Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Sounds like a great idea to me! I am so SICK of games "dumbing down" so that everyone is equal - where is the room for hard core players who are willing to work like mad to compete for being the best?

If people could actually manually fly, and manually fight, then this would allow true competition in players skills, which is the only area of this game where it sadly fails at the moment.

Please can we see this feature implemented? I too remember the good old days of this kind of playing style in Elite, and I truly miss them, and this would also satisfy the gap left in my needs since I quit wow, the gap where PVP meant my skill at controlling my character with my gear, so if I am a better player, I can beat other players with better gear than mine because of my personal skill.

use the search function. This has been suggested a thousand times, and shot down as many. CCP will never do it.

1. It violates the lore. You are commanding the ship, not piloting it. For reference, frigates are the size a 747, cruisers are the size of an aircraft carrier and battleships are the size of a Star Destroyer. A bloke with a joystick is not appropriate to flying things like that.
2. It breaks the game code. It was never designed to handle realtime movement calculations.
3. It breaks the game servers. Wait till you get into a fleet fight with 500 people trying to make realtime movement decisions.

Not gonna happen. I'd love to see a tactical style interface though, like Homeworld or another RTS.

I agree with Zayn lol.

Besides, even if CCP couldn't think of a way to write it efficiently (and thats an excellent point about Elite doing precisely what you are describing nearly 30 years ago, so modern computers should be able to handle thousands and thousands of such real time events at the same time), as they charge about double what most other online MMORPG's do per month, they should easily be able to afford to expand a server farm - this is 2012, that sort of thing is easy and relatively cheap, and the could always push more computations down the line to local user PC's and just capture the results.

I would have thought adding a feature like this would attract more players, and keep more existing players from getting bored and leaving - more players = more money, more money = good business.

Makes sense, no?

With once per second server ticks, which is what EVE works on, twitch mechanics like this will never work. PLEASE stop suggesting them. You're the fiftieth one since the forums changed.

Also, if the option to do this is so much better, then it'll become mandatory almost immediately, and a lot of people do NOT want this.


Also, here's what you'd see in first person.

http://i.imgur.com/ARiYV.jpg

If you think about it you just actually made my point nicely thanks lol.

The entire point is that YOU are "roleplaying" somone thousands of years in the future, YOU are that pilot, but as we dont have technology in our point in time to operate systems simply by "thinking" (although there IS research into this at the University where I do my research) we have to make do by thinking in our heads and using our mouse to convey our commands / thoughts.

Now following the story - if you were in control of your ship by thought, you would be fully aware of all the systems, and would know where you were in space, and when the automatic pilot is turned off, and be able to pull up any such information by simply thinking about it, YOU decide to move the ship up, down, left and right to steer it by thinking. You identify where in space other ships are that you want and you aim your weapons at them and you will them to fire.

If you think about it the only difference between you controling your ship so you can "manually" direct it with your mouse, or direct it with thought, is the method of HCI (human-computer-interaction), and so, thank you for making my point - allowing the player to have hands on control of their ship is MORE in line with the background story than the current over simplified system of letting the artificial computer do it for you, and NOT the players thoughts making the decisions.
:)

Wow, what a selfish attitude lol. Ok, let me address each of your points and give a solution even you cant argue with:

1. Server ticks - ok simple solution, push all the ship realtime movement calculations to the local user PC, and update where other ships that are within in the same "room" location to every ship within that room once per second - thats a simple 3D space coordinates and direction facing update; thats still realistic when you take into account the distance that the ships are apart - part of the skill of real time playing then will be to anticipate where the other ships will be when your missle / rocket / weapon lands; thats the way it worked in older games like elite anyway. Done

2. Thank you for making my point nicely - the reason SO MANY people keep requesting it is because so many people WANT IT, and for every person who posts, there will be thousands of others that also want it who dont post lol.

3. Think about what I said - key word "optional". Theres 2 ways that this could be handled implemented which doesnt "force" people to have to switch to real time if they "cant handle it":
(i) You make it so "normal space" has too much background radiation interferance to fly reliably manually, but designate certain solar systems to be suitable for "manual real time stearing and combat", and then people who want this fix can go and PVP with each other properly in those solar systems, maybe even have local space stations capitalizing on the local activity by running specialized pvp services or gambeling on the outcomes of matches or providing rewards for winning set competitions. OR
(ii) You make it so that in normal space the AI of automatic ship control/fighting is an even match for manual, but in certain solar systems the automatic ship control / fighting is distrupted by background radiation, and so players HAVE to fly/ fight / compete manually, again creaing PVP areas which will allow the game to attract a new player base of people who otherwise wouldnt play EVE, and increase revinues. Players NOT wanting to fly/ fight with their ships manually could then simply stay out of those few solar systems, and everyone is happy lol.

