EVE General Discussion

Hello there my dear komred, you seem upset over something? Have you tried drinking a cup of hot tea? I think its pretty calming.

Just keep in mind that there are other people who enjoy the game differently than you, and just because you may not enjoy the game their way, does not mean they're idiots.

So I am one of those players that believe WiS would dramatically increase the player base. That said I don't ever expect to see it. The brief glimmer of hope and the sad panda captains jail was the result of a badly attempted plan to build a vampire game based on a technology demo created by nVida. There was NO WAY that technology could ever scale to allow anything more that the single character instance MMO that is the Captain's Jail cell, There was never a real time multi player demo shown of the vampire game. But CCP bet the farm on that technology. Sad waste of time, money and resources. Unless some serious competitor that threatened the existence of Eve featuring WiS appears WiS will remain just a sure way to start giant threads on the forums when it gets boring around here.

If you really look at the basic premise of Eve, you in space as a ship is the primary way your "character" would be experiencing existence anyways. So you could make the case CCP is delivering most of your experience as your virtual "space self" already. You are just plugged into a goo filled pod and you have become your ship. If you aren't just sitting in the station spinning your ship, which isn't what I believe the first developers of Eve expected being a ship in space would be the primary experience.

WiS wasn't a failure. It was just bad timing that it coincided with monocle-gate and gold ammo. :(

If people need spaceships and walking around, why are they not playing Star Trek Online? I still laugh when I think of the WiS types proclaiming "STO is going to have Avatar Gameplay!, CCP better add WiS quick or STO will kill EVE!".

I (naively) thought that once STO was out and EVE didn't die the question would be settled. I was young(er) and stupid in 2011 lol.

To be fair, STO is an overall **** show and always has been. The space combat is pretty cool with the four quadrant shields and such, but the ground combat is pretty dang ill considered. it's like they took the city of heroes engine and went "hey, what if everybody was a mastermind and also we made the controls and powers worse?"

The cool parts were the officer and crew card systems. That design was actually really neat, despite having nothing at all to do with the main moment to moment gameplay. Getting a crew of RNG card-people that you could send on missions and do industry with added this satisfying micromanagement that felt appropriate for hthe starship captain theme. The officers were also a neat system, like modules with semi-RNG stats that you could level through experience.

Then they basically watered it down with a hefty helping of linear quest grind and pay to win cash shop ships and crew, which removed any appeal from what few redeeming qualities the game had.

I'd support EVE getting something like that crew system though. Maybe for player stations in a new player owned galaxy or something? Like asymmetric NPC warfare SOV for a new area of space where capsuleers can basically build their own navies and set policies, and **** with other people's little NPC sovlings for ISK in stead of ratting. Ignoring most of the game just to focus on that system gave it this neat sort of roguelike feel, specializing your crew to be good at torture, or piracy, or ******* botany, or whatever you wanted to do, and getting to trade staff with other people to chase but never quite catch that super efficient group of 50 to a hundred staffers. You'd probably need a LOT of new space to support a system like that and still have it be accessible, or have a small guy version of the system like some kinda way to staff your extra ships with non-capsuleer crew to make mini-fleets to fight other people's mini-fleets or something.

And then you could give them deplorable nicknames and send them on suicide missions under the guise of scientific research or something.

It ain't that far out there. We already know that player buildable gates are in the current actual plans for the game. I seriously doubt they're just going to add gates without a corresponding massive increase in available space to put them. There are realistically only two places where they could, wormholes, and Jove space. Wormholes are out because you can't just permanently break WH space, and Jove space is out because its simply too dang small to support the gold rush.

Keep in mind that any sort of "interact with non-capsuleer employees" system is largely numbers and text strings, stuff that is far less art intensive than any kind of meaningful WiS content. It's a kind of thing that developers have been doing in video games for longer than EVE has been around with some not-all-that-complicated quick random generators and decent design sense. Read: Far cheaper and far more impactful than a WiS lobby.

Also note, it works fine without adding any WiS content to it. The "walk around and see your crew" bits in the STO implementation were pure fluff, you could interact with the whole system and get full use of it using only menus. Heck, a similar system dealing with espionage agents in a game called beyond protocol did it with nothing but menus and badly drawn rng face pictures, and it was awesome, and it was 100% of my job for my alliance because it had actual PvP elements of counterintel and interrogation and could have devastating effects on enemy empires when employed properly (like shutting down power to facilities, sabotaging invulnerability timers, and directly stealing blueprints and cargo)

And, I mean, if this new space is just literally empty systems with the ability to build structures it's kind of just a more pain in the ass version of null. My basic assumption is that the ability to build stargates goes hand in hand with some form of player subsidized NPC navy. It's really the only thing the existing null mechanics couldn't offer without breaking the game utterly.

And lets be clear. Being able to walk around inside a station and /dance is not content. It's window dressing that is a complete waste of time and effort without corresponding gameplay. Anyone asking for WiS that is simply cosmetic hasn't been paying attention to literally everything CCP has ever said about WiS. Specifically, that its not something they're prepared to do until they can deliver it with a substantial gameplay impact to justify the massive effort that implementation would take.

sounds like there is nothing happening anytime soon with this area of eve but while i am here i am going to give my opinion and the opinion of another eve player i live with. he never even knew of captains quarters until i showed him its...OK. why? the interaction is very limited. when CCP actually decides to put time into this the bare minimum should be an area in stations/citadels where capsuleers can congregate and show off their avatar in a bar or pub like setting. some other things that can be added that would immensely improve this experience is an arcade game either eve based or a pacman or pinball or something similar. add in a pool table where we can challenge each other or even put some of these in HS stations. This would be a great way to show of your avatar and maybe a bigger incentive to spend more isk on avatar clothing if the avatar is actually used and interacted with.

I wonder if Second Life has regular threads starting up on their forums about how their devs need to implement a single shard PvP spaceship sandbox?

The STO duty officer system is one of the few good things about that game. It's what CCP should have done with Teams, but instead trashed the idea. CCP should revisit Teams to make it more like duty officers; they could tie the missions to EVE lore perhaps? It was a good game system, not too demanding on resources.

Ironically, looks like they dont have to. Spacebox is so wide as to make it capable of flying in spaceships. Well, kind of.
Seems like Second life already have enough spaceships for that community. Example.