Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Wormholes are more common in hisec. In fact, in null security space it's more common to run into a mag/radar/combat/grav than a wormhole.

And they are actually improving the interface.

Exploration, finding something new, not missions with additional tasks before - probing. I don't see any other move here other than randomized content ( maybe named t2 modules, oh yes, the hated fe. brutal enectron blaster of armor (+2% dmg, +2% armor) when it comes to structures, mobs and loot. If something isn't properly randomizes, it will stay the same. I go to agent maybe i get that or that mission - i go probe maybe i get that or that probespacearea - mission.

Yup I agree but there is a rich lore to EVE that also can and should be represented.

True, but don't let that hold things back too much. Lore is the backdrop, player actions are the story.

Take Schmata Bastanold's post in this thread, https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3091722#post3091722.

That is exploration.

Open the map and unflatten it, find The Myridian Strip. See that big open empty space under the Myridian Strip? What if in that big empty space there were a few solsys nodes running in that space. Players could get into those nodes from the adjacent solar systems. Where the nodes meet, if a player moves far enough over the boundary, use a system transition and place them in the adjacent node.

All ya need for lore is to say that was the home space of the enter_favorite_name_rat_name_here. Though in all honesty, you don't need to. Create the space, design a relatively simplistic method of procedurally generated anomalies ore and ice belts. Let players anchor anything they want, where ever they want. Allow them in that area to warp using manually entered Cartesian coordinates and just let players go nuts. Maybe it takes a player a couple of days to manually warp that distance, so what.

No Sov, No borders, no gates, no limits, no rules.

More crazy and amazing stories will come out of there than lore could create in a year, and at much less cost.

What should exploration be? Exploration should be difficult and fraught with peril in grand EvE tradition. It should require both in-game and out-of-game skills, backed up with practice and determination. It should offer rewards that are in line with the work required. It should allow emergent gameplay and (in line with current CCP goals) let players generate the storylines and as much of the mechanics as feasible. There should be a clear progression for new players. It should be beautiful to look at and absolutely deadly, just like exploration in real life.

Congratulations, you're done!

...and in a few days you'll have screwed it up. It was work to find signatures and took experience to know which ones are most profitable and interesting, now you've replaced work and experience with a flashy and distracting visual effect that puts signatures front and center. You've messed with the skill requirements to decrease the benefit of specializing, and you've messed with the in-game setup to reduce the amount of player skill necessary to safely deploy and set up probes. You no longer need to practice and test probe setups to learn how to get the most bang for your buck or determination to keep scanning that 5th system after the first 4 came up dry. At the same time you've pulled a bait-and-switch on the reward mechanic (oh, sucks to be you; not enough guys in fleet means that dark blood tower bpc that you were all waiting for is dust in the wind) and added yet more flash in the form of a clickfest that takes the game out of the hands of players and back into the hands of CCP. By making probing so easy, you've made the explorer progression (t1 scanner -> covops -> t3 -> daytripper -> c1/c2 ->c3/c4 ->c5/c6) stagnant - why train for a covops when your magnate lets you scan down everything in highsec? At the same time, though, that magnate doesn't have a cloak so jumping into that wormhole is super dangerous and maybe I should just stay here where it's safe. The new radar sites don't look bad, so props for that, but there's not even the danger of your fragile scanning frigate getting popped by the red crosses.

All of this is to say that sometimes constructive criticism has to be, well, criticism.

Now, to recommendations. The skill changes suck but skill changes always suck - fine, keep 'em. The modules are fine, who cares. Make fewer cans, let them fly away, but make them slower and give them the same despawn as the site as a whole; if a player wants to go chase each one down, fine. Give us back the ability to launch individual probes; in general, stop telling me how I'm supposed to play the game. The system scanner is annoying but pretty, so go ahead and keep it. Add real danger back into the sites by putting the rats back in highsec radars, and make the rats aggressive enough that cloaking devices are useful. Get rid of the cute mini-game, it's boring and adds nothing to the story; the "minigame" for exploration is spamming d-scan to make sure some guy in a Tengu isn't on his way to kill you.

Fix POSes. You've heard this for years, I don't care if it's hard, it's the clear next step in making wormhole life (the end state for most explorers) interesting, exciting, and enjoyable. Fix loot drops out of player structures so that players can make and destroy each others' loot pinatas instead of relying on CCP to spawn cans; making CHAs and SMAs hackable could help and would bring the hacking mechanic out of pure PvE and into the wider game. Make POSes easy to administer. Give daytrippers a ship that fits through a C1 and can act like a temporary POS (think triage mode on a midget orca) as a way to encourage exploration of unknown space, a tradeoff between flexibility and safety.

