f13.net

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=401

They're going to add walking around in stations as a feature. As they say on the internets, WTF? Comments in the official forum were mixed, so I guess there do exist Eve players who feel the need to get out of their ships. I also understand that some potential Eve players try the game and are turned off by the inability to get out of your ship. Does being able to walk around in station make you more likely to play the game, people who feel that way? For the most part though, I have to imagine most Eve players are used to having a static portrait instead of an animated avatar and aren't concerned about getting one.

Personally, the opportunity cost of implementing walking around in stations is too high for me. I would prefer CCP spent the devhours on factional warfare or planetary invasion or better POS warfare.

Assuming the goal for CCP is to broaden their playerbase and reasonably well done implentation, I think its a very good idea.

Are they talking for Kali or pie-in-the-sky "we're going to do this... someday"? They also want to implement planetary colonization and atmospheric flight, along with a bunch of other neat stuff. Who knows when though.

Somewhere in between Kali and "... someday", I think. Not Kali1, and possibly not Kali2. But they're actively working on it, they have screen shots, and they're planning a release schedule. My money is on 2007, but not the factional warfare update.

I would expect it to surface with the DX10 client, based on the discussion of the avatar modeling.

They have hired a ton of developers, so they have to have them working on something ...

Which is fine - they might be able to use what they are coming up with for the stations for use on the planets too.

If nothing else, it'll make a nice and recognizeable 3D chat room for stations. Gives people a little something to relate to.

Most likely, IMO.  Building actual 'walking around' mechanics lets them work the bugs out on a trivial, unimportant bit rather than trying to fix it AND whatever combat imbalances they come up with.

Can't go floating around in a pod of embryonic goo forever, apparently.

So, can we shoot the other players on the station?

Yeah, it was quite funny that HRose, in the midst of his MMO-style "that's it.  I'm leaving.  Bye!  Don't try and persuade me to stay!  Seriously, this time I'm gone!" forum-drama leaving posts on the Cesspit, spouted a bunch of doomspiel recently saying that nobody was working on developing Eve and it was being left to rot while CCP worked on other stuff.  On the contrary, I've been amazed by the level of redevelopment of fundamental systems (and the fixing of deep-seated design issues like instas and research) that seem to be announced every other week.

I'm quite keen on them allowing implementing wandering round stations.  I rather like their idealistic and doomed "walk, don't run" stance, too.  In fact, I'd quite like to be able to wander my ship, too, though I find it hard to think of a point to it, I admit.  But then, I'm all about the worlds.

Walking around the station is only good if you can do something new, different and FUN on the station. Gambling for instance (the old hookers and blackjack etc). Othewise, having to get out of the ship, load the surrondings, spend 3 minutes walking to the auction house to see a screen I could have looked at on my ship, no thanks.

1st Person invasions of ships and asteroids, with marines and boarding actions? That might be fun. 

I love the devs. Reverse carebearing indeed.

Looking at the few pictures they posted, they're going for photorealism with the avatars, and this "walking around in stations" thing seems to be as big a quest for them as "giving EVE the best graphics" was 4 years ago.

My guess is that they're using the EVE playerbase and game to test out / implement portions of the World of Darkness MMO they're making.  First just avatars, then some sort of combat system, and NPC AI.

That makes sense - build the engine, then WoD and Eve development can split off and go different ways.  Either way, it's interesting they're doing a sort of reverse SWG - start in space, and build down.  It'll be interesting to see if they build up the avatar skills to a similar extent that they have the space ones, and in so doing create an almost second MMOG.  It would actually work fairly well for Eve as they're already attempting to segregate players in several ways (hisec/lowsec/0.0, mining vs fighting, etc).

The skills would probably work well, but I am not sure what sort of movement system they'll implement.  Not sure if "right-click, choose action or object to approach" works.  Probably not.  I'd expect WASD, but I'm not sure how WASD will affect the skill system then.

CCP can out-innovate the bloggers, that's what gets people.

That's my thought - it's a protoype for the WOD engine.

Cool.  That'll give me a use for those Nosferatus in PvE after all.

Oh man, that's like the 20'th Nos joke i've seen so far.

I really think EVE needs this. I hope they do it well. It would make me want to resub to check it out.

At best, this feature will be really cool, and at worst it won't change the game we play if we don't use it (from what I read..). I look forward to it.

They're going to do it like Puzzle Pirates. The same menu that you're used to will let you access station services, but if you want to walk over there, they'll let you do that too.

I am surprised by the generally positive reactions. Well, hell, I hope they get it done and a ton of people sub, then.

