Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Eve Blog Banter - Ambulation

Welcome to the first instalment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month's topic comes to us from PsycheDiver: Ambulation: What are your hopes for your avatar and new functionality of stations?
Ambulation promises to be a huge leap forward for Eve in terms of immersion To actually see your avatars walking and interacting will finally make them more real, and allow players to get into personality more.

Hopes for the Avatar:
- Many options for how the avatar looks in terms of hair styles, clothes, body heights and shapes. One huge complaint I have with Eve now is that a lot of character portraits look a lot alike, expecially in the Achura line. More variation, more uniqueness.

- Reasonable body shapes. I don't need 17 year olds creating avatars with unrealistic bust sizes thank you very much. Variation is one thing, DDDD is another.

- No tongue-in-cheek movements like /dance. My MMO is a gritty uncaring universe where millions die every day due to war and hardship. I highly doubt pod pilots would "do the robot" in the station concourse. Maybe dancing in a dance club / bar would be ok, as long as its setting-appropriate.

Hopes for Station Functionality:
- Front offices that are more interactive than current station office blurbs that point to websites.

- Bars to hang out in and chat with other pilots.

- In game gambling, both solo and with other players. Poker works well. :)

- Clothes shops to change your appearance.

- Apartments that can decorated and stored with trophies, or unique items earned or bought on your travels.

- Many different station styles for the interiors, not just four (one for each faction).

- Large spacious stations, make them feel huge inside.

- Lots of interactable NPCs.

Hopes for the Future:
- Eventually I want to see more ambulation environments beyond stations. Planets, cities, derelict stations.

- Ambulation PvE combat: missions to derelict stations where you go on board to find a missing data packet and NPC pirates try to rush you with hand weapons and such. Get that down pat and it leads to...

- Ambulation PvP combat: Not large scale wars, but just a few pilots fighting others in derelict stations where the long arm of the law does not reach. You get killed, you show up back in your new clone, your ship docked and abandoned at the delerict station waiting for you to return or someone else to board and take command.

- Ambulation wars: Well, if the captain is going running around derelict stations, the crew should go to! They would act like companion drones and accompany the pilot on his ambulated sorties. There could be different qualities of crew from plain old crewman to security staff to mercenaries to full blow Marines. Maybe some have better weapons or different weapons and armour, etc. They could be a new commodity to be traded on the market, maybe have training levels to reflect their abilities from experience.

- Ambulation Station Control: Once you have pod pilots leading soldiers in combat against other pod pilots in derelict stations, you are right there at combat in outposts and player controlled NPC stations for control of such assets. This leads to the possibility of special boarding ships for attacking stations, new tactics and gameplay, an improved method for gaining control of stations rather than POS wars, and just a hellva lot of fun.

- Ambulation planetary wars: Well, if you fight wars in conquerable stations, time to up the ante and gain control of entire planets through combat. We'll need some planetary landing craft, orbital bombardment weapons, atmospheric fighters, tanks, bases, APCs... and we should be fighting over something, right? We'll need to be able to install Planetary mining operaitons, factories, secret labs, training facilities, etc.

Other Blog Banter Posts on the same topic:

Update: Fixed PsycheDiver's url, added Mad Rant.
Update2: Fixed more URLs, added I May Find Peace Within the Emptiness...
Update3: Added Ombeve
Update4: Added A Merry Life

6 comments:

  1. Great ideas about expanding the idea of in-station combat!

    I hope you enjoyed the topic.

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  2. Anonymous11:12 am

    Yeah, I have followed many communications on those planetside ideas. Personally, I think it would be a great way to further out the universe. Time will tell.

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  3. Great ideas Kirith! There's enough material here to keep EVE lively for the next 10 years...and then the Jove can finally show up...

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  4. Anonymous12:47 pm

    In a few of the replies to crazykinuxes blogging extravaganza on ambulation i heard several things about "personal quarters" I believe if eve were to implement this it would be an on ship thing rather than an in station thing this would make it available everywhere your ship was (granted you may have to provide yourself new decorations everytime you lost your ship) but i think thatd be a bit better than a "renting" system which i believe they would adopt for several of these "storefronts" and personal quarters similar to renting a corp office in stations presently.

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  5. Anonymous2:54 pm

    Well done man! Great ideas about ambulation combat!

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  6. Anonymous2:55 pm

    Great thoughts about station combat :)and I agree no DDDD.

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