Replace pre-defined probe formations with a user-generated library, then have new players create the spread and pinpoint formations as part of the explo tutorial. It gets you to the same place but makes the new player understand the *reason* behind those formations instead of just blindly clicking. Have the probe launcher fire as many probes as are required for a given formation (up to 8) so I can create a 1-probe "formation" if I feel so inclined. Balance this by drastically reducing the base flight time of a probe and create a skill that increases that time (e.g. 10 minutes base flight time, 10 minutes additional for each level of "Scan Probe Tuning" or whatever, for a maximum of 1 hour) so that I still have to be smart about managing my probes. I don't care if it's hard to make the library, it's the difference between CCP giving me the tools to play *my* game and CCP dictating the way I'll play *their* game, and that difference is what makes EvE special.

And then make a pledge, a solemn oath, with pinky swears and signatures in blood, never to touch the exploration system without talking to the players first.

You'll be done.

Again.

Also, listen to Autumn. He's damn smart and cares a lot about Eve - belittling him and ignoring his comments is non-constructive and petulant.

There was stuff here, but it disappeared.

Short response is that if I can put a POS anywhere, it makes it easy to set up gate camps or bubble traps backed up with POS guns; put a HIC and a POS between two gates and blap everything that lands. Putting scannable stations in safespots renders them bookmarkable and therefore unsafe. Connecting POSes to the market system creates a number of hilarious scenarios in which I take your ISK and then use my POS defenses to blow you up; your wreck will give me the loot i need to set up more sell orders. Setting up a mechanic where mass numbers of NPC battleships (necessary for a POS-bashing fleet) attack a defended position opens the possibility for exploit-level farming opportunities. Allowing POSes to be anywhere could significantly increase system loading time and network loads for both client and server. POSes suck anyways and shouldn't be given any greater utility until they're fixed.

Am I the only one that listened when they were all like that Odyssey was the first step in improving the unknown?

And quite frankly as an explorer, i'm happy with that first step. They got sites away from just being another form of mission running. I.E popping an endless swarm of rats. They added a simple mini game to it to keep it more involved that can probably be expanded down the down and made more complex and thought provoking.

They did a good job all round improving it this time around, there wasn't an exorbitant amount of new content. There were little bits here and there, with a massive overhaul to the features and visuals we pass through everyday to give new life to the game and help bring you more in to the game.

I feel like a lot of people were expecting a complete 100% overhaul to everything in the game.

I feel like it's a bit premature to call an expansion a misleading lie or a failure before it's even fully released.

I also don't think they were misleading us or lying at all, they said it's a first step in that direction of changes and additions.
Personally i'll wait for that first step to land and see where the second one goes before calling it a "big lie"

I heard something a long time ago an i passed it off as eve folk law because there was never a concrete source and it sounded too good to be true....

goes along the lines of eve devs have had an expansion on the back burner for ages, called colonization or something, basically its adding in the ability to discover wormholes to new totally new systems not currently on the map - not wormhole systems but normal space.

The new systems would have no stargates or stations or anything but the ppl who colonize it would have the ability to build stargates, stations etc. They could connect up a handful of new systems they found and keep it totally private to themselves but they would then be destructible to anyone else that found them (through wormholes).

If they wanted they could connect up their stargates to the main stargate network which would put them on the map so to speak and allow all players to access their gate from a normal npc one. Once connected it would then become indestructible but at the same time they would not be able to restrict access - possibly charge a gate activation fee or something.


The lore behind these new systems would be that they are waaay out at the edge of the universe so out of cap ship jump range - until a gate is built and connected the only way in would be through wormholes and these would be too small for caps.


obviously there would be a crap load of detail to work out and stuff to consider balance wise but that sounds like utopia to me - proper exploration, colonization a sence of being the first to do something. - however as it sounds SOOO good it cant possibly true and i guess will never come to pass :(

A good suggestion: Add a node in the exploration game that unlock a expedition, reveling the location of a harder site only accessible to you and your fleet. In other system. This site obviously have a better loot and could take to other site...

This would probably make the players to travel allot. And really explore the game.

The main Idea would be to force players to move from regions of space into lower security as the difficulty increases, until it starts leadin into WHSpace and Deeper WHSpace... Of course, it becomes really more difficult to find Specific WH systems, but if you run it quite allot, you will end up with a nice pool of systems and the small probability will start to become relevant.

Also this makes the rewards progressive with the time and effort. What makes this a meaningful profession to invest.