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General Discussion => General Non-RP EVE Discussion => Topic started by: Casiella on 21 Jun 2011, 18:13

Title: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Casiella on 21 Jun 2011, 18:13: So it's up. Thoughts?

I hear the monocles cost 4 PLEX and the Mac patch doesn't work (needs the full DL). The former bit sort of ruins it all for me.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Saede Riordan on 21 Jun 2011, 18:34: Quote from: Casiella on 21 Jun 2011, 18:13
So it's up. Thoughts?

I hear the monocles cost 4 PLEX and the Mac patch doesn't work (needs the full DL). The former bit sort of ruins it all for me.

There is no expense to great for proper taste. 60 dollars for digital eyewear is a comparative bargin. Obviously it is only meant for pilots of truly superior breeding, we must keep out the riffraff and what what. Right ol'chap?
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Ken on 21 Jun 2011, 18:45: Mmm, that eyepatch only cost 12,000 Aurum? How, pedestrian.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Casiella on 21 Jun 2011, 18:53: And yet no cane with which to strike the urchins who scamper underfoot!
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Saede Riordan on 21 Jun 2011, 18:55: Quote from: Casiella on 21 Jun 2011, 18:53
And yet no cane with which to strike the urchins who scamper underfoot!

It had best cost at least 80,000 aurum. We wouldn't want any of the peasantry getting their hands on it.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Ciarente on 21 Jun 2011, 19:04: It's ::facepalm::

They don't understand their own business model ....
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Casiella on 21 Jun 2011, 19:13: Let's see. Monocle or 4 months of game time? Hmm....
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Ciarente on 21 Jun 2011, 19:17: 1) introduce microtransactions for vanity items, thus annoying a lot of players (not me, I add, but the forums showed a lot of people really didn't like it)
2) make the items you can buy hideously ugly thus ensuring they have limited appeal
3) set pricing at such a ridiculous level that only a tiny, tiny minority will even consider purchase.
4) wonder why you are making zero extra profit at the cost of annoying the crap out of p. much all your subscribers
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Ken on 21 Jun 2011, 19:22: Quote from: Ciarente on 21 Jun 2011, 19:17
1) introduce microtransactions for vanity items, thus annoying a lot of players (not me, I add, but the forums showed a lot of people really didn't like it)
2) make the items you can buy hideously ugly thus ensuring they have limited appeal
3) set pricing at such a ridiculous level that only a tiny, tiny minority will even consider purchase.
4) wonder why you are making zero extra profit at the cost of annoying the crap out of p. much all your subscribers
5) ???
6) PROFIT!

What could go wrong with this plan? :psyccp:
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Lydia Tishal on 21 Jun 2011, 19:31: Doesn't really bode well for Dust 514, does it?
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Ken on 21 Jun 2011, 19:42: Happily, as far as performance goes, I'm not getting the trouble some people are reporting on the forums and for whatever reason my in-space frame rates have improved noticeably for me on my m11x.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Shintoko Akahoshi on 21 Jun 2011, 19:51: I've got a funny perspective on this, 'cos I'm in the process of doing my own MMO and I'm also planning on a microtransaction model.

It's tough to do microtransactions right, but the most successful implementations make the game free, with premium vanity items. Games like EQ2 (back when I played it) mostly sold things like furniture and fancy clothes to players, and people made extensive use of this. At the opposite extreme are games like Battlestar Galactica Online, where anything is available for player purchase, including fancy weapons and experience modifiers. There's a pretty large outcry about that from players who are (quite rightly) stating that there is no real incentive to actually level your character, when you can simply buy your way to an end game character.

In Eve's case, they seem to be chasing the vanity item model, but they're doing it in a weird way - we all still have to pay our regular subscription, and then we are allowed the privilege of purchasing vanity items. It's fine, suppose, from a game balance point of view. They're not selling anything that I've seen which allows new players to buy their way into being skilled ones. However, since they're still charging a premium price for subscriptions ($14 a month is not cheap in the MMO world), and since they also allow isk purchases (which allow people to buy things like t3 ships and officer mods with real world cash), I'm a little surprised that they're charging so much for these vanity items.

Then again, we're addicts, and I presume people are buying these things. God damn the pusher man...
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Esna Pitoojee on 21 Jun 2011, 20:16: As I said on the relevant EVE-O thread, while there are some choices by CCP I've disagreed with in the past, this is one of the few that I honestly have no clue whatsoever how it was rationalized by CCP. Maybe it's these delightful quotes from CCP that confuse me more:

[ 2011.06.22 00:00:44 ] CCP Zinfandel > The Looking Glass Ocular Implant (right/gold) is fairly expensive. It's also a machine being installed into your eye and one would not want to buy a cheap version of something to go in your face.

(For the record, I can buy 2584 "Limited Ocular Filter" for this price, assuming said filters cost 500k each)

[ 2011.06.22 00:04:15 ] CCP Zinfandel > Hello Kyle - we have been talking about the prices regularly in here. There are expensive items in the shop. Noble Appliances Corporation opened these shops particularly to target the wealthy capsuleer community.

(screw you poor or moderately-wealthy types! We only care about our filthy rich customers!)

Incidentally, I hope we're all aware that the ability to opt out of CQ (presumably by turning the "load station environment" button) is going to be removed at some point in the future?
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Seriphyn on 21 Jun 2011, 20:20: Quote from: Esna Pitoojee on 21 Jun 2011, 20:16
Incidentally, I hope we're all aware that the ability to opt out of CQ (presumably by turning the "load station environment" button) is going to be removed at some point in the future?

