I did some 0.0 ratting the other day, just because. It is a more interesting task in 0.0 when you don’t have intel channels or friends nearby. I always shoot my wrecks as I go, so as not to make it overly obvious what I am up to. The re-balancing of the wreck hit points makes that process a little more expensive.
I then jumped back to Hi-Sec to put the new camera through its paces. I had tried doing that in 0.0, but I managed to de-cloak myself a couple of times or approach or lock objects I hadn’t intended to.
I spent a couple of hours trying out all the camera options and sliders – attempting to get it to work like the old camera. There were keyboard shortcuts that improved its use – but many of those were not listed on the HUD icons, so you had to go find out about them yourself. In the end I was able to configure it into a substandard version of the old camera which I might, with annoyance, be able to put up with. That’s not much of an endorsement.
It is not intuitive; the zoom needs to be much more linear, you should be able to zoom in as close as the old Camera did without having to use the ALT key, when you set your angle and zoom distance on an object it should stay there, and not swing, float, offset itself or go into follow mode or whatever else it decides to do; there really should be a HUD icon to turn on tracking like the old camera, instead of having to select an icon or hold down C when you select an object, and the transition from viewing one object to another needs to be better if you miss-click in space – instead of a jarring crash back to your own ship.
Sometimes your ship will pass by an object and you will get this glorious cinematic view that you literally think wow. More often it won’t stay or work like you want it to, and causes miss-clicks and frustrations.
It was a bit horrifying to see CCP will be removing the old camera in around a month. Unless they make major inroads in the new camera, that day will be – for me, a downgrade of the game.
While in Hi-Sec I spent 2.2B ISK yesterday on the new skill books available on the market. I had forgotten how expensive Capital related skills were. It will take well over a month to get them all to Rank 4. I should get my main Alt back to Hi-Sec and get him to train those as well. That would be 4.4B ISK gone.
Still just keeping myself amused..
Evehermit 