Navigation Search Bar

[(XBOX)Mentor0fHeroes]

Have you ever been in a situation like these:

-You want to do a low level survival mission. So you go through earth, you go through this and that planet looking for the right level and it takes you forever.

-Or say you’re looking for an extermination nightwave mission, you would essentially have to go through the same tedious process.

-Or say you’re looking for a survival mission with infested enemies, same thing again.

Well, a search bar would fix all of that! Or at least something like a search bar. Basically it would have several tabs that you could submit. It would look kind of like this:

Search:

Mission: [survival]

Enemy type: [infested]

Enemy level: [20]-[30]

Advanced search:

Mission name: [______]

Enemy name: [_______]

Mod name: [______]

Nightwave: [✅]

Syndicate: [❎]

Siphon/ Flood: [❎]

(Play)

Then, once you’re done it will highlight all of the levels matching that description in the star chart!

You will also have the option to simply press play, which will put you into a random mission which matches the description you provided.

[quxier]

I would other options:
- enemy level, e.g. <20, 1 - 20, >50
- tileset (choice from the list): e.g. void
- syndicate/kuva missions: yes/no
- rewards: for example you are farming Meso K1, it will give you percentages (chance) and rotation that it can appear
- certain enemy: for example if you are running scans for symaris it will show you missions that enemies can appear; if you scanned it already (normal scans for example) it could show 100% chance.

And to be honest no highlighting but simple list (unless there is only one result).

[SweetAnubis]

yes please!!!!

[Drasiel]

2 hours ago, quxier said:

I would other options:
- enemy level, e.g. <20, 1 - 20, >50
- tileset (choice from the list): e.g. void
- syndicate/kuva missions: yes/no
- rewards: for example you are farming Meso K1, it will give you percentages (chance) and rotation that it can appear
- certain enemy: for example if you are running scans for symaris it will show you missions that enemies can appear; if you scanned it already (normal scans for example) it could show 100% chance.

And to be honest no highlighting but simple list (unless there is only one result).

Most of those I definitely agree with but syndicate and kuva missions are already in our quick navigation bar, search parameters for them seems unneccesary. 

[quxier]

4 hours ago, Drasiel said:

syndicate and kuva missions are already in our quick navigation ba

syndicate - yeah

kuva - it's a bigger list...it might be nice to include it

[Hobie-wan]

Also searching by node name.

Sometimes people ask for help with 'node X' and I don't remember where it is offhand or what it is. Being able to search in nav would be faster then asking or popping to the wiki to see if it's something I want to help with or just give a suggestion on how someone can get it done if they're perhaps new and still learning things.

[(XBOX)Mentor0fHeroes]

On 2020-08-02 at 1:13 PM, quxier said:

I would other options:
- enemy level, e.g. <20, 1 - 20, >50
- tileset (choice from the list): e.g. void
- syndicate/kuva missions: yes/no
- rewards: for example you are farming Meso K1, it will give you percentages (chance) and rotation that it can appear
- certain enemy: for example if you are running scans for symaris it will show you missions that enemies can appear; if you scanned it already (normal scans for example) it could show 100% chance.

And to be honest no highlighting but simple list

These would all be very good additions. I will add them all as soon as I get the chance. Thanks! 

I said highlighting because I saw that, on a different navigation search bar forums page, people were complaining that a search bar would make the star chart useless, and a lot of people like using it.

P.S.: sorry I haven’t been responding to these comments, I just realized I wasn’t fallowing this post.

[(XBOX)Mentor0fHeroes]

22 hours ago, Drasiel said:

Most of those I definitely agree with but syndicate and kuva missions are already in our quick navigation bar, search parameters for them seems unneccesary. 

It may be better to add it anyway. Who knows, maybe it would be more convenient for people to use the search bar than the navigation bar. I wouldn’t limit it, it may serve a purpose in the future, plus what’s the harm of having it there right?

[(XBOX)Mentor0fHeroes]

18 hours ago, Hobie-wan said:

 

Also searching by node name.

Sometimes people ask for help with 'node X' and I don't remember where it is offhand or what it is. Being able to search in nav would be faster then asking or popping to the wiki to see if it's something I want to help with or just give a suggestion on how someone can get it done if they're perhaps new and still learning things.

 

Good point, a way of actually searching for a specific mission would be useful as well, I’ll definitely add that feature later.

[quxier]

1 hour ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

I said highlighting because I saw that, on a different navigation search bar forums page, people were complaining that a search bar would make the star chart useless, and a lot of people like using it.

With text based search engine you can do lots of stuffs easier. It will be cleaner. And you can just put results on the map (highlighting some nodes). I guess that's how they will program it. So both can coexist. There is no reasons to not release text-based engine, imho.

