Monday, September 7, 2009

Alliance Tournament 7 - Looks Good!

If you play Eve or have a friend who plays Eve there is a good chance that you have heard about Alliance Tournament 7. Over the weekend CCP had the first rounds of competition, and let me say that the production quality is top notch.

The announcers were all well chosen candidates. They keep the information coming and do a great job of explaining the nuances for someone who isn't as familiar with all of the PVP mechanics. Crovan from The Drone Bay, one of my favorite Eve podcasts, can be heard covering several of the matches.

There are a couple of new graphics added to the videos showing which teams are which at the start of the round. The new particle effects are great to see and they really bring a new level of flare to what otherwise might be some outdated explosions and firing effects.

Now that CCP has allowed remote repairing back into the matches, it has slowed things down a bit, but at least makes the combat more realistic. It's also neat to see some tech 3 ships duking it out in the heat of battle.

My only real complaint is that sometimes the visuals are hard to match up with what the announcers are talking about. Perhaps zooming the camera back a bit so that viewers can get a better idea of the distances would help. Also the addition of a system that would allow us to see the ships that the announcers are speaking about would be great. It's a little awkward when we don't get to see the kills because the camera is focused on some other element of the battle.

Otherwise they are great fun to watch and I recommend that everyone (even non Eve players) go check them out.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with your observations. Commentators have been great, watching the new tech 3's in action cool - but trying to follow what is going on visually more difficult.

    Perhaps a separate view of ships for each side outside the actual video, showing their status (including webbing, dampening etc) would help.

    Then in game they could literally have a view on EACH SHIP, and someone viewing the website could click on the ship and see the camera view on it.

    Really ... not that hard since all the views are there, CCP just has to set up multiple cameras (i.e. multiple observation ships: 20) Then simply digitize each run. Would be well worth it.

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