(accidentally posted to pathwaysend first… moved)
“With the Winter expansion possibly being named ‘Crucible’, it certainly is a melting pot of refinements and tweaks aimed at making the EVE experience smoother and more wholesome. If the developers suddenly found themselves some spare resources and approached you for an additional feature to include before release, what single concept would you pitch them and how would you implement it?
For bonus points, the one thing lacking from this “patchwork” of iterations is a cohesive storyline to package “The Crucible” together. How could this expansion be marketed to potential new customers?”
I will admit i was late here. But this one lead to me to do a bit of thinking.
What does EVE lack? well certainly there were a whole ton of problems which are being adressed in the new expansion, but EVE in my opinion never lacked largely for game play. EVE in and on istelf isn’t the most unbalanced game i’ve seen. the thing about EVE is the balance is similar to two elephants on a seesaw- even the slightest imbalance and you suddenly have a massive weight difference, which the community and the bloggers never stop complaining about (of course :D).
But the fundamental flaw in EVE, and the one where i think that really has stopped the game in it’s tracks is ironically one of it’s biggest selling points.
EVE has no level cap. there is no glass ceiling, no barrier to how far you can rise, how much new stuff you can experience and learn. This is one of the things that has truly set EVE apart, has made it one of it’s best points. the reason why people still play the game after 8 years since it’s beta.
And therein lies the problem.
For most of the blogging community, especially the more influential blogs like Jesters Trek, Fiddler’s Edge, and Eveoganda, and the EVE community at large, they are at the high end of the SP spectrum. For Veterans, SP is not a barrier.
But to compare the entire situation to Peter F Hamiliton’s Common wealth Saga, you get the condition where the oldest members of society simply don’t die off. And all the while they gather more and more wealth, more and more SP, more and more power. Everyone born later as it turns out, is at an instant disadvantage simply because there IS no ceiling, and they can only move as fast (or slower in fact considering implants) to everyone else. I joined EVE with half a dozen others from RL- and i’m the only one who ever made it into a battleship.
EVE is often considered noob unfriendly. this is the real reason above everything else. EVE has a high level of difficulty, horrendous tutorials, a non-welcoming community, and viciously punishes mistakes and ignorance. All of this however, can be solved through study, pratice, and youtube in general- what can’t be solved is the sheer amount of time it takes to break into “real” eve- years.
And that, gents, is why EVE gets few good people. because only a tiny percentage of the noobs coming in are willing to get the shit beaten out of them for literally years in hope for the “glorious moment of equality and ISK making” at the 13 million SP point or so.
If EVE wants to solve the problem of a system that was never really intended for decades long timescale, then rather than simply dancing around the problem (the new free implants for example) they need to confront the skill system as a whole. How this would be done, is for another Post.
But as a temporary solution they should offer SP to returning players, a sizeable return on people who have been away. there are so many people that played eve back in 2008, 2007, 2006, and have since moved on, htat this would make enormous instant generation of returning players.
Let’s say that we set this at 10% of the SP you would have gained had you been active you would gain as free SP.This could well tally into millions of SP, but it’s only at the 0-20 mil SP range where that much SP makes a huge difference to the player.In esence, there would suddenly be a whole lot of returning pilots from years previously suddenly with the SP to compete.
Of course this would see abuse, reactivating old alts. But as a whole i think that any SP bonus to reativating players, or even a flat SP gift would be for the better.
In conclusion, Liberty, Fratenrity! Free SP for a better and more attainable EVE for the noobs!
Yeah that’s all i’ve got to say. It would be cool if they did it but i think this Implant scheme of CPPs is the their own way of dealing with the SP gap. I wish them well in it (and looking forward to the implant itself… solves some PG problems on some of fits)
