Monday, May 28, 2012

Inferno - Resounding Success???

It's a year after Incarna and a week after Inferno. Now we've had almost seven days to play with it, how is it for me? Well before I say, some more missile p0rn....



Like any Eve Online expansion (or any online game expansion really) it has its bugs. The first thing I did when I logged on when the servers came up last week, was fly to a Caldari held system and try to capture a plex. I immediately found there was a bug with the little progress bar and timer on the satellite that you need to orbit to capture the plex. Whilst I later found out the background mechanics are working and the plex still captures, the progress bar and countdown wasn't working properly if you started the timer running burnt off it (to kill NPC's) and returned.



I tweeted to the #tweetfleet this bug, and asked if anyone had the link to the online bug reporting webpage. I got two replies.

First one was one of those Eve Online "Really?" moments when I read that pressing F12 would let me report bugs in game. You learn something new every day, even after four years in the game!

The second was from Ned aka CCP Manifest saying he was relaying bugs highlighted on Twitter direct to the Live Team. Wow! Live updates to the Live Team!

A short while later I suddenly notice a neutral ship in the faction war complex I was running. As I am a "nawty piwat" and also a member of the Gallente Militia, neutrals usually either attack me or are eyes for the enemy militia who are about to attack me. Therefore I operate a "shoot first, ask questions/sort out fallout later" policy in regard to neutrals. Some times it gets me into trouble, but if you are blue to me, get your alts blue too, I kill neutrals! I am about to burn for it and attack it when I remember to check the ship type, usually a good great idea before engaging in a 1v1.

"Hang on a second!!! WTF is a Polaris???"

 

Then I realised! CCP Zulu was sat in the plex watching me. We had a quick chat in local where I told him what I'd found about the bug, he asked some questions, got some engineers to look at it and vanished. A little while later I got a Tweet saying the bug had been squashed and it would be fixed in the next patch either on Wednesday or Thursday. And indeed it was!

Now, just think about that. A random player in a MMOG Tweets about a bug (some might say a very minor bug) minutes after the launch of a major expansion and before you know it you have the Senior Producer of Eve Online sat watching you play (actually, that sounds very wrong!).

Kudos to Manifest, Zulu and the rest of the CCP team for this rapid bug hunting/squishing response!

The Faction War iteration has certainly put a fire under the militias. However, if that was the pleasure, the Unified Inventory is the pain. Previously I said I'd wait to see if I got used to it. I'm trying, but I still don't like it! When docking up I want to QUICKLY be able to open my cargo hold AND my ammo can and drag and drop whats needed to top up my various ammo stacks in the cargo hold before getting back out. Yes I know you can do this with shift-clicks but the windows take up so much space and it's just so much hassle. It's also slower, much slower than the old system.

Corp chat is full of complaints, alliance chat is full of complaints, voice comms was full of complaints. I understand that some players actually like it, others hate it. I'm wondering if the player type has something to do with it? Are PvP players finding the Unified Inventory terribad whilst industialists are finding it the best thing since sliced bread?

So there are the two issues I found at launch that I had trouble with. One is fixed, the other continues to bug me although CCP Soundwave's latest dev blog says they are working on it and will continue to work on it till most people are happy. Will I get used to the unified inventory, will it grow on me? Time will tell. But let us not forget these are minor things in the grand scheme of things:-

New Missile Turrets = Win
New Missile Effects = Win
New Stealth Bomber Models = Win
New Starship Murder Notifications (KM's) = Win
New Modules = Win
Faction War Revamp = Win

If the bugs are squashed quickly and if CCP continue to look at the Unified Inventory, Inferno can officially be classified as "Win".


1 comment:

  1. Well apart from them STILL not sorting out the difference in Navy NPCs so that 1 day old Caldari FW toons can solo speed tank Gallente plexs for LP farming.

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