Star Wars Galaxies: Developer Comments On Mixed Reception of UI Changes

Holocron has today commented on several of the UI changes that took place in the large update yesterday, as well as the inclusion of an ! over the heads of so many NPCs...

The ! icons were added because people said they had trouble finding NPCs with quests and missions.

The UI changes have met with mixed reception, I admit, but the goal was to make it easier to read, not harder.

The white con is SUPPOSED to almost kill you--if it did, thank goodness, that means we're finally getting the difficulty curve closer to right on some of the creatures.

The rate of money earning from missions was through the roof. I haven't posted an economy update in a while, but the average player increases their money by 7% every day. That's net profit. The vast majority of it comes from missions.

-Raph Koster, Creative Director

I have to admit that the font changes within the game certainly improve the presentation of the UI, but I am not so sure about the difficulties caused by changing the Skills and Inventory screens to a single colour layout, having the effect of making it much harder to see what you have equipped, and what skills have been completed. I did also wonder at first about all those exclamation marks over peoples heads...

Note that Holocron also entered the initial profit increase per day as 70% as opposed to the actual 7% (this was soon corrected), creating reams of flaming all over the official boards in a matter of hours. A demonstration of the tension and passion surrounding SWG...