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Touching Odyssey Changes on the Test Server




First thing: I think the new Origins Trailer should replace the current trailer/video when you start Eve. 

I watched the old one, looked at the old, dull un-v3d Rifter and felt no excitement  With the news stories going out and the empires going to war with their previous allies I cannot help but think that that trailer would prepare people for where the game seems to be going right now. It would also be an early entry into Dust. Who are these ground units? What is that? They'd be caught up on the storyline news going on with one video. It is also a bad ass video.

For anyone that has not seen the Origin Trailer click above and watch it a dozen times.


Singularity (SiSi) the test server has been updated with many of the Odyssey things. You can go and see them. Go here to learn how to set up the test server.  Below is my time spent there playing with new things.


I had no idea why my Jaguar was glowing with these gorgeous  sexy rich blue lights. They are a pale teal on the regular server.

Main SiSi testing feedback Thread

Main Tags 4 Sec testing feedback Thread

These were the main things I was there for. Other people have already crunched the new mineral prices. Welcome to the market exploding.

My observations so far:

No abort undock button anymore? That has been asked by several people so we will see what the answer is. Beyond that the undock effect is much smoother.



The jump gates are incredible. The gates themselves are gorgeous and the effect is amazing. I had my sound on and they make crackling buzzing noises when you are near them. When you jump the camera flips around to the gate and shoots you through it. Very, very cool stuff.


When you undock and when you enter a system the new system scanner, which reminds me of an old fashioned radar scan, activates. It feels very good although I don't care about warpable sites in the systems for the most part. I wish they would just stay without having to run the scanner constantly. However, I also like the effect of the scanner running nonstop. I'm rather torn. The nice part of the visual is the movement will remind you that you are in space.



There seems to be some confusion about something. When I killed my first Tags4Sec NPC the wreck/can was blue. I asked about this and CCP Masterplan said that this was how cans/wrecks have been for outlaws for a while. However, on Tranquility (main server) my wrecks are still white and other people's wrecks will be yellow no matter what their sec status is. I think there may be a miscommunication or something going on. I'm not going to immedatly scream out "bug!" or "missed feature". Other people noticed the same thing and CCP Habakuk said he would look into it on Friday because tomorrow (or today when this posts) is a holiday for them.

This seems like an interesting, side step nerf for gankers and baiters? You won't take aggression for looting their wrecks or stealing from their kills. No can flipping. I understand that when Concord kills you, your wreck is free for all. However, now that is expanded to any wreck or can created by an outlaw character. Because we are outlaw we do not have any innate game mechanic property right? Theft does not lower security standings but now for an outlaw it is not 'wrong' by opening an aggression timer between you and the other group.

Tags 4 Sec:

I did half of the Molden Heath loop and found four all told. I guess that isn't to bad for going from Bosena to Skarkon. They are harder in the tank section then normal low sec battleship rats. I had to switch from my Jaguar to a Cynabal to kill them in a reasonable amount of time. Once I switched to a Cynabal they died well enough. They pack more of a punch and they do scram to at least 20km out. However, they do not always scram.  I was also webbed by one. With the hp and regen I don't know how 'easy' they are. I don't do the stealth bomber thing to be able to use that as a measurement. It isn't hard. My Cynabal chews through them with 425's but they do have repping power. They are kind of like two battleship rats combined.

Each one dropped a tag and some meta modules. I didn't get to spend a lot of time playing with the tags because of fleet.

I then went to an office to go and play with the sec gains. I discovered that the seeded tags don't cost 100 ISK like everything else and ran out of money. However, I was able to play with the market a little and look at the current costs. From -9.5 to -7.7 would cost 3 trainer tags and 9mil ISK.


Probing:

I did start scanning and launching all my probes at once was cool. I then had no idea how to make them move around again and got a bit frustrated  I'll have to play with it more but my first reaction is do not like! However, once I figure out how to move them and see how to preset formation looks I may change my mind.

I really want to find a Combat Ladar site and see if they left them or moved them. So far, we have not received an answer on the forum thread about the changes to the scanning system.

You have to have 7 probes to use your launcher. I took 2 and jettisoned them and loaded 5. It would not let me launch them and told me that it needed 7. Pressing buttons I learned that shift + alt allows the formation to move closer or further apart in formation. That was irritating me until I figured it out. Moving them is easier because the center probe is the only one that shows and clicking it moves it around without holding other buttons. Probes also magically reappear in your cargo hold when you jump. I left mine across the system, warped to a gate at zero, and then jumped. As soon as I jumped they appeared in my cargo hold. I don't like that at all.