I turned it off because my beast of a computer goes into some sort of jock-alpha-male mode, going "AWW MAN A GAME I'M PUMPED, TIME TO RENDER THIS AS NOISILY AND AS HOT AS POSSIBLE", even if it actually only takes minimal GPU processing to do so. I go into the starmap and it quietens down instantly (2x GTX580 in SLI btw). I believe it is shoddy optimizing on CCP's part.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Ciarente on 21 Jun 2011, 20:22: yeah, new computer, top of the line, ran 4 clients without blinking, now a single client has it running at OMGI'MWORKINGSOHARD - with settings at minimum.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Ulphus on 21 Jun 2011, 20:32: Quote from: Ciarente on 21 Jun 2011, 20:22
yeah, new computer, top of the line, ran 4 clients without blinking, now a single client has it running at OMGI'MWORKINGSOHARD - with settings at minimum.

Now that scares me. My computer isn't top-of-the-line, brand-new, and had problems with the character creator before Incarna 1.0.

I guess I'll find out when I get home in 2 or 3 hours.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Casiella on 21 Jun 2011, 20:34: Guess I will be dropping down to 1 account per CCP design.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Citizen 31 on 21 Jun 2011, 20:52: Yeah... I can't enjoy this expansion with my current computer. I can enjoy beautiful space battles at full settings yet the CQ is kind of not fun. Low settings visuals are not great. It reminds me of Shepherd's apartment in that one DLC module for Mass Effect. Even then, it's stuttering and dark, and still makes me want to play Mass Effect rather than walk around a CQ or stare at a wall while I talk to my agent or chat.

It's also lonely.

But yeah, social spaces are not going to be that successful if this is the result. Not everyone can afford top of the line computers (or even decent computers under $500), and if even low settings for low end computers are unplayable with solo content, it's going to be far, far worse with social spaces.

On top of that, the outrageous PLEX cost for the "vanity" items is just a slap in the face. Also, what's the point of vanity items if there are no social areas? I mean, seriously! Pants? Skirts? All we see of someone else is a picture from the shoulders up.

Also, what happened to the fashion designers they hired to design clothing? The architects to design social areas? The economists that have experience in microtransactions and real world economics?

Yeah, sorry, not going to fall into this particular scheme. :psyccp: I could even cancel my subscription to save up money for a new PS3 so I can play Mass Effect 3 next year.

Or, you know, I'll stick around to see what changes in the next few days... I'm here mostly for the RP and the fiction. :cube:
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: John Revenent on 21 Jun 2011, 21:02: Takes me 5 minutes to launch EvE now, and lags on login with low settings. Running at 7 FPS in space with no turret/missile effects.

Seems my Geforce 6200 has failed me finally... :oops:
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Kyoko Sakoda on 21 Jun 2011, 21:16: Quote from: John Revenent on 21 Jun 2011, 21:02
Seems my Geforce 6200 has failed me finally... :oops:

Well, not to troll, but that should have failed you a very long time ago.

Right now I'm just pretty damn bewildered at the NEX prices fiasco, and 99% of the time I tend toward being on CCP's side...
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Kohiko Sun on 21 Jun 2011, 21:22: I'm still patching with 150 megs to go, so just from what I've read:

- I'd like it if they gave two separate graphics settings you could adjust: one for space and another for in stations.

- Why, oh why, did they ever decide that you automatically leave the pod every time you dock instead of adding a button to station services or the NEOCOM? If I'm hopping to a new ship in a hurry, just dropping off cargo before undocking again, running missions, or such, I doubt I'd take the time to unload the pod, drain the ectoplasm, cough up the ectoplasm in my lungs, get cleaned up, walk to my room, poke at holographic buttons to do what I could have done with a thought from my pod and crew or dock workers, turn around to get back in the pod, reconnected to the pod, flooded back up with ectoplasm, and reconnect the pod to the ship every single time I dock.

- I remember Zinfandel saying during AT that his group would be adjusting AUR prices as they see the reactions instead of leaving them set in stone from the start. Happily, that means they might make more sense by the time clothes actually worth buying are released, because the current selection I've seen is ...bad. I do hope the current Scorpion from AUR magic vending machine is priced crazy high, though, and stays that way until they make it include the trade in of a vanilla Scorpie.

But, the whole thing makes me happy, because they've been promising ambulation/WiS/Incarna since before I started playing over three years ago, and it's finally starting to appear! It's been the number one thing I've wanted since the beginning. Unlock the cell doors so I can go see everyone! *\o/*
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: John Revenent on 21 Jun 2011, 21:29: Quote from: Kyoko Sakoda on 21 Jun 2011, 21:16
Quote from: John Revenent on 21 Jun 2011, 21:02
Seems my Geforce 6200 has failed me finally... :oops:

Well, not to troll, but that should have failed you a very long time ago.

I have been using it since 04 and it has treated me well over the years.

I am using this piece of crap since 03-04. (Dell Computer Corp. 0K0057)

[spoiler](http://www.esaitech.com/objects/catalog/product/image/thb55781.jpg)[/spoiler]
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Seriphyn on 21 Jun 2011, 22:07: I don't think I've seen so much backlash...hopefully things change.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Acerba on 21 Jun 2011, 22:49: I'm disappointed by the patch.

Although the Captain's Quarters are neat, the Noble Exchange prices are just... yeah. I was hoping that the prices would be low enough to buy multiple nifty little accessories with a single PLEX =\
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Z.Sinraali on 21 Jun 2011, 22:59: I realize they're Icelandic, but do they not have a dictionary to look up what 'micro' means?

