Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Dear CCP,

My husband and I have been playing EVE since 2006. My two favorite things to do in game are exploration and salvage. The way they are implemented in the game is nice but there is so much potential to make these really fun activities that I find myself frustrated by what I can’t do. Here are a couple of suggestions that I think would be fun for a veteran like myself and even help address two other concerns:

1) Giving new players something to do early in their careers
2) Encouraging and giving incentive for players to explore low sec and null sec areas.

Also, the skills necessary for these activities are already in game and training in them will be useful throughout a player’s whole career.

Exploration missions offered by agents for Corp Standings – An artifact was mistakenly jettisoned out in so and so sector. Need someone to recover this artifact. Go to mission region. Scan down jettisoned pod. Recover artifact from can…need codebreaking/analyzing/salvaging skill at mission level.

Salvage missions offered by agents for Corp Standings – there has been an accident in space, go out and clean up the wreckage at so and so location…instead of regular salvage and modules can give you special mission salvage parts that you turn in. I used to try to get my husband to run fighting missions just so I could clean up the wreckage. Would do these for loyalty points, and corporation standing in a minute! More fun than courier or mining missions if you don’t want to fight anything.

Artifact Collections - One of the games I tried this last year was RIFT…my number one favorite thing about rift was their artifact system. Hunting artifact collections was so fun…trying to find that last rare artifact to complete each set. Many times while I hunted artifacts I thought about how if only EVE had artifacts for me to hunt and scan down and collect in EVE I would never have felt the need to try other games. It seems like artifact hunting would fit in really well with the different races and lore of EVE. It also seems like it would be so easy to implement since the system for exploration sites is already there…the problem with exploration sites as they stand right now is that I find the ACT of scanning the sites down is what is fun for me…once I find them they have nothing that I really want to do. Right now I can find:

Grav belt…well okay great if I like mining but it is not my favorite activity.

Fighting site…well sometimes I get carried away scanning things and then I find I am 20 jumps away from my other ships. I never seem to have the right ship for the sites I find (i.e. gate restrictions).

Radar and Mag sites…my favorite but so few and far between and I still usually have to switch out for a fighting ship, kill mobs, switch back, open cans, find stuff that is useful if I want to do invention but I am not an inventor so why am I really doing this?

I can so imagine artifacts seeded throughout EVE, me and my trusty Buzzard combing the entire Universe for that one elusive artifact to complete a collection. You could make artifacts regional so that I would have to explore all the different regions to find them all, make some in null sec and some in wormholes…it would be a great way to lure someone like me who would never go looking for trouble into dangerous areas for all you PVPers to kill. Give me some pittance for completing each set like RIFT did and then some big prize like a special exploration ship to attain after I get some impossibly big amount…make it hard! I only left RIFT after I got the one and only large prize they offered for artifact hunting (a special mount). If you keep giving me some elusive prize to work toward I will be playing EVE for the next 10 years! This also seems like it could be a fun activity for new players to do while they are skilling up to get into bigger ships.

I think most of these suggestions would be fairly easy to implement as it would seem to require only small modifications to already existing systems. It seems like it could be an activity that would appeal to a veteran like me but also something a new player could do as well. If you do it right it would also provide a really great incentive to someone like me to go into risky areas where all you predators can hunt me! All I want is an activity that I can do in an exploration ship without having to bring two other types of ships with me to switch out if I actually find something….I would travel into the farthest reaches of null sec if I knew that when I found that can I could open it and might find a rare artifact inside….catch me if you can at those gates!

I just skimmed through the post, since it's a fairly large block of text, but it seems like the gist of what you're saying is "I want exploration sites, but I don't want to have to explore to find them, just have an agent make them and then probe them down". This is completely contrary to the whole point of exploration.

Also, there is plenty of exploration content for both newbs and experienced explorers. You just have to ... explore to find it.

Thanks for the feedback so far but I think those that have responded have missed a bit of my point. My point is not that I think we need to change how current exploration works. I love exploration. I have done it almost exclusively since 2007. I have mined the grav belts, I have done the fighting sites, I have sold my invention stuff for ISK, I have even done invention. What I am looking for at this point is a way to get MORE fun exploration, to expand on a great system to include some new challenges and new things to hunt for.


As for:


I am not sure why wanting an alternative non-fighting option to the current courier "load cargo in my ship, autopilot to station, unload cargo" is a bad thing when I am asking for an active replacement like "go scan down the objective and bring it back". Just like with mining missions you don't get real ore from a mining mission, you get mission ore just to turn in for corp standing. That what I was thinking off with the artifact and salvage mission suggestions. Isn't anyone else ready for a new mission type after all these years?

The last artifact suggestion was NOT supposed to be obtainable from missions. These would be the real artifacts that would be something you would have to scan down just like a radar or grav site and would have all the risks involved in normal exploration. I would have a hard time believing a real exploration enthusiast would have an issue with having the option to find MORE stuff in space.

Less thinking, more cooking, TIA.

This man knows what's good for him, wife aggro = worst aggro

That said it's nice to see husband and wife teams working together, for some reason Eve doesn't overly appeal to female gamers, I would be pleased to see the female subscriber base increase in line with other MMOs and online games, even if only to see the tears when some [stereotype] neckbeard basement dweller [/stereotype] realises hes just been wtfbbqpwnd by a woman who he thinks should be in the kitchen

TL;DR Eve needs more female gamers