Jita Park Speakers Corner

EVE is not broken. The work of the previous two CSM’s, along with the refocus of CCP on flying in space has been wonderful for the game. Player numbers are climbing again, reversing a 2 year trend. Faction Warfare has driven renewed interest in a large portion of low sec that was so long ignored. The numbers can’t be ignored. If more people are playing, CCP is doing something right.

EVE can be improved. Functionally, there are so many things that make EVE beautiful. First and foremost is that casual players can succeed. CCP built a system that allows both hardcore and casual players to succeed, side by side. What CCP has failed to do however, is to remove some aspects of tedium from the game that still limit casual players. It should not require a player to sit for 4 hours inside a starbase clicking “online”. Think about it. We’ve built a system capable of faster than light travel across the stars, but a starbase can’t queue up it’s commands? There are common sense improvements like these in most aspects of the game. Sometimes it just takes a fresh set of eyes to see the forest through the trees.

EVE can become more interactive. The EVE universe has a fairly robust API that is unique in the gaming world. I can be sitting on a train and check my market orders in Jita. Now, imagine that instead of checking them, I can adjust them. Imagine that I can manage my corporation membership and roles from outside the EVE Client. Now, I’m not suggesting we replace tasks that required flying in space, or exceed the limits of the existing game, but allowing tasks to be completed outside of the game adds a new level of interactivity. The system is already in place with the EVE API, it just needs to be tweaked to allow two way interaction with the game. CREST is a great start, but shepherding it through completion is going to be a special area of focus for me.

EVE has shown its staying power. Develop and publish a 5 year plan for the game. This allows you to incrementally implement major changes without shocking the system. Develop expansion benchmarks for the long term processes so that the long term change takes jumps during expansions and steps during patches, eventually arriving at the completed change.

EVE can become more data rich. CCP has a ton of statistics that they break out from time to time. They show things like ship production, mining numbers, modules in use and so on. Let’s work on getting this data to players in a timely fashion, both in and out of the game, in a way that doesn’t compromise the sandbox.

The sandbox is paramount. CCP has built one of the richest player driven economies in the game. The interaction between the player mining veldspar in high sec and the Erebus being blown up in null sec, is rich, complex and a fundamental requirement of the game. Any changes that will strip this core away need to be taken very carefully and with a lot of time for the community to investigate potentially unseen impacts. Fortunately, CCP tends to agree with this idea as well.

If you'd like to know more, visit my blog - http://artctura.com/ where you can get to know myself and my ideals better.

Signed

I have it on good authority that Artctura is getting on the next CSM.

Looking forward to the fresh ideas you bring to the table Art!

+1 Best of luck you have my vote.

You've got my vote.

This discussion thread reminds me of the one HitIer started just before he announced his candidacy.

You have my axe! And all my votes!

This goes out to all the magazines that supported me. All the mom & pop stores.