Assembly Hall

For sort of a middle-ground idea, jump freighters only require freighter IV instead of freighter V. Requiring that would mean that at least some level of specialization was required per faction (as is the stated theme of T2) without the enormously demanding month-or-so train of getting a cruiser, for example, to V. It would, for better or worse, mean that you would have to be careful about what bonuses went on the base-hull skill as opposed to the T2 skill, of course.

I think you would be amazed at how much of a difference it would make if you could do something as simple as customize the skin of your ship directly (especially for new players or bored bitter vets).

If anybody ever played City Of Heroes, that would be a good analogy of what I am talking about. All the archetypes had the same power sets and nothing you did in character customization made any difference in the actual play, but it made all the difference in your investment in the toon, and made character generation a blast.

In Eve, the ships are the toons in my analogy, and if those could be customized using an in-game interface similar to the UI, but specifically for the ship, people would want to get in different ships just because they look cool. This is anti-utilitarian, and seemingly stupid, but it's the little thing that make a game fun and worth it. It also drives goals and motivation for new players.

I have played this game on and off since '03, and surprisingly enough, the one thing I don't really feel like I am ever really doing is making stuff mine, it is just stuff I happen to hold. There is nothing special about any of my beloved ships. No battle scars, no tweaked out appearance, my thorax is just a thorax like all others.

Half the game is also shopping (my Wife loves shopping and yet still hates eve), I guarantee if she could shop for a thorax that was custom skinned and on market as a "customized" model (simply a different player designed skin) she would be at it for hours, or designing and selling her own, hell, she might even go into production, and mine and do all the other manufacturing crap, just to have her own line of designer thoraxes. It's the seemingly stupid trivial things, that make bigger mechanics work. I have manufactures all kinds of stuff in eve, and it is just variations on a bland theme to play the .01 isk game etc, it's not like me making it felt like I made it, but rather jumped through the right hoops....might as well shoot the red crosses. In other words, even though I made it, there was nothing special about it whatsoever, might as well makes drops in the ocean...if that makes sense.

The current skinning is a PETA, and the licensing and aura driven funky model now where they are yet still made on your behalf is likely in the wrong direction (I am probably describing it wrong because the mechanic should be right there in the fitting window, or a fitting type window instead of some external store that I have to do things and stuff to get it, which I will likely never bother to learn or care about).

I love Eve, and have played it forever, this is by no means the one thing missing, but having tried to recruit all kinds of people for years, mostly unsuccessfully (and more importantly seeing what they do end up playing) I think a simple thing like this would go along way to drive new subscriptions and give people reasons to try all aspects of the game.

Minecraft is insanely popular because building stuff is fun, especially stuff that is unique to you, even though it functions the same or similar to all other similar things.

You mean they'd have to put effort into skill bonuses, instead of treating the base skills as a role bonus?

Thank you Leeloo and Mail.

This was interesting:


What about doubling the skill ranks to ten and halving the bonus per level? This would leave the overall power level unchanged but allow intermediate steps between IV and V.

People tend to not want to talk about DDOS and so on. It's generally done for attention, and saying 'we survived these' pushes some people to redouble their efforts.

Ignoring them doesn't stop it. But it makes it less enjoyable.

I would answer that in detail but then we would be talking about it, wouldn't we?

m

Role bonuses aren't innately evil, y'know.

But yeah, some of the more role-bonus-like bonuses might need to be looked at. (I'm betting they'd be fine, though...) I do remember when T2 resists were hull bonuses instead of role bonuses, even if I was an antisocial mission-runner leveling up my raven back then.

To fill in a little detail, it's not really Evelopedia as a whole. It's things like the item database that's embedded in it. For things like the chronicles, it serves a very good purpose.

"The CSM then proposed adding hats to the game" - seriously?

More seriously, I really hope we are going to see some action on the impersonation clause in the next 3 days. It's still hanging about the EULA like a dead woodchuck under the porch. The last time I can find it mentioned in the minutes, it seemed the then CSM rightly said it should go, but nothing has changed.