Out of Pod Experience

Today I tried to get a coworker to try EVE. I'm not terribly sure he'd be the right person since he is into Defiance and ESO and some other similar types of games which seem pretty mysterious and foreign to me. They do seem pretty exciting with explosions and gun battles and such.. it was honestly difficult for me to explain to him what excited me about EVE.

It was almost like trying to explain to a Jerry Bruckheimer movie fan why reading a book is exciting and why I think about it all the time. But to the movie watcher, all he sees is a book and says.. this really isn't exciting. I don't get it.

Anyway, I thought I could at least see what he tries out in EVE. He installed the game, and lo and behold the Launcher opened and sat there with a blue circle hovering. Eventually Windows would just tell us the program is unresponsive. A google search didn't give us any clues.

Ok, so I showed him to start just directly from the file. So in we go. It takes him less than a minute to finish pilot creation (how depressing!). So he starts the game and it is totally unreadable. His monitor uses 1366 x 768 as a resolution and EVE looks pixellated and unusuable (not because it's not a great resolution, but because EVE tries to do 1280 x 720). Putting it in window mode didn't really help either. We tried to figure this out, but didn't find a solution today..

To be continued.

This is pretty anecdotal of course.. but I guess what I'm trying to say is that the esoteric nature of EVE makes it an unimpressive opening scene to a new player (after character creator). The station hangar is pretty static, and the only thing with any real movement is a chat window.

I'd actually never seen the cut scene to the game before today (I was always too excited just to get into the game, even during my first time), but I find it interesting that the cut scene has so many things that you can never really do in the game.. walk around on a dusty planet shooting people, taking survey scans in a bunny suit as a wormhole closes right in front of your eyes, watch pieces of ships crumble as they're fired upon, epic battles where the ships *don't* generally appear to be standing skill, watching your clone reawaken, etc. Actually, the cut scene has more or less nothing to do with the game.

My friend didn't really care for his faction or caste. None of these were really described in any interesting way.. and all of it was more or less a wall of text. Can I blame him?

Don't get me wrong. I love EVE very much. In many ways, I find it to be the perfect game. But I feel like I am staring at something that is half built by my own imagination and does not really exist on the screen. This is very hard to explain to someone who doesn't see this.

Should EVE only be a game to be enjoyed by those who see the same invisible things I do? Can things be improved to "help" others for whom EVE doesn't immediately "click"?

I've deleted quite a few characters over the years last one I also got rid of about 10 billion isk.

Sat in Rens buying up all the Minmatar t1 battleships then reprocessing and selling the minerals then buying more battle ships. Time I ran out of isk there where only 2 or 3 of the smaller ones left on the market. You can actually work out which date it was from the market sales history.

As you can see I'm back starting a new character, the name of this character is the name of one of my old deleted ones. The name has nothing to do with WoW as I was using it before WoW did. In fact the Tiger part came about because one of the old portrait backgrounds had a picture of a tiger on it and of course I used that background.

Still this time I've got a 6 months sub, so I shall see how it goes if it works out I'll stay if not I'll just use it to wind down on games with the aim of giving them up completely.



But chances are you could end up coming back especially when you have forgotten some of the not so good things and remember the better ones.

Although the real reason I came back this time was ESO was crap and I don't see them fixing it.

Active NPCs would be cool, something to make the place feel active and alive rather than just the current occasional dumb belt rats and convoys.

e.g. if player ships start to gather somewhere the local pirates proactively form up and try take them out. Too many rats gather and the local navy show up in hi and lo.


Edit: Thankee kindly for the gift sir, though I still think you should keep it for the inevitable return

Encourage individual gameplay by discourage the blob.

One way to do this would be to provide cruiser and battleship class bombers/bombs.

Um...wow...that's a long way...might take you...a while...

Planet walk and exploration on the surface.Believe or not this game will thrive even if we had some ugly 2d avatars diablo2 style able to do stuff on planets.Most people leave eve because they can't swallow the fact that they are a ship...

More T3 Ships, a hauler between TP and Freighter, Stations that blow up, more star systems, etc.

I too gave up sex for a week. But I'm back.

Thanks OP!

I had a couple of interesting ideas one is very... ugly to both sides of some arguments but in a rather twisted way.

It boils down to the following:
- enable smuggling as a *REAL* profession where you can get away with it 99% of the time without any loss to status.
- enable "pirate faction warfare" - where those attacking certain faction centers are free war-targets for you to shoot at.
- enable "hidden routes" through empire space that are not "on the grid". Unmonitored pirate gates but destroyable ones that can be attacked and blown up.
- enable mostly lower level pirate faction missions in empire space.
- increase penalties beyond acceptable levels for ganking in highsec. Realize if you gank, you lose FACTION standings with the owners of bases and the space they are in -- they will take away your ability to even use gates in different empire space areas. You are kiling their customers and tax revenue and that doesn't go over well with governments. NOTE: See the above for how to "work around" this set of limits - join up with the pirates.

A new type of deadspace pocket would exist in empire space that can be probed down.

These are pirate locations with gates to pirate space and player pirates may be there. A key (randomly gotten ratting in that system or, for pirate affiliates, gotten by trade) would be needed to access the accel gate to that pocket.

These player pirates *CAN* defend the base as well as any NPC's legally in that space.

If you fly in there, welcome to a "nullsec pocket" but the NPC's do have an attitude problem about fellow "pirates" blowing each other up. No fighting "friendlies" in their space.

If you are hostile to that pirate faction, an announced warning is given upon arrival and you are free game to any NPC's and players in that pocket. -- concord *WILL NOT SHOW UP* to save anyone but the pirates will attack anyone who starts a fight, like faction police/concord and you'll take a pounding with the pirate factions doing so.

Destruction of these new deadspace pockets would be fairly richly rewarded by the empire owning that space - good faction gains and payout for blowing up these nests.

By aligning with pirate factions, a smuggler can use these back-door gates to move around unmolested by the police but the risks exist being as you ARE flying through "pirate" space. You may not be ganked there by other players but a simple trap at the accel gate exit and you're toast without the pirates getting hacked off - though concord would show up at that point...

Add low level pirate faction missions into these areas so people have reasons to go there and work up. Most would be trivial - others would be rather ugly and they would work rather differently than most missions.

Stuff like reinvigorate the old "convoy raiding" days of EVE by making them highsec pirate missions for items carried in said NPC convoys.

Add named faction police to the game. These are "honest cops" that won't be bribed - thus pirate bounties are put on their heads for getting up there and killing that faction cop.

Smugglers could use their connections with the pirates (via a fee of course) to get through the gates to and from that system freely without inspection - unless there's a named "honest cop" at a gate - in which case they'd need to find another route but... Anytime there is an honest cop up, the local pirate base has a standing bounty for killing him and the player can contribute to that NPC's bounty. (in other words a reverse kill the named pirate missions - with player contributions to killing that NPC possible).

Anyhow, that's the idea.

Have blackmarket type locations with secret passages through empire space. Enable smuggling to work in the game efficiently as a profession - still with risks (named NPC's and not every system having this kind of pocket... bribery, etc.) - make ganking uglier but with workarounds so you aren't just "another pilot" but one who has to survive by wits as you operate under the radar. All the while increasing the potential opportunities for legitimate PvP in highsec but with more rules on behavior with ugly penalties for breaking them (even the pirates don't care for "friendly" fights in their space. Take it elsewhere or lose access to THEIR facilities.)