Jita Park Speakers Corner

Be careful on how you broaden the game to a wider audience.

A wide river can be a shallow one.

@ CCP Seagull: if you want to engage the solo player, you should question why your company only listens to the guys who can step forward and get 10,000 votes and become members of the CSM.

I am a solo player, and I have seen quite some people leave in silence after each expansion. They didn't even post in forums, I just met them accidentally, and they left unnoticed because your company was very busy dealing with the "politically correct" players, the ones who engage in social activities, who join corporations, spam the forums, and eventually go the Fanfest or become CSM.

The cool social, dedicated kids are nice to meet in person, but then it's the solo, casual freaks who pay your bills... until they leave. I am sure that your data on this is far better than mine.

I see you're... concerned? on why do we lurk, what can you do about us.

I can answer that easily: don't shove "community" unto us. We are not socializing, so take that at face value. We may be shy, or cowardly or selfish or whatever. So we don't need more socialization, we don't need better rewards for socialization, we don't need to be punished for not being of use to the community.

What we need are better, more engaging niches that suit to how we use the sandbox and not how players are supposed to become long term subscribers. You can meet us mining, ratting, running missions, exploring, trading, manufacturing, PI'ing... on our own. Some of us even spend our time customizing our avatars for our own pleasure, go figure.

We don't need rewards for socializing nor punishment for not socializing.

We need solo-specific content that adds to the existing one, which is scarce and also has become appallingly old and tired after so many years.

Oh... and we need that you don't thread on the flowers. That we're tired of the old content doesn't means we want to lose it...

I walked away from the minutes thinking 'thats nice, but what is CCP actually going to deliver?"

And where does avatar gameplay factor in all of this? Why won't the CSM represent the views of those players who want meaningful gameplay? There's been plenty of threads in support of it.

Will there be an avatar stuff in 2013?

Enough of this "we will deliver something at sometime in some way" crap please. And sadly it now it seems POSs joins WIS as something that may happen.

I thought EVE already had a vision. The "future vision" as shown by Hilmar at fanfest. Which featured spaceships, avatars, dust, explosions and revenge. Is it no longer relevant?

Confused.

Well, they're certainly not going to deliver a POS rework thats for sure

You're 100% right, in that many soloers/casuals will rather leave than be penalyzed for how do they play. Every player haves a reason to play EVE, and removing those reasons is not going to make them change their mind -rather change who gets their money.

It's like, say, Nike. Everybody haves a reason to buy Nike shoes, and you bet 99% of them are not athletes. A wide majority doesn't even do any sport. So, can you figure what would happen if Nike only cared of their "politically correct" customers who actually do sports with their Nike shoes? Sure, the "prestige" of the remaining customers would be increased, but Nike as a company would plummet into the red and go bankrupt.

Because most people who buy Nike shoes are like most people who play EVE: hang them if they bother themselves to do what the "corporate image" claims that their customers do.

There's plenty of people in EVE who play it "the wrong way". And for the most part, they don't exist before CCP's eyes.

To be frank, there's alomost nothing on us at the minutes. Most of the "next decade" meeting was about the cool guys, enablers and inducers. This thread is one of the quietest on the CSM minutes, and it turns most people postign here are soloers who take a chance to speak now that CCP deigned itself to notice we're there, "playing wrong" their game.

On the specific point of moving T2 production to nullsec, frankly, i don't care. It's like the n-th time the spoiled brats in nullsec ask to have everybody's pie. CSM 6 asked the ABC minerals from WH, now CSM7 asks T2 production, and I don't care. This game is not going anywhere now, no matter wether it stagnates on its own or they speed up the process.

Where should EVE aim for to last another decade? I think it's a kind of wrong question. EVE will not last that long unless TQ starts picking up population this year, and frankly, resolving any amount of oldtimer's issues is not going to attract nor keep customers any better than Crucible, Inferno and Retribution have done. "WHY should YOU play EVE?", that's the question CCP hasn't answered since Incarna.

"We are going to fix POSes" is an awful sellling line to people who neither know what is a POS, nor could care less even if they played EVE. The same goes for Sovereignty, Titan Bridges or whatever piece of ingame slang. You don't build your future by adressing issues from the past.