But yeah. I get between 2.5 and 3 FPS in CQ, with minimum settings, and severe load times. Keeping that setting off until I can't anymore.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Kaldor Mintat on 21 Jun 2011, 23:05: Quote from: John Revenent on 21 Jun 2011, 21:29
Quote from: Kyoko Sakoda on 21 Jun 2011, 21:16
Quote from: John Revenent on 21 Jun 2011, 21:02
Seems my Geforce 6200 has failed me finally... :oops:

Well, not to troll, but that should have failed you a very long time ago.

I have been using it since 04 and it has treated me well over the years.

I am using this piece of crap since 03-04. (Dell Computer Corp. 0K0057)

Please do not mercykill Frankenstein....... :(

[spoiler](http://www.esaitech.com/objects/catalog/product/image/thb55781.jpg)[/spoiler]
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Misan on 21 Jun 2011, 23:07: My PC seems to handle CQ fine, even running two clients. Though it really doesn't add much of anything for me at this point.

The NeX prices are just :bash: - I don't care for the current selection anyway, but at those prices I wouldn't even touch the stuff. It makes me wonder if they did any research on other MT based games that sell vanity items.

Can't comment on much else yet, we'll see after I've had some time to find broken things later in the week.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Ken on 21 Jun 2011, 23:08: Quote from: Z.Sinraali on 21 Jun 2011, 22:59
But yeah. I get between 2.5 and 3 FPS in CQ, with minimum settings, and severe load times. Keeping that setting off until I can't anymore.

The variance in performance with this patch is really strange. I don't have anything else to test it on right now, but while running only one client, I've got CQ doing alright (~20 fps) with antialiasing and shadows off and all other settings at high. In-space, runs like a dream (>40 fps). Even better performance in space than with Incursion 1.6. These results on the following laptop:

Alienware M11x R1
Intel Core 2 Duo U7300 1.30 GHz
8.0 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 335M
Windows 7 64-bit
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Kyoko Sakoda on 21 Jun 2011, 23:11: CQ crashes my system after about 5 minutes. Which is funny. It never crashed on Singularity.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Valdezi on 21 Jun 2011, 23:38: Leaving work now to patch and play. It had better work. :bash:
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Z.Sinraali on 21 Jun 2011, 23:42: Well, I've never had good performance with walkingincarnambulation. That's roughly what I had in the character creator too.

As for space...well, I haven't benchmarked my performance recently, but my instinct is that it may have improved slightly. Haven't done much with it yet though. :shrug:
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Senn Typhos on 21 Jun 2011, 23:44: And wouldn't you know it, the day I decide to return to EVE, CCP decides my laptop is too shitty to ever play their game again. >>
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Shal Novastorm on 21 Jun 2011, 23:49: Working just fine for me on my lappie.

Noble prices, well those are terrible but...they can come down at least? I don't know, nothing on it interests me yet so not a huge deal yet, but god damn if they're asking sixty bucks for that monocle we have issues.

Anyway, CQ, cool, I like it, makes me smile, but doesn't really 'do' much yet. I mean, I respect it as a cool look, but until we get some actual station stuff we have nothing to really say beyond 'yep, sure is a thing'.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Aria Jenneth on 22 Jun 2011, 01:16: Yeah, they really did price that monocle as though it were crafted out of electron-caged antimatter. At this point, you can easily buy and fit a carrier for the ISK-equivalent you pay for it.

Otherwise? CQ slows my system, but is still a ways from crashing it, and getting to watch teeny little Aria strolling around her domain is a treat and a half.

Makes character visualization MUCH easier, and I can't even walk out the door yet!
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Horatius Caul on 22 Jun 2011, 01:20: God knows I've been an Incarna defender for years, but this release leaves me with a taste of urinal cake on my tongue.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Milo Caman on 22 Jun 2011, 01:38: CQ runs at about 10FPS, and my machine is pretty solid. Was running EVE at maxed settings before, and now I have trouble running it on low ones in station. Guess I'm going to have to stare at a rusty door when I want to get anything done.

Somewhat pissed they scrapped the old hanger view. I vaguely recall CCP promising that they'd keep CQ/Incarna/Etc Optional, which implied they'd have a button to use it in the regular hanger.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Kohiko Sun on 22 Jun 2011, 02:23: My price checker alt thinks it's totally worth it and is tired of that reporter's disingenuous assertions:

[spoiler](http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa266/coyotespiral/20110622075650.jpg)[/spoiler]
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Z.Sinraali on 22 Jun 2011, 02:24: More info re: clothing:

Quote from: CCP Zinfandel
Thanks for bringing this up. And I did chuckle at the great "killmail" above.

We finalized on the following characteristics:
-clothing are destructible while in your cargo (like anything else)
-clothing are not destroyed if podded while worn - you will wake up in your new clone wearing the same outfit
-clothing does not travel with you if you take advantage of a jump clone - it remains in the previous station
-items such as the eye implants or Amarr monocles which are installed in the body do NOT behave like implants but can be removed and put on again at will (or even resold.)

We believe these settings best serve both our current population as well as those players who come later and learn to play EVE Online without the benefit of a specific briefing on the new functionality.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1532513&page=1#29
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Aodha Khan on 22 Jun 2011, 02:27: Worst expansion ever. I'm closing one of my accounts in protest. If this crap continues, I'm out for good after playing since beta.

