EVE General Discussion

I'm interested in hearing people's opinions on the new V3 skins now that they are in the game.

My own experience was tinged with dismay, when I logged on to find my Caldari Badger, along with all my other ships, jet-black.

I do know that there are a lot of people enjoying this change, and I'd really be interested in your points of view, since I'm probably looking at it differently. Let me explain:

On the positive side, the ships look a lot more like ships that humans would actually be flying in space in the future. The silver and blue of Trinity Caldari ships was very appealing to the eye, but appealing to the eye is not something that really applies to realistic spaceship design. Gunmetal is a lot more practical of a color than stainless steel in a hostile space environment. No reflections, no contrast, no visible edges.

On the negative side, I feel that all this darkening makes the ships (especially the Caldari ones) more bland. Aside from the fact that the ships no longer contrast with the background of space, (the much darker background of space, with the new nebula) and are much harder to see and appreciate as a result, the racial themes are being ignored and thus blurred. Even in-station they fail to "stand out" like they used to.

The T2 Caldari paint schemes are not what I'd call an improvement. We have Lai Dai with a gold-plated scheme, (which looks a bit odd in my opinion, especially for Caldari) Ishukone with a brushed gold toward the back scheme, and Kaalakiota with the addition of dark red stripes.

The Gallente as a whole are, IMHO, decent looking, again the T2 is far less distinguishable than the Trinity versions, but perhaps that's the intent. The look has shifted to a more "space plastic" material design, which would fit Gallente I guess. Much darker on the whole.

It depends on what CCP are going for. On the one had you have visual aesthetics, where races have color schemes that play off each other and complement the other races, and where ships are designed to look sharp and look good. On the other you have a more practical disregarding of colors and unification of T2 variants. The latter method is used a lot in sci-fi movies, the intent being that corporations don't give a crap about what their ships look like as long as they're functional and hard to spot. This is a theme in and of itself, used in Alien most notably.

It could also be that Caldari ships are now black to make the player corp logos stand out more when they're implemented. This would be the saddest explanation, but since there's no changing it now, I'd like to hear what you guys think, and if I could be looking at this a different way.

I too think the new art direction is too dark.

I had an inkling it was going to happen with the new Amarr theme that came about with the Maller remodel, with Amarr going for a much darker shade of gold rather than the current glorious theme.

Then we had the Noctis. The Primae is a wonderful model, but the dark skin on the Noctis pretty much hides all that funky geometry.

The new Gallente and Caldari skins confirm it, although the Gallente T1 skins haven't changed too much in intensity, their T2 look really muted. The Creodron ships in particular look rubbish with their new black-green as opposed to their previous forest green.

(also, new Comet and Gal Shuttle skins are terrible).

Also keep in mind that it looks like the skins will be customizable in the near future, so this provides a "base" to work from.

You are likely correct about making corp and alliance logo's stand out, which I don't find a bad thing at all.

All in all I'm pretty happy with the new textures, and find most to be a distinct improvement.

I'd really like some of what your smoking. Current Amarr ships look like butter, and not in any good way. The Oracle is ******* hot though, so I'm hoping my Arbitrator and Harbinger end up looking like that.

The Primae is a horribre puke green color. The Noctis skin shows off the shape of that model much better.

I love the darker look of the ships. That Rokh looks amazing now. Before it was a big shiny light blue stick...now it is a weapon of doom and destruction. Seriously...it looks like it just wants to go out and kill something.

Did they change The Primae? If not it's pretty sexy for a useless ship.

I really do think Roden are the best of the bunch now, the Enyo, Phobos, Onerois etc look bloody amazing followed closely by CreoDron ships with that dark green metallic sheen.

Caldari ships seem to have that brutally effiicent look that the race is famed for all sheet metal etc, the t2 (I think) Ishukone ships look the best with the two tone to almost gold thing they have going on (Vulture and Harpy)

Overall rather impressed with the lot.

Overall I love the Gallente ships. Greatly improved.

Caldari ships are too dark. They look nice in station or in some of the very bright systems but they otherwise look like dark blobs. What is the point of the V3 texture remodel if the ship is no longer visible?

For the record I started a thread complaining about this on the test server forums and was basically told by everyone "Shut up space is dark".

I don't have a single complaint. I think the new ships look absolutely stunning. I dig the corporate logos on the ships too.

For those that miss the old 'orange' paint job on the gallente shuttle, you should take a look at the interbus shuttle. It got the old orange scheme and it looks a lot better than it did with the flat yellow paintjob it formerly had. Also adds some 'EvE nostalgia' value to the interbus shuttle.

I haven't really looked at the Caldari changes, other than the Kaalakiota designs (red stripe is now orange and it's not black anymore, ugh).

I really like the new standardised blue/grey looks of the Gallente ships, I think it fits them quite nicely and I especially love the new Deimos. Still hating on the changed Navy Comet and silly space camo ofcourse.