Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Those of you who joined in the first CSM 9 Town Hall back on June 22nd will have heard me say that I wished to run a project relating to any potential future corporation/alliance revamp, and how such a thing could benefit the numerous social groups in EVE.

Well here I am.


First up what do I mean by "social groups". Usually these are 2 or more individuals with a shared interest coming together to undertake that interest outside of other ties, familial or employment related. Borrowing from wikipedia (I know, I know), I found this list of definitions which works even better:



In EVE terms, the following are what I would class as the prime examples of social groups (outside of corporations and alliance, which is a whole other ballgame):

• Incursion communities such as Warp to Me, Incursion Shiny Network or The Ditanian Fleet and many many more.
• NPSI / Open Roam groups like RvB Ganked, Spectre Fleet, Redemption Roams or Stille Gewalt
• Groups from outside communities that wish to enjoy EVE's content together without leaving the potentially disparate corporations they are in. Examples being the SIG's famous in the CFC, forum based groups like those in the Teamminmatar channel, shared language communities and so on.

For those interested in my current thoughts on the issue have moved beyond simply allowing the creation of truly public fleets. Currently I would love to see social groups/communities in EVE be more than a chat channel and potentially a mailing list.

This could be done by merging both of those as the key systems the group coalesces around, with membership of one granting immediate access to the other. Combine this with greater granularity of roles for those assigned them by the community. Roles that potentially allow some people to moderate the chat, some to moderate the mail systems, or others to form fleets that any members of that community can access just like they would a corporation fleet, fleets that can inherit standings from their FCs, that have built in kill logs, allows some people to post operations in a group calendar (rather than relying on outside sites and tools) and so on and so on. Effectively a corporation without the shared assets, hangars, taxes, and all the other useful aspects that cause people to come together under a corporate banner.


This is where I need feedback. I have my own ideas, some of which I have wrote about above and in the past on my weekly Crossing Zebras column, but the larger the level of feedback the better.

When providing feedback try to use concise explanations, with plenty of obvious keywords, this will make it easier to scan and get that feedback centralised for when and if the time comes.

Fantastic idea. Adding a layer of organization that runs perpendicular to the vertical system of Corporation > Alliance would be a great benefit to the community. As someone who originally joined EVE from a forum group where not all members of the forum group were members of the same corporation, and had to deal with the opsec concerns and issues that came up, I can attest to the difficulty and stupidity associated with maintaining all of those relationships at once. It also unfortunately fragmented the original forum community to an unacceptable level.

There would be a fair amount of interface and mechanical overhead in implementing this, but I think it can be made intuitive and helpful. Furthermore, with the new style of release cycles, it would be possible to implement changes in discrete chunks; you don't have to eat the whole pie at once.

First steps could be something as simple as being able to join the proposed "social club," with such memberships displayed in addition to the existing standings systems. So if I join RvB Ganked, Mangala's normal standing ticker, be it red, orange, or blue, gets outlined in yellow, indicating that, regardless of how our standings are set, we're in the same association.

Great plan, and I'm looking forward to seeing what can and can't be done in this arena to push EVE ever forward!

It'll be interesting to see how this plays in with the idea of the Corporation in the EVE sandbox.

The way I see it, here could be a good change to make the calendar a bit more useful than what it is right now.
There could be an option to subscribe for calendar events (much like mailing lists today), but in addition to the regular ganked mail for example, you would also get a calendar invite for the fleet. It would ask whether you would want to participate or not and you would answer correspondingly (no pop-up windows though, just a blinking calendar!). The admin(s) of that list would be able to see the participants beforehand and when the op goes live and the fc creates the fleet, he/she would be able to create an advert for a specific calendar list. Then all the participants who expressed their desire to join would receive a fleet invitation (if they are not in any fleet at that moment, if they are the invitation would bounce as usual and they would have to apply the "hard way" of xing in channel. Though I believe it should be made so that the fc would not receive any rejection notifications when inviting people this way.)

This would greatly reduce the need of manually xing and inviting people to fleet, and should shorten the wait time between form-up and departure. Also, if you can see the op times from your calendar you don't need to have a kilometer long motd in channel
I'm sure that the mailing lists and calendar lists could be optimized quite a bit to create the most effective solution (ability to answer for an invite by clicking yes/no/maybe in mail, ability to pick your role in the fleet when responding etc..). In addition to the public npsi -communities I believe this could also help many alliances to plan and form their fleets more effectively.

Well, this is just my two cents for this conversation, I also like the proposals for temporary standings and other stuff you guys have been proposing here.
Anyways, hope to see you all in space, purple or otherwise

A BIG +1 here

Love this idea. As much as this will help in-game groups it would also be great for the community stuff we do with EVE Down Under to organise events both in- and out-of-game.

As for contributing specific suggestions, well I'll have to give that some thought, but for now let me just say I fully support Mangala's idea in principle.

Somewhat related to "Ability to set standings with other fleets" (great idea, Koz Katral), having a way to prevent disconnects from being killed by their own NPSI fleet. How many times do we hear the FC saying, "pilot-X is friendly! don't shoot him!" after a DC.

Also, when we do big operations with multiple fleets (e.g. last Sunday and Ganked 100) we had some issues with shooting each other. Koz Katral's idea seems to fix this nicely too.

Essentially, you are asking for all of the rewards of forming a corporation without the risk associated with it.

You conveniently forgot

• The ability to declare war and to be declared on

Which by and large is the reason why you aren't forming a corporation to begin with.

lol, PL lands on grid and the mood changes. (just kidding)

I agree that war-dec immunity is an advantage to NPSI groups. Though, war-decs are fairly broken anyway. I'd likely just move to a NPC corp if war-dec'd regardless.

NPSI could be seen as a threat to other playstyles (e.g the more serious, territorial corp/alliance focused styles). Also, the NPSI groups tend to roam or hotdrop on whoever and thus could be seen as griefers. Though, in many cases the big battles we end up in are arranged in some way and mutual (BNI and many others have been great about this). Most players like getting in a big space battle--win or lose--because it's fun.

That's the key idea behind NPSI and it's something that could help open EVE up to more people: lighter: more accessible pvp. Pvp is a lot of fun/excitement and EVE has a great system for it. But, there are arguably many barriers one has to overcome before getting into enjoyable pvp. These open NPSI fleets provide one of the easiest ways to jump right in.

Did CCP intend for Corp/Alliances to have risk/reward trade-offs or was the intention to give players a way to work together. Also, with the general understanding that players who socialize in game keep playing longer. Why not promote lighter social connections. I see NPSI groups as a potential gateway into pvp (more enjoyable, sustaining play) for newer players and bored carebears.

CCP Rise's New Player Experience project should consider what these NPSI groups are doing and perhaps find a way to integrate or encourage these lighter, easier pvp groups so that new players will be more likely to get hooked on the best part of EVE.

Mangala has a ton of experience with NPSI fleets thus his position on the CSM can continue to do a lot of good for the game.

I'm a Ganked addict myself. I had been a bored carebear and even now I'm fairly casual. It has been great to be able to jump in on some major action most Saturdays. I've had some fun with Spectre and Redemption fleets too. There are lots of great players and FCs involved with these groups. It's a part of EVE that will hopefully grow and help give more players access to some of the most fun parts of the game.