Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I'm not a fan of skill injectors, but the way I rationalize them is this: I have a couple of alts that are like 8 years old. they've been doing minor things for me for about 8 years. Over that time I've trained them little. They have been in game for 8 years. Lore wise - they didn't just go off into the ether when I wasn't actively using them. Training has changed. Multiple characters at the same time and all the other adjustments to skilling since 06.

Rationalization: If I want to upgrade an 8 year old character with skillpoints via injectors then that isn't really a bad thing. The down side (and why I'm kind of against them) is that some newbro w/ a credit card can just straight up buy skills that I earned over time. (yeah - I'm often just that childish)

They are a shortcut that I don't care for. Not saying it's wrong, I'm saying I personally don't like the idea. What I will say is that comparing skilling in eve to skilling an another mmo is kind of silly. Other mmo grind skills. Eve skills just show up over time regardless of how much you actually play the game. It's apples and oranges.



Name changes and your lore stuff. All name changes really accomplish is to add another step to determine if a character plays as a douche. Let's be honest here - Eve has pretty much cornered the mmo market on allowing douchbaggery. It's so many light years ahead of all the rest in it's allowance of douchbaggery that it really doesn't need to give the folks playing as douchers an additional level of misdirection to pull off their stuff. Name change with name history just adds a step, name change w/ no history is against the consequences aspect of the game.

As to the folks that named their characters stupidly and just can't live with their folly - biomass, roll a newbro and buy injectors. The game already has a means for you to get over yourself.

Take this character. I've had folks stumbling over saying serendipity (and it's 23 known mispronunciations), serenity, dippity, sarah and so on for 10 years. It's a crap character name, especially during active pvp moments on comms. I've wanted to change it more than once over the years, but it stays and is something I created and I have to work around. Just saying that I totally get the 'oopsies' thing on character naming, but also believe in the whole consequences aspect of the game.

I deleted the first half of this post because it was just completely irrelevant to the discussion.

You're saying name changes are going to give mean players yet another edge to use against unsuspecting players, and I'm here to tell you that this is complete nonsense. First of all the obvious: Name history will clearly show you who that character is regardless of their aesthetic name change. Second, all other relevant stats about that character will also remain the same; their employment history, bounty, killboard, literally everything. Therefore, name changes would be used far more for aesthetic reasons than for trying to "throw people off" which just wouldn't work against even new players who are basic learners.

(If someone does happen to fall for a name-change, and they think someone is harmless when they are in fact dangerous, well that's where the CONSEQUENCE of the game comes in, remember consequence? Very important aspect of the game.)

If you're worried about people abusing name changes, there could easily be a limit to how many name changes you can make, it could even be once a year or something like that. Problem? Don't think so.

As for your last point, you're basically saying that because you had to live with a terrible name for ten years, we shouldn't put name changes into the game. I'm not even going to bother explaining how unreasonable this logic is because it just stands for itself.

You didn't just happen to mention that for no reason. You were making points against the idea of name changes. In that context, you clearly implied that because you've had to live with the consequences of a bad name, others should be condemned to the same fate. If that is not what you meant, you just brought it up for no reason, I guess, or for some other reason which I am failing to comprehend.


Wrong. Even if it's something minute and purely aesthetic, name changes unquestionably add something to the game. What's the gameplay reason to add ship skins, or custom clothing? There are none. The reasons are purely aesthetic, immersive. Same with name changes.

According to you name changes add another step to determine if a player is a douche. That in itself is adding gameplay elements to the equation, even if they are very subtle ones. A tiny bit more deception, a pinch more trickery, even if it is just a cheap illusion which can be dispelled by a glance at the "name history" of the character, definitely has an effect on gameplay.

At it's worst it's just an aesthetic change for immersion and comfort, with a mostly inconsequential effect on gameplay.

Why in God's name would we not be allowed to change our names in the first place? That's a good question.

The old name should be available at the press of a button in "Biography". Old traitors and scammers will not be able to escape their history. But lots of players desire a new name just for aestethic reasons.

First thing - how can other players know a capsuleer's name? Because local tells them so? Because they can pres "show info"? So what? Is his name written on the hull of the ship? Can the "show info" read his mind? We should not even be able to see names in local, just ships maybe.

A name means nothing. An enemy you are at war with will not have his name written on his ship. Maybe there should be a ship module (quite useless) - that scans the enemy ship, sees the face of the enemy player, then uses a database to get his name (trying to describe a plausible reason about why you can see the enemy's name in local).

Maybe only friendly names, from a RP perspective, they have set their ships computers to broadcast their name to blues...

