Test Server Feedback

They've explained why they're doing this and it does make sense.

1. People have complained that the settings UI is too complicated. I've spent more than enough time helping out newbies to know they aren't BSing on this, I can't count the number of times I've told someone "oh there's a setting for that" and gotten something akin to "oh, I stopped messing with the settings, it all looked too complicated" or similar.

2. Having tons of different sliders and what-not complicates their work as devs. It's probably also responsible for some sliders controlling things that make little sense for them to control to the average player (for example Citadel tether sounds are caused by tether, which is technically a module internally, hence module sounds). With a simpler menu they can spend some of that freed up time making sure that every new thing tweaked or added ends up in the right place in the UI controls.

This is part of a larger question that we've been trying to work through of how we can find ways to highlight individuals as well as groups in the in-space experience, offering an individual a way to aspire to having a human presence in the game. We do have other concepts for this, but this feature was an opportunity to do something simple to serve that goal.

What it means to the corp's members is going to vary a lot from corp to corp. Many corps (including some with the strongest identities) have CEOs who are active players and whose personalities help define what makes the group work. Many corps, as you say, have CEOs who are essentially placeholders, and yes, they won't see as much value in it.

The earlier idea of using alliance executor corp CEOs was a first-pass implementation that was created to get the feature going, before we had a full discussion about where the value might be in having such a portrait on the structure. Player feedback on this mirrored our internal feedback and we were happy to tweak it to make it something a bit more meaningful.

These portraits are relatively small and are placed far less prominently than alliance and corp logos. They're there if you care about them and look for them, and if someone wants to highlight the CEO portrait in, say, a player-produced video, it should be easy to do so, but they don't dominate the look of the structure. If you're not looking for them, you're unlikely to find them too distracting.

The reason that we are not providing UI control over these features is that doing so would require back-end database and UI work that would necessarily involve another team, and would greatly increase the complexity and time to implement the feature.

I personally think that corps with CEOs with strong personalities and in-game identities will enjoy the detail, while corps with placeholder alt CEOs can probably find ways to be creative with their portraits that communicate a mood or something about their corporate personality.

I'm running 5 clients at any given point in time. If I can't mute stuff like weapons, the station interior/exterior, I'll pretty much be forced to play with sound off. That sucks.

I don't believe the settings for muting inactive clients are part of this change, but you can log on to Singularity and check it out to be sure.

Regarding specific feedback about certain sounds and use cases, thanks for posting it and please keep it coming.