U41 font?

etchedpixels

Other problem with some of the font changes. The 'arty' fonts on things like the scrying objects are no longer able to be read using the ipad screenreader.

This matters for one of the people I play with as they are dependent upon this to read all the game choices and other boxes that ESO _still_ hasn't made screen readable.

It would be very nice to have an accessibility option to force a high readability and reader friendly font. Much as I loathe it comic sans actually works really well in this role and is fairly dyslexia friendly.

Aurielle

So I previously wasn’t having any issues with UI text — not even after maintenance this AM, but I *just* noticed how borked it is after the sun came up in game. I'm thinking that the in-game shadows may have been masking the issue for me yesterday.

What it looks like for me now:



Compared to the screenshot I took yesterday:



@ZOS_Kevin , might want to pass on to the team that it looks like the text shadow has simply been shifted down and over too much to the right, and it's very noticeable in sunshine (and when font is smaller). Shift the drop shadow back a few pixels, and it should be fine.

I recreated the issue in Pixlr. On the left, we have a reasonable distance for the shadow on light backgrounds, and on the right, we have something close to what we currently have in game.



Decrease the size, and you really see it...



But then stick that exact same text with the exact same text shadow parameters on a dark background, and it's easy to read -- preferable, even.

LesserCircle

So... let's see, this is my own personal opinion and many people might not agree with it. These are all the awful changes we have had in the game since it released.

• We lost level progression and the easy to follow order of quests with One Tamriel, no more enemies with higher level in the next zone to feel accomplished and stronger. Everything is available for everyone, some might like it, I personally don't.

• Many years later the champion point system was reworked to CP 2.0, now instead of having everything as active passives like the fast gathering we now have to use 4 slottables. CP 2.0 also contributed to the tank meta we have in PvP if I'm not wrong, as we have more health than we used to (more about this below).

• Hybridization, what can I say about this? I don't like it, no more stamina or magicka builds it was a big loss of identity and forced everyone to change they way they play (but hey play like you want right?) This also made everyone even more tanky in PvP somehow if I'm not wrong.

• Changes to animations like flurry or jabs, even that one DK skill that nobody uses (stonefist? something like that) these new animations look awful and feel even worse than they look somehow, just why?

• Grim focus permaglow, it's just awesome to always glow red right?...

• And now this hard to read font that nobody asked for.

Look, not everyone will agree with all my points, some people my like a few of these changes but why do we get so many changes to begin with? Eveything in this list was fine before, even the One Tamriel update, it just needed to be an open borders kind of situation, I still see players confused as to why do their gear becomes weaker as they level up and why their stats go down as well, doesn't make sense.

So basically just... don't change things that have been there since day 1, maybe add new ones or ask the players before, just imagine a "Do you feel like jabs needs a new animation and timing? Also here's the new one we want to implement Yes/No"

Jaraal

LesserCircle wrote: »

So basically just... don't change things that have been there since day 1, maybe add new ones or ask the players before, just imagine a "Do you feel like jabs needs a new animation and timing? Also here's the new one we want to implement Yes/No"

This is a good idea, however the opinion of a couple devs/managers > the opinions of millions of players. That's just the reality of how it works. It's a devtatorship, not a playerocracy.

SilverBride

Am I the only one that doesn't notice anything different with the font?

code65536

Aurielle wrote: »

So I previously wasn’t having any issues with UI text — not even after maintenance this AM, but I *just* noticed how borked it is after the sun came up in game. I'm thinking that the in-game shadows may have been masking the issue for me yesterday.

What it looks like for me now:



Compared to the screenshot I took yesterday:



@ZOS_Kevin , might want to pass on to the team that it looks like the text shadow has simply been shifted down and over too much to the right, and it's very noticeable in sunshine (and when font is smaller). Shift the drop shadow back a few pixels, and it should be fine.

I recreated the issue in Pixlr. On the left, we have a reasonable distance for the shadow on light backgrounds, and on the right, we have something close to what we currently have in game.



Decrease the size, and you really see it...



But then stick that exact same text with the exact same text shadow parameters on a dark background, and it's easy to read -- preferable, even.