On my first try I found what I was looking for. Are the Ladar Combat sites still there under ladar. It appears that they are as "gas" sites now. I liked the old exotic naming sequence. Anyway, the site is exactly the same as it used to be. So no change there.


However, probes are now magical and can teleport. They also don't seem to have timers anymore. One set of probes are now immortal. No more   forgetting probes. No more buying emergency replacements or not being able to probe a ship because you were not paying attention. Now, unless you die or take them out of your cargo they will always be there.


Frankly, I find it a bad change and expressed my opinion on the feedback thread for scanning. Making an interface easier I understand. Making it more accessible I get. Making it magical is not what I expected from this game. I thought the auto return would start them back to you and if they were close they'd make it to you before you docked or jumped. Before, the probes had a warp time across the system. That also seems to have been removed and they just sweep through space at the speed of light or something.

Immortal probes are a buff to AFK cloakers. It will be interesting when people notice that.

I had a few different discussions about why I dislike it. I'm not screaming 'eve is being dumbed down'. I'm saying that all those consequences of forgetting your probes or mismanaging them vanish. Crazy things happen in Eve because we have to think about what we do. It is the people that get stuck in wormholes because they forget their probes that will never get stuck again. Ahh well.

I didn't try any mini-games yet.

They are changing a lot of the colors. The blue print copies in my cargo hold seem much brighter.




What I don't like: The new V3 skin for my Rhea is boring and blah. It was just added in a patch for Retribution. I still hate it. They took away my gorgeous blue camo. I'm actually quite angry. The ship was mind bogglingly lovely to me because I have a super camo fetish for urban and water camo. Now its flat blah gray with yellow (blarg) stripes.

Comments

  1. to abort undock you have to click the undock button again.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ugh, I really hate this "immortal" probes thing. Your point about all those people getting stuck in wormholes that never will really drove it home for me.

    Wtf is CCP thinking? You say you hesitate to call it "dumbing down" but that's exactly what I would call it. They are removing a consequence for not thinking carefully about what you are doing. This is very frustrating news.

    *takes a deep breath* Anyway, ty for the write up. Very informative for those like me who are too lazy to install sisi :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Because the goal is simplification not dumbification.

      To provide constructive feedback that will be received raging and calling names will not help the situation. If they said, "people are to stupid to figure this out we are going to make it easy" that is one thing.

      They are trying to smooth the process. Automated actions make sense. That is where we the player point out where it doesn't make sense and/or where it takes away from game play. Such as no longer getting locked in places like wormholes because of derp when derp is a motivating factor for the game.

      When giving feed back, I try to look at it both how I see it and how they see it and give my opinion on it. Succumbing to emotional frustrations will only turn what I write into an incoherent mass of frustrated feelings. See: The paragraph about Rhea's color change.

      As a writer and as a person I try to present things in a format that people can always consume and gather the information I have attempted to lay out with out walking away from it due to my mood or state of mind.

      Delete
    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    3. I read it as why won't I call it that, so I explained :P

      Delete
    4. Ah OK. Nah I wasn't trying to question you, just raging about the topic in my own little bitter-vet way :)

      Delete
  3. CCP *is* going to replace the opening cinematic with the Origins trailer. They've confirmed it.

    And I agree with everything Laktos just said: Wormhole space is not Kspace, it's dangerous just to go in. You should not be able to just auto-probe yourself out. Or auto-probe anything, for that matter. And to think, I still long for the days before the easymode probing, when you had to triangulate everything by moving into position yourself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Can I haz link to changes?

      And I to believe that some things are very good (formations and moving, it was hell when I started until I figured it out and got enough of a skill to find things) but bad for magical probes and lack of details.

      Delete
  4. Cool run down on all the changes. You've saved me the job of installing SiSi myself with your excellent commentary :))

    ReplyDelete
  5. The probes are not immortal. For whatever reason CCP isn't displaying the lifetime remaining.

    ReplyDelete
  6. With the scanning I ended up doing on SiSi I did find one combat ladar. Good news here is that they have seemed to been moved to their own signature band now. Seems like they are all by themselves in the 2% band.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ahh. I never got into the sig band much. It came up as a 'gas' site or whatever and once the name popped up I was excited. It was also super hard to scan and that is how I mentally understand when it is probably a combat site because I am bad. :)

      Delete

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