Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I agree with you strongly on a number of these things. For some I accept the counter-arguments, and for some others I wasn't bothered by the change, so I'm quoting from a number of places in this thread just to see where it goes really.



I agree. They simply do. The colour-banding is really bad in a number of places. The fuzzy resolution is disappointing in some places.


It depends on which you are looking at, but yes, a number of the new nebulae are just really unappealing. They make me wonder how the artists felt they would be nice to put in the game. I wish I could list of which regions these are, but I can't.


I'm not sure I understand on this point, because black is as dark as it gets and many backgrounds contain a lot of black space, and it's no problem I thought (worth noting though that all the black is why the colour-banding is so noticeable). Ultimately a completely black background isn't too dark, which is why I don't understand what you're saying. Unless you're saying you prefer there to be much less black space.

The *ships* however, are definitely too dark since the new nebulae were introduced. At their very brightest, in full sunlight, it is still difficult to make out all the detail on a ship. That encourages eye-strain, and that's at their brightest. Most of the time, the camera is viewing a ship with even less light.

And this is coupled with the way that some parts of the nebulae in highsec are too bright. The bright whites in Amarr space, and the bright light blues in Caldari space, to point to 2 examples. I always have to turn the camera away if it points at these areas, and that's a really bad thing; the player having to rotate the camera to avoid parts of the background.


This is indeed a pain. The reasoning for it is good - it's logical, it makes your location more identifiable. But the reality is that it is very, very boring. The backgrounds are 90% of what we are seeing on screen. Players typically go hours, or days, with that never changing. We don't travel across regions as part of our regular activity since jumping through gates is not the fun part of the game. However the background of the game *should* be changing more often as part of our regular activity. This is a real issue in my opinion. The concept was nice, but the reality of it is disappointing. I honestly don't know how CCP could address this now. They're not going to ditch the new nebulae art, and it would be awkward if they changed them to per-constellation.

But without a doubt, if I had an option between the new and the old nebulae, I would definitely use the old. People like the new nebulae, ok, but I think the above points are pretty valid.

So all I can think of is to really, yes, ask them to give us the option for backgrounds.


The change in nebulae also meant a change in the lighting that was applied to all ships.

For me the worst change of all; I'd kill for them to revert this (and the ship skins that responded to it best). I stopped playing Eve for 18 months because of this. These pictures show why:

http://i884.photobucket.com/albums/ac47/DanOnTheCorner/Image699.png
http://i884.photobucket.com/albums/ac47/DanOnTheCorner/Image730-1.png
http://i884.photobucket.com/albums/ac47/DanOnTheCorner/Image721.png
http://i884.photobucket.com/albums/ac47/DanOnTheCorner/Image718.png
http://i884.photobucket.com/albums/ac47/DanOnTheCorner/Image679.png

All the same ship, just in different constellations. Every time you arrived in a different background, the appearance of your ship changed in a very cool way. Your ship looked blue in one constellation, yellow in the next, pink in the next; it was very fancy. Nowadays, even when you changeregion there is no difference in your ship's appearance, ever. Cool factor completely torn out of the game.

The Malediction, Anathema, and any other "shiny" ships were especially affected by this, as they reflected the old lighting brilliantly. The Anathema just looked the absolute boss. Black and colourful shiny silver. But even normal ships really benefitted from this; I have photos of Merlins and Thrashers that I took just because they looked cool in different systems. Now, it's not possible. When the old nebulae were taken away, so were the dynamic colours.

Since it's on topic, and related to this point, I will complain about the ships skins that used to be shiny. The Malediction and Anathema looked so good because their hulls had a metallic, shiny appearance. Now every ship that shared that shiny skin looks much worse, much less shiny. I know I'm using the word "shiny" a lot but it is that simply really. There were many ships that stood out specifically because they had this fancy, shining metal skin. Now they're all totally ruined.

And this is saying nothing of how plastic the new skins look in general, especially for the Gallente hulls. Gallente ships used to look the best, now I feel sorry for pilots of Gallente ships. So much soft rubbery plastic.

Here's a before and after for the Malediction.
Before:
http://images.mmorpg.com//images/galleries/full/242008/27595e7b-216d-4db0-b419-6e53d4439b51.jpg

After:
http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s260/MrOosterman/eve%20ships/malediction.jpg

I don't know missiles enough to have any complaints.

I have no complaints about the inventory system. Perhaps it has been updated because I read that there was once quite a stink about it. From my perspective, I can enable Compact mode and still use it exactly how I used to. Perhaps your wishes were filled on this one.

The font was bad. Large and small caps are bad for reading. As with other changes, I can't think of what to suggest to make you happy about this. Asking them to provide the option is fair, IF it means they don't have to muck with the whole interface spacings to do so. I seem to have the impression that they would, however. But I might be wrong. The option would be nice, but to be honest I think 98% of people would stick with the new font, again bringing into question how much it is worth asking the devs to put time into it. It's like the UI resizing option. That took them quite a bit of work, but no-one uses it.



There are 2 main reasons they changed this as far as I know, and I agree with them:
1. Can-flipping, identified as a different thing to stealing, was only successful when the victim was tricked into a fight he couldn't win. That's a fine thing to do in Eve, but the nature of can-flipping meant that only noobs suffered, not vets. A mechanic that only victimised new players was a mechanic CCP didn't want. The change has moved the harshness of can-flipping to the exploiter instead of the noob.
2. Removing the can-flip mechanic was part of a simplification of criminal mechanics that the game needed.

