Ok, the CQ is gone, and there’s reasons for it. But there are ways for improving immersion in Eve by using technology that’s already there: The full body animated portrait.
By now all player portraits can be switched to “full body”, so the chars are animated, moving, blinking, breathing, lively (just without an individual background). Almost like in the CQ, just without the nice, but somewhat useless apartment environment.
My suggestion is to use this for all portraits (except the small chat versions) of players and NPCs. So we’re getting animated heads (not full bodys on first click, but on second) in a player char’s info as well as in mission (and other) NPC portraits, replacing the non-animated portrait pic, while adding the individually selected background to the animated portrait version. (Btw the mission NPC presentation hasn’t been improved since forever, has it, CCP? Give those guys some breathing, nodding and maybe a hand gesture or two, please).
And for people not interested in immersion please add a switch for keeping all portraits un-animated. And while we’re at it, please replace the background pic in “character sheet” (Menu ALT+A) by the individually selected one, as you’d see today in your non-animated, non-full-body portrait version.
This change should add a lot of atmosphere without piling up workload for CCP devs.
The next step would be showing the char in the actual ship’s command bridge, but that’s fine for 2018.
I suggest reading the lore for the last bit. There is no command bridge, you are in an immersion pod using your brain to command various systems on the ship, crew are still there to assist, your ship has about 2/3rds the crew of a ‘traditional’ ship in EVE. But that’s the whole capsuleer bit and the pod you end up in when the ship blows up.
As for animated portraits, hey, more shiny is good if it’s suitable dev time for a minor project.
You are right, lets just represent ships as spheres with a label on the grid, that will make large battles easier to render. No turrets, no visual fire indicators, just red boxes.
Immersion is pointless.
/sarcasm
Or you know, we could recognise that immersion is a good thing, providing it doesn’t cost too much developer time for it’s benefit, so if animated portraits are a fairly low cost option, then why not.
Yea I forgot about the lore. But I did like the bridge idea. Could let us see our characters inside the pod, or a first person view from with in. Could have a bridge simulation for your brain and that is how you control the ship. A mental simulation would let you move about a bridge facsimile. Could have first and third person cameras. And let you look out the ship through monitors.
Why would you slow yourself down like that?
We already have a superior method of commanding ships, so implementing something that doesn’t make a lot of lore sense and slows the game down isn’t worth developer time. This is what we mean when we talk about a meaningful gameplay reason being needed to justify a larger Dev time investment.
Animated portraits are one thing. Pointless fluff is another.
I know that you are right. I just wanted some way to look at my characters and have them interact with things. But by the same token, animated portraits just wouldn’t be worth the effort for developer time either. And with the time and isk spent on my characters to look nice feels like a waste.
I really did like the captains quarters. For me it added something different to the game. As nice and cool as the ships are they get a little boring to look at some of the time. This is even more true when docked in a station. About the only ship I wouldn’t get tired of looking at: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Executor, or many other Star Wars ships.
Yes the Captain quarters needs updates. Place a new Technology, Tech 1, I would like to communicating by viewscreens with others by a Galactic Link. A new Paid service to market with, Skillbooks and technologies that can be bought. Tech 2 to upgrade the abilities to add more Alts to view and communicate with in real time. I like to start a LFJII Communication Service Corporation. and Tech 3 levels having all my Alts/Corp/Alliance members showing on screen. Tech 4, Corporate Command to Fleet Commanders or individual ships.
CCP LFJII
thz me later
Sells should be interesting, lol
Trillion isk should be my payout
A command bridge would be pointless, though. It doesn’t make sense from lore because we just don’t have a bridge, and would get in the way of the flow of UI.
That would be in “new game” territory, like what would happen if we tried to make this thing (more) multiplayer. Which might have been the way to go for capships… hmm.
I think the immersion/bridge/pod idea given is a good start.
I think having a first or close-third person camera showing your character connected to the pod, commanding the ship or something
Personally, I think the CQ were amazing, but they needed work. I was hoping they’d make bussling harbours or landing decks, offices for corps that you can actually walk into, etc etc, but it looks like that’s not coming anytime soon.
Anyway, back to the pod thing, I think it would be really cool to just see what your character would look like jacked in and flying
I dunno, I just like immersion, it’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed with Eve (and Dust 514) for so long
I realize what they look like, but again, it’s for immersion purposes. Add a small glow-light in the pod to see your pilot, or maybe a holographic HUD or something. I dunno, just braindumping ideas that would be fun
Yeah, except… we run into the problem of “How does this promote player interaction when the other ones don’t?”
If the easiest way to run the new capship is to multibox it, people are going to multibox it. That, and alts don’t randomly drop your shields or private-chat the ship’s resist hole or what damage type the weapons are about to switch to.
Immersion is good, providing it doesn’t cost “too much time for its benefit”. That said, we’re sitting at more than enough immersion, so unless there’s some groundbreaking difference to current immersion, any amount of dev time is pointless.
Or the pod could be like a fancy escape pod/the captain’s battle station. I think a bridge would be cooler. The captain’s chair could have all of the same hookups and essentially be the pod that extracts the Captain upon ship destruction. I really like eve but I think the whole pod thing is cheesy, ships are team environments and even if there was a mental hook up like that you still cant multitask with your wet ware as a human. especially for capital ships that are monstrosities. in short you still need thumbs to run a ship. so I agree with you on that.
