Station Walk RIP, Perspective of a 2009 Player

Communications Center General Discussion
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Hear me out. I know. Just hear me out.

I have played EVE on and off since 2009. Personally I knew what was at the end of the road when I began, and it’s always what brought me back. An Epic Saga, a slew of Wars, Conspiracies, Greed, Unexpected Friendship all done in a no holds bard, persistant Sandbox unlike anything in gaming.

The thing is I always felt like EVE was missing something to help immerse you into it as a New Player. Personally for me this wasn’t a major issue, I pushed through, grinded away much like other MMO’s of days past such as Lineage II (Props if you ever grinded to max lvl in that game :joy:).

Thing is, we lose a lot of Newbros, especially in todays Social Media age of short attention spans who get side tracked with other Titles, IRL concerns, and other factors BEFORE they get a glimpse of the rich gameplay to be found in EVE Online.

Let’s be honest this doesn’t scream “FUN!!!” at first glance… and queing up a "45min Skill to do something wtf…"

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However, if you’ve had those meaningful momments, you know it’s there in abundance in a unique way. The problem is getting more people to arrive at that destination.

Why is this? Newbros aren’t being immersed from the start. I think what happens to 75%+ of new players is they hear about & want to be involved in the Grand Epic Stories they see and are told all the time in Gaming Outlets, even MSM, and Social Media. However they feel like all they do is stare at numbers, feel alone unable to trust corps or vets, and the result is often they get bored overtime from lack of a human connection & immersion.

Again lets be real, EVE at first glance looks like a Account Manager’s nightmare simulator.

Having players like delonewolf make vidoes of EVE Talk using the Station Walk to help pull attention to the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lcXufAxMTo&list=PL3hbyucMbP7cx-n7kG9BkDTLaCQ6kY9nZ&index=23

Honestly I believe not expanding Station Walk is a mistake, think about all the new players you bring in if they give the game a more human experience from the get go. I think what happens to the vast majority of new players is they want to be involved in the Epic Story but they feel like all they do is stare at numbers, feel alone unable to trust corps or vets, and the result is often they get bored overtime from lack of a Immersion.

CCP stated that no one used Station Walk. Well yeah, duh, it was a room to look at your toon & nothing more.

They need to flesh it out more. Why didn’t that door ever open on the side of our Room? Why not walk into a Shady Bar to meet up with a Corp Mate, gamble some ISK with the local bookies, and potentially get into a confrentation or meet other players.

Even the Player’s Room. Let players customize it! Allow them to place kill trophies, unqiue items found while out running missions or ratting. Give it some flare, make it personal. The state it was left in for 6 years was everything you could do Docked inside of your Ship.

In Summary I would never want EVE to become WoW, I would throw up over the sacriledge. However injecting a human compenent from the start would intrigue people to delve further into Story.

If you made it this far, thanks for hearing me out.

I hope one day this get’s looked at again by CCP, the potential is unreal, and I believe it would finally connect New Arrivals to our game, to our Saga and thus grow EVE into something even better than we thought possible.

Save the Newbros.

Yours always and forever, Gunner. See you in Local.

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It has potential sure, but perhaps as a thing on the side. CCP did state that just to give it maintenance was already using up resources and time and they would much rather focus on what makes EvE EvE.

Don’t get me wrong, I love roleplaying, and the ability to walk on stations and stuff and seeing other players in some rooms would be neat (rip Jita loading that) but in all honestly I would much prefer to see the team focus on the game itself first, as cool as it is most players would just fly in space anyway. I am no programming genius, but I always heard that EvE’s kinda unique when it comes to that field, so they might be having more problems bringing station walking come to life than ever, not to mention you could do things in “that room” from which people still preferred the normal station since it is fast to set up what you need rather than walking from point A to point B, and it would load faster as well.

But hey, one can only hope that they Might be looking at it, maybe they are doing a cheeky sneaky surprise! They pull the plug, people get upset, later they return and be like “Hey! We figured it out! Here you go have fun!” which explains the point of removing station walking from the game so they have less to focus maintaining every maintenance so they focus on developing it better. But that’s just a wild guess, they might not even be lifting a finger about it.

