Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Problems

1. The trader has no interstellar reference pricing since all the regions have only local regional markets. Agreed that more centralized markets allow every Joe to know what everything is worth and where it's best to buy and sell, while a market with a range per solar system would benefit the smart hauler trader. The trader would spend 10 times longer accumulating the same ISK and LP from Currier missions as he would from Combat, so he better pick up a gun and become a failed-fighter.

2. Due to the crashing market, high competition, overwhelming production and population distribution, the ‘perfect’ builder, which needs too many SPs in empire makes a profit margin of 10-20% on average (low end modules as low as 1-2% and battleships 10-20%, which barely justifies buying the BPO, since there are way too many on the market anyhow. A strict T1 builder just starting would not survive in Empire too long. A no SP builder should be able to build.

3. The scientist has no place in 0.0 since the datacores, the BPOs, the data interfaces, decryptors are all in Empire it is too long, tedious and dangerous to transfer out. The profit margins of the ‘perfect’ scientist and t2 builder have dropped tremendously in the last years due to competition caused by overproduction vs. necessity of those modules. To become a perfect scientist, you require investments of millions of ISK, and over 1 year of skill training, year in which it is impossible to make any money researching, thus forced to be a low-level fighter. Furthermore research is bottlenecked by the 30+ days of wait just to copy the BPOs, as there are no more T2 BPOs.

4. The perfect miner would be lucky to make the same amount of money/items as the low-end missioner who will most likely get those items without BPs, with a higher ‘meta’ level, and some bounties to top it off. Thus unless you have a macro, or 1 billion ISK worth of implants, ship, fitting and you are in 0.0, mining is a waste of time and ISK. Leave the mining for macro-miners, perfect for all people that support their accounts with ISK.

5. The fighter has 4 choices, complexes, ratting, mission-running, or PVP/pirating. Cosmos in empire, low sec and 0.0 is owned by fighters, not builders. By far the most dominant class, with the same SP can make many times the ISK/hour as a starting character over any other class. In the end game it is not the richest, but still the most dominant class, and has proved the central most essential class. Now with LP stores, the fighter class is even more profitable. Has access and is favored in low sectors, is protected from rats at all times.

To further destabilize the market, EVE makes changes in the new patches, that totally changes the value of modules and faction items. An unstable market can not only wreck the game for making things too easy to acquire or not worth acquiring, or decrease the trust in investments due to the instability.
Thus the miner, the builder, the scientist, trader/hauler cannot compare to the fighter, making the game unfair (especially for one who just starts and chooses a random favored class).

Solutions

1. Eliminate Macro Miners: The game should automatically block and ban a miner ship that moves at same coordinates 3 times consecutively. 1 is normal, 2 is chance, 3 is a pattern. Use ProtectShield-like programs to detect against macro programs. Use NPC mining patrols to ask various random questions for miners, and have them answer or be temporarily banned. (Communication that blocks the screen so it cannot be ignored or rejected.) A miner that warps out of the belt when the belt patrol comes should be a suspect. A miner that does not answer the question while switching mining targets will be banned. A miner that does not answer the questions 3 times in 5 days will be permanently banned. (no such thing as AFK for more than 5 min intervals) A player that mines for more than 3 hours straight should be flagged as a suspect, one that mines for more than 6 hours should be investigated. Reduce amount of ore available, reduce ore types in empire, reduce amount of belts in safe sectors.

2. Increase base prices for items to increase profit margins for miners, producers, researchers and traders. Optimal economic structure:

Tech I
Miner/Refiner: Ore (35% profit/day of work)
Component Builder: Components (30% profit/day)
Wholesaler: Buys and Sells in Large on few stations (15% profit/day of sales)
Retail/Trader – Buys, Moves, Distributes and sells on many stations (20% profit/day of sales)
Soldier (ultimate) – Buys all materials created, accumulation of wealth. Should work to rat, pvp, clear complexes for 4 days to afford the components that the Miner/Builder/Wholesaler/Trader made available for him.

