Player Features and Ideas Discussion

These days eve evolves with pretty regular development cycles, and there's always new contents and balancing factors being implemented.

Overall, CCP has done good job at keeping players updated on what's happening with eve and let us know in advance about big changes coming up, through dev. blogs, then through feedback forums, SISI testing, and final implementations on Tranquility, etc, etc.

In a way, this is great and I appreciate the developer's willingness to listen to the player base and shape the game in a way that its loyal player base would like to see, shared visions and all that.

However, with many of us players having played this game for like a decade now, sometimes things are too smooth, too pedestrian, and we feel like we are too settled and well established in the game.

So I was thinking, wouldn't it be nice for CCP to 'surprise' us sometimes, with random spectacular things.

I know there have been some goodies introduced to game as surprise 'gift', such as ship skins, new rat/anom spawns with new rewards to get players out into low-sec/null, which I guess lead to some more content.

But I'm not talking about such 'gift' or 'bonus rewards'. I'm thinking more in lines of 'disasters' that shake us out of our comfort zone, and "force" us to adapt.

I thought of two such ideas, they are in no way perfect examples, but this will give you an idea of kind of 'surprise' events I'm thinking of.

1. Black hole, super nova or such cosmic disaster

Imagine a black hole appearing in one of the trade hubs, or in some home system of a null alliance, or in a busy FW system, or in a high-sec mission hub, wherever. Totally unannounced and unexpected, and totally destructive.

All the stations and ships and assets - everything in that system will get sucked into the blackhole, and yes, be lost forever permanently.

****? yes, it will cause outrage. People will lose so much stuff they have been hoarding thinking they would be 100% safe (because nothing can ever happen to your personal assets in high-sec station right?).

But that is the whole point. To introduce the sense of hopelessness to the player base. That **** can happen to anyone, no matter how powerful you/your corp/your alliance/whatever is. **** can happen that make you lose very valuable stuff, totally out of your control.

Would I be upset? Yes. If I was flying my most blingy ship in space and suddenly got sucked into a blackhole only to wake up in a new clone on the other side of the galaxy (with possible SP loss too lol), or if a trillion of asset someone amassed in a tradehub got wiped out, that would suck big time. But then again, that's the point.

Eve is supposed to be harsh, but if you've played this game for long time, and know the game mechanics and follow all the development news religiously, it is very hard to be surprised or make a big enough mistake that actually hurt. Make this happen, to remind us that space is dangerous, to bring back the paranoia again even to the oldest and fattest cats in New Eden.


2. Empire Blockade

Something like a Caldari vs Gallente war, some rogue rebellion in Amarr space, riot in Minmatar space, whatever. This does not have to be permanent, but make it last some time enough to disrupt the geopolitical scenery. Something like an unexpected escalation of war between Gallente & Caldari, and ALL travel routes/borders between Caldari and Gallente being closed. No player ship allowed to move between two empires. Don't tell people when this will happen, and don't tell people how long this will last.

Make a Minmatar Riot breakout in some highsec empire system, mission hub or even tradehub like Rens or whatever. Station will be inacceissible. You cannot retrieve your goods from certain systems, whatever.

You can weave these events to chronicles, make them part of the development/progress of New Eden's history, which could give it more context.


Well, I'm sure there are much more creative people out there who can think of more/better scenario like this. But the main point is as I said earlier, to make eve unpredictable, to give us that 'oh ****' moment, make it arbitrary so we feel like we have no control over the disaster, put the capsulers down to remind them no matter what demi-god we have become now, space is very big, and powerful, and terrifying.

Yeah, that is a problem.

So I think these things should come straight into TQ with no SISI testing or player feedback gathering.

Something like ship balancing or new module introduction needs player feedback/balancing so I guess they need to be on SISI. But some kind of a disaster whose main function is just pure destruction probably don't need to be tested.

Maybe this will make some people rage quit, but I don't care. I'm prepared to take big personal losses if that means it brings fear into New Eden.

This doesn't even need to happen regularly. Just let it happen once, somehwere, unannounced, in a big scale. The next such event could happen the day after or four years later, but once it happens, and it leaves its disastrous mark in the universe, this will be a permanent feature in the lore and in player's experience, because although very very very unlikely to happen, we know that it CAN happen.

edit: btw, I like the 'player disease' idea, very much!

If you blew up jita and everything in it with no announcement, warning or testing at all, how many people do you think would unsub and never return?

Can we try it and find out?

I think the game would be just fine if 4-4 got swallered up by a black hole. Outrage? Sure! I'm qitting eve threats? Sure. Quitting eve for reals? Totally!

But let's examine the real 'damage' this would cause.... Beyond "I lost all my stuff" what would the 4-4 black hole event actually do to the game? The long term game, not the short term. Seriously, if the 10 year vets that are ultra rich were black holed into starting over or quitting - would that really be a bad thing?

Overall I think it would be healthy if CCP added more risk/loss into the game in lieu of safeguarding stuff. I think the game is kind of at a crossroads. CCP will either make changes to keep it's unique and awesome game (the part that makes your heart pound because your game gear is actually on the line) growing stronger and better, or they will follow the 'make eve more wowlike' to pull in those subs (wow players) and chase a quick buck. The past several years of caving to the safety of the player base has the game leaning further and further to stale, stagnant and dying. Sure - you get to keep all your stuff, but you can do THAT in every other game on the planet.

