Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ok, so everyone knows the typical arguments against being able to properly pilot your ship in Eve: server load. The servers couldn't handle all the data from player's joysticks, blah blah blah. Well listen up CCP - It's about to be done successfully!

Everyone remembers Elite and Frontier from the 80's and 90's. I am sure Eve even owes some of its heritage and inspiration to that game. Well Elite: Dangerous is in production, it's now online multiplayer, and you have direct, realtime control of your ship. It's gonna take David Braben at Frontier Developments 2 years to finish the game. So there you have it CCP - you have 2 years to do something about this and give us proper control of our ships so we can feel like we're actually piloting them, and not just telling the flight computer what straight line to fly in.

The consequences of not addressing this sorely lacking feature in Eve will be pilots leaving to play Elite Dangerous in 2014. Consider this your heads-up!

Here's the proof it CAN be done:

Elite Dangerous Dev Video

AC.

I respectfully disagree Ted. I think you'll find that once they (Frontier) have the HUD working, it will show you what's going on all around you, just like the old Elite and Frontier used to with the 3D 360-degree radar - something else Eve really needs. And Eve is about flying spaceships (mainly). And when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of piloting a ship, especially something fast like a Rifter, the pilot experience would be greatly enhanced with full real-time control. It's only become an RTS because of the control limitations. And those controls are fine for large craft. But for PvP in small frigs, surely being able to actually pilot your ship has gotta be more fun than "click this button, click that, wait, oh he clicked that so i have to click this..." i mean really. I honestly think that Eve would benefit from having both control systems - the point and click for the big ships, and then manual piloting available for the smaller ones. We'd have the best of both worlds!

If by "things like a rifter" you mean "Pretty much only rifters" then yes, totally.

There are like... half a dozen ships in this game that would actually benefit from this (the few combat frigates people actually use), and it's such a major development drain that I don't see how it would be worth it for that.

AND since your weapons cannot be controlled manually (if they were, it would defeat the whole mechanism of brain implants etc. and having your pilot have "skills" separate from your own actual aiming skills, etc.), it wouldn't even really be all that fun to be in first person. If you can't even push the trigger and get instant pew pew, then it doesn't seem so great.

No.

Why? Because EVE isn't a "dogfight" space simulator game, It's a full MMO game with character Skills paving the way to your success or lack thereof. A dog-fight type game would remove that and set the skill set in the hands of the player and not the character.

If Elite: Dangerous does make it to market I will most assuredly play it but I also will not give up on EVE as the two games will be very different from each other, so far as basically being completely different types of games.

EVE makes flying simple and sets all the effort into learning and testing various ship fits and getting the character skills needed for these as well as having manufacturing and trading and all other aspects governed by those same skills.

Elite will most likely stay on the same path as the original two releases, which I think is a great path, but with the added concept of being able to fly around with other people too and with modern graphics and technology used. It will be more about getting your hands dirty kind of game with learning to control your ship both in space and in planetary stratos/atmospheres.
Mining will be more of setting mining-modules on an asteroid and coming back later to pick the ore up. Trading will be done not by setting a good price in a localized market like EVE has (despite various regions) but getting something from one economic area to another economic area to make a profit from it (much like having import/export in our own world) with all economic areas having completely different market prices.

Elite and EVE are just completely different games and trying to get one thing from one to the other would in my opinion just be a mistake as it either requires complete rewriting of the basic codes or just won't fit with the current structure of how said game is set up.

Cheers

Nope. Sorry. You haven't sold me. Still disagree.

Ok, you know, these are all very good points. And i'm not suggesting turning Eve into Elite. I love the skill system and the ship-equip system. But I guess what I am asking the devs to consider is a way to integrate the OPTION of manual piloting for dog fighting. I don't see anything wrong with it. I mean they created an entirely new environment for Incarna (the inside of the station) so don't tell me they couldn't incorporate an additional piloting system. And not to compare this to Incarna, but the whole "walking in stations" thing could have been great if they'd been allowed to develop it, but no, people had to whine and complain about change - you know why? Because they were so stuck in the past that they couldn't imagine a better future. It's a human failing, I'm afraid. A genetic trait that makes you feel comfortable in your metaphoric nest - a survival instinct. One that is sorely misplaced here, in this game. We could have been having Corp meetings in virtual person on a STATION by now if it wasn't for their narrow-mindedness, instead of using Teamspeak or whatever happens to be your client of choice. We could have been buying and selling in actual shops, instead of using an antiquated database list. So yeah, thanks for that.