[(XBOX)Mentor0fHeroes]

21 minutes ago, quxier said:

With text based search engine you can do lots of stuffs easier. It will be cleaner. And you can just put results on the map (highlighting some nodes). I guess that's how they will program it. So both can coexist. There is no reasons to not release text-based engine, imho.

I agree, there can be a text based search engine as well, but I don’t think it should replace the category based system. In my opinion the text based search engine would be best implemented as a way of finding specific missions by name. Then one could find a broader spectrum of missions using the category based system.

[quxier]

44 minutes ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

the category based system.

what's that?

[(XBOX)Mentor0fHeroes]

2 minutes ago, quxier said:

what's that?

It’s what I described in the main post:

On 2020-08-01 at 12:00 AM, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

Well, a search bar would fix all of that! Or at least something like a search bar. Basically it would have several tabs that you could submit, such as:

Mission, [survival]

Nightwave, [no]

Enemies, [infested]

Then, once you’re done it will highlight all of the levels matching that description in the star chart!

 

[Klokwerkaos]

Nobody doesn't want a search bar and an in game wiki on your terminal.

These are not implemented at this time because they  are big jobs.

That is the only reason because it would only benefit DE and players.

[(XBOX)Mentor0fHeroes]

4 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

Nobody doesn't want a search bar

That’s just your opinion, I don’t think you can really speak for everyone.
 

4 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

an in game wiki on your terminal.

I have no idea what you’re talking about here.
 

4 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

These are not implemented at this time because they  are big jobs.

It may be difficult to implement but that’s no reason not to do it. 

To say that DE shouldn’t do something because it’s a “big job” just doesn’t make any sense. The game itself is a big job, and so is every update and rework that they work so very hard on.
 

4 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

That is the only reason because it would only benefit DE and players.

I don’t quite know what you’re trying to say here, because to me it kind of sounds like you’re supporting the idea. If it benefits DE and the players, doesn’t that mean it’s beneficial for everyone?

[quxier]

5 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

These are not implemented at this time because they  are big jobs.

Big jobs? Then Heart of deimos is made by legendary programmers working 15 hours a day 6 week, for 5 years...
... no, it's not big job. It might be searching some list/trees for certain values. Even slow implementation would work because they have small number of nodes.
 

7 hours ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

t’s what I described in the main post:

On 2020-08-01 at 6:00 AM, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

Well, a search bar would fix all of that! Or at least something like a search bar. Basically it would have several tabs that you could submit, such as:

Mission, [survival]

Nightwave, [no]

Enemies, [infested]

Then, once you’re done it will highlight all of the levels matching that description in the star chart!

Ah. Then it's "text-based" as well. I mean, text based as things that contain text and no or no complex graphics (your web browser's menus have little bit of graphics but they are mainly text-based). You have to type something, select some text (e.g. faction's name) from the list etc.
Compare it to the "graphic based" where you see, for example, planets/nodes. You connect some nodes/values. Highlight some places. Of course graphic based engine should have some text as well, but it's less than in the previous approach.
Hence you can implement TB then work on GB.

[Klokwerkaos]

7 hours ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

That’s just your opinion, I don’t think you can really speak for everyone.
 

I have no idea what you’re talking about here.
 

It may be difficult to implement but that’s no reason not to do it. 

To say that DE shouldn’t do something because it’s a “big job” just doesn’t make any sense. The game itself is a big job, and so is every update and rework that they work so very hard on.
 

I don’t quite know what you’re trying to say here, because to me it kind of sounds like you’re supporting the idea. If it benefits DE and the players, doesn’t that mean it’s beneficial for everyone?

Yes, I do support the idea.

What I'm saying is, this is like prior to to tennocon being like "where's the hydroid prime tailor?"  or saying "Make conclave great again" or "Where's Mirage Deluxe?"

All of these things can and should have been delivered upon ages ago to the point where they are now embarrassing.  That doesn't mean DE doesn't know about it and that it's not important to them to fix it.

It's frustrating for you that it's not in the game, and it's frustrating for them too.

They have a direct and vested interest in increasing the accessibility of their game because that DIRECTLY translates to dollars.

What I'm saying is, they know.  They know that we know.  They know that we know that they know that we know....

Yes someone has to bring it up every so often to make sure they stay on their toes and address big issues that get left unresolved for too long (sergeant replacement when?), that said when it gets said everyday ten times it's very much like the "new cover sheet for the PTS reports" in the movie office space where it's no longer helpful to hear it after 10x the same day but just demoralizing, and to be clear, this is the second thread  within12 hours of each other calling for this, and I'm not a moderator that reads every single thread...

