Captain’s Quarters Soon to be Gone

First off we have Incarna, an amazing technological and artistic achievement. A vision from years ago realized to a point that no one could have imaged but a few months ago. It rolls out without a hitch, is in some cases faster than what we had before, this is the pinnacle of professional achievement. For all the noise in the channel we should all stand proud, years from now this is what people will remember.

CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson on the launch of Incara

CCP has announced that the Captain’s Quarters will be removed from EVE Online with the August release. (Also, we’ll be getting an August release this year.)  The Captain’s Quarters underwhelmed when launched with the Incarna expansion (my tour from back then) and has remained stagnant since then.

Captain’s Quarters

The letdown of the Captain’s Quarters was greatly aggravated by removal of the hangar view that was long the staple of being in a station.  Instead, if you didn’t want the resource hogging new quarters you got a static door.

The Immobile Hanger Door

Then Hilmar’s derisive comment about “ship spinning” poured gasoline on that fire.  Spinning had nothing to do with it, being able to see your active ship was the point.

CCP eventually relented and put the hangar view back with the Cruicible expansion, an update that saw the company begin to focus on long neglected features already in the game.  A lot of features in the game have improved greatly since then… though CCP still seems lost when it comes to creating a useful in-game map.

Usage of this minimalist pseudo-housing, the one place in the game where you could walk around with your avatar, was never huge once the hangar view returned.  And with the advent of citadels, which do not have that as an option (and docking in a citadel changes your default view to hangar), usage plummeted even further.  CCP even has a chart.

Game time spent in Captain’s Quarters

So the Captain’s Quarters has lingered for six years, the “amazing technology” stopped in time. (Well, we got “themed” quarters, but that was about it.)

However, the code is in the game and needs to be maintained and updated as things change.  Furthermore, the middleware developed to be used with that code is out of date and is standing in the way of getting a real 64-bit game client.  Per CCP:

One of the first things that we want to investigate is to release a 64-bit EVE client to better utilize your available system memory when playing. Compiling a 64-bit client has been held back by the outdated middleware that was needed by captain’s quarters.

And so it goes.

I won’t be sorry to see the departure of the Captain’s Quarters come August.  I have long maintained that avatar play and the idea of “walking in stations” was a distraction from the core of EVE Online.  With limited resources, if a feature doesn’t somehow involve spaceships, it should be avoided.

Of course, as I have also noted on past occasions, any given feature in an MMO, no matter how bad, awkward, or simply useless, is somebody’s absolute favorite aspect of the game.  The fans of the Captain’s Quarters will no doubt stand up to be counted.  But they will be hard pressed to argue that this lingering feature is more important than a 64-bit client.

In a reality where CCP is spending more time and effort on their VR projects, leaving fewer resources to work on EVE, simplifying by removing the superfluous makes sense.

Along with the Captain’s Quarters the integrated Twitch option is also slated to be removed come August due to low utilization.  There are other options for using Twitch with the game, and it seems like streamers are already using them.

Addendum: Reddit seems to be mostly on board with this change.

Others on the topic:

• Kirith Kodachi – Captain’s Quarters – Potential Never To Be Realized
• Po Huit – Goodbye, Captain’s Quarters
• Evehermit – No More Walking for You

 

Inside with Incarna

I couldn’t resist.  New stuff in the Incarna expansion made me want to peek back into EVE Online.

Incarna looking at you…

The patching took a while, so I haven’t had much time to poke around, but I did get a view of one new feature, the captain’s quarters

Gone are the hanger views of your current ship.

No more ship view…

Instead, when you log in, you are in your new quarters.

Your new home

You can move around, but the controls are… wrong… in my opinion.

They use WASD to move, but they keys are for absolute direction, not relative.  So A doesn’t turn to you or make you strafe right, but turns your body and moves you West, while W moves you North, and so on.

Not a totally outlandish idea.  If I recall my short time there, it is the way that you move around in Dream of Mirrors Online.

Coming from an EQ/WoW/FPS background it felt awkward in DOMO and it feels awkward in EVE.  And while you don’t have to move around a lot, you do have to walk a bit when you return to your station and dock.

When that happens, you get placed at the far end of a walkway and must walk to your quarters.

I just got these legs, I don’t want to wear them out

Not a long walk, but you have to do it.  You can see my quarters through the hatch.

In your quarters you get access to the same things that used to have buttons on the side bar, hanger, drones, storage, and the like.

Access to controls

Then there is that big screen TV flashing stuff at you.  A little more useful than the CONCORD billboard you see at every gate, but not hugely relevant.

And so there you are in your room, a little hologram of your currently select ship in front of you, standing there, wondering what the big deal is.

Well, I am out of that damn pod at least!

I redid my avatar… tried to make him a little more Michael Westen-ish.

I guess the new quarters are cool.

I am not sure it adds much to the game yet.  And, like any change to a user interface, it feels awkward and less functional when you first start using it.  We shall see if it grows on people as time goes on.

And this will lead to walking on stations and seeing other people some day.

And /dance emotes… I bet we get those as well.  You just wait.

Addendum:

Per Soliloquy’s comment below, I did managed to sit down.  You seem to have to get yourself and the camera in the right position to get that option.

Sit or Stand, your option

However, once seated, the camera pulls in too close to see much unless you rotate it around to look at the back of your head.

What is on Space TV today?

I cannot seem to get a decent screen shot of my character sitting.  I can get his whole body in if I move the camera practically up to the roof, but to look into his face, the camera positions itself so you can only see him from the waist up with about 2/3 of the screen showing stuff behind and above his head.

You can also see your pod.  I did not turn around when I docked, it was right there behind me.

<make Pod Bay Door joke>

And you can see your ship docked as well.

Behold the mighty Sushi Boat!

The ship rotates very slowly.  I would guess it rotates about 1/10 the speed of the wireframe model you see as well.  So waiting for a profile screenshot can take a bit.

And you cannot scroll the camera into first person view, so any screenshot would include you as well.

(And there is Stargrace in her quarters staring at her Domi.)