So much to do to with areas of Eve they never finished or just left to rot like FW, Bounty hunting, epic arcs for BR/Sansha, pirate stations etc etc.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Morwen Lagann on 22 Jun 2011, 02:32: Quote from: Aria Jenneth on 22 Jun 2011, 01:16
Yeah, they really did price that monocle as though it were crafted out of electron-caged antimatter. At this point, you can easily buy and fit a carrier for the ISK-equivalent you pay for it.

That one monocle costs more in terms of ISK than all of my ships in my hangar, with the exception of perhaps one or two of them. Neither of which is my carrier (which probably runs about 1b, given price changes - it'd be closer to 750-800m by the price of the hull I originally purchased it at) - we're talking more than 1.3 billion ISK for a fucking eye implant.

CQ is cute, but all told, it's an utterly fucking useless waste of CPU/GPU resources that should not have been released for another couple months, and destroys a good chunk of immersion. (See the thread on the Assembly Hall about making CQ optional. I'm not getting into that again here.)

Really, the only part of this expansion that was even remotely a success was the new turret graphics, and the new Maller hull model. The Agent Finder is the only completely new feature worth a damn, and that's because it actually makes something more efficient - finding available agents that meet your requirements quickly, instead of having to use eve-agents.com or going through the list of agents in the corporations' showinfo windows one by one.

I'm extremely unimpressed with this expansion. I love EVE, and I think CCP are pretty good in comparison to a large number of companies out there, but Incarna honestly makes the original iteration of FW look like a nugget of gold in comparison.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Myyona on 22 Jun 2011, 02:55: I am mostly saddened that I am still not able to see other peoples faction standings or show off my own. One of my primary motivators and feeling of immersion (define the story of my characters through who they interact with within the game) seems gone for good. :(

The prices on cloth are ridiculous; though learning that it cannot be destroyed when worn justifies the price a little.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: GoGo Yubari on 22 Jun 2011, 03:26: After seeing the initial tid-bits on SiSi, I became very skeptical. Now with things on Tranquility, I am beyond skeptical.

We knew there would be no real content to speak off, so I'll skip commenting on that. Performance-wise, looking at my computer and hearing all the stories, this is a overheating, game-slowing disaster.

Most of all, the art assets in this are just bad. The design is quite terrible. The quarters itself is supposed to be crummy, I get that, but it isn't crummy in a way that delivers, it's crummy in a way that a kid with 3DS MAX could do better. The lighting is terrible. The clothing is beyond terrible. /facepalm "The sense of scale" with the ship hangar is not there.

If I was a newbie, these things would unsell me on the game immediately. No way will I be inviting the players that had previously avoided the game, but expressed interest when they heard about proper avatars being introduced.

I have a hard time believing this is done by the same company as previous expansions.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Myyona on 22 Jun 2011, 03:58: Quote from: GoGo Yubari on 22 Jun 2011, 03:26
"The sense of scale" with the ship hangar is not there.
He, when I first entered my hangar I had an Ibis as active ship. It seemed rather large for a space ship. Then I change active ship to a Fenrir freighter. It felt equally large...
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Mithfindel on 22 Jun 2011, 05:16: Ibis is 64 meters long. Closest wet-navy examples would be large fast assault craft or small corvettes (though the Ibis is almost as high as it's long - cut the stern deck off a Braunschweig class (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braunschweig_class_corvette) and you're pretty close). Civilian examples would be megayachts. Fenrir, on the other hand, is almost two kilometers long, dwarfing all existing wet-navy ships. In other words, should your character be able to walk in the hangar beside the Fenrir, it would take approximately 20 minutes of fast walking to go from bow to stern.

But yes. Hangar lacks anything we could compare for the scale. The ship designs themselves are horrible with all kinds of blinky lights and details that look great at first sight, but are scaled totally wrong. (Huge cockpits, multiple-meters wide holes in armour plating, let's not get started that exhaust locations don't really make sense as thrusters, but they probably are just exhaust from power generation, with real drives being some kind of reactionless drives.)

The RMT shoppe is funny, the prices suggest that it's a rich kids show off e-peen lengthener, but the designs suggest a bargain bin store.

(For ship sizes: http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/DavikRendar/EVE-ships-Tyrannis.jpg (http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/DavikRendar/EVE-ships-Tyrannis.jpg) and http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/DavikRendar/EVE-ships-subcap-Tyrannis.jpg (http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/DavikRendar/EVE-ships-subcap-Tyrannis.jpg) for dimensions measured from the ship models.)
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Jev North on 22 Jun 2011, 05:16: I absolutely love the new turrets.

Beyond that, it's pretty meh. The captain's quarters look.. nice, but I predict I and a whole lot of people with me will have that little "no captain's quarters plz" switch set a grand majority of the time. It takes a good long time to load, and walking my avatar around inside it feels like I've recently had a major cerebrovascular accident and the floor is covered in three inches of molasses. I understand they're going for maximum realism, but first-person view and a more FPS "feel" to the controls would not hurt at all. Immersion's nice, but I want to be immersed in something responsive. Or a nice space battle. A responsive space battle.

Also, someone should take these guys aside and quietly explain what the "micro" in "microtransaction" means.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Hurs Sokira on 22 Jun 2011, 07:12: Quote from: GoGo Yubari on 22 Jun 2011, 03:26
I have a hard time believing this is done by the same company as previous expansions.

Because it is not the same company anymore. I wonder for how much longer investors will tolerate incompetence of CCP's upper management.

