EVE General Discussion

A much faster pace in updates and everyone who disagrees with your opinions is a carebear whiner?

First, most of the problems EVE is having right now, namely incomplete /abandoned content came from the 6 month update/ expansion idea of CCP.

Second, I can't be bothered to write on how many of the OP ideas are wrong.

Isn't things like vinyls and progressive damage just more for the server to remember, or are ae you talking just seeing such details on your own ship? I don't really want to have my game (and it is a game) ruined just to see some paint chipping on 600 enemy ships.

Universal vinyl ofc
If you're concerned about performance.
Notice how when you don't press look at ship on other ships.
Their turrets won't load.
The same can be done on the vinyl .

Progressive damage can be offloaded onto the client end by planting in the algorithm of what kind of texture and model to load at that level of "HP"

Technical problems , are not a problem :P

The Good-

Runs on old DX9 Hardware.

Easy to multi-box.

Exceptional variety and scope regarding design of ships, weapons/turrets, jumpgates, stations, hangers, captains quarters to such an extent that any new player can (very quickly) identify any racial object or environment by looking at it.

All popular sci-fi styles are covered; Steam-punk, Neo-Tokyo/Akira, Blade Runner, Mirrors Edge/oppressive-dystopian and 2001/Kubrick colour palettes.

The Bad-

Explosions. They lack racial significance; if you were to look at a battle from afar, you should be able to tell whether a Gallente ship went down or an Amarrian. And they are not awesome and devastating. Both of these points undermine the intricate depths the design team(s) have put into the models, and, undermine the significance of taking someone down AND; is contrary to the laws of game addiction. This is surprising from a company who have been making a game for ten years.

Engine Trails. They are weak. The creative side of me says the trails lack a decent opacity gradient between the centre of the trails and the outside edge. It looks too fake and for some reason it bends after the fact, instead of emitting, adding to the fakeness. And, there is no correlation between the engine particles that do emit and the trails. Overall they look rushed and tacked on, probably because they were rushed and tacked on.

The GUI. Needs a complete redesign, it's functional at best and dreadful to work with. It genuinely looks like a programmer designed it "...Just make a series of lists on the screen...that'll work fine..." because programmers work with lists all day long :) We're supposed to be controlling a spaceship with our minds! I know we're not; we're sat at our computer terminal and using a keyboard and mouse; but FFS at least give us some onscreen representation that we're immortal demi-gods capable of controlling the destinies of entire worlds by thought.

The Ugly-

Graphical break-up of textures and polygons. Biggest issue I've had since day nought and suspect it's a problem of DirectX, but I'll mention it anyway. To explain this, undock your ship, 'look' at a station, move the camera as far back as possible - and then do ctrl+alt+shift+rmb+lmb and then move your mouse to the right, this will zoom the camera in. Post back here and tell me what you see.

Skybox. It's pixelated.

Low-res textures. Like the skybox, we all know you have higher-resolution textures on your servers, you use them for marketing videos/trailers and screenshots - and even have E-ON magazine with their own copy of your external dev-tool so they can create screenshots and not bother anyone @ HQ.
We understand you need to keep the downloadable client as small as humanly possible, but in all honesty, where is the harm in offering a high resolution texture-pack download as an option? An option.Optional. This would mean those with lesser internet connections would be no better or worse off for either deciding to download EVE or not; and the same would go for those who do not have enough VRAM to play EVE and load all of the textures. There is no argument for not making it an option.

Epilogue-

You spend so much time over suspending disbelief by style, and then destroy it by substance. And you wonder why you do not have more new accounts; it's not the NPE (although I'm sure it contributed) - it's because you alienate those who would be drawn to this genre.

But I still love you guys.

A

Except that "modern" cards and sli/xfire have outpaced graphical fidelity for years. You can easily run 2 2 year old cards and crush some of the most graphically intensive games out. This is not the early 2000's where upgrade cards every year was more or less required to stay up to date with graphical progression.

With a single 5770 (100$ 2 year old card), 3.2 ghz quad (overclocked to 4.0 with 35 dollar heat sink) and 8 gigs of ram I can run bf3 at almost full graphics at around 40-50 fps. This same system can run many accounts of eve at near full graphics with extremely playable frame rates. This system can be easily attainable for 500$, spend a few hundred more and you can put something together that will obliterate modern games and will continue to do so for a couple years.

