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To CCP Turtlepower // Team Psycho Sisters, CCP in general.

I'm having severe difficulty working up the willingness to help tweak the new camera to a functional, non-nausea/vertigo inducing mess with my personal feedback and replies on this thread. Why?

My faith in your Vision (tm) has faded with your decisions over the last 6-7 months. My trust in CCP's promises to their customers is in the garbage bin, as they are not followed through on in anything resembling a timely manner. In many cases, they have Yet to be handed out, giving the appearance of blatant lying and ignoring of your own words.

Has CCP ever heard of the carrot/stick method of getting compliance from a balky employee, middle management, or segment of a customer base that's irate over some Great Idea shoved in their faces? If so you might want to give it a try. Reason? All you have offered in the last 12 months or so has been sticks. Customers WILL accept these changes as they are, nevermind any constructive criticism given when asked for feedback. CCP develops selective blindness and deafness when an idea pitch isn't given glowing reviews across the board. Customers WILL use the tools, settings, and changes put in place by fiat or they can shove off, HTFU, and be left behind in the great Vision of Evolution.

All stick, no carrot.

I will offer feedback to help tweak the new camera if I get some carrots.

1. Return of Region Description Flavor text as we, the customer base, were promised.
2. Putting in place the customizable overview icon selections that we, as a customer base, were promised.
3. Leaving the 'Classic/Legacy' camera as an option for the foreseeable future of Eve Online as an operational product in the MMO segment of gaming selections.

No carrots? Then I won't be around for much longer in the paying customer base to be a target for your sticks.

As someone who does have vertigo, understands how some graphic changes can trigger nausea for those not knowing about such things as vision defects or lingering effects from inner ear damage, those suggestions might be worth learning about. I will not hand them over without some frikken carrots, after the number of sticks CCP has bounced off my skull.

That's my offer, CCP Turtlepower, Team Psycho Sisters, and CCP as a whole.

You can do the right thing, or you can continue to carry the 'cold harsh cruel New Eden' attitude out of game, and into your interactions with your paying customer base. RPing only flies for so long in a business arrangement!

TL;DR Version:

Until CCP hands over some (already promised!) shinys and agrees to NOT axe the 'Classic/Legacy' camera, I won't help them tweak a single frikken thing with this new nausea ride camera.

>Jeven HouseBenyo's Mistress Keyboardist

Ok. Reposting all comments from previous threads since none of the issues raised have really been addressed.

Could you explain what the purpose of this replacement is? What is the goal you're trying to achieve and how does the (presumed eventual) removal of the current camera achieve it? As long as it's opt-in, it's fine but for how long will it remain so? If the purpose is just to update the code, why wasn't a 1:1 functional replacement of the existing system the first thing you did?

• First person is neat, but ultimately pointless. It also means you have to implement more control options to allow the exact same level of personalisation that everyone expects from an FPS. I know you guys hate options, but this is non-negotiable.

• Tactical view is an interesting idea and I suppose it came out of the (very) old idea of having more of a 2D presentation of the battlefield, combined with the need to provide some way of controlling the future Fighter swarms. That old idea was cute; this implementation is not it due to how you keep losing track of where you are, and yet does not offer any more of an overview of the battlefield than what the current camera + tactical overlay offer. In fact, since it's so easy to move off of your own ship, it arguably offers less, even more so with the lacking persistence of settings others have already pointed out. If you want to keep this mode, the paradoxically right thing to do is to remove it and rework it from the ground up as something that doesn't even use a regular camera view. That might offer something better than what's currently available.

• The orbital view could conceivably be interesting for movie makers if you stopped trying to make it so dynamic — granted, at the moment, it's not actually dynamic, just heavily inebriated, uncontrollable, and not showing anything of interest. You might be able to catch a neat fly-by every now and then, but it's just too chaotic to be reliable and is almost completely useless for actual flying. You've offered more options to calm the thing down, but still not the ones that could make it properly useful: allow the user to turn off each and every automatic effect individually to the point where it reverts to the old system. I.e. no smoothing, no drifting, no bobbing, no auto-focus, no fov, very exact non-dynamic position of both your own ship and whatever you're looking at, linear and precise zoom, temporary quick-look, etc.

And again, this just leaves the core question unanswered: what are you actually trying to achieve? What are your use cases and how do the different camera modes correspond to and solve those use cases? How do you plan to handle the case “none of the above” in the long term? Asking for feedback is all well and good, but without knowing what you are actually aiming for, it is almost impossible to say whether what you're doing is of any use or any good.

