[Feedback - 7.0 - 529848] Annoying newsfeed overlay

[Candergart]

For a while I figured I would just try to get by without mentioning this annoying detail.
But after several hours of game play, this is really getting on my nerves and I just can't stay quiet.

Please have a look at this screenshot:
http://eve.lmfao.se/X4/map_overlay_annoying.png

This newsfeed is overlayed on top of other windows, none of which can be moved.
Sooo many times I have wanted to make changes to ships or interact with things that required that I be able to read information behind this overlay window.

But the news just keep rushing in and it really really really gets annoying after a while.

My suggestion is that this new feed either be placed somewhere less interfering while in map-view or that you allow us to move it.

Best Regards
Me

[SpaceCadet11864]

Wanted to add that this happens while station building, and when on the "Logical Overview" screen. For 16:9 Ratio, it also covers the entire lower-left corner. I have found a work-around, though not ideal - when pausing the game the overlay immediately disappears, allowing me to use the lower-left corner again.

On one hand, I do like seeing notifications when I'm in other screens, as sometimes it is something important. However, because I can't scroll the sidebar down low enough, the notification blocks me from seeing the menus clearly. I've mostly found this get in the way when I am trying to assign ships to commanders or stations. For a while I turned off notifications but I really didn't like that either because I wanted to see how often relations were rising.

The only workaround as said, is to pause the game. This has the disadvantage of the notification not coming back though, but it's not too bad since I can still go to the logs and see them if needed. I would say that I'd very much prefer either the ability to scroll the left sidenav further down so there is a 30-50% empty space on the bottom left area, or revert back to pre 7.0

I've added some screenshots as well:
https://imgur.com/a/lmlAFRN

[geldonyetich]

Oh, you pause the game to get rid of it? That's good to know. I have to say that it seems like 4 times out of 5 when I go to select a ship from my unit list, the ship is going to be on the lower left corner of the screen since it falls below the stations I own, and there's that dang news feed in the way so I can't see what I'm clicking upon.

[Koizuki]

It does look like an element that is kind of "temporary"-looking in that they just hacked the existing element to be layered at the top of everything. I am hoping it doesn't ship like this when the beta concludes, though.

I do want to see these messages (for example, missing a ship being destroyed because I'm in the map giving orders somewhere else, or one of my alerts goes off but I can't see where it triggered) but it should be a new element, probably a standard rectangular popup in the upper-center or bottom-center of the screen or something, with an 'X' button to dismiss if we're busy at the time. These should also be logged, because currently there's a bunch of stuff that shows up there that might be important (like the details of the pirate ship that just demanded one of your traders drop their cargo..) but they don't appear in the log so if you miss it, you're stuck looking around the map for the single ship that's giving you problems.

One can hope..

[alt3rn1ty]

I think this topic is about the fourth on the subject of "the message ticker has become really annoying". Here's a couple ..
viewtopic.php?f=192&t=460924
viewtopic.php?p=5224412#p5224412

No bug tracker numbers have yet been assigned to any topic I have seen.
Personally I consider this to be a bug in game UI design.

On a screen size of 1360x768 (for better performance on a laptop), and the UI scale set to 1.1 (for better viewing of menu text with my eyesight), the ticker box covers a bigger portion of the lower left of the screen.
I have a lot of notifications turned off so it doesn't bug me so much .. but it still bugs me, especially if I want to interact with any ships listed on my Property list in that area when it pops up. We can click through the message box, but then I cant see exactly if I have my mouse on the ship I wish to interact with, so end up having to wait until the message box goes away again.

[SpaceCadet11864]

but then I cant see exactly if I have my mouse on the ship I wish to interact with, so end up having to wait until the message box goes away again.

Just in case you missed it, you can immediately dismiss the message box by using a pause hot-key. I know it's not ideal, but until it's fixed I've found it quite useful.

[wevee]

If this new functionality is a feature then this will be some negative feedback regarding its placement. However, if its a bug, I am quite happy to report it as such.

The placement of the notification popup on the map screen is more an annoyance than it is useful as the more ships I have, the more ships in the list are covered, especially in an active game with a lot of notifications.

Then again, if its supposed to be under the map layer, I would like to post this screenshot to show exactly what I am talking about.

https://imgur.com/a/I0J4KGZ

thanks for the time.

[wevee]

So it appears that this is a new feature, and while it does relay some important information to the player that could get missed while in the map screen, it can't be at the expense of other information.