Just like with the other thread I will also explain here:

The new player experience is coming in less than a month.  I wouldn't expect that it will have a robust search engine, though it would be nice (and it might), but lets see what they put out before crapping all over their efforts when we know for certain this area is getting an update later this very month.

Sometimes it's important staff get to have just five seconds to celebrate a small victory, you know?  And contrary to popular belief they are people too, and yes it's their job, and we shouldn't have to pat them on the back for doing it when they should always be doing it, but there's a line there where it stops being helpful to constantly criticize the same thing.

Call me crazy but I actually believe scott when he says that the Devs are not out to get us and make the game as bad as possible deliberately.  I get that it can feel that way, especially when important things like this go unresolved, but again, if this was a "change that zero to a one and it's done" issue, it would already be done by now.

[(XBOX)Mentor0fHeroes]

4 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

Yes, I do support the idea.

Oh, so when you said “nobody doesn’t want to see a search bar” you actually meant it, I thought it was just bad grammar.

 

4 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

Sometimes it's important staff get to have just five seconds to celebrate a small victory, you know?  And contrary to popular belief they are people too, and yes it's their job, and we shouldn't have to pat them on the back for doing it when they should always be doing it, but there's a line there where it stops being helpful to constantly criticize the same thing.

That’s not really what i’m doing. I know tennocon just happened (so awesome by the way, can’t wait for the update!) but I wasn’t going to wait a month to make this suggestion.

Also, I don’t know how often a search bar is suggested, but even if it’s all the time I think mine is a bit different. Instead of just typing words, for many of the categories you simply choose from a small list. For example:

Enemy type: [Corpus]

[__] Grineer

[✅] Corpus

[__] Infested

Also, instead providing the list of missions matching your search, it will simply highlight the levels in the star chart.

[Klokwerkaos]

4 hours ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

Oh, so when you said “nobody doesn’t want to see a search bar” you actually meant it, I thought it was just bad grammar.

 

That’s not really what i’m doing. I know tennocon just happened (so awesome by the way, can’t wait for the update!) but I wasn’t going to wait a month to make this suggestion.

Also, I don’t know how often a search bar is suggested, but even if it’s all the time I think mine is a bit different. Instead of just typing words, for many of the categories you simply choose from a small list. For example:

Enemy type: [Corpus]

[__] Grineer

[✅] Corpus

[__] Infested

Also, instead providing the list of missions matching your search, it will simply highlight the levels in the star chart.

I understand what you're trying to suggest here.

The exact form could would and should be left to a professional in UX/UI and likely would be dependent upon the platform in question.

For example on PC it's much faster to type what I DO want to search than read through a list of possible options and select them, where as console players it's very likely far easier to do the opposite (because typing with a controller is terrible).

What form it takes exactly is kinda irrellavent though to the way the metadata needs to be set up so that it can provide a solution.

Essentially it's been confirmed that right now the reason this stuff doesn't exist is because the star chart was never built with meta data tags like that.

Essentially it wasn't ever set up for queries. 

In order for that to happen someone needs to configure what all of the possible search terms are, what the possible results are, create tags for it, then create parameters as well (ie, I don't just want a grineer mission, I want the lowest level disruption grineer, or which mission has plastids and condition overload drops?)

Then that all gets plugged into a search DB and the tags go to different nodes, and then you also need error messages for failures like on google (did you mean this?) when you ask for an invalid querry (where drops oxium and condition overload?) which then provides potential answers but shows which parameter was omitted in the result.

The point is, this is consistantly asked for and is a major accessibility issue because we simply require use of third party apps to make this game work (ie wiki, youtube, etc.) and that makes it much more difficult for new players to get into it and stick with it.  Having more accessible front end also doesn't limit the amount of complexity of the game either, it just makes the barrier to entry smaller.

The point being this is not a small deal.

I use to sell companies that do this to colleges and medical labs/hospitals and it would frequently require 30+ staff to do a job... granted the magnitude of a 50 year old hosital is much larger than a 7 year old video game, but it's still a massive job, and it does get requested ALL THE TIME.

The chief challenge isn't even setting up the data base, that's a lot of work to create all those search items, queries and tags, but it also needs to be integrated per platform in a way that also doesn't choke the system on low end console machines because frankly they just have inferior hardware to modern PC's in almost all ways (especially once they are a year old).

So yeah, it's not a small thing.

[(XBOX)Mentor0fHeroes]

10 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

For example on PC it's much faster to type what I DO want to search than read through a list of possible options and select them, where as console players it's very likely far easier to do the opposite (because typing with a controller is terrible).

