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I was thinking... dangerous, yes I know...

The out of pod experience should be its own game, the stations would still be the connection between the two worlds, but the out of pod life should be its own massive sandbox.

it should be possible to transition from one game to the another, so that a pod pilot could give up flying ships for a while and still be in touch with the game. Or a player who started out of pod could become a full pilot.

former pilots should be able to produce skill books, assuming they trained the skill to lvl5 while they were a pod pilot, or do salvage alchemy and so on. Smuggle stuff in their private assets, as they hitch rides on the pilot's ships, the police at the gates wouldnt be able to see the contents of the passenger's personal effects, but then again you wouldnt be able to move a big number of goods through in that way. or players could become agents, and hand out missions to pilots and so on.

Lorewise it would work too, we pilots are supposed to be in a class of our own, the immortal elite.

I think a reasonable vision for the development of the Captains Quaters is that overtime it should come to reflect the achievements of the capsuleer. Perhaps this could be done with different versions of a captains quaters becoming available as your standings with a corporation improves. It makes sense that a corp would reward a high performing mission runner in such a manner.

So what could be done to improve WiS with the puny amount of resources you currently got available?

Well, you could look to your own DUST 514 and the concept of a Trophy Room. People love trophies from various deeds and it will immensely increase the feeling of "this is mine". Trophies could be a show room for corpses or being rewarded decorative items or pieces of clothing for special feats. These feats ould be a drop from some officer rat in deep space, the completion of an epic arc, getting a certificate, having scored 100 player killing blows/pod kills, there are plenty of possibilities. You need to quit the idea that the NEx should be the primary way to introduce items in WiS. Already, the clothing items introduced outside the NEx (the Quafe shirt and the "Russian" uniform) have much more appeal than those you can get in the store.

But, again, in the long run WiS needs more stuff that players can manipulate and make their own.

There's an interesting contradiction in this effort. It requires an insular activity that involves only a few people, but which can influence the sandbox on a large scale. I think I have just such an idea:

Station Maintenance Technician/Chief

Agents in the station would vend "Station Maintenance" missions to those WiS. These missions would involve anywhere from a single pilot to a large group of technicians. They would need to wander the stations servicing various sectors (there's a potential here for instanced game play, though it wouldn't necessarily be required... techs could easily show up needing to work on a pub's stage lighting or a docking hanger's hydraulics systems). These missions would require certain skills from those who participate (skills that exist in game already, like engineering, electronics, jury rigging, and mechanic for instance). Additionally higher levels of these skills would impart unique abilities not granted those with only basic skills (for example a tech with jury rigging 5 might be able to do a job in 30 seconds that, properly done with Mechanic 5, would take 5 minutes). The actual missions themselves could consist of various mini-games, which can have all kinds of levels of complexity: from a simple game of "memory" or (even worse) connect-the-dots, to tuning a filter network, to designing a power distribution network, to figuring out how to connect pipe A to manifold B without disconnecting very important power conduit C (whatever you do though, don't make it a "click the widget" game).

Failure to achieve these seemingly unimportant missions could have large scale consequences. Indeed, this introduces a meta-gaming element where people intentionally do something horrible: "WHAT?! Tech Team A "accidentally" cut the power conduit to the station sentry gun targeting systems, and Tech Team B just reported a medical emergency at the docking bay doors? Gee, I hope no-one outside was counting on the sentry guns or docking for the next 5 minutes while the backups kick in." How's that for violent griefing? Such actions would, of course, mangle one's faction standing with the station and probably get one fired, but it could be SO worth it.

Stations who see very little traffic may slowly begin to lose services or the quality of the service they provide. This would also help to give a more plausible reason for why a low sec station has lower refinery efficiency: those clunky maintenance bots just cant keep up with the abuse and no one's ever around the fix the big problems.

Also, usage could determine the rate of decay. therefore stations like Jita would require vastly more maintenance crews (which would justify the greater number of missions they'd likely be giving out). Additionally, the repair needs could interact with each other through a "depletion layer" just like Planetary Interaction. That could even be the basis for a more dynamic type of maintenance mission where multiple teams or individuals working separately have to interact with the "maintenance layer" in order to accomplish goals (kind of like incursions).

For example:
Team A has to get the comms relay back up and running
-> in order to do that Team B has to repair the atmosphere scrubbers in section D
-> unfortunately section D has no gravity right now and no one can figure out what the problem is
-> until Team C fixes the internal sensors
-> and if the comms arn't sorted out in the next 30 minutes, a bunch of capsuleers wont be able to talk to their mission agents for the next hour.