At this point, the best that can happen is that EvE gets taken over by a large software house such as EA, most of management fired and core dev team tasked with maintaining and iterating on spaceship part. Considering how CCP is desperate for money, the takeover outcome is more and more likely.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: GoGo Yubari on 22 Jun 2011, 07:42: Quote from: Hurs Sokira on 22 Jun 2011, 07:12
Quote from: GoGo Yubari on 22 Jun 2011, 03:26
I have a hard time believing this is done by the same company as previous expansions.

Because it is not the same company anymore. I wonder for how much longer investors will tolerate incompetence of CCP's upper management.

At this point, the best that can happen is that EvE gets taken over by a large software house such as EA, most of management fired and core dev team tasked with maintaining and iterating on spaceship part. Considering how CCP is desperate for money, the takeover outcome is more and more likely.

Dunno if I will agree to that 100%, but I would be looking pretty damn critically at the Incarna team. Incursion, for example, was a nice little expansion. But then again, these things are lead from the top. Certainly the company has changed, but has it changed conclusively for the worse or not.. I'm not saying Eve is dead yet.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Punx Evangeline on 22 Jun 2011, 07:50: The thing that disappoints me is the only captain's quarters are the dirty, rusty minmatar ones. Oh, and the clothes in the store are ugly and overpriced.

The turrets look nice though. I thought they were going to change the background starmap, but I guess that's one of the things that got cut at the last minute.

Overall, mostly disappointed with the implementation, but I think it has room to grow into something nice.

-Punx
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: lallara zhuul on 22 Jun 2011, 08:20: Just as pointless as I thought.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Victoria Stecker on 22 Jun 2011, 08:28: A couple thoughts on this expansion.

CQ? Kinda cool for the first few minutes until you've seen every single thing the TV has to cycle through and gotten bored. Lighting on the characters is terrible - looks like dogshit on low settins, and simply looks flat on higher settings. That face I spent a while making and shaping and blahblahblah? I'd find it less jarring to look at a stick figure with a 2d image of my portrait for its head than look at the corpse I see now. I'm also a little annoyed with the new 'load station environment' option. Formerly, when you told it not to, you got a static image of your ship in the hangar. No spinning, but there's your ship. Now you get a door, you can't see what ship you're in unless you open the fittings or hangar windows. Just a little inconvenient.

Turrets? Pretty cool, tbh. Except they're supposed to go in and out and whatnot, and I did not see this when I tested it. Otherwise, pretty. I'm happy-ish, except for what they did to the tempest. Seriously, wtf? They moved one of the six turrets and it just looks strange.

Performance and resource management? I have two gaming machines, an old laptop that used to run eve at max settings and rock and roll, now it overheats, and we're pretty sure it's the memory and not the graphics that's the issue. In Incursion, it had no issues running a single client on minimum settings (Multiple clients --> more memory use --> overheated and crashed laptop). Idling in CQ on minimum settings now crashes it.
My new machine, built specifically for running multiple eve clients, used to experience only mild slowdown with three windowed mode clients on max settings (12 GB ram ftw). It now experiences significant issues with two clients in CQ at the same time. I don't think the graphics are the issue (or, I don't think they're the biggest issue), I think CQ is just a massive memory hog. Reminds me of the old 'bloatware' moniker for microsquash products.

I've noticed some slowdown in space, and while I only skimmed it, the gist from the dev blog on fighting lag was that it would have more stuff happening client-side, less happening server side. Result? Less lag in massive fleet fights, but makes the game harder to play on low-end machines, even if you don't have to deal with CQ.

The noble exchange... yeah, wtf? They said something about not wanting to inflate plex prices, which this was almost certain to do; maybe their way of preventing that was to make the stuff so expensive that no one would buy it, thus avoiding the spike in demand for plex.... and wasting everyone's time, particularly the developers.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Ken on 22 Jun 2011, 08:58: Also notice that factions standings tab in 'show info' shows the relationship between the factions again. Was that in the patch notes?
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Victoria Stecker on 22 Jun 2011, 09:15: Quote from: Ken on 22 Jun 2011, 08:58
Also notice that factions standings tab in 'show info' shows the relationship between the factions again. Was that in the patch notes?

Yeah, that's a big important feature, new to incarna! You can see people's faction standings!

. . . :bash:
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Ken on 22 Jun 2011, 09:21: Seems to be NPC inter-relations only right now...

[spoiler](http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/4582/standingspage.png)[/spoiler]
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Wanoah on 22 Jun 2011, 15:50: I remember when CCP were cool. /nostalgia
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Andreus Ixiris on 22 Jun 2011, 16:39: Fucking awful expansion. Almost every feature is broken in some way. Could have been fixed by a five-minute glance at the forums and a couple of weeks delay.

There's literally no excuse.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Kasuko on 22 Jun 2011, 16:43: Quote from: Andreus Ixiris on 22 Jun 2011, 16:39
Fucking awful expansion. Almost every feature is broken in some way. Could have been fixed by a five-minute glance at the forums and a couple of weeks delay.

There's literally no excuse.

The turrets are nice .___.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Andreus Ixiris on 22 Jun 2011, 16:46: I fly a Tengu.

And of course, you know that the only truly useful, well-thought out, well-designed, bug-free feature of the expansion is the one they spent absolutely no time advertising, talking about or drawing any attention to whatsoever.

Mixed Metaphor's active roster doubled in under 24 hours? Why yes, new Recruitment system, that sounds lovely.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Hamish Grayson on 22 Jun 2011, 17:27: (http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/173/8/e/microtransactions_by_johnnygeeksheek-d3jp89w.jpg)
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Shintoko Akahoshi on 22 Jun 2011, 17:28: I play Eve on a MacBook Pro that's a couple of years old. The graphics chipset has never been really stellar for it - I could run the premium display content when it came out, and it's good for basic PvE. The character generator made the poor thing cough and fall over, though. I had to use it while drinking, ignoring the 1-2 FPS framerate, to create the new Shin.