The shadows are a separate problem, resulting from the new shadows being sharp rather than blurred. So instead of helping provide contrast for the text, the shadows now distract from the text, due in part to their sharpness.

Aurielle

SilverBride wrote: »

Am I the only one that doesn't notice anything different with the font?

I didn't notice a difference at first either, but it immediately became apparent when looking at the chat box against a bright background. You won't notice it as much if it's darker in game or if your chat box is over a dark background.

It's the drop shadow. I thought at first that they'd shifted it down a bit, but the problem is actually the softness of the shadow. I zoomed right in on a couple screen caps, and you can really see it. Before the update, the text shadow was softer. It now is not soft at all, and creates a harsh doubling effect that is most apparent on lighter backgrounds (but you can still sort of see it on darker backgrounds when you increase the image size). Observe:





Pre-patch on the left, post-patch on the right.

EDIT: Tagging @ZOS_Kevin in this too. Problem can be resolved by shifting the shadow up and left ever so slightly and/or adding a blur back to the shadow. Blur has quite obviously been set to zero in the current patch.

SilverBride

Aurielle wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Am I the only one that doesn't notice anything different with the font?

I didn't notice a difference at first either, but it immediately became apparent when looking at the chat box against a bright background. You won't notice it as much if it's darker in game or if your chat box is over a dark background.

It's the drop shadow. I thought at first that they'd shifted it down a bit, but the problem is actually the softness of the shadow. I zoomed right in on a couple screen caps, and you can really see it. Before the update, the text shadow was softer. It now is not soft at all, and creates a harsh doubling effect that is most apparent on lighter backgrounds (but you can still sort of see it on darker backgrounds when you increase the image size).

Oh I never noticed a drop shadow. I'll take a look when I log in today. Thanks!

Aurielle

code65536 wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

So I previously wasn’t having any issues with UI text — not even after maintenance this AM, but I *just* noticed how borked it is after the sun came up in game. I'm thinking that the in-game shadows may have been masking the issue for me yesterday.

What it looks like for me now:



Compared to the screenshot I took yesterday:



@ZOS_Kevin , might want to pass on to the team that it looks like the text shadow has simply been shifted down and over too much to the right, and it's very noticeable in sunshine (and when font is smaller). Shift the drop shadow back a few pixels, and it should be fine.

I recreated the issue in Pixlr. On the left, we have a reasonable distance for the shadow on light backgrounds, and on the right, we have something close to what we currently have in game.



Decrease the size, and you really see it...



But then stick that exact same text with the exact same text shadow parameters on a dark background, and it's easy to read -- preferable, even.

The shadows are a separate problem, resulting from the new shadows being sharp rather than blurred. So instead of helping provide contrast for the text, the shadows now distract from the text, due in part to their sharpness.

Yup, noted that in the post I just made. It is most apparent in the last image I posted, on the "You depost [Soul Gem]." The harsher shadow has the effect of creating a gap between the text itself and the shadow, which in turn has the effect of making the text look thinner than it actually is -- when the shadow was softer, it looked contiguous with the text, which had the effect of subtly thickening it up a bit.

Number_51

Jaraal wrote: »

LesserCircle wrote: »

So basically just... don't change things that have been there since day 1, maybe add new ones or ask the players before, just imagine a "Do you feel like jabs needs a new animation and timing? Also here's the new one we want to implement Yes/No"

This is a good idea, however the opinion of a couple devs/managers > the opinions of millions of players. That's just the reality of how it works. It's a devtatorship, not a playerocracy.

Mmmm... devtators.

Aurielle

The disorienting doubling effect due to the borked drop shadow is veeeeery apparent here, thanks to the colour I have set for friendly AOEs, haha:

Scott_Kylian

LesserCircle wrote: »

So... let's see, this is my own personal opinion and many people might not agree with it. These are all the awful changes we have had in the game since it released.

• We lost level progression and the easy to follow order of quests with One Tamriel, no more enemies with higher level in the next zone to feel accomplished and stronger. Everything is available for everyone, some might like it, I personally don't.

• Many years later the champion point system was reworked to CP 2.0, now instead of having everything as active passives like the fast gathering we now have to use 4 slottables. CP 2.0 also contributed to the tank meta we have in PvP if I'm not wrong, as we have more health than we used to (more about this below).

