Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is probably the least-terrible WiS thread in F&I yet. In fact, I might even go so far as to call it good.

Anyway, CCP has come up with a "three pillar" model around which to design their MMOs, which they detailed during the World of Darkness keynote at Fanfest 2013. You can watch the keynote on their YouTube channel if you like.

The first pillar is "The Sandbox". This is where players interact with the world and with each other via game mechanics. For EVE, this is sov war, gatecamping, freighter ganking, mining permits and building outposts. Things like that.

The second pillar is "The Themepark". This is where players interact with NPCs. Agent missions, running anoms, belt ratting, exploration, incursions, things of that nature.

The third pillar is "The Coffee Shop". This is where players interact with each other in a more social setting, where game mechanics aren't necessarily involved. It's what they were more-or-less (originally) trying to do with WiS and it's something that they're building into WoD starting from the very beginning. Your proposal sounds very, very much like revitalizing the attempt to build a "Coffee Shop" into EVE.


With regards to "why would a pilot leave their pod and lose their immortality", all I can say is that the question was asked prior to DUST and prior to the discovery of an implant that allows for consciousness to be transferred even without being in a pod at all. It's something that could just as easily be "implemented" (as much as lore ever has to be implemented in a game) into the capsuleer segment and remove that annoying gap in our immortality.

Now as for when you can start to hope that CCP will talk about WiS again, I wouldn't plan on that before WoD is released. They're letting the WoD team do all the heavy lifting at the moment, working with the CARBON engine and finding ways to improve and optimize it. Maybe after WoD is released we'll finally get a patch for CQ that optimizes it better and lets my GTX 570 stop spinning up to 90% fan usage.

All in all though, +1 from me - although I rather like the walkway. Can we keep that?

Props to the op. I'm now going to flood this post with similar concept ideas that support CQ and WiS on a social level, without sacrificing the option for future functionality:

- First Person Viewpoint
- Observation deck to see space, possibly not even in real time (distances too vast for the unaided eye ... 1km is over half a mile away, in the middle of a starry sky).
- The ability to invite others on a one-by-one basis into our personal CQ.

I'm covering the usage of the screens in CQ.
- Any tasked 'window' that we open up in captains quarters needs to have an option to be assigned to one of the three screens in our room. This means that if I open up a conversation with an agent ... it needs to appear there. If I open the market, it should appear there. Through a simple radial option (hold left mouse) allow us to 'port' any window into the screens, or 'unport' any screens into a window.
- Allow normal windows to be more functionary in CQ. If I open the market, as an example, and allow it to take up all three screens, then display different data on each. On the main screen it displays our group list. On the left it displays market statistics for the items we're viewing. And on the right, it displays the full show info on the item we're highlighting.
- This can carry over to all task windows we normally open from the neocron. If I open dialogue with an Agent, put their face and identifying information on the left screen (name, division, location, standing), the conversation at hand on the center, and possibly some intel imagery on the right (known ships, factions, etc). If I'm doing industry, the side screens can reflect images of production lines turning on and statistics on market value of the item.

The idea is simple. Incorporate functionality that is already in the game, but do so in a manner that can make it more appealing to those focused on immersion.

As well, add a control panel with check-box indicators, allowing us to turn on/off individual screens in our room.

Important to add: Functionality for the hangar control panel by your ship (out in the hangar proper).
- Give us popup 'screens' while we're standing at the hangar that respond and react much as the screens in our CQ do. While we could effectively do all the same tasks from these screens, they disappear as soon as we take a step back from the control panel (and the ship hologram, as well), giving unfettered view of our ship.

I have suggestions for ship and inventory management in CQ.
- Increase the functionality of the ship hologram item in CQ. Add three 'buttons' along the base of the hologram that we can interact with. The first two are a left and right scroll button, which would allow us to cycle between ships in our ship hangar bay without opening a window to do so. As you cycle the ships, their 'name' and class pop up in holographic text for a few seconds above the ships. If you are at the hangar control panel, the 'real' ship floating in space would do a session change as well.
- The third button would be to open the ship hangar bay on one of the main screens. Keeping this immersion without throwing windows up. Right clicking the hologram would allow the default access to windows that we're used to.
- Switch the 'mouse over' options to radial options. Allow the 'left click and hold' radial menu to maintain immersion and use screens, and the right-click and sort menu to open new windows.
- When selecting the 'ship cargo bay' option and drone bay options, go straight to our inventory screen, not the 'active ship' screen. This could be in windowed form (if you right clicked) and screen form (if you used the radial options).
- Allow us to rotate our ships by grabbing the hologram.
- Turn off the hologram near the hangar bay until we approach it.

