before:
3,2,1,GO were just words that flashes across your screen.
it was ok

now:
its like a conversation box that flashes across.

the boxes take time to go away, when the race starts, the boxes make it difficult to see whats infront as they clogged up the centre of the screen.

its quite annoying.

I like the countdown now, but agree they take too long to go away. It would be nice if once the buzzer sounded, they disappeared.

works fine for me

Agree, not like the race was really a challenge to begin with, or will be with us much longer.:p

100% agree with OP.

Is there some guy at Cryptic who works FULL TIME now just doing nothing but thinking up ways to clutter the screen with junk?

Once again something that was done right the first time has been replaced with something that disregards basic elements of design.

What does a person who is about to start a race want?

They want to know when the race is about to start.

What else do they want?

They want to be able to be able to see where they are going.

Do the new boxes make it so hard for me really. No, not really. I still ran the race without any trouble. Is the dialogue box nice looking in and of it'self? Yes. It's a fine and handsome box. Do I want to look at it? No!

The part that is a big deal is not that the box makes it so hard to run the race (it's not a 'difficulty' - it's just an inconvenience and an irritation.), it's that Cryptic - over the last 4-6 weeks in particular, keeps failing to ask and answer design questions like the ones above. What makes it even more maddening is that things which seem to have been well thought out by someone who can ask and answer simple 'user-centered' type questions like the ones above keep getting replaced with 'improvements' that fail to ask and answer the same questions.

"But all of the other communications with the race coordinator are in boxes so that means it's a rule. And that means this one should be in a box also because we have to follow the rules!"

Cryptic, you used to be able to think 'outside of the box'. Please find a way to start doing so again.

Yet another case of decisions being made by someone who apparently is very good at thinking in terms of systems (a very important skill set to have on the team) and lacks the skill set to evaluate things in terms of human psychology, What draws attention of the mind and the eye, how these things are effected by overall design choices,etc.

I'm sorry to be so harsh, but this is a current trend. I'm not reacting just to this one issue, my emotional response is the result of seeing evidence of this as a trend for the last few weeks. It has the potential to harm Cryptic's profitability. I hope that something can be done about it.

I don't know what's more amuseing. Somebody complaining about this little detail or Cryptic pointlessly changing it to this.
But I suppose it might actually be an issue when played on lower resolutions. Hmm

Yeah change it back, it's pointless.

They changed it?!?!!??!?!

I ran this morning... Didn notice a diffrence...

Yes they changed it and I agree that those boxes are to big and last too long.
Just change it to the way it works for Klingons, they have transparent boxes so you can see what is ahead.

Go straight, don't turn and don't run. You'll be fine. Then the boxes will disappear before you hit the first turn.

It's not like you can't *walk* the race route and still win.

Its not too bad a problem. On 1 you can start running (a jump start but who cares). I zoom in on the map top right and stick to the middle til the screen clears. I admit to new players it looks un professional and can put players off the game.

If this mission was repeatable daily, this would be really annoyin, but once a day per character for 4 seconds, i can live with it.