New Alignment tip drop feedback

[Luminara]

Ever since mid-screen notifications were added to the game, it's become increasingly difficult to see the game.  These notifications pop up in the middle of the screen and during combat, obscuring the player's view of the action, of the targets, of the powers affecting the targets, of pointer location, everything.  After combat, the player has to wait for the notifications to finish animating before the next spawn is visible or before he/she can safely move in any direction.  And since these notifications move to different parts of the of the screen, depending on what they're connected to (tips, enhancements, recipes, salvage), even moving the camera around doesn't alleviate the problem.

 

And now it's worse than ever, because tips overwrite tips and allow the notification system to spam the screen without restriction.  There are no buff/debuff icons on the target window, so the only clue we have to what might buffs/debuffs are on enemies is the graphical effects of powers, and we can't see those.  The notifications come up dead center on the screen, right where targeting is optimal, so we can't see location-click reticles, which enemy we've targeted, names, con colors... just notification after notification after fucking notification.  We're playing a graphics-intensive MMORPG and we can't see the graphics because we have MUD text constantly obscuring everything.

 

Added to that, it's now impossible to gather favored tips without accepting them immediately.  In the middle of combat (which we can't even do since tips can't be accepted or dismissed inside instanced content).  When we're pressed on all sides by enemies trying to Cuisinart us.  That leaves only the options of going out and street sweeping spawns of 2 and 3 to get the tips we want, or breaking off combat and bolting for the exit every time a tip drops.

 

Everything about this is detrimental to the fundamental experience of playing the game.  Everything.  There's no benefit to this, and I don't mean the bad outweighs the good, I mean nothing about this positively affects gameplay.  It's bad across the board.

 

But the worst part of this is that it was added to a release candidate 6 days before publishing the beta to live, without bring attention to it, without even mentioning it in passing, nothing but a few lines of green text at the end of the longest patch notes you've ever dumped on the forums.  Yes, we all know that pushing things to the live servers is a volatile situation dependent on @Faultline available time and ability to connect, and you all have schedules of your own to which you need to adhere, but that's completely irrelevant in this case.  This should never have been added at that stage.  YOU DO NOT ADD UNTESTED FEATURES OR MAKE DRASTIC CHANGES WHEN YOU'RE IN RELEASE CANDIDATE PHASE.  That's Beta 101.  Release candidates are for polishing and fine-tuning, not cramming in spur of the moment changes to basic gameplay.  This is something that should've been set aside for the next beta, brought to player attention and thoroughly tested, not dropped in and pushed out immediately because someone on the team was anxious to squeeze in one more thing.

 

I've never criticized a developer before, but this time, it's warranted.  Whoever did this made a monumental error in judgement and execution.  And I hold all of you responsible.  Publishing a change like this without any warning, testing, requests for feedback, or even consideration of the consequences, was a bad decision.  No-one on the team stopped and thought, "Gee, maybe we should run this by the players, since it directly affects the ability to access content", or "Gosh, I wonder if there could be some downside to this", you all nodded your heads and said, "Yeah, throw that in there, it works, good enough!"

 

This is Development Team Failure 101.  It should never be repeated.

 

Roll this back.  Get it out.  I don't care if you have to go in with a backhoe and explosives to remove it, get it the fuck out.  We do not need the screen cluttered up with even more giant goddamn billboards blocking the view, and it's turned tips from an enjoyable way to experience the game to an unmitigated hinderance of combat and movement.

Edited February 22 by Luminara
Edited in compliance with GM instructions.

[tidge]

The vector of my dislike for this change to alignment tips is the same (as above), but the magnitude of the personal animosity is less.

 

Please roll back this unnecessary change that is also highly annoying.

[Lunar Ronin]

Agreed completely.  The changes pushed through the last couple of release candidates should have been held back.  You don't push game altering things through into release candidates like that.  People assume rightfully that release candidates are for bug fixing.  If a few people hadn't tested the keybinds that were pushed through three days before release, people that used the default keybinds would have had their keybinds overwritten because the keybinds profiles didn't actually work.

 

Still, it was just a mistake that can be corrected and learned from.

Edited February 22 by Lunar Ronin

[Acroyear]

I agree. This forced change needs to be rolled back. It is seriously one of the worst changes I've ever seen to this game (and I've been here since 2004).

[PeregrineFalcon]

That's too bad. I was planning on playing, and doing a lot of respecs, this weekend. But constant pop-ups, in any game, drive me crazy.

 

I guess I'll just play Helldiver 2 this weekend and wait until The Council of Thirteen fixes this issue.

[Krimson]

I was street-sweeping last night to check out some of the updated mobs. Wow... Tips for every group, sometimes more than one. Dropping before the fight was over. Heck, I got TWO tips from a mob that was a single Hellfrost. I was getting more tips than groups I was fighting, but as was mentioned, they get overwritten. Tip spam is crazy.

[Jimmy]

We're making some changes to this in the next patch to reduce the number of tips dropping in missions.

 

One thing I will say is that the issue is being amplified by the Valentines event being active, which dramatically increases the amount of tips floating around. In any other month you'd be seeing a lot less.

[tidge]

"Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

 

I don't mind tips dropping in mission or out of mission. I want them to drop in each circumstance. Previously I would do one tip to get the next one... And after the morality mission I'd street sweep to get a tip...

