I have had a bit of time to play with some aspects of Rhea since it dropped earlier this week. The first thing I did was futz with my monitors and graphics card, got my setup running Eve across three screens, then bee-lined for Thera on an alt. Bee-lined doesn’t really make much sense, bees don’t fly in straight lines. Anyway, I went to Thera.
First, Eve with PBR is gorgeous, especially blown out across three monitors. Things are pretty. The only exception is planets. The resolution on the texture map for planets is not holding up well when you get up close. This has always been true, but with the new ship effects and with the added effect of three monitors of width, it is very noticeable. But, damn, the game is looking pretty! You can see crepuscular rays around your ship, which is lovely.
Second, the new UI is flat. I am torn on the whole flat UI debate. In some cases it works well, in others it looks weird. I think Eve falls somewhere in the middle. I’ll have to give it some time, but overall I am finding things quickly enough. I do like how the game picks a UI color scheme based on the race of your pilot. A little touch, but it makes cycling through alts a bit easier to mentally manage. I have three accounts, and use some 7 of the characters very regularly, so I appreciate that little visual distinction. My alts span the races. I suppose if you have alts of the same race, it might be a bit less useful. My main three characters are Gallente, Caldari, and Minmatar, so it works for me.
Thera itself was both amazing and a bit of a letdown, as these things always are. I went in, and quickly investigated the various lore sites. By the time I got there the station camps had died down, but lots of cloaked gankers were hanging about. I learned this when I went to pick up some corpses, because why not pick up corpses? A bomber almost got me, but I was cognizant enough to fly away from the point and get safe and cloaked again. I ended with four corpses, for the record.
I was disappointed to learn that the Epicenter, in Thera and in other Shattered wormholes, only has “violent wormholes”, not ones you can really jump through. There are a lot of attendet structures, some with Talocan in the name, so I am curious to see where this goes. Those violent wormholes have to be part of something bigger. I was actually hoping those sites would be weird intersections where you have to deal with all sorts of player tomfoolery, but that is not the case. You just have to worry about gankers, at least for now.
The size of Thera was impressive. One of my corpmates hates it, and won’t be going back. I like the sense of space if gives. Thera is huge. The grids are also huge. I estimate that most of the grids I landed on were at least 650km. While not unheard of, that is bigger than most grids I find in Eve, not being part of crazy null sec fleet battles.
I also got into one shattered wormhole outside of Thera. It was a C3 with a mix of sites. We cleared it, and then I checked out the epicenter. It appeared to be the same as in Thera. Then we got some barges and reminded ourselves why we import ice products instead of mine them.
Overall, I am happy. I have not tried the new destroyers yet, as I don’t have much of a use case for them yet, but we’ll see. I plan on taking my scanning alt on a trip to see if she can’t find some more lore sites in shattered wormholes. Who knows what we might find. I hope more.