Thursday, December 24, 2015

It’s the Little Things…

CCP spends a lot of time working on features that have wide-ranging effects on the game. But it’s nice to see that they don’t neglect the little things, either.

I just fell for a null-sec procurer bait trick, and managed to escape with a nearly burned out MWD in about 80% hull.  This was the first time I escaped a fight in hull, so it was the first time I could see the new hull damage effects for myself.


 I absolutely love the new pock-marks and burning circuitry. It’s one of those features that helps you feel as if you’re really living in this world.  Immersion, I believe, is what the kids call it these days.

But that wasn’t it. When I docked up to repair the damage, I expected the image of my ship to suddenly shift from a damaged ship to a repaired version, the way it does when you swap ships.  But no, instead, the damage gradually repaired as if nanobots were running along the hull and effecting repairs. It wasn’t immediate at all, but rather gave an organic feel to my ship “healing”.

That’s one of those features that absolutely was no necessary, but shows that CCP takes their work to a whole new level. It’s a neat little treat for players that didn’t make it into a dev blog or even get any media attention.

But somewhere, there was a group of designers who a) thought to put that in, b) fought for time to develop it and “went to bat” for it with management, and c) spent man-hours designing and testing it, all so we’d feel more like we were playing a fully fleshed out game.

CCP, if you’re reading this, please let me know who we should give credit to. I hope they see this, and know how much we appreciate little touches like this. Somewhere, in a weekly meeting following the holidays, I hope someone brings up this little bit of appreciation so they know that their efforts directly improve my experience. Without them, this game just wouldn’t be as awesome.


Thank you!

7 comments:

  1. I am totally in awe of the little things that have been added almost "under the radar". Just recently there are a few of us using the #eveupclose on twitter. It is well worth a look.

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  2. I have a whole post on this... took MANY pix... MANY.

    Watching the DPS take down the shields... then incoming damage causing increasing amounts of actual visible armor damage... OMG!!! I was lost in the immersion.

    Then, back at the POS... swapped out armor reppers and... another OMG moment as you could WATCH the reppers actually REPAIR your ships hull and armor...

    Yous said it Tal and I second... Kudos CCP! GODDAMN KUDOS!

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  3. its really nice, but too bad the gameplay makes it almost useless and impractical to enjoy those effects. In most cases you have to be zoomed out to get good field view. Still I think it's worth it. It just shows they care about the details even if it won't be noticed by majority

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  4. Yeah I absolutely LOVE this new graphics feature. It adds a lot of beauty to the game, but even more so it add a ton of immersion. Seeing my rifter burnt and falling to pieces after a good fight only makes it all the more epic

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    1. I'm right there with you. It also gives yet another reason to him tank

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    2. I'm right there with you. It also gives yet another reason to him tank

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  5. Being the Star Trek nerd that I am, I absolutely LOVE the new shield effects, especially on ships where the shields really stretch out from the hull (Cerberus, Rattlesnake, to name a few examples) to form a protective bubble around the ship. It may be a little thing in the grand scheme of it all, but it was a huge boost to my immersion :)

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