So I started a thread on what I perceive to be excessive graphics, UI and interface baggage being added to the game. An ISD kindly moved it to technical issues section because I do, in fact, ask for specific tips on how to reduce the perceived performance and visual impact of the past several years worth of encrustation.
That said, I do also want to check in with people in a general sense, which is why it was in this forum originally.
Do the brighter nebulae, shinier ships, glowier menus, blinkier station interiorsā¦ do they entertain you? Are you logging in to EVE for extra layers of shiny eye candy? Are you recommending EVE to other people based on how pretty it looks?
Personally, Iāve found that ever since they started fiddling with āchat system backendsā (you know, to make the game more efficient), my own personal EVE experience has gotten laggier, slower, with more missed inputs (clicking on something and no response happening).
For a while I had more of the ālong black screenā on logins and undocks, although that seems to have gotten a bit better. But the overall performance seems worse, even though Iāve upgraded my PC twice during the past few years.
What are your thoughts on all the ālook and feelā changes? Do you crank things all the way up or turn off what you can to minimize the impact?
Fortunately, I donāt have to put up with any of that as I disabled the Photon UI before I even logged in. I will keep using the legacy UI. As far as the station interior updates and other things that bog your computer down go, shift ctrl F9 solves the problem quite nicelyā¦
Better nebulae entertain me. However, the HD treatment for the background nebulae by CCP has made most of them worse, not better. Tenerifis looks hideous now. Vomit green ripples all over the clouds that look more like noise and artifacts than intentional picture aspects. The golden Domain clouds inside Domain have lots of very visble pixelization, despite HD treatment. Doesnāt look good at all. The only clouds that looks better than before is the Vapor Sea cloud (what you see from Catch and Tash-Murkon), and Domain from outside Domain.
Shinier ships are nice to look at. Thatās why I prefer a Providence over any other freighter, for instance.
Glowier menus are very situational. The old UI also has glowy elements, but they are appropriate and subdued in most cases. Photonās glows are weird, incoherent and badly placed.
More active station hangars are nice but optimization is key. And immersion. Why do I see a constant smoke cloud where my ship sits? Thatās not confidence inspiring.
Depends on your play style. If all one does is sit in fleets, zoomed out to āRTS modeā (and possibly in tidi) then thereās little use for it. If all one does is multibox 15 accounts then thereās little use for it, if all one does is use the market market and/or industry window then itās wasted effort.
People who actually go out and about and do things on a smaller scale (account/fleet wise) DO really notice the difference and then itās personal preference if they like it or not. People who donāt play EVE like itās a Spreadsheet MMO will, probably, appreciate it. I personally like good improvements because I tend to play in solo/smaller engagements and I like immersion but that doesnāt mean I enjoy ALL they changes, just in general.
Hereās the things though: The chance that any completely new player will join the game āto have me some spreadsheetsā is fairly low, especially these days given that PC and gaming in general has more normies. Games these days are just more visual: computers can deal with it, people expect it and they will ignore games that look āā ā ā ā ā. So by looking shinier and more modern they will attract more newbies than they will miss out on, especially because new players tend NOT to play in RTS mode, they tend to play more solo for now and they actually undock. If at some point they are invested enough and want to play in a different way they can still do so, but you first have to capture them and GET them invested. You donāt do that by looking like a PS1 game.
Also: they have to change things at some point, according to the ādude why even changeā logic they should still be using their first UI and trust me you donāt want that. Itās just that some of their decisions areā¦ questionable (itās EVE, itās gonna happen), many people canāt deal with change for a variety of reasons and people just whine, itās what they do.
Improvements are good but not all āimprovementsā are improvements.
Personally the game runs just fine for me, I see no hickups or issues in terms of performance. Only have 2 omega accounts but I run on older hardware (1070ti @1440p) and itās fine. The backdrops and nebs differ on where you are, Caldari space is terrible in that regard and while I avoid it as much as possible to begin with itās certainly a factor.
No. They put more stress on my retinas and hurt my eyes.
Itās a plus, but ultimately itās optional. Not something to make me log in for.
Pretty itās a plus, but we all know itās not what makes this gameā¦ If I want to recommend a game to an enemy , it will be Eve Online.
I get the same experience here. Fixing these should be a top priority for them.
I keep it somewhat ābalancedā ā¦ have most of the graphic settings to medium as I noticed that if I set them to low , I wonāt get me that much of an improvement. Having the settings to high only works for a single client. Lag and long wait times on loading textures on undock and gates are still there.
The graphics are impressive on a high spec machine. Ironically, the over-bright nebulae and stars tend to occur on low spec machines set for lower graphic settings. Iāve noticed since getting a new high spec PC that much of the over-brightness is gone.
My old machine was nothing but lag. With my new machine I can leave Jita 4-4, with 1600 people in the system, and get no lag at all. This suggests most of the lag is client end.
I still get an annoyingly long black screen on logging in to a player citadelā¦but not an NPC station.
I have everything on max. Just for tech info Iām running an RTX 3060 ( 12GB video memory ) and 16GB of RAM. It all works very well.
If anyone is finding stuff too bright in games or just in general, it is much better to turn down the monitor brightness than to use software apps for it. This is because overly bright monitor settings tend to lead to a background sheen and brightness that can be almost impossible to get rid of via software in which brightness and contrast also affect gamma levels. I found this with my new PC, using the same monitor as the old PC but everything was just waaaay too bright and no amount of fiddling with Nvidia app would resolve itā¦just leading to some apps being too bright and some ( like Prime Video ) being too dark. But simply turning down the monitor brightness fixed the problem for all apps.
