If you happen to play other games too, you could use the Steam voice chat. They have everything integrated the second the client starts.
You don’t have to, it’s just an alternative you can use.
This to me reads that there are plans afoot to:
A) change local as we know it
B) change where item / player / corp/ alliance etc… information is displayed
C) move more shite into the ever more laggy agency window
or
C) All of the above.
It is very straight forward to just double click on someone who enters local and have their information open up.
How much straight forward can that be made?
I think it can’t be made simpler but don’t just take my word for it.
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As an intermediate step, what if there was “station chat” that is separate from system “local”? A non-“Local” chat channel available only if docked. Maybe “station chat” would provide a Facebook-like wall, where structure visitors could leave a persistent message for later visitors to see?
Maybe it could be a module for Upwell structures; maybe later the 3D toon-interaction could also be a service module? It would provide a service that would help distinguish one Upwell from another as a public gathering point, or an alliance meet-up (as structure owners could filter participants, etc). It would need to be pricey to prevent over-proliferation, and it would use a service module slot, which means a serious commitment by the structure owner to create a “social spot” in space.
The more I think about it, the “wall” or “bulletin board” would be the feature to draw pilots in. You could only read the wall if you were docked. There’d be a maximum amount of cache per service module (for example, 10MB). Each toon can only have one post on the wall per station. You can use your post to leave a message to the universe (“Kilroy was here”), advertise your particular trade skill, promote your corp, brag a kill, or call-out a ganker. Wall messages are dropped FIFO as the cache is filled. Busy structures may see a turnover every few days (hours), remote structures may never fill their cache.
To prevent obnoxious abuse, maybe the modules are prohibited in Jita and the other tradehubs. Or, maybe the limitation of being docked would be enough to throttle spam?
This would be a good test bed to determine the potential use of 3D toon-interactive content. I see where there could be some hybridization between both concepts which might reduce the 3D overhead.
…just a thought.
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Absolutely. There’s a million voice options out there that work pretty well. The problem is that I can’t count on any random having any one of them except EVE Voice. I don’t play EVE through Steam and most folks seem to advise that it’s a bad idea. (I’m playing on Linux through Wine, so it would be more problematic for me than most in any case.) Thus, even if the person I’m trying to talk to is playing through Steam, we’ll still have to go through some text-chat negotiation to exchange Steam IDs and make sure we’re allowed to talk to each other. Workable, probably, but a slightly annoying experience for both ends.
When you consider the whole negotiation — “Are you playing on Steam? No? Do you have Steam? No? OK, what voice chat options do you have? Teamspeak? I can do that. Oh, your version is incompatible with mine? Let me try to find an alternative client for my Linux box. [minutes pass] OK, set. Now, what server are we going to use? What’s the password? What channel are you in?” — I’m likely to prefer being stuck with text chat.
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What features will we lose once chat is replaced?
tagging items (systems, names, etc)
drag and drop from the UI into chat. (fits, locations, etc)
One of the cool things about EVE was that it had some unique qualities. Like a Linux client, a voice with voice filters, ingame browser. That “tech” heavy feel (and complication) is giving way to the app-ification feel of most cartoony video games. I think EVE loses something there - in the feel alone.
Whatever you replace it with - I hope it helps strangers play together without having to sign up for things.
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Will the 64bit client still work on linux? (Yeah yeah i know there is no official support blah blah blah)
Add me to the list of people who say that not having a native in-game chat system will impede interaction between strangers.
Eve voice did/does have its problems, but it’s there. You can use it in a pinch. (Figuring out how to use it is probably the largest barrier to its use…just like the rest of Eve.)
By all means, use a third-party program, but integrate it in so that it does the things that Eve Voice does do, like providing an in-game indicator of the active speaker or speakers. Make it install alongside Eve, so that there is No Question that any two players have access to this program.
Whether or not that’s Discord, Mumble, Teamspeak, or Ventrillo, it should be there. No question. (But not Skype, please. I don’t want to give into M$'s demand for more of my profile. They have no legitimate need for my birthdate.)
Frankly, links still open in your standard browser, even with the elimination of the in-game browser, (which I also consider a loss.)
Maybe those of use who actually use Eve Voice will need to start putting a web link to Discords web-based interface. It seems like more of a hassle, and more likely to get ignored, but at least we can, hopefully, work around the developing problem.
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you should have just disabled eve voice and timed how long it took someone to know 
I doubt they will remove the 32bit client just because a 64bit client is possible 
AFAIK 64bit application work on wine.
Well done . If something dont work/use…out.
Since then, we’ve been looking at more parts of the client with a view to updating and optimizing, as well as retiring elements that aren’t used.
So you will remove 90% of null sec too?
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Where we are going, we will not need that. 
Other than a 32 bit only rig? Amiright? but that’s probably only .4% of the population in the world…?
Bingo!
Double Bingo!
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Muilt-core gaming
Please, PLEASE, PLEASE tell me that local will be going away!!
There’s wormhole space for that.
That is where I live… Local is stupid, basically defeating the purpose of risk taking and conflict in game. If you want to be safe be a care bear in High Sec. Not only would this hurt bots, this would greatly increase content.
No. There would be more bots. No meat player wants to spend an entire gaming session setting cloaked on a tac off every gate into a system to watch for gate flare and warn of incoming hostiles.
In a non-game world, such things are automated as much as possible.
In a game world, someone will develop a bot to keep tabs on the gate and inform all the alliance players, via a Discord bot, that lets them know what type of gate-flare was witnessed, and who showed up on 0.1AU scan range near the gate. It’d not be a matter of weeks, it’d be a matter of days.
Edit to say, just because players don’t willingly fly into your crosshairs to die doesn’t mean the game is broken.
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