EVE Information Portal

LOOT SPEW MUST DIE! Especially before they try to port the mechanic over to other activities like mining. Team Protoyping Rocks touched on this at Eve Fest. Kill it before it lives!

I like the idea of the mini game. The execution is still very much Bubble Breaker but it does beat clicking the Analyzer/Hacker then waiting and waiting for the can to open. I'd rather have the interactivity.

LOOT SPEW MUST DIE! I can't say that enough. It is by far the worst part of this expansion. If I beat the game, let me open the damn can and reap the rewards of my efforts.

Please hide the hidden sites from the main scanner. The whole point of having "hidden" sites is that *gasp!* they're hidden. Leave some actual exploration in the game. I thought it would be a convenience to land in a system and immediately see if there were hidden sites before deploying probes, but amazingly, I find it kind of a let down. Take away the crappy, heavy-handed "challenge" of the Loot Spew and add that challenge back into the probing.

Let me PING the main scanner. Having automatic sweeps is annoying.

Oh yeah...

LOOT SPEW MUST DIE!!!!!!!!!!

If it helps, you can just single click on the loot containers that are scattered out to collect them.
Double clicking still initiates ship movement.

After a few days of trying this out, here's my feedback:

1. This is the biggest one for me - the jump animation. Get rid of it, destroy it, burn it in a fiery death. Or at the very least, let us turn it off!!! I have found this animation to be both nausea- and migraine-inducing. As a regular migraine sufferer, I have enough triggers to avoid; this game does not need to be another. I should not have to look away from my screen or alt-tab every time I need to change systems. This game is now messing with my physical health, causing real-life pain and discomfort. I can't think of anything that would be more clear of in indicator that this was a bad design than that! I will gladly take a black screen with a loading bar over this any day.

1a. As a side note, please bring back the old gate flash effect, even if we only see it when other ships are jumping. It was a truly epic and iconic effect, and somehow, the game feels less like EVE without it.

2. The undock button - please, put this back where it was! Muscle memory is one thing, but there are also functional reasons to have it back on the neocom. Personally, I will often go to the map screen to plot out a course, then immediatly undock to start my journey. This is no longer possible, as the undock button is not accessible in the map window anymore. Like many aspects of this expansion, this change has added more steps and clicks to previoulsy simple tasks. It should be obvious that interface changes which require more steps is the exact opposite of streamlining the U.I.!

If you absolutely insist on keeping the new locaton for the undock button, then please at the very least swap it with the C.Q. button. The positioning now feels so counterintuitive. The button to undock should be pointing out towards the visible hangar and traffic of ships leaving the station, while the C.Q. button should be pointing further "inward" to the station. As they are now, it's the opposite, the arrow pointing towards your ship, hangar, and the path to open space takes you away from all of that. Plus, if the undock button were on the left, it woudl have the benefit of at least being oriented the same as it had been on the neocom, which would help make the transition a little easier.

2a. Another subnote, the undock animation - this defnitely needs to be more noticeable and measureable. It needs to be obvious that you are undocking, and clear how much time you have left to abort it.

3. While we're on the subject of U.I. changes adding more steps, how about the scanner button opening a radial menu? This is a redundant waste of time, and makes it the only button on the HUD that behaves differently than all the others. It is out of place, and a useless inconvenience.

3a. As a subnote on this, I'm against radial menus in general. In my experience, they've been something of a fad in computer games, but are rarely all that effective. With a simple dropdown menu, the mouse, and consequently, the user's eyes, only have to move in one direction to find the item you want to select. With radial menus, you are searching around, moving in multiple directions at once trying to find your selection. Not only is it disorienting, but it takes longer to do. In a game where timing can make all the difference, the delays of using a radial menu (or of having a radial menu pop up unintentionally and having to close it) can be a big pain. If you want to include radial menus, fine, but make sure that we have the ability to turn it off (and no, remapping to a different mouse key does not count - I use my mouse keys!).

4. And on scanning, turn off the autoscan effect! There are times I want to scan and look for things, but most of the time I do not. When I'm not out looking for something, the effect is just annoying, as are the myriad of objects that pop up in my view. I'd be fine with the animation if it only triggered when I wanted it to. Scanning needs to require player interaction, and as such, it needs to be moved back to a manually controlled event. The autoscan is just cheap, distracting, and annoying.

5. The red flash at the bottom of the screen and accompanying sound effect on taking damage - not only is this annoying, it is redundant. I know when I'm taking damage, I've already got three bars on the HUD that tell me this with a lot more detail and effectiveness than that constant annoying flash; not to mention the damage display telling me not only that I've been hit, but by whom and for how much. Note: just in case you're getting any ideas, removing these other features would not make the damage flash any more acceptable.

6. Targeted ships flashing before disappearing - this is not only annoying, but also provides an unneccessary time delay in acquiring a new target. The moment a ship blows up, it needs to be gone from the target list. I frequently have more ships in space waiting to be targeted, and the momentary delay waiting for a previous target to "blink off" can be costly in a thick fight.

7. Right click menu on ship in hangar - ok, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume that this was an unintentional bug. But whether it was or not, it needs to be fixed! It was the easiest and simplest method for performing several tasks on the ship. This is yet another change which has made previously simple tasks require more effort.

8. Camera autofocus on selected items - this is dizzying, and nearly as nausea-inducing as the jump gate effect. However, I didn't mark this as a major issue because you did at least include the ability to turn it off. But it needs to stay off, and not be on by default!

Bonus item: Ok, this one isn't Odyssey related, but I will repeat it every chance I get: Bring back the jukebox!!!

Sorry CCP, these gate and wormhole transition animations there might look cool for the first couple of times but please give an option to turn them off again.

Jumping through a gate/wormhole is when you mentally prepare for what awaits you on the other side.... not the time for epileptic seizures.

These additions to the game go down the same road as the tons of sound notifications you added lately. Cluttering the screens and ears with pretty useless stuff distracting from actual game play. (blowing up space ships that is, just as a reminder)

Thank you.