Expression Of Sympathy (please hear me out)

[JojoKasei]

I feel deeply sorry for the UI designers. I am quite confident in saying they did not choose the new layout and the new icons. Those were forced onto them by higher-ups (I am not too familiar with the topic, but I think that was some project manager who only cares about financing). Now imagine having to redo stuff that was working as intended and with the apparent order to make it worse. It would be like being told to invent a wheel that isn't round but octagonal. It's nothing you want to do, nothing that makes sense. But you can not really refuse, either. You have to invest time and effort into actively making something worse despite the solution in place already working. Best case scenario, the project manager actually - erroneously - thought the changes were for the better. I believe it unfeasible that everyone below them didn't catch onto the fact this might be a bad idea. And for those people I feel sorry, as they were made to manually push the car over the cliff, fully able to predict what would happen.

 

To elaborate: My girlfriend's ex works in the gaming industry, and according to her he used to complain a lot about his project managers, because they habitually issued orders that made no sense from a technical perspective or were grounded in reality in any way, as they were neither trained developers (business/finance graduates) nor connected to objective reality and/or player interests.

Edited February 16, 2022 by JojoKasei

[Darth_Exar]

I really dont get the light blue highlight around every skill on our skillbars now, please for the love of god revert it, it seriously hurts my eyes as its a stark contrast to the generally darker shading of the game. The old UI in this regard was working perfectly well.

 

As for the character sheet, I dont think its a bad edition, the rest however is another story. Inventory, skills and utilities, caps lock everywhere.

[Sarova]

I feel deeply sorry for the UI designers. I am quite confident in saying they did not choose the new layout and the new icons. Those were forced onto them by higher-ups (I am not too familiar with the topic, but I think that was some project manager who only cares about financing). Now imagine having to redo stuff that was working as intended and with the apparent order to make it worse. It would be like being told to invent a wheel that isn't round but octagonal. It's nothing you want to do, nothing that makes sense. But you can not really refuse, either. You have to invest time and effort into actively making something worse despite the solution in place already working. Best case scenario, the project manager actually - erroneously - thought the changes were for the better. I believe it unfeasible that everyone below them didn't catch onto the fact this might be a bad idea. And for those people I feel sorry, as they were made to manually push the car over the cliff, fully able to predict what would happen.

 

To elaborate: My girlfriend's ex works in the gaming industry, and according to her he used to complain a lot about his project managers, because they habitually issued orders that made no sense from a technical perspective or were grounded in reality in any way, as they were neither trained developers (business/finance graduates) nor connected to objective reality and/or player interests.

I can believe this. It happens in every field - people at the top with no hands on experience of anything making ridiculous decisions because they've convinced the shareholders/directors that it will make them even more money/save them money.

 

As for the UI, I'd hoped the change in font was restricted to the PTS but it's made it into live and it's awful - really hard to read.

[arunav]

I feel deeply sorry for the UI designers. I am quite confident in saying they did not choose the new layout and the new icons. Those were forced onto them by higher-ups (I am not too familiar with the topic, but I think that was some project manager who only cares about financing). Now imagine having to redo stuff that was working as intended and with the apparent order to make it worse. It would be like being told to invent a wheel that isn't round but octagonal. It's nothing you want to do, nothing that makes sense. But you can not really refuse, either. You have to invest time and effort into actively making something worse despite the solution in place already working. Best case scenario, the project manager actually - erroneously - thought the changes were for the better. I believe it unfeasible that everyone below them didn't catch onto the fact this might be a bad idea. And for those people I feel sorry, as they were made to manually push the car over the cliff, fully able to predict what would happen.

 

To elaborate: My girlfriend's ex works in the gaming industry, and according to her he used to complain a lot about his project managers, because they habitually issued orders that made no sense from a technical perspective or were grounded in reality in any way, as they were neither trained developers (business/finance graduates) nor connected to objective reality and/or player interests.

 

Pretty sure Keith is in charge of those decisions. And he definitely knows better/isn't an EA finance guy who has no idea what people like about SWTOR and why they play it.

