After being away from Eve for almost 2 years I’ve decided to give it another try. But before subscribing I decided to watch some current videos to see what has changed… wow my peepee went limp so fast, maybe this Doctor Who-ever can prescribe something to get my excitement back, because right now things aren’t looking good at all.
After 18 years, the UI still looks so freaking outdated. Like it was created by someone who just came back from WWII. Are you kidding me? 18 years, and CCP can’t give the UI a much better face lift. The same old ugly ship control circle thingy is the most ugly thing I’ve ever seen in video gaming. I can probably do much better in Paint and I have zero artistic skills. Every item is still represented by some ugly looking cartoony JPEG from when computers CPUs could only process up to 8bit of memory.
I get it, the majority of EVE’s player base is probably 3 times my age but if CCP goal is to recruit people from my generation, the game needs to be refreshed and more appealing to young people. Just to be clear, my negative feedback is only about the UI part of the game. The 3D component of the game, like ships, the world itself, etc are beautiful. It is the outdated UI that turns me off and it screams LAZYNESS
What in hell is this Doctor Who-ever event thing (never even heard of this show b4, must be from the time TV was invented or something, I don’t know.) Why spend money, time and effort on something nobody cares/knows when EVE universe has already so much to offer in terms of lore. Also based on Twitter and Reddit, nobody in the community seems excited about this so called event.
the last point is mainly my own interpretation of the current state of the economy after watching some videos on YT. It ain’t looking good right now. Things are out of whack, ship prices are all time high. Maybe that’s because the player population has dropped significantly? I am not sure, but it ain’t making me excited about coming back…
sorry, as much as I REALLY wanted to re-subscribe , I am now rethinking it with great reservation.
It’s a very sad time for space sim/game enthusiasts because every game we have (Elite Dangerous, Start Citizen and Eve) is a broken mess, run by a greedy company that lost touch with its community.
Play as Alpha for a while to see if you want to subscribe or not. As to your 3 points:
The interface is clunky and awkward, but a fair bit of that is because EVE is designed in a clunky and awkward fashion. The mechanics of ship combat, scanning, etc. would be pretty hard to re-do in a “console controller friendly” fashion which is what most games seem to be looking for these days.
The other issue is that CCP has a history of messing up any large-ish changes pretty badly, so trying to re-do the interface is a disaster waiting to happen. Look at the changes to the chat system, or even the recent Skill/Character page re-write. It would be far more likely to alienate existing players than attract new ones, unfortunately. So we’re likely stuck with it.
A few hundred people bitching in Reddit/Twitter/forums is less than 1% of the player base. The tiny portion of the EVE community that bothers to post publicly is far more used to tossing pitchforks than praise. No matter what CCP proposes it will see more public negative response than positive. Not saying I think Dr. Who crossover is a good idea, but an event will come and go within a short time, and it will at least create some buzz outside the EVE community by using a well-known IP.
Yes, EVE can do a lot with its’ own lore, but that’s basically preaching to the choir. You’re not going to lure in fresh meat with an event based on Sleeper lore.
The economy isn’t that messed up, and wasn’t that messed up even before CCP decided they needed to starting “fixing” it by breaking things. Some things are more expensive, some cheaper, some about the same. It’s possible to earn ISK at significantly higher rates than in the past, depending what your EVE career bases are.
When deciding to get back into the game, just go cheap with FW or exploration or mining or whatever you’re doing and get some ISK built up before you decide to take a risk on more expensive stuff.
In the final analysis, CCP stopped trying to really “improve” the game about a decade ago. Since then they’ve mostly been focused on turning the game into a giant sheep dip for funneling herds of multi-account subscribers through to strip maximum income from the remaining player base.
Up to you if that’s something you want to support or not.
I am dead serious man. I had no idea what Doctor Who was until after seeing the marketing email from Eve. Of course I was curious so I wikipedia’ed it , but also I am not British so maybe that’s why I am not familiar with the show.
anyhow, only time will tell if this event was worth the money and effort they put into it.
It’s so sad because it has so much potential. I know this is a very niche MMO, however, no other MMO EVER was able to pull a 1000 player battle in a single shard server like EVE. And that says a lot about the game. I feel like CCP treats it like a “maintenance mode” game
actually that’s a valid point. We are talking about 18 years old code base. But to be honest, what really bothers me is the ship control UI and this circle thingy at the bottom that represents the ship shield , armor ,hull and capacitor. I find it so outdated and unfriendly in terms of UX. I understand that updating the UI is a massive undertaking , but at lease they can redo the ship control UI.
Also, the art style that represent items, (i.e minerals, components etc etc) can also use a redo. I know there are 1000s of them but they have to start from somewhere.
lol, before I left 2 yrs ago, I sold most of my stuff and the rest got destroyed by gankers.
I think I only have like 1 clunky Venture with t1 stuff and maybe another t1 cruiser…
The Dvorak keyboard layout is far superior to Qwerty, but changing everyone’s keyboard, everywhere, at once, will cause HUGE human being problems. Esperanto is absolutely easier than English to learn and teach, but, again, the installed base of English speakers would be without a language for too long if you snapped your finger and English wasn’t in our heads anymore.
On the other hand, an experimental choice of user interfaces would be ok. A good way to start such a project would be to decouple the calls to the backend systems that control things from the current interface. That is, implement a decoupled API for which different front ends could be implemented. Hmmm…I think this costs money. Alpha’s don’t help that. Hmmm…
An event where we invade sleeper territory instead of Dr. Who would not only be better but also give grounds for permanent content and even new systems to explore.
I get the “preaching to the choir” argument though. So I’m hoping that Dr. Who attracts a lot of new potential players. Not all will be Dr. Who fans I reckon, some will just want to try out the game because of all the buzz about this. Word can spread easily.
New players literally won’t have the skill points or gear to run this content, and won’t be able to work up to that level in the amount of time the event will last. At best some new players will be able to run the lowest-tier site by the end of the event without dying instantly.
Well, unless they buy those multi-hundred-dollar SP and PLEX packages that is.
OP, I think the ship UI is fine, how else would you represent 3 different levels of hitpoint bars + stamina?
One that needs overhaul is the inventory system, from more accurate item icons that you can discern at a glance to the look of the management window.
There’re already efforts to bring new players up to speed right now. The word about the event is out already, some of those new players are in the game right now. CCP said that there would be content available for new players too. It would probably make them peanuts for ISK but it could serve as quasi-tutorial, who knows? The event hasn’t even started yet.
I read the hoboleaks but didn’t dwell on them. I mean eve pve is a site where you hack things or activate weapons on them. That’s like 100% of eve pve. Obviously the event is gonna follow this stale recipe but oh well. I want to see how the general feel of the event is
I was thinking about that hud thing and it occurred to me that it’s not so much a control as a set of indicators. It works too. When warping you can get your progress in the warp which is useful for creating bookmarks.
I never use the ‘+’ and ‘-’ since I only use 2 speeds, as fast as possible and stop. Orbit and keep at range do the other work.
can prescribe something to get my excitement back, because right now things aren’t looking good at all.
