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EVE Online

EVE Online
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Salartarium

My dream for the future of EVE Online involves looking to the past. One of major problems with the lore of the game today is that so much content has been forgotten and removed and so many story threads did not reach their full potential. Whatever happened to that Drone Mind that you retrieved an embryo for? What EVE needs is a restoration of disabled content. We need the SoCT missions back, COSMOS, lvl.5 Distribution and Mining Missions, Endless Battle, and Resource wars back. Though it would require resources to restore the content so much of EVE lore currently has to be read online rather than from playing the game.

Though I hope for the relaunch of a tie-in FPS game, I have realistic expectations. At the very least, CCP should bring back orbital bombardment and tie it into the current FW frontlines system. The system is already developed and contributed to a more realistic sense of war.

Though it is a small mechanic corporation stocks could be expanded upon. For one, corporations that use stocks as a management tool could benefit from having settings for the way shares can affect corp mechanics. From different rights for shareholders to the ability to change how long votes take, and automatic dividends. Other financial tools could be established. There should be in-game tools for bonds, collateral in contracts, and loans. For example, a corp should be able to create war bonds with automatic payouts that would even neg wallet if funds are low. There are ways to still avoid paying out, but it would help to facilitate a common practice that is currently done entirely out of the game. Having contracts with set terms for loans and the ability to attach collateral, would still allow the loanshark metagaming, but add a further veneer of legitimacy to the practice and make it much safer to partake. Finally, such systems could lead to automatic SRP systems whereas now only big corporations can automate this bureaucratic task.

One thing is a change to structures, I think the game needs small citadels and more variety. I think replacing POS with the capsuleer outposts from EVE Echoes would be a drop-in replacement. They allow a player to set up a quick base, yet have some unique functions that would help EVE. One is that they would organize PI and make it a lot simpler while still requiring investment. Also, it would make sov warfare much more interesting. Though POS are no longer in the meta, it would concentrate structures at a few planets from many moons and would create soft targets, allowing small gange sov warfarce to have much more content. Big groups would want to defend their PI and could protect a few small areas if they brought in more ISK, yet it would be a lot easier for a filamented fleet to pop in and actually destroy things.

To recreate the niche usefulness of POS and their durability. I believe there should be Tech II versions of the Citadels, another higher tier of defensive fittings, and a few unique service modules that would allow a few Citadels to have a reduced backup functionality of certain FLEX structures and IHUB upgrades. For large groups there is too much structure spam and staging citadels don't feel like the fortress they should be. This plays into a few balance ideas I have.

There should be no damage cap on structures. Reinforcement timers allow fair play, and damage caps are a necessity given the way the funds large coalition reality exceeds the cost to max fit a citadel. ADM should have to double the requirements for each level, but the capital should get a bonus for the total amount of systems held to make it harder to headshot a large empire and reduce the need for a defensive rating in a war. With the increase, a counteracting +1 bonus should be given for holding an entire constellation which would stop some of the metagaming there is with sov and make the initial battles more contested and create momentum. Playing both on citadel changes, POS guns should be added to citadels based on size, yet be destroyable without Citadel having to go through timers. This would allow a sort of automatic defense of structures yet would be another soft target that would allow fleets to come in a do damage. As an extra cost, staging keeps more vulnerable due to removed damage caps these would allow further engagement based on player actions rather than artificial limitations.

Finally, I believe CCP will add more NPCs with better AI. NPC activity in game is greatly limited by server resources but is needed due to the shrinking player population to the amount the map was designed for.

Kane Carnifex's avatar
Kane Carnifex
Salartarium

Thats fast :) but i believe we all have this thoughts... need to frame mine in a second.

Alex Sinclair's avatar
Alex SinclairMod
Salartarium

Very nice, and clearly written too. Thanks, Salartarium!

Alex Sinclair's avatar
Alex SinclairMod
Alex Sinclair

Hi Salartarium - would you mind clarifying this sentence for our curated content: "Reinforcement timers allow fair play, and damage caps are a necessity given the way the funds large coalition reality exceeds the cost to max fit a citadel. "

Is the following edit correct?

