Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is a long shot and not a fully baked idea so please try to bear with me.

A long time ago there was a game (already cancelled in development phase) with interesting twist: a multiplayer one but providing single player experience. It was named "The Crossing". Something kind of first person shooter/action with the main player progressing through the story. The twist was in the shape of opponents, they would be controlled by other players and while inherently weak (the hero has to succeed after all) they'd provide the cunning and unpredictability of real humans.

And it struck me, what would it be like if such principle was applied to EVE's PVE?

HOW?

Possibilities are many but two come to my mind:
1. Allow a player to board given NPC ship during PVE encounter. Possibly allow to 'switch' to another taking part of the same fight, either upon former ship's destruction or just at will.
2. Make such player an overseer which would take control over some NPC ships in a manner similar to controlling POS' guns.

Mind you, this wouldn't be a change in power balance, only in NPC behavior (and you thought sleepers were pain in the ass...).

WHO?

This is where things become interesting (in the "may you live in interesting times!" sense). I think they should be selected and vetted group of volunteers (not unlike ISD maybe) who want to and agree to devote their time for others' fun.

WHEN? WHERE?

I believe it safe to assume that number of PVE encounters happening at any time would be much greater that number of such... well, let's call them animators, and honestly it would be overkill to guarantee every such encounter was human-handled. Thus probably the simplest and possibly the best solution would be to match a pool of active animators and randomly drop them into PVE actions out there.

On the other end of gun, maybe add a safety switch, which would control whether player consents to such extra spice during their activities.

POSSIBILITIES OF ABUSE/GRIEFING.

Still present though rather limited. Apart from actual brain, NPCs don't get any extra superpowers. Running away (with mission goal to prevent its completion) can be guarded against by teleporting ship back if too far from initial position. Maybe some safeguards against podding should added too. Everything else seems to be fair game and after all, this aspect in one of reasons why animators should be somehow vetted.

FINAL NOTES

That's it. Flame if you wish but if you have any refining ideas, counter ideas or just want to point out some glaring weaknesses/issues with it, you are more than welcome. Mind you I do not propose anything of such kind must be implemented, rather, it's more in the "what if" spirit.

Discuss.

No.

How about you just go shoot another player.

Or if this mission happen to be in busy mission hub you may wait for sudden ninja. Decision to make whether to go after ninja (may be interesting if scrambling frigs are still alive) or keep putting pressure on missioneer.

Or trigger full aggro on missions which do not aggress automatically (Assault?).

Or if guy brings friend(s), you may try to make their lives interesting.

Or if he happens to have drone boat you may coordinate attack on their drones.

Or you may employ spiraling trajectories to actually avoid being instapopped.

Or you may use EWAR where it counts. Same with remote repping if available.


Of course if someone uses blinged Marauder or compatible then there's not much what can be done. But on the other side, 'animating' a mission would be purely optional. When set up, you are given a choice whether to mess with given encounter or to pass it, and when taken you can 'abandon' it at any time which would mean it would take its own course. When you relieve control of POS guns they keep shooting as if you weren't there.


Good point, however I'm writing from the perspective of spicing up PVE, not of sneaking into PVP.

Become the burner and destroy your friends with small weapons, offgrid boosting, and officer fit pirate frigates.

Sounds like a fun plan, would love to see it.

^This

ummm, you do know rats are vampire proof...and have infinite cap, right?

Unless changed go test this. If changed, please correct me as I have not retried in quite a while.

Run nos/neut on a rat. If it works it will stop working after a few cycles. Nos will for sure. I tried this in the past. You get a few pulls then nothing. Nos will still run mind you, but at that point its just drawing activation cap from your ship, not getting any back from the target. Reason for this: ccp didn't want rats being abused to run permarun ships nos'ing rats. It also be the reason why long ago billboards were moved. As I hear it they use to be a lot closer to gates....campers would nos the billboard to boost the cap. This why they are all the way in left field and not really in your face visible.



Infinite cap is seen In that even the inty rats if you let run wild in your mission....just keep burning and burning and burning and burning. "boss" rats like trigger BS also have a permarun tank, they can rep/shield boost all day long. You see this when low sp running and your dps not strong enough to break the tank. YOu have enough to knock off a few hp but the reps are eternally getting it back to where it was.

I could also be nitpicky and point out rat e-war stronger. Even with ECCM II, sensor boost array II , electronics sub 5 and diss. sequencer,, grav sensor 4, AND HG talons (used to be my unprobable setup, now I am jsut hard as hell to find) I still get jammed from time to time by gurista in my tengu.

This is extremely fun, would love to see something similar here.

The basic problem is in the Who? section: you need volunteers for this. Volunteers that want to add to people's "fun." Well, we have those in the game right now, and they volunteer to be FCs, to head corporations, to sponsor events, to provide necessary services. And the thing is, we don't have enough of them to cover the jobs that need doing. Want another major null-sec war? Well, we need volunteers to run it.

This suggestion is a drain on a limited talent pool. It requires a pretty big expenditure of in-game human effort (there's even a vetting process!) to benefit a segment of the population that is, by nature, interested in solo play. It doesn't seem like a good deal to me.

Rubbish. You cannot shoot "another" player, because most often you meet more than one, who are shooting you. Or are running away because your group is larger. OP's idea would be a nice way to ACTUALLY solo PvP (and by that I mean no offgrid-boosting, alt-probing, logi-ex-machina "solo" PvP).

I volunteer to control Lv4 missions in Sinq Laison.

Now, which trash ship should carry the cyno so I can drop officer-fitted super-long-pointing Core Grand High Admiral Carriers on unsuspecting billion-ISK navyravens, or EOM Soul Destroyer Dreadnoughts on Marauders that are almost out of their Bastion cycle and won't react in time to turn it off before starting the next?