This is something I’ve been mulling over the past few days after having some more recent PvP experience. There are so many awesome tactical decisions that unfold in space battle, but we never get to see enjoy them outside of the moment unless someone happens to record and actually upload the footage. It would be awesome to have some sort of instant replay feature to go back and rewatch fights. An instant replay feature would also make it a lot more likely for individuals to upload their fights on social media, helping advertise the game. Please make it happen CCP
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While cool, I think this idea has some problems. If you’re thinking of the immediate “instant replay” as in sports, it runs against the single-universe, real-time (minus time dilation) design of the game. New Eden is not a live TV broadcast - each player is doing their own thing despite experiencing time at the same rate as everyone else. You can’t play something back for one player without breaking the flow of time (and interrupting gameplay) for all players.
If you’re thinking of replays that are saved for players to view later at their own leisure, I just don’t think that’s feasible. To make sure any player can get a view of any battle in any place from any time in the past, you would basically have to keep a continuous record of the entire gamestate of New Eden available to players. Every vector, every user command, would have to be painstakingly archived for an indefinite period of time. Storage and computer problems aside, can you imagine the spy games that would erupt over this treasure trove of data?
The most direct solution is to let individual players choose and record the moments they feel are important to record, and allow them to share those moments at their own discretion, which is basically the system we already have right now.
I think those are great points; I was thinking more alone the lines of when a fight is initiated, some automated recording feature is started up and lasts the duration of the fight. Players could have 24-48 hours to decide to save the replay to their HDD otherwise it is deleted. It’s a similar system as how replays are stored for MOBAs, It could possibly work IMO. There are indeed significant data storage requirements but I don’t think it’s unprecendented
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No, go away.
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Was in development once upon a time, sorta, got dropped due to technical scope.
I would disagree; MOBAs are only live while you’re playing a match, for example League of Legends games (Summoner’s Rift) usually only lasts for anywhere from 20-45 minutes and only 10 players, not like in New Eden where the game is live 23½ hours out of the 24 hours in a day and has thousands of players. If you really want to have your “Replays” you can always start recording all your gameplay. All those great (or bad) videos/streams you see on youtube and twitch does not rely on there being replay features in the games the users play, but they take their time to record their gameplay and spend time editing and then uploads for everybody’s enjoyment.
Even if it’s made as you suggest, only records when a battle takes place, it would still need to record every millisecond the server is live. This is because there is probably a fight going on every single second/minute somewhere in New Eden.
Nope, the data transferred to the individual client is minimal (a couple of numbers don’t take much space), and that’s all what you need. With the network traffic of your client ↔ CCP recorded, you technically can replay everything (from the client’s POV), if the client would support that feature.
I think one reason why this was not done yet, is the intel potential of a replay. What today gets lost in the heat of the moment, will then be analyzed to death …
Why not make it record the data client side which receives the data anyway and only the data the player is entitled to plus the data will not be overwhelming so no need to record the entirety of New Eden nor even the cluster nor even the system just the local grid (that can include warping to other grids too as still the player’s own surroundings are recorded only of which he receives data for anyway) and just like with logs the player can decide whether to keep the replays or not and even opt out of the entire replay saving option in the settings if wanted to (and preferably make it opt-in so no replay saving by default but can be turned on and might even have a hotkey to activate on demand as well).
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Simple, you just have the client store this data, the actual replay data isn’t that big its just a series of commands with details about damage, all you’re essentially doing is logging the network traffic and replaying it, all you need is a barebones replay “client” which can already use the shared cache files the client uses to just replay events, it would also mean being able to view epic battles in real time as the server calculations are already done and all you’re doing is logging the servers output, solves the storage issue because CCP wouldn’t have to deal with it and there are no real spy games as anyone on-grid would be able to save the same data
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The answer is:
EVE MP3 player
EVE Browser
EVE Video Recorder
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This game needs a lot of things, but not a replay feature.
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What are, things EVE doesn’t need?
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Why “not” exactly?
I’m genuinely curious why you think a clientside method to record fights is something we don’t need, it would enable a lot of things like being able to actually watch TiDi fights in real time and record them, not to mention being able to properly record footage from multiple angles for training videos etc
Why exactly do you think we don’t need this?
Nvidia Shadow play
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/geforce-experience/shadowplay/
I’d enjoy something that simply recorded what happened from my perspective because you’d still see the whole battle on grid from any angle.
Play voice comms over the top and voila your own This is EVE
It also means fights that happen in potatoe settings can be given a facelift, maybe even sent to a skilled friend to make more impressive.
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Fixed it for you. 
But yes, those have been tried before and abandoned. Maybe it can be downloaded from some abandonware site and copied into the eve folder?
Perhaps make it client side integrated into the UI rather than a continuous drain on the eve servers where it taxes the users pc instead. Epic fight videos would be great content…
If you are in windows 10, then Win + G & Win + Alt + R to the rescue.
Anyway, use the win10 build-in Game bar option.
Read more about it here: Use Game bar on Windows 10
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CCP makes Instant replay happen, mandatory
Players get kill and feel happy rewatching their kill
Players realize they werent the only ones fighting and during the instant replay are being attacked and killed
Players spawn in station when replay ends to a lossmail
Players demand removal/changes to instant replay system
CCP scraps Instant replay shortly after implementation over player response/not enough people using it.
Profit???
I recommended something like this a long time ago (at least 10 years). It’s quite efficient if game data is recorded rather than a simple video recording, and it is done client side (no extra load on server at all).
Full utilization of the potential of this feature would include a simple client that allows recordings to be viewed as if you were in game (ability to manipulate camera etc. during viewing).
Such a system would allow players to critically analyze their performance during fights as well as making it easier to produce videos to share with others.
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