"Reinforcement timers allow fair play, and damage caps are a necessity given the funds of large coalitions in reality exceed the cost to max fit a citadel."

Kane Carnifex's avatar
Kane Carnifex

What is a major piece of every video game? Yes, NPCs. And EVE:Online is not different here.

Regarding a Tweet from CCP in 2015  we killed roughly 3.700.000 NPCs per day.

https://twitter.com/CCP_FoxFour/status/558654160468725761

Massiv, but let me try to give you a better picture:

This would be 47.435 Havens. (If all possible NPC spawn and “Milchmädchen Rechnung” applies) If each gives 30m Bounty this would be a total of 1.4 Trillion ISK per day.

So we would agree which NPCs are a pillar of EVE, maybe not the biggest if you look at Mining, Production and KING trading a it is s a combination of everything above.

https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/monthly-economic-report-july-2023

What is the first thing you think about NPCs? Quest, aka Missions in EVE. This is the very first thing which drives you through new Eden.

You invite your friend to the fleet, start the Mission and you need to do it twice due to the flawless design we have to prevent abuse.

Spool up 2033…

You and your friend decided to start a career as a bounty hunter. After you initiate a contact with the Agent an interactive Video starts to determine your skill level. Both of you agree to take it easy and start in the Frigate Class. After various questions, some more serious than the other, you get four Ships suggested.

Just for the curiosity you anyway didn't qualify for a higher class :P

You first Mission is Emergency Response for a Region System nearby. In the Briefing Video the enemy is expected to be Gurista Pirates which use modified drones and missiles with a high Kinetic damage output. You should tank your ship accordingly but consider which pirates never play fair.

A Popup appears, there are currently following Bounty hunter on the same mission. If you want you could fleet up with them, but you decide differently.

Once you arrived in the site, it looks kind of easy  a Frigate is holding a miner in the asteroid belt. You start locking your target and approach to get into your weapon range.

Once you start your first shot a timer appears and the Bounty system warns you which enemy forces have been detected by the nearby local intel system. It is estimated that they belong to the Frigate and will arrive in less than 3 Minutes at your destination. We automatically activated your emergency beacon, since you are outgunned.

You slowly chew through the Frigates tank, time says 1,5 Minute but the tank is just slowly breaking. You acknowledge which the frigate must be max tank without any guns since nobody from you got shot yet. You hear the landing warp sounds like bob,bob, and 10 Man Fleet  landing close to you. Your Fleet automatically joins the Bounty hunter NPC Veteran class, your voice gets connected and a very calm voice tells you to enjoy the upcoming show. Seconds later the reported Pirates from the intel channel arrived… the battle begins.

What you don´t know is that the NPC Veteran Bounty Hunter has received three Goals.

  1. Keep you alive

  2. Keep the Miner alive

  3. Kill the Pirates

You see the Broadcast, you know from another MMO, Focus Fire…

You receive heavy hits but as much Shield you lose as much you gain back but this is can´t be your local tank… target after target get called and together you shred them down.

The fight is over and the Miner makes you an offer once you grow in Level you could special missions from him for some shady stuff. If you know what I mean.

Since you saved the miner, you received your bounty and you are ready for the next mission. In the after briefing you get told which the mission escalated, which can happen from time to time.

So this is just glimpse of how it could look like:

  • Interactive Mission System

  • Scripted Variations which represent common tactics from players.

  • Video Feeds or Voiced Mission Briefing

  • NPC Support Fleets (or even Player Support fleets)

Overall a more dynamic living Mission System

My last thoughts are in the line of a general more dynamic content in all aspects of EVE:Online. Imagine wandering, nomad style  Pirate Faction HQs which try to shred everything in their way. Invasion of NPC which rescalp Lowsec or even Nullsec if not driven back by the help of players or

Do you want to see the new eden burn?

Kane Carnifex's avatar
Kane Carnifex
Kane Carnifex

If i copy this from google sheet is, meh :P And for some reason the page is bouncing down in Firefox. Maybe bad PC day :(

Rupert's avatar
RupertStaff
Kane Carnifex

We're fixing the page bouncing!