The way it is now, it doesn't really take much skill to fight so far as piloting goes. The skill element does come into play in so far as knowledge of the game and of the options that are available to you where ship equipment is concerned. Once you've learned that, and your character is old enough to have gotten the required skills for those modules, you just turn them on. I guess the skill comes in to play when you have to know which ones to use and when. But once you have that knowledge and your character is old enough and has trained enough skills, it's basically the same as using a cheat code in a single-player game. A 5-year-old clone is gonna have what amounts to an unfair advantage over a a 1-year-old clone, purely because they are older.

Now, that sounds obvious, but what I am trying to say is that you could take an Eve vet, take them out of their regular character, give them a brand new character and they'd lose every fight, purely because that character can't equip as good modules as an older clone, or fly as powerful a ship as an older clone. The actual SKILL of the player as a pilot doesn't even come into play. And when you consider that most of the game is about flying spaceships, that's kinda crazy. It smacks of nothing more than game limitations at the time the game was originally conceived 10 years ago. Well, computers and servers and internet connections are all just a tiny bit faster than they were 10 years ago! And btw, David Braben talks about "a huge amount of players" being involved in fights, so don't assume anything yet - we have no idea - for all we know at this point it could very well mean thousands.

Well, the technology is available now - David Braben is proving it. And you know, we all call ourselves "pilots". Doesn't anyone remember what that word actually means? Well here's a reminder:

pilot
noun
1. a person duly qualified to steer ships into or out of a harbor or through certain difficult waters.
2. a person who steers a ship.
3. Aeronautics . a person duly qualified to operate an airplane, balloon, or other aircraft.
4. to steer.
5. to control the course of

Does that sound like what we do in Eve? No it does not. And yet it's a spaceship game. Go figure.

So what I am saying is this. No one is suggesting removing skills - in fact you'd need more skills related to piloting that would affect the performance of your craft. What I AM saying is that we need to inject the piloting aspect of flying a ship into the existing game that is after all supposed to be about flying a ship. It could even be optional for the player. If they so chose they could just stick to the old point and click routine. But I guarantee you they wouldn't last long against someone who chose to manually fly their ship, and who is able to steer and aim and dodge and perform skilled evasive maneuvers. I know, I know, actually flying your ship would involve real life skill. OMG. Heaven forbid we actually have to use some real skill of our own as a player and not that of a character. I am telling you right now guys, winning a PvP fight would be sooo much more satisfying this way, because you would know you have beaten the PLAYER and not just their character's skill set and equipment list.

Don't be a sheep: Be brave.

"Fly" safe!

AC

This kind of thing could be introduced as a stand-alone game in the Eve universe, based on the idea of piloting fighters & fighter bombers off carriers. It should be a casual, drop-in-and-play affair to bring back some of the World of Tanks crew. It would also be great if there was an "embedded" version in the Eve client so you can play it while docked up or floating at a POS.

Agreed.

I don't think it's possible with Eve's code and how it ticks over on the server. It would require a massive change in code and hardware.

So sorry, it'll most likely never happen.

OP - There are many many reasons FPS is not suitable to MMO style gameplay. It has nothing to do with space. WoW, AoC, Lineage, and dozens of MMOs are all third-person-click-targeting for a reason.

(1) it's hard to be social and chat when you have to stare at the screen constantly to play

(2) it's hard to read and type into chat when you have to keep aiming at a target

(3) it's hard to get a human to stare at a crosshair for the thousands of hours MMO gameplay normally engenders

(4) aiming is a skill, not a tough decision

..I could go on. If you disagree, go look at Jmpgate Evo which went 'back to the drawing board' on their FPS space mmo and still hasn't shipped. FPS MMO isn't going to happen. If it does, it isn't going to be an "MMO" like we think of them here.

DUST-514 is a more interesting take on blending FPS gameplay and MMO. IMO it looks more like, and will appeal more to, the call-of-duty crowd than the MMO crowd. Which is a good thing, there are lots of those players. I just don't think it'll 'feel much like' an MMO.

Just because Eve isn't twitch based play, doesn't mean it's dated and will die. There are many shooters out there, some are third person, some first. It doesn't mean one type will die without change.

Eve works the way it's now coded, for large fleet fights etc. This means twitch based coding and hardware is not possible atm, due to time and cash. Also due to the fact, it's not that type of game.