SECURITY/ INTELLIGENCE PROBLEMS

Problems

1. Right now the game espionage, counter-espionage and theft system is only based on dirty lies, deceit, backstabbing, cheating and stealing from good people, not making for a good source of relaxation.

2. Much more of this side of the game should be based on individual player skills and intelligence. (i.e. A new player with a purchased skilled character should not always win against an experienced players with lower skills)

Suggestions – Additions

1. Introduce the Espionage to the game with associated Espionage Skill Cluster:
a. Add ability for players to rent ships from NPC corporations for 15% of the price of the ship per week. Lost or stolen ships are to be paid at 125% over the 15% rental fee. Allows poor people to still experience the thrills of their new skills, and know if they wish to buy a ship before spending billions on it.
b. Skill to infiltrate into other people's private conversations (adding twists/dimensions to the game)
c. Skill for Ship Sabotage, allowing users to disable components in mid-flight, destroy cargo/ammo, detonate ship, turn drones against their master, etc... One example just imagine a Gallente Command Ship with unbeatable T2 drones confidently taking on a harmless industrial ship in 0.0… when suddenly hardeners fail and the drones start attacking their master ship, an incredible site giving hope to the weakest)
d. Skill and module for holographic projection. This can disguise any ship as another. Similar to cloaking, this disguise can be dropped when approached at 2500m or closer, or if disengaged. This would reduce the confidence of even the most experienced pirates.
e. Skill to see other people's hangars and steal from them.
f. Skill for counter espionage (can find people's traces of where they've been without agents, their alts, their skills, find out who has a specific item (within a range), ships or locked containers, the market orders or contracts, etc...
g. Skill to look up information about specific people, such as their implants, their skills, their location and their alternative characters.
h. Skills for checking foreign corp. mails, corp. members, corp. accounts, and even to sabotage corp. (e.g.: kick people out of corps, steal money from corp. funds, steal items from hangars, destroy/steal assets from contracts or corp. hangars, etc…)
i. Skill for hacking to do secure containers.
j. Skill to check various local channels remotely from other systems

2. Add corporation security levels measures, many different levels needed for accessing POS, inability to cancel jobs placed by someone else, logging of names of people taking stuff, cancelling jobs or others just as if they were taking money.

3. Introduce military or organizational ranks for a hierarchical structure in corps. Promotions by corp. directors can be granted based on connections, skill points, financial contributions, corp. service contributions, established trust, length of time with the corp., etc…

4. Add Tracking Devices, personal trackers that can be carried in cargo-hold, others like mines that can stick to ships that pass within 2km in space. Cameras that allow interfacing from far away to watch battles, allows news reports and espionage in areas of interest remotely.

5. Add module to monitor and capture conversations, the closer to another ship, the easier to intercept conversations, the closer the two people talking, the more secure the conversation

6. Add Bomb Modules that mimic regular modules, that when looted off your wreck can be linked to a remote detonator and destroy/damage/disable the carrying ship. Decrease motivation to rob miners in space, to interfere with other’s missions and perfect against pirates.

7. Fix: Do not allow any more than 1 EVE client to run on the same computer at the same time, do not allow more than one connection from the same IP. (Allowing people to have their own gang of 3 characters makes it unfair in the sense that they don’t need to depend on others to do missions meant for gangs)

8. Module for Freighter class: Refitter, Refiner, Repairer, Reprocessor and Repackager

9. Unique items, item collections, ability for people to have collections/collectible hobbies, extremely rare items that are only found in 1 system (Entity the item collector is only one man), ability to place those items on display on ships, on stations, amazing visual effects on ships that keep completed collections in cargo.

