Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Wardec (to be fair, I am part of the mechanism)
- New founded corps are safe against being wardecced for several weeks / month.
- Overhaul the notifications. Leave that "Yulai"-thing, clearly states what happens. Changes in or out alliances are horrible bad notifications. Assists that are running out dont have any notification.
- Corps that have been decced cannot be decced again for 4 weeks when the war is finished, no matter if surrended or regularly.
- Adjust prices from 50..500mio to 100..250mio. Though it is still wrong, basically it needs to be inverse to member count to treat smaller corps with limited chances and allys with vast resources the same way. One may count the number of war targets to be the criteria but thats the view from the war deccer. From the point of the wardecced it appears wrong that large ally with nearly almost a pvp section that can fight back are more difficult to wardec than small corps.
- Allow protection contracts! That means when a Merc-Ally set up a protection contract including bills for payment with an entity then the aggressor war dec will directed to the protector. This would allow instant benefit for a protected entity. It has the experience it makes sense to look around for professional support. Its not very protecting if you have to join as assist.


Crime watch:
- Ganking is still unbalanced. Increase response Concord reaction. Ganking of freighter should make sense starting with 10bn earliest.
- Other options increase the reaction time when Concord is already in system.
- Ganking of miners: Something is wrong, when miners need to buy a permit from code!
- CCP have let the ganking community grow that much that they have now vast resources for fun or low level ganks. Ganking of empty freighters in 0.9 and 1.0 systems show that.
- Improve tank of freighters. The added fitting options are ridiculous and arbitrary held short.

Killrights:
- Make every killright per standard public available for 0 isk. Who wants to change it, may do. Change from opt in to opt out. This will improve law inforcement. How many killrights are lost because people dont know how it is made public. It wont change something for the people who do not know and it leaves all options for the people who know. Just as earlier.
- Fix that "that killright is not longer available" - we dont want to run and set up everything to get this message! The check whether it is available can be done when I look into the details of the killright!

Watchlist and location:
- Get the watchlist back in game as earlier. Your arguments are wrong. It can be countered by staying online. It can be countered by counter watchlist your opponent. There are many other information without risk.
- Allow locating without standing requirements to make it accessible not only for specialised like wardeccers but also for the wardecced and others. Make it available as station service.
- Let us add contacts of a couple of links of chars, corps and allys in one go. It is frustating to right click -> add contact etc. for each of it individually.

Contineous game experience:
- Let us leave the Captains Quarters! There is no need to super inside models. Simply provide a main street with bars arranged where people can walk into it. Allow individual bars to open with access control like such as a chat channel. That is not 3D-rocket science!
- Lets "Walk over" to jump down to planets aka future addon games, e.g. Dust II -> dont dare to limit to console again!

Clones
- Let allow swap clones as in Citadel also in Stations. If you want prevent insta-transfer of fleets by clone jumping dont punish people that want switch pods at one station with a timer.
- Let us have more than one clone at station / citadel. Shall we built three citadels in WH just have all necessary clones with us? It just more effort only.

Misc:
- Let Rorquals in Highsec. So many mining corps dreaming of it.
- Improve the symbols and backgrounds for corp symbols! Hell, did they every received an overhaul since start of Eve?
- Provide billings! So many things could be done on a payment basis. It is just like a contract. A contract sets up payment rate and amount of isk. It does not include any items or services, its just payment conditions to automatically generate bills. Both agree. The bill shows up under bills and can get marked to be automatically paid. If the contract is being cancelled by one or the other or it is not sufficient ISK available the involved get notification. Let Excelsheets rest in peace.
- Remove the corp office limits per station. How many corp offices surrounding of the main systems are sold out and blocked by inactive corps. You dont want to loose the isk sink? Built an average office fee and make this a general standard fee.
- Count in Mails or Bulletins also the number of hidden characters! I hate writing emails that are capped still though below the limits because of hidden characters!
- Search function in Emails!