For planets, I really was hoping for flying ships around on the planetary surface instead of deep space, with maybe some planetary installations like sentry turrets and planetary resources like belts, moons, and clouds. Walking around on planets would completely subvert my expectations. Of course, knowning Eve's propensity for scale changes, they might do both.  :-D

I've tried the game a few times and I always felt it was too "cold" and impersonal for my taste. The game has many features I do like though. Maybe meeting face to face will add something, but "just" walking around will just feel cheesy if it has no impact on the game.

Add a poker game (for ISKs) to it and we'll see a very suitable meaning to meeting up at spacestation. I'd play then.

Well, once they decide to implement more than just walking around, I wonder if they'll implement in-station PVP, and the question I have is, how will that work?  Obviously, with insta-concord in 0.5 and above, and no concord 0.4 and below, who'll walk around in lowsec and risk being shot and losing implants, while docked?

There would need to be something to walk around /for/.  I don't see them making the blatantly obvious mistake of a risk mechanic without any sort of reward.

I will play at the zerosec blackjack table where you can shoot the house if you lose.

Shooting newbies is its own reward.  You have to admit that you'd do it just once.

I would like some visual identifier of clones.  Maybe a number on the forehead.  That would be funny.

I am fine with not having an avatar, but many people do have a problem with it if only because it's not what they are used to.  Add to that the lack of ship customization.  I am divided over whether or not I want more players in EVE.  It won't be SPAAAACE if every system is like Jita.

It might not be SPAAAACE but it will be WAAAAR!

It didn't make it a worse game, that's for sure. :P

Really? It seemed like an add-in to me, served no purpose.

Seconded.  Earth & Beyond's space stations were tacked on at the end of the beta to assure players that yes, in fact, their avatars existed independantly of the ships.   However, the interiors of the space stations looked like ass and walking around in slow motion amongst other nearly identical looking player avatars did little to reassure.  Westwood (may they rest in peace) should have dedicated more effort towards making their game play differently from EverQuest and less towards reassuring their players that ship and pilot were two seperate things.

Will it kill EvE?  Nah, it's a long established game where everybody's happy being a zero gravity stock trader with missiles.  Walking around on the space station doing nothing is a viable sub activity at that level of fun.  *Notices he's on a board of EvE Players*  Uh, gotta go!

> Walking around on the space station doing nothing is a viable sub activity at that level of fun.
Have to add walking around doing nothing before you can add walking around doing something.

I can see a whole sub-game to capturing space stations. Tons of new skills for squad based combat and engineering skills to augment space-station defenses.

I suspect it's going to start as a 3D chatroom with -- if we're lucky -- some form of gambling or casino sort of thing.

I don't know if it's gonna be as tame as that.  If they implement walking around in stations, they have to implement walking around in stations for the Gallente, and a lot of their clothing is revealing, which will lead to things.

For starters? Why wouldn't it be that tame? Offer stations to browse markets and do all the normal stuff you do in stations, only through your 3D avatar (and leave it so you can do it either way). Offer a cantina something, maybe some gambling, and that's a solid start. You can test out your engine for it, make sure it looks good, and works before you try anything new.

Plus, I'm sure there's a pair of frigates out there right now humping each other while their pilots roleplay furries or something.

I wonder if I could be a dancer in the cantina....

Like a dancing wookie maybe...

Only if they DO enable station combat. I want to win ISK off of idiot PvPers who can min/max their damn ships, but couldn't play poker to save their lives.

This is one of the reasons I love CCP and one of the things I've been talking about in various places for a while now: new "layers" to a game like this need to be added incrementally. They're doing this now because, once Kali is fully in place (all three parts, that is), EVE will more or less have a "feature-complete" space portion. That doesn't mean they won't add stuff to the space layer in the future, but there was a crazy super-ambitious design for what the space layer should be back in 2000 when the game first went public... and Kali more or less completes that feature-list. The space game, at that point, will be nice, full-bodied, rich, enjoyable, and rewarding, and would take any dev team anywhere else in the universe years to merely match point-for-point, much less surpass. Thus, CCP can move on to in-station stuff, to give the players a more concrete feel for the universe, maybe even their own "residence" or "office" on a station, something else they can customize. It's mostly fluff, but at this point, EVE is in a position where it can worry about fluff. Which is a wonderful thing.

Fluff is good.  I want to paint my ships.  I also see this work on stations and avatars as the tip of the ground-based-combat iceberg, so I'm all for it.

Only took them 6 years after launch to reach feature complete eh? :-P  I kid, I kid.