Copying from Google Sheets is a bit tricky, however...

Zap's avatar
Zap

Burn it to the ground. All of it.

There is this thing called the circle of life. You may have heard of it. Everything alive must die and from death comes life, or something like that. It’s easily confused with the life cycle, which sort of says the same thing; but when applied to a product is bizarrely reimagined as some kind of machine on which it’s believed that, if you pedal hard enough, the inevitable end can somehow be kept at bay.

Eve is a product that CCP has been sweating over for more than 20 years. And while the end has been successfully delayed, it has only gotten closer. It is closer at the start of the game’s third decade than it was at its second, which was closer than it was at launch. How close? Not for me to say. My task here is to offer a vision for the fourth decade, which, assuming Eve hasn’t met its end by then, I believe requires CCP to embrace the circle of life – to let the life cycle complete and begin anew.

A sequel, basically. But not just any sequel.

Gamers of a certain vintage will remember how disastrously most MMOG sequels have turned out, with Asheron’s Call 2 being about the best example of not to make one (Everquest 2 also to a lesser extent). More recently Blizzard made some of the same mistakes with Overwatch 2, as did Taika Waititi’s character in the movie Free Guy; which is to not be a dick and destroy everything your players have created in one game just to release another that isn’t sufficiently better.

Players have created a hell of a lot in Eve Online. Probably more than in any other game that has ever existed. You might reasonably argue that there’s so much player content that it would take Star Citizen levels of investment combined with the Call of Duty turnarounds to make an Eve sequel good enough that players would be willing to let 20 years of shared history end. I would agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly. But what if they didn’t have to? What if CCP made a sequel in which players could take all of their stuff with them?

Eve is a game of systems built on top of systems built on top of systems. Some have taken the weight of those above, others not so well, which has increasingly meant that CCP is spending most of its time shoring up all the stuff that’s crumbling under the weight of the newer features piled on top. Therefore we can all imagine the features of an Eve 2 without the need for it to just be better and bigger. Done right, it would be bigger and better by default.

Key to everything is Eve 1 existing for long enough so that Eve 2 has a chance to thrive, and the gateway between two remaining open. From a lore perspective, imagine some NPC scientist somewhere bringing about the end of New Eden, requiring the empires to come together to engineer some mechanism to open a new Eve Gate to a hitherto unknown galaxy (lots of potential for events and community goals there, too). A predicted date is set upon which New Eden will burn out (or up - the technical term alludes me), prior to which Eve 2 will open up and players can begin to pour forth and settle new New Eden, all without them losing the riches that identified them in the old one.

Maybe the status quo would continue, maybe not. The point is that players will have new tools, new possibilities, a whole new galaxy – all without losing everything they have built up. And being a new beginning, it means there is a jumping on point for new players to make their mark. Because without them, the circle of life will just get smaller and CCP will have to peddle that much harder.

AlexGra 's avatar
AlexGra

The Ideal 30-Year-Old EVE Online: A Vision for the Future 🤩

Introduction

EVE Online, the iconic sandbox MMORPG set in a sprawling virtual universe, has been a source of fascination and wonder for gamers across the globe for over three decades. This essay aims to envision what an ideal 30-year-old EVE Online might look like. By delving into the game's potential evolution, we'll explore ways it can maintain its allure, relevance, and innovation while preserving its core principles.

Player-Driven Emergent Gameplay

At its core, EVE Online has always been about player-driven, emergent gameplay. Our vision of the ideal 30-year-old EVE Online would amplify this aspect. The game would provide players with even more sophisticated tools and systems to shape the universe. This empowerment would extend to alliances, corporations, and player-run governments, granting them greater control over the game's narrative, economy, and politics.

Evolving Technology and Graphics

Over three decades, technology has made monumental strides. In our ideal EVE Online, players would be treated to cutting-edge graphics and an immersive VR experience. AI-driven procedural content generation could ensure that the universe remains fresh and dynamic, transforming exploration and discovery into endlessly engaging experiences.