Using the age old excuse of (I can't keep up with graphics) is not applicable anymore. It's easier and cheaper to keep up now than ever before...

you really can't compare BF3 to this game... and using yourself as an example isn't all that persuasive .
Nevertheless , when we look at the statistics, it does support your argument
:D

Testimonial from a fellow sure is nice

BF3 is actually a very good performance yardstick. The game puts a nice strain on both GPU and CPU. And is significantly more hardware intensive than EVE will ever be. The destructible environments alone are a huge strain on the hardware. Particle effects (all those fires) are pretty heavy as well - I once had four tanks burning on the screen, and my FPS dropped considerably. Character details and animations. And lest we forget - the terrain itself? I mean EVE has no terrain, it's just a skybox, but in BF3 there's terrain geometry, added textures, grass that has to be rendered, etc., etc. And finally throw in things like projectile collision detection (something EVE doesn't have at all), and physics (especially visible with vehicles). All of that makes BF3 significantly more demanding, hardware-wise, than EVE.

So if someone can run BF3 fine, they sure as heck should be able to run EVE double-fine. And by the way, I totally agree with the guy regarding his estimates. I too was running BF3 quite decently on high settings on a 5770, which is under $100 (my local store has 7770 for $119 right now for crying out loud). And a 7950 can be had for around $300. He doesn't have to use himself as an example, it's just common sense - look at minimum and recommended requirements for most games today. And stats like Steam user poll (pretty large sample there). EVE's hardware requirements are positively tame by comparison. And BF3 is over a year old already.

Besides, an average EVE user already spends what, $180/year on a single sub? And if he has multiple subs? $360 a year? More? But they can't spring for a $200 video card every 2-3 years? Come on.

You can argue what you want, show what other single player games have or have their load distributed over several servers, the dev's have a poly limit. It's not that they cannot create fabulous highly detailed Star destroyers, or don't want to, it is just that they must always keep their poly count in check, or Return of the Lag will be plaguing the servers once again when 500, 5 million poly battleships jump at once from A to B.

I've been playing EVE since 2007. I played on the what they called "the classic client" and then later on "Premium Graphics", which where two huge different looking clients.

I witnessed the birth of Trinity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyYZmwhJ5YY which you must see to get an idea how bad the graphics where before, and where they had to scrape devs of the floor because CCP tried to do everything in one expansion. Hilmar back then said something like, that they never again would do such an "all in one" revamp of nearly everything.

They are now V3-ing everything at a sensible pace leaving room to do other things and until the moment they turn that (V3) on (hopefully with an off switch because choice is good, right CCP?) I think you should wait and see. Patience and all that you know. :)


Being since 2007 here I keep on running into little things like: what the heck? I jump through a gate and I can still! look around until I'm actually transported to another node? In the past I hit jump and my view froze, for quit long.

Have you tried to use both mouse buttons (left-right) in space and move your mouse a little bit backward or forward? Suddenly your ship is really, really tiny next to that station you're hugging.

And on and on and on. So many improvements I've witnessed, makes me feel your call for "revolution" is totally misplaced.


If anything, CCP is always looking ahead. Sometimes a bit too fast, too far but besides making money they strive continuously to make this the best game/MMO around.

Again wait for V3 to fully materialize, then we can see whats next.

Hi,

Graphics is not a reason I and my friends are playing EvE. I think this is only game curently available requiring such use of brain cells :) . THe only game now allowing such big freedom in actions you take and results u will get.

FOr me, DX9 is enough, even then it's a bit problematic - my need is to be able to play on Linux.

I don't see nor understand reasons to invest resources to DX11 "upgrade". IMVHO this will definitively cut many users from that game. I don't believe it will bring profit for CCP -most users of DX11 are buying their HW with FPS in mind. THay are simply not matured enough to enjoy what EvE has to offer.

I see gameplay much more important than some fancy efffects. Actual slow evolution of the look of EvE is quite fine for me. IMVHO EvE doesn't stay behind other titles so much.
I think it is not designed to be beutiful, it is designed to have limitless posibilities, to be "another world" where u can submerge and spnt lot of time doint things which possibility surprises you regardless of time you already were playing.

Graphics ? WHo cares ? WHo of those which will stay with the EvE for years ?

You are not wrong.. The OP is constantly changing his original Post.

As somebody else mentioned. Creating better Graphics is not an Issue. I am sure they can if they wanted to, but they need to work within certain limits. Your not going to be happy if a couple hundred ships sit in jita and your game looks like a slide show with all the High Poly ships.

You mentioned games like Star Citizen. It is easy to create high poly ships and lots of detail when you do not have to worry about a single shard server backend that has to support thousand of players.

Just remember to take things you compare eve to into context. Both of your examples are single players games.