EVE Evolved: Ship spinning and Incarna
Last week, EVE Online developer CCP Games released a devblog about an upcoming patch designed to re-introduce the ship hangar removed as part of the recent Incarna expansion. The old system involved docking into a ship hangar in which players can spin their ships around to look at them from any angle. With Incarna, the hangar was replaced by a new captain's quarters interface in which the player gets out of his ship and walks about his quarters in a full-body avatar of his character. Amidst a flood of complaints from players whose computers couldn't handle the Incarna environments, CCP reluctantly built a temporary disable switch into the system.
Developers repeatedly stated that they had no intention of letting players opt out of Incarna forever as the company wants it to be a seamless part of the game world rather than a separate game in and of itself. The announcement of the ship hangar's return has effectively overturned that statement by giving players a way to stay out of Incarna environments indefinitely if required. This is a big deal for current EVE players, but most of my friends and colleagues who don't play EVE don't see the importance of what is on the surface a purely cosmetic change.
In this week's short EVE Evolved column, I discuss the plans to bring back ship-spinning in EVE and explain why this change is a big deal for players.
A change of mind
Before Incarna went live, developers repeatedly asserted that using the in-station environments would not be optional. Players worried that in-station actions like changing ships or loading cargo might take longer under the new system due to the increased load times, but CCP promised that this wouldn't be the case. The inclusion of a loading screen for the Incarna environment technically fulfilled this promise, but the game often reacts slowly or stutters during the loading process. With players facing performance issues, the option to disable the in-station environment was temporarily added.
Rather than returning players to the standard ship hangar, this option displayed a static image of a door when players were docked. Fed up with "being shown the door," players began to demand the return of the traditional ship hangar. CCP insisted that the option to disable Incarna would be left in only until performance issues with the expansion had been resolved and that the old ship hangar would not be making a return. The fact that CCP has now gone back on that statement represents a fundamental change of mindset within the company, hopefully for the better.
The new solution
In a recent devblog, developer Torfi Frans Olafsson detailed the new docking procedures due for implementation in a future patch. Rather than proceeding directly to the captain's quarters in a 3-D avatar of his character, the player will dock into the old ship hangar interface. From there, he will be able to exit his ship to enter the captain's quarters and subsequently re-board the ship at any point he wishes. The game will remember whether the player last undocked in his quarters or inside his ship, and it will use that setting next time he docks.
As presented, this solution is almost exactly what players have been asking for since long before Incarna launched, and it's an idea that was repeatedly rejected by developers. This raises the question of why it took CCP so long to finally agree with players that it was a good idea. In his dramatically titled devblog The moments that define history, CCP Zulu explained that the events of the past few weeks have forced a lot of internal dialogue on development priorities within CCP and that the ship spinning patch is part of an ongoing plan to focus on changes players have asked for.
Final thoughts
Even though disabling the captain's quarters confers no real competitive advantage, the increase in performance provides a big boost in quality of life for traders, mission-runners and anyone else who docks often. The re-introduction of the ship hangar extends these benefits to all players, offering a way to enable or disable Incarna at will and in a realistic manner. The quality of life changes are nice for those of us who don't always want to load the Incarna interface, but the main reason the change is a big deal is that it represents a positive change of mindset within CCP. The past few months have seen some questionable and often confusing decisions relating to EVE Online, and it's refreshing to see something positive again.
Brendan "Nyphur" Drain is an early veteran of EVE Online and writer of the weekly EVE Evolved column here at Massively. The column covers anything and everything relating to EVE Online, from in-depth guides to speculative opinion pieces. If you have an idea for a column or guide, or you just want to message him, send an email to brendan@massively.com.
