Jita Park Speakers Corner

Thanks for the opportunity to provide feedback.

I hope it doesn't sound facetious to say that I'd like Incarna to do anything. I'd like it to be part of the game. The exploration-related content sounds terrific. If it could be expanded to missions, so that we could enter the structures that we currently either ignore or shoot, to free prisoners and slaves (and maybe enslave them ourselves, if we're so inclined), that would be great. Corp and alliance meetings where we can all gather and share a map and a screen (holographic?) would be great, especially if it could also link to DUST corp offices. Eventual integration of ships would be amazing (why wouldn't command ships have corp offices as well?), as would live markets, agents.... really, Incarna could add a tremendous amount of depth to EVE.

Please explore the possibility of WiS being a "free to play" alternative--if you want to fly in space, buy a pilot's license, or a pilot's license extension. Besides potentially attracting a whole new audience, it could provide more ships and more jobs for pilots, because the F2P people will still want to be ferried around. Maybe they could even man guns.

It would also make the universe seem larger if there were more than 4 station types (extrapolating from the 4 CQs). A Gallente Federation Navy factory should have more spartan accommodations than a Gallente Pleasure Hub, for example, and there's no reason for Deteis, Jin-Mei or Ni-Kunni stations to look like mainline Caldari, Gallente or Amarr stations, and Brutor and Sebiestor styles would also be different. The difference could very easily extend to what the stations are best for, just as they do for POSes currently. But that's the kind of thing that could be rolled out on a continuous slow burn. What Incarna needs most desperately is to become part of the game of EVE.

Also, if they could speed up the load time when you dock to your CQ, that would be great. It's currently excruciating.

I would want that incarna added gameplay for casuals and non-PvPrs. "FiS on foot" is not worth it, frankly.

Some key points i want to be hammered down, just in case:

Stations are safe. Always. Forever. No excuses. Once docked, nothing bad happens to you unless you do something. That's not unusual, it's the degree of safety enjoyed by traders in the market tab. Say no to ganking in stations.

Immersion. Capsuleers don't risk their precious lives. Whatever they do and can end with death, they do it through proxies. Think of Jump Clones on foot -i call that drone clones.

Customization. Capsuleers are entitled, by the lore, to represent themselves in whatever fashion. Currently there's not enough apparel and that leads to everybody using the same stuff over and over again and blurrign to inexistence the very first choice a player makes: race. Forcing people to stick to Superpollez as their name but not force them to commit to that Ammarr ladies won't wear "DatAss" skintight flightsuits is sort of lame.

Social content. Allow players to interact and they will interact. The biggest bang per buck is in emergent content. Prototyping dungeon raiding may be necessary, but the fast and easy way to get some WiS delivered before the character creator grows obsolete and anyone interested on WiS dismisses it as undeliverable propaganda is social content.

Casual friendly endgame. Allow to make meaningful progress in small steps. 1,000 small steps lead to a goal, rather than require hours logged in for a single step which then can be lost in 5 minutes AFK. FiS is doing well enough without WiS, so make WiS a new experience for those who are not doing well with FiS and its awful time comsuming activities. "What can i achieve in 30 minutes" should have an answer better than "be griefed, killed and stolen of your belongings". Rather than make FiS casual friendly, make WiS casual friendly from start.

Will keep thinking, now i must go back to RL. Huh. Good we no longer lose posts upon posting them after Too long...

(BTW: forum warring is of the single most casual friendly activities in EVE. And it's -gasp- social gameplay. *wink, wink*)

Yes, this would cover any aspect of the Walking In Stations project.

Ok, good.

Please do everything to ensure that any future development of Walking In Stations is focused around implementing actual gameplay and things for players to do, in keeping with the design principles of existing Eve features. Please ensure that any suggestions about vacuous 'social environments' and other Second Life / Sims Online-inspired nonsense, or suggestions that revolve around removing existing functions to crowbar into WiS (for example 'you should have to get out of your ship to access the market/medbay/trade window/etc') are met with a suitable wall of disdain.

In particular, the more recent ideas about exploring hidden structures for lost technology, or carrying out secret 'off the radar' missions that leave no trace with the existing NPC agents, were interesting and need to be explored further.

The WiS content needs to start somewhere. Suggestions that social environments are "vacuous" should be treated with the contempt that they deserve.

Social environments on station are an ideal starting point since there is so little functionality required. That is the biggest "bang per buck" that Team Avatar can deliver: multiplayer environments which allow spatial voice communication, basic emotes. Follow up with customizable environments ("establishments") where punters can gather to pay strippers/exotic dancers, gamble on simple games, etc. The core of EVE is the emergent game created by the players. There does not need to be any more mechanics behind the social environments other than simply being in the same green screen space together. 3D spatial sound will help: an establishment owner might install "private" spaces: dining bays with soft furnishings to absorb sound and prevent eavesdropping. Another owner might prefer harder surfaces to cater to musical performances.

Expanding this environment to dungeon crawls can happen after the bugs are ironed out of the "multiple avatars on screen at once" system.

Start small, get players involved early.

PS: for those who want FPS shooter action, there is DUST514.

Shelve it completely for a long time, and while that happens, think of a way to actually have it enhance the game in some way, rather than a thinly-veiled front for a failed microtransaction scheme. Figure out in detail exactly where they want it to go gameplay-wise before even writing a single new line of code, and then maybe even pitch it to the playerbase (I'm not normally in support of having to sell every idea to players, but with something this toxic, I think they have to).

One quick look indicates that second life is a freakshow,
if we get overrun by them freaks hey can i apply to AHARM?

The emergent game created by the players can only exist because of tools provided by CCP to facilitate it. Shoving players into a room together and expecting the Emergent Gameplay Fairies to come along and generate player-driven content out of thin air is laughably naive.

Imagine if CCP had created a spaceship game where all we could do is float around in our ships and emote to each other. No guns, no asteroids to mine, no missions, no cargo to transport, just lots of big empty space and players looking at each other. Where would that epic player driven narrative that forms the foundation of Eve come from?

As for the idea that I'd go to a virtual bar to spend my isk on drinking virtual beer so I could pretend to get drunk, or receiving a virtual striptease so I could pretend to get wood, or watch a virtual rock band and start a pretend moshpit, I can only assume you got here by accident and have no idea what actual game we're discussing.


Players already have the tools to 'prevent eavesdropping' - confidential text or Eve Voice conversations are available simply through opening a private chat, never mind the multitude of out-of-game options that exist. It seems you're suggesting that WiS features merely duplicate the tools we already have elsewhere, which isn't going to do anything to justify the man-hours spent on it or encourage people to try it out.


So basically you're advocating that the players beta-test a gameplay-free graphics engine and that content can come later. CCP already tried that and called it the Incarna expansion, I heard it went really well for them?

Incarna is still with us. The players left because the parts of the game they enjoyed were being ignored st the expense of Incarna which only gave us one racial captains quarters. CCP put more focus onto features the players were interested in, and finished the other three quarters, the players came back.

The expansion into the station multiplayer environment is going to happen: there are plenty of folks who have been looking forward to multiplayer Incarna environments since walking in station was referred to as "ambulation". Just because you do not like space Barbies doesn't mean nobody likes space Barbies.

The people that space Barbies will appeal to are the role players, machanima producers, and refugees from Star Wars, Second Life, World of Warcraft and Star Trek Online. That you cannot grasp this as a useful tool for recruiting is only indicative of your lack of imagination. That having such people in the game will cause you emotional stress is more reason for me to want the feature in the game.

And it is in fact exactly what needs to happen. Only without the secrecy, lies, hurfblurf and hype, and without calling it an expansion until it's actually ready for one.