Personally I have no problem with the change, because I have no problem with turning suspect to everyone. That is very Eve-like. To put it simply, it's fun. It makes the steal more of a thrill, and requires the thief to actually be careful, like a real thief should. I say that as an RvB player; having many people around who are able to shoot me is a fun thing.

It also returns to stealing what the whole purpose of stealing was meant to be in the first place: enjoying the stolen goods. The can-flip mechanic of finding a legal gank was a side effect that became larger than its original purpose, and that was a design flaw I'm pretty sure.



I think rather than ask the devs to change minimising, you could rearrange your Neocom, and your hotkeys, to reach a solution that's better for you. Because ultimately the change has resulted in less screen clutter.

NPCs on 50% hull is definitely a nitpick sorry. Believe me, I get that small changes can really be a bother while half the world doesn't notice, but there's no good reason to ask them to return this 50% thing, as far as I can think of. The fact that it makes NPCs die a bit faster is not a good reason.

Not sure what you mean by the old info window...





On the positive side of things, they did bring back:
Ship spinning
Turret icons (time for an upgrade though)
Inventory ease
Engine trails (need to work like trails, not tails, though)


But damn I wish they'd bring back the colour-changing lighting, and the shiny skins that showed it off so well, the warp sound, and make the damn ships brighter. :/

Yeah, I'm in the same boat, liking the new stuff better.

I think this is mostly about personal taste, for example there are a lot of ships in Eve I find absolutely hideous, but I didn't get the idea in my head to make a thread demanding CCP to change their looks to something I prefer. (Hint, Hint.)

A possibile solution is to add a nebulae for evry single constellation.
and with extremly dark i mean the black space, not the nebulaes itself. The essence region has 3/4 of its space just black. When adding another nebulae (good will be an amarr one, so that it looks like yu are close to amarr and galente spaceroom. (like it is in devoid and derelik).

Asking they add nebulae for every constellation is not a solution. Solutions need to involve as little of the devs' time as possible, but you're asking for the complete opposite.

Regarding only the nebulae, you presented 4 problems, I added 2.

These are the solutions I think are realistic:


1. Quality
The only way to address image quality is to increase image quality.
Many players have asked for an optional downloadable higher-resolution pack.

2. Boring
The only way to address the nebulae that are visually boring is for the art team to redo them and replace them.
Even on a per-nebula basis, even if just one nebula gained traction in complaints, one new nebula means multiple new maps.
I can't see a way to address this that isn't too much to ask.

3. Too much black space.
Exactly the same response to expect as #2 above, I'm afraid.

4. Too infrequently changing.
This is a real issue for the game in my opinion.
CCP can't be asked to produce a tonne of new artwork to address this.
I believe the only realistic solution is a way for players to use the old nebulae.

5. Some parts too bright.
I would ask they rework the overly-bright parts of the offending images.
But it wouldn't be a trivial task so I imagine this is too much to ask also.

6. Ship lighting no longer changes. Ship lighting far too dark.
THIS issue CAN be addressed easily with a very appealing solution:

Ship lighting (or colouring) used to be dynamic, and changed every time the nebula/constellation changed.
Ship lighting no longer changes at all.

Solution:
Bring back the dynamic ship colour, but tie it to the star, not the constellation.
Every system has a different star. Different stars have different colours.

It's simple, it's logical, and it would be very, very nice to have the coloured lighting back again.

This would also go some way to addressing the issue of the graphics never changing inside one region, as players would now at least get to look at their ship in a different light, very frequently.

And I would hope that this also partly addresses the ships' darkness in general.

+1

also int his "old stuff eve client" bring back the old pulse sounds. srsly heavy pulse used to sound BAD ASS, now it sounds like just ass

another problem is, that there are now only 4 different effects, one for evry type of damage. The explosive missiles now using some of the old sounds. the old had unique effects for evry size and depending on their range.

Makes me wonder why everyone wants the Challenger catastrophe cloud back... I also cannot follow where the new nebulae are boring. They are varied, have many shapes and features and change the perspective at reasonable pace/distance. They are not even blurred, quite in contrast to the old nebula (it was only 1 single cloud) which was blurry at what ever resolution. And for the number of clouds (see before), space is mostly black and dark. We can be happy that we have that many nebulae already. More just start to make the game look childish and like fluffy ponyland.

The majority agrees that the new stuff is better.

And you may argue, "But why not make it optional?", to which the answer is obvious. It takes too much of the developer's time. I'd much rather have them working on new graphical improvements rather than giving us optional "texture packs", which are not feasible if I may add, which don't enhance the graphics overall but instead merely appease a certain demographic that can't stand change.

Because programming does not work like a word processor maybe? Because if you change something here, it breaks its dependencies over there? And that breaks something on the other side...

The new turrets and launchers are not compatible with the old ship models or the other way around. Some of the old models have the wrong number of hardpoints, or none at all. For some ships there are no old models, or the models lack certain features of the new ones, that are needed (How would you know, if the Marauder in front of you just switched to Bastion, if not for the effects?).

The new backgrounds interact with the new ship surface. So you cannot just drop the old ones in and hope it will work.

If you make all these choices optional, even if they would work, you would create a completely absurd number of test szenarios, as you would have to test each and every combination. (double the work if one option, quadruple the work for two options, eightfold for three, do i have to continue? Hint: the formula is 2^n with n the number of options)