint that will be hard to miss. We use values, color and bars to represent the values to make them easily readable at a glance. Positive values will have a bar growing from left to right and negatives will go from right to left. This will save more horizontal screen space than using traditional center split bars. Since we display the values with + or - as well as color it should still be very clear. CCP Greyscale will go into more details in his blog regarding ME and TE.

REVERSE ENGINEERING AND INVENTION

For Reverse Engineering and Invention activities, we have slightly different feedback and interaction requirements in the UI. The core interactions however stay the same across all activities to ensure functional consistency. Once you have tried one activity, you pretty much know how to do all of them.

Quality meter



The quality meter around blueprints that are being reverse engineered or invented will determine the potential quality of the outcome. The % value will go up if the player adds optional input items or trains skills that affect the job.

Optional inputs



Left side: Default state for empty optional input slot

Right side: Hover effect

Select the outcome



Work in progress mockup for Reverse Engineering and Invention activities visualization

Teams
The mockups show a tab called Teams as well as an icon above the blueprint in the visualization. I will not go into it in any details in this blog because we have a specific blog lined up for it from CCP SoniClover, so stay tuned for that!

That's it everyone. We promised to release the Indy blogs before Fanfest so that we could be gathering feedback on the designs rather than spending the time filling you in. We will monitor the feedback on the forums as well as we can, but replies might not be as structured as usual (because of Fanfest). We will read every single post so please give us your thoughts, be constructive and send us positive vibes along with your feedback.

I hope to see you all at Fanfest so that you can show up to our Industry Panel and Roundtables and just come up to us directly and have a chat about Industry. We have been working very hard on this feature and want to make it the best it can be and that can only happen with your guidance and support.

@CCP_Arrow

Source 2.

Greetings space-labrats,

Let's talk about research!



Older blogs in this series can be found in the archive.

There's two major changes we're making to research: Copying is going to become way shorter, and we're changing how Manufacturing Efficiency (ME) and Production Efficiency (PE) work.

Copying

The headline here is that, during EVE’s summer 2014 release, we're going to change base copy-time on all blueprints to be the same as base build-time. With Industry giving a maximum 20% reduction in build times, and Science giving a maximum 25% reduction in copy times, this ends up meaning that (with maxed skills) copying takes 6.25% less time than manufacturing from a given blueprint.

The primary reason for this is to try and unify T1, T2 and T3 manufacturing around being dominated by build-from-copy rather than build-from-original. This gives a more unified experience and allows us to make more liberal assumptions about how much risk people are prepared to make with their build jobs. To give a concrete example, this makes us much more comfortable about removing the ability to build from a starbase using a blueprint in a station - when you're only risking the copy, this is a much smaller concern than when you're risking a BPO.

For comparison, currently the trend is that T1 blueprints take 20x longer to copy than to build, and T2 blueprints (for those lucky few BPO owners) take 100x longer to copy than to build.

Speaking of T2, this change is obviously very relevant to invention. We've had a good look at the numbers here and are currently of the opinion that this ends up being much less significant than it at first looks. The majority of invention work currently seems to be of the invent-to-build variety rather than invent-to-sell-blueprint, and on a character with the same number of possible research and manufacturing jobs, the bottleneck is pretty much always in the build time rather than the copy or invention time -- and frequently there's a further bottleneck in that invention anyway takes longer than copying. Unless this leads to a major expansion of invent-to-sell, the actual throughput of invention should not significantly change as a result of shorter copy times.

 

ME and PE

First of all, we're changing the name of PE (Production Efficiency) to TE (Time Efficiency), on the grounds that it's then much clearer what it actually does. ME is now called ME (Material Efficiency) everywhere, rather than sometimes being "Material Level" instead.

The major change underpinning most of the work done here is to move blueprint research to a more skill-training-like system, with a fixed number of researchable levels with identical bonuses but increasing research time.

