Player Features and Ideas Discussion

If being able to tell that your ship is damaged is hand-holding, then stations refilling your capacitor for free is borderline matrimonial, and not banning players from high-sec after they reach 1 month of age is straight-up orgy.

I suggest that the players who have commented here are right, it is hand-holding. The same holds true for being able to tell if your ship is damaged while in space. The shield/armor/hull/capacitor icon on the HUD should be removed, and all indicators you are being shot at or targeted should be taken away. You'll know you were dying when you pop. Being surrounded by red players should have been an indication. HTFU

So, then CCP should make the HUD pop up briefly after you take damage or use/lose capacitor, and then become hidden from view again. It's up to you, the player, to remember what your status is with those things. You should also be calculating your capacitor regen all the time, and thus should know what it's at at any given time as long as you are updated with how much it goes down.

Maybe all you should get is a slurry of numbers that tell you how much capacitor or hit points you lose, and only from external actions. You should know how much capacitor your modules cost, or how much your armor repairer grants you. And then lets take out the hit point and resistance indicators in the ship equipment screen and the HUD, you should be able to calculate those figures easily based on your fit and skills, and the initial values listed in the ship's info page.

I'm not ignoring your point at all. I'm showing you that your point holds no merit because there is no fine line. There's no boundary between what you're suggesting and what I'm suggesting. Indicators are not hand-holding when they give you information you're supposed to have access to. If CCP has a reason that people should not be able to know their ship's damage status in station (and why would they?) then they would remove the ability to check this via the repair service, and force you to discover the cost of repairs after accepting. They might give you a readout of the price per hit point or however it's calculated, but nothing more. You'll have to undock to get anything else, or remember it of course.

But that's not the case at all. CCP wants us to be able to see what state our ships are in at any time we want to know. They'd like to give us a way to see the hit point status of assembled ships in other stations away from us I bet, but it's a bit of a programming challenge and not worth the tiny gain. But rendering a HUD in station as well as the hull damage smoke/fire would not be much of a programming challenge as it would not conflict with other systems, and it would be rather useful. It's not hand-holding. It's not even borderline hand-holding. It's not hand-holding at all, not even related in the slightest way. Why not? Because the indicator would only give us information that CCP already wants us to have.

stop beign lazy.

as soon as you dock you repair first thing i do really.
my ships have to be in tip top shape 100% everytime i undock.

never ever have i forgotten to repair my ship
check check double check checked!!!

That's the point. He's showing those in disagreement with the idea why it is absurd to suggest that giving such an indicator is "hand-holding".

ShahFluffers and Bakuhz: You apparently have missed the multiple posts here already pointing out that it is unreasonable to expect players to go through an hour-long pre-flight checklist which includes things that almost always do not need to be checked.

I wouldn't mind the ship showing the damage it has sustained, it would make the game a bit more immersive, which is a good thing; what's more, it's not hard to think of a few cases where it would be both impossible to repair your ship right away and also forget at some point it has been damaged, and none of them have anything to do with ineptitude.

Edit: To the people saying that you should make a habit of checking for damage after docking or before undocking, doing so takes time, likely affecting the efficiency with which you do other things and probably even causing loses greater than your own.

I saw a ship in station with fire coming out of a hull breach. There were camera drones spinning wildly around it.

The blonde capsuleer inside claims she was "trying to put the fire out"
XD

Indeed, you'd think people who expect you to go through a lengthy pre-flight checklist prior to every undock, would be so incredibly patient that they would read the thread before commenting.

Had Bakuhz done so he'd have seen I had already mentioned that while I almost never AFK travel (being under near constant War Dec), that I will sometimes hit the Dock button when I jump into a system (after checking local) and then go AFK, which could be anywhere from 1 minute to 1/2 an hour. Not difficult to forget you were damaged by the time you return.

Although to be honest I've forgotten to repair damage after docking, taking care of some quick business I docked for, and then undocking. Since I rarely have hull/armour damage (1 in 20 docks), it's not something I'm in the habit of doing, and if I'm docking with just armour damage I won't even see any smoke/fire prior to docking as an in-your-face reminder.

I'm not sick of choices and consequences, well, sometimes I am, but it's not the point. I'm sick of argument "because EVE is game of choices and consequences". Every other game is too. There are choices and consequences in WoW and so there are in Hello Kitty Online. Hell, even playing tic-tac-toe you're making choices and you're facing their consequences.

And yes, I understand this phrase and its meaning and that this is one of characteristics making EVE unique but we shouldn't forget that what makes EVE unique is what kind of choices there are and what kind of consequences there are, not their mere existence. We absolutely cannot forget this distinction when those choices and consequences are subject of a discussion.

Speaking of which, the point I'm trying to put through is that we should try to make distinction between UI and game mechanics, even if quite often they are interwoven and the border is blurred at best. Simplifying mechanics is what I regard as true dumbing down and I repeat, in itself it is not always bad, but whether it is or not, it is not what has been proposed here. The choices remain (I still can choose to undock in damaged ship) and so remain all consequences.

On the other hand the UI is responsible for presenting information and carrying actions and in both regards making things here simple and easy is almost always good(*). So effort should be made to make available information more available and more comprehensible and to make allowed actions to be executed as easily as it's reasonable. If it's dumbing down, then I'm all for it. I understand that you may oppose this part but if you want, UI wise, the act of playing the game to be pain in the ass, say it aloud please. You will not get my support nor sympathy but at least you'll earn my respect for being honest.

(*) Not always. If the ease is done at the cost of overall efficiency then it's bad. But it's a subject to another discussion. Here it's a matter of convenience only, functionality is not reduced.


This pretty much sums it.


I had a bit different vision:
This is ships in space game. See? This is my ship. See where gun port used to be? Now here's SPAAAAAACE!

hour long check list its like you have a real cokcpit in your room out there ''exaggerate'' is the word here
but please if you have a cockpit link a picture.

but you dont have to impress me but CCP, wich from icelandic nature in general are more stubborn then i am so good luck with the lazy functions and indicator topic.

i rather see CCP fix the curent issues of the expansion that are really gamebreaking