Koopman van Luxe
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Posted - 2011.02.22 23:24:00 -
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 Originally by: Vincent Athena
The inconsistency is that up to now getting into and out of a pod has been portrayed as a long, difficult process that is physically and psychologically stressful. Now, to keep docking and undocking times unchanged, yet allow an avatar to be on the balcony, it seems getting into and out of the pod will be fast and easy. Its a big change, and without an explanation it is immersion breaking for existing players or anyone reading existing lore.
There are things that CCP can do, like say new pods just became available that contain the decanting equipment on board, and a new drug relieves the stress, allowing fast ingress and egress. Also, say that our implants have a wireless access mode, that allows limited functions even when we are out of the pod and includes a system to transfer our minds to the med clone even if we die outside the pod.
That way you still need to be in the pod to properly fly the ship, but being out of it is not such a big deal.
This is a good point, but all the same you don't really want to go through a full animation of this whole exiting the capsule thing every time you dock, do you? I'd say it's an acceptable break from immersion for the purpose of game flow.
When you dock with a station, you are treated to a quick message that you ship will be 'towed into the station', seconds before your ship automagically pops into the station. This isn't very immersive, stations are gigantic things with a limited number of docking bays, sometimes only one on the far side from where you warped in. If the game treated this realistically, docking would take an absolutely painful amount of time. 10 minutes watching your ship slowly maneuver on its own to the docking bay, more time doing who knows what else is required to dock with these things. It can't actually be possible to dock, do all the things we do in the station, and undock in the space of a few minutes. Imagine doing this every time you docked.
Instead, you just pop in. All that junk happens off-screen, for simplicity's sake. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say the same thing happens with leaving the capsule.
For those of you worried that your internet spaceships will be RUINED FOREVER, don't assume and stress over the worst possibility. Stress is bad for you! Perhaps it could work this way: docking with a station would work the same as it does now, with a modified station interior model where the camera is fixed in a 'cheap' balcony model. You press a button somewhere or right click to release the camera and spin your ship if that's all you want to do. No real difference in immediate load times.
CQ assets can get prefetched in the background but wouldn't do anything other than take up a bit of memory until a big "Go to Captains Quarters" button is pressed, at which point you are treated to a nice animation of a camera flyby from the balcony, through your quarters, stopping in the pod dock where you arrive and exit the capsule in a short animation.
There could be an option in the graphics menu to disable the prefetching of CQ assets, for those with multiple memory-starved clients or those who simply do not care to use the feature. This would address many worries brought up in this thread, or so I hope.
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