Assembly Hall

First let me define my perspective so you understand why I am suggesting an alternative rather than pushing CCP to drop the idea. I apologize that this will make the post long-winded, but my suggestion sounds insanely stupid and impossible unless you look at it from a particular perspective.

The *motive* behind CCP's proposal is entirely laudable, even if it is at the behest of spreadsheet managers. More people in the game does create more potential for "fun stuff to happen". I believe this means that dailies are an inevitable and implacable consequence for all MMOs as soon as player retention becomes an issue. That may also be why so many of us casually link dailies with MMOs that are becoming less popular, when in fact the cause and effect is not as straightforward as you might think.

So if it is inevitable, then the only thing we as players can "do" is advise CCP on better ways to implement the concept.


So first of all what are the negative aspects of the current proposal?

1. The rewards are SP, which is considered by many to be over-powered.
2. CCP are telling people how to play, not rewarding the meta-game/"alternative"/RP/etc players in eve and turning logging in into a chore.

(There's more to it than that, but I think that's a fair summary of the player response so far)

I would suggest that point 1 is putting the cart before the horse, until you have valid requirements, arguing over the incentive to complete those requirements doesn't make sense. So I'm just going to call it the "reward" from here on in and put that issue aside.

With point 2, I would actually say it's the chain of reasoning where CCP have made their mistake, rather than in their final decision to implement the "kill a rat" requirement. If the motive is to get more people online, the obvious conclusion is you need a mechanism that appeals to, or is not objectionable to, or is simple to do for the broadest number of players. If you accept that conclusion then CCPs choice makes perfect sense, but I don't accept it and consider it to be flawed.

A lot of people have commented that "kill a rat" is going against the "sandbox" principle of the game, I would say instead you need to review the conclusion about reaching the broadest player base in the light of the sandbox principle. There is no "broad" appeal in a sandbox, there is however "diverse" appeal. Leave the "broad" appealing to the themepark MMOs who do it best.

The problem is CCP do not see a way of creating a "diverse" requirement for the daily. Lots of people have suggested alternative opportunities geared towards pvp, sovnull, etc., but for CCP to implement an opportunity for all the suggestions out there it would become an immense unwieldy feature at huge cost to them.


So we come at last to the crux of my argument, how do you create daily opportunities that can appeal to all the diverse players in the game?

My suggestion is, at it's heart, to allow player corporations to determine what the daily opportunities should be, day by day. Players will have a far better idea of what other players will be prepared to do for the daily reward than CCP ever will (and I'm sure they would agree with this too), as well as be able to change them according to fluctuations in the game without needing CCP involvement.


Why would corporations agree to do this?

I would suggest that being a DungeonMaster (DM) is just as much fun as playing a Wizard, Warrior or Thief. Maybe not to everyone, but clearly we have DMs in Eve, only we call them FCs, officers and CEOs. So I'm fairly sure there would be enough people willing to to come up with diverse and imaginative opportunities if there was a means to do so. They should even be motivated enough to police the system and keep everyone "playing by the rules" just as tabletop gaming DMs do. And corporations already have the ability to punish their members for breaking corp rules, which can be used to backup their policing. Finally they can set the opportunity to be something which helps the entire corporation, thereby making even the most trivial task meaningful to the player completing the opportunity.


How could something so complex be implemented in Eve?

So my "quick and dirty" solution is to give the daily reward for completing at least one corporation contract. It is not the most ideal format for implementing this concept, BUT it has the advantage that it should require no more effort on CCPs part than they have already invested in "kill a rat", while at the same time having the potential to do almost everything I've described above. At the very least if it was implemented it would give us some idea of whether this concept could be made to work in Eve and if it really would be a better direction than CCP are choosing.