That said, I've been worried about this expansion. True to my expectations, my laptop can't load the CQ at all. No biggie. However, I noticed a huge improvement in space. Fraps shows my framerate hovering around 50-60 for moderately busy areas, dropping to about 45 in a cluttered mission. Pre-Incarta, I was seeing around 25-35, so I'm pleased as punch with this. The new turrets look awesome, and they work well for me on the laptop.

Some of you may know that I'm in the process of starting a business. As part of that, I bought a new Mac Pro with an ATI HD 5770 with 1GB video memory. This is the first time in about 20 years that I've had anything resembling a hot video card. I set up boot camp & windows on it, and set up Eve, and I've got to say I'm really impressed with the way things look on it. The character generator is finally a pleasure to use, and I can keep my character settings (and the rest of the graphic settings) high all the time.

That said, the CQ is still a pain in the ass. Movement within it is clumsy, and I hate the look of it. It looks more like a lounge in a maximum security prison than the sort of place a wealthy (and we're all wealthy, right?) capsuleer would spend time. I realize that this is just the start of the walking in stations thing, and that CCP are probably simply using this as a large scale test of their engine. At the same time, it's really hard to see the value in it, and I'd really rather be able to go back to the old, utilitarian station interface.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: GoGo Yubari on 22 Jun 2011, 17:37: Quote from: Shintoko Akahoshi on 22 Jun 2011, 17:28
(and we're all wealthy, right?)

Not after buying the monocle and shirt, we aren't.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Crucifire on 22 Jun 2011, 19:39: After a couple hours playing with it now, this expansion neither improves nor detracts from my gameplay experience. I can dock up, do my thing, and undock without even noticing there's a character standing back there.

The turrets are also p.cool
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Mathra Hiede on 22 Jun 2011, 20:57: So - after hoping and hoping that CCP as a whole would start to get things back on track with Incarna and really push EVE back into the territory of a hyper-finished every-detail-perfect level MMO it was back when I started.... has completely been broken.
So, I cancelled my account - my alt account got cancelled last month - I have game time remaining till mid august, but after that unless EVE gets a huge dose of wake-up juice, I doubt I will be re-subbing.

Sad day for me.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: DA5UN on 23 Jun 2011, 00:02: Running well on my custom built, albeit slightly out-of-date, PC. Loving the new turret animations and I'm enjoying the novelty of the quarter's actually. I'm easily amused though. My only complaint is that I would be more inclined to run around to all the little terminals if I could actually run.

Kiruss is a bit of a nervous busy body and I don't see him walking from the PI terminal to his pod with so much swag.

He also rendered quite well imo.
[spoiler](http://i.imgur.com/FiJ6y.jpg)
May need to trim back those eyebrows a tad, but, reppin' the FEDRO.[/spoiler]
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Kaleigh Doyle on 23 Jun 2011, 09:13: Quote from: Crucifire on 22 Jun 2011, 19:39
After a couple hours playing with it now, this expansion neither improves nor detracts from my gameplay experience. I can dock up, do my thing, and undock without even noticing there's a character standing back there.

The turrets are also p.cool

I'm with this person. All it really does is remind me that I need to shell out more money to change the character's body now (which should be free now that we see them in motion), and force me to load the map while I idle in station. I understand this project was a huge risk for EVE, but I think trying to release it early instead of as a full package release is going to hurt them in the long term. The graphics are sub-par and the resources EVE requires while docked is like 20x more than in space. It feels incomplete, and rushed, and I'm finding this hard to believe it'll keep people invested.

That said, the turrets are awesome and the recruitment tool is pretty sexy. (and yes, needs improvement)
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Aria Jenneth on 23 Jun 2011, 09:19: Quote from: Mathra Hiede on 22 Jun 2011, 20:57
... hyper-finished every-detail-perfect level MMO it was back when I started....

When was that, exactly?

Good God, people. I, with my entry point at 2006, remember probes that scanned a disk 1 AU thick. I remember all-but-unstoppable nanophoons, utterly useless logistics ships, and bombers that were maybe useful for swatting the occasional interceptor if the ceptor was standing still!

Now, my history doesn't go all the way back to 2003, but I do know the stories. Nano-Ravens stacking up torpedoes into a single, unstoppably fatal strike. Torpedoes that functioned like smart bombs, blasting frigates into powder almost without trying. Missiles whose damage was functionally impossible to reduce.

When the hell did CCP have it right?

Ever?

I find myself suspecting that an awful lot of people are wearing rose-colored glasses on their theoretically 20/20 hindsight.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Kaldor Mintat on 23 Jun 2011, 09:38: Aria, you so dissapoint me bringing logic and reason into someting like this :(

Joking aside though. I know this is supposed to be just the first installment/groundwork for further Incarna features but even at that i am underwhelmed. Disregarding the strange perfomance issues many have, with fans going into gear like they think they are jetplane engines, i find my avatars rather low resolution on even high setting compared to the charachter creator. Fun looking at the interior/floating ship/vid screen for a few minutes and then you emptied out current CQ "content" more or less.

Turned it all of after 10 minutes on both the desktop and the laptop (was a total nonissue on the lap as a loaded CQ environment at lowest settings meant 5-7 fps and for some reason seemed to also affect my inspace fps. Considering i did 20-25 fps in the old docking environment on all middle settings before patch its a major difference.