I don't know that I agree with that. Yes typing on console is terrible, and typing on pc is much easier, but in this case I don't think typing for everything is ideal, even on pc.

For some I still think typing is the way to go, such as enemy level, mission name, and enemy name.

But for the rest there are so few variants that it's just quicker to click on it., especially with typos to think about. I mean there are only like 4 different types of enemies, and I don't know how many types of missions there are but I feel like there aren't that many.

[Klokwerkaos]

30 minutes ago, (XB1)Mentor0fHeroes said:

I don't know that I agree with that. Yes typing on console is terrible, and typing on pc is much easier, but in this case I don't think typing for everything is ideal, even on pc.

For some I still think typing is the way to go, such as enemy level, mission name, and enemy name.

But for the rest there are so few variants that it's just quicker to click on it., especially with typos to think about. I mean there are only like 4 different types of enemies, and I don't know how many types of missions there are but I feel like there aren't that many.

I mean I will say this:

I'm not a UI/UX expert, but my wifey is, has a Masters Degree specifically in UX and minor in UI and works For a major International Tech Firm as a Senior UX Designer.  I often talk with her about work and hear her work meetings as she's working from home during the quarantine.  I know for sure that when she makes these determinations it's very carefully thought out and tested to ensure the smoothest experience possible, and that's very rarely what the client "thinks" is optimal up front.  My guess would be that whatever you or I think, even if it's the right answer, we're in the very least thinking about it from the wrong perspective and reasoning and I say that as someone that did actually spend 5 years designing contract websites as well, so it's not like design is a foreign concept to me as a Former web designer and professional creative artist (musician specifically).

The way I view it in terms of music it would be like iF I wrote a song and someone from the peanut gallery was like "no dude, it should be more like Shakira, like a woo wah, not wah woo... you know?"  At a certain point being a professional with an education and years of experience at the bleeding edge of one's field does make a substantial difference.

I do know however, that search queries generally don't use checkboxes from my time in sales for the company when I sold such services.  As a web designer I know that search boxes are usually better than check boxes unless the person asking doesn't know what they want.  An example might be iF you want to browse a category of mods for Fallout 4 on the nexus.

That's a time where you dont' know what you want, but you have a vague idea.

That said, my wifey is likely to have entirely different answers as a professional and I'd trust her judgement because she's a literal expert for a fortune 500 company that writes policies for other designers based on advanced UX and UI design principles.

[Steel_Rook]

Can I go one further and propose you take this system... And turn it into an actual matchmaking system? That is to say, let players set up mission type, level range, etc. and hit "Play," then either be matched into a lobby which fits these parameters or set to host a random node which does? I'm in absolute agreement with the OP, but feel that DE are long overdue for actual matchmaking.

[quxier]

23 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

For example on PC it's much faster to type what I DO want to search than read through a list of possible options and select them, where as console players it's very likely far easier to do the opposite (because typing with a controller is terrible).

For basic things auto completion might be ok. For something "more complex"... yeah, console is bad for this.

23 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

Essentially it's been confirmed that right now the reason this stuff doesn't exist is because the star chart was never built with meta data tags like that.

Essentially it wasn't ever set up for queries. 

Ah you mean something more complex:

23 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

In order for that to happen someone needs to configure what all of the possible search terms are, what the possible results are, create tags for it, then create parameters as well (ie, I don't just want a grineer mission, I want the lowest level disruption grineer, or which mission has plastids and condition overload drops?)

 

Mods might require some "changes".

23 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

The chief challenge isn't even setting up the data base, that's a lot of work to create all those search items, queries and tags, but it also needs to be integrated per platform in a way that also doesn't choke the system on low end console machines because frankly they just have inferior hardware to modern PC's in almost all ways (especially once they are a year old).

Hmmm.... if a machine can run WF then it can run such queries... unless someone introduce bug(s).

[LuckyCharm]

Id love a search option. Is also love the ability to highlight which missions hold my simaris scan targets or search for a mod name and it'll show which missions have the chance to drop it. Or search resources. Its the biggest pain hunting the wiki before you even start a hunt for anything you actually need

[(XBOX)Mentor0fHeroes]

12 minutes ago, LuckyCharm said:

Id love a search option. Is also love the ability to highlight which missions hold my simaris scan targets or search for a mod name and it'll show which missions have the chance to drop it. Or search resources. Its the biggest pain hunting the wiki before you even start a hunt for anything you actually need

I see your point, so I added the option to search for a specific mod, but the simaris scan target search is kind of already there. You can just put the name of the enemy in the “enemy name” section.