EVE Online to axe voice chat throughout its back-end revamp

Atmospheric, but now silent

Sometimes it’s good to take a step again to take two ahead, and typically your server infrastructure is such a colossal mess of interconnected software program programs that you simply simply should hack out a bloody nice chunk of it earlier than something might be improved.

In order to improve their server software program to 64-bit commonplace, EVE Online studio CCP are officially saying goodbye to Eve Voice, their built-in voice comms consumer, and moving their regular text-chat system outdoors of their gameplay server infrastructure.

According to CCP, the loss of life of EVE Voice isn’t any nice loss, with solely 0.4% of gamers utilizing it. The overwhelming majority have long-since used third-party instruments equivalent to Teamspeak and Mumble, with Discord quickly transferring in to take its place because the dominant group communication software. By externalizing textual content chat as effectively (apparently it can run by way of its personal Amazon server cluster), it implies that irrespective of how strained servers get, gamers ought to at the least be capable to keep in touch, lag-free.

This isn’t even near the primary time that EVE has made cuts and down-scaled on plans to be able to assist the entire. The largest characteristic to be left behind must be the power to stroll round inside ships and stations. Originally deliberate as a complete on-foot layer to the sport, they ultimately pared it again to only a captain’s cabin aboard your ship, after which dropped it completely after only a few gamers ended up utilizing the characteristic. Around the identical time, in addition they axed Twitch integration, a seldom used and largely pointless characteristic.

Probably the biggest concession EVE makes when it comes to gameplay is Time Dilation. In order to save lots of their servers from bursting into flames throughout bigger battles (encounters on a scale fairly unparalleled within the style), time itself is slowed down as extra ships congregate in a given space. During the biggest of encounters, the sport goes into super-slow-motion as missiles lazily swim via area and super-capital class ships maneuver at a glacial tempo. Case in level: The battle within the video above.

In the grand scheme of issues, this isn’t very main information, however it’s one more instance of CCP being keen to be clear and open with their viewers about what must be modified to be able to preserve the lights on for the enormo-scale area sandbox.

EVE Online is now free to play, with an optionally available subscription permitting entry to bigger and extra specialised (though not essentially higher) ships.

Source

CCP, EVE Online

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