If Fluid Router Network knows and broadcasts the name of every player in K-space, it should easily broadcast the name of all players I set as red that are in a certain region. The FRN knows they are in that region, and the communication channels allow communication between the ends of the galaxy, it's just a matter of plugging in a cable, isn't it?

I said "old name should be accesible with a button in "biography" .

What value would be added to gameplay for this change?

"I should be able to" isn't added value, it's a want/desire. How would this make the game better?

If by gameplay you mean, piloting, managing modules and heat, knowing how to fit properly : nothing.
But if you think about intelligence / spying, it adds a lot.



As far as bumpers and such are concerned, it's a matter of readaptation, in my proposed idea, this name change is possible only in a certain amount of time, as CCP would chose. Once a year ? Once every 6 months ?

Once you've noticed that your 'bumper' as changed his name, not only would he stay red if you set him very bad standing, even after a name change, but you would recognize him by the ship he flies, the system he's in, the gate he's camping, and so on...

Yes, it asks you ONE single time to be aware of that, once you've discovered the name change, you just erase the old name in your mind and relearn the new one... not a big deal.
If you are playing Eve Online, you're brain should be able to do that, right ?



Other point, my idea is proposing a new tab in the "show info" window just like "Employment History" that would list all the name in a dated period the character had.

To 'counter-argue' the above statement, would it be as dangerous has changing name than changing corporation ? If you only set a standing on the corporation, not on the character. What if a character named "A" was a danger for you, but he left his corp ?
Would you forbid people to change corp ?

Of course not, the "reasonable" answer would be : 'you should have set the CHARACTER red, not his corp, this is your entire own faul'.
Well that's the axact same answer i'll give to you for someone that has changed his name : 'put standing if you think those are dangerous for you, or just blame yourself'.



On the principle, i am even 'harsher' than my idea.
I concider that all the stuff i've added to "flatten the curves" of people against it is stupid.
On one hand people are gargling how they are "special" playing Eve Online, such a special game, with its difficulties and such, on the other hand, they always refuse any changes to it, wether it ease the game or harsh it more.

My personal idea would be that any one could at any time, change his name depending any amount of ISK in-game, by standings or missions, or amount of PvP kills or whatever.
It should be part of this game concidering how important spying and counter-spying are for 'serious' stuff.



But honestly, most of the guy who would chose to use this feature, would do it for pure aestethic/cosmetic reasons.

Judging by what CCP Mimic has told, i wouldn't be that sure as you are.
Now you can threat CCP to leave the game, and so on.

It's not a bad idea, and it will happen eventually.

According to your line of reasoning no features should ever be added to the game unless they directly benefit gameplay. It sounds fairly reasonable until you follow this path to it's logical conclusion. When you do that, you realize just how many things would never have been brought into this game if we all thought the way you do:

Captains quarters would not have been added, ship skins would not have been added, player avatars would never have been updated, custom clothing would never be added or updated, engine trails would never have been brought back, character resculpts would not have been added, AURUM would not be a thing.

It can be debated whether those things should have been added to the game in the first place, but that is a completely separate discussion, so don't even try to bring it up.

The point is that things can and do get added to this game based on reasons other than their direct benefit to gameplay. Therefore holding to this point as an argument against the idea is inherently flawed.

Logically, you now have to come up with a different reason why this is a bad idea, because gameplay (or lack thereof) is not a good enough reason, as I clearly just demonstrated.

At the same time, all of this does not necessarily prove that name changes are a good idea. All it proves is that the last of your arguments, your appeal to gameplay, is wrong.

I would argue that name changes should be added to the game as a necessary freedom of choice for the players. It absolutely does not negatively affect gameplay. In fact it would add just a bit more depth to the gameplay. And it would benefit players who had previously chosen their names poorly so that they could change it to something more reasonable.

Heh, so three makes a pile Sorites paradox: starter edition.
Well to be fair, there is an argument that Eve is a much longer term game than is typical from computers, especially these days. People may now be playing 'Clash of Farmville Minecraft Crush IX', but they won't typically be playing that in a decade's time. Even my forum sperging alt's turning 10 this year.

People become attached to their characters, and I do think it's time to reassess quite why we feel people can't have a once-only name change. It doesn't affect me really, but I bet it annoys quite a few people. I've started many a game after coming back from the pub, trying my first-choice 5 names, then my next 10, and finally playing "Agke Gfadevsarecunts" from frustration.

The "consequences follow you" horse bolted quite a while ago when you could pick up a new axoxxing character from the bazaar. It has since accelerated. Let it go, and allow one-time. traceable changes.