10. Missions like quests that need items, riddles, personal intelligence, some that need a few friends to do, activate ruins on planets, much more like

11. Tracking devices/mines that can pinpoint a ship (not a player) on system map, or some on starmap (better way of tracking than locator agent) (only removed at stations with high standings, 8+ for example) Some can show a smoke tracer in space of where the ship went exactly, even when cloaked. Some can give information about ship size, direction, radius, energy, systems, etc… Some can be deployed in space, and better ones can be placed by enemy ship within 2km range. Action not punishable by CONCORD. Can only be detected by stations with repair bay and external scanners when docked. Allows tracking of players, corps, fleets, etc…

12. Space mines that can be deployed... (limit the number to the Mine Anchoring Skill to reduce lag) (Limit all anchoring to the player's skill so that there is no infinite cans, no infinite outposts, no infinite bookmarks, etc…

GEOMETRIC REALISM

Why were planets and moons hollow inside, and why is flying through them so easy. Planets, Moons and Stars are not their real sizes, can’t be approached, cannot be seen from close, can be flown around, and cannot be seen from one another as would be expected. (e.g.: The moon can be seen from Earth, and Jupiter can be seen from Saturn, but not in the game. The Sun as an average star should be 1.3 million kilometers in diameter while planets should be on average 20000 km in diameter with a standard deviation of about 10000 km.

1. Should not be able to warp anywhere near the sun, without losing your ship and pod.

2. Should not be able to pass the sun and should not warp through physical objects (stations, moons, planets) even in warp. If there is a large object in the way of a warp tunnel, then warping has to stop at the object, and the object must be manually navigated around. Thus if you are on one side of a station or a moon, one cannot warp directly to a gate, without having to navigate. This makes navigation a critical pvp skill, while allowing frigate and small ships an advantage in velocities, maneuverability and warp speeds over the larger ships.

3. Crashing into objects should cause heavy damage to shields and then instant destruction; e.g. Mission: Deadly Arrival, cannot warp in the middle of a hollow asteroid and be trapped.

4. Understandably game play (speed/entertainment) and role-play (realism) often contradict each other. Warp to 0 does not exist, can warp anywhere between 1km and 100km depending on many factors: disturbances, obstacles, ship ability (scan resolution of the ship, skills, distance warped, size of ship (maneuverability), signature radius of the target object and a random factor. (e.g.: an interceptor will always warp at 1km from a planet, a battleship will always warp between 50 to 100 km from an interceptor, and a battleship will always warp between 10 and 30 km to a gate.

5. Add better textures for planets, approaching short of landing it, easy to implement, much more attractive for a lot of people. Green planets covered in plant-life, blue oceanic planets, rusty red volcanic planets, yellow desert planets, white snowy planets and purple gaseous planets.

6. Consider keeping relative sizes of objects such as the sun compared to a planet, and dimming light of the sun the further one goes from it.

7. Gravitational attraction and acceleration of large objects that can start moving your ship. Suggestions 6 and 7 allow for low atmosphere combat maneuvers favored by the small maneuverable ships (allows one to hide beneath the clouds). Slow cloaked ships will drift towards the planets’ surfaces at an exponential rate. Racing ships can use the gravitational attraction to achieve higher speeds than they are able to otherwise.

8. Planet surface should have corrosive hot clouds, explosive fumes and thick atmospheres allowing ships to hide in them, as a cloak.

9. Planets need more roles, whether it's to hold colonies of 'workers' or ‘exotic dancers’, that produce incomes, or that can be mined slowly, conquered, and maybe build on them, even put a citadel/orbital gun on them.

10. Station design should consider space assembly from many parts, have strong geometrical shapes that allow for gyro stabilization/centrifugal-artificial-gravity generation, that maximize volume to surface area with slant surfaces (ricochet kinetic impacts) that minimize impact with piercing space dust that gathers in gravitational well to orbit moons and planets, maximized volume to surface area for thermal, air pressure containment and life support isolation, and directional physical/energy shields as well, polymer domes for space viewing and command, towers for guns with maximum clearance.

11. It does not make sense for stations to have such little defense. Small ships can have up to 4 small guns, battleships, up to 8 large guns, and POSs can have massive guns, webbers, scramblers, scanners, citadel launchers, etc... So how can a station with so many more goods to protect, more people, more resources, a market and infinitely large hangars, how can it have only 6 miserable sentry guns? A station should be the heaviest weapons platform, 10 times more than the most guns that can be fitted on a large POS.

12. All stations (including faction) should be able to be destroyed otherwise the transferable power and resources are too great from loser to winner of the war. This makes no one safe at any given time.