Desktop works fine at a high fps, although fan goes into highgear as mentioned earlier if i use 2 clients. Have not tried 3 clients yet and not sure i dare. Used to be able to run 5 clients (all my accounts) at once with no perfomance issues and just a minor up in fan workload.

Severly better optimization needed.

CCP and many of us players hoped/expected Incarna to bring in new players/subs and i am personally not seeing that that will happen in any major way if they dribble out small additions every few months.

Consider that we will not get the other racial quarters for 2-3 months yet (CCP says late august but time overruns do happen to all now and again). So...how long for actual walking in stations?
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Raze Valadeus on 23 Jun 2011, 09:56: This may or may not help some of you with Captain's Quarters:

Depending on the age of your video card and what operating systems you're on:

If you're on Windows Vista or 7, make sure you have DirectX 10 or higher installed and updated to the latest version.

DirectX Update (http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=35) This single download will patch you to the latest version usable by your operating system and video card.

(Even if the game developers say they didn't use DirectX in their design, the fact is that your computer is using it regardless. This might help.)

If you're using an nVidia Card, make sure that you disable all custom enhancements to your graphics for EVE. (To do this, go into your control panel and go to "Advanced 3D Settings" and make sure that "Let the 3D application decide" is set for every available option for EVE and that "use global settings" is set for every other option.

What happens is that the drivers will attempt to override the game's settings which results in highly increased system resource settings. Disabling this will improve performance in most cases.

That may help some of you. I know it's a short list, but it could alleviate some of the problems.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Aria Jenneth on 23 Jun 2011, 10:48: Quote from: Kaldor Mintat on 23 Jun 2011, 09:38
Consider that we will not get the other racial quarters for 2-3 months yet (CCP says late august but time overruns do happen to all now and again). So...how long for actual walking in stations?

Personally, I'm guessing the next "title change," so probably the winter expansion. Failing that, next summer.

Impatient though I am, the current version runs smoothly enough on my poor 5-year-old system; there's a frame-rate plunge while in the quarters, but that's no great surprise considering how badly I'm out of date. It's just nice to be able to watch my character narrow her eyes in thought as I contemplate what she's thinking.

What I feel CCP fell down on in this was their marketing strategy for the expansion. This is not the Incarna we were promised; it's a bit like being promised Conan and being presented with an infant and a broadsword. Even if a cloth diaper does resemble a loincloth in some superficial way, and even if the baby has a good chance of actually growing into a badass barbarian, it's still too damn early to ask, "Conan, what is good in life?" and expect an answer more memorable than some happy babbling.

By naming this expansion "Incarna," CCP is implicitly telling us that it's handed us the promised Conan, the full WIS experience, when what it's handed us is that happy, cooing infant.

And that, my friends, that, is bullshit.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Casiella on 23 Jun 2011, 11:13: /me starts the slow clap for Aria
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Victoria Stecker on 23 Jun 2011, 11:17: They did a similar thing with Incursion, but with a much less shitty initial offering and the promise that the full version would be out in the very near future (less than two months later) and the first iteration actually brought good things (rocket boost, PI improvements, iirc).

This is a much larger undertaking. and it's going to take a long fucking time for them to do anything interesting with it. In the meantime, it's an extra strain on even the systems of people that disable it (I think).
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Lydia Tishal on 23 Jun 2011, 15:49: Pretty much what Aria said.

For what it's worth, the CQ runs nicely on my 7 year old computer with the graphics all the way up. The lighting is bleh, but the only real issue I have is that my character's pony tail attacks her everytime she moves. The Physx install failed during my last driver update, so I don't think Eve is the problem there.

Maybe running Win XP and Direct X 9c isn't so bad after all.

And just to play devil's advocate, that $60 eye piece might make sense as the ultimate epeen status symbol if it was included in a store with 100+ other reasonably priced items that looked halfway decent. I think the accounting people were way ahead of the art team on that one.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Invelious on 23 Jun 2011, 15:55: im buying that eye piece tonight and destroying it.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Senn Typhos on 23 Jun 2011, 16:07: I baked this special for you, backstage.

(http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/7972/ccphatesyou.png) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/808/ccphatesyou.png/)

Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Ken on 23 Jun 2011, 16:36: (http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/7102/thatsitiquiteve.png)
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Misan on 23 Jun 2011, 16:41: So much win Ken. :lol:

(Add a monocle for double win)
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Katrina Oniseki on 23 Jun 2011, 16:42: Why does Keanu always look like he's still a run down college dropout?
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Citizen 31 on 23 Jun 2011, 16:43: https://gate.eveonline.com/Profile/CCP%20Zinfandel

So... yeah. I'm just gonna leave this here.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: lallara zhuul on 26 Jun 2011, 11:58: Just realized something...

If the UI will be as useful in CQ as in the rest of Incarna then how can it be used as a RP tool.

There is no way to affect the avatar itself except by standing still and hoping that it fidgets something resembling an emotion, the UI itself when interacting with anything is pretty clunky.

Hmmmm....
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: GoGo Yubari on 26 Jun 2011, 13:48: Yeah, not only did we get no emotes, we also got no moods. Quite the lame duck, but then again, these are things that can be added on later when we actually have other people to interact with.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Shintoko Akahoshi on 26 Jun 2011, 13:53: I'd be excited about the prospect of emotes and moods if I hadn't suffered through RPing in EQ2 and LOTRO. The combination of static "moods" and scripted emotes is just awful, and most RPers in those games ignore them and do the standard "/me gives so-and-so a wink before delivering a blistering riposte" thing.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Casiella on 26 Jun 2011, 13:57: I'd rather just have /me frankly. It allows us to continue to focus on detailed characterization.