Thus a social dynamic is created; there's potential for immediate (face to face) interaction as well as distributed game play. The ecosystem has the potential to have wide effects on the sandbox as a whole, while still being completely optional. The places with high populations will naturally benefit, and a human landscape of well maintained (as well as seedy) stations will evolve.

P.S.
Another, optional idea that could fit into this is "Station Docking Fees" to fund the Station Maintenance Budget and create an isk sink/source dichotomy between maintenance and usage.

They can't do it. They invested a lot on it and burned their fingers once. Now they're too scared to proceed in any direction and took another timeout to internally think some more on a project, that has already been worked on for years. It was a good decision though and will propably do good in the end, but it also highlights what a giant mess the management of the project had become. This part of the project should really have been a done deal long time ago, with satisfactory implementation of that vision the only hurdle left to overcome.

I'm not saying that CCP will make this. I'm saying they should.

The only way avatars in EVE will be useful, in any way, is in any form of social interaction. If there won't be any social interaction, it's complete and utter garbage, just an extended character creator (which ironicly, is what the blog is pointing at now).

And no, CCP did not "invested a lot on it and burned their fingers". They spent six? years releasing zero content. If they had invested alot of time and actually delivered.. something.. (right now it's nothign), it would potentially have 'burned their fingers'. Now, they just did nothing for six years and wasted alot of money on it.

It's quite simple: content. Why do you think Tetris is still a great game after all these years? Pac Man? I'll take that pixeled game over walking around in my CQ any day. I'll play my Super Cars 2 on my Amiga 500, or hell Asteroids or River Raid on the Atari 2600 - no matter how pixeled. Because it's content. It has something. And that's why CCP delivered "nothing". There was no content.

That's why this is so simple too. It's all about content. Fancy looks die. I mean, I loved the looks and controls in the Gears of War series, but a game that has several cinematics and still end after 10 hours gameplay is utter garbage. EVE is an MMO that's been on the market for 9 years, and doesn't seem to die just yet. So there's plenty of incentitives to look at long-lasting content. Avatars that interact socially in stations might very well be a way to make an "EVE 2" without actually making a new game. And it's a solid platform for World of Vampires. But then CCP needs to stop being butthurt, looking at the quick/easy solutions (like the latest expansion, no long term effects and good stuff, just bug fixed and shortterm balancing that will create issues - I'm looking at your supercaps and hybrids).

CCP needs to realise this. It's not rocket science. Simple.
Content. Lastability. Profit.

(edit; this means that Team Avatar should completely drop their work if they're just focusing on the character creator, it already works and is quite decent, it'd make alot more sense to work on real lasting content. Boosts to mining, major nerf to highsec income, make incentitives to go to null, stop promoting superblobs - in all ways, super balancing, nullsec upgrade fortresses, jumpbridges, fw changes, etc - make incentitives to spread out in null. If CCP really want to stick to working on these 'avatars' they have made, they need to create content for it, period, and that means social interaction, anything else is complete and utter waste of time and repeat of history/mistakes they already done)

Corp/alliance logo as an arm tattoo? Back tattoos? Where are our hats?

Personally I believe there should both be economic & physical pvp in-stations. Let us use the DUST 514 weapons in stations.
Of course WIS is so far reaching, that almost anything is possible. Maybe inspiration from Planetside and Tribes should be taken into account as well as DUST 514. The mass effect series too I reckon.

In terms of pvp would we finally be able to shoot our enemies jump clones/clones ala planetside? Can we camp players in their cabins? Of course players should still be able to do a lot more things in the quarters. Maybe various entrances to different parts of the stations so camping is less easy. Can you hack into a players trading interface and damage their finances? Sabotage their ships while they are docked by implanting a virus?

I personally think players should police their own. Poison a players quafe ultra to damage them when they swallow? Don't like being defeated in mindclash, just pull out a pistol to shoot your opponent in the head unless they have a firearm inhibitor around.
I also like the way in some games you can push npcs out of the way. You should be able to do that to players.

Corp/Alliance tatoo's... I like that.

Including NPC types.

I would like some minigames. And corporation office with heads of the most notable enemies of the corporation mounted on the wall.

Say, while we're at it, can we fix all the bugs with the character creator?

Let's shoot for the background loading 100% of the time.

Oh, and my face. Let's get the quality up to the point where we can load my face 100% of the time.

Oh, wait and lights! It would be great if the lighting loaded 100% of the time too.

So to recap: the character creator should 1) load the character, 2) load the lighting, and 3) load the background.

Then I think it's safe to work on other stuff.