If you didn't know it yet, the latest expansion was released earlier this week. It was a tad anti-climatic after the events of the weekend, but it is still a FREE expansion of some new stuff into the world's very best... whatever it is. I hate labels, but I love Eve.
I can say this much - Eve is better right now than it has ever been. Right now, at this very moment, Eve is the best looking, best running, most balanced, most intuitive (!), it has ever been. Luckily, we still have much further to go on our journey. But progress, significant progress, has been made.
Every expansion since Incarna has buit upon the previous one to form a somewhat new kind of Eve. This new Eve is a tad shocking to the older players, or at least it is for me. Shocking in the sense that we probably never really believed we'd live to see it. Things are starting to work together and make sense. This is a tad unsettling.
I'll leave the specific feature talk to other writers, I'm more concerned with the big picture. And I also happen to be focused on the pirate perspective at the moment. The pirate thing was dealt with in the last expansion and we don't get much in this one. Besides some additional ship balancing, which is starting to arc above our pay-grade now, new Gate effects, and easier probing ( I'll take your word for it.), pirates don't get much to chew on. Which is ok, we had our day.
As the name suggests, Odyssey is really about travel. Exploring. New ships for PvE, whatever that is. Jet cans spewing things in an annoying way and generally finding things popping up on your overview that didn't previously pop up on your overview. I still flinch when all those icons pop up in a system I just jumped into. Or when the people in local pop up on my overview before I've loaded grid.
Many people seem upset by the re-location of the undock button. I might be, if I had ever, ever used it. I never do. Since day one, when that guy in the belt told me, "Right-click everything in Eve" that's what I've been doing. There was a short period of time this week when even that didn't work, but I complained and CCP fixed it. So no harm done. Yes, you can right-click your ship floating in the hanger and access a full menu of options, including undock. Try it, it is pretty great.
For the sake of Eve I hope that the next expansion is focused on Null. We've covered Hi-sec, Low-sec and exploration, FW, etc. It is time for a dramatic re-balance of Null Space. In my humble opinion.
Those people need some help.
Another solid expansion. We are starting to get spoiled. I like it.