I didn't participate in the beta, but I hear that the DSS used to have a heat map of bio signals that was removed on release because it was "too confusing." Heat maps should be just about the easiest thing to interpret ever, especially compared to the catch-all "blue = may or may not be anything here" that we have now. Can anyone elaborate on why it was so confusing?
The bio 'heat map' from the beta
- Thread starter BradHann
- Start date
It was removed early on during one of the Alpha updates....it did work really well for people that aren't easily confused! I don't know why they just didn't give us an option so we could select one or the other but I suppose by then then code had all been written and would take a lot of work to make two options rather than just changing the heatmap.
That's quite possible, but even if they couldn't discern the separate colours distinctly, what they had then was exactly what they have now, a location map with no way to tell density, only now we all just have a location map. I am not against having special adaptions for people with colour blindness, but what we have now is the equivelant of removing all steps everywhere then replacing them with wheelchair ramps.....why can't we have both?
Because next additional option could confuse people confused by heatmap
I think this was better than what we have today.
On the other hand, I seem to recall that the biggest complaint people were making was about the lime blobs, and how horrible they were.
I have to admit I didn't really follow the evolution (or, rather, involution) of the heat map, so I can't say if it was people being confused by the colours, or blinded by the lime balls themselves (I remember dev posts mentioning the lime, though).
On the other hand, I seem to recall that the biggest complaint people were making was about the lime blobs, and how horrible they were.
I have to admit I didn't really follow the evolution (or, rather, involution) of the heat map, so I can't say if it was people being confused by the colours, or blinded by the lime balls themselves (I remember dev posts mentioning the lime, though).
I think this was better than what we have today.
View attachment 292700
On the other hand, I seem to recall that the biggest complaint people were making was about the lime blobs, and how horrible they were.
I have to admit I didn't really follow the evolution (or, rather, involution) of the heat map, so I can't say if it was people being confused by the colours, or blinded by the lime balls themselves (I remember dev posts mentioning the lime, though).
There were a lot of issues where the filter wouldn't work or appear to work correctly and that probably confused a lot of players, that's where we had the lime ball complaints from, it would stay or be left on "all" by the player and resulted in endless complaints during the Alpha, but the complaints just kept pouring into the forums instead of everyone just putting in updated reports and letting them fix it so I guess FDEV opted for the easiest solution.
I never had any colourblindness issues with the Alpha heatmap.
My understanding was they changed it purely because people found the information confusing, either misreading what's essentially a probability map as a density map, or reading the green areas as the positive zones instead of vice versa.
So now it's just a blue overlay where the relevant object can spawn.
My understanding was they changed it purely because people found the information confusing, either misreading what's essentially a probability map as a density map, or reading the green areas as the positive zones instead of vice versa.
So now it's just a blue overlay where the relevant object can spawn.
There was some confusion, if I recall, that when the heatmap was on the dark side (no not that dark side) the heatmap colours were changed to make them stand out more and some players couldn't work it out, but whatever it was at the time, we have what we have now, but that's not to say that FDEV will leave it like this forever of course, it's always worth asking for it to be changed.
This is the only dev reference to it that I know of:
issues.frontierstore.net
It doesn't give any underlying reasons other than it was "confusing."
Issue Tracker
issues.frontierstore.net
It doesn't give any underlying reasons other than it was "confusing."
This is the only dev reference to it that I know of:
Issue Tracker
It doesn't give any underlying reasons other than it was "confusing."
That's the only one I know of, there was a lot of noise at the time about green balls and it got changed after that, is that cause and effect or just correlation, who knows, only FDEV.
