Immersion

New Eden lacks consistent immersion. The level at which one is layered under the veneer of a virtual galaxy endured. An example of this is docking. In almost any film where spacecraft are required to dock or undock, the event itself is celebrated, an opportunity to portray size, scale and weight to help make the ships themselves appear larger in your minds eye. In EvE Online the suspension of 'dis-belief' is shattered every-time a ship docks, undocks, swaps vessels, jumps through stargates, ejects a canister, fires missiles or does anything which does not respond in a fashion that’s consistent with the inferred or expected.

To be fair, these things are superfluous to the mechanics of New Eden, but in the interests of maintaining a healthy dollop of immersion, these omissions should be addressed. Perhaps a cut-scene animation could be created to run during the docking manoeuvre using the current gorgeous real-time graphics engine to show a ship being towed into the intended station, a POD being transferred via mechanical arms or tubes from one ship to the next, a missile or drone leaving its launch bay and, in the case of drones similarly returning to dock with the host.

At present, docking/undocking we have a progress bar which, I’m sure you’ll agree does absolutely nothing to maintain the assumption that we are in a hugely powerful vessel of steel and that this vessel is in one of the most hostile environments known, space. If CCP’s strategy is to attract an increasingly diverse spectrum of players to New Eden by appealing to those paying pundits who find shiny things interesting, then the trimmings may become much more important to the sort of clientele they are aiming for.

Obliterating the lag monster is of up most importance to our sanity and should be given due attention, but reading patch notes where "A spelling mistake has been corrected," there is obviously some manpower overflowing at CCP...devote it to something interesting please.

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