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WiS, Extra-Vehicular Activities and the CSM Minutes.
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Vin Hellsing
#1 - 2013-01-16 17:39:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Vin Hellsing
Extra-vehicular Activities
Here's a letter I sent to Trebor:

Vin Hellsing wrote:
Hello.

I read the first few pages of your CSM minutes (after running a search for mentions of Walking in Stations, with no hits), and I noticed that by Page 11, that you guys were talking about rampant paranoia and other issues preventing newbies from getting engaged with corporations.

Well, I have an idea! You remember the EVA demo they did at the last FanFest - ExtraVehicular Activities. Exploring the ruins of stations and such.

Why not make the most basic skills for EVA easy to train for and make it emphasized that newbies should be helping corporations with EVA activities, and use it as a means of building the relationship between the newbie and the corporation?

There are various potential scenarios available.

Plus, this would allow CCP to iterate on the featureset of Incarna that had been neglected since Burn Jita (orphaned features are NOT a good thing!).

Expanding on this, if we were to implement EVA activities, we could create a deeper gameplay aspect. Here's a scenario:

Extra Vehicular Activity Dramatization wrote:
You are the newbie in the corporation. You've been tasked with helping explore the wreck of an ancient Amarran station in the City of God. You have a partner on the outside in an Anathema, with scanners at the ready. You're trying to find your way to what appears to be a location within the station that has a high metal density (possible riches, materials, etc).

Your skills prevent you from being able to scan your way through the station by yourself, thereby requiring your partner in the Anathema to continually scan the Station to give you a good picture of what's going on in the station. This information helps the newbie navigate deeper into the station towards the objective. Once the player reaches it, the goods are recovered to his ship, and he must now navigate his way out of the station as well.

It's basically an exploration gameplay that gets riskier when you move out into lowsec and nullsec - the chance that you, the EVA player, could get stranded because your partners either had to flee or got blown up, becomes even higher. (Risk vs Reward)

Walking In Stations
And then there's the Walking in Stations concept that CCP had been working on during Incarna. It got shelved because of Burn Jita. Instead of it being exclusive to each station you're docked at, why not just make it a holodeck? Have it connect all users who opt to leave their CQ, and provide various services that you would typically find in an avatar-based sci-fi MMORPG. NeX store with actual demonstration models, player-owned storefronts that sell goods, cafes, a plaza that looks out into space, and maybe even personal booths that let you change the view to whatever station you want it to be (provided that you've been there before) so you can watch things like the constant parade of ships outside Jita 4-4, or a battle for sovereignty outside your NullSov alliance's station.

We have players who don't go into space often, and this featureset would provide a social platform for those people. In addition, this would greatly enhance Live Events hosted by CCP in the world of New Eden. Who here hasn't wanted to actually meet Tibus Heth face to face, and try to punch him? Who has wanted to meet Otro Gariushi (now-deceased), and shake his hand? Who has wanted to broker shady backdoor deals in a face-to-face setting? Edit: Who has also wanted to have actual in-avatar meetings for Alliances?

I guarantee you, there are people who have wished for the above, and so much more. If we made EVE a more personal place to be, where you could literally look the other player's avatar in the eye and then declare war, it makes the world so much more engaging.

I hope you all will appreciate these ideas going forward, and support their implementation!

Sincerely,
Vin Hellsing

P.S. Due to the changes with CCP's plans for each expansion, it's possible for them to include a little bit of everything with each expansion (PvP, PvE, Tiercide, Incarna updates, etc), that way, everybody gets something out of the deal. Therefore, I am advocating for CCP to at least continue work on the Incarna featureset to ensure that WiS does not become an orphaned feature.
Pieter Tuulinen
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#2 - 2013-01-16 21:13:23 UTC
Whilst I think that CCP's focus really ought to be on completing the ship rebalances and doing something meaningful with PvE, I support the premise that more needs to be done with the WiS technology that gave us these wonderful avatars but doesn't let us do much of anything with them.

At present there seems to be no publicly available development arc that tells us where CCP intends to run with this technology and I would very appreciate seeing something to that effect, as well as being able to see 'baby steps' improvements in things 'out of pod' - recognising that this is not a first line development priority.

For the first time since I started the conversation, he looks me dead in the eye. In his gaze are steel jackhammers, quiet vengeance, a hundred thousand orbital bombs frozen in still life.
Vin Hellsing
#3 - 2013-01-16 21:51:37 UTC  |  Edited by: Vin Hellsing
One of the biggest problems is getting people to look past the stigma of Incarna and get them to understand that EVE needs to expand into newer fields. ExtraVehicular Activity is one such field that could enrich the EVE experience, and make it so much more personal.

If CCP wants to implement these features, they would need to package it into some kind of theme that fits with their new development style for expansions. Since EVA is a form of exploration and salvage, it could inevitably be used to create a second Apocrypha expansion that adds more to exploration, R&D and other fields that have been somewhat lacking in recent years.