Have you ever heard of… Aurora? Now THAT is a nightmare

I mean come on even the guy is like “I’ve heard jokes of EvE being a spreadsheet game but… This is The spreadsheet game”

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There’s an old saying - Believe nothing that you hear, half of what you read and everything that you see.

Personally I think the CQ was originally created to facilitate the addition of Microtransactions. It was window dressing to help promote the sale of apparel items. Since it succeeded in accomplishing that, it was no longer needed so it was removed.

In 2007 CCP promised Ambulation would be added to the game. In 2011 they added the CQ with the promise that game play content would soon follow. Obviously that never materialized and the CQ soon became a constant reminder of CCP’s super fail. As long as the CQ was present in the game, players would continue to ask for WiS content. Since the CQ was a thorn in their side, they needed to remove it.

I truly hope CCP does the impossible and incorporates Avatar game play content into the game. There is a lot of potential game play content for that which would make Eve really unique. Unfortunately I think that kind of programming is beyond CCP’s capability.

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Well the stated reason for its removal was the intensive strain on the art dept as when any changes were made to the hangers they had to be replicated in WIS.

Solution, remove the hanger from WIS and finish it XD

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Seems a bit of a moot point now. CCP faceplant-failed on the whole thing and got away from the last uncomfortable reminder. They showed they weren’t willing to do both WiS and FiS together. Better to have FiS than neither. WiS in eve is dead, it’s not coming back. Look at the CCP track record…

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I went through the NPE in November 2016. I enjoyed fitting ships, scanning down wormholes and hauling goods through dangerous space. It was all very immersive and got me hooked. I was not drawn in by the grand tales of deceit and war reported by news outlets. I assumed that it was very unlikely I would be involved in such things. Later in the game I did experience trickery, deceit, theft and war. However, this was on a smaller scale than the stories of null-sec alliances in the news. I would imagine stories like this https://www.pcgamesn.com/eve-online/eve-online-co2-coup-the-judge-gigx might actually drive new players away. Knowing that everything you work for in the game can be taken away in an instant isn’t a good selling point. I have unsubscribed at this point and do not play EVE anymore. I got bored with the game and drifted away from it to play other games. Not sure if I will ever come back, but if I do, I will probably remain an alpha clone.

TLDR: NPE is fine but lost interest after about 10 months.

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@OP You make some good points about what is wrong with EVE. And then you fumble the idea for a solution. How exactly is space barbie supposed to fix a feeling of social isolation in the game? I’ll tell you exactly why I got hooked on EVE and quickly dropped every other MMO I’ve ever tried… I made the social connection quickly. I joined a corp that had effective recruitment, and then we quickly had challenges as a group that we felt we could confront. I basically stopped playing when that corp imploded several years later. CCP still doesn’t really seem to know what they’ve got, after all this time, which is embarrassing, but they know what they don’t got: space barbie.

Also, just a note to pretty much every poster here… if you feel the need to say a game that is older than a decade has “potential” then you’re playing the wrong game. The game matured long ago, and is now in its wind down phase of its life cycle. Playing a game you completely misunderstand and demanding it to be a completely different game is ridiculous.

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Heh, the only reason this game is winding down is due to players like you who constantly oppose growth and change. Nobody said change Eve into a completely different game, it’s all about adding more variety to it, not a bunch more ships and constant graphics updating.

And yes, I said there’s a lot of potential game play content for WiS in this game. If you lack the imagination to envision that, then you’re definitely blind as a bat.

Also who the hell are you to say people who like the idea of adding WiS content are playing the wrong game. Take your troll bile somewhere else.