Expansive PvE and PvP Opportunities

The game's enduring appeal has always been its ability to cater to diverse player preferences. In the ideal 30-year-old EVE Online, the range of PvE and PvP content would expand even further. Players who relish PvE content could engage in intricate AI-driven missions, while those who lean toward PvP could partake in epic fleet battles and territorial warfare. Striking this balance would guarantee that EVE remains accessible to both new entrants and seasoned veterans.

Improved New Player Experience

In our vision of the ideal EVE Online, the onboarding process for new players would undergo significant enhancements. Interactive tutorials and mentorship programs would demystify the game's complexities. A sleek, user-friendly interface would make navigating intricate systems more intuitive, all without compromising the depth that sets EVE apart.

Deepened Economy and Industry

The game's economy would evolve further in the ideal EVE Online, featuring greater complexity and depth. Players would find more opportunities for meaningful participation in the economic landscape, from resource extraction and manufacturing to trade and finance. A realistic supply and demand system would shape the market, facilitating emergent player-driven economic narratives.

Inclusivity and Diversity

Our vision of the ideal EVE Online would nurture a welcoming and inclusive community. Ongoing efforts to promote diversity and equity within the player base would be actively championed. In-game mechanisms would proactively combat harassment and toxicity, fostering an environment where all players can thrive.

Storytelling and Lore

EVE Online boasts a rich history and lore. In its 30th year, the game's narrative would have evolved and deepened further. In-game events and story arcs would continue to shape the universe, with player actions wielding profound influence over the overarching narrative. Collaborations with talented authors and artists could bring the game's lore to life in novels, comics, and other media, further immersing players in this rich narrative tapestry.

Forward-Looking Technologies

To maintain its status at the vanguard of the gaming industry, the ideal EVE Online would be unafraid to explore emerging technologies. This might encompass integrating blockchain for secure item ownership and trading, harnessing virtual reality for a truly immersive experience, and experimenting with artificial intelligence to enrich gameplay and storytelling.

The ideal 30-year-old EVE Online would represent a vibrant, immersive, and ever-evolving virtual universe that consistently pushes the boundaries of what an MMORPG can achieve. It would uphold its core tenets of player-driven content, politics, and economy while enthusiastically embracing new technologies and inclusivity. With an enduring narrative, breathtaking graphics, and an extensive array of gameplay possibilities, this vision of EVE Online would captivate players for generations to come.

orik Kado's avatar
orik Kado

Thinking about EVE's future is something interesting, and many crazy ideas can come to mind. However, some of my less wild ideas would be as follows:

A fully functional stock market, perhaps with the possibility of acquiring shares in one of the Caldari mega-corporations, or why not, I'd love to be a partner of the good folks at ORE. This market should react according to events in the universe, such as wars or events that have positive or negative effects. Additionally, players should be able to list their corporations on this galactic stock exchange. It would be very interesting to see the ISK flow it could generate.

More lore for ORE. I believe it's one of the less developed factions that has a lot of untapped potential. More ships, more technology, more events – they are a mega-corporation, and the possibilities are endless. As a bonus, they could introduce more apparel options, not just for miners but also for executive suits. After all, they should be handling a lot of ISK to be in overalls and boots all day.

Galaxy expansion, perhaps through lore, introducing the creation of new systems that can't be claimed by anyone but offer good profits if you know where to look. Something like the Abyss but with permanent access, featuring changing weather that could wipe out your ship if you can't identify the signals announcing a climatic event.

To wrap it up, perhaps a new collaboration with another science fiction franchise. Something like Star Trek or even the old and forgotten Stargate Atlantis. Collaborations like these could breathe new life into the game and, most importantly, generate maximum hype.

Alex Sinclair's avatar
Alex SinclairMod
orik Kado

Nice ideas! I've wondered about the potential for a Stargate crossover ever since EVE x Doctor Who. I know lots of the devs are fans of The Expanse too, and that would be another great fit.

orik Kado's avatar
orik Kado
Alex Sinclair

the possibilities are endless

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