And EVE since Incarna has been more about issues from the past than about the future.

Just read this thread. There should be a debate on what we dare to ask for EVE's next decade.

Instead, we see soloers ask attention and nobody else gives a damm of EVE's next decade. The real hot topic from the CSM minutes, it's an issue from the past...

Y así nos va.

You know its good that CCP at least acknowledges the existence of solo players.

They are not well represented by the CSM. Probably because they are a difficult group to engage with. I mean, how do you engage with someone who isn't really interested in engaging with you?

I find myself very much in agreement with Seagull's plans, however they same rather ephemeral at the moment. "Our long term plan is to come up with a long term plan"

this strikes me very much along the lines of "We formed a committee to discuss the formation of a committee to discuss the formation of a committee..."

Saying 'we need a theme' is great, and I agree. But has CCP actually talked about what they want that theme to be? Do they want the help of us (the players) coming up with that?

Here's a few thoughts on things CCP needs to work on over the next decade in my mind:

* Dynamism: EVE Needs to move away from being so static. Everything should be in flux and the players should determine how that flux occurs. Everything should change, highsec systems, lowsec, nothing should be static, through this lies the way to decay. There should always be new ships and modules coming out to shake up strategic balance and allow interesting tactics and clever pilots to get an edge. There should always be avenues open to players to change the entire scope of the map. This would be the, "Why can't I bomb Athra from orbit?" gameplan.

*Mystery: this was touched on. One of the first things that a new player in EVE encounters is the massive scope of the universe. Everything seems so big and huge and mysterious, and you're just this one small person in this vast spaceship world....except that only lasts for a bit. Once you see past the thin veneer of asteroids and realize they're just floating rings of rocks in the middle of nowhere, once you've rescued the Damsel the 80th time, once you've scanned down your 20th exploration site and start realizing all the content are just thin bubbles of items floating in nothingness. EVE starts out as a huge expansive universe, and then this very quickly dropped away as players understand the game mechanics. Nothing should be easy in EVE, nothing should be 'do these steps get this ISK' everything should be fun, and new, and challenging. You should be asking 'well eve, what do you have for me this time?' every single time you undock. This would be the "Why can't I fly my ship in warp between stars and find cool scary things in deep space?" gameplan.

*Expansion: EVE should be constantly growing, constantly expanding. There should always be new space opening up, new things to explore, new stuff to build, new territories to conquer. As long as there is a limited amount of space, the older more experienced players will slowly push out the newer players. I would call this the 'Lets build more stargates!" gameplan.

*Creation and Destruction: There isn't really much in EVE right now in the way of creation, besides to create more tools for destruction. I can't build cities, I can just build spaceships. I can't build softdrinks, I can just build autocannons. I can't build acceleration gates or stargates or any of those cool structures floating in deadspace, or a lot of other interesting things. Having more stuff to build means having more stuff to blow up, and everyone likes explosions. This would be the "Farms and Fields" gameplan.

*Community: This is at its core, what EVE is all about. EVE isn't a game about spaceships at the end of the day, its a game about people. Its a game about players, and making friends and enemies you can have for years to come. Feuds should be encouraged, disputes should be hot. Players should get angry and want to go blow up each others things, as well as have drinks with each other. The Community is arguably the most important part of EVE, and its what CCP needs to encourage above all else. This being the 'Friendship is magic" Gameplan.

These are of course just my thoughts.

I agree completely.

My mind is boggled by the fact that there are no idiots trashing this thread. Does the OP have a can of idiot repellant? if so, I need several. :)

3. MODULAR POS

The idea of modular pos is just too good not to do it. However, there's a dilemna. With PI and now with DUST 514 on the horizon, it seems sort of silly to be mining moon materials from orbit with some modified mineral-death-ray. So get rid of POS as we know them, and give the moon material supply to the watchful eyes of either PI or the Dust Bunnies. But give them a new function.