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The game is winding down because there’s a disruption in the player experience that has been left unaddressed. Because the game doesn’t facilitate experiencing what the game IS. Because the game is mature, and the market of potential players has already been mostly tapped out. EVE’s success has been because of what the game IS. “Potential” is all about what a thing is NOT. Saying that EVE has potential in WIS is exactly like saying EVE has potential as a motorcycle simulator. It has potential there, like it has potential in a literally infinite number of possible gameplay mechanics, because it’s NOT a space-barbie wow-clone, it’s NOT a motorcycle simulator, it’s NOT a licensed NBA game, it’s NOT a WW2 shooter, or a billion other things. If you want to be playing one of those things that EVE is NOT, go ahead. It can be a rewarding experience. But I can’t imagine a dumber position than being butthurt that EVE isn’t every game ever.

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The fact that you lack imagination and feel the need to use the term ‘Space-Barbie’ to describe possible WiS content says a lot.

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Not reading that giant wall but if your saying CCP needs to finish walking in station I agree.

That should have released, in full, with all features and dust 514 support back in incarna with no overpriced microtransactions. Eve isn’t a frewmiym mobile game, everything g should be in Game for isk and LP or as a drop from NPCs. No premium currencies.

Ccp got lazy and greedy and only released one Cq and then made a bunch of overpriced items that aren’t even that detailed or interesting. The monocle is more steampunk than anything else and lol at charging 70$ for it. Ccp should have fired everything single person on that team, apologized and refunded players and started over and fixed Wis.

This is something games have had and done correctly for years and star citizen us upping the game with legitimate ship boarding and out of ship gameplay which is an essential part of the mmorpg experience.

Eve has always been lacking a meaningful quest system and out of ship experience. Quests with interesting stories, varied gameplay, unique npc characters, cutscenes and voice acting. The closest wrve gotten is the awful new tutorial with the robotic text to speech voice acting. Ccp is dragging behind the curb and it’s showing. Especially when CCP has spent years advertising characters walking around in capital ships and backstabbing and sneaking around in third person to do orbital strikes and stuff and that other trailer a while back with the insertion ships unloading troops to fight in ship interiors during fleet battles. Ccp knows that alot of people want that and i guess it’s up to star citizen to deliver it.

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Not defending him but what’s wrong with the term space Barbie, would it not indeed be fantastic to be forever wrapped in shiny plastic?
I adore the term and personally would love to be anyones silver haired ken doll.

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Because hateful anti-wis trolls use that term in a derogatory manner with the intention of demeaning those who would like to see Avatar game play content added to Eve.

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Me being new agree with you a bar or something would be nice.

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It is sad to see people use such demeaning language against people. But real money was used to get apparel so we could have nice looking characters.

I think the walk in station and captains quarters could have been fun. Could have been like a Star Wars cantina. Now with the captains quarters gone I think the apparel just is not worth the price.

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That isn’t the only use for clothes.

If they went and added the usual MMO fare of really revealing clothes, they would become useful kit for cloaky blops hunters. “Stun 50% of neckbearded males in local for 2d4 seconds” is nothing to sneeze at when you’re trying to catch prey before it flies off, and pretty female toons tend not to make all the guys run away screaming. Not until we put “It’s hotdrop o’clooooock!” in local, anyway.

95% of the players in this game are male, so it’s not like this has a really bad chance of working.

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Plus chance of Increasing reaction time by 50% for 10 minutes.
(because of using only one hand)

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And as with all NES content, you could also buy them for Isk. Either from the market or through buying Plex for Isk and exchanging them for AUR.
AUR were also handed out as gifts several times and lots of apparel was seeded directly as gifts or through events.

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Yup, WiS would problably make the biggest eve new born income in history and if there was real content with it they would stay for years (peps like to identify with avatars, funny thing everywhere ccp says about capsuleers but you’re ship all the time not person, capsuleer etc)
Im really not buying that shi… arguments for scrapping wis, instead they waste time and money for things like project legion etc, something that has little chance of succes and even if so for max 2years because of changing game market.

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Success of GTA Online means that sometimes the game can be more than just simply sum of its features. Looks also like the market for that kind of games was there for a long, long time and its not going away.

And I have nothing against having attractive avatars. :wink:

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