Appeal to return to the old designer

[Slaxx]

So i really dont like the new designer.

HOWEVER. I seriously loved the old designer type.
This new one is like a full blown 3D model program and i am legitimately unable to make designs. GAME BREAKER. Especially for newcomers.

My idea was to use the old designer but rework it so you dont make block designs.

Specifically i L-O-V-E-D the drawing method. I want it back.

If i was to put it in terms:

Current designer: -2 fun
Old designer: +3 fun

Now if the old designer was reworked so it prevented blocky shapes, it would be perfect. Just make it so it automaticalöy smoothens the shapes or maybe add a exterior hull function and merely make the basics blocky-wise

Best would be an intelligent function, a "smart-designer" that smoothens edges like an anti-aliasing setting in 3d programs. Have it add superfluos matter automatically.

[Deantwo]

Apart from being simpler to use, the old designer wasn't all that good.
Making large designs in the old designer took forever, and a lot of the room drawing was really quirky. Like you couldn't surround a room with another room, and so on.

But yes, more tools to make the new designer better would be nice. A drawing mode somewhat similar to the old designer would be useful. But mainly needed for interior, exterior of spacecraft doesn't need to be much simpler.

But there are several idea threads about this, so lets refer to those.
For example:

• Ship Designer - Interior Layout Tool
  

[AnrDaemon]

The problem of the old designer was optimization.
Optimization in designer itself (rendering large models was impossible slow) and in editing process (automating rooms numbering would go a long way towards desinging speed).
But by itself, it wasn't bad.

[Deantwo]

The old designer needed some update, sure, but the new one is a nonsense.

In the new one, there is not building tactics, only hull to fill with a slide bar and that's all. That's kind of lame.

I sm not sure what "building tactics" you are referring to. You mean having to place solid rooms between hull and interiors so players couldn't exploit through the walls and shoot crew? Or placing turrets in only specific ways so players couldn't use them to get into the ship? Or have no hull doors or paths to the hull doors so it was impossible board the ship?

None of that was really tactical designing, it was just preventing bugs and exploits, or exploiting yourself to get an advantage.
There wasn't really any tactical decisions on where to place solid rooms in the old designer expect for that. Engine room could be anywhere, location of your shield room didn't matter, only the weapon bay rooms really had to be made in a made in a specific way.
Only thing that mattered in the old designer was the parts of the interior that you could walk in, and yeah you had to walk through rooms filled with system modules if you wanted to min-max, but it wasn't required and felt horrible when you were forced to design like that.

I agree that the new designer has a lot of issues, but saying you don't have the same tactical decisions is nonsense. To be fair you can make even more exploiting and broken designs in the new designer than you ever could in the old designer.

The main issue I see with the new designer is the unrestricted customizability. We no longer have easily recognizable hallways and doors, PvP focused designs can have endless exploits, and making a basic interior is freaking complicated.
But most of that is better discussed in the thread I linked to above.

[Xantheose]

I sm not sure what "building tactics" you are referring to. You mean having to place solid rooms between hull and interiors so players couldn't exploit through the walls and shoot crew? Or placing turrets in only specific ways so players couldn't use them to get into the ship? Or have no hull doors or paths to the hull doors so it was impossible board the ship?

None of that was really tactical designing, it was just preventing bugs and exploits, or exploiting yourself to get an advantage.

Okay first of all, look at this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Now, if you're really thinking that building tactics were only exploits, that explains why your ships weren't good at all. That's not it. You had for example to choose where the modules go, in order to repair or break them. Also, not having hull doors did not prevent from teleporting inside the ship, that was not an exploit (but ofc, you had to wipe the enemy shield, probably a hard achievement with your lame low-tech civilian spaceships).

I agree that the new designer has a lot of issues, but saying you don't have the same tactical decisions is nonsense. To be fair you can make even more exploiting and broken designs in the new designer than you ever could in the old designer.

All you're saying is : "Okay the old one had thin walls, so instead of making them thick, let's replace them with a new heavy and complicated system, that sounds better to me, even if it's crap, it's still better".

Now when you design something, you're just basically moving slidebars to change the whole spaceship statistics, everything else is mainly cosmetic (therefore, useless). What an incredible progress.
Also, the new designer finished to kill the game, due to its low ratio complexity/relevance and lot of players were lost in fear to use it.

[nightslaysanta]

in the past i surgested keeping the old style for starters and then they can transfer to the new style when ready

[Altman420]

The idea of a hybrid suite IMO would be best, or even two different designers you can utilize.  I wouldn't ever design again if the new designer was removed.

Can't cater to one group and screw the other, need to strike a balance. Which, I'm sure we can all agree, is generally easier said than done/implemented


I am curious though, are we past the point to being able to revert the designer? In the couple years I was away, there has been some pretty dramatic changes.