Out of Pod Experience

Nothing, as they path they are on seems to be the correct one. Industry is being fixed, then they will tackle corp and alliances stuff, then pos' then sov. then expand.

How long will that take? hades if I know. But a lot of the improvements that have already been making, make me feel, personally, feel better about eve. About the only two things I would add is system wide asteroid belts/ring mining which would make sense to come in a pos revamp, and comet mining.

As you can tell i'm a miner at heart.

Other stuff will come, but i'm on the 'they need to fix what is broken before they add more broken to the game' boat. If they get around to making PI less of a click fest and more enjoyable then I will cheer for that as well.

But we will see. And i'll gladly take some of your stuff

Idea: WALKING IN STATIONS...

Seriously... so much could have been achieved and there should have been "heads on pikes" outside the front entrance at CCP.

One great way to keep me more active would be to give me your stuff. But in case that doesn't work.



To be honest, a great deal of when I have seen people quit EVE is due to real life commitments taking precedent. There is not a great deal of things to be done about that, the game already lets you pay for your sub with isk and the skill system is about as casual friendly as possible.



Now this is always an interesting discussion. EVE is not for everyone. It's a niche, and changing it to make it more mainstream runs the risk of alienating the people who came for the niche in the first place. So I'm not going to say anything trite or self serving like "more PvE/PvP/WiS/whatever my favorite content is!".

Instead, I will discuss two things. Expectations and player outreach. They are closely tied together, so forgive me if my thoughts run into one another.

Much of the "problems" with EVE can be laid at the feet of misplaced expectations. EVE isn't hard, not like the internet at large wants to claim it is. EVE is not "griefer's paradise", as is the prevailing opinion either.

The problem comes when people expect EVE to have the same rules as everything else does, for their behavior to translate from other games into EVE. And that simply doesn't happen, because EVE is different. Now, when taking this into account, it must also be pointed out that it is not EVE's fault that other games follow the same formula of banality. There is a section of the internet that hungers for difficulty, that wants old school, unforgiving games. But they don't play EVE either. The trick is reaching the audience that would enjoy EVE, not making EVE fit to the audience that already doesn't like it.

CCP, as a general rule, SUCKS at PR. One way they have gotten it right however is in the Buddy Program, which provides an incentive to add new accounts to the game. This is an example of the kind of player outreach that is needed to grow the game. But the kind of PR to make player outreach successful can't just come from CCP, it has to come from us. We need to proselytize EVE, we need to stand up and shout down the negativity that pervades the prevailing opinion about the game, we need to change minds and encourage more new players.

"But Kaarous, most of the player outreach in the game is solely the province of the players anyway!"

Yep, it is. Things like EVE Uni, RvB, and Brave Newbies have done to KEEP new players than any official resource or game mechanic has. And that's why CCP has to have a part in this too. They've actually done a lot, in recent years, and I have to give them that. The T1 ship rebalance has done wonders for the viability of low skillpoint characters in many aspects of the game, the new and accessibly low grade pirate implants help a lot, and the Crius industry rebalance will help even more. Iterative improvements in the basic game itself is one of THE most important things in regard to selling the game to new players. (Please note, this includes ship remodeling also, as those efforts have paid off big in my opinion)

But does it stop there? Right now, to me, it really seems like it does. And that's what I'd change. Open up new player resources like fixing and modernizing the EVE wiki (instead of wasting time with tooltips, just saying), start incentivizing content creation and EVE journalism, and add new, challenging and impactful things within reach of a new player. (an excellent example of this is the Angel Epic Arc, which is without doubt the best designed piece of content in the game)

TL;DR: Encourage the community to market the game to the kind of players who are inclined to like it, shake things up with more unannounced Live Events (drop a Revenant on after downtime, watch the scramble), and work towards impactful choices for new players.

Crew and Support Staff:

Crew slots added to all ships.. purchasable crew that are able to provide slight bonuses to things like alignment time, tracking speed, max velocity, thing like that.

Support Staff added as a part of the industry and PI process. Same sort of deal, bonuses to the process for each staff type. Finally a reason for exotic dancers, janitors, etc.

The support staff sounds a bit like what they are doing with the next update, but it could go much further. Temperate planets can have a PI-type interaction that gathers crew/staff and then they can be sold on the open market, traded as a commodity, etc.

I think it would be cool if we had full integration of Dust and soon Valkyrie into EVE.

I'd like to be able to dock my ship, get my character into battlegear, grab a gun and go find some troube - or cause it somewhere.

Or what about a boarding crew? After shields are down we dock with our boarding vessel on top of a hatch on that Supercarrier, hack it open and board the ship. Inside we need to overcome automated defenses, perhaps some sentinels which are controlled by the pilot, hack a door or two until we get to the main engine / weapon control / ship computer etc. and do some sabotage. Perhaps we can even take control from the pilot that way.

Maybe we can find the main hangar inside that supercarrier, board some Fighter-Bombers, hot-wire them and launch those babies to unleash their fury against our enemies.

Maybe some covops, too? What about approaching that POS in a cloaked ship... once in position we use a zero-g suit to get into the POS without triggering the alarms. Inside we try to get to the labs without drawing too much attention. Sneaky business. We need to stay in the dark. Maybe use a knife or a garotte to remove some obstacles - sure, they're lowtech, but the scanners won't notice them and they'll help to get past those guards in utter silence.

Such an integration would bring a plethora of possibilities.

Adding holographic exotic table dancers to the CQ.




Id stay for that.

Get rid of the crimewatch thing, the ship safety button, and bounties. The game had a bit of a better hisec life without these two things. Carebears were less idiotic than they are now, and there was less crying and overall butthurt over ganking.

Didn't you quit?

I don't want your ISK so hand it to someone else that needs it (or better yet, keep it for when you return).

As for retaining older players, it's very hard tbh, most have done so much that there's nothing left to explore, and adding NPE stuff generally is needed in order to get more new people in.

Adding stuff that can only be used by older pilots is also a dying feature since older will drop off regardless how interesting the game is due to external factors.

Personally, adding sorta lame achievements or medals if you will, is one thing that will keep me going just to collect that stupid stuff lol since I'm beyond the point of making certain decisions just to keep history kept - and stuff like that would do it for me at least.

/c

Probably the most controvertial is tackling the current idea of cementing in powerblocs in the player owned regions of space (le 0.0). You could argue that the current power blocs are a pedigree that stretches back to their original creation; most of these major blocs have been in the game from the very start and over time have harvested a large amount of resources (ISK, Minerals, Supers, The Illusive 'Warchest') and have earned their place in space through diplomacy and conflict.

On the other hand this space was obviously designed to change hands, the problem being its harder and harder for newer alliances to establish footholds or challenge those who built a legacy long before. Not really sure what can be done about it, Supercaps, Dreads and Titans are the keys to contesting & taking sovereignty and the cirulation for them is small (the fear of committing them both into a fight and sale).

I thought 0.0 could be a little more nomadic, systems changing sec, their resources rotating to try and encourage dynamic space but then I remember where I am and the sheer stress of logistics in EVE and the tediousness behind it.

So maybe fixing Sov is a case of changing the way logistics works?