EVE General Discussion

Drugs are delicious. In game drugs that is. Unless they're drugs that are designed by CCP, so that they don't act like drugs at all.

Yet again, CCP had the chance to design something brilliant. Simple and elegant, yet complex and extraordinary. Yet again CCP misses the mark when they were so close to success.

CCP's current design: when you use a booster (take drugs), you have a random chance of a side effect, you don't know what it will be, and for how long, and how intense it is. Note, this occurs while you are under the effect of the drug. Taking more drugs doesn't fix the problem.

This isn't a very good imitation of how real drugs work. There is a much better way to design the system. Here it is:

In game drugs (boosters) should mimic real life drugs. Take one, it does a little, take two, it does more, take a bunch and you can overdose. While you're high, you have little or no adverse effects. The bad effects come afterwards- you have a hangover. The more you take, then more intense the hangover, and the longer it is. Take drugs long enough and you start needing to take them just to get back to 'regular'- you suffer penalties unless you're using a low level of the drug at all times. Continue to use the drugs long enough and you have to increase your minimum dosage to simply have your stats at 'normal'. Sound familiar?

Positive effects should last for minutes or hours, while negative effects should last for hours, days, even weeks. The effects, both positive and negative should have a scaling effect over time. Effectiveness should peak and then taper off, requiring more drugs to maintain the peak, while negative effects should be similar, peaking and then tapering off, but never going away completely until quite a bit (days?) of time has passed.

The point is, boosters/drugs should provide spectacular advantages (100% increase in DPS anyone?) for a short time, with a long enough penalty phase that it compels the player to take some more, just to avoid the "hangover" phase of the boosters. Which in turn delays the negative phase and compounds the problem by making the next negative phase that much more intense/prolonged. Again, sound familiar?

Everything that I suggest above, can be introduced into the game with the existing framework and mechanics. I'm not asking for anything radical when it comes to code redesign. All we're talking about here is the introduction of a few variables and attributes to the existing item structure. Simple stuff, from a programming point of view.

I may come across has harsh and hyper-critical, but I just don't understand why it's so easy to imagine really good game play mechanics and then CCP seems to ignore the obvious and elegant and instead does something else that is clumsy and disappointing. Just think of all the effort that has gone into features and content that just ends up being wasted because nobody uses said features/content (Factional Warfare anyone?).

Anyway, let's discuss: drugs, why they're awesome, and how they should be implemented in game.

Also- if you support the above idea, please add a "like" to the OP. It helps to let me know if you think my ideas have merit.

Elaborate, please.

Why are you trying to get EVE banned in Australia?

I see no real need to have combat boosters 'mimic' real-life drugs. Besides that, I wouldn't want to see people forced to keep buying boosters because their character is 'addicted'.

EDIT: Not that I have any experience with boosters. Feel free to disregard

EDIT: Well, I was offered some once in college but it was just that one time. Kids, you know?

EDIT: It's just a casual/social thing

You really don't want him to do that.

Scooter Kondor for CSM 8 Chairman!

Ponies in spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!

Im not serious, these effects would be ridiculous, but I am trying to point out that Eve is a game, you dont want too much reality here.
The bit about my job though is true, Ive been working for years on mental health cases, a very large number of which have been caused by hard drug use.

Agree. The closer EVE is to reality the more the game will suck. The games economy system is still too close to RL. You need to workd to make ISK. Everything ingame becomes a value. Some people can affort to play EVE hours per day to be successful. Some people can't and that's one reason why people leave the game and the EVE community is not really growing. When you get addicted to drugs ingame the whole mechanic will give you a headache and everything is just focused on taking drugs.

The actual mechanic is fine as it is for a game. You take a pill, you get boosted but with negative sideeffects. It's like taking coca*ne to be awesome for hours. Once the effect is done you feel like the opposite, like sh*t. The EVE drugs are just balancing this kind of effects at the same time for the PvP moment: you will be awesome at repping but with less tank and cap. When you would do it in a way like: awesome repping with same tank and cap, you just finish the fight and keep afk for the hangover (no repping bonus and less tank and cap).

The consequences of the OP must be that drugs ruin your gameplay like drugs will ruin your life if you take too much of them and beeing addicted.

Sooo, what you're saying is you want to expose minors to drug culture and turn them into a market of addicts?

Morality aside, all you're going to have is a group of people who will WTFPWN your supercap in their Ibis.

I like the idea kindof but it is not very good business if players feel the need to quit logging in or unsub just to get off the drugs.

Hello good sir,

I work at a medical research facility, addiction research department. I have to inform you that you are wrong.
Short overview:
C-ocaine: could possibly kill you via cardiac arrest or stroke, yes.
H-eroin: kills a lot of people, but strictly dose dependant. Highly addictive, but low doses are harmless as far as your vital functions are concerned. After all, opioids are used in pain therapy for ages without killing off the patients.
Amphetamine/Metamphetamine: Could also kill you quickly, not very likely but possible.
Cannabis: There are no THC-receptors in the brain stem, so it simply isn't possible to have a lethal overdose. High doses could cause a psychosis, but could never kill you.
LSD:also very likely to cause psychosis, there is a lethal dose (LD 50), I am not quite sure how high it was but it was ridiculously high.
Shrooms: Lethal dose was somewhere around 10 pounds, iirc. so good luck eating all those.
Benzodiazepines: Extremely high doses may lead to asphyxiation, especially if you are suffering from certain neurological sicknesses or are using them together with opioids. Low doses are harmless. They are widely used as tranquilizers without killing all the patients.
PCP: nasty one. But even here it is more likely that it drives you insane and makes you cut off your head with a chainsaw than outright kill you.

But back on topic and to OP: Why should the boosters in EVE mimic real life drugs? This is science fiction, after all...
edit: stupid wordfilter....