13. Planets and other objects should rotate in their shown orbits at set velocity, different from one another.

14. Stars should move relative to each other, together in constellations to approach and gain distance from one another, creating a realistic, yet unexpectedly dynamic map.

15. The stars seen in the sky at any given time should accurately show the real EVE-universe stars, in their given locations with the associated colors and brightness based on star color and distance accordingly.


Conclusion

These innovations would make the EVE space an awesome model of realism incomparable to anything else in existence.


REALISM ISSUES
Problems

1. CONCORD should not be able to show up into a mission and kill the player yet rats and CONCORD ignore each other.

2. CONCORD should never bother anyone in a mission, unless called upon. (no beacons, no CONCORD protected gates, no bullshit; this should solve the pirates and CONCORD fighting and the inability to use ECM bursts, smartbombs, FoFs and accidents)...

3. CONCORD cannot be unbeatable, they can die, just more should show up over time.

4. Rats and CONCORD should not just appear out of nowhere next to you as if they were always there cloaked, but rather would take some time to warp in (gates and stations still don't accept you if Concord is looking for you)

SUGGESTED WEAPON MECHANICS

And for game dynamics, ALL guns have all by a few minor differences (in range, tracking and damage) almost as if making Rock-Paper-Scissors as Rock-Rock-Rock. That surely sounds like a strategic game to play! Starcraft was a popular game because Blizzard did not make the marine, the zergling and the zealot all hit with the same power, same range and have same life.

1. Missiles’ damage should be slightly decreased; missiles should miss really fast ships, when close by. Otherwise it would make sense if FoFs should act as defenders as well. Torpedoes decreases are good, but maybe a little overdone.

2. Defender missiles should shoot automatically at any range, taking out all missiles/torpedoes.

3. Realistically Lasers should be the most accurate due to their light electronic components, no mechanical/moving parts, no ammo and having instant impact to target. They would be so accurate that a medium sized laser would always hit perfectly a medium sized ship, and the same for all other sizes. The range of lasers should determine the energy consumed and the damage done, e.g.: 3km = 400 damage, 10km = 300 damage, 20 km = 200 damage, 30 km =100 damage, 45 km = 50 damage, 70 km = 5 damage (exponentially lower)

4. Railguns are less accurate then lasers, have shorter range than projectiles and require ammo/projectiles and energy. When they hit perfectly however they do much more damage than either projectiles or lasers.

5. Projectiles are old-school pirate weapons of choice, using no energy, no technology, hard to aim, long-ranged weapons (shouldn't even really have a falloff closer than 300km as projectiles don't slow down in space nearly as much as energy dissipates). In exchange for the Laser's accuracy and efficiency, projectiles can be offered the possibility of burst with multiple fast shots, and the disadvantage of being capable of missing targets and hitting other things in their path. This friendly fire concept can possibly end up in interesting strategies with frigates causing massive damage to fleets using projectiles, and increase the use of small ships in larger missions. Targets hit by projectiles should be hit off course or change momentums.

Additional Balancing Changes

1. Passive targetters should not allow the enemy ship to detect that it is being targetted at all, as long as it is online, otherwise they would be useless.

2. Change Auto-Targetter to properly target only enemy ships, while giving more bonuses. The slot it takes is more valuable than just a simple auto-target function.

3. Add Sensor-Link. Ability to link all sensors on multiple ships together to increase sensor strength, scanning resolution and targeting distance.

MISSION-RUNNING AND CORP STANDINGS

Different NPC corporation's departments should offer very different services such as:
1. “Accounting” and “Financial” should offer banking services, such as investment with better interest rates, etc…

2. “Marketing” should allow NPC buying of various items needed by that faction for a killer price.

3. “Security”: espionage/locator services, other services stated in Espionage section of the EVE report.

4. “Internal security” and “Surveillance” provide Counter-Espionage Services in an area.

5. “R&D” would offer RPs and Research slots at their stations

6. “Administration Skill” would give priority to people who have a better standing to use facilities.

