EVE General Discussion

A social area with a knife counts as meaningful gameplay to me.

A social area that doesn't allow for meaningful interaction (besides talking to each other) isn't worth spending time on. We already have chat channels and voice Comms for social interaction.

I actually think there's room for potential here, and that's in proximity-based chatting.

Eve is somewhat unique in that all chat is normally broadcast, be it to a channel (even privately between two people), your corp/fleet/team, or to the entire system. There's not a "hey, I see you, so i can talk to you". When you're sitting on the Jita undock, there's not a way to talk to just those people near you.

The ability to chat with people around you in a station will change that.
You're not really worried about spies in local, or what your CEO thinks when you're talking to an enemy player, or what the enemy may learn from you talking to one of your friends. Instead, you can actually trust your eyes.

That alone opens up entirely new levels of communication.

The forums are scary. I have controversial opinions, and they come and bite me in the ass when someone gets pissed about something I say. But I don't believe in using an alt, as I actually like to see a realistic level of socialization between players.

It'd be nice to be able to chat with small groups of random strangers I run into without the entire world having a permanent record of it.

Scams, black markets, mercenaries, trades.... everything is taken to a new level when a new style of communication is added.

How many pages has this gone for? It's not a bunch of people saying don't do it, it's quite the opposite in fact.

Lots of FiS content over the last 18 months, the hell is that content at exactly? All I got was a bunch of preexisting content redone.

Anyone read the CSM minutes? Notice anything? Like all the new content as falling into the "we want to, we'd like, we're thinking about" category, and what we will be getting is yet more redone existing content.

Starbases sound great.
If there's one thing CCP has demonstrated effectively over the years, it's that they can come up with really great ideas, do a bunch of work on it, and then scrap it.

All the stuff I read in the minutes sounds great, but I have a better idea.
Finish what you already started. Give team avatar the resources they need to do a proper job, and then move on to the new stuff.

I'm sick of getting "expansions" that are just old content being tinkered with.

Ps: new players trickling in here and there isn't really growing the game, and putting new shaders on ships or redoing the war deck system isn't going to get a lot of new people interested in EVE.

Yep. Private. Not proximity.

Ever play any other MMO?

It's the difference between /s and /w

We have area chats. We have whispers. We have channels.

We don't have anything close to a /s.

Also, there's obviously not a CSPA charge or a required "accept" to walk up and talk to someone.

Sure we do. There are general, public channels.
There are Constellation Channels.
There is Local.
There are Private Chats.

Local is the proximity chat for EVE.

1. A Gridwide chat would be useless (Local already provides the functionality).
2. What advantage does broadcasting your conversation to just everyone in "earshot" have over just using a private channel or Local?
3. Lore has us immersed in Capsules filled with Goo 24/7 because we can't really die unless we leave said goo (capsule brach > copy and flash burn the brain). Leaving said goo leaves Capsuleers open to real (as in, no waking up in a medclone) death. Capsuleers generally don't like that idea. So as far as immersion in EVE lore, WIS makes no sense whatsoever (also, per Lore, Capsuleers are all pretty much violent sociopaths. It just comes with the territory. Look up the NPC crew numbers for EVE's ships.).
4. You can talk to everyone on your grid by right clicking them in your overview and inviting them to a conversation.

If you want to walk around emoting at everyone else, there are games for that. EVE's not particularly well suited for it.

@Your Story, EVE's chat functionality is identical to IRC. Until you, I had never heard of anyone having any trouble with it. Especially since the Chat system is explained in the 5th panel of the Tutorial.

1. Useless? Is it? Do I really need to spam someone over by the gate to tease someone playing station games? Or, more important, tease someone over by the gate to talk to someone else /in the station/?
2. "Oh hey, I like your avatar". "What type fits are you guys using?" "WTF was the starbase password again?"
3. The DUST 514 lore has already fixed that with the new implant.
4. Right. That's practical.

Thing is, I don't want to play wizards and elves and swords and magic and guns and aliens.
I want to play Eve. I like the setting, the gameplay, showing off my killboard, training skills, collecting ships, hell, even losing ships. You know, EVE. No other game is suited for that.

Eve's just lacking in the character relations, communication, and empathy department. And I really hate to see the game not being as good as it /could/ be. While Eve is the best MMO I've ever played, I've also played literally dozens of others. Most of the time, I think "They could sure learn something from EVE". I brag about Eve to my friends constantly, and two date have earned half a year's game time just from buddy invites.

But we don't need to be as ignorant to think that Eve can't learn anything from WoW, Star Wars, or any other MMO.

Sure, EVE is better. But it's not perfect.

WoW was a terrible game. I hated it. It was awful. But it was a great social experience. The dozen or so people I raided in WoW with, years ago, are still good friends I keep in contact with regularly. So far, I haven't struck that sort of relationship with anyone on Eve. And that tells me the game is lacking a bit.

But more importantly than any of that:

What harm would it do for them to implement social areas? Really?

Has it ever occurred to you that essentially what you are asking for is a room for a bunch of dudes to emote each other in and eve online is rated only rated pegi 12?

Chat isn't a logical or fun reason to devote a large amount of resources and development time. A dedicated form of gameplay needs to be a foundation for social features, of which proximity chat could be a part of. Once avatar-based interaction involves meaningful gameplay, then a revisit of WiS could be in order.

Who gets to decide what meaningfull gameplay is?

You do realize that some people are wiling to stand around chating with
each other with their human avatars, and to them that is a meaningfull use
of their game time?

You do realize they pay subs too, right?