Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I read here: http://www.intomobile.com/2011/03/30/eve-online-being-tested-on-tegra-2-android-tablets-smartphones/

About the possibility of seeing EVE on Android Os at some point. As this is obviously very exciting I was interested to know if there was any specific timeframe for release?

Also I'm looking at buying an ASUS Transformer tablet, it will be running Android 4.0 ICS - Is it likely EVE will be supported on this device?

Many thanks.

Meh, I could do most of what I do in EvE via a text only interface... graphx are pretty, but aren't needed for everything...

personally, I don't hold out much hope for EvE on my droid until they can at least fix the eve gate email to work on android...

The big problem that ALWAYS comes up when people ask for this kinda stuff is that any version of eve that actually allows you to interact as if you were logged in normally is that every client would need a similar amount of dev time as the main game. And be working with extremely limited resources and in an environment that Eve is not native to.

Now, that means that CCP can't afford to do it. They can't take on four times the developers and do four time the QA and testing to make that happen. So that's why they can't do it. They decided that the 'basic graphics' client was a waste of their time and effort, so mobile devices... Hell no. And there isn't a hope in hell that Eve proper would run on a smartphone. Not by a million miles.

There is something to be said for a thinned down, zero graphics client that only allows for market orders, contracts, eve mail, skill queues and chat to be used. But then again that brings up difficult questions about how it wold actually work. Would you show in local ? What if you logged in space ?

Even if you totally restrict it only to stations, a client that thin wouldn't really be eve, and honestly would only be attractive to a very small number of people. Useful from time to time, but certainly not a day to day thing for the average player. CCP releasing that would be ok, but totally not exciting.

Personally I think it is FAR more likely that this kind of limited functionality will come to us via eve gate (as evemail is now) which we can then access on the go via the website, with an open ended API that would allow anyone else to develop mini-Eve apps for whatever platforms.

As a side note: The particular reason why there could never be 'Eve For Android' is that handing any kind of advantageous tool (even a minimally useful one as above but it counts ten times as much for a full client in the future) l to one platform while excluding another, even a less popular one, would set an extremely bad precedent for CCP. Sending the message (however well intentioned) that to compete in Eve you must have this one type of device is really really bad.

People are... well... PSYCHOTICALLY devoted to their smartphone platform, so picking one over another is bad. Similarly, Eve is played by a lot of people who don't have a whole lot of RL money. Since you can pay for free, if you can make 500mil per month, and can be played on a very modest system, Eve is great for poor people (like me). So adding on the unspoken implication that 'If you don't have a Galaxy Nexus/iPhone/whatever you will not be able to compete with these other people who do' will **** a lot of people off. It doesn't matter if its big things or little things. And that layers on the implication that rich people obviously don't have the time to game because they are too busy being popular and having sexy parties, and honestly aren't even really nerds at all. Just virtual entrepreneurs.

I may be over thinking this. But yeah... If you have any functionality in eve (and EVERYTHING in eve is PvP) tied into any kind of specific platform, or even to 'smartphones in general' you end up disenfranchising some of your players. You tell them that they don't get something shiny because they aren't rich enough. And that is totally contrary to the way that eve is.

Speaking for myself, as a blackberry user, I would be monacle-gate pissed off if CCP launcher an Android or iOS client that I was cut off from simply because 2 years ago I chose a work phone and told that if I want to access that I need to pay two months rent. That stuff is not cool. It doesn't even matter what that client contains. Even if its just skill chaning. There are suddenly features of Eve I can't have because I'm poor.

That **** is not cool, and I will not have it in my eve sir. Not ever.

Unless they port it for the blackberry tablet OS. That'd be fine.