Thats all. Of course some proposal could be abused somehow but I am pretty sure the game designers can prevent it by the details.

I notice it has also lot of my personal wishlist, I apologize.

I dont care much for destructive responses, flames, lols or similar - its just ignored. If you have style, focus on the strong arguments and dont pick the weakest and generalize the whole statement with that.

With so low numbers of online players lately the position of veteran players to keep everything as it is just because they had to run through it too has been weakened.

Which has nothing to do with summer holidays or overall holidays which are more often in summer times.

What's that other stuff supposed to do other than making highsec farmville online?

Those missions you are proposing are called DED complexes and there are DED 10 / 10, you should try those. And since you had such a great time in your 4 weeks and are bored now, long term players are not at fault here.

Your 'new players' initiative means Gankers get infinite almost perfect ganker accounts that they can just never subscribe, so no, that's not practical.
Lvl 5 missions can be run by cruiser gangs no problems, been there done it with corp for lols with T1 cruiser gang.
Killrights public for 0 isk means they can clear them with an alt whenever they want to.

Just to name a few exploits your ideas make possible.
You really have no idea of the game systems you are commenting on or why they are that way.

Yeah. While there might be an idea or two in that wall of text worth considering, most of it seems to be to gut much of what Eve makes Eve in a short sighted attempt to make the game easier for new players. Ignoring the fact established players will just abuse the hell out of this and it will hurt much of the existing gameplay, there is no evidence that a de-fanged version of Eve where progress is given to you on a silver platter while you are bubbled-wrapped from interactions with others would indeed retain more players. In fact, the recent presentations at Fanfest by CCP suggest the opposite: you will likely get even more players stuck on the 'leveling my Raven' or solo highsec mining track to nowhere and bore them out of the game.

I do think there is plenty of room to improve the NPE and make Eve more accessible but not by turning Eve into a completely different game or dumbing down all gameplay to the lowest common denominator in attempt to make it impossible for anyone to lose. Eve grew the fastest in the past when the game was harder, harsher and more obtuse and for some players to win, some have to lose. To tell our own stories we have to be able to interact, often violently, with each other, not wall both new and old players off into thier own little gardens where everyone is immune from everyone when the game is suppose to be Everyone vs. Everyone.

You should accept that Eve is not a game for everyone. It in a single-universe, PvP sandbox where you are intended never to be safe and your stuff can be taken or destroyed against your will. That type of competitive game is not for everyone and it is perfectly predictable that the majority of players that try the game won't stay for that reason or one of many others.

Like pedro said, there is some tid bits in there but the op is wholly ill-informed or has just decided to make 'facts' up.

'ccp have let the ganking community grow' - no they haven't. They've nerfed it to the point that only the most organised and dedicated groups can do it frequently and make a profit. It used to be something many people did on the side or for luls. They've also just buffed the tank of freighters by 50%, just because.

'only players who are held in the game get into [pvp, and get out of hi-sec]' - not really. Players who pve stick to the game for a few months, get bored once they've 'leveled up their raven' and leave. they rarely get into pvp, or active corps or any part of the community. They actually try to isolate themselves. Players who pvp early stick around for much longer. Players who pvp get much more involved in corps/alliances and the community. Its the hardship, notoriety and difficulty of pvp that makes players reachout for help. No pve player has their home threatened by an npc. And the incursion community was irrelevant until they were having a tiff with eachother.

'null sec rewards are better than hi-sec' - again, not really. Incursions pay out more in hi sec than anoms in null and clearing incursions in null is more about getting control of your system back (cyno jammers, bounties nerfed) than the rewards. Blitzing Soe missions in hi-sec are more worth while than null rewards.

Mining wise, ccp have had to buff null rocks and industry multiple times to try and get people to actually partake in industry out there. Honestly there is still room for more improvement. Add to that afk cloakers and inty gangs hunting you down in null and its easy to see why the vast majority of players are in hi-sec for the ridiculously high reward for no risk. Null players have their indie/ratting alts in hi sec.


