Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A few friends of mine were kicking back on vent last night, and discussing the tendency in video games to dumb-down the game in order to appeal to the masses. And specifically some of the scanning changes.

We (of course) all want to see Eve kept 'hardcore', but my assertion was that old games constantly need new blood, or they die out. CCP has made great strides towards making the game more accessible to newer players, and it has to be remembered that there's a key difference between making a game easier, and making it more accessible.

For example, a tutorial makes a game more accessible, but not any easier. And putting the signatures on auto-scan definitely made the game more accessible, but I argued, did not make the game any easier in aggregate. It's easier for players to notice a new sig popping up. But harder to hunt players as a result (you're under more time pressure to catch them). Easier for some, harder for others, and overall, the game remains as difficult as before.

Anyway, this led to a discussion on how we could make the game more accessible to new players, without spoon-feeding them or destroying the game. Here at the ideas that came from that discussion:


1: Faction Warfare status updates.

Play them in every major hub in that faction's space. Perhaps all 1.0 and 0.9 systems. Maybe include the current market hubs, rens, hek, dodi, amarr, jita. Perhaps Jita 4-4 could have news from ALL factions!

-eg: "Minmmatar warriors have increased their control over System XYZ! The control has risen to level 4. Blah Blah..."

-Gives new players a constant window into what's happening in the game.
-Keeps FW players informed while they chill in high sec.
-creates esprit de corps for a faction.


2: Give the Billboards and captain's quarters TV's something to display. Allow players to run a news channel.

-Channel switching interface needed. Preferentially a way to navigate quickly to favorite channels.
-Channel creation interface needed. Perhaps as simple as allowing corps to create channels.
-Inactivity mechanism needed: If you don't update your channel for two weeks, it disappears from the 'TV'.
-Rule needed to stop corp recruitment spam: No more than 10% of the content (by word count, space, or by video display time) may be advertising.
-Expands the horizons of newer Eve players as the news will often feature something they didn't know about.
-Offers a mechanism for players to earn isk for promoting your game and adding content. Advertisers will pay good isk to quality channels to feature their product, corp, or otherwise.
-Gives us something to watch while chilling in our captain's quarters.
-Makes those stargate billboards useful.
-CCP can promote it's own products this way, with the players hosting a channel providing the exposure.
-Creates a new profession in Eve: Media Tycoon. Eve is real, brothers, Eve is real...

Eve news... Hell yes.
I like OP's ideas and agree that eve should not be dumbed down further.