Okay, this is a surprise for me, as well. Let’s get that out of the way right off.
Almost definitely A/B testing of a possible feature. Though I cannot confirm that, this being the weekend in Iceland as well as the real world. But it explains why some see the new and others say that nothing has changed.
Those of you unsubbing because of it? Do you MAKE that many characters a week? I mean if you have an established character that was made in the olde schoole then you should be fine.
For those of you asking about how this will fail the newbros in regards to Lore? Newbros do not worry about Lore, they have enough on their plate trying to find the sensor overlay.
The question I DO get now and again in Rookie Help Chat is ‘Why did we spend so long on how our pilots look and dress if they never get out of their ships?’ I don’t have a good answer for that one.
His portrait tells us the story of a man who devoted his life to fighting, because he can’t get ■■■■■■■ laid by the freckled minmatar redhead he secretly wishes to own!
That is where you are partially wrong. There are plenty of Newbros joining EVE because they’ve sat and read the Lore.
Those players that have unsubbed have done so for reasons other than “i can’t spam [racial] alts.” It ties into the removal of the bloodline descriptions, making it harder to figure out who is what. Some of us use that for corporation requirements (PIE for example only allows Amarrian characters in, barring exceptions), others for RP; Nauplius is well known as a … disliker… of the Minmatar, but with that removal it makes it nearly impossible for his RP to continue in the direction he has chosen.
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?
Then please find smarter friends, because that’s ■■■■■■■ stupid.
There’s no reason to punish those who aren’t idiots.
When they’re not smart enough not to give a damn …
… then that’s solely their problem.
You’re not actually making a point. If it was a point, we’d end up with EVE being dumbed down to shits because there’s always some idiot not capable of grasping even the simplest things, including clicking RANDOM, NEXT and DONE.
Holy ■■■■, don’t people have real problems anymore??
This was, for me, in regard to unsubbing, simply a contributing factor as I outlined in my own post for pulling two of my subs. I also do semi-regularly make new toons on alphas for story purposes.
All things considered, I think the basic concept is okay, I think that the current setup needs a lot of work and polish. Many people here have given some solid ideas and constructive criticisms to it.
There’s give and take here, and I want to see things improve, but I also won’t be dumping most of my disposable income to eve anymore as I have in the past because of things I’m not happy with now @Mike_Azariah
this I partially agree with, but it would still be useful for CCP to at least label the basic archetypes in the new creator so players know the specific ‘base’ they’re working off of, even if its no longer hard coded to choosing a specific bloodline
This is wrong. Very wrong. So very very wrong. Literally could not be more wrong, actually.
There are a lot of players who look to RP in RPGs. I made my character over 10 years ago specifically intending to RP in the game as the main thing driving what I did in the game. Back then, I didn’t really look outside of the game. I worked off of what I had and back then I had maybe not everything I know today, but enough to make my character and have rough ideas about what she would be like and what motivates her and it made sense given the world of Eve Online.
Without the bits of context that I was given, I’d have made a LOT of choices that I’d have regretted. I’d never have known what to look for to find the RP community (via the in-game means), and I’d probably have quit and never come back within a much shorter period of time.
A lot of us do play that we get out of our ships, actually. Even with the WIS being removed, the visuals for the characters are really nice for us.
Stories in eve are a collective matter. You don’t make them alone, you make them with others. The point of bloodlines etc is not that they make your character look cool - it is that you have shared background with other characters.
(Not unsubbing because of this but still felt like should explain.)
You’ll still have that question tho. The new customize option takes as much time as the old one, and has less information on what the choices of style etc mean in-universe.
EDIT: the answer is: "EVE is a complex universe with a rich lore. You don’t need to worry about that all now because it won’t affect your gameplay, but once you feel like you want to learn more about EVE’s background story check out http://fiction.eveonline.com/ ".
I dont think they in fact removed the bloodlines, only hidden it. Seems they didnt want to touch bloodlines as they are programmed into the clothing options, and they didnt change that.
So we have only bloodlines but hidden and with other corps.
That’s a six of one and a half dozen of the other; CCP ganked it because very few used it and it was holding back 64bit development, most of us didn’t use it because there was zero perceived value in a dingy room with a locked door and a parking space.
You talk about results, I about causation. They even admitted to failing to develop it enough, in an article for some game magazine. I remember reading about it after the fact.
If CCP had simply wanted to open up character creation to have more options available, they could have fixed it by letting any bloodline go to any starting school while simultaneously removing the bloodline restrictions on hair and clothing. This would have allowed players to make any combination that they wanted while keeping the flavor text that keeps RP nerds like myself happy, but most importantly it gives new players information about the game setting and a sense of their character’s identity.
Causation was the normal half arsed CCP attitude at the time the new character creator and WIS were launched; that whole period was characterised by CCP insinuating we could piss off if we didn’t like it. IMHO it was nothing more than a cynical attempt at monetising useless crap via the NEX store.
That’s before we get into the carbon engine turning gfx cards into melted slag…
It still could have been different, if they would focus on EVE. They did everything half assed because of too many titles. Not being able to focus made them act like that. They had no structure and resources to fill all the fields in their plan.
Stupid players and those would-be-players still matter. There’s nothing wrong with lowering the barrier to entry as long as it doesn’t spoil it for the rest of is - I do think there’s room for having it both ways. Take the current (ie. not this new A/B testing) character editor: a simple way to reintroduce the portrait editor without making it a mandatory step would be to have an edit portrait button on the last page. So you’ll have a default portrait that new players can stick with when they log in, but observant/curious/vested new players and experienced players can edit the portrait before logging in.
I hate the new character editor as much as you do.
Correct. My post was along the lines of a “if CCP continues in the direction of eliminating bloodlines”. In the Beta New Character Creator they no longer exist as an explicit option and henceforth they implicitly exist only to the extent that it still shows up in the Character Sheet and Body Resculpt won’t let you change facial structure + tattoo sets. My point was simply that there is room for opportunity if bloodlines are eliminated as attributes in EVE.
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