Edited February 16, 2022 by arunav

[JojoKasei]

Pretty sure Keith is in charge of those decisions. And he definitely knows better/isn't an EA finance guy who has no idea what people like about SWTOR and why they play it.

 

Then he has no excuse. The finance people at least have the really flimsy one that they don't know better and are just too arrogant to listen to the people that have to act on their words.

[-OcTavius-]

The new UI looks so bad. I don't know who thought this would have been a good idea. It's less user friendly as well by a large degree. When changing outfits it doesn't even seem to work compared to the old one. Like if you want to ununify your colors on an outfit, you have to completely unequipped that item and reequip it. It's broken. And I would have some patience for this kind of thing if it wasn't already delayed. So now we have a UI that not only looks terrible, less user friendly, but also doesn't even work sometimes. Great. I was really excited for this update and it's been a complete and utter letdown in just about every aspect.

 

The price for being a subscriber is becoming increasingly unjustifiable

.

Edited February 16, 2022 by -OcTavius-

[juliushorst]

I have some sympathy for Jackie, being left alone to deal with an angry mob (of which I'm a part) while people responsible for this mess went into hiding.

[DarkIntelligence]

I feel deeply sorry for the UI designers. I am quite confident in saying they did not choose the new layout and the new icons. Those were forced onto them by higher-ups (I am not too familiar with the topic, but I think that was some project manager who only cares about financing). Now imagine having to redo stuff that was working as intended and with the apparent order to make it worse. It would be like being told to invent a wheel that isn't round but octagonal. It's nothing you want to do, nothing that makes sense. But you can not really refuse, either. You have to invest time and effort into actively making something worse despite the solution in place already working. Best case scenario, the project manager actually - erroneously - thought the changes were for the better. I believe it unfeasible that everyone below them didn't catch onto the fact this might be a bad idea. And for those people I feel sorry, as they were made to manually push the car over the cliff, fully able to predict what would happen.

 

To elaborate: My girlfriend's ex works in the gaming industry, and according to her he used to complain a lot about his project managers, because they habitually issued orders that made no sense from a technical perspective or were grounded in reality in any way, as they were neither trained developers (business/finance graduates) nor connected to objective reality and/or player interests.

 

I don’t believe that for a second. Why would a higher-up, especially one who is only concerned with the finances of the game, want to waste resources on something as mundane as an UI change? No this whole thing is reminiscent of the endless iOS and social media platform updates that constantly fiddle with the UI, often only making it worse, just so all of these designers can justify their paychecks. Changing things that don’t need to be changed so they have something to point to and say: “see, this is why you have to keep me on the payroll.” This kind of behavior is especially prevalent in operations such as SWTOR which have essentially been placed on life support and have only a skeleton crew to begin with. Understaffed and untrained people were just desperate to keep their jobs and that’s why we got this mess.

[Tofu_Shark]

I believe that "higher up" goes even higher than the project manager, OP. I believe EA has been giving BioWare most of the orders since KotFE/KotET, because that was the last time the game seemed to have any significant investment based on the scale of things. I believe EA doesn't trust BioWare anymore and they have very little say in game affairs since then.

 

Also, these insults of "did you get an intern to do this" that I'm seeing all over the forum and elsewhere are really kriffing low. These people making these insults obviously were never interns. Unpaid interns could only dream of doing work as important as UI design on a huge video game. Never in a thousand millennia would they be allowed to do work as relevant as that!

Edited February 19, 2022 by Tofu_Shark

[Totemdancer]

I have some sympathy for Jackie, being left alone to deal with an angry mob (of which I'm a part) while people responsible for this mess went into hiding.

 

Yes, she’s the only one I have sympathy for.

[Rolodome]

Yes, she’s the only one I have sympathy for.

Her situation makes me think of this scene:

 

(for context, the character Jim Carrey is playing had just gotten hired on as VP of communications - also, the movie was inspired in part by what happened in RL with Enron)

[MaraNebesna]

Changing things that don’t need to be changed so they have something to point to and say: “see, this is why you have to keep me on the payroll.”