Theres still the issue of killing rats being mind numbingly borning, mining even more so, hauling cargo INSANLY more so, and not much else to do besides.  I wouldn`t neccessarily say "full-bodied, rich, enjoyable".  My biggest wish is that they look at some of the fundamental gameplay mechanics like that, and figure out ways to patch in "teh fun" (salvaging seems to kind of help with this).  Maybe figure out a way for death not to be as massive of a time sink as it currently is.  Though they are certainly doing better with alot of the changes Im reading for Kali (warp to zero, character creation/learning skill changes, ect.), and if they actually implimented space station boarding actions in war, that would be awsome as well.  Figuring out a way to make "epic wars" between corps more than just endless gate camping by catasses would be nice, but oh well. ;)  Still, might resub eventually to play with the changes a bit, as I like what Im reading.

It's enjoyable if you're looking for a PvP game; alliance wars and politics being the intended end-game.  PvE in EVE was always weak and not where they imagined Teh Fun to be.  Basically you can be an achiever and try to amass ISK in novel, non-grindy ways, or you can completely not care about collecting items or cash or skills or anything and just blow everything you have on PVP fun, soon as you get it.

They've added some PvE features, and the playerbase has gotten bigger as a result, so they may continue with it.  Or maybe they'll just re-focus efforts on another MMO.

Maybe death is different than when you played, but I'm not sure what you mean here. When I die, I hop into another ship and run out there and die again. The "time sink" only comes in if you live and you have to float your pod 10-12 jumps home.  :roll:

Well, being able to afford and fit ships on a regular basis could also be considered a timesink.

The problem is you really cant pvp worth a damn other than griefing random newbs unless you get a bunch of money to pay for better ships and equipment.  And the constant loss of those from PvP means you have to constantly be grinding out cash to stay alive in PvP.  So for me grinding PvE was a requirement to take part in PvP.  Was there a way to generate instant cash I wasnt aware of (other than buying it online, heh)?
Depends.  If we are playing in 0.0 space, where all the grand pvp alliance end game takes place, then I die, buy a shuttle, and fly to the nearest empire space to buy a decent ship.  Because in 0.0 space, none of the damn stations have what you want, or are selling it for about 20 times is normal price.  Then I need to go get more fittings for it as well.  Then try to get back to my base of opperations without getting ganked by groups of gate campers along the way.  THEN, I can hop back in, die, and start that entire process over again.  Which takes a long time.  If im in empire space, its easier, though I still usually have to jump several systems to get a new ship each time and buy new fittings.  I never really had enouph money to buy several good ships and just leave them sitting around my hanger in case I needed them. 
Overall, it just takes to damn long to jump back into action it always felt like.  On top of that, the more I died, the more I knew I was going to have to subject myself to endless amounts of cash grinding in the near future to make up for the PvP.  It would be nice if you could some how have an auto order system set up, so when you die, you reappear back at your home station with a new ship of what ever you just lost, minus the cost from you bank account.  All the punishment is still their, but at least I can actually jump back into enjoying the game instead of staring at waypoints for the next half hour.

Now granted, the changes to warping should actually help this somewhat, since it wont take as along to get a new ship and get back to where the action is, so that is a positive.

Sounds like you need a good 0.0 corp. I have a batch of throw away frigates being made for me as we speak, as Im going to be tackling bitch for a while. I think as a general rule, you should usually take out a ship 1 class below your best. If you have Battleship, take out a battlecruiser most the time. If you have Cruiser as your main, be a frigate bitch for a while in PVP. The big engagements is where you grab your sweetheart and take her out.

Yah, we always have cruisers and frigates that the corp made just laying around - specifically for use in PvP, so when you die you can hop into one and head out again. We also collect modules and store them for use (for free) to all corp members so they can refit their ships without having to go to a market hub.

We also collect a large number of BPCs and BPOs to make the more popular modules and ships right at our HQ - wither it's in 0.0 or low sec or high sec.

Are those available for general corp member use?  As I said in another thread, I have an industrialist alt cooking away: he's at the 8 million skill point level that hasn't made anything more complex than some small iridium hybrid charges.  I'd like to try making something more e-peenish.

Yep they are. You just have to dump the minerals in one of the 'open' hangars (misc1/misc2) and use the blue prints found in the research/bp hangar. If you need mins we can sell you the ones we have or just give it to you depending on what you are making. :)

Excellent.  Of course, I have nada rights to any hangars...  Honestly, anyone would think that being an alt of a member of the ol' Guiding Hand made me untrustworthy...