Player Features and Ideas Discussion

"~If you want a picture of the future of WiS, imagine a spaceship, stamping on an avatar's face. Forever."

Your signature beat me to it.

Personally, it should say 'imagine eve's subscriber numbers going down further and further. Forever.'

Frankly, the idea that the two have to fit the playstyle of the other is absurd. It's like saying miners should be forced to PvP. (Oh, wait, goons have said that...)

I actually like the idea of gunfights in stations. You know, it would really cut down on the station hugging if I could just dock and hunt someone's ass down and kill them. After all, eve is about risk, and there should be risk to hiding in station.

As far as the sims/social gaming stuff.... meh. I'd like to have more clothes and a customizeable CQ. If players were allowed to develop their own clothing lines, however, it would be interesting. Sadly, it's unlikely, due to the sandbox nature of the game letting people put all sorts of things on a tshirt.

The practical problem with talking about 'gunfights in stations' is that you then need to design an entire new combat system for WiS, which massively increases the work that needs to be done before anything is actually released. You're getting to the stage where you're basically asking for a whole new game within the existing client. And to be honest, CCP are already working on one game based around guys running around on foot in the Eve universe and shooting at each other, the likelihood that they want to reinvent the wheel and do it all over again is pretty low.

For me, the idea of WiS needs to be based around the teaser trailer CCP put out a couple of fanfests ago. For an Eve pilot, getting out of the pod should be an act of last resort, something they do reluctantly when there's no other way to achieve their goal. Disconnecting from the pod is like having a limb removed or like putting on a blindfold, it takes the pilot from being an immortal star-god to just another "Easily replaceable, carbon based, piece of meat". In that context, the idea of going and sitting in a space-pub chatting with other capsuleers or playing poker at a table to while away the hours is, frankly, laughable, and it doesn't make much sense to me that they'd want to test the limitations and mortality of their human bodies further by drawing pistols on each other outside of the safety of the capsule either.

The most recent concept Torfi talked about at fanfest, where capsuleers explore lost and abandoned structures to retrieve rare and valuable items which can't be obtained any other way, or the previous concept of carrying out secret off-the-radar missions, make sense within the backstory and provide reasons why the capsuleer is putting themselves at additional risk by getting out of their pod. I can't say that about most of the ideas I see from other players.

No, in order to sell WiS to spaceship pilots you need to provide tangible incentives for them to get out of the safety of the capsule and to put their human forms on the line. Risk vs Reward and all that. That's why 'social environments' and the NeX store are discredited concepts, because Eve isn't The Sims Online, or Second Life, or some microtransaction-riddled Facebook game, and trying to ham-fistedly crowbar these concepts into Eve when they have little connection to the existing universe is destined to produce more failures like the so-called 'expansion' that was Incarna.

Make WiS a profession worth taking up, make it an environment that provides something valuable to the Eve universe that can't be obtained elsewhere (like wormholes or incursions are), give it some actual gameplay, some game mechanics that challenge players. Make them feel the vulnerability described in the Incarna teaser trailer.That's how you generate interest in WiS while both making it something unique and keeping it within the theme of Eve.

WiS has been dismissed as a gameplay-free haven for the risk averse and the easily amused. Do you know what the perfect response to that would be? Make WiS the most dangerous and nerve-wracking experience available.

"I am no longer able to launch a volley of missiles with a single thought.
I am no longer protected by shields, armour, drones, anything. I am just a body.
Easily replaceable, carbon based, piece of meat.
It makes me sick."

Remove everything that the eve player normally takes for granted. Get the the capsuleer out of the comfort zone, take away their ability to kill thousands with the twitch of a synapse, take away the safety nets of the Large Armour Repairer II and the escape pod and the medbay to bail them out if things start to go wrong. Then put that capsuleer in an unknown, dark environment where suddenly, the mere mortals that had previously been beneath our attention or mere cannon fodder for our Battleships and Strategic Cruisers are on a level playing field, out for revenge for the lost comrades who crewed the rats we shoot down en masse, hunting us down by torchlight in blacked-out corridors and hangars as we race to finish hacking the computer terminal which will give us access to the next section of the station and the valuable artifacts we wish to recover.

That's a vision of WiS that fits Eve's dark environment, a vision of WiS that gives the regular capsuleer a reason to participate, a vision of WiS with teeth. And that's without even any consideration of how PvP might be incorporated.

Double Post

About all those posts about WiS combat and more FiS in it...

Although i'd liked such an oppertunity, one step at the time - when WiS will be properly finished, we'll see about combat.

As i said earlier, it's better if it's will be finished as something like Sims or Second Life, a good social enviroment, and there is a reason.

First reason is an obvious one - that i, and many others don't need a shooter or something like that in Eve. Because we arleady have Dust 514, and because there is A LOT of shooters on the PC market, and this industry will only grow. So what's a point to wait this "another one of them", and just like the others, play it for a couple of months in a good case and forget about it when new battlefield or CoD appear on the market.

Second reason is if it's will be something social like that, adding some combat system later on as an "addition" can make very interesting and different game. Imagine a games like The Sims with an appropriate combat system. Now that's something else

One day GW will remake the Dark Future game and I'll get to be Elvis Presley, Road Warrior. It will be glorious.

That's nice but GW has a track record of not just suing people over what they really own, but the concepts of what they think they own. Their definition of their IP is rather broad.



And, if it takes having WiS working properly to get FiS, then by god I'll put up three more Incarna's to get to face shoot station huggers.

I know there was a joke post from CCP on april fools about Bringing in pets into the game.

I though it would be interesting. having a Slaver Hound with me or something to greet me when I cam home to my chosen station.

But actually make them real like.
- Not this automaton that just following me.
- Give it life and character: ie
--> if I take it walking it will greet other pets, or May attack other who they think are Alpha males. Attack Minmitar characters.
--> If I don't come back to the station in a month the Pet's personality will be come distant unfriendly, or may die if not automated feeding/cleaning service is paid for in you CQ
--> If I am transporting my pet and leave it in my ship or the ship gets blown up it may die.
--> Allow stations to have laws against pets
---> Have pet able to be trained to act as attack drones.
--> Pet breading, personalities and states.
--> Actually have Pet games where yes pet will have a 50% chance of dieing if loosing or even die if winning a competition.

--> This may make having pets in public difficult and could more harm that good especially off of leash in Public.

Even though the Thought of Pets may revolt some. I would like to see these pets that actually some day to get into the game but be more than just eye candy. well except maybe Gold fish.

one finds this concept of docking and tracking down the weenie who thinks hiding in a station would save him from my wrath fascinating, especially since destroying the station itself to get at him would cause my corp's war dec page to explode in rage

If they implement WiS, it must include the FiS ruthless soul, or else it is worthless. People didn't sign in to play secondLife in space.