Posted - 2010.07.25 08:40:00 - [1]

 

CCP,

I am at a loss for words when it comes to discussing the current state of eve gameplay. In an effort to remain polite and on topic, I've come up with the following.

1: The Client UI has a number of issues that affect gameplay. It's really really really bad. Pin, rollup, doubleclick, right click context menus.... I can't name a single portion of the Eve UI that works properly and consistently.

2: Server side performance is inconsistent (from minute to minute, from system to system. There's really no way to measure the time between the execution of an action, and when (or if) that action will occur. I sometimes wish that the UI included a "Suck-o-meter" in the ctrl-alt-shift-m interface that would let me know if it was safe to engage. Many of my engagements go like this:

Decloak... Bubble (no bubble, no bubble, no bubble, no bubble, going on 6 seconds). Hmm, I'm lagged, I should warp out (bubble "now" goes up after I have attempted to engage warp). Oh Crap, I need to MWD out of my bubble (MWD does not light for 5 seconds). Finally out of the bubble, I attempt to warp to an on-grid tactical BM. This does not result in a warp drive activation. Instead it aligns me back to the center of the bubble (even though I engaged warp as far as 100KM outside of my bubble). So I Ctrl space and right click to bring up another BM, except for my boomarks do not appear in the context menu. Finally I click on "absolutely anything" in space and click warp in the selected items box. (aligning, aligning, aligning, aligning, aligning). I'm in a saber, taking 21 seconds to align and warp, with the MWD supposedly off (though it's been flashing red for 3 complete cycles so that the zealot can really light me up).

And pop goes the sabre.

Golf clap

3: The handling of defects related to the UI is worse than the UI itself. I'm fairly certain that you guys really don't care. Players file defects (via bug reporting), produce images, videos, and other media demonstrating the issues that we are having. These defects are normally responded to with a "cannot reproduce" comment and closed. If you really do not give a hoot about issues with your software, at least have the courtesy to let your customers know (I believe Blizzard does this, though in their own creative way).

4: The reimbursement of in-game items is where the real kicker is. I've seen players lose ships "the day after they log off... in a station, 14 hours prior to when they logged in". This was not reimbursed. I've personally lost ships to targets that were unconditionally jammed, yet targeted and scrammed me for greater than 40 seconds (bug filed with screenshots of both clients). No reimbursement, because "A successful jam is not logged, only the module activation is logged". I'm pretty certain that you've pretty much stopped logging everything in order to increase performance and avoid liability for in game item reimbursement. Again, please let your customers know this.

I know how it is. I work in a company that writes software and sucks in may of the same ways that CCP/Eve does. We have ****ty managers, the developers have no idea what they're doing, and I'm convinced that a company that recently acquired our division is actively trying to sink us. The documentation is written by the developers, so everyone else sucks by association, and it's gone on so long that nobody working for us gives a **** anymore (I certainly don't). We just keep the subscriptions firing and sit back and collect paychecks. The only new features we release are usually developed by other companies that we acquire. I'm also pretty certain that our CTO is mentally ******ed (for real, no joke). We'd be better off replacing him with one of Hugh Heffener's ho's.


My recomendation. Hand Eve to an entirely new team. New devs, new GMs, etc. Just clean house. Keep the 6 good ones, fire everyone else. Then fix stuff.