 

Yeah .. They've really proven themselves this time! :D:D

[SteveTheCynic]

To elaborate: My girlfriend's ex works in the gaming industry, and according to her he used to complain a lot about his project managers, because they habitually issued orders that made no sense from a technical perspective or were grounded in reality in any way, as they were neither trained developers (business/finance graduates) nor connected to objective reality and/or player interests.

I have news for you. It's not happy news, but it is news.

 

This problem affects software projects in general, not just game software(1). Software project managers don't need to be trained developers(2), but should have some grounding in what developers do and, therefore, the impact of "seen from the outside" changes on the internal processes of development.

 

(1) Authority citation: my own experience of thirty three years as a software developer.

 

(2) Perhaps, even, they *shouldn't* be developers, even if their background is in development. On large projects, the project manager's job is to manage the project, not to develop software for it.

[pjskull]

I don’t believe that “project managers” are responsible for strategic design decisions, that sort of authority usually resides at a higher level within an organization. In many current organizations, the entire notion of a “project manager” role has been revised in favor of a more agile pod based structure.

 

Regardless, blaming design / functionality decisions on lower ranking backlog managers is a mistake. Somebody making a much bigger check likely either drove the decision or gave the go-ahead.

[Kryptonomic]

I feel deeply sorry for the UI designers. I am quite confident in saying they did not choose the new layout and the new icons. Those were forced onto them by higher-ups (I am not too familiar with the topic, but I think that was some project manager who only cares about financing).

 

That's not really how it works. Generally the "higher ups" have a budget and plan that has a line item: "Update UI elements." There might be specific reasons for that line item. For example, it might fall under a wider ambit of "normalize UI elements for easier platform portability."

 

Within that line item, a product manager will break down various aspects of what has to be updated. UI designers are then given the task of coming up with the actual requirements for the design itself. Those are generally agreed to by the "higher ups" but not dictated by them. That would be a little like suggesting that the "higher ups" also had exacting input into the C++ code that the developers were writing and actively told them what code constructs to use in lieu of others.

 

Certainly if the "higher ups" just absolutely felt that a given design was horrible, they could push back against it and nix it. But even then it depends on who you're talking about, since a Senior Designer may be the "higher up" to a group of UX/UI designers.

 

What you might instead consider is perhaps that the "higher ups" are actually not involved that much at all. Perhaps the situation is such that a cohesive strategy for implementation across a broad array of fronts is lacking. This tends to happen, for example, when product management is absent or inexperienced. What might be happening is that you have people -- say UI designers -- who are operating under little to no constraint and doing what they think is best or what makes their own job easier.

 

I can pretty much assure you what did happen is that the UI design team came up with proposed designs given their mandate of "update the UI." Those updates were presented and, obviously, accepted as they were within budget and capable of being produced within whatever timeline was agreed to.

 

To elaborate: My girlfriend's ex works in the gaming industry, and according to her he used to complain a lot about his project managers, because they habitually issued orders that made no sense from a technical perspective or were grounded in reality in any way, ...

 

Project managers -- as opposed to product managers -- are not generally making technical decisions. What they are doing is keeping the project on a timeline; usually one that was promised (either internally or externally). Granted, titles and how they are carried out differ at companies, but it is pretty much a truism that project managers will not be dictating the technical development (including the constraints) of a game.

 

Project managers are basically all about scope, schedule, finance, and risk. They often do get a lot of the heat because they are pushing for the timeline in spite of the technical constraints that might exist. But they didn't cause those constraints nor do they dictate how they are handled. They simply say in what timeframe they must be handled or things are pretty much going out as they are.

 

Project managers are reminding the development team that there is only so much cost allocated for the current work cycle and thus whatever solutions are made, they have to fit within that cost constraint. But they didn't allocate the budget nor dictate how the budget would be spent.

Edited February 19, 2022 by Kryptonomic

[xordevoreaux]

Yes, she’s the only one I have sympathy for.

And she's working today, a Saturday. She replied to a bug notice earlier. All sympathies from me for what she's doing.

 

Jackie has the least-fun job at any gaming company. Kudos to you, Jackie.

Edited February 19, 2022 by xordevoreaux