Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Long time Eve player here. Started off when the tutorial was "Here is mining laser and your pew pew gun. Please note that one is for rocks and other is for shooting back at ships shooting you. Have fun."
Since then it has improved. From friends who have tried Eve the common issue is "I don't have time for this game's learning curve." and less of "WTF do I do!!!" People who hang on through the tutorial usually go one of 2 ways. Total pvp and join pvp corps or go carebear and eventually join a mission-industrial corp.

Time to step out of the box...

Bounty hunting and factional warfare is a step in the right direction, giving tangible results which effect the region or let you actively hunt another player. However, bounty hunting has become a bit of a joke where damn near everyone gets a few hundred thousand in bounties slapped on their heads. Annoying, especially with some of the more enterprising players offering anonymous bounty posting for a fee, but its damn original. Another example of a player thinking outside the bounty box.

Stepping further out of the box, CCP should develop the pirate factions and concord so players can join the pirate factions and or become an agent of concord. As an agent of Concord you hunt smugglers, player pirates and players who are -10 with concord. As a pirate faction player you would live in pirate stations from .5 to .1 and go out to hunt players and perhaps show up in mission runs to make it more exciting for mission runners. (heh heh) Use Pirate Jump Drives to invade Hi-sec and do hit and run making Hi-Sec a bit exciting. Lets say you are a Gurista pirate and find a fat Hulk mining after sneaking into a .7 system. Well, concord knows you are about and sends a notice to player concord agents. They come to the system and start patrolling. Aggress the Hulk and it tips off the player concord agents who now have a location report. Can you nuke the Hulk before the player concord agents show up or are you using the Hulk as bait to pull in Concord agents to your superior pirate force waiting for them.

The CCP mission system would remain but be spiced up with more pvp opportunities. Your Pirate faction NPC buddies getting slaughtered by a uber tanked Drake in a lvl 4 mission? Help the NPC pirates out by joining them. Yes this would be undoubtedly complex for CCP to create but would breath more excitement into missions and mining.

Lastly, stepping way out of the box, its time for CCP to start thinking of opening up the station. The in game stations have the opportunity to tie the players together from Eve, Dust and Valk. How much fun would it be for an enterprising corp to hire a Dust squad with some atmospheric Valk pilots to travel on your corp carrier (or a new planetary dropship) to a planet with your enemies planetary infrastructure and have the Dusties and Valk pilots do a commando raid on it and blow the snot out of it or capture and raid its warehouses. Of course if the corp who built the planetary infrastructure has placed defenses and / or allied with a Dust corp, it could get interesting. An eve corp could pay a Dustie corp to guard installations and if guarded installations are attacked the defending Dusties can quickly deploy to the installation. Stepping a few parsecs out of the box, shouldn't Dusties be able to board a titan and fight to capture it or defend it once the shields are down. Why blow it up when your Dustie buddies could capture it for a fee. :)

CCP needs to really consider using the players as resources to spice up missions. Nothing randomizes and excites a mission like squaring off against other players. Factional warfare was a good step in the right direction so I really hope CCP expands on the idea.

Suggestion Summary:
1) Give players the chance to join NPC pirate factions and / or become agents of Concord
2) Pirate faction players can participate as opponents in high level missions.
3) More options for interaction with Dust and Valk players. Player created missions.
4) Open the stations up so the players from all 3 games can have a place to interact and negotiate deals and missions.