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Gallente/Caldari highsec (other than Verge Vendor and Lonetrek) still feel like lowsec regions.

Minmatar/Amarr highsec do feel like they are highsec according to the devblog.

I was on late last night and the star field was much denser than on TQ but it was AWESOME!. Did that add even more this morning or something? IMO, there should be alot of stars. This is space afterall.

Edit: TQ star fields are rather drab to be honest. The ones on the test server seem much more alive. As I said in another post, EVE looks more like the Pictures that comes from the Hubble space telescope and it really adds to the immersion factor.

I agree with some of what you're saying. The ships definitely look sharper which is nice. Though its all in the normal maps. The actual diffuse textures are still really blurry. The windows on all ships are still really blurry. And I agree that the ships look plastic. I think the speculars were more intense and much wider before. Now they are very tight. That might be whats making the ships look plastic instead of metal. The diffuse texture also seems rather bland compared to the old ones. All the grime and grit and wear and tear is gone. The ship textures now have large areas of pretty much just solid color with no variations or details. This is probably adding to the plastic look. I also think some of the new skins are worse than the old ones in some other ways. The Brutix for example is much more subtly colored on TQ. There is color variation - greens, light silvers, dark silvers - but they are very unified. The Brutix on Sisi not only has more contrast between its colors but they are also rearranged into more of a patchwork pattern. Its sort of the same problem as the camouflage ships just not as severe. While on TQ, the values and colors of the skin are more grouped together into large shapes. The ship looks much more smooth, sleek, and sexy on TQ because of it.

The higher res normal maps are definitely welcome though. And man, the raven is looking pretty bad ass now. Its so detailed, I found myself twirling it around and studying it for quite a while. I wish all the ships in eve were so detailed. The Golem is still ugly but not as ugly as on TQ. The Navy Raven... well I've already made my opinion on camouflage known. Also not a fan of the faction with the sunburst/fade paint scheme. I'd prefer much more subtle paint schemes for each faction. I do like the shiny metallic creodron scheme, which some people seem to have a problem with.

As for the nebulae, I love the new Metropolis nebula. I don't think its too desaturated at all. I love the new rusty color. It also kind of reminds me of Metallica's blood and semen album cover. heh. I think the bright spot is still too bright but other than that I love it. I still feel like I end up looking through/past the new V3 ships in favor of the nebulae background though. The ships aren't quite as dark as they were but still too dark and too low contrast in my opinion.

In general looking much better though I think. I like the more subtle nebulae and the more dynamic star field.

I do not know if this has been mentioned, but in some systems where the background nebula is extremely bright and there are object icons near it, it becomes impossible it identify what the heck the object icon represents. The white text/bracket on white background makes it all just one bright white blur.

Heres some examples of what im talking about

Impossible to read - UI Scaling at 90 percent
A little easier to read, but still pretty tough - UI Scaling at 100 percent

"As it so happens, by stellar coincidence, the dominant stellar phenomenon of each race happens to be in the same color palette as the ships of that race, making it more clearly distinguishable."

This is clearly wrong...
It should probably read something like:

"As it so happens, the ships of each race happen to be in the same color palette as the dominant stellar phenomenon, making it more clearly distinguishable.

You can now witness this for yourselves, with our ongoing improvements to capsuleer ship/pod stellar sensor array technology."

I'm in two minds about the added stars in the background.

On one hand, they're visual clutter. The artist who already designed the background starfield had an impression or mood in mind and I'm sure that artist (or several) deliberately worked and tweaked the background for it to feel right. CCP didn't just chuck in whatever and say "Ok it's a starfield;" they had people deliberately making it look good. Unfortunately the new bright neighbour-stars came later and they don't cater for this. As a result, their look-at-me nature overpowers the intended atmosphere of a starfield someone worked on to get right. They sometimes distract from nearby nebulae too.

On the other hand, their practical meaning is great. It really is cool to watch the stargate fire you at a star you can see; the whole thing about repositioned gates totally works in my opinion. And soon we'll be able to recognise at least a few of our common haunts in the background, for the systems we frequent the most. They do add some of that extra sparkle and beauty to the nebulae as well, if only that extra sparkle wasn't inescapably in every screen you turn your camera to.


Well, good or bad one thing is worth acknowledging: the neighbour-stars weren't designed to lift the background's aesthetics. Their presence is practical and then CCP has tried to make them fit. If it wasn't for the stargate business people would be wondering why they did this to the starfields.


Suggestions to toy with:



I don't mean to sound like I'm whining. I do really notice the difference and the "break" in the feel of the backgrounds now; it was a drop. Attention grabbers everywhere. I wonder to myself if a particular someone inside CCP had a moment of "What are you doing to my starfields!"

Wow...Really? Lets not hold EVE back with 2007 backgrounds. Yea, thats not good. The new nebula are AMAZING.

But its your opinion and you are allowed to have one.

Same problem in Metropolis. The color was beautiful, the brightness of the nebula in some spots, not.

Now the color is washed out. There is no fire orange and red even if thankfully the blinding brightness of some spots is gone. The red now looks brown and drab.

There has to be some midway that can be struck. It seems they heard the complaints of brightness and simply turned an overall general dial down. There should be multiple and different dials they could have tweaked. Instead of turning a main dial, couldn't they have just turned down the brightness on the bright spots but preservesdthe color of the whole. I don't get it

Misunderstanding, when I look at the ships in the game and then the fog, I see only mud.

And I am sorry if you are already making so much work with so great nebulae, then why are the texture so mushy!.

I said I would want an option where you can download separately integrate high-resolution and sharp textures.

I'm sure you all recognize this image from Newsletter Volume 68 advertising the new nebulae:

http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/2818/3065/EVE_Nebula_03.jpg

Okay, unless I'm crazy or simply in the wrong system, the new nebulae looks nothing like this on the test server. If it looked like this image render on the test server and covered the entire background box, then I'd be all for it.

However, from what I've seen, from central Gallente space to southwestern Amarr space, the "new nebulae" is an entirely black background with a single big splotch of colors to one direction and that's it.

Please tell me I'm wrong or simply in the wrong system.