EVE Online Blazes a New Trail with UI Only Mode

Proving once again that EVE Online is different from most MMORPG’s, CCP announced on the forums on Friday that they had put a new “UI Only” mode option on the test server.

Just to be clear, what this option does is allow players to turn off the 3D rendered EVE Online universe and operate with just the UI elements.  This is the opposite of the “hide UI” option that any game worth its salt has.

You get the overview and chat channels and inventory and controls and brackets and pretty much everything except the pretty view of space and all the ships that occupy it.  You get to be under the hood, go instruments only, fly the overview.

Instead of this:

Space and structures in the view

You get this:

Keep your pretty pictures, I just want the data

I cannot think of another MMORPG where this would not only be a viable feature, but kind of a big deal.  I know people who are stoked for this feature to come into the game.

Because, when you’re in one of those grinding null sec battles with thousands of objects on grid with you and you turn on the in-game system monitor and see how much RAM the client is gobbling up and how hard you are pushing your GPU, having the option to let go of a significant amount of processing the client need to do can be a big win, especially if you’re in with multiple clients.

This will be a boon when it gets pushed to the live client.

Of course, it won’t do anything to help with the underlying problem of the servers struggling to handle those big fights with thousands of objects on grid.  Time dilation will still suck and the server will eventually get way behind, stop responding, or just fall over if too many people land on it.  But your GPU won’t be melting as well, and your system will have resources to keep streaming Netflix or play the other game you have going while you wait for your doomsday to cycle.

Control-shift-F9 will be your new friend.

(Unless you’re like me and out there to take screen shots.)