K been playing again, so, lets see
Sculpting is much better now, much smoother, faster, more responsive, and more in depth, although as I've said, there is a slight issue in that its a very complicated tool to use, which is sort of silly considering its only going to be used once. Functionality should trump prettiness. Its even harder now to get the character looking how I want, even though the face is more morphable.
The ring spinners are still rather meh, their not needed, they lag the system rendering the realistic dial spinning, the dials still slip the wrong direction when clicked on, and its overall still difficult to use. I think it could be fixed to work well, its not that bad, but I think on principle, they are a bad idea. One thing I think that would really help, was if there was some sort of labeling on the spinner to delineate between the options, for instance, on the eyes, label what each type is, same on the hair, etc, etc.
Still no options to change skin tone. CCP this needs to exist. All the characters are currently a very generic perfect white except for the Brutors. (lolgenericblackpeople)
In the old client, my Intaki character looked rather Indian with her dark skin, but now Intaki's are bland white.
Even the Asian bloodlines don't have much differentiation between skin pigments, the Achurans, Vherokiors, and Khanid look rather white considering they're supposed to be distinctly Asian.
Overall CCP, I know it might be a bit hard to implement this due to the way the avatars are rendered, but you really can't skimp on it. There needs to be that level of modifiability or everyone will look the same. Before you could roll anything from black to olive tan on a brutor, you could roll anything from pale as a ghost to half black with Gallente, you could roll anything from creamy white to distinctly Indian with Intaki, there should be more skin color options, not less.
I'm glad everyone will have unique, sculpted faces that look photorealistic, but on the tiny little boxes, all we'll see are faces with no way to tell them apart. It also hurts a lot of immersion factor, since one of the reasons I found eve special was that it lacked the whole "in the future everyone will be white and European" I feel like we're drifting back towards that.
The races still lack any unique feel. No accessories, no more outfits, no tattoos, no piercings, nothing to make one character stand apart from another...you see the problem I'm seeing here? We've gone from, in the old system, everyone looking like their bloodlines, and the bloodlines looking similar, to everyone just looking similar. Sure, there are a lot of for instance, hair options, but when you look at the big picture, there are going to be a LOT of clones, this used to only happen in the same bloodline, but its gonna happen a whole lot more if we don't get some more really distinct big things to tell the bloodlines apart.
Female hair colors are still incredibly different in the pallet then they are on the body
Female hair on some of the styles are still too high up on the head, too much forehead, specifically on the long straight one, but all of the longer styles suffer this a bit.
Specifically the hair style with the half Mohawk in the back, the hair cuts into the face above the right eye.
Sculpting the body is still incredibly awkward, its just a pain in the ass to do and pulling and pushing on things doesn't do what you'd expect to a rather annoying degree. The same is true to of the expression sculpting on the pose section, though not quite as much so, and there's still no way to have asymmetrical expressions, like a half grin, or a raised eyebrow.
so overall, in terms of core technology, its improving, in terms of the actual usability and modifiability though? not so much Tim.