Player Features and Ideas Discussion

if no one's already mentioned it...make the effects of the phenomenon remove you from local...

Inspiration is futile when not backed up by means to act on it.

What has set this thread apart from many others is the fact it has been almost exclusively positive. Almost every post has been supportive, with a great many adding or trying to expand upon the ideas already proposed. That in itself should make CCP take notice (as we have been told it has) and hopefully many of these ideas will find there way into future releases.

Yes, I think there has been pretty much universal acceptance of the general concept across all playstyles, at least I hope there has been.

But as with pretty much anything, the devil is in the details. But as I said before, this is something that could be very iterative, and slowly fleshed out on Sisi long before it goes into production. But I have also said, if CCP was serious about doing something like this, it should be relatively simple to create the very basic cloud, which contains absolutely nothing, and operates just as the new deployable will, except the size is obviously larger, and the locations randomized.

Does this skeleton add any new playstyle? Not really, since there is nothing in the cloud (large PvP fleets may argue that it does change something to the game). But it initiates the process, which would be a good signal. Every skyscraper starts with a big hole in the ground.

I love this idea. It has all sort of stuff that I wanted for a long time.

Now, I think that it might be good if these were handled by their own server(s) and the edge of the DDC would act in a fashion similar to the jump gate. Thus the TIDI on the system would not be hampering the cloud and vice versa. And in further iterations of the cloud they could indeed start tampering with TIDI on purpose to spice up the cloud.

I recall at the alliance tournament there had been talk about how exciting it might be to have a sped up place. Before DDC there was no excuse, but one could even say that "strange things happen in DDC" and use that as excuse for having 10 times sped up cloud every once in a while. You might even have hard time staying in the cloud if you flew too fast. Of course once you exited the cloud, you would not be able to re-enter until 10 times the time you spent in the cloud had gone by. Or... you could, but if you then engaged the similar looking ship with same name as yours, you would only pop each other. Or if you did not shoot, you'd just merge in short while, or something. Just ideas that came to my mind after thinking about TIDI tampering.

Regarding concoord, if the DDC was placed on its own server, trying to cross the edge of the cloud could trigger event where player would get just blown up, while anyone outside the cloud would see a concoord ship slowing down outside the cloud and shooting high energy beam inside the cloud. There might be even quick and temporary light flicker all over the cloud so people inside would know that someone, somewhere, tried to run from concoord only to get blown into smithereens.

Overall I really like this idea just a few thoughts and questions on it though:

For it to work and not be lame:

1)Clouds need to be unpredictable - pve content could include anything from sleepers to 1/10 complex sites. I think it should also be unpredictable on the amount of time it lasts. Say anywhere from 1-30 days before the DDC dissipates but maybe with the bell curve of the timeline on the 4 day mark.

2) Must hinder warping IMO to include emergency warp like a wormhole hole you should prepare to not necessarily have an easy way out

3) Should come with reduced ability to sense danger.. removal of local while in field.. remove or reduce d-scan and if possible reduces gridsize so you really need to look around instead of just staring at D-scan

4) Should not include limits to mass / shiptype etc.. Because its just lame game mechanics..

5) Could potentially include wormhole effects. environmental effects. Sensor distortions, no cloaking mechanics..

Questions:

How does this DDC look from outside and how does a person get into it?

1. Yes, all sites would indeed be completely unpredictable, so no one can industrialize the zone.
As for how long it lasts, I really don't know what would be a good length. It would depend on a few factors, one being the amount of PvE sites in the zone, plus the potential value as a strictly PvP arena. If a number of players decide that it is really fun place for a different form of PvP, even after the sites have been exhausted, then the length of duration should be longer.

2. Yes, personally I think that warp operations should be not functional, but that functionality is debatable. There are good reasons on both sides of the argument.

3. The whole premise is built on d-scan not working, and I tried to get an answer from dev's in another thread if the Eve game engine allowed for different standard grid sizes in the same system, but that thread was derailed by trolls.

4. Yes, agreed that any size ship should be allowed in the zone. You may not WANT to take certain ships in, based on the various game mechanics that can be applied, but you should not be restricted. One of the proposed uses was that capital ship and supercap fleets could hide in one.

5. The potential environmental effects are wide open, and really limited by the imagination of the dev's and programming limitations of the underlying existing game engine. What effects are fun and interesting, and what is not, well, that I hope would be the deciding factor.

6. Getting into and out of the zone is up for grabs right now. But I would expect it to be no different than getting in or out of a warp bubble today. Hopefully, you could enter at any position.

Salute from Freespace 2 hardcore player to another o7.

can we have CUBED grid please? -notroll- 2d space exploration isnt fun we need that on 3d.

new module, anomaly short range scaner, makes you go suspect. when used, is your eyes and ears, short ranged only, ofc. no need for concord then.
faction police? an AOE on landing in or out of the site that "web" anything giving the npc police time to land there and not anywhere inside the site, call it the event horizon of the cloud, lore is safe. concord too.