Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This message is for CCP on what is not a complaint, flaming, or explaining my preferences, but factual information.

I do not care a lick about flaming because this is technical information regarding the Rhea update. You can argue freely but it serves no purpose against logic.

Hi I am not really a super EVE vet but have been playing for 6 years, enough to have seen the many I'll take the good with the bad updates, complete successes, and complete disasters. Rhea introduced some seriously awesome content with the new wormhole systems and the mysterious lore added with them. However there are two technical changes, that are absolutely horrid and I want to explain to CCP what they are and how they affect the game. My numbers are not 100% accurate, but give a good idea with what is at stake here.

#1 new graphics algorithm for rendering ships

This holiday I got excited and splurged $2k on computer parts. I have been extremely busy December and only the past couple days have been checking out the not-so-shiny features of Rhea. The new algorithm makes the ships look different and not better. It's purely objective whether or not a player thinks they look better or not. That's great and all not a big problem, except for a "tad" change in performance which I have tested on my previous PC and my new RIG. On my old PC I could render 6 accounts, at 40-50fps. My awesome $2k rig can render 4 accounts at 40-50fps. So you see a drop in performance here, something to be concerned about, but not too bad. THIS IS WHERE IT GETS BAD, REAL BAD. I tried running multiple accounts on my old PC again after the Rhea update. It now barely hits 60fps with a single FULL-SCREEN rendering mode, meaning even the OS is out of the question, and pretty much all the processes are focused on that single game. So doing the math, before the graphics update I get less fps on the old PC with a single full-screen render compared to the previous 5 simultaneous renders which ran well above 60fps. We are looking in this instance around 550% drop in performance at the very least.

So the ships look different, and for my personal taste the previous rendering method actually looked a lot smoother with the rest of the game. Right now the ships look like they are in a separate rendering, as if they are warped in from a different game, and the rest of the scene is the smooth look EVE always has been. I know it has got to suck to put so much work into something, and have this kind of outcome. I am not going to blame you for not fixing this by any means possible, but I am also not going to forgive you if you don't.

This hits the following players really freaking hard:

Players with at least a little experience with more than 1 account.

New players that don't have $250 graphics cards, basically any of the major retail stores in the USA that sell ridiculous amounts of computers including Walmart, Best Buy, Office Depot, Office Max, and Staples. These stores in most cases will not sell computers with decent graphics cards.

The next issue is nowhere near as bad, but destroys the once unique game that actually benefited from multiple accounts. EVE works perfectly with multiple accounts, and even MULTIBOXING. I do not know of any other game, where it is worth spending an extra $15/mo or whatever length of time is played, and make the game much more addicting and interesting. It also possibly half the reason why this game is considered a "sandbox". If you look at the game design and all it has to offer, and how well it works with separate game instances played at the same time, it's quite amazing that it was possible on that level. Once you get the first extra account, all kinds of things start connecting and falling into place. That is, if you are aware of this or not using multiple accounts.

Which leads me to:

#2 CCP & communnity(?) against multiple accounts

Well technically, using multiple accounts at the same time is no longer possible, unless you like your screen flashing and delaying every time you may magically alt-tab to the right account or hit the windows key. Playing the game in full-screen window mode could be removed from the game with no difference in term of what a player is capable of. There's something to be said about removing the ability and uses of multiple accounts when a game is perfectly designed for it. Once you have that connection and have it taken away, it's a comparison and exaggeration to having a family with kids then all of a sudden being single. It doesn't matter how many "friends" (lol) that you have in EVE. It's the same as the real world, your own characters are your family that you can trust and your corp and alliance is the real world where the second you let your guard down it's over for you, except in most circumstances a lot more severe in EVE.

The people that hate on people with multiple accounts are the same people that fly around with their own exploits, more often much worse than extra accounts. Either they have their own advantage they want to firmly position in place as being foolproof for their own good, or they are just plain stupid. ISO boxer has some pretty hard risks. First you have to invest a TON of money into the game, and second you are flying around a lot more ISK work of ships than a single player would. Thirdly one person controlling multiple ships has to be a certain setup. These setups are far less effective than a fleet of skilled players with good synchronization and strategy. ISO boxers are at a disadvantage nearly 100% of the time, but it's freaking awesome to do if you haven't tried it yet.

The wormhole lore, mystery, additional content, and the Confessor are totally awesome. I'm not sure about the other two that are tacked on, they are pretty ugly.

yep...


ccp had issue with the ability to launch a massive barrage of say....a 10 man bomber wing with 1 click.


Nothing is stopping you from staging those 10 bombers, and hopping to everyone of them to press f1 to fire.



The other stuff...games have to move the graphics along. They/you should be happy they can play with dropped framerate. Want a pity party about ccp upgrades here is mine.

CCP a bit back mac users upgrade to a set level to play the mac client. Which is fine, time to standardize and I can dig that. They however seemed to have not kept up their part of the bargain (they should imo anyway) in keeping up with apple. Latest expansion has generated its fair share of hit or miss issues with Yosemite. If lucky I actually get a 1 night a week I can play. other nights....crash and burn :( . I'd love to help them with submitting a crash dump file....I like many have seen even this feature not work. I'd take 20 FPS at this point tbh..it be nice to play the game consistently. end pity party...

Please verify that we don't have a case of this.

1) Ships look objectively better with no performance hit, performance is actually better than before Phoebe

2) No changes to multiboxing have been implemented, they only extended the botting ban to cover all 3rd party botting programs.

Also broadcasting is not botting. It is still person at keyboard, hitting buttons. Just makes many things all happen from the same input.

I have not had any issues running six clients on the same old computer. ISBoxer also works just fine for windows management, without using the input broadcasting features.

I currently run 3 accounts at the same time. 3 monitors. 1 account per monitor. I have no problem. I dont need any software to play. I used to do 2 accounts on 1 screen but I hated using alt tab, so I saved up, bought a decent GPU and a second monitor. Then I had more accounts and was back to using alt tab, so I saved up and got my 3rd monitor.

Ive decided to stick to just 3 accounts and 3 monitors for now. I have 2 more monitors I could connect and move up to 5 accounts if I wanted to. If I did, I'd still click each client and manage each individually with no problems.

Their policy clarification has not affected my multiple account gaming. Never used isboxer, never wanted to and never planned to.