I actually unsubbed 3 accounts specifically because, while I have a PC at home, I rarely get to use it so Iām on my laptop mostly which now completely buckles when multiboxing. God forbid I dock in a citadel. Even with graphics off my comp crashes when before I could run all 3 accounts with graphics on all the time and playable frame rate.
Even when Iām playing 1 account I often have a black screen when docking/undocking for around 60 seconds.
Meanwhile I can play Albion on my PC, Laptop, and phone with great FPS. Not to mention itās a better game than 2022 Eve (though I will concede that 2010-15 Eve was better).
Just an FYI thoughā¦ needing to have a $400+ graphics card and new rig in order to run a game smoothly is exactly what graphics bloat is. Itās excessive graphics encrustation beyond the needs of the game - enough to cause performance issues in anything but high-end machines.
Up until about 3 years ago, EVE actually used to run quite well and smoothly on machines that were easily 3-4 years behind the curve.
I get @Aisha_Katalenās point that EVE needs to be visually competitive with what else is out there these days - if itās going to grab new players as they try it out. So thatās valid enough.
But I doubt limiting decent performance to people whoāve bought the latest tech since last Christmas is going to broaden the appeal very much.
I have an i5-8400 with 16GB, a 1070Ti and an SSD. Not exactly modern in any way, in fact itās aging quite a bit, but it IS a gaming PC (as it should be if you play games a lot) and with a clean and well maintained windows. EVE runs just fine for me, not saying it thus canāt be problematic for others but if you have a decent PC it should be fine.
If not then enable AMD FSR and toy with those settings, if still crap then go back to DX11.
Yes it is client spec issue. After I increased my RAMs from 8 to 16, the crashing issues and black screens after undocks were gone.
And while you are right, that the game might feel and look like better for those who are new to the game and donāt know how i s played or just play it intentionally 1st/3rd person for some reason (canāt imagine how can that be playable, but I guess there are some players like that), the majority of the player base not only doesnāt benefit from this at all, but suffers from this.
EVE uses to be great because it wasnāt āspec hungryā. That started changing with 64bit client, new nebulas after, and god who knows what between 2019 and 2022 that I was unable to multibox 3 clients when I previously multiboxed 8 just fine on same machine and OS. And now this recent crap with DX12 new UI and docking āanimationā and inside citadel/station animations.
The main problem is that this would all be perfect and very acceptable, reasonable and very well accepted IF this game wasnāt about multiboxing and it wouldnāt be played zoomed out. But it isā¦
And I doubt these things bring any new players. Perhaps they stick bit longer, better default overview was needed for long time, but eventually they quit because they get killed by another player or find the game very slow, boring and extremely demanding on time. Oh and extremely overpricedā¦
BTW, my brother started EVE recently, like 2 weeks ago, he got hyped because of the book he read, so he watched some youtube videos and jumped straight into wormhole and exploration. He said he has no problem with new UI (but he has much bigger screen than I have), and that he isnāt bored doing exploration. So he was doing that few for few days, quit later when he realized how much is it pay2win. Now he is back in Albion and LoL.
Itās not until one actually has a gaming PC that one realises just how much graphics there actually is in the game. All manner of effects that you just donāt see in potato mode on a basic or older PC.
Some time like 10 years ago, in the old forum, I wrote that I wouldnāt mind wireframe mode for EVE. Graphics designers must have read this and retaliated by introducing overly bright nebulae. Welp.
My āgaming PCā specs are about 15% higher than yours, Iād guess on a rig about 14 months more recent (from the release dates of the tech). Still an older rig but plenty for the type of graphics in EVE. Iām well versed with graphics settings to improve performance, and EVE runs at 60 FPS. Except when it doesnāt, and decides to drop to sub-10 FPS for 2 seconds.
I donāt put EVE on the SSD and that may be an issue, if the client frequently dips onto the hard drive for texture loading or whatever reason. But TBH EVE isnāt interesting enough to devote SSD space to so itāll just have to live with HD access.
When a not-very-graphically intense game like EVE stutters on simple undocking and warping at medium settings on a simple HD monitor on a decent gaming machine, thatās not āclient spec issueā. It may be client spec issue on your PC - that doesnāt make it the general case.
Companies that care about their gameās performance spend time optimizing their code for performance. Iām guessing CCP decided a few years back that adding bells and whistles with their usual mediocre quality code was important, but performance tuning wasnāt.
Perhaps. But my gaming PC runs max mode just fine at 60fps. But it still stutters.
I donāt think itās needed and I donāt think it will really help with retention, but I can still multibox 16-20 accounts so thereās still plenty of wiggle room in specs. It is noticeably more memory hungry than it used to be though and the new UI is riddled with bugs.
Personally I think that if they are intent on mainly pushing look and feel, theyād get more income from the existing playerbase by bringing back captains quarters and adding purchasable customisations for it, but Iād much rather they spent time revamping outdated mechanics that feel more like chores than gameplay choices. PI for example.
I hope and wait for a PI revamp for more than 10 years. I can say the same thing about agents and missions. Maybe in 2033 weāll have them , if Iām still around physicallyā¦
Tenerifis looks hideous now. Vomit green ripples all over the clouds that look more like noise and artifacts than intentional picture aspects. The golden Domain clouds inside Domain have lots of very visble pixelization, despite HD treatment. Doesnāt look good at all. The only clouds that looks better than before is the Vapor Sea cloud (what you see from Catch and Tash-Murkon), and Domain from outside Domain.