4. What you would see in first person with the current system doesnt need to be what you would see in the new system - when you zoom in beyound a certain point it could load, in the same way when you dock with a spacestation, and you see a big glass window with cross-hairs in the middle, and information you need to know wrapped arround the outsides of the screen. Something more like this only more up-to-date as this game is over a decade old a machines are MUCH more powerful than there were then, so something much nicer would be possible, but the basic interface is the same idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZGnyMvj9n8

1. If done like that, speed hacks.

2. I'd like a better flying/floating through space, but moving with keyboard isn't helpful. ALTHOUGH, I could live with a "fly with maximum transversal" option. You have Orbit, which is supposedly a maxxed tranversal speed, and an Approach. But there's no "fly next to option" either way its not really relevant.

3. If its better, it'll be used. Autocannons versus hybrids and hurricanes/drakes versus... everythign else really. If its more efficient, its better and thusly in our efficiency-related game, better.

4. Meh, I like to view my ship from the outside, from the camera drone.

I would however, enjoy a UI improvement with scanning reticles displaying aperture, aswell as a fully non cartesian 3D tactical overaly. If it could rotate, to always intersect your and whatever your shooting at, that would be awesome, aswell as displaying a vector towards ship heading.

I'd also really enjoy a new scanner that operated like a real radar. Ours only makes sense if you thinkon a submarine analogy, but if you do think about it in those terms, turning it off would render you invisible the moment you stopped emmiting energy. (themal, weaponery, sensors, etc). So yes, I'd like my ship scanner to incorporate the system map and actually look like a 3d radar displaying possible, out of grid directions of targets.

1. Speed hacks - increadibly easy to check - if a player moves more than their ship would have allowed them to move in a tick then you ban them, in the same way as using any other hacks.

2. Keyboard? Im not sure you quite get what we're talking about here - have a look at this link, its from a MASSIVELY out of date game, but shows the basics of the kind of optional inteface we are talking about - obviously a much more sophisticated and nicer looking interface is possible with the more powerful machines people are using now from when they were playing this game, but you can see the basic idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZGnyMvj9n8

3. Im guessing you didnt read my earlier post - scroll up about the "normalizing" factors that could be introduced about background radiation.

4. We never said you COULDNT stick to the outside of ship view, we are just asking for the many many many people who want the other option to have an interface a bit more like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZGnyMvj9n8 to have the option.

Cheers

1.Any game, even the current existing game in its current form, could potentially be cracked (the phrase "hacking" actually means to write computer code without planning it before); the FBI and CIA can be cracked, banks could be cracked - know why they arent? Give the Eve developers credit, they arent stupid, and stupid things like someone moving from one point to another in space which would not be physically possible in the ship they are in within the time is INCREADIBLY easy to put on automated watch and ban people who brake try it; losing their account will put off anyone except an idiot.

2.Wow, you have psychic powers? What percentage of Eve players actually post on forums? I would be surprised if its over 1%, and you can say that the "majority" of players wouldnt want it by reading what so few people have to say? Thats impressive :) If a system was put in place to restrict this kind of thing to only certain locations (such as the idea I put about making real time combat inpractical in normal space, and only really work in certain solar systems) then this would have ZERO impact on the way you play, and you could completely opt out. So why do you want to stop others doing things which are fun if it doesnt effect you at all?

3 Nothing to discuss here, just your personal opinion - you sound like the kind of person who likes playing chess by post lol. I am just suggesting something which would make the game more fun for a lot of people to enjoy, and which would attract more players, and hence increase revenues for Eve Online, and more money means the company can afford more developers to keep adding more features to the game for everyone; everyone wins. Again, if it has ZERO impact on your preferred play style, why would you really care? lol

And again - wakeup call - CCP are expanding the style of the game to try and attract new customers; have a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTfKweL9y9o

Obviously the OP has never been in a LARGE fleet fight and doesn't realize how much the server "chokes" with the input options we currently have.

Not supported.

edit: size IS relevant. Look up the terms "inertia" and "mass."