Player/Staff Search & Scouts

[xsmason]

As someone who has not really played EHM in the last 2 years, I keep finding myself struggling to find these options. They should be more accessible, unless I've forgotten the route. I keep going to "Transactions" and realising it's not there, then I sit and look at the options for a few minutes and then find it via "Scouting". Could it be possible to give it it's own option - unless I'm told it does and I'm completely blind......If I struggle, newcomers may.

Scouting - on the scouting page it's not clear as to who is doing what. I don't think it should look like FM, but I think a quick header with a couple of main points of search criteria should be placed in the Scouting box -similar to FM but with it's own identity..

[PuckingAround]

The interface in general is pretty awful. Some options are hidden under drop-down menus for no reason, others are buried many clicks deep somewhere you wouldn't expect to find them. Right clicking sometimes produces a useful menu, other times it does nothing (why can't you request coach or physio reports from right-clicking on a player? Instead you have to enter their profile and check the "Actions" menu). Clicking a player's name sometimes brings his profile up, on other screens it does nothing. Comparing the abilities of your coaching staff is a good example of a nightmare in interface design, another is the scouting screen (scouts listed under a drop-down menu?) Interface design is about minimizing the number of clicks required to navigate and logically grouping options. Sometimes this interface almost appears designed to maximize the number of clicks required. Tool-tips are absolutely useless, or even broken (such as the morale listing - this is something I'm sure they will rectify).

I assume a lot of this has to do with shoehorning new options into what is actually a much older game. The hard-coded 1024x768 resolution and current font sizes means there's no more space to add options to the top menu. Instead of re-thinking the interface, Sports Interactive has opted to use the mysterious "Actions" menu, which is just a catch all "More" button. It makes no logical sense. What distinguishes an "Action" from anything else you do as a manager? This forces you to click and check the "Actions" button independently on every single screen to make sure something important is not hidden there.

I realize that hockey is a very niche market, especially when compared to Football, so the resources for this project will be fairly tight even if it does gain a strong following. I also sympathize with SI, as the amount of information and options to organize is absolutely mind-boggling. Still, this interface needs to be re-worked from the ground up. I would not expect it to happen on a shoe-string budget, however, but there are still many things that could be done to improve it.

As an amusing addendum, even the interface in this forum is poor. The composition box I'm writing this post in doesn't word-wrap, so entire paragraphs are restricted to a single break-less line. Reviewing what I've written before posting is almost as aggravating as running my hockey team =P.