I would like to offer an alternative, that likely will not be an easy fix, but would solve the overlapping of information.

While on the map screen, and as long as the player has one of the information panes open, (could be built into either the left main pane, or the normally collapsed right pane) have the same notifications as a plugin to those panes that grows from the bottom creating a scroll bar as needed over the information.

As I said, this is probably not a quick fix but leaving the overlay as it is now is just poor to look at from an overlay perspective. Due to the conflicting angles of the notification screen and the information panel it just looks like its a bug, which due to my lack of play recently, is why I reported it as such.

Either way though, please don't leave it the way it is, early in a game, its bothersome. Towards late game, I just want all notifications to stop so I can see my list of ships. Thumbs up for the idea, thumbs down for the presentation.

[alt3rn1ty]

I think this is fixed in 7 Beta 5

The messages seem to cue up now waiting for when you are not looking at the map/whatever.
Then you get a stream of them all at once to catch up on what you missed.

IMHO its much better.

[alt3rn1ty]

[Beta 5] Removed message ticker rotation while shown on top of menu (new feature in 7.00).
[Beta 5] Removed message ticker appearing for normal messages while menus are open (new feature in 7.00).

[Falcrack]

I think this is fixed in 7 Beta 5

The messages seem to cue up now waiting for when you are not looking at the map/whatever.
Then you get a stream of them all at once to catch up on what you missed.

IMHO its much better.

I don't like it though. Because I will spend hours in the map and menus, and when I finally go back to the regular view, I am seeing a huge long stream of ancient messages that never seem to end.

[HeinzS]

I would like to see the messages displayed on the map at least for the alarms that have been set up. Because at the moment you have to open the log for the alarms, which is very cumbersome, to see the reason.

[SpaceCadet11864]

I am having trouble with the latest changes. When I am spending a decent amount of time in the map view, I don't get any messages anymore. Then when I leave map view, I am getting a bunch of old messages.

I currently am using the "Wait" feature with pirates. Whenever pirates accost one of my traders, I switch to map view and sometimes another pirate accosts another trader, and I switch back from map view to see who it is, but the message ticker is so far behind it doesnt show, and it got ot a point where I was hearing the pirate messages or seeing the pirate message in the cockpit and it was related to an older event or something. I honeslty got very confused and was not able to find the pirates on a few occasions. It can compound and get worse if switching back and forth from map to cockpit.

I am also getting very old messages like "we found something out here" that I cannot respond to.

[sabbede]

I'm also finding the total message suppression to be an issue. I'm losing ships because I don't see the "I'm being killed" notifications.
Almost there though!

[ElMonoLoco]

Same feedback from me. The messages cueing up while the map is open is no bueno and just leads to an endless stream of useless outdated messages when exiting the map after using it for a while and it also means I keep missing important, time-sensitive messages. Please revert to the old behaviour where messages would go by unseen behind the map screen so we at least get the audio cues while they are still relevant. Ideally I would also like a new section in the notification settings that lets me choose what kind of messages have a high enough priority to get displayed on top of the the map.

[Falcrack]

I would want messages to show up while the map is open, but perhaps they simply need to change how they are displayed when the map is open compared to when it is not. If the messages were to appear in an area of the map which is not normally covered by important map elements, that would be better than the message suppression we have in the beta.

[SpaceCadet11864]

Yeah, it would be nice to set priority on certain notifications. Another thing that crossed my mind is this notification system is similar to modern smart phones. When a notification is "pushed" it shouldn't be delayed or suppressed just because you are in the middle of something, not unless you put on "air plane" mode or "do not disturb" - etc. If the notification part was just not blocking other information it would be fine, also it would be intuitive if when you click on the notification panel it just opens the log. IF we could customize where the notifications show up that would be great, or which ones are urgent enough to block.

I wonder what problem the delayed notification "feature" is aiming to solve exactly? I assume it's something related to accessibility, like players missing important messages? If that's the case, the way it is now is much less accessible for me because I keep getting dated messages. I've had to quit the game and restart because the backlog got so bad, this happened when I spent a lot of time building a base.

I'd be perfectly happy though if it was back to the way it was at 6.20, I never really missed anything back then. I can't stand how it has been in 7.00. The video calls are also very broken. Ever since this delay has been introduced, getting video calls well after an event happens it just really jank, especially when they're back to back to back.