Reicine Ceer
Rodents of Unusual Size
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Posted - 2011.02.04 00:54:00 -
[1]
I actually wet my pants when i saw the horizontal bar o' usefulness.
EVE's interface has been due a facelift for a while imo and this was just fantastic and i was genuinely disappointed that, like many others, there was no option to have either setup. Sadface.
STOP READING HERE TO STAY ON TOPIC!
On a side note, my brain went nuts with the idea that you could get an interface for windows that ran EVE as a desktop, which would give you the full functionality of Windows but simply have EVE running behind it, a la those fancy rolling demo vids of the stations, and give you the ability to be playing it all day long whilst doing other stuff.
PATENTED BUSINESS IDEA FOR CCP FOLLOWS
Further to this, and once Incarna is released and such, CCP could go all out, and release a free version of their Walking In Stations expansion for EVE Online.
Hear me out.
New Eden is a huge place, many billions of people fill it with life. LIFE!! Stations in many online games that are populated by only-real-people feel empty and seeing other people moving around becomes a novelty.
My idea is as follows: You install the Incarna client, for free. You create a character and leave it running in the background. Your character will sit about in a variety of locations, perhaps even dressed as and acting like an NPC would do on a station - performing maintenance or whatever. The trick here is that the free client version has NO CONTROL other than camera angle, zoom (and maybe chat? Reasoning to follow). Potentially also with a limited free roam ability.
What this does is fills the stations with some life, which can never be a bad thing. It also introduces many many people into EVE Online, and on several different levels. The Sims-a-like fans will get a kick out of it, potentially getting CCP moar isk, the roleplayers will have an avenue into a rich universe in which they can do their thang - and pay for it, remember, whilst always potentially enticing players into the internet-spaceships side of things too.
Imagine writing an email, and maybe hearing/reading some chat as your uncontrollable avatar wanders into a bar on a station. You click to the desktop to see whats going on. Its shady, with boothed seating holding all manner of wild-eyed madmen shouting at each other or nursing beers as they play a game of cards. Your character takes a seat at the bar, the npc-control ordering a drink as you alter the camera to take in the vivid storytelling of a pirate fresh out of 0.0 space exclaiming impossible to believe tales of space battles involving thousands of ships. In chat, you tell him you'd like to see this and for a nominal fee (microtransaction), a contract is created where this player can take one unit of Tourists to a specified location to look out a window... never mind what might happen on the way there, of course ;)
Or just be sat watching through a massive observation window at the multitude of ships moving to and from Jita 4-4.
Or seeing a massive battleship undock, get attacked and blown to bits... other ships converge on it to steal and salvage the remnants and your friends or family say "is that real?" and you can say 'its happening right now. These people are all real - wanna join? You could be that guy blowing people up! PEW PEW!'
Endless possibilities!
And all through a program running happily along in the background. Of course, should a user decide to play a game, the connection and graphics/cpu usage of this would be suspended and restarted as and when required.
"Grammatically, the word 'nothing' is a noun, which suggests that it refers to something." - Wikipedia |