EVE General Discussion

So forums ate my last post, disappoint I am now on second page :(



Sounds like sandbox to me, you can go for buffs that are expensive, permanent and low risk (implants, good PvP set should set you back around 6 bil), or you could go for buffs that are cheap, temporary, and high risk (reworked boosters that could bork your clone). Or you could go absolutely batshit crazy and go for both, if you are willing to risk borking a multi-billion ISK clone.


Now onto the bulk of the OP
I think this is a fantastic idea, boosters atm are standard fare for PvP cargo bays, this shouldn't really be the case.
There should be almost the same dilemma over whether to use boosters in game as there would be if you were to use drugs IRL.

I'd do this by implementing the system you suggest, being able to stack pills for added effect and bringing in severe consequences if you choose to overdo them such as addictions and withdrawals.

I'd like to tweak the short-term negative aspects of boosters to maybe attempt to emulate drug induced psychosis. Some poorly thought out examples of this could be that while 'high' on drugs your perceptions cannot be trusted like they should, maybe have this represented in game by targets displaying false readouts of remaining HP, or if more intoxicated maybe blues appearing as red on overview (and vica versa), or people showing as flagged when they aren't, or even more intoxication starts to display false ships on overview, or perhaps starts showing that Diemos as a thorax, that Raven as a CNR, that rifter as a Freki.
Customary RL analogy: The guy that's just smashed 4 hits of PCP has near superhuman strength, but he's also incapable of telling friend from foe, or even what is really going on in the world around him.

As you can see, there are many interesting and dynamic penalties that can be applied to the pilot rather than the ship.
When you get drunk and drive, you don't crash because your car obtains a -30% penalty to steering response, you crash because your perceptions are skewed, your inhibitions are gone, and your response time is shot.

Long term penalties should be focused around addiction, you get addicted you suffer withdrawals without your drug.
withdrawals imo should be mostly in the form of attribute reduction (think of it like a -4 implant)

The other negative I'd like to see, is that stacking drugs should exponentially increase your chance of a fatal overdose (instead of a stacking penalty like mods). Lets pull some numbers out of my arse here and say that popping 3 strong exile should equate to a 50% chance of fatal overdose, when you OD your clone dies in it's ship, you wake up in a clone bay, and your ship is left floating in space as if you ejected.
To balance this out a bit there could maybe be a 0% OD chance on a single dose.

Your clone should obviously be cured of addiction if it dies, but there should probably be some sort of 'detox' booster, like a 2 week treatment program you can go through to ween yourself off the drugs. Make it 10x (another arse number) more costly than the drug itself and you got yourself a great little mechanic.



Gotta say some of the complaints on this thread are asinine, people taking the new form of boosters should be well aware of the risks going in. If someone is stupid enough to totally screw up their char and quit the game, how is that any different to the idiot that pours all his money into a faction ship, takes it to lowsec, gets popped and quits?

Because RL drugs are made of space gas, so they all have to work the same way...

STOPPED READING THERE

I, too, wish for the introduction of ketamine to make my character's come downs feel less soul destroying.

In game DMT would be nice too, just to make burn Jita more entertaining.

Add side effects such as randomly losing targets, making the screen blurry, randomly warping to some celestial, and waking up the next morning with a massive headache. No clone jumping during hangover effects :)

If you prefer realism perhaps you should try taking real drugs while playing eve.

I think this would be an excellent addition to the game.


Can you provide an example of someone dropping dead because they smoked a single joint?

Hey man, that's a piece of my life I've put behind me. I don't need a bloody game to start giving me withdrawal flashbacks.

Also, making the drugs more realistic would hike up this game's rating to at least 18+ which, while probably having a positive effect on the community, would pull the game out of certain stores. This, as you can guess, is a bad thing.

To be perfectly honest - yes, the boosters (I would note that the name is distinct from "drug") do need some kind of overhaul to make their usage more interesting and dynamic or meaningful... but paralleling life overmuch would not be advisable, as others have said more eloquently here. (And with the level of technology Eve has - cybernetics and so on - wouldn't you think a lot of the negative effects of drugs would be minimized or eliminated as well?)

Wouldn't a simple boost - and not one in the 100% range, definitely less than 25% - with a deficit/withdrawal for twice as long afterward work? Perhaps boosters could even be temporary stat modifications, in that they allow you flexibility without permanent change or respec. (Obviously, temporary stat effects would be pretty pointless if stats weren't more useful.)

Increasing DPS is not an effect you could explain through existing lore. Effects like increasing your targeting speed, maximum targets, turret control, accuracy, could, though, be explained through a "mental boost." They would indirectly affect your DPS, but in a way that's less blunt and takes more skill and is generally more interesting. I realize I'm likely stating the obvious here.

Again, running too close to realism isn't that much fun for a game most of us play as play.

I play for two hours a day. Thus having a system in place where a booster works for O(N) hours and provides O(N^2) hours of withdrawal systems would work for me :)

Say for example that using a blue pill for 1 hour would produce 2 hours of withdrawal symptoms, but using for 2 hours would lead to 4 hours of withdrawal. Using another blue pill will remove the symptoms and restore the boosted performance, but then you'd be using for 3 hours and suffer 9 hours of withdrawal.

Then as you use for more hours straight, you have more and more chance of slipping into major withdrawal and suffering more severe side effects while having no way to counter them. 8 hours straight of booster use, then BAM, you're in the medical centre having your blood filtered for 5 days straight before your body is ready for infomorph transfer.

Excellent for casual players :)