Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Eve is a community driven game, however Eve also paradoxically lacks the basic functionality for players to create groups that are not tied to specific gameplay mechanics. Corporations and Alliances are the only two functional groups currently in existence, however those comes with roles, risk, and changes to fundamental playstyles. Players should be able to create custom groups such as those that already exist with the Haulers Channel, Anti-Gankers, Incursion Runners, Lore Aficionados and Roleplayers, and of course the Public Fleet Channels. Giving these groups and official way of establishing themselves, even if it's only automatic communication tools, is an absolute must for these specialty groups in Eve to thrive.

Some ideas:

Groups should have the option of being open or requiring invites, as well as being public or private.
The groups should have automatic and permanent communication tools, such as "fixed" chat channels.

There is a lot of room to expand upwards if the functionality is wanted from the playerbase. However, to start with, it's important to give these groups that already exist, the means to organize and grow within the community. If you have any ideas or comments, please leave a comment below. I'll be taking these suggestions and comments of support to CCP during this upcoming summit.

Want a suggestion?


Blizzard redid theirs in WoW a long time ago. Allowed one window that showed all your chats - and color coded the text. Allow players to stack windows - and color the text accordingly. As well as unstack those windows or break a chat from a grouped chat.

This would allow someone like to me to merge my corp/alliance into one channel, and see green or blue text.
I could have intel channels merged and pick different shades of red or w/e.


Social Groups:

I would love to have them... Only if CCP doesn't **** them up.

Rebuilding Corporation and Alliance from the ground up.

1: Make it harder to create a corp - discourages the one man corps.
2: Set max corp size to say 500-1000 after all skills.
3: Create Mega Corps - This is the place where standard corps come to get into a larger group. When a Corp joined a Mega Corp - it becomes a Corp Division - The CEO becomes the division head.
--This would allow the Mega Corp to more effectively work with the members in their Mega Corp - If they wanted to place a guy in a Division as a POS fueler for the Mega corp they could.
4: Coalitions - Would replace the Alliance.

**Extra things that would be nice.
If a division wanted to merge with another division in a mega corp - they could run a vote on it. If a division had inactive leadership - the Mega corp Leader could merge the groups - would have to figure out a way to handle assets, but that should be easy.

Corps and Alliances are no the only groups systems in the game. A simple chat channel with loads of people from different entities is already a group that has nearly no added risk (except for exposing yourself to the group). In these channels, you can set whether people can invite other people or whether the chat is closed and only certain people with roles can invite more people.
What I would like to see in this regard, however, is an Info window on a channel with information about who created it, who's running the show and who are the moderators. And for moderators/operators, as I suggested many months ago in a separate thread, they should always be able to see the full member list of the chat whenever they wish to. Currently, they cannot see who's in a channel if there's more than ~70 in it. For a moderator, this is unacceptable.

An official status for groups like the Haulers Channel is non-sense. What purpose would that serve, except for cluttering up Char infos or other menus. There are already official communications platforms via official mailing lists and via mentioning representatives and moderators in the MOTD of such a channel.

What do you mean with "open Fleet Chats"? A constantly available chat, like any other chat, for a fleet? What is the purpose of that? If a fleet is public, the fleet can be accessed by anyone, and thus their chat is open for the all who want to participate in the fleet. Other than that communities like Specter or Ganked hav their chat channels where they discus and communicate already. What would be the point of yet another channel that serves no added, useful purpose?

@Amarisen Gream
Why should I be forced to use many players to create a bigger corp? There are certain things in EVE where I do not need to accept more risk as part of a bigger group when I do not get any more gains. Instead of barring people from creating a 1 man corp, they should be encouraged to join a bigger corp or create a corp with friends by offering an inviting and friendly (or weird, idiotic, chaotic, rumbling, funny, sad, whatever makes people stick together) environment. If I want to have my own little micro-cosmos, I am entitled to create my own little micro-cosmos. That is the sandbox. If I decide to join up with a bigger group, I do this on my own terms and not because some mechanic forces me to. Forcing people into this kind of interaction with other people is just bad game design ... in which CCP is kinda successful these days. However, if you do not like people in 1-man corps, then you as the player should put more effort into making them want to join you. Not force them to join into something bigger due to a game mechanic limitation.

My biggest concern about joining a corp with my alts is that I do not control what they (the people in charge of that corp) do. With my alt, I have a couple of corps that I would potentially be interested in joining. However, one of them recently started a little crusade against pirates. I, on the other hand, have no real interest in joining a war with a char that cannot fight and is not supposed to fight. Which means that I would have to leave that corp for the duration of the war in order to continue with my business and then be at their mercy for accepting me back.
Therefore, my drive for joining up with other people is primarily satisfied by being part of the haulers channel and talking with people there or striking deals with people there. This is as much social interaction as I feel comfortable with without compromising my gameplay unnecessarily.

What is the poin of the thread? This is very well-trodden ground after the last summit.

I guess this means that CCP isn't yet ready to actually do anything about it?

These already exist. You can already make a public or private persistent chat channel that has a MOTD that contain links, fits, fleet links and so forth.

What more are you proposing? A calendar? An icon on the character bio?

Seems like the functionality is basically already there. I am not sure what more you would want to give these social groups. Maybe searchable in game? Although you can already search for chat channels.