From a post I snagged from F13, some interesting features that will land with the first segment of the Kali patch:
* Kali in 2 months.
Big new stuff:
* Solar System view. 3-D view replacing the Scanner that lets you see stuff around the solar system you’re currently in. Improved and more usable scanning. Blob size apparently influences how easily you can be detected. Also, there’s a spore-like ‘seamless’ transition from ship view to solarsystem view to galaxy (map) view. Scanprobes will be changed and improved. They will now be 3-D aware and not a giant pain to use. No details on what that actually means.* Along with the SS view will be more hidden complexes and hidden asteroid belts with goodies in them. This is to “enhance the exploration aspect”.
* When ships explode, they no longer blow up into cargo cans. They will now leave a hulk that you must ‘scavenge’ for loot, parts and stuff. Scavenging will have skills associated with it. Hulks will last longer than current cargo cans, “a few hours”.
* Booster system, where you take drugs to confer temporary bonuses at the expense of temporary drawbacks (e.g. +5% turret rate of fire, -2% velocity). Tolerance, so if you shoot up a lot, the bonuses won’t last as long as the drawbacks, thus simulating addiction. This second bit is not finalized.
* Gas clouds and gas cloud mining, which are used in booster manufacturing. Gas clouds are all in 0.0.
* Reverse Engineering. Basically, using parts found in complexes or salvaged off of the hulks of your enemies, you use reverse engineering to fix them up and then ‘assemble them’. The game mechanic way of describing it is that you ‘put parts in a box’ and seal it; this locks in a set of advantages and disadvantages. You can then drop the box into your ship (“like implants for ships”), conferring those bonuses and drawbacks to that one ship. The ‘box’ will be destroyed when your ship explodes. Skills associated with all of this, naturally.
All interesting features to enhance the game, but not really adding anything in a meaningful way, honestly.
In the meantime, after my earlier E3 report by proxy, I decided to cancel my account.
The biggest reason why I was interested in Eve and to support it was about seeing it move past its limits and really achieve its potential. This objective was made concrete through the “Factional Warfare” plan that I had extensively described and commented. That’s where I wanted to see CCP’s resources being spent.
With the announce that this part has been delayed to the next year, I’ve decided that I’m not going to support their choices and I’ll be back only when they decide to make the accessibility of their game their first priority, instead of the last.