The current system is interesting and flexible but also pretty unintuitive and with some core accessibility issues. Right now every level of ME or TE for a given blueprint takes the same amount of time to research, but gives fairly sharply diminishing returns: The first level is worth 50% of the total available bonus, the second level takes you to 66%, the third 75% and so on, so that by level 9 you already have 90% of the total available bonus. You can then go off and research into infinity to close off as much of that last 10% as you can stomach; in reality you reach "perfect" at the point where the potential savings round to zero, but this is a seven-digit number for battleships.

The major reason for changing this system is that the current relationship between ME/TE level and actual savings is difficult to understand without wrapping your head around some reasonably non-trivial math, which adds fairly substantially to the mental barrier of entry for industry and generally makes the system more opaque than it really needs to be.

 

No more waste

We are removing the concept of "wastage" from the system. With the reprocessing changes we no longer need to be quite so careful about build requirements dropping below reprocessing returns (which are now 50% rather than 100% of build materials), so we're removing the current system of taking "perfect build" requirements, adding waste on top and then removing it again with ME.

In the summer release, all base build costs will be increased by 11%. ME will then reduce build costs by 10% of that new base value, which brings us back to where we started. The rest of this blog is working from that new, higher base.

Production time already uses this dynamic, so no changes are needed there.

The Material Efficiency skill will be repurposed, stay tuned for more information on that in a future blog.

(The reason we’re going up by 11% is that we’re multiplying the new base by 0.9, so we want to divide the old base by 0.9 so the two cancel out. 1/0.9 = 1.1 recurring, so the actual multiplier we use will be 11.111111…%.)

 

The new system

Blueprint research will then be moved to a ten-step system. Each step of ME research will reduce material requirements on that blueprint by 1%, and each step of TE research will reduce manufacturing time on that blueprint by 2%. These values will be displayed as their actual percentages, rather than their step numbers, so a blueprint that has been researched six times in each will show as ME 6% and TE 12%.

Research times will follow essentially the same curve as skills, with the additional five steps interpolated between the existing skill steps, and blueprint "ranks" multiplying the research times for more advanced blueprints.

For a "rank 1" blueprint, such as T1 ammo, the unmodified research times will look like this:

Level    Seconds    Approx. Total
1                105         1m 45s
2                250         4m
3                595         2h
7            19000         5h
8            45255       12h
9          107700         1d
10          256000         3d

Skills and other bonuses will then reduce times as they do currently.

Negative ME and TE levels work pretty much as you'd expect in this sort of system, being converted into direct percentage values. TE -4 will thus now be shown as TE -100%, and all the various decryptors (and related code) will be updated to match.

This gives us a pretty clear system that is easy to wrap your head around, works for pretty much everything, and provides a point at which blueprint research is "done" for a given blueprint and needs no further work.

 

Details

What we're doing with non-standard blueprints

We would like to unify everything around a clear, consistent set of numbers, which means rooting out and eliminating as many of the anomalies as possible. This will for example mean moving Warfare Links to the same ME 10%/TE 20% system as everything else, removing the weird outsized TE bonus on fuel blocks (I'm pretty sure that's my fault and I'm pretty sure I did it by accident), and generally eliminating most of the other quirks, except where the blueprint or product is sufficiently unique anyway that it's justifiable to keep its oddball status.

How we're selecting ranks

T1 ammo will be the Rank 1 baseline. These blueprints all currently have a base research time of 6,000 seconds (i.e., 1h 40m). To determine ranks of other blueprints, the current plan is to simply divide their research times by 6,000, maintaining the research ratios currently present. This means T1 modules are generally rank 2, T1 frigates/cruisers/battleships are 20/40/60, and the highest current rank is Titans at 3414 (good luck maxing that out!). This is pretty easy to further adjust, and we may for example want to pull ships up or down a little.

How we're going to turn old blueprints into new blueprints

Obviously we need some way to remap old blueprint research values into new values, and equally obviously we're not just going to turn an ME 120 blueprint into an ME 120% blueprint.

Our current line of thinking is to do the math such that no currently researched blueprint gets any worse in terms of the bonus it provides (weird anomalies like fuel blocks getting a general TE nerf notwithstanding).

This would mean that ME/TE 1 become ME 5%/TE 10%, ME/TE 5-9 become ME 9%/TE 18%, and anything over ME/TE 10 currently move to ME 10%/TE 20%.