Then there's stuff like this;

'Facts- [freebies is not working. Actual content is. This means make more freebies for noobs].' - Seriously?

'analyisis - [vets are leaving. **** vets, just get new players. Then when they become vets **** them too'] - surely we should try to retain all players, not just try and attract new players.

'make wardecs more expensive' - new players used to try out pvp using wardecs. This is how the vast majority of players first got into pvp which we all know keeps players in the game for longer. Groups that wardecced would mature and leave hi-sec for 'bigger fish'. This happens much less since wardecs became more expensive and with the ally system.

You said yourself we need to lower barriers for new players and provide content. That should include players who want to mess with other players. This is a pvp game after all.

Here we go with the grand lies about EvE again.
CCP has never stated that PvP hold players in this game. What they did state was that social involvement within the game, corps, small or large groups of like minded people doing things together was the largest factor in holding players in this game. And all of those can and do occur outside the PvP arena, in fact from the social standpoint one of the strongest groups I have ever been involved with inside the game was an incursion community, yes that's right a PvE group. The only things CCP has ever stated regarding PvP and being shot is that being blown up is not a significant factor in players leaving the game, actually I believe they called it player retention. But we need to be aware that because being blown up is not bad for the game does mean it is "good" for the game either that is an assumption made from evidence that is not available.

OP, Daichi Yamato is not alone in the belief of this specific point and while I will call him and the others out for posting it as fact when it has never been proven I also understand the position that brings it about. I started this game back in 2009 on another character and when taken as a whole the PvP community is one of the stronger ones in the game from a social standpoint. While it has never been proven and CCP has never stated it there is some circumstantial evidence that the statement made by Daichi Yamato may indeed be the truth.

Now back to the OP and the ideas posted.
Like the others I do not like most of your ideas since they do not get at the root of the problems based on my experiences.
SP is not the problem, ISK to a degree is not the problem, trying to come to terms with one of the most complex and bewildering games on the internet is the problem. So addressing that side of the new player problems is where we need to focus energies and ideas, not on giving them more free stuff like skill points and ISK.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5504176#post5504221

For those new to the forums, to understand the syntax of the above.

Thank you for posting this I had lost the link to it.


No one has ever argued with the need to keep new players in the game long term, what we do argue about is how to achieve that goal.

You point to two major problems that plague EvE, the steep learning curve and the shall we say not so nice players.

Giving out massive amounts of skill points (yes 2.5 million is a massive amount) to characters when they are created solves nothing. We veteran players see this quite frequently when someone new to the game thinks SP is all that is required so they buy a high SP character off the market and then proceed to lose billions in ships and end up quitting anyway because they were so hung up on SP (they compare it to levels in other games) that they never learned how to actually play the game. Getting new players to understand that a lack of SP is not what holds them back, but understanding that EvE is unique that it offers a unique set of challenges and most importantly that EvE is not a grind for levels type of game is the problem.

The not so nice players like some of those you have run into are an unfortunate reality in EvE and there is nothing that you, CCP or anyone else can really do to change that. Coming to terms with the not so nice players you come across and how to deal with it when you do is as fundamental to EvE as learning to pilot a space ship. To detour this a little the first time this character got blown up I made the mistake of turning off my safeties and did not notice I had jumped into low sec straight into a small gang gate camp. To keep this short that gate camp group was so nasty about the whole situation that a group of other low sec players warped in, blew the gate campers apart and over the next 15 minutes or so we had a wonderful conversation and they even gave me a replacement ship. Moral of the story is while there are a** holes in EvE there is an even greater number that are just plain old nice people who will help you if you ask even if they did just blow up your ship.

Giving new characters a set of basic skills, skills that will help them no matter what they do in this game instead of a pool of SP they can use however they want was a step in the right direction towards helping new players. A better set of tutorials would be another step in the right direction. But the real question is what can we do to help new players that does not break the game for the rest of us, and cannot be abused to the detriment of any and all players in the game.