EVE General Discussion

Okay so a lot of you are raging about the launcher. Not surprising, of course. As for ISDs, I hope you realize this isn't a feedback thread that needs locking, this is more of a post be informative about the purpose of the launcher and how it will continue to change.

LOST SETTINGS? READ THIS

Before we continue, for all of you that have lost settings, simply reboot the launcher after having closed all EVE instances and such. Devs say that the setting derp was caused by it using the wrong file location the first time through and fixes itself the second time.

LAUNCHER PURPOSE

"What is this thing?! I hate it! Nothing was wrong with the old way!"

Well actually no. See we actually had a few problems with things before the launcher came about. The problem we have here with the community is that the launcher's full purpose and potential has yet to be realized and it's a bumpy incremental journey along the way.

That and no one reads dev blogs, or if they do they don't retain any of it. So, the following is a few of the problems and solutions the launcher has for them:

• Problem: Low Patch Frequency and Patch Process

For those of you that were here before the launcher existed you'll know what I mean. The way that patches were deployed before was annoying, riddled with problems, had holes in it that CCP couldn't plug up, and most of all they were so infrequent that sometimes a really bad bug or exploit would be stuck being left in the game for weeks before we got a fix. The launcher helped this by giving CCP a platform they can use and have control over to diagnose problems and to quickly and seamlessly deploy rapid fire patches in dire situations. One of the nice things that got taken out was the fact that the client would open, detect a patch, close itself to run the patch, and then open again. That little annoying thing is now a thing of the past :D

• Problem: Multi-patching

Prior to the launcher, anyone with multiple copies of the client that wanted to avoid redownload the patch several times had to download the patch manually from the website. They would then run the patch repeatedly for each of their clients. What the client now offers is the ability for these people to save the patch directly from the launcher and then apply it to the rest of their clients without having to redownload it or take extra steps to find it on the website.

• Problem: Speed

To my knowledge CCP was using an oldschool HTTP system to do patching before. But now with the launcher they have the ability to use other protocols to push patches out the intertubes faster, including torrents. There was a torrent devblog a while back but it was shelved as not being ready. (Don't worry, CCP knows some of you have torrent blocked networks and was planning an options to not use torrents).

• Problem: Lack of Intentional Throttling

This one is rather simple. Ever try to download or stream anything while the old patches downloaded? Yeah, probably wouldn't work too well. With the launcher we can finally throttle back our patch download purposefully so that it doesn't all bandwidth in the house and can even change the number of download threads it uses.

• Problem: SiSi Access

So, not only did we have to copy our client but we also had to dig around in the website to find the test server version, download it manually, run it, and hope to god you caught the install directory make sure you didnt install on top of your TQ client. And then after that it'd fail a lot. and ever after all that you had to make sure to point the client at the test server with some commandline stuff. Now, all we have to do is copy the client and change the command line to Singularity and let it patch itself. You're welcome. But that's not all! CCP has had plans for over a year now to let you copy and patch SiSi all from the TQ launcher and have then both accessible from the same place.

• Multi-client access

Not sure if you're aware of this, but if you don't let the launcher close itself after launching EVE you can simply click "PLAY" again to open another copy of the client. A little easier than clicking the shortcut on your desktop over and over huh? But see, this is only a tiny step in the direction of what CCP is planning on doing. We all saw today how they changed our launcher to include account login. This is but the first step to amazingness. Once they're sure they have all the kinks ironed out with what we got today they intend on letting us log in several accounts at once and letting you open all of their clients in one powerful click. Wouldn't you all love that?

• Problem: Character Swapping

Don't you all hate that when you wanna switch characters you gotta restart the whole client and then login again? Well even after today's patch you have to restart the client but you don't have to login any more provided you keep your launcher open \o/

Eventually the client will be able to return to character select without having to restart itself :D

So there you have it, all of the awesome that the launcher gives us. And yes, even after all the grief the launcher has been it's better than the old system. I only see maybe 1 or 2 threads about launcher fails on patch days usually, it used to be worse...

"But what about the awesome login screen?!"

Well I'm sure CCP would never fully remove the login screen concept we know and love. Most likely they simply shift the character select to it so that we can still have an opportunity to have awesome music and animated backgrounds :D

Here's a dev post for you: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3067196#post3067196

And another: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3071935#post3071935

Well, I guess we need to bump this one.

*hears several klangs as the thread pushes up passes the many padlocks*

I was referring to the launcher as a whole, not just today's changes.

It's not so much fanboy-ism as it's a validation of the launchers existence and laying out its current and future intended purposes with the intent of possibly calming the rage from today.

Too many people rage because they don't see any perceiveable benefit in ever having a launcher to begin with.

Thanks for the explanation of the purpose of the launcher. I think most will agree that the changes are beneficial.

However, people are not raging about the features of the launcher. They are raving about the poor QA that preceded this roll out. We don't need the changes. We need a game that just works.

urgh.

>> You are aware that the major issues wasn't with the launcher itself

It doesn't matter if the problem was caused by one department of CCP or another. It is still a problem and it is still CCPs responsibility to do a proper QA before they roll out new changes.

>> Load testing a live SSL cluster with a new and partly unknown new usage pattern isn't trivial

It also doesn't matter If your code is easy to test or difficult to test, you should always apply the necessary resources to test it. Saying "Oh, this is difficult to test, lets just ship it" is not an option. I also wonder how they managed to miss that settings was cleared on first login. That can't be hard to test and make me wonder if they did any formal QA at all.

Nevermind =D

There is one for now, however if they make the client "character select only" then it will be impossible to bypass since it will be the only way to login to your account.

IIRC the file named "ExeFile" inside of your bin folder allows you to bypass the launcher. When you use it it brings up the old login screen.

Edit: who knows how long this will work, though.