Allow them to start out very basic and cheap as they do now, but make them fully customizable, and unlimited in their expansion potential - markets, research labs, refineries, hangers, office space, etc etc. Let people deploy them anywhere. Make sure they are fully destructable, and of course allow them to have a vast array of defenses and offenses. Let people dock with them as well, of course.

I'm sure there are concerns about vast structures appearing in asteroid belts and near permanent wormholes, and other resources. Why is that bad? That's what we would do in reality. Imagine the trade hubs that could appear? Imagine being able to refine, reprocess, build, buy, and sell everything you wanted, right next to your resource? Would you really want your customers coming in on your resource?

It could generate lots of conflict, and that is what drives eve and makes eve fun. Let people go crazy with an urban sprawl of POS in every corner of space that they so choose.

You'll have some folks that just want a secret base on an off-grid safe spot.

You'll have others that make a contraband laden, slave-girl ( & boy ) buffet, trading mecca completely begs for someone to come and obliterate it.

Lastly make the things drop loot. If you destroy a modular POS, it should drop a portion of the loot contained within. Whatever wasn't destroyed should be fair game.

Is this redundant with the current stations? Possibly they will be more desireable because of their expandability. Possibly not because they can be destroyed. The players of eve will figure this out and they'll make it work. It's just a toy for the sandbox.

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4. TECH 3

Finish it up already.

Give us the modules with bonuses to overheating. Make them slightly less effective than T2 items, but with a better bonus when overheated, and a much better ability to withstand the overheat for longer. These wouldn't take a lot of creativity to come up with the stats, just a few standard forumlas to deviate from the current T2 items.

Give us more ships. You've set and cast the die with the T3 crusiers, so you make ships that are versatile, that can do a wide variety of things almost as well as their specialized T2 counterparts can. Set it up so they are pretty expensive to lose, and keep the skill-loss intact that exists with the cruisers. Give us frigates and give us battleships, then give us a T3 capital ship that can work as a carrier, or a dreadnaught, or a rorqual, depending on which modular parts you put on it. PS give us T2 dreads, carriers, and rorquals as well.

Do this, and move on from the mess that has become tech 3, so we can hurry up and get to tech 4.

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5. TECH 4

Bioships!

Lots of new skills for both production and piloting!

Bioships will be grown rather than built. They'll be incubated to adulthood rather than constructed. They'll use organic as well as inorganic materials that will be fused with the living being after the incubation period is over.

inorganic and organic materials could simply be ones that are already in use for other things, or they could require some player corpses be harvested and recycled to get some of the rarer ingredients.

Bioships will have a basic regeneration (healing) to their structure. Armor is questionable as it could be biological, or the armor could be the inorganic materials that were fused with the beastie, meaning it might have to be repaired like a normal ship. I'm definitely leaning towards the latter.

Bioships will need to eat. The existing gas clouds scream for attention here. Especially considering the gas clouds are used to make boosters, which give you bonuses for flying ships. Theoretically, having the proper type of harvested cloud-gas in your hold could give your bio-ship the same bonuses you'd have from using boosters, and possibly without the side effects since it's what they eat, after all. We might need to populate some more gas clouds to keep them all properly fed :)

Overheating things on a bioship would be potentially bad, as there is living tissue surrounding the hardpoints that were integrated with their bodies. So this creates a wonderful opportunity to create a contrast with all the lovely Tech 3 ships that you've just released.

Instead of overheating to squeeze moar dps from your weapons, you instead have to think more biological. The capacitors of these living ships will actually siphon off the energy created by the beastie that you're flying around, so this creates an idea for t4 modules and a mechanism that would go with it.

Tech 4 modules would be specially designed to, ( when activated like overheating a normal weapon ) tap into the creature-ship's stored energy reserves to operate more effectively for a short amount of time. This process would not damage the modules, however, but would instead damage the creature-ship's hull ( body ), and would either shut down or drasticly slow the automatic regeneration of the shields and hull that normally occurs constantly. If your hull reached zero, your ship would die, leaving a giant corpse-wreck for the looters to drool over. And you would be very, very sad, of course.

And a final note of consideration. If your ships are living entities, they should have implant slots instead of rig slots -- for those truly wealthy folks that simply cannot fly an un-pimped ride.