EVE General Discussion

If they disagreed 100%, it would already be out. Instead, they only started working on it last year; they are still holding back with no sign of it coming any time soon; and like with every other graphical jump in requirements, they're talking about how those left behind have to be a sufficiently small group to make it an insignificant loss.

So we're still back at that question: are the advantages worth the cost? The visual enhancement offered is pretty small, no matter how much people dream of some hypothetical massive change. The performance improvement can be decent (especially with the kind of scenes EVE produces), but that's not what the “must have DX11”-crowd is looking for — potential new customers in particular. So will it bring in more people even though it looks the same, and will this hopefully-an-increase outweigh the lost accounts it will inevitably generate?

…and this is in reference to what, exactly?

The light client was also a cause of a pretty significant reduction in their ability to produce new art content. Calling it “their job” misses the important point that it's still additional work which has to come out of the existing pool of work that can be done. The difference here is that now new assets are really required for DX11, so “all” they'd have to do is maintain two different rendering paths… but even that means a waste of effort. That's why it's most likely to happen as a wholesale switch-over, and as one where the immediate visual enhancements will be negligible (other than tesselation on compatible hardware). Down the line, there might be some SM5 work as well, but consider how long it took them to go to SM3, (and to create shaders that needed it) that would be a lo-o-ong term project.

As long as DX9 is good enough and retains more people, compared to something that's not much better, but loses them customers, DX9 will most likely cling on, and do so more tenaciously than one might expect.

Ok. What visual enhancement are you envisioning that will make a significant impact and which can't be done under DX9?

I don't see why people let their computers fall so far behind. Do you really enjoy logging into a game that looks like a Nintendo game from 1989? And don't tell me that bullcrap that you can't shell out the money for upgrades. What are you living on government support or something? If you can't afford 30-50 bucks on a card I feel pretty bad for you when it comes time to sit down at the dinner table to eat. But I agree with the one case however. CCP should not switch until it is feasible to do so. There is no need to race to DX11 when most games nowadays are still burning off DX9 (Consoles are still churning on this so why race EVE to DX11?) I say let CCP work on the game in DX9 some more seeing as A LOT still needs to be done in the graphical department. And I mean A LOT! There is so much out of scale and just so blurry looking I see no need to move up to a new DX version until they finish what is still pretty much outdated with the current one.


And BTW... Crysis 3 is a TOTALLY DIFFERENT game than Eve Online. You simply cannot compare the two. One is a offline fps where all graphical assets are dedicated to making it pretty looking while running smooth at the same time. The other is a massively multiplayer world where graphics take a back seat to stability and balance. With a MMO stability and balance is always first and foremost over how shiny it looks, and honestly... Eve Online looks pretty good for its age I must say.

I see you clearly are NOT on a tight budget

CCP will drop DX9 when:

a) They think it will make sense for THEM to use it.

b) More than 95% of eve sessions run on hardware capable of DX11. (Yes, the do stats on that when you start the client...)

So upgrade?

It's not that difficult, welcome to the world of PC gaming, where you HAVE to upgrade every once in awhile. A GTX 560Ti, a kickass card for what it is, is $170 on Newegg.

And what am I supposed to do with this graphics card?
You seem to think I have a place to put it.

less client lag? more performance even with the same graphics? a better framework for multithreading? and all that base to work with when creating future shinies? I believe those are way more than enough arguments to switch.

Sure, but those aren't enhanced visuals. My point is that the whole “omgz, must upgrades or it will be ugly/people will leave” argument rests on the assumption that going for DX11 will somehow automatically make things look better. It won't.

My other point is that, if people pick up the game simply because it says DX11 on the box, and would have refused to do so if it still said DX9, then they won't last long anyway. Between the Excel online gameplay and the need to zoom out to view the battlefield, it's the gameplay — not the graphics — that will capture and retain customers.

They don't have to spend anything. They just need to update their windows verson to a modern one of their choice. They can stick with DX9 if they like, or if their systems can't handle modern graphics. At least that way, everyone else can have the choice to run on the higher graphics, rather than being held back by people living in the stoneage.