• Hybridization, what can I say about this? I don't like it, no more stamina or magicka builds it was a big loss of identity and forced everyone to change they way they play (but hey play like you want right?) This also made everyone even more tanky in PvP somehow if I'm not wrong.

• Changes to animations like flurry or jabs, even that one DK skill that nobody uses (stonefist? something like that) these new animations look awful and feel even worse than they look somehow, just why?

• Grim focus permaglow, it's just awesome to always glow red right?...

• And now this hard to read font that nobody asked for.

Look, not everyone will agree with all my points, some people my like a few of these changes but why do we get so many changes to begin with? Eveything in this list was fine before, even the One Tamriel update, it just needed to be an open borders kind of situation, I still see players confused as to why do their gear becomes weaker as they level up and why their stats go down as well, doesn't make sense.

So basically just... don't change things that have been there since day 1, maybe add new ones or ask the players before, just imagine a "Do you feel like jabs needs a new animation and timing? Also here's the new one we want to implement Yes/No"

That's a lot of subjective opinions, none of which are relevant to the issue at hand. You may prefer a system or another, that's up to you. Others will disagree. Neither can prove it's "better" or "worse" or "majority of players agree".

Text losing legibility due to
- excessive sharpness
- absence of hinting
- inexistant background/shadow to contrast against sunny ground, paper-pages, etc
however is an objective fact. It may only affect a few people (based on resolution and whatnot), but there's no denying that in those cases, there is an issue.

And it's not "they should never touch it if it's there from day 1" either. I have no idea why this is being changed, but from what we've seen there's a lot of positive impacts on less-critical texts (tooltips, nameplates, ...), it just so happens that we currently have that one side effect / regression. It just ("just") happens to completely overshadow every other benefit for the setups impacted.
To be fair, I'd be very happy if they managed to bring back the original look&feel with the new whatever, or discard using it in some cases. I really liked the old one. But I'm open to change. Just not the current one ^^

TaSheen

SilverBride wrote: »

Am I the only one that doesn't notice anything different with the font?

No. I don't see anything different either. But then I'm running 4k screens.

fizzylu

LesserCircle wrote: »

Look, not everyone will agree with all my points, some people my like a few of these changes but why do we get so many changes to begin with? Eveything in this list was fine before, even the One Tamriel update, it just needed to be an open borders kind of situation, I still see players confused as to why do their gear becomes weaker as they level up and why their stats go down as well, doesn't make sense.

So basically just... don't change things that have been there since day 1, maybe add new ones or ask the players before, just imagine a "Do you feel like jabs needs a new animation and timing? Also here's the new one we want to implement Yes/No"

Saying "everything was fine" is a bit debatable since the game wasn't doing very well in it's first few years (having to go from a mandatory sub to "f2p" is proof of that).... and I definitely wouldn't say the problem is change. The problem to me and other people I know well, is where their priorities are with the changes. In recent years, most of the changes they implement either rarely or don't at all align with what the player base wants and are even really out of touch with their game and the way it works/functions.
Perfect examples of this are the red permaglow and it's pages upon pages of ignored player feedback, a card game as the main new feature of a chapter, the U35 light attack changes and Zenimax insisting that the change was good when players told them right after reading the patch notes that it wouldn't work the way they were saying it would, and a new "favorite" of mine.... the Grave Lord's Sacrifice morph, a creation that in every way seems to completely miss how ESO combat functions.

Tandor

SilverBride wrote: »

Am I the only one that doesn't notice anything different with the font?

No, and not just in the game but also in the comparisons people are making here between the old and new fonts - they look the same to me.

SilverBride

Tandor wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Am I the only one that doesn't notice anything different with the font?

No, and not just in the game but also in the comparisons people are making here between the old and new fonts - they look the same to me.

When we zoom in I can see the dropshadow in the screenshots @Aurielle posted, but in game I don't notice anything.

licenturion

LesserCircle wrote: »

• We lost level progression and the easy to follow order of quests with One Tamriel, no more enemies with higher level in the next zone to feel accomplished and stronger. Everything is available for everyone, some might like it, I personally don't.

