Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hi, I'm fairly new to EVE, 1month so far, and I really like this game, the complexity behind, the possibilities, player interactions. However sometimes I am wondering why isn't there this and that. I'm kind a player that always think about improving the game, so far all the games I played offered some way of modding the game be it unofficial resources (diablo2) or official (neverwinter nights) well anyway...

As I read the articles about upcoming changes in november it seems to me you intent to get new blood into EVE Online. Making game free2play is definitely a good step towards that, and new tutorial and character GUI might help but I think it needs more.

I was trying to get my friends, brother and his friends into EVE. All failed. Ether they disliked the GUI, how "low action" the game is, how hard is to controll it and understand it, how much micromanagment is there or they have been detered by the first suicide ganker in highsec losing their ship.

There is little that can be done to address this, but when dealing with new players, trying to teach them, tell them what to do how to find a way to me etc. I came up with some ideas that would really helped a new player to get more knowledgeable in this game.

1. More colors into overview not just for player controlled ships!
Please give us the option to set icon colors for asteroids, stations and stargates. Either pre-set by CPP or just as options for overview customization.
I would love to be able to set different color to each asteroid type which would then help the new players in determining what is best ore/ice to mine. Even if thats quite easy to learn, it would be really nice to see.
It would also be great to be able to colorize stations in which my corporation has office/HQ. Another thing that comes to my mind is to set a color for citadels that are not allowing given player to dock/or they require entry fee.
Stargates could share the color of the security system they lead into.

2. Corp/Fleet member tracking.
In basically every multiplayer game I played, I could easily see how is my ´friend partying with me doing. I could see location he is and I could see his hitpoints. That made easier to tell him what to do or change my actions to help him. It already happened to me several times that the friend or corp member I played with died because he was unable to write into chat "im under fire" trying to save himself and because we didn't use teamspeak. Now, I know all these informations can be get from the player via the teamspeak. Is that however reason not to add them into game directly? I know I can just keep him targetted - which I do, but it seems to me like a workaround for an unexisting feature. Sorry.
If there are any doubts about abuse about giving away these informations (would that be a problem of a feature that someone has a double-agent in corp?) then allowing each member to choose whether he wants others in his corp/fleet to see his location/hitpoints would be a solution.

3. Item icons and player customization.
First of all. It really disappointed me from a game running so long (and I game with so much rumours I've heard) that a lot of items has a same icon. It is then hard to see which is the better one especially when dealing with meta modules. I know how to use a compare tool and I now know which is which, but it's another thing that makes game neccessary unfriendly.
Anyway. I do realize that doing this require artists and that it is probably not realistic to get a new art material in the game because devs are focusing on different things.
I have solution for that. Allow us players to modify/override item icons with our owns! Even noob like me can recolor icons in irfan (which looks ugly but would serve a purpose) which would then help me and peoples I sent it to better understand the "level" of the ship modules.
If the game would load item icons from documents/EVE/customization/icons or anything like that then we would just need to know how the icons for each module should be named and the first custom icon set could come into existence!

With regards to #1. Some of the suggestions are interesting and could indeed help a bit (although I am not convinced that yellow, light yellow and dark yellow for the 3 Veldspar types would make it easier to see what's the best compared to just sorting your overview by type, in particular if there are boatloads of roids around). However, too many colors in the overview defeat their purpose in EVE. While they are probably used to differentiate a very limited number of things in other games (just yesterday, I had a glance at WOW's UI. The amount of different colors used there is quite staggering and not really easily readable without serious training.), the number of things in EVE's Overview can and usually is very high. Colors are meant to highlight the really important things like enemies, not mundane things like office or med service availability. This kind of information, however, should be easier accessible and the Services tab in the Info Window needs a rework (suggestion in my bio). It used to be easily accessible with the IGB and Dotlan, but now that this awesome tool was removed, we are stuck with the garbage CCP calles UI in that area.

With regards to #2. You have a hit point indicator in the Watch List, the map tells you where your fleet members are, fleet members can request reps/assists with broadcasts and if you are the fleet boss, you can set up your fleet so that you need to accept join requests before they can join. As a squad/wing/fleet commander, you an also invite people into the fleet.
The map also tells you where your corp members are.

With regards to #3. What is the point of a different icon for a Scoped, Enduring or Compact armor repairer. They are all Tech 1 items and thus are essentially the same thing. Names and special designators give more at a glance information than a color coding could.

I get your point but remember I was suggesting to make it optional/customizable, just as you can customize player ships now (which is great). It would be up to a player/corp how he wants to use this, if at all.
The example with ore was maybe bad idea, thats not so usefull afterall, though all three types of veldspar would obviously had same color because they differ in icon size so the color settings would appear only per ore-type not al ore types and ore subtypes.

Still I believe that adding more colors and making overview prettier would attract new players and I would definitely send such modified overview to anyone starting to help him orientate in the game.

While I agree with your idea, adding colors for other things in overview is much easier to code and therefore much likely to be implemented.



Different names tells nothing to the new player about the item. He will not see immediately that this armor repairer is better than that armor repairer and another armor repairer uses nanite paste. Another thing with medium/small/large/capital modules - weapons have at least a small letter indicating the size. Yes, non-weapons have this in medium but if you have a 50 armor repairers in inventory different icons would make much easier for you to find the one you need. And don't forget there are non-english players who barely understand basic like an armor/damage etc. Not all languages have their localization, for example Czech. They do have a troubles with this and different icons would help them sort out. I would just need to say - pick the blue armor repairer for your ship and come with me.

Besides - the way I suggested this to work would allowed to make this optional and customizable. It would still be the same for you and new player, some other player would first have to create and alternative icons and then you would have to decide whether you add it or not. In my case, I would add them for myself and would then send them to every friend I would try to bring to EVE to help him orientate in the game.

Here is something that might be of interest on the mining part of the game. There is a very clear indicator on the overview for

- basic ore: small pebble (rock icon)

- the +5% ore: medium pebble (bigger rock icon)

- the +10% ore: large-ish pebble (biggest rock icon)

It cannot be more clear than that. Even after we have been told that colors are bad for EVE, so they removed color from EVE.

If your friends can wait until Nov 15th, they will be part of a story that will make things easier.

Thats not problem. Although basically everyone me included first thinks the icon determine the ammount of ore inside.

But so many players are mining veldspar when there is plagioclasa nearby. Why? Because they don't know they get higher income from plagioclasa. Maybe its good because then there is opportunity for those who knows this, maybe.

This game is simply google what to do or fail. It would be nice if at least something could be easily determined ingame without need to visit eve wiki/reddit everytime I find a combat site signature which name I don't know yet.

BTW - good that some players have the list of anomalies "difficulty" in their bio. Helped me a big time. Still think that anz sort of ingame "difficulty/level" identification would be a good thing.

An eve quick reference sheet exist here, its two pages long and pretty much tells you basics of what you need to know about site, ore, anomolies and a few other things on the fly. if you have this with you when your playing, plus a little experiance, very little extra is needed to play this game effeciantly.

I get what your saying with a lot of your suggestions but eve is unique and not like other MMO's and this is why alot of other MMO concepts dont fit right into the EVE universe.

Imagine the following, you and your corpmates are master-miners and produce a lot of stuff. One night you make a manufacturing job and see you ran out of tritanium.
You have plenty of pyrite, isogen, megacyte and so on but you are in dire need of tritanium.

For you and your corpmates veldspare is the only option for you to mine for 100% tritanium. In this case it has more value for you and your corpmates.

While you can make more isk with kernite or plagioclase, your value is determined by your needs. Someone's crap is someone's treasure.



Happy to help.