Player Features and Ideas Discussion

i recently returned to the game and some things came to my attention

first, congrats on a lot of the changes! i really like the new Nebulae, the new Autopilot, and the lot of minor changes that make life easier and were missed for a long time

my thoughts:

NEBULAE:

as said, really like it - but i'd like to see some improvements:
- next Step: Nebulae based on Constellation rather than Region
- next Step: obv. based on Systems
- next Step: what i really would like to see is some kind of animation. not necessarily in the background, but maybe when jumping between regions, there could be a short (2 sec) animation of your flight, entering or exiting the nebulae...

UI - WINDOWS:

i really liked to hear that the creative director has a vision about this (acc. to the AT-IX-interview), although i see it's difficult because of all the information that is necessary within EVE
i cannot present the "superwindow", but i would propose to at least get rid of some Window-borders and backgrounds, cause they're mostly not needed - to make the visual appearance more "open" - not so "windowed"
and rather than think about windows think about "information streams" - i hope some newage-vocabulary helps :P
and maybe stop thinking you can view every kind of information with the same tabled-window-theme

UI - CHAT WINDOWS:

i think they could be easily overhauled - e.g. put the user-list on top horizontally, just with porttraits - name only on rollover
this would saveup space, and would draw more attention to the character as an Image rather than a name, which i think makes it more immersive
and again forget the borders and stuff
and about Local Chat - you could turn it into some kind of tool (more than chat)
also a logical approach would be to "marry" it with the scanner-window (as they are both for system-wide interaction)

UI - LOCKED ITEMS, SELECTED ITEMS

i can imagine lot of visual changes here too

SELECTED ITEM: a rather big block of questionably aligned buttons, with about zero information
IDEA 1: get rid of the border and background, lol
just put a pic of the item there - and maybe not the easy solution of just using the market-icons, but use an image without background
new icons could be placed around it nicely
and maybe put some big information next to it (i think speed could be interesting, also distance, maybe customizable)
IDEA 2: get rid of it all together - atm we need 1 Selected Item, X Locked Items, 1 Active Target - seems alot
you can just have an icon on the left in the overview - click it, and the few interaction-possibilities zoom out to the left - done

LOCKED ITEMS / ACTIVE TARGET:
i would propose to have the active target quite big with more useful information to it, and to reduce the size and appearance of the other locked items
also here use special icons - not the one from market

UI - SHIP CONTROLS:

i have no actual ideas for it, but it's quite old now (from the 2004 or 2005 expansion?) - and it doesnt work well with multiple screens, it can't be moved - maybe cause it would look odd as it it designed now
and the overload buttons - lol

UI - MAP BROWSER:

what's up with that?
it's one of the abandoned features in EVE that could be really useful if designed correctly
more customizing options please - make the different windows detachable, and of course no borders or backgrounds :)
if i could have a small semi-transparent constellation/region-map in one corner it would be nice

GENERAL APPEARANCE - Camera Bots:

instead of a cockpit we have the pic of a camera-drone - OK
but i can't feel or see it - maybe some visual effect would help - or it could just help to think of it when redesigning the UI

UI - AUTOPILOT:

one small and easy thing for the end
if more than one gate is on your AP-route in your current system, they all have the same color in the overview
IDEA: make the next system a different color than later ones - EASY

sorry - got a bit long - but had to be said - maybe i'll come up with even more :P

grad

Nebula are huge interstellar dust clouds. Some might be System specific as far as visibility goes, but mostly they are just graphical eye candy in game.

Really, the naked eye is unlikely to ever see them on any planet, or within solar systems. Technically speaking they are extra-solar, as indicated by the interstellar dust cloud bit. They could never really exist anywhere near significant gravitational masses.

yea that's exactly what i meant - rather than more nebulae i just think about more angles of the existing ones

just got another idea - small and simple:
- FACTION SPAWNS
give em a different color/appearance on overview
to make it maybe more obvious that there's an npc "elite fighter" coming after you :)