Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The problem:

EVE is a beautiful game, and has a really cool immersive "space" feel. Planets are AU apart. A kilometer is actually a kilometer. Planets orbit their respective star, and moons orbit their respective planets (albeit, they don't move *sadface*).

One thing that feels like a major break from this "space exploring" feel (read: immersion) is the asteroid belts. Simply put, the asteroid belts in EVE don't make any sense. You have hundreds of small rocks within a 50km radius, that respawn, and that's considered a belt. Wait, what?? That's just weird :x

Where are the grand vistas of asteroid belts stretching off into the endless horizon? Where are the massive chunks of space-rock with veins of veldspar, omber and plagioclase hidden underneath its surface?

Since the original conception of asteroid belts, EVE has dramatically changed. With the Odyssey expansion, scanning is now common-place, and has a very low barrier to entry. Which leads me to...

The idea:

Asteroid belts would be literal "belts" that encircle that system's star, with an orbital path similar to a planet.

Q: So what would being at an asteroid belt look like?
A: In place of the weird 50km arc of depletable space-rocks, you would instead see a line of asteroids that may be 10km wide, stretching off into the infinite horizon, complete with rocks of varying density and size. You can quite literally travel down this line, and asteroids will be procedurally generated / removed from the grid as you travel.

Q: What about the current belts that exist in a system?
A: Static belts in a system would be converted to warpable "belt beacons" that take you directly to the asteroid belt, at a particular point in the belt's orbit. You do not need to scan down these sites.

Q: What about scan-able sites?
A: Yes! Because of density/gravity fluctuations over millions of years, asteroid belts have regions where certain types of ore tend to cluster together (or some other semi-reasonable explanation). Let's call them "density cluster" sites. A density cluster site can be scanned down much like how an anomaly can be scanned down, and certain types of ore can be found in its highest abundance.

Q: Can I just warp to some random point on the belt and just mine to my heart's content?
A: You can! It's just that the ore to be found there is decent (good), compared to the known warpable beacon sites (better), or the scan-able density cluster sites (best). As always, combat scan probes can uncover your sorry mining butt.

Q: Wouldn't procedurally generated asteroids affect performance?
A: Not if it's done right. A new "endless" asteroid belt such as what I'm proposing would be more spread out, especially compared to what is currently found in EVE. To compensate, asteroid size would be increased, and the spacing tweaked accordingly. This smallish number of large, procedurally generated asteroids would be created/removed from grid as someone travels and its path. Most of these "filler" asteroids would be empty husks of useless material, or some form of cheapish generic material (veldspar veins, anyone?).

Q: If asteroids are larger, how are they depleted, to keep in balance with what currently exists?
A: Asteroids would have "veins" that would be depleted; the actual asteroid itself wouldn't disappear. Multiple veins can exist on a single asteroid, so you would manually need to switch veins as you deplete them. Almost exactly the same gameplay process that currently exists, but more interesting and realistic.

Q: Could you sneak in a mini-game here?
A: I never thought you would ask! With the implementation of asteroid "veins" on larger asteroids, you could follow a vein with your mining laayyzzaars, or you can uncover new veins, that gives you additional bonuses as you mine (so "active miners" are more generously compensated over afk miners).

Q: Why hasn't been posted before / Wasn't this posted before?
A: It has, of course--no idea is completely new. But I tried to present this in a unique, refreshing light.

Thanks for reading!

Edit: Kirimeena shared this video in response to this thread... It should get you in the mood

Yep -- people paying attention would be a huge step up. I think mining needs a little bit of love. It's currently the most boring, terrible aspect of the game and could use a facelift.

its not terrible its a job i do i f i like to relax or like some income and read a book at the same time ( in empire)

some people have reached the perfect miner they like mining and cant get more yield per skill or imp
and the find new ways to perfect mining

aka not managing 1 ship a fleet of ships

without is boxer even 6 accs is possible if mining changes to a playstyle were multiboxing isnt possible
many people leave eve or many accs cant be used anymore

As presented, mining via IS Boxer would still be possible, but the yield would drop off dramatically.

fly a hulk thats aktive mining or a Covetor more yield and aktive mining

better belts hell Yeah
other mining mechaniks No

miners need more long term content its not ok that a char can reach the yield of a mack
in under 2 weeks

the whole reward the active players idea need to be balanced t cant be that 1 aktive player makes more than 2 or 3 players using the not so aktive way

If even a tiny portion of this was implemented it would be an improvement. You've described performance as not a problem, but even with lower density, the number of 'roids needed to fill a belt would be immense. I could see this being implemented at a limited scale with belts that orbit planets instead of the star, but having a belt diameter of over 100,000km is not feasible. (set up an interceptor with mwd and do a fly by of a planet, you'll see what I mean, at 5 km/s you can travel 432000km per 24 hrs). Some fancy grid loading mechanics could be used to cover for dynamic generation of asteroids, but it would be pretty strange to implement.

Mining needs an overhaul, and including some of the exploration mechanics would be a good way to do that. Also, having the ability to mine off grid from any easy warp ins other than probing would give a significant amount of protection from griefers without preventing ganks all together.

I especially like the idea of mixing useless ore in with the good stuff and forcing players to scan asteroids to search for ore. If each individual asteroid contained more ore and could be mined faster, but more time was spent looking for good 'roids, it would be tremendous incentive to not mine afk.

As for the mini-game idea, I don't like mini games but they do punish bots, so it is something to consider. I doubt I would mine either way, but making it harder to gank miners because they are actually active instead of sitting ducks would be an improvement.

What we'd need for this to work is the planet beacons to be actually placed at the centre of the planet. but have the diameter of the planet +10% so that when you warp to the planet you end up in whatever belt surrounds it.

Not having people war from different sides of the system to land in exactly the same spot as now.

Each planet could say have multiple belts at different 'depth zones' from the planet. one at 0 for example would be 10000km from the planet etc and maybe one at 100000km from the planet. It would take a rework of some of the warp to mechanics but I reckon could be done.

This would actually afford a lot of surprise gank protection as to reliably gank a miner you'd have to know exactly where they warped from and to what belt they warped to to land anywhere near them. Of course you could still scan them down with probes etc to get a pinpoint but then you risk them seeing the probes and warping off.

I like it. Bring back some of the feel of the original Frontier game I played decades ago.

I also mine with three accounts, but I find the current system dull and pointless. It's an easy way to slowly make **** for money, yes, but I could honestly get more value for my time flipping burgers at McDonald's and buy PLEX. The only reason anyone mines is because the game depends on it, not because any significant number of people actually enjoy it.

Now, this is not to say the mini-games need to be particularly hard or involved. I am not at all opposed to multi-account mining, but there should definitely be some serious diminishing returns.

there are people who enjoy it i love mining and i know i m one in 10.000 but there are hardcore miner who do nothing else then mining seeking the last % yield in there setup