 

It is the unnecessary notifications that aggravate me. Maybe for my account they could just be turned into Enhancement Catalysts?

[PeregrineFalcon]

2 hours ago, Jimmy said:

We're making some changes to this in the next patch to reduce the number of tips dropping in missions.

Please give us the option to turn the on screen notifications off entirely.

 

Thank you.

[Excraft]

I have to agree with others here.  This is a super, super annoying change and should be rolled back and/or removed entirely in the next patch.  "Making tips drop less" does absolutely nothing to prevent this text from obscuring the screen when it does happen.  There has to be a better way of notifying the player of these drops instead of this annoying text.  The game is already over polluted with VFX.  It needs less, not more.

[Number Six]

13 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Please give us the option to turn the on screen notifications off entirely.

 

Should be hitting Brainstorm tonight hopefully, but as of that same patch, when a tip is replaced because your tips are full, the floating text is suppressed entirely and does not appear.

[Burnt Umber]

Though less vehemently, I too am not fond of the new tip system.  Previously, I could hold onto tips and discard the one I didn't like at my leisure.  Now, the game discards tips based on whether I've actively committed to doing them.  Further, I find I get the tip notification even when I have three active tips - the system now gives the notification whenever it would have been possible.  It's quite irritating.

 

Like the OP, I realize there are restrictions when things need to be put out, but also like the OP, I am disappointed that actual additions with need for testing were still being added to the release candidates just before it was pushed to the Homecoming servers from Beta.  This feature should not have been tacked on at the last minute.

[Luminara]

5 minutes ago, Number Six said:

when a tip is replaced

 

If there's no way to retain tips so they're not overwritten, they shouldn't be replaced.

 

Ever.

 

No, "Just quit the mission and start over so you can save the tips outside" is not a solution.

 

No, "Just accept the tips you like and never run them so they're not replaced" is not a solution.

 

No, "Just go buy the tips you want and skip the drops" is not a solution.

 

The ability to keep or dismiss tips has been taken out of players' hands, and hiding the notifications doesn't fix that problem.  Don't throw a rug over it and do the Jedi mind trick wave, that doesn't work on me.  I want the control I had over which tips I kept and which ones I dismissed.  Those are my decisions, not the game's, not yours, mine.

[Rudra]

I completely agree with @Luminara. Having new tip drops remove already held but not activated tips is a really bad idea. If a player wanted different tips before? They could just dismiss the tip and wait for the next one. If they wanted the tips they had? They just kept them until they were ready to do them. Now? There is no player agency. And even if only from the "Redside... Best Side? Right??" thread, you devs should have realized that player agency is a really big thing to us players. And you took it away. So yeah, this part of the change needs to be completely rolled back and the previous method of dealing with tips restored. (So I guess this can also be added to my "Thanks For The Gift, Can I Give It Back?" thread....)

[Coyotedancer]

Lumi's got a good point, there... The popups (Which, yes, are as annoying as all hell right now-) are only part of the problem. Losing the ability to easily curate our "to do list" tip collection, so to speak, is also an issue.

 

You've removed our ability to potentially get a favorite tip during a mission and say "Yeah. I like that one. I'll run it later." It's likely to have been replaced by the time we're ready to run it. o_0

 

 

 

 

Edited February 22 by Coyotedancer

[TheZag]

A lock/unlock for tip mission overwrite would likely alleviate the problem,  assuming its even possible.

 

The tip spam suppression mentioned above will solve the issue for most players that ignore the tip system or dont care what they get.  But for those that actively seek certain tips,  having them constantly get overwritten still wont help.

 

[tidge]

The previous system worked fine: If I wanted a specific Tip, they only cost 1 merit via a SG Base. If I had tips I didn't want, I'd just dismiss them.

 

I don't like having to "start" tip missions to keep them, because it is too easy for those missions to screw up things like trying to get to arc doors via Team Teleport and Mission Teleport. Having more than one mission active means that the player has to make sure to set the active mission to the one they really want to go to. Not impossible but enough of a PITA that I never kept an active door tip mission.

[PeregrineFalcon]

On 2/22/2024 at 11:53 AM, Luminara said:

If there's no way to retain tips so they're not overwritten, they shouldn't be replaced.

Did the new patch fix this issue?

 

I ask because I spent the weekend playing Helldivers 2 with my sons. I love the internet!  😁

[Luminara]

13 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Did the new patch fix this issue?

Quote

Alignment System

• Alignment tips and Valentines event tips can no longer be replaced when your tips are full. We may revisit this in the future depending on plans for use of the tip system in upcoming content.

 

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

Right, I saw that.

 

But did it actually fix the issue?

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

But did it actually fix the issue?

 

Testing on a Storm/Storm corruptor, I collected three tips, selected one and ran that.  On completion, the other two tips were still there.  Clearing the last couple of spawns after mission completion, I received one new tip, the two existing were untouched.

 

Presumably, I didn't encounter an incredible streak of coincidence, in which the tips I entered with were repeatedly overwritten and eventually ended up exactly the same.  I say presumably because it was an office map with low ceilings and  I wouldn't have known if Jeremy Clarkson himself appeared in front of me, throwing tip notifications at the screen and shouting "SPEED AND POWER!", because STORM/STORM...

 

But yeah, I think everything's back to normal.

[RikOz]

Wait, is this why I kept getting tip notices yesterday that never actually showed up in my tips list?