That last point about picking “none of the above” is very very very important, because it seems to be the most common use case and one you have forgotten about completely. Right now, you're missing the option having the orbit camera, only without all the cumbersome controls and without the cinematic stuff. A view that just shows your ship and what you're looking at and nothing more fancy than that. Yes, this means you have to retain the old camera because it is simply better for almost every practical use than the fancy modes you seemingly want to replace it with. In doing so, you could even improve the current camera some more: switching between directions should be near-instant, very precise, and snap sharply with absolutely zero wobble — i.e. the current tracking mode but without the smoothness. Such a camera mode is by far more critical and infinitely more important than any of the three options the new camera has because they it is absolutely irreplaceable for combat tasks such as manoeuvring and quick scanning. It also offers vastly better situational awareness than anything these new modes offer for the simple reason that it defaults to always showing your ship. With the old camera, you have to struggle a bit not to have your ship at the centre of the screen and show everything going on around it — this is a good thing and it must be retained in some form. Anything that inverts the struggle is inherently bad and ill-conceived and must be removed.


So really, the most critical question that needs answering is how long we get to keep the option of keeping the old, working camera? Will it eventually be baked in and just be a fourth, no-nonsense camera mode, or will it eventually be dropped and its functionality lost? The previous threads offer tons of explanations of why the old camera must be retained and why the new ones are wholly insufficient to cover its use: for regular combat, for navigation, for fast manual control, and for anything related to scanning.

Tracking Camera toggle on/off AND tracking moving ship in warp.

Thanks.

As directed, copying my feedback from the other thread:

Overall: I will not be using the new camera in its current state. In particular, the issue below regarding the tactical overlay is a deal-breaker. I am indifferent to most of the new camera features anyway - I have absolutely no interest in 'cinematic' camera behavior or a first-person camera, for example - and so, for me, the new camera has no upsides and quite a few downsides.

Subjective: Playing around with the new camera initially made me feel a bit queasy - disabling dynamic FOV seems to have solved that. Not necessarily a *problem*, as everyone has different tolerance levels for that sort of thing, but a definite thing to watch out for. (I also disabled the dynamic FOV on general principle as I don't like games screwing around with my FOV - thank you for this option.)

Annoyance: Mouse sensitivity for vertical camera rotations feels significantly lower relative to that for horizontal camera rotations than previous (i.e. it takes more mouse movement to rotate a given angle vertically than horizontally), which is very jarring and annoying. Currently I cannot find a camera speed setting that provides acceptable rotation speeds in both directions at the same time - either horizontal rotation is too fast, or vertical rotation remains too slow. Please either revert or provide a toggle/slider.

Annoyance: Loss of the ability to toggle the tracking camera is quite annoying and makes quickly centering the camera on several targets much more cumbersome than before. I would please ask for this feature to return. (Also, I do not like how my ship is offset while tracking a target, and would prefer a toggle for this behavior.)

Annoyance: The continual sound in tactical camera mode is extremely annoying. The only way I have found to remove it is by dragging the master "UI Sound Level" slider to zero, which is obviously not a workable solution. Please remove this or add a dedicated slider to disable it.

Annoyance: When switching from orbit camera to tactical camera the zoom is always reset to the same level, regardless of the previous zoom level in orbit mode or the zoom level when last in tactical mode. Orbit mode remembers its last zoom level and returns to it when you switch back into orbit mode; for consistency tactical mode really ought to do the same.

Annoyance: The orbit and tactical camera modes have different 'default' states for the tactical overlay - orbit mode defaults to the tactical overlay off, and tactical mode defaults to it being on. The problem with this is that every time you undock, jump, or switch camera modes, the state of the tactical overlay resets to the default for that mode. This is highly annoying, because I prefer to leave the tactical overlay on 100% of the time, but would like to remain in orbit camera mode to avoid the possibility of accidentally detaching my camera from my ship (I've already done that a couple times just playing around, and the potential of doing so and losing track of my ship in the heat of combat makes me cringe). Thus, I am faced with the prospect of having to turn the tactical overlay back on every single time I undock or jump, which is highly annoying. If I have the tactical overlay on, it's because I *want* it on, and if I want it turned off, I'll *do it myself* - I don't want the game deciding for me. Please make the state of the tactical overlay persistent, or at least give a toggle (or give a toggle to disable the sound and the ability to detach the camera in tactical mode, so I can use that mode instead).

(Elaboration: for me, the camera is first and foremost a situational awareness tool. Its purpose is to allow me to instantly understand the types, positions, and motions of objects in the 3-d environment relative to my ship. The old camera, zoomed out with tactical overlay on, filled this purpose quite well. There are two critical elements - first, the tactical overlay MUST be on, as it allows me to instantly absorb the position of other objects relative to my ship. Second, the focus point of the camera must be ON my ship, as this not only always lets me keep track of where MY ship is in an often complex environment, but also ensures that the motions of other ships on my screen represent motions relative to MY ship rather than motions relative to whatever other point the camera is anchored on. No combination of the new camera modes matches the functionality of the old one here. Orbit cam keeps turning off the tactical overlay (absolutely unacceptable) and displacing my ship from the center of the screen. Meanwhile, in tactical cam it is far too easy to accidentally detach the camera from my ship, wrecking my situational awareness in a fight if I accidentally hit the right mouse button at the wrong moment.