A 4-4 black hole event is obviously over the top, but the game could use a bit more uncertainty.

Take a step way back and look at the big picture. The human condition is based on clawing our way to the top. Once there we fall into decadence and sloth, then things topple and renew.

Games are the same way. It's all about the struggle. Truly bad games die immediately (of course). Good games hold our attention as we strive to be on top. Once the game is mastered it loses it's appeal and players move on. If CCP makes eve into spacewow, then they will lose. At this point in gaming trying to outwow wow is folly - they own it. Once a players hangar/citadel is all full up - where is the joy in the struggle. Getting your first merlin (enyo, curse, tempest, archon) is pretty sweet. Adding a 4th backup archon is pretty meh. (Woo Hoo I have 3 to 5 backups of everything)

I'll give you my current place in eve. My corp recently got burned out of our C5 WH. It was glorious. We lost everything. What is everything? Well, it's all the stuff we had in there. After losing all that it was time to rebuild. I took stock of what I had left after losing everything. It's pretty staggering. 50+ BS I didn't even remember I had. 20 something logistics that I will probably never fly. Hics, inty, AF in stacks and piles - the inventory was crazy. Other assets in stations - 10s of billions. Liquid isk - 10s of billions. That's on just on this character. Basically I lost 'everything' and can still plex all my accounts for 3 years without undocking.

I'm at the point where I'm having trouble logging into the game. I have little purpose. PVP has lost it's meaning. Null stuff has been stale for several years. It's all fake or for the luls. Empire pvp got patched into garbage w/ the free assist stuff - it's pretty much pve, but you farm players instead of npc. FW is pretty much reduced to complex farming manipulation. Incursions - I'll just say wtf were you thinking??? So I did WH, but that's pretty much been carved up by a few large groups w/ like 3 viable indy groups hanging in there.

Citadel space magic was a huge blow to my hopes for the future of the game. What's the point of playing eve right now??

Piling assets really really high? Check
Meaningful PVP? Hell yeah, but where is it???

So, 4-4 black hole is funny but over the top. Surprising me w/ some worthwhile and meaningful pvp would be great.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Like I said, maybe blackhole or blockade ideas are not exactly the best ideas technically or lore-wise, but you all understood the intention behind it anyway so it's ok.

The main point is that IRL, stuff can happen in catastrophic scale such as earthquakes, etc. And such disasters often reshape the way people think about their lives as well as give incentives to prepare for the unexpected.

But I understand and accept that just pure 'RNG screwing you over' may not be a good game design. So some revisions could be made to my original idea, such as following.

1. Give 'hints'

Let's say before a cosmic disaster, let there be small signs over preceding period. Such as appearance of some cosmic anomalies (no not the ratting kinds...) we can observe. A slow development of tell-tale signs over the preceding weeks, that can be found/scanned or whatever by players to give others warning (if they want to). A bit like how geologists these days give warning about potential major natural disaster based on data they collect and analyse regularly. Explorers could be encouraged to report when they see something abnormal developing during their journeys. This could give rise to player driven 'observation and early warning system' type of thing.


2. Same could happen with blockade lore wise. Give more updates and means for the players to connect with what's happening in the empires/pirate factions lore wise. News flashes, chronicles, in game bill board or whatever. Let the political situation develop over time, so that players, if they are keen and keep an eye on the political situation of the empires, can sense that something may be coming up which could disrupt the 'normal life' in New Eden.

So this is how I think my original idea could be modified to make it a better game feature.

Having said that, Serendinpity Lost explained my idea better than I originally did perhaps. Yes, some ideas may be OTT, but possibility of disaster/event/whatever that could shake up the game and lead to player reactions is what I want. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket", "don't horde on to everything you ever bought", "give reasons for players to spread their assets out", etc, kinda idea.

I too experienced great losses during my eve career of course. Some due to player actions, some due to my own stupidity, whatever. But some of the great losses were 'awesome', and often forced me to adapt the way I play and do things in the game. Change the direction of corp, change the way I fly ships, change the way I run my operation, etc, etc. Some of my early experiences with Wormhole when they first came out really brought back the feeling of exploring a new harsh universe just as I felt when first starting eve.

Maybe my currently proposed idea is ok/good/bad/sh!t, whatever. But the main point is to bring back that unknown danger and 'oh sh!t' moments back to eve.

They could give us some meaningfull stuff like this.

1 I agree, I think OP want to see people quit, We once had stations destructible, Yulai system I think is where the attack happened as it was like jita before every one moved to jita, an alliance attacked the station and all stock/market/hangers all lost.

also people would not like logging in to finding their character died in 1 system and their home system also destroyed un able to clone which would make more people quit.

2 the Minmatar are shifting that aid to a unknown base rebuilding their attack fleet that was loss to the empress to keep freeing other slaves in another massive attack.

Yeah, there are a few cases of unintended side-effects turning out okay. Not just the Corrupted Blood Plague, but players living in wormhole space in towers was completely unintended gameplay as well.

Though as a temporary event, that plague turned out okay, but for long-term gameplay that was disastrous.