| Author |
Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 10 post(s) |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus
Get Off My Lawn
10
   |
Posted - 2015.01.21 21:06:57 -
[1] - Quote
I think you would be amazed at how much of a difference it would make if you could do something as simple as customize the skin of your ship directly (especially for new players or bored bitter vets).
If anybody ever played City Of Heroes, that would be a good analogy of what I am talking about. All the archetypes had the same power sets and nothing you did in character customization made any difference in the actual play, but it made all the difference in your investment in the toon, and made character generation a blast.
In Eve, the ships are the toons in my analogy, and if those could be customized using an in-game interface similar to the UI, but specifically for the ship, people would want to get in different ships just because they look cool. This is anti-utilitarian, and seemingly stupid, but it's the little thing that make a game fun and worth it. It also drives goals and motivation for new players.
I have played this game on and off since '03, and surprisingly enough, the one thing I don't really feel like I am ever really doing is making stuff mine, it is just stuff I happen to hold. There is nothing special about any of my beloved ships. No battle scars, no tweaked out appearance, my thorax is just a thorax like all others.
Half the game is also shopping (my Wife loves shopping and yet still hates eve), I guarantee if she could shop for a thorax that was custom skinned and on market as a "customized" model (simply a different player designed skin) she would be at it for hours, or designing and selling her own, hell, she might even go into production, and mine and do all the other manufacturing crap, just to have her own line of designer thoraxes. It's the seemingly stupid trivial things, that make bigger mechanics work. I have manufactures all kinds of stuff in eve, and it is just variations on a bland theme to play the .01 isk game etc, it's not like me making it felt like I made it, but rather jumped through the right hoops....might as well shoot the red crosses. In other words, even though I made it, there was nothing special about it whatsoever, might as well makes drops in the ocean...if that makes sense.
The current skinning is a PETA, and the licensing and aura driven funky model now where they are yet still made on your behalf is likely in the wrong direction (I am probably describing it wrong because the mechanic should be right there in the fitting window, or a fitting type window instead of some external store that I have to do things and stuff to get it, which I will likely never bother to learn or care about).
I love Eve, and have played it forever, this is by no means the one thing missing, but having tried to recruit all kinds of people for years, mostly unsuccessfully (and more importantly seeing what they do end up playing) I think a simple thing like this would go along way to drive new subscriptions and give people reasons to try all aspects of the game.
Minecraft is insanely popular because building stuff is fun, especially stuff that is unique to you, even though it functions the same or similar to all other similar things. |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus
Get Off My Lawn
12
|
Posted - 2015.01.22 21:44:03 -
[2] - Quote
"He [CCP TomB] noted that the NPC creation system had essentially not been changed since EVE has started. However now a new template system has been created streamlining the process considerably. This allows a game designer to select a ship "hull" and fit it with pre-made attribute sets."
Going with the whole "dynamic world based" idea over instance type model, wouldn't it make more sense for NPC creation and mechanics to be the exact same as fitting a player ship, where random utility slots could produce variations according to the NPC type, but still using real word modules (and whatever is fitted drops as though it were a PvP kill)?
The remaining attributes to fill out would be the blackboard behaviors mentioned earlier, defining how they behave and organize to do stuffs. Blackboard - A blackboard is a way for them to share their intentions with each other. They have a shared blackboard where if one of the NPCs posts a location or primary target, they will behave like a well organised fleet following their FCs commands.
Once tweaked, the "blackboard" modeling of NPCs can reduce the numbers required for them to be effective and could eliminate the bloat and oddity of killing cores and scores of red crosses in a mining like fashion. Bounties could be raised and NPC farming can more closely simulate normal PvP and create dynamic content at the same time. Might as well even have them have to hold sov like we do, and attack and defend in a similar fashion...talk about dynamic content ;)
They could have to mine and defend against those pod pilot rats that keep trying to kill their miners etc etc etc...just sayin... |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus
Get Off My Lawn
12
|
Posted - 2015.01.22 21:47:59 -
[3] - Quote
...forgot to mention this as part of the above logic:
"CCP Affinity brought up that no game has really been able to create enough content to keep players engaged over a very long period of time. CCP Frellicus also added that with a new mission system they would look more at being able to generate
constant, dynamic world content rather than just static missions." |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus
Get Off My Lawn
12
|
Posted - 2015.01.22 21:50:21 -
[4] - Quote
...oh yeah, and this:
"CCP Affinity asked the CSM to let them know if they had ideas to try out with the new behaviour trees. Corbexx brought up them speaking in local. Sugar Kyle brought up random small events going on in the world, such as NPC pirates fighting NPC faction police in locations."
My earlier post in regards to the Blackboard would fall into the behavior trees as well... |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus
Get Off My Lawn
12
|
Posted - 2015.01.22 22:34:22 -
[5] - Quote
"CCP Arrow talked about how the controls for your ship are next in line to be worked on by the team."
oohh....Please see this: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=386471 |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus
Get Off My Lawn
12
|
Posted - 2015.01.22 23:26:57 -
[6] - Quote
"Sion then talked about something along the lines of a rotating corporate task list that players could complete and get a reward. CCP Rise liked the idea and had previously been talking about stuff and had been thinking of the opportunities for corporations to use this tracking system to organize themselves and reward their players."
OMG this all day, yes, this would help greatly getting corp stuff done!!! One could argue that contracts can do this, but they are a PETA and having a dedicated task list has so much more potential. |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus
Get Off My Lawn
15
|
Posted - 2015.01.26 18:13:19 -
[7] - Quote
Quote:"CCP BasementBen explained that it would be cool to have picture in picture to be able to see what's going on at close range."
Word.
My dot at the center of concentric circles just isn't doing it for me anymore ;), Plus all the "incredible" youtube videos showing colored brackets is a headscratcher for just about everybody.
Alot of what made "This is Eve" great, beyond the awesome comms, was seeing actual ships...just sayin... |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus
Get Off My Lawn
15
|
Posted - 2015.01.26 18:29:42 -
[8] - Quote
Quote:CCP Mankiller explained that he feels that anything needed for situation awareness should be shown on the UI, rather than in 3D graphics.
I agree, seeing your environment is overrated, we should just use our imaginations to visualize conceptually what the readouts mean....oh wait, isn't that called a MUD...
...seriously though, what would this game be like if you could only zoom out to like 10k or something...scary thought...
Our handy camera in my view actually breaks immersion quite a bit, and makes no sense physically (from a physics perspective) and is way too convenient... |
Harry Saq
Blueprint Haus
Get Off My Lawn
67
|
Posted - 2015.03.05 22:31:06 -
[9] - Quote
CCP, can you please release the redacted portions of the minutes relating to SOV prior to the election ending in 5 days?
Harry Saq for CSM X
|
| |
|