/me sips carefully at his wine after sniffing it cautiously to inhale the aroma

vs

/sip
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Desiderya on 26 Jun 2011, 15:42: Although one must admit that the moods in lotro cover basically the complete range between a runaway psychopath and a drunk village idiot.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Matariki Rain on 26 Jun 2011, 19:31: Quote from: Desiderya on 26 Jun 2011, 15:42
Although one must admit that the moods in lotro cover basically the complete range between a runaway psychopath and a drunk village idiot.

Running the gamut of emotion from A to B? (pace Dorothy Parker)
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Kemekk on 28 Jun 2011, 00:26: I want to be able to smoke and drink as emotes. That's pretty much it.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Kala on 28 Jun 2011, 06:01: Quote
Quote from: Mathra Hiede on 22 Jun 2011, 20:57

... hyper-finished every-detail-perfect level MMO it was back when I started....

Quote
When was that, exactly?

Good God, people. I, with my entry point at 2006, remember probes that scanned a disk 1 AU thick. I remember all-but-unstoppable nanophoons, utterly useless logistics ships, and bombers that were maybe useful for swatting the occasional interceptor if the ceptor was standing still!

Now, my history doesn't go all the way back to 2003[...]

Mine does, and I don't remember this mythical period where everything worked as intended or was 'hyper-finished' or ' every detail perfect' :ugh: Unless that's tongue in cheek - can you still get stuck on stations, inside other ships and fly through planets and suns? I remember when getting 'stuck' in systems was a fairly regular occurance for me (you log in to blackness and nothing loads) and I'd have to petition with an alt for a GM to teleport me somewhere else. That sucked.

But that said, I am nostalgic for the days when it was just frigates, cruisers and battleships (and industrials, but I don't care about those) and space was all unknown and new frontier-like, not as overpopulated and anything seemed possible...

:(

edit: while I'm being all nostalgic though, EVE was always very pretty. When I started playing I was ubruptly coming to the end of my patience with Ultima Online - where they'd basically sold out with Second Age making two worlds, a 'safe' one and an 'unsafe' one, when it had previously all been unsafe apart from guarded towns. Then they chucked Garriot, and reshuffled the crafting system to something more marketable (i.e kinda diabloeqsue) and made it 3D in Third Dawn...ooh 3D. Except it looked vastly more horrible than the 2D sprites did originally and decreased performance exponentially. I remember trying to fight ogres with my archer, when you have to kite, and my character spending the next five minutes running on the spot. By then an ogre has obviously clubbed her head in, it's just I didn't see it.

It got to be unplayable for a variety of reasons.

EVE, however, ran just fine and was much prettier. And granted, it's environments are ultimately just backdrops so were less resource demanding, but for someone who was used to jogging on the spot in a fugly world, it was a dramatic improvement. Back then I was on a 56k connection and had no problems with lag (obv that changed later and my interwebs were upgraded :P) So yes, while there was always things wrong with EVE one way or another - balance issues, stability issues, things not quite thought through etc...EVE did look very polished and pretty. So while 'hyper-finished every-detail-perfect' might be a somewhat laughable description currently, as a first impression of the game in 2003 compared to other MMOs at the time it's understandable.
Title: Re: Incarna 1.0
Post by: Senn Typhos on 28 Jun 2011, 12:47: You know what's almost more irritating than CCP's upsetting lack of foresight? The reasoning people have come up with for unsubbing. So for what it's worth, I'm going to explain my position, at least.

I'm not unsubbing to "teach CCP a lesson." I'm not convinced these large-scale protests will actually help, because in the very action that led to the protests, CCP demonstrated they don't trust their community's feedback. I'm not unsubbed on principle, because I don't have any principles tied to EVE that are strong enough. I'm not unsubbed because things were better "way back when," I've only been here for a year.

I'm unsubbed because I ain't gonna spend $15 a month if this game isn't fun.

You know what's not fun? Having a game that ran perfectly well yesterday, slow down to 2FPS the next day. Having the economy of the game that part of your RP depends on, destabilized due to a new currency. Having MTs introduced, pretty much the bane of every MMO.

When I got here, as the bossman can tell you, I was wide-eyed and drooling at how expansive and amazing everything was. I'd escaped my six-year-internment in WoW and found a game that required me to think about my actions, in-game ones and IC ones. The fact that a CCP employee would step into an actor NPC and engage with the RP community was so astounding I nearly went hysterically blind.

Now, it looks like the mentality of the game is changing. CCP's attitude with the Incursions was the first thing that made me say "wuh?" Now I could jump on a soapbox like some people on the EVE forums, but CCP makes way too much money to care what I think. That's not a stab, by the way, if I made $15 off of a million people every month, I wouldn't care what anyone thought, either. CCP is the seller, and I'm the consumer. If their product changes and I don't like the new formula, I'll take my business elsewhere, and they'll probably keep making money.

I unsubbed because I only care about whether or not my various hobbies are fun. When they stop being fun, they stop being hobbies. If things change in a manner that makes me think the game will be fun for me again, I'll probably resub that day.

TL;DR: I don't care about protesting. I don't care about whether past iterations of EVE were better or worse. I don't care what CCP's motivations were in this patch. And I don't care if the rest of the community thinks I need to "HTFU" or that my unsubbing will make the game a better place.

I don't care. I'm BORED with the current iteration of EVE. And when I'm bored, I go find something else to do.