I understand some of your complaints but not this one.

If it wasn't for OneTamriel we would probably not be celebrating this year 10 year of ESO and wouldn't have reached 8 expansions (not counting smaller DLC). One Tamriel brought many players (back) to the game and also made the game more open for more casual players and younger/starting gamers. Elder Scrolls has never been a 'hardcore' series.

As for on topic: I notice nothing on the font changes (4K player) except that text seems more darker and bleaker than before the update.

Kirawolfe

Echoing other's concerns about unexpected font changes.


Not concerned with color of the book, just the readability of the font.

The new default font is thinner, which makes it harder to read.

Another example:


The new default font is thinner, which makes it harder to read.

Another example:


Even bigger (new is on left this time*), it's thinner and lighter, which makes it harder to read.

Chat:


Ignoring the background, the new font is thinner, so it's harder to read.

Hoping they make the default font a little weightier to improve readability.

TaSheen

Actually, for me the new font is more readable and less.... "clunky" than the old.

TheKaan

Thanks to @code65536 for the words of wisdom here. As a font nerd I appreciate it.

Personally I find that the new Slug rendering looks awesome in 4K, as others have said, but unless it works for everyone it's not worth it.

I also noticed that 80% of complaints here are about the "new font" when the font itself hasn't changed at all. We never make it easy for those Community Managers, do we?

colossalvoids

TheKaan wrote: »

Thanks to @code65536 for the words of wisdom here. As a font nerd I appreciate it.

Personally I find that the new Slug rendering looks awesome in 4K, as others have said, but unless it works for everyone it's not worth it.

I also noticed that 80% of complaints here are about the "new font" when the font itself hasn't changed at all. We never make it easy for those Community Managers, do we?

Actually I wanted to update OP for awhile with actual info and code's explanation to ease speculation front going as we already know what's that, who's affected etc. Will do in a bit.

g0thiCiCecReaM

Here's another example, while this is text from an addon, the addon doesn't reference any true type fonts or otf, it's using the constants for the default game fonts

Sunegami

Is there any way we could just, y'know, choose the typeface for our own setup? I wear glasses and I've had trouble reading nameplates (as a single example) forever, and would love to be able to customize the look so things are more legible to me.

My resolution is 3840x2160, but I'm also using a custom interface scale to increase typeface size.

tsaescishoeshiner

This is what it looks like for me. Way harder to read. I'm no font maestro, it's just not as thick. I'm sure there's some benefit to how the changed the font system, I just wish the default was like before, or otherwise more readable. It's fuzzy.

Myrillya

code65536 wrote: »

The shadows are a separate problem, resulting from the new shadows being sharp rather than blurred. So instead of helping provide contrast for the text, the shadows now distract from the text, due in part to their sharpness.

I agree. It's definitely not only the position of the drop shadow, but also the softness. It would make everything a bit easier to read if they'd reposition the drop shadown and blur it a bit more, so it is softer and basically encases every letter.

SpiritKitten

I increased the font size per the recommendation of a dev in a forum post and now the name covers the health bar on enemies. So I don't know if they are dying until they are dead.

And also, increasing font size didn't really help. I have a hard time reading anything in the game now. Definitely a nerf to enjoyment and immersion.

TaSheen

I actually don't have any issues with this. I'm not sure what could be different for me?

virtus753

TaSheen wrote: »

I actually don't have any issues with this. I'm not sure what could be different for me?

What is the resolution of your screen? I find it highly noticeable at 1080p and even worse at 720p, but I find it ok at 4k.

Pixiepumpkin

1. The drop shadow distance is set to far from the typeface.
2. The drop shadow has no spread on it (blur).
3. The drop shadow has very little if any opacity on it.

I am not sure how this made it past QA, but this is pretty basic stuff.

Drop shadows should be used to pull the text off the page, to help establish itself seperately from the graphics behind it. When used this way, most would never realise there was a drop shadow being used, unless they went looking for it.

TaSheen

virtus753 wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

I actually don't have any issues with this. I'm not sure what could be different for me?

What is the resolution of your screen? I find it highly noticeable at 1080p and even worse at 720p, but I find it ok at 4k.

3840x2160