Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Did i just witness CSM Malcanis liking or even agreeing to an Idea of Dinsdale Pirannha?

But yeah, I like that Idea, could be quite cool.

This sounds awesome. It would have been a worthy addition to an exploration based expansion like Odyssey. Imo if these areas are designed cleverly you can even make them static.

This would have been a nice and actually sensible replacement for static lowsec plexes for example. Because of the random nature the content would not be farmable.

Of course when you enter them or scan them down and then warp to them you would have to land at a random position within its vicinity. Also the grid system might be a problem here. The easiest way to implement them would probably be to handle them as "mini-systems" running in an own instance which is not ideal of course.

But i really, really like this.

very free lancer 2 lol

Very cool idea, signed. If developed properly an Apcrypha II could be built around it.

OIK, Malcanis and I exchanged some emails, and he has suggested I take my email and split so it fits.
So, using his template on how to present an idea to the CSM:

Issues to solve:
Real space is actually quite messy.
Yes, most of it is vast expanses of nothingness. But when you get nearer the core of the galaxy, or near a star, weird things happen, most of them em based. Have a look what happens to our telecoms when the sun gets a little too energetic.

Eve, at the moment, does not have an area that represents that messiness. Everything is crystal clear, from the electro-magnetic wave perspective. If "Eve is Real", why not represent real space a bit better. Why not have areas that blind many of your sensors, where exploration is far more difficult, but the rewards may be equally more lucrative. Unless, of course, you run across some group bent on mayhem, or perhaps you run across some group that does not want to be found.

Game specific reasons:
1. Exploration: I think many would agree that Eve exploration has lost a bit of its cachet with the last few go-arounds of changes. I am not talking about the quality of the various sites (I have not even found a ghost site yet, so no way I can comment on it). I am talking about the actual "art of exploration". Those pilots of circa 2008/2009 remember the old old system where we sat waiting for the cycle to end...forever. That was soul-crushing.

Then the new system came along, I think with Apochrypha. Exploration, while "easier" in the speed it took to explore, also had tremendous excitement injected into it, and more than a little real life skill to do it well. Exploration became easier to do, but harder to master. I think that this concept of "mastery" is slipping away. Read Tiger Ears' blog and her comments about the discovery scanner to get a feel for what I speak of.

2. PvP in Eve comes in a dozen different flavours, but fundamentally, you know your adversary is there, unless they are cloaked, and they can't hurt you if they are cloaked. But I truly think that Eve is missing a large element of "cat and mouse" PVP, where the hunt is more difficult than the fight, and perhaps more satisfying. Why not add that element to the game, by making scanning non-functional? Consider it in terms of a hunter heading into the forest, or a fisherman wading into a river. There may be prey there, there may not be. Finding them is part of the thrill. And from the prey's perspective, what if there were lucrative items to find, to balance the risk/reward we hear so much about?

3. While incursions are group PvE, and CCP wants to encourage more group work, I would suggest that after running incursions for the 100th day, gets more than a little boring. This would be a new form of group PvE that would require all kinds of different skills, ingame and out of game.

(2) Propose a solution
Create a non-scannable zone inside existing star systems. For a real world analogy, I would suggest these would be the equivalent of a hunter/explorer heading into a great forest in the early 20th century, with some decent weapons, but no GPS, no satellite phones, no infrared gear.

They should likely be :

a. Randomized locations, that stick around for 3-5 days. (maybe longer if they are quite large)
b. Various sizes, running from 5,000 - 20,000 km in diameter. The size is a big deal. Assuming a spherical shape, something 1,000 km across has a volume of over 4 BILLION cu km). 20,000 km across is likely too crazy.
c. Contain rare belts/anoms/gas sites, sites of significant value.
d. Traditional scanning equipment, including dcan, does not work in them. You can't scan out, nor someone on the outside scan in. Perhaps a new scanner would be needed, something that works with a significant penalty to existing ones.
e. Jump drives, standard warp movement (not talking MwD's here, will need that to traverse the distances), nothing like that works.
f. Cloaking I would suggest, at first glance, does not work.
g. Aligning to a fleet mate does not work. Other methods of trailblazing must be used. Perhaps dropping beacons, like breadcrumbs. Or very specific navigational instructions. To find someone who has gone before, you must "move at 1000 m /s for 75 seconds. Then execute a 45 degree turn." (a neat trick in a place with no visible landmarks).
h. One I like, but think many won't: Anyone in this non-scannable zone also does not show up in local.
g. As cool as I think it would be for groups to be able to set up POS's, since there are no moons, doubt that will work, but Yurts will.
h. I would think a standard grid should be about 200 km (distance the oveview works). That means am interceptor moving at 4,000 m/s can view a "tunnel" about 500,000 cu km every second. That is just a working number, to start.

The PvP value of being able to hid entire fleets would be invaluable, so no point discussuing incentives from a PvP point of view.
But from a PvE point of view, there would be a TON of exploration needed to possibly find something. The rewards at any given site would have to be quite high to maintain the interest of explorers, given they may look for an hour, or a day, or 3 days, and find nothing, if they are not lucky or smart.

Basically, you warp next to a void. You enter. You start looking around. Perhaps you find something of value. Perhaps you bump into a fleet of Nyx's, hiding. Perhaps you happen upon a group of miners who just cleared out a belt of high end moon goo, with no combat escort. I think something this large would only work with a highly co-ordinated manner among a group. One person flying alone could never know for sure how much territory they cover, but a group, working together, dropping beacons perhaps, and being really smart, could cover a lot of territory using just the overview. New meta's would likely evolve on how to PvE and PvP in such a space.

Reserved

Put them in high-sec, and don't let Concorde in. Then, let WH open up inside of them.

Yummy conflict.

I would expect Concorde could chase a criminal from normal space into a cloud, but I think Concorde should be blind to any conflict that is happening inside one.

So while inside, if I shoot someone, I still acquire all flags normally, but Concorde will not respond unless I am dumb enough to leave the cloud. I would need to remain inside until my flag dropped.

Considering CCP strongly discourages running from Concorde as a base rule, I feel that if you try and flee Concorde into a cloud you should be subject to the same abuse. Concorde should retain god powers there until their target is destroyed. Then they can GTFO.

I would prefer that if Concorde is trained into a cloud they do not go on a rampage on all those in cloud; otherwise it would be ripe for abuse.

--Just my opinion

Several other CSMs too!