Thus, to be usable, for me, either orbit cam must let me leave the tactical overlay on, or tactical cam must provide an option (button?) to lock the camera to my ship so that an accidental right-click will not shift it.)

Bug: Occasionally when undocking, the tactical overlay ends up in an odd combination of on and off - for example, in orbit mode the overlay displaying in space but the button not actually being pressed. When this happens I have to turn the tactical overlay off and on again a couple of times to get the state of the button and the state of the overlay in space to sync up again.

Bug: When switching from tactical mode into orbit mode, if the previous orbit mode zoom level was set very close to the ship *and* the ship is currently moving, the camera will rotate slightly as it zooms back in close to the ship. (It's almost acting like the anchor point of the camera is artifically being held stationary during the transition zoom, so as the ship moves away from that point the camera has to rotate to follow it.) This results in an uncommanded change in camera angle once the zoom finishes, which while generally small is still annoying.

first

THAT NOISE ON TACTICAL CAMERA MODE
THAT NOISE ON TACTICAL CAMERA MODE
THAT NOISE ON TACTICAL CAMERA MODE
let us turn that ********************** thing off without turning off ALL sound (u can include any noise from new map etc)

second
save tactical overlay state between jumps/dockings/relogs/camera modes

Tracking camera changes are awful.

First, the loss of toggle is extremely inconvenient and needs to die in a fire.

Second, removing the inability to follow ships in warp is a significant nerf to people who scout, solo PvP, or do literally anything else requiring the ability to follow people who might run away. Why on earth would you do that? People who scout and solo provide a disproportionate amount of content.

Third, when tying the track command to the overview, you apparently disabled tracking celestials while in warp, making it impossible to scan belts, FW plexes, stations, etc while warping (again, a core aspect of good dscan usage while scouting).

In short, the tracking camera changes are awful. I will not be using the new camera until the tracking changes are reverted and the grid overlay is given a separate toggle as well.

Hello CCP.

I'm not having too many problems with the new camera, then again I wasn't in a big fleet yesterday, did some minor stuff, and later some pve. I never used camera tracking much so that change doesn't bother me, but it bothers WHOLE LOT of my corp mates.

It kind of strikes me as throwing the baby out with the bath water ie in a move to make this new things you all didn't even consider the really great aspects of the current camera system.

Like the rest, I' too would like to know they whys and wherefores of this. It's starting to look a whole lot like Unified Inventory Debacle and the icon mess (to a lesser extent). Updating things is fine, but many times it seems the way you all do things are rather haphazard.

"The initial driver for this substantial chunk of work was the identified need for a tactical camera that wasn’t necessarily attached to a space entity all the time—in preparation of the Capital rework and more coming in the EVE Online: Citadel Expansion. When we started digging into the code, we quickly realized that the old camera wouldn’t be a suitable foundation."

If trying to add new things breaks old things then you are doing it wrong.
I recommend that you wait to implement new "features" until you can do so without breaking whats already in the game. Pushing bad code into the client for the sake of deadlines is not good practice and this new camera is a glaring example of that fact.

Which do you think is more important for the masses? New fancy mmo style aoe effects for capitals or a functional and polished camera? How many pilots are ever going to even SEE the new capital gameplay? Is it really worth destroying something as ingrained and perfect as the old camera just to make a camera that more suits your new capital rework? I don't think so and I think that most of EvE would agree.

Anyway I grow weary of ranting so I'll step away for now. I think the contents of this thread speaks for itself. I just hope someone is listening.

Tried the new camera.

Found it to be cumbersome in operation and not user friendly. The only buttons I should have to keep pushing is "Weapons" to select and "Fire". Without the constant tracking on, it is my opinon that the new camera is FAIL.

As stated in another thread, "I am not here to make "movies" or take "screenshots", I am here to kill some SOB before that same SOB kills me." I am finding it completely unusable at this time. If I click (only one click) on something on my overview, I want to see it before, I shoot it!

The new camera seems not to be fluid in control and the drift is terrible. I will go back to using the old camera till I am forced into changing and if it is not right at that time, I can take my money elsewhere.

If this is the case, and they don't new code an "old camera" setting, then it's going to be a deal breaker for me. I really really really don't want to stop flying, but the nausea and frustration simply won't leave me a choice... and that will make me sad.