Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This morning in the shower, I remembered that needed to cancel my EVE Online subscription before the renewal date. This must be the tenth time I’ve cancelled my subscription, and even before doing so I know I’ll be back as a subscriber again. I then got to thinking why do I keep alternately subscribing and cancelling my subscription to EVE Online, and what could be done to keep me, and others like me, as steady customers. During the length of said shower I came up with the contents of the following open letter…

This is an open letter to the developers of EVE Online [the game]. My intent is to voice my opinion on how best to move the EVE Universe forward and make the game more appealing to a larger audience. My reasoning is twofold. The first is selfish: it is simply how I’d like to see the EVE Universe change to best suit my vision how it should be. The second is more altruistic: it is the simple truth that the more people in numbers and variety that play the game, the better the game’s economy works and since the EVE Universe is first and foremost an economy simulation this is where efforts need to be focused.

Let us start with the solo player aspect of the game. Today, despite the game’s developers’ best efforts, I could define solo play in the EVE Universe as boring and repetitive. Playing alone in any massively multiplayer online game [MMO] is, by definition, not intended use. However, it is the way a very large portion of the subscribing populous does in fact play these games. There are a huge number of reasons to play alone in a game populated with thousands (or millions) of other people, all playing the same game. Reasons vary from insufficient time to play with others; to not knowing other players therefore not having friends to play with; to simply being introverted and preferring ones’ own company to that of others. Whatever the reason these are paying customers and should be catered to.

There are a number of issues with EVE Online’s solo player experience. First there’s limited reasons to play solo. The primary activities done solo, in my experiences playing the game, are completing missions, mining asteroids, and engaging in the harassment of other players for my own enjoyment. Let’s first focus on the experiences that do not require the involvement of other players.

The completion of missions is a moderately rewarding experience. In my experience the reward curve (measured in the enjoyment of the activity as opposed to the in game currency reward) is a third degree curve: one that starts very high on the enjoyment axis and quickly drops to below zero, only to oscillate above and below the zero axis until at comes to reset at zero. The problem with mission completion is repetition with the impetus to move forward. The only compelling reasons to complete missions that I know of are the in game currency reward [ISK], loyalty points (another form of currency), and faction standing (a third form of currency used to access more missions).

Mining in the EVE Universe is potentially the most boring activity ever presented to mankind as a form of play. Even golf is far more an exciting and rewarding way to spend your time. As best I can tell mining as an activity only exists in the game to provide a limitation to the influx of new raw materials thus stabilizing the economy. It requires hours of time spent doing mindless tasks best left to a automation and is both a waste of personal time for the EVE Online subscriber as well as server time for CCP.

In my opinion these are insufficient rewards to keep the game interesting to anyone who, for whatever reason, is playing solo and that customer will unsubscribe as their return on investment [ROI] decreases past their minimal threshold for paying the subscription fee. With mining it is even worse that with completing missions because there’s very little personal ROI for those engaged in spending their days and nights mining for ore to sell for ISK. In fact it has become such a critical, yet painfully boring part of the game that many players have looked outside the offerings of CCP to spend additional money to purchase software which will automate mining and therefore reduce the boredom. This means that the only way to make mining enjoyable is to violate the end user license agreement [EULA]. Making a bad situation worse is that the large scale usage of bots to make mining rewarding punishes those who haven’t broken the EULA by suppressing the value of ore in the economy and consuming deposits (asteroids). This is a fundamentally broken system, and I fully believe CCP knows it to be broken because I have seen obvious usage of automated mining tools [bots] go on for months without any repercussions.

[CCP: If a player never logs off and never stops mining, that player is a bot. Clear and simple.]

The experience of completing missions could also be improved by reducing the chance that my third solo activity (engaging in the harassment of other players for my enjoyment) is reduced while in the process of completing a mission. I have a simple mechanism and a solid in game logic to explain it.

