It’s been a while since this has come up. I would like to explore some things that we could do with it to make it more than just walking.
What I imagine is that in every station there will be areas designated for residence and for business use including an area for all of the corporate offices, with bigger stations having more space for all of it. Players will have the potential to rent one or more modules in either area in any given station from its owner. As a station fills the price of each goes up from being originally affordable to have an apartment and even business area to eventually getting very pricey as demand overtakes supply.
Each section should be a decent-sized space in which you could have a shop advertising the catalogue of products you have available for trade, and options for other amenities such as gambling services where you play fun card or dice games against other players, with the potential selection from different types of music as well as control of lighting and other furniture to create whatever atmosphere you want. Also NPCs which could include exotic dancers, security guards, pets, etc.
They could also even implement a combat system and allow us to wear armor and shoot each other while in Stations, although if you do it as random murder then generally the station-owner’s OP security NPCs will come and basically concord you after. You could hire security npcs to follow you around in the station as well for your protection, or to keep the peace in your business-area.
There should also be some standard NPC businesses available. Every station should have an NPC casino, pub, etc., but in populated stations it should all be overtaken by the ones the players design naturally.
Now of course it should still be possible to generally interact with all of the station services etc. as we currently do. For a player of current EVE, everything new should be optional but fun and promote socialization. Players should be able to buy dance sequences and emotes, including some which are done with partners or groups. Some more friendly and fun, others more romantic or intimate - perhaps even kinda dirty like grinding lol. To prevent people getting too weird there should probably be a thing where if someone starts doing erotic dances on you without consent within your personal zone of space you have the ability to call Station Security to have them shot.
I want to see what emerges in Jita, Amarr, and other trade hubs as well as in random stations everywhere across the galaxy. Give us multiple games of chance and there will be gambling in both casino-type places as well as in seedy pirate taverns. Let us have music and dancing and there will be popular places for that. Let us drink and let it make us drunk if we drink a lot.
There are already some people who live in Jita or in other trade hubs now. Some who play mostly in stations. But it’s just a spreadsheet game there currently. The point of station-walking is mostly just roleplay. But it can be monetized through rent (potentially a good ISK sink) and in general if they give us the tools to partake in different activities and shape the environment of stations as a sandbox where we can customize our home and our business areas too (which can both be monetized and unlock options for more music and different modules for your business or home sold for PLEX). It can be another thing to spend both ISK and PLEX on.
I think this could actually be something which causes EVE to grow significantly again if they do it and give us the freedom to shape the stations we live in. It will massively add to EVE’s immersion as a Roleplaying Game. It is a significant investment in development but at this point the game itself isn’t really hurting for big new features it does everything it does well and there’s tons of stuff they’ve added since 2003. This would basically another game, a mini-game within EVE which would potentially allow massive growth of the whole by tapping into new audiences as they market it as a new expansion of EVE’s sandbox gameplay.
I think this is the main thing preventing EVE from feeling “immersive” from a roleplaying perspective. There is too much detachment from our characters. I think if they do this, it will make it really feel like living in another world, and one which we can shape even individually. Small apartments and businesses should be relatively cheap, with bigger ones costing more. Newbros should be able to get a small apartment with basic amenities in relatively quiet stations outside of tradehubs affordably, something like 5 mill or 10 mill per month being pretty easy to find for someone looking. The first apartment could even be free in any hisec station which has available housing so that any time you don’t have any apartment, you can always get a free one.
Smaller stations should have hundreds of apartments and dozens or up to a hundred businesses. Some could go into the thousands of apartments with a few tiers of sizes available, and hundreds of business locations. Many of these in less populated space will not be full and will be affordable to get a big business when it’s unsettled by players. But in places like Jita and Amarr there will be bigger demand in the centre of the business area, as well as for bigger apartments.
In any station you visit you could have a list of the NPC and player-owned businesses which could show their name as well how many people are in them currently so you could see where you might be likely to find people looking to gamble, socialize, or trade.
Anyway I give the floor to you guys: What would you like to see as features surrounding station-walking, if you’d like to see it at all?