EVE General Discussion

From what I understand of looking at how SC will work, it will be largely the same type of thing as EVE, only there will be a system working in the background to bring you into PvP situations (instances), or leave your (e.g.) mission instance open to crashing by others, only to the degree you want to, based on a slider. There are a few other refinements, some quite clever, but basically it's not going to be all that different.

What Roberts meant by "waiting for the technology" was more just the detailed rendering aspect, I believe.

Elite: Dangerous is another kettle of fish. David Braben is probably smarter than the whole playerbase of EVE and SC combined. With Elite he (with his equally brainy university chums) changed how videogames were conceptualized, and judging from the development videos, he's being just as clever with his new game.

Elite: Dangerous is probably going to be the game that the original CCP developers wanted to make way back in the dim, distant mists of time - i.e. it is, in fact, going to be a multiplayer Elite, with full loot, etc. But how he handles the "E", the environment, is going to be procedurally generated, over a core region of known stars in our nearby galactic environment.

The possibility of procedural generation means something more like what the OP is asking for. But it can't be done that way in EVE, so far as I know. Or at least, it could be done (all things are possible) but it would take such a huge overhaul that it wouldn't be much bang for buck for CCP to do it.

(I actually fear much more for the consequences re. EVE's population from Elite: Dangerous than I do from SC. SC is going to be filled with people who tried EVE and didn't like it. Elite, well, that's going to be filled with a fair number of EVE players - specifically, those who love EVE's freedom, but think the space combat gameplay in EVE is intrinsically boring, which is a fair old number, I think.)

I think you will find it was Ian Bell that was the "university chums" you refer to.

And it was his lack of presence (for whatever reasons) that made Frontier and First Encounters enormous empty realisticly modelled universes with nothing to do and utterly awful spacecraft controls.

I am keen to see what Elite IV is like, but I don't hold out for it being the open world that EvE is, or of it giving you what you are after.

Procedurally generated is one thing, but it isnt what makes a hidden cache of gold hidden.

Ill be pleasantly suprised if E:D becomes a reality; Ill be even more suprised if it works.

Well, it's more of a thing and more in a working state than SC is at the moment, that's for sure If I were a betting man, I'd bet on E:D more than SC, although Roberts is himself obviously no slouch when it comes to making successful videogames (if not movies - *ptoo*).

SC vs E:D = Beatles vs Stones. Moar space games!!!

What i meant was that it has nothing to do With point of view or graphical attributes ect. Its the setup that deny us the abilities to fly where we want.

I just wanted to point out that EVE is (or was, as they arnt adding static elments right this very second) procedurally generated. Stars, planets, moons, (NPC and capturable) stations, gates and the like are (mostly) procedurally generated, with the exception of things like the Jita bypass gates. You guys didn't seriously think CCP placed every stargate and moon by hand, did you?

It's a design choice. Players are forced to interact with each other through a number of pre-determined chokepoints in the system. This forced interaction provides "player-generated content". This savannah is specifically made this way so you have only a limited path to run from the lions, and you can't really hide.

Basically, nothing should be ever completely safe. And by allowing unlimited free flight within the universe, you either destroy the whole system of forced interaction chokepoints, or limit them to stations, markets and player structures such as POSes.

Will it be better? Personally, I think that of course yes. But such is CCP's vision, and it it highly unlikely to change in this game's lifetime. Also, lots of people play specifically to... uhm... "create content" for the hapless herbivores that can't run away, and, believe me, those people will rage and wave their pitchforks like there is no tomorrow should CCP, for example, ever remove gate camping as a "feature".

I had an idea for transwarp awhile back. Basically it let you warp directly to other stars (not the same thing as my star jump idea linked in my sig), by a simple method of using the base warp speed of your ship and factoring in a 20x multiplier.

So your 2 AU/s ship would transwarp at 40 au/s. Would add a lot of strategy to an otherwise largely predictable meta game.

A single star system alone is massive. Finding some outpost or ruin in the middle of nowhere is not feasible unless you have some method of detection (i.e. scans). This idea would only work if outposts etc. were placed very near other known objects.