Some one-off suggestions:
- Agent Tablet: Give us the ability to scroll through agents in that station by adding little buttons to the tablet itself (or radial and right click options). Three buttons, left, right, agent finder. Could also incorporate EvE Mail into this tablet to allow us to read mail by pulling it up on one of the screens.
- Another customizable tablet near your bed would be awesome.
- A control panel that allows us to turn on/off screens, adjust the lights by color and intensity, control who can come in or is invited into your CQ (later functionality), etc.
- Sleeping: Allow us the option to lie down in our bed. Then pop up the log off or quit game options.
- Port Cam: Give us the ability to access a camera feed of outside the station's docking port, especially on one of the screens. This doesn't have to be enormously powerful like the overview. It could simply be a camera, showing a live feed of what's undocking and what's docking, but not going into detail on who is out there or who they belong to. Show the feed from one of the turrets or the doorway or from points on the outside of the station. And allow those in hangar to see this feed as well in a mini-window.

- Let us place small objects that cost aurum to get. Decorations only. I have in mind a golden Armageddon on the shelf by the wall. No effect on gameplay, merely for personal decoration.
- Let us watch the CCP live streams from in WIS. Probably a more difficult change, but would be a seriously enjoyable addition.
- Obviously, give us multiple 'formats' and layouts for each CC. Allow us, when we dock, to either keep the default CC for that race and station, or one of our modified CC's. I think a servant can setup a room for us, considering how much we're worth.
- Allow the addition of 'rooms' for further nefarious purposes, such as bedrooms, or trophy rooms, or something to meet in.

Fair. My argument for integration is to use existing art elements already available in CQ and stepping around the 'hologram in our eyes' that currently exists. I think we're working towards the same environment. I see tony stark throwing graphics from his phone onto the TV screens in Iron Man 2 as the way to go .. only without needing the phone and letting our implants do the rest.

But I'll also agree that the right step is to get away from trying to make CQ and WiS some type of essential-but-not-necessary addition to FiS. Make it a social environment, and we're golden. Let us socialize. How happy would many of us be to just get corporate offices that DO NOTHING SPECIAL but allow us to see each other?

As far as the fundamentals go ... that's lightyears ahead of where we are at. And it's just one room.

I think you are close to what ambulation (WiS) should be... but really it needs to go one step further...

Be its own game!

Just like DUST 514, this could be another Free-to-Play model game that is all about the social experience and doing what you want. Have it as a social game where it is all about living and or working in New Eden in space stations; then we as Capsuleers and Mercenaries can enter from our "rooms" and walk around in station with them and all three games share the same social network. The best thing I can think of is Star Trek: Deep Space 9 meets Second Life.

The sky is the limit and I will leave the rest of the design and ideas to others but one thing I want to suggest, design a new station model for all trade hub stations of each region, and make sure they are bigger (much bigger) models than current stations. And have these as the starting station for new... regular humans?

Anyways, if people want to play this "EVE WiS Game" they will want to become part of the community, so let them have a chance to work in a corporation office, on a manufacturing line, research BPOs or invention tech. Maybe have it so that all the mini-games can be run from an app... oh the ideas!

And anything that is considered passive income, like say R&D agents or Planetary Interaction, that don't focus on "spaceships" can be moved into the realm and control of the New Eden Residents! Therefore becoming a key part of the economy! Contracts for Planetary Resources, Research, Production and more!!!

I better stop now.

First off it was just a suggestion, I don't expect CCP to look at it like I do;

I like when things visually represent the importance and scale to the people using them, visual stimulation is the strongest and easiest to relate to, which is also why I believe a lot of the recent UI changes have been to more simplistic visual displays and not lists or tables (But list and tables do have purpose and function! I love them too! And so do a lot of other Capsuleers).

With that said, I feel none of the station models are to scale, which is fine. I just think about the amount of increased traffic and ships and cargo that is held in a regional trade hub over other stations... they deserve to have a trade hub model, that's all. Another way to look at it; Tokyo, New York, London, Los Angeles, Paris etc. are cities with unique looks and culture around them more than your average city.

Players do not actually leave their ships: image of CQ is projected into brains (same way sound is created in space for guns firing, ships exploding etc.) while capsuleer is still in capsule. You're not walking in your room, you're dreaming of it.

You know what would be cool for Incarna? Corp Offices with a smaller private room and a big alliance room that any blue could walk in to if they're docked there.

Also, trade hubs should have public areas with entertainments that reflect the local culture of the hub - Jita would have all the sleazy stuff, Rens would have the biggest underground booster bar, Hek would be a bunch of small seedy dive bars, Amarr would have a Royal Heritage Museum and a few underground posh bdsm clubs, and Dodixie... a biiiiig dance hall with a few small brightly lit glittery cafes on top. I'm imagining one big room for local and several instanced small rooms you could invite a few friends to hang out in.

As does running in stations.

Its not inevitable jim,
Its a spaceship sim

Actually I've thought that for the last 3 or 4 years, so not a surprise, I guess.