Hell, why not make it possible to rehabilitate old, abandoned stations in highsec (would be very expensive) for player alliances to use that would end up requiring the use of EVA? This would prompt a new age of exploration and expansion in EVE Online.

Or, why not implement EVA in conjunction with Sleeper sites in W-Space? This would create a new level of exploration in W-Space, and subsequently, a high level of challenge.

I mean, look at this devblog. It's a perfect opportunity to bring a new facet to Exploration in EVE that ensures that the resources created in Incarna, do not go to waste.
Vin Hellsing
#4 - 2013-01-17 00:02:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Vin Hellsing
A set of new ideas to go with Extra-Vehicular Activities:

This came out of a discussion with a friend in TEST, and we think it's actually a viable concept. It ties in with the original EVA example I cited in the original post.

Station Salvage
There are three station types: V1, V2, and V3. These stand for "Value Level", which indicates the worth of the station.

Let's say there's a bunch of stations, at least one for each system in all of EVE, that has been seeded. A large percentage of these abandoned/wrecked stations are V1 and V2, and a VERY small percentage of them are V3.

V1 Station: Contains large amounts of minerals, resources or items. The station itself is a total loss.
V2 Station: Contains obscene amounts of valuable resources, or has salvageable station components that can be reused.
V3 Station: Can be rehabilitated via EVA and heavy industrial activity.

The real gem of this is the V3 Station - these would have a 1 in 3 million chance of spawning in a Mission that's given to you by an agent. If you have the proper mods, you can scan down the station to determine its value, and that would result in either V1 V2 or V3. A V3 from a mission is like hitting a $1 billion lottery. There will be measures in place to prevent others from "stealing" the discovery from the original discoverer, such as "claiming" the station in the form of a Genuine Bookmark that can be auctioned off. Additionally, V3 stations that have been discovered (and its Genuine Bookmark claimed by the discoverer) will not appear on scanners (both probe and on-ship). If the Genuine Bookmark has not been claimed after a time, the station will become visible to high-skilled exploration players in the form of a Magnetometric Site.

This Genuine Bookmark is also basically the Key to the Station. The Key will essentially also allow your corporation to rehabilitate the station into a functional, dockable, and claimable station. Once the rehabilitation is complete, the Key will be automatically consumed, and all rights to the station given to the Corporation that held the key.

To rehabilitate a V3, it is not all that different from building an Outpost in null-sov space. You just need replacement components, and a team of EVA players working on the station from the inside (reactivating circuit breakers, bringing reactors online, etc, etc). Because of this immense amount of investment, most discoverers of a V3 will opt to auction the Genuine Bookmark off on the open market.

And yes, V3 Stations would be seeded in highsec, making them into a form of territory that can be claimed in Empire space by any corporation or alliance (Nullsov alliances would probably only be able to hold one or two of these V3 stations, due to CONCORD/DED limitations - this is to prevent zerging highsec V3s for a single alliance). Wars can be conducted to take these stations.

This is also another idea, tied in with owning a V3 station: If a corporation or alliance gains control of enough V3 stations within a single constellation, they could be granted rights to light cyno fields within the systems their V3 stations are located.

How do you explore these stations in EVA?
Once you discover a station, you can approach it, eject from your ship and then dock with the station via your capsule. Due to debris and nonfunctionality of the station, you can't dock with your ship. (This produces a risk factor in losing your ship while you are EVA, but does not end up with you being podded or any other scenarios involving being killed outside your capsule)

Once you are boots-down in the station, you will need to find your way to the station's interior where the resource of value is located. It may require you to unlock doors or do hacking puzzles in order to bring some of the station's functionality online in order to extract the resource. But the most challenging part is that I like to describe it is "W-Space in Stations".

What does this mean? It means the route you take to get to your destination in the station will not be the same route you take to get back. Due to malfunctions, poor state of decay, and other stuff, debris and stubborn doors will cause your route to be altered dynamically over time. Which brings me to another aspect of exploration: If you brought a friend along in fleet who's in a scan frigate, he can scan the station repeatedly to give you updated information (via a minimap) what your best route back to your capsule is. There will also be advanced trainable skills that will allow you to scan the station's interior by yourself via a handheld device (presumably an equipped item), so that you can solo explore these stations on your own.
Talinth Fortuna
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2013-01-17 00:21:29 UTC
Vin Hellsing wrote:
they could be granted rights to light cyno fields


Bring back Titans to Highsec!
Vin Hellsing
#6 - 2013-01-17 00:44:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Vin Hellsing
Talinth Fortuna wrote:
Vin Hellsing wrote:
they could be granted rights to light cyno fields


Bring back Titans to Highsec!



And funny thing about that...if a Titan broke the law in Empire Space, can you guess what'd happen?

CONCORD wrote:
Username, you have violated the law within the jurisdiction of the DED. Your ship will be automatically self-destructed.


Reason? Simple: Failsafes. CONCORD isn't going to let people have supercapitals without a guaranteed means of protecting others from it. CONCORD and the DED are responsible for firmware updates to Capsuleer hardware, so that'd be an interesting mechanism.