A Newbie's View of Inferno

So, Inferno has been out for a couple of days now.  Now, I'm a newb and not all that used to the old interface yet, so my reaction is a lot more positive than many people who I've been seeing on the forums.

The New UI

A lot of people have been hating on the new UI.  I really like it, though.  It keeps all my stuff in one place instead of having to use two different buttons for ships and items, something that I always found annoying.  The new filters make finding ammo, skillbooks, and modules in the morass of items I keep at my home base much, much easier.  My only real problem with it is that it is extremely slow to load compared to the old inventory, which leads to a few problems.

Just recently, I was doing a Level Two mission called "Stop the Thief" where I faced a lot of incoming damage from Mercenary Elite Fighter missile frigates.  I knew going into it that my artillery cruiser's DPS wouldn't be enough to cut down enough frigates before they got through my shields, so I decided to kill the NPC carrying the objective, who was conveniently named "the Thief," and take the item he dropped.  Unfortunately, when I finally managed to reach his wreck to loot it, I had to wait several seconds for the loot menu to appear, where previously it had popped up instantly.  This allowed the missile frigates to get in two more volleys against me, cutting about a third of the way through my  armor and costing a few hundred thousand ISK in repair bills.

Still, the new UI is quite nice and overall very functional.  Good job CCP!

The Missile Effects

Eye candy is awesome.  We all know that, and its awesomeness comes out in force with the new missile effects.  I wasted 144 Nova Light Missileson my CEO's Loki just to watch the pretty trails and explosions, something nice to do while I mine.  Now, I'm actually looking forwards to seeing a few rats around; it looks like Christmas at the Griswolds'.

The snazzy V3 launchers do look a bit out of place on the crappy old Minmatar V2 models though.  Looking forwards to the next update when Minmatar ships finally get V3 models.

The V3 Amarr Ships

They look wonderful, truly wonderful.  The gold now looks like real metal instead of that cheap plastic you find on kids' toys, and the tacky-looking blood red is now gone in favor of something more realistic.  In short, Amarr ships no longer look like oversized plastic toys and have finally claimed the glory they really deserve.  The glint of light off of the new silver and gold is almost as good as the shininess of new ISK in my wallet.

Everything Else

I don't have too much to say about the rest of Inferno, considering that I haven't really noticed it.  I know they made major changes to Factional Warfare, but I've never done that and don't really even know what it is.  I also know they switched up the wardec system, but I doubt my corp will be wardecced any time soon.  If we are, we've got a nasty surprise up our sleeve, so I'm not too afraid of anything other than maybe losing my own ship, which I accept is a possibility whenever I click the undock button.

Despite the people raging on the forums these days, I think Inferno is quite a worthy expansion.  I enjoy everything that CCP has done in it so far and look forwards to more updates like this.  Devs, good job taking EVE in the right direction!