Since most missions are in “dead space” where faster than light travel [FTL] isn’t possible, it shouldn’t be possible for any kind of scanners to detect activity within dead space. Somebody needs to explain to me how anything is detected inside dead space at faster than light. Even at the amazingly fast speed of light, it takes eight minutes to each the Earth from the sun and over four hours to reach Neptune. Given that, dead space should be blocking any FTL transmission. How are details such as ship placement visible from within a pocket of dead space? Simply put they shouldn’t be. The pocket of dead space itself should be easily detectable, but not the contents within. Therefore players looking to harass other players should be allowed to warp to the edge of the dead space pocket, but be forced to travel at sub-luminal speeds looking for the acceleration gate, potentially a multi-hour/day activity.

Without this limitation imposed by dead space what logical reason is there that the EVE Universe’s massive empires still have rouge elements within them? How can a military body the size of the Gallente Federation Navy, which protects hundreds if not thousands of planets, be unable to hunt down and decimate a single corporation? Why provide the player characters with secret acceleration gate locations when anyone who warps to the edge of the dead space will magically find the necessary acceleration gate? The only logical thing to do here is to make dead space FTL signal-dead and prevent the scanning of the objects within. Only by knowing the location of an acceleration gate can one access the dead space. Finally, the discovery of these acceleration gates should be one of the key activities of the upcoming Incarna experience; players should need to research, coerce, and bribe the information to use for their selves, provide to the empires, or sell to the highest bidder.
This change doesn’t have to be limited to solo player activity. By changing the nature of dead space, player run corporations will more easily be able to hide their player own stations and other valuables, however now the valuable location will be the acceleration gate(s).

To offset the safety provided by a darkened dead space, I believe CCP should prevent warp from being initiated with dead space as well. Except in the case of pod emergency warp, ships should require the use of an acceleration gate to get out of dead space as well. This means once players have committed to a mission they must complete it or fail. With the addition of Crew the stakes have been raised and the player has only themselves to blame. These stressful situations with so much on the table are amazingly rewards when you succeed; they can be quite addicting.

The only method I have come up with to resolving the problem of the low ROI the activity of mining provided for EVE Online subscribers is the same solution that so many before me have come up with: use a bot. From my point of view CCP has a choice to make: either get serious about banning bots and punishing users of them, or create your own mining bot. I believe CCP should create a sanctioned mining bot which can keep a character online, even when the player has logged out, to continue mining as much as possible.

Admittedly this will have an impact on the economy due to the flood of raw materials. I do have this to say about it however: because asteroids are limited and are consumed by the act of mining the actual amount of minerals being dumped on the market is limited; in my experience this nearly happening today anyways; therefore by allowing all subscribers to engage in mining with a bot only EULA breakers are being punished. However, since there will likely be more minerals injected into the market we need a proper sink to keep the economy balanced.

There you have roughly twenty minutes of thought. While admittedly a long shower, is a short amount of time to have spent thinking about topics as in depth as this. Therefore I present these thought as what they are, the initial seeds of ideas, not yet fully thought out or scoped. I do believe there’s something valuable here and therefore have presented these ideas as is. Thanks for your time and I hope something has sparked your imagination.

Fly safe

I think you misunderstand. Crews would be NPCs not human controlled. Therefore would not require anymore coordination. At least that's my vision for it.

I read 90% of that ...whew. Some good ideas but leave the probing alone, it works well and as intended. Eve doesn't have to conform to real world physics any more then the Universe has to take on the properties of the mathmatics we humans use to describe it with.
I have previously put forth the idea of CCP supplied bots, ones where you earned the LP to spend on a bot that could only be operated for a limited number of hours and harvested less then a real player - it didn't go over well.
But I would like to encourage you to run for CSM this year - you obviously care about the game and think of it.

T3s are and will always be produced from WSPACE, minerals are barely required.

Definatly not this

I commend you on your efforts in writing a comprehensive assessment on your feelings toward Eve Online. However I think you may find that many here disagree strongly with F2P (pay to win) and artificial botting.

get your F2P nonsense out of here

Edit: Inappropriate part removed, CCP Phantom.

Solo players are less likely to generate content/social interactions that will make current players stay in the game.
I guess they are also less likely to recruit new players into the game.

If CCP invests some money to make a socially connected and active player happy they'll get a higher multiplier on that investment than if they spend the same amount of money on a solo player.