7. “Command” would offer help when a person needs it (to be used like a special; eg: when in a low sec combat and there are 2 ships versus you, you can call on Caldary Navy Command to send 4-5 ships to help you out, ships and specialties such as shield transfer, cap transfer, offensive ships can vary depending on the corp)

8. “Legal” can give pardons from CONCORD for empire kills, or can increase kill rights (number and how many depends on level and quality of agent). Can change security level. Can clean up thievery

9. “Advisory”, “Archives” and “Astrosurveying” can give hints about regions, systems and even planets with hidden complexes, explorations, or alien phenomena.
10. “Distribution”: Free Remote Hauling Services (Put it on Contract similarly to a Courier only a diff category and deliver instantly to target locations safely, range depends on agent level and quality)

11. “Manufacturing” and “Production”: Can buy minerals and COSMOS components for better prices

12. “Mining” should offer mineral trading for better prices, and ability to refine better (cumulative to skills)

13. “Personnel” should give better officers for the new ship crews, than randomly found

14. “Public Relations” should give access to certain black market channels as well as the ability to modify Sec rating and or Standings with specific Factions.

15. “Storage” should allow a safety deposit box to protect precious possessions from theft.

VISUAL / INTERFACE ENHANCEMENTS

1. Addition of a Combat Simulator, which is hooked to the test server and person while in EVE mining or travelling, can play on the test server in a window, can test fittings and challenge friends in a safe environment.

2. Alternatively, EVE could allow just one system for people to kill each other with random ships they can test-fly ships , allowing practice combats, challenges, arenas, without the losses of 0.0 and without money losses) (adds a Starcraft side to the game)

3. Add board games, card games, gambling for ISK, chess, newscasts, spies reports, news report, tips sections, possibly EVE-TV and/or EVE News in an in-game Window.

4. Module that allows the pilot to broadcast his camera’s view to the rest of his fleet.

5. Module that allows the pilot to have a distress call communicated on other local channels, giving location, #of jumps, ship under attack, condition, # of attackers, ships of attacker and some of the info about the enemy.

6. Damage from hits, and sequential hits should stay on the screen for a longer period of time. The enemy hits should be shown on a different side of the screen from own hits. Assuming that most of the universe has a black background, the background box currently used can be removed. Simultaneous hits should be show like in World of Warcraft, slowly sliding up. This is necessary since most of the time, cannot scroll through log while in middle of battle.

7. Hits should do more than shake the screen! Hits should make modules blink on and off and ship speed and direction should change, hits should shut down certain systems such as the main shield/armor/energy gauge/warp drive/comms and main overlay overview.

8. Scramble - A VERY OBVSIOUS warp scramble indicator should be shown on the speed gauge, also where warp kicks in, and when/where you are safe from the warp scramblers.

9. Ability to draw in space temporarily with smoke. Smoke can slowly diffuse out from its original location.

10. Option to cancel locking.

11. Communications -> have a small animated screen with a picture of the person (finally can put the 3D character generator to good use, and have animated picture of the talking character in a chat or convo... this can serve better than blink on/off since you know who is talking at all times, without having to read the convo.

12. Being able to accurately, specifically targeting of modules such as sensors, engines, shield boosters, hardeners, etc… This would increase the role of scouts, ships with scanners on board that can call targets on specific modules exploiting specific weaknesses in enemy ships. Most important in small ships can use targeting speed, positioning/ship speed, weapon accuracy and sensor accuracy to shoot out specific systems and modules such as shield booster on BCs or BSs to actually have a chance to take them down.

13. Expand the game-play experience and incidences in the realistic space world, so people can feel it, relate to it and live it, such as asteroids colliding, accidental engine failures, nebula storms, black hole attractions affecting ships and view.

I think it needs to evolve in a 2012 game, after 10 years... If a different game would do the same with new features and what I mentioned above, I would join that in a second. Apple needs to remain innovative to remain at the peak of the technology and lead the market.

You're right. I can only hope that GMs read this, and take what they will from it. It was written in 2007, and never accepted by CCP.

Got some good stuff in there, but since 2007 alot has changed, and the game favors pvp players now more then anything.