Have you ever had this kind of interaction with an Agent?
You: Hello Agent_X, I am in need of isks, and I was told that you have a job that needs to be done.
Agent_X: Come to my station, this channel is not secure to discuss the sensitive matter that I need resolved.
You: Sure, I just need to travel 5-10 systems so I’ll be here in a few minutes.
[A few minutes later…]
You: Hello again Agent_X, I am here for this job you are offering.
[Receive an email describing the job]
You: Hum, you asked me to come over, and you just send me the job description by email?
I mean I spent hours sculpting my body, combing my hair, picking my finest clothes and accessories just to receive and not meet you?
And your sensitive matter is delivering crates of garbage?
Agent_X: You want the isks or not?
[You go on delivering 2 crates of garbage to a station 5 systems away]
…
The Agent window has been as it is for as long as I can remember (which means from Beta time because I have been playing for that long…)
It is just a text window that is the same for every agent, no matter the faction, agent category or level.
So I have a few suggestions to refresh this age-old interaction, so here there are in no specific order, and some are cumulative:
- The agent background (behind their body) should reflect the category of the agent.
ex: A security agent could have an armory behind them, a distribution agent could have a warehouse behind them. - The level of the Agent should show in the background.
ex: a level 1 distribution agent would have a dingy/dirty warehouse behind them. A level 4 agent would sit at a clean desk with a window overlooking a clean warehouse behind them. - Make the mission more like an actual dialog between the player and the agent.
ex: Bubble dialog, or like an actual chat (left side for the agent and right side for the player) - Show the Agent and the player in front of the background (as described above) facing each others with the dialog/mission description between them. It would make our own avatar a bit more relevant than something that we design when we start playing and then forget forever.
- Make the background faction dependent (Amarr with religion decoration, Caldari more clean and functional…)
Pretty much every other parts of the game has changed except this one.
We even have animation or missile launchers.
Do you actually take time to look at your missile launchers deploying and firing?
I know I don’t because I am more focused on killing and surviving.
So for something that is more visible than missile launchers, I think it is time CCP gives the Mission window and overhaul.
Especially considering that EVE Online can be daunting to new players, and that our beloved game is more compared to an Excel-game that an actually MMO.
So let’s get away from the Email-game too, and be a bit more interactive.
And for those who fear that it would slowdown their click-click-click-drag-drop-undock cycle, I am not talking about slowing down the pace, just make it a bit more pretty, and make our avatars a bit more visible.
No need to go full Ambulation on it.