Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Short version

Create a bar / social hangout in stations, where we can walk our avatar, consume some drinks (ISK sink) and chat socially to people (setting up casual gangs, easing people into joining corps, etc.). To protect against scam spam, make it only possible to hear people within say 5 meters radius of your avatar. To protect against over-filling, limit the number of places (and create a queue system for entry).

Long version

1. According to CCP Rise, nothing predicts better that a new player will stick with the game than that they engage socially (are in a player corp).

Yet there is no place where one can build up social contacts. Local chat is either deadly silent or filled with the chatter of scammers. The newbie help channel is gone after a month and the number of people reading the forums is limited. Basically, one has to jump into the deep end of joining a corp, generally without really knowing anybody there. A place where people can go and chat socially would really help here to create contacts that lead to further engagement. Beyond finding a good corp, this might make it easier to ask for help with a mission, setting up casual gangs for some transient purpose, etc.


2. EVE has the most amazing character creation system, allowing one to create highly realistic avatars.

These avatars then for the most part stand around in the captain's quarter staring pointlessly at a flickering screen, or wherever else you park yours. Creating these fancy avatars seems like an exercise in futility. Furthermore, given that CCP actually wants us to buy apparel for these characters, it seems silly to make them appear to others mostly in the form of stamp-like portraits. Clearly, if we met each other with those avatars, people would be way more interested in dressing up nicely or interestingly. So the current situation is a waste of time for the player, and a waste of income opportunity for CCP.

Here's a simple idea that addresses both problems: create a bar / social hangout where we can walk out avatars in station. The only interaction required, at least at the beginning, is to be able to see other characters in their avatar and to be able to chat with them. To solve the scam spam problem, make it so that the chat in the bar only allows you to listen / talk to people within a set radius, say 5 meters. That way, a scammer can only really annoy a few people close by, and we can walk away from him. I would also suggest that the bar sells drinks and bar food (ISK sink). Eventually, it would be helpful to add gestures to give the avatars an active body language, but that can come later. In order to not overload the server and/or client with complexity, the number of places in the bar can be restricted. There could be a simple waiting queue for people to get in (and perhaps you should get thrown out after a couple of hours, to stop people from hogging the spots).

I think most of the technology for this is already available. We already have avatars walking in rooms with 3D collision detection, and obviously we already have chat. There is nothing fancy going on here, like say fighting between characters. All the avatars need to do is to move around in a different (and bigger) bar room, and sit down (perhaps a new animation for bar chairs required). The animation work for taking a drink should be relatively mild as well. On the software side, I imagine one has to handle collision between players in addition, as well as restricting chat based on a player to player distance.

Clearly this requires some dev work, but I think it would be a lot less work than other things one might want to do with the avatars. I think it could really make a big difference for the social life in EVE. And I think it would seriously boost sales of apparel, thus paying for itself.

This is all you had to write, the rest was waste.

Basicly this is what WiS was supposed to be, but CCP slacked with the general idea.
This is what we expect it to become one day, but most definately not now.

I always wanted low-sec booster bars, wonder if I'll ever get them.

I am saying it here again.

If WiS ever sees the light of day ...
... you will see me everywhere with an army of short skirted alts ...
... raking in billions from happily paying victims.


Bring it ...

I do want this.

It does seem really odd they don't, every other game has this ingrained. They big thing was execution with some insanely graphically intensive engine. They really just need to have it with decent but not amazing graphics and work up.

And of course, multiplayer, any incarnation of avatars in this game should be with players, this is a mmo.

Just because ccp bungled it doesn't make it impossible.

I personally do not think that EVE needs WiS, even though a lot of people do.


However, WiS will always bring back the idea of the Greed is Good, and because of that, I really doubt that CCP will ever bring it to fruition, as most players will look at it as a cash grab.

yea, not implementing incarna fully was biggest failure which killed eve.

Well did not kill But when you advertise an expansion as incarna, and all you have is a room with bad lighting, that burns lots of video cards aroudn the world, and that present you with a a clothes store with 70$ items as the ONLY feature in the exapnsion.. well you cannot get surprised to receive a lot of flak and a LOT of cancelled subscriptions. I Myself cancelled my subscription for 1 year because of Incarna fiasco and disrespect to the players.

If they try it again they need to do it VERY carefully and with MUCh more dedication and completely separate from any money grab scheme (not that money grab is intrinsically bad, but they burned themselves there and need to be careful)

there was nothing wrong on incarna, if your display card melts it is not fault of program, it is hardware failure.

If you have no money to buy items, then do not buy those, all was just items that does not affect gameplay.

Sadly now is too late, other games are filling needs now and EVE lost great opportunity because of peasants crying.

Are we discussing Polka Bar, Stripper Joint, Juice Bar???

OP - google walking in stations or eve riot - this is not what folks want out of a space combat game.