Monday 21 May 2018

Iconography in EVE Online

EVE is old!

Every so often I am reminded that EVE is actually getting up there, like a nephew that pops up on occasion and every time you think to yourself "I remember when he was just a kid!".

We're now in 2018 and had this been a person in Denmark where I live, we're talking about a teenager just getting ready to have his first sexual encounters at 15 years of age.

Backdrop

When the game launched in 2003, I am not sure they had put much thought into a clear vision for iconography, they kept it simple and understandable. People could tell the difference between a ship and a container - but many icons were identical, only differing in size. When things are getting hairy, this can be difficult.
Detail wise - the image format PNG did not become an international standard until a few months after launch in 2003. I can image that working with image files back then was a lot different.
Since then, the focus was on getting the game up and running, fixing bugs and getting in new features - icons were not that high on the totem pole to get attention.



Present day

Fast forward to 2015, 3 years ago - things were in place to launch a strategy on iconography.
This sought to update existing iconography structures and lay down a path to follow for new icons that would later be launched, depending on new content, ships, containers, structures, roles and so on.
Developer "CCP Arrow" lead the way. There was a logic behind the new path:
  • Ships: Triangles
  • Drones: M's
  • Structures: Boxes
And with the new structure in place you would then also iterate on the same theme and come up with variations depending on role/effect of the items/ships you would see out and about in the void.

Fermentation

Give things a few years to ferment and players start to compile data and present in a teaching environment. What followed the strategy was then as nature predicts - a player eventually doing something about that data.

Reddit user u/OperationTechnician posted this image that covers mostly all icons (barring future changes) compiled into one easy-to-handle image.

Well done.




(source)

Monday 30 January 2017

The New Player Experience - a Veterans review

Background

The NPE saw implementation in October 2016, by Team Genesis and was released with the Ascension expansion on November 8th that same year. Feedback thread here and here.
Since then we'd assume that they have had time to get rid of the child syndroms of any implementation so this research was done by end of January 2017, from the 21st to the 25th.


The NPE

After going through the new player

Monday 13 June 2016

BB76 - Tanky McTankFace

This is my contribution to Blog Banther 76.

I'd like to thank Drackarn for continuing the Blog Banthers.

We were asked the following:

At fanfest CCP Fozzie proposed a potential new ship class. Lets call it the fleet commander's flagship for now. This is to try and prevent "FC Headshotting" where the opposing fleet knows who the FC is and alpha's them off the field leaving the rest of the fleet in confusion and disarray. Fozzie mentioned a ship with a great tank but no offensive abilities. Is this a good idea? Is FC head-shotting a legitimate tactic? If CCP do go down the route of a "flagship" how might this work? Also is a new ship the answer or is there another way of giving an FC the ability not to be assassinated 12 seconds into the fight without letting players exploit it?
Source @ 52:50

Background
CCP Fozzie is looking for feedback regarding a possible battleship sized hull with no significant offensive abilities (much like the current booster ships), but with a significant tank - which would allow an FC to operate without a cloaky scout alternate account to maintain visuals of the battlefield in fair safety, (ie. not cloaked safety), so would be able to target, move etc.

Lets review why the current fleet commanders use cloakies: In case of explosives!

Lets face it; you as a fleet commander would use a cloaky to maintain visual of the battlefield while safe. Even though you are not able to target ships, you are still able to view on-grid non-cloaked ships from the main overview and provide your mates with consistent coordinated target calling, right?

The reason this works well, is that as an FC you can provide fleet support in a combat able ship, and in that ship do provide some kind of bonuses to your fleet mates (ie. reps, boosts, ewar etc). You make enough ISK to have several accounts, and this is just one more use for your cloaky scout. Many of us have cloaky scouts for a reason.

It sounds like the ship balancing team are looking to review the ship classes based on the actual usage of the booster ships. The first team originally designed these with the intent of FC'ing in mind. How they turned out to be used ended up being quite different though. The development team would like to rekindle this ship class with the original intent in mind. Im not saying this because I have some sleezy inside info. I'm saying this because I know how developers think.

We have a fully developed resource which took time and money to develop. So my best bet would be that they are going to base it on that platform. Adding new art work cost additional resources. No need, as they are busy with new Citadels. Bad business decisions are bad.

Throw something new into the mix. Supertank modules, only fittable on Command cruisers, which disallows offensive abilities is what they have in mind. But this won't "Fix" what they are trying to solve. The reason FC's has two accounts is that they need two ships. One for visual overview in case of ... yeah. Untimely explosions, and one for fleet support.

While I've never been the guy to go for, for suggestions on fixes - what I can say is that this will propably have some short term benefit for different aspects of the fleet to work.

Like a bonus for remote repping, DPS and ewar. Or a module that allows 2 characters online at one time to pilot a carrier? Or here's an idea; How about asking the CSM? They are in a unique position to provide feedback from their peers.

They would propably tell you that if a fleet has superior intel, they should stand a good chance at winning. If they can Alpha significant players off the field, shouldn't they be able to?

Saturday 21 May 2016

Going Rogue


Welcome o/

Let this be my introduction and my history. What led me to create this blog, and where I come from.


First things first
My first MMO. I mean ... my very first MMO, was actually SWG: Star Wars Galaxies - which I played very much from about 2005 and almost until the very end.

During what felt like an eternity, I managed to get to know thousands of players and during fan gatherings/events; Through my work with writing guides and finally as a representative for the players (much like what you know as the CSM).
During these times