This has the advantage of everyone's blueprints staying the same or getting better, but the drawback that people with blueprints researched to really high levels will find that, while their blueprints are still generally getting better (i.e., will be actually perfect rather than just a reasonable approximation thereof), other blueprints which were less-well researched will have caught up with them.

We're very aware that some of you will feel that you've lost your previous advantages gained by researching blueprints for a really long time, and this is one of the areas we're preparing to focus the most on in terms of receiving feedback and making adjustments or additions to smooth the transition. Everything is on the table in terms of finding a reasonable solution that meets everyone's legitimate concerns, so please approach the feedback in terms of telling us what you'd like to see rather than simply expressing frustration with the changes as described here. We're not done with this yet!

For transitioning negative ME blueprints, we're just multiplying by 10, while for negative TE we're subtracting 1 and multiplying by 20, which keeps both values roughly the same before and after for the reasons outlined above.

 

Wrap-up

That covers pretty much all the changes to research. The functioning of the system is pretty solidified design-wise, but all the numbers are very easy to adjust. We're anticipating making further balance changes in response to feedback, so, please let us know in the comments if there's anything here you see as especially problematic -- and why -- and we'll try and address as many concerns as possible!

Cheers,

-CCP Greyscale, on behalf of Team Superfriends

:tables: ._.

Anyway, I have literally no idea what any of this means, so you industry types can go nuts ^_^

[Makoto Priano]

So-- ME/PE-wise, at the moment waste is something like waste * 1/1+N, N being the researched level. So-- ME 1 is going to be waste * 1/2, ME 2 is going to be waste * 1/3, and so on. This results in diminishing returns.

Now, they're doing away with that and just making it COST * (1-(.01*ME)), with a cap of ME10-- so up to 10% off the cost, instead of weirdness like costs being increased then decreased. The dimishing return will be on the time required to research the BP, which will now function similarly to skill ranks for determining research time. It's a marginal simplification that they'll be able to play with later, I suspect.

The rest-- um. Yeah, I'll have to read through it more. :x

I wonder what they've got under wraps still for this expansion. I figure the 'teams' thing is going to be quite big, but I feel like there'll be more...

[PracticalTechnicality]

All very promising stuff, but as makoto points out, until we have the ufll pantheon of dev blogs, there is no whole picture just yet. 

The UI looks like it will enable the less spreadsheet minded to go about their business, while not swamping industry with 'minerals are free types' (that profit notification should kill off that entire philosophy - until 'donchian agnostics' come along and ruin it all again by not paying attention to incremental values changes). 

Research is a much needed simplification, though December is my potential dream patch as I hope they will finally remove 'output randomisation' from Tech 3 subsystem jobs, the same way they removed it from invention. 

TEAMS are the big thing here.  Likely test feature, lots of speculation and a potential gateway to implementing 'crew' mechanics.  I eagerly await more news. 

[Dessau]

Not really familiar with the manufacturing process outside of the tutorial in Quantum Rise, but is it normal for a Myrmidon in production to have a Tech II badge?

[PracticalTechnicality]

It is if it is an Eos, but that could also be a UI art department snafu as everything show is art assets afaik, merely demonstrating the new UI. 

[orange]

The simplification of ME/PE is nice - we will see how my prints come out on the far end.

The UI is kind of "meh" mainly because it is all still 1 job oriented tasks.  I am a two-bit industrialist and I have to use spreadsheets to manage resources and the like.  We will see what Teams provides.

[Dessau]

It is if it is an Eos, but that could also be a UI art department snafu as everything show is art assets afaik, merely demonstrating the new UI.

Appreciate the clarification, thanks. Nothing worse than loosing a premature boner for a new ship that doesn't exist.

[Makoto Priano]

Hopefully there'll be fun new ships.

Team-wise-- yeah. Given that the CSM minutes indicate that CCP was inquiring about non-corp social groups, it could be that. However, with the importance for research cost determination, I somewhat suspect this'll be a trial for a new crew mechanic, or else a 'ships for manufacturing, sort of!' thing.

Going to so love that.