Even I have had not one but two friends who chose not to play EVE because they found the character creator to be overwhelming; they didn’t want to 1. deal with the time consuming process (esp. when portrait creation was part of it) and 2. face unknown consequences of their selections (am I stuck with a character who will forever look like that? does my race/bloodline/university limit my options? etc). My understanding of the current situation is that CCP has both metrics and feedback that suggest many players aborted playing EVE for the first time because character creation was too overwhelming. I think what you and I and others here are faced with are survivor bias: we’re too busy focusing on those who’ve made it into EVE that we don’t have the feedback of those who bailed out of logging in for the first time. Fortunately CCP has that information.
It’s not just the character creator. Look at this: Do you see anything missing?
The description tab that provided info on bloodlines is also removed. The only place I still see this info present in the character editor.
There may be a silver lining to the removal of bloodline selection, however…
Here are my thoughts: Suppose CCP completely eliminates bloodlines as a character attribute… this COULD enable players to do two things they could not do before:
- RPers can now assume bloodlines other than those that were previously hardcoded in EVE. For example, an RPer could claim to be of a different Minmatar tribe than the three options previously listed (eg. Thukker, Nefantar, etc)
- There is now zero justification as to why the Pilot’s Body Resculpt Certificate couldn’t allow you to alter your look to the extent of appearing to be of another bloodline. It would be absurd to say “hey, you didn’t make your character look Asian in the beginning, therefore you can’t make him look Asian now” since these attributes are no longer explicit. If bloodlines are no longer attributes, Body Resculpts should allow you to change literally every element of your character’s appearance except for your race and sex. This also implies that a resculpt could make a new array of tattoos available. This item would become far more popular than it currently is if this were all possible…
Of course, these two possibilities wouldn’t address the fact that the new character creator still has OTHER UI/UX issues.
@Mike_Azariah what are your thoughts on these two “possibilities” upon hypothetical removal of hardcoded bloodline attribute?