Player Features and Ideas Discussion

One problem with adding true exploration in this game is the number of players.

It took a few months for all those new and exciting wormhole systems to be completely mapped and broken down. You put enough people out wandering the lost and lonely, and very quickly your not lost and lonely.

Then you also have to deal with the repercussions of adding too much uniqueness. What does the person find when they go out? And how can it be exploited?

Let's say I own a ship that is one of only a few ever made. This ship will never undock. Why? Because to do so would be instant gankage. Once it's gone, it's gone. It's a shame how that works, but that's real life.

Or you flood the game with unique assets, and due to there being so many, they no longer become unique. Oh, you found an old cathedral and looted a cool drone? Well check out my Terran shirt I got a week back at this ancient strip club.



I'm not against the concepts of the post at all. Simply playing devils advocate. It's so hard to add true exploration, because in the end, it will all be explored.

It has to be sunk in order to remain rare, just as it is in WHs now. As much as CCP wants a full player-driven economy, you can't have it complete when resources and technologies are artificially held at bay.

If lands can't be discovered and settled
If new materials and ships can't be invented
If new resources that are valuable can't be located

Then you need to artifically give a monetary reason to explore.


Now, that being said- if CCP had gone the once-proposed route of making R64 minerals rotate, deplete, and regen - or maybe even take them off of moons and put them in something like comets, then there would be that desire to go out and find them, a way to discover a genuine resource that would be useful.


But for now... we have to brainstorm with the tools at our disposal.

Unique things only hold the value of the buyers. Whereas Entity has some beautiful, amazing rare ships, only a handful would actually consider buying them.

I have a TS warp disruptor on the market for 4mil below regional average... it's been sitting there for a while, because the market is so slim for it.

The rewards can come from cosmos or other agents. You don't get them a normal way, you have to piece together the puzzle. You need to talk to other players:

"hey I found xx, do you know of anyone [agents] who would like to buy it?"
"I do, but apparently it's part of y. The agent is offering 300m for both. I'll buy yours for 180m"
"Sure buddy... just meet me in Rancer, top station."

Maybe the logs you find give you a bookmark somewhere on the other side of space. You can go there yourself or sell the bookmark to another player.

I think you all are thinking too far outside the box. A few simple fixes could do a lot more, be much more manageable, and much more likely to be enacted than dreaming up a whole new system of risk and reward.

But first, some commentary: I really hope what we haven't seen of odyssey yet is considerable. It might just be me, but a new system to open/loot sites IS NOT important! It is quite seriously a side grade and not worth the time put into it when you can consider what would take far less and matter much more. I enjoy UI re-imagining- all the little changes are nice, but in the end they do nothing for actual game play. Compare how I felt when I heard grav sites getting the shaft (indicative of a real, meaningful change) to now, when I realize that likely all we're going to see for odyssey is no change to the apathy of scanning. I would have loved to see the scanning can opening modules being moved to the hislots (with salvagers), and scanning strength playing a role in the success chance of your modules (so that low and mid slot items could benefit scanners directly, making for strait scanning ships where player stealth and cunning was more important- scanner fittings should be dreamed up not to deal with rats but to deal with other explorers (who should have always been the "dangerous" presence in the profession- not rats)). Enough- onto the only real things I want to see.


Remove DED sites. They are missions in the end. It's time to accept that. Take those 1 bil modules and put them into real exploration. Put them into the new scan types that appear. No longer classify the sites by the types of sensors in the game- We should have ~7 site "types" ranked by the randomness of the site. That's right, all sites are now random in the best and simplest way- they lead to random places for the big isk bucks. Exploration Escalation- the way it should've been.

Types:
"Heavily Documented Signal"
"Documented Signal"
"Lightly Documented Signal"
"Slightly Unusual Signal"
"Unusual Signal"
"Highly Unusual Signal"
"Unknown Signal"


On warp-in all of these would be very similar- they would have a chance to be wreckage very much like a mag site, or an abandoned radar instillation with decryptors still in the memory banks of the computers. All exploration sites would start like they are now- but every site would have an escalation chance. Every can you open would have a chance to escalate you- the type of signal would not effect this- that would mean something else.

What that (the types) would mean:

Lets say you find a Heavily Documented Signal, you warp in, get an escalation- it would be an escalation that would lead you to another such site ~2-3 jumps away. Lets say instead you found an Unknown Signal- you might be flying from Jita to Serpentis Prime for your escalation.

Lets follow with the scanning Jita and you finding an Unknown signal:It escalates for you (I would imagine this would be a 5-10% chance per can you access). You start off in jita having found, since it's hi-sec a site, maybe 100k isk worth of loot. Pitiful. But thanks to the new scanning changes even these sites have a chance to lead you somewhere where you could make 100mil isk.

But this is where exploration gets fun for everyone- I mean rats are boring, but every scanner worth his salt knows the fun of sneaking into low or null and scouring those sometimes abandoned, sometimes deadly systems. Like Indiana Jones- people are going to want to find those deadspace modules too. Those people, who do none of the work but just want to vulture off you- those people are the ones you have to outsmart- not some stupid rats with dialed up damage and such.

So you get an escalation- and it will be broadcast across your constellation. Not who found it- not even where exactly it is- just a simple message like: "A capsuleer has discovered a signal that stretches across the void, system gates have received and transmitted acknowledging pings with (system name)."

Ok, so they don't get the exact warp in- but if anyone wants to they can fly out there and sit in the system waiting for you- probably with a combat scanner out and ready to pick up you and that X-type you might just find.


Suddenly it isn't about having to have friends so that you can scan and they can fly in and shoot stuff up- it's not about having friends to scoop loot- it's about having them- like was advertised back when I started eve- to protect you when other players come sniffing.


No longer will nullsec carebears have to fear random gankers- they'll have to fear a mob of players from Jita setting up shop in their system because some ping let them know there was a good chance someone was going to get a deadspace module there.

This kind of exploration would take SO LITTLE! on ccp's side. They could keep DEDs as anomalies and keep the overseer effects... but give explorers all the fun- and in doing so actually give meaning to FAST ships- chases across the universe would be worth it for ANYONE when a A-type medium pith shield booster is on the line.

It would be happening often enough though that it would not mean people would pile out for everything- abandoned places would still be fairly abandoned- it would only be when you're say scanning in a system around dodoxie, and you stumble out of the blue on an Unknown Signal- and in the constellation everyone gets and update "Serpentis Prime!" And they know damn well that escalation is a big one. Imagine if some noobie then asks "dude what did just I find?" Enter an actual realization of all that eve advertisement propaganda. All those blues making isk in null? Suddenly thier "unknown signal" lead them into

Hell, lets make the alerts show up in this new dscan they're making- don't make it as obvious as local chat. I don't know about the details- all I know is that this would give people a reason to race across the stars.

I like your post except this one blurb.

Hopefully CCP will be replacing local, and on top of that having a broadcast in w-space is very, very dangerous- it doesn't say where you're going but it says that you are there, in system.

I think the only sort of broadcast rish should be the chance of setting off a shipwreck's transponder alarm, which creates a warpable beacon. Make it a slight chance, say about 5-10% and only after a sucessful hacking.