Development 101

One of the most important things in any complex application is enabling the user to find things that are relevant and important to them. Its development 101.

I was playing with the industrial changes and explored the teams interface. I figured out the difference between teams already at work and teams up for auction, saw how to bid on them (not a fan that you *have* to hit enter after typing a solar system name, but not a big deal), and decided to throw a bid on a team as an experiment.

Note: not pleased the bid had to come out of my alt's personal wallet instead of a corporate wallet, but again not a big deal.

I log off and logged back on the next day and decided to check out that bid I made.

And I would if I can find it. 

I don't know if the auction finished and I was outbid or if its still running. I simply cannot find it as I did not explicitly write down the team name as I made the bid. That's crap, CCP, that is unacceptable. It should be simple as a check box to see the teams I've made a bid on, or at least that have a bid from my system / a specified system. This is a big deal.

Seriously, can you tell which one I've bid on?

The interface knows my bids because if I hover over the right one in the auction column it tells me my bid amount! It should be obvious at a glance which one it is, and ideally if my system I bid for is the current winning bid or not.

(And no, I do not think this is a good spot for the API and a third party developer to step in. This is a good spot for CCP to develop a new feature properly. Their QA department should have caught this.)

On a positive note, I'm pleased with how many active teams there are and how easy it is to browse for the ones that impact a certain blueprint. Still need time to tell how feasible it is to get a team I want though.

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In other news, the first of two pre-Crius Archon builds comes out in two days, so after I get back from a long weekend family trip I'll evaluate what changes to my Archon build there will be. Look for that post Monday.