CCP Manifest wrote:
**Please note this will not include access to the internal video making software our video team uses, at least not in any near term timeframe. Wanted to get that out of the way now as the hurdles for doing so are just too high. Perhaps EVE Probe will get us closer though!
On this note, I would like to say that some of us are quite opposed to the notion of any kind of 'Battle Recorder', or other means to play back recorded Eve netcode (like the /record and /demo commands from some shooters of yore).
A game like Counter-Strike. or even World of Tanks, is essentially sport. A game of football or a motor race lends itself well to endless replays, to be carefully discussed, studied and enjoyed.
Eve is an open world sandbox that benefits from the 'Fog of War'. Information is power and it's important that people have to work for that information. I'm not sure I'd like anyone to be able to record everything on a grid and play it back at their leisure.
Positioning on a grid is vital to strategy. Not every Fraps recording will show you exactly where a dictor was before it cloaked or which ship from a tightly knit group dropped a cyno. From overview ranges you can extrapolate some information about the spatial positioning of a hostile fleet but never to the same extent as being able to pan around them at your leisure.
Presently, one person's recording may be less valuable than another's. One person may not be on grid at the right time, or have the right overview settings, or do a 'Look At' on the right ship to see who is neuting who... or precisely which ship was smartbombing which drones.. and so on.
My best scout should not be interchangeable with my worst. Otherwise they would not need to even be present at all and we could just send recorded replay files to them after the event.
As Eve players, the hours and days we invest into tracking fleets or events that interest us - or even spying - all involves actually playing the game. I'd rather be rewarded for playing the game as opposed to getting a file in my email that contains all the answers I seek. It's also - frankly - more exciting to turn to your best scout and send him out on a mission like some sci-hero, rather than saying "here, this file has the answers, study from timestamps 41:23 to 59:40".
Sharing with someone a Fraps recording of what
you saw is very different to offering them a window to freely explore for themselves what
happened.
An integral aspect on which the Eve-Is-Real motif hinges is to be able to say, "I was there, this is what I saw".