The whole intel gathering/cloacking/espionage framework, first of all. I’m long time fan of such kind of activities and specializations, and find its implementation in Eve extremely lackluster. Except for being a social engineer kind of spy, you have almost zero other tools and mechanics to play as one. I’ve submitted my suggestions on how to reform local and intel gathering/spying activities here and here, if somebody may be interested to review.
In addition to this, cloacking must also be re-designed in such way it won’t anymore grant a total invulnerability, there must be a constant competition of skill and motivation between cloacked spying vessel and those who want to hunt it down, so it won’t ever be safe by sitting in one place for a while. New kind of probes allowing to scan down sitting still cloacking ships, some module allowing to get a hint where on your grid cloacker may be, a certain locations on the solar system map where you can hide and become immune to some of those new tools while cloacking - but at the price that your hunters may easily guess you are there, and just come to your grid, using more precise and hard to avoid tools, while blocking all exits from there (as you can’t leave it except from moving through one of several jump gates, and you get a constantly updated capsuleer timer while you stay there, so you can’t just log off either) etc etc etc The main idea is that it must become an active gameplay, not a retarded contest of who will bore who to death first by afking while cloacked/docked.
Then, I would do something with PvE and exploration of space in particular. Imo the later should be one of the core aspects of space game at any time. And after initial addition of wh space, there is little of progression here, and there is little to explore in wh, those systems ended up as another (though much more interesting) space to grind for resources and money. No thrilling discoveries there, no hidden secrets - well, at least if you play as a lone space pioneer, or a small group of such, without heavy machinery to take out sleepers and drifters. I know that CCP’s design philosophy reads “no theme park gameplay, PvP brings all variety and excitement instead”, but I can’t see this approach working this well at all. And somebody still have to do PvE, otherwise who’ll be buying PLEXes to provide isks for those who hate PvE? There is no reason for those PvE guys to suffer boring, simplistic, chore-like activities for hours.
Regarding exploration, I had some thoughts of even more hardcore, deep space locations accessible from deepest wh space, which are dynamically re-generated on regular basis (so they will stay challenging and interesting no matter how much time you’ll go there) and provide a lot of challenges in form of complex puzzles and navigational activities (i.e., no constant monotonous clicking at red icons in your overview, and no simplistic boring puzzles like in current exploration; instead you need to learn the “landscape” of both solar system and a specific exploration site in it, find a safe path through a dangerous location full with deadly traps and unpleasant surprises - still with possibilities of a fellow capsuleer waiting for you around some corner). With much more complex scanning activities, forcing you to account for a bunch of random, changing environmental factors. I.e., the whole experience must rotate around puzzle-solving, decision making and precise, tactical navigation of your ship in a dangerous environment, not around typical boring PvE combat activities. A mostly exploration-oriented activities for those who prefer more thoughtful gameplay. No mindless needless clicking following the same patterns again and again.
An interesting twist tied to those spaces: different kinds of puzzles you’ll find there will reward you with items that can be used to influence lore of the game, revealing some secrets from the past. After enough of such items are gathered, CCP issues another lore article, or starts an event, which is tied to those discoveries, perhaps even giving capsuleers who were most active in gathering them the lead roles in this event and lore. For example, if several competing groups of explorers have assembled several different sets of “lore puzzle pieces”, contradicting each other, there may be an event built around this confrontation, with other capsuleers helping in it, until a certain “view” will win. So players will be defining lore of the game and direction plot is moving, to a certain extent.
Another thing tied to this new exploration space is that materials found there will be used in new kind of research activities:
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An overall research of Eve’s world technologies. Certain pieces of data found in those spaces are analyzed and “research puzzle pieces” are produced from them. Those pieces can be used to fill a certain grid, and it’s done in competitive way, as other researches try to fill the same grid as well (so you can trade those pieces, or steal them, or even share them in an altruistic gesture to speed up developing of new technologies). A group(s) of researches who get the biggest section of the grid filled is granted “a patent” on next new module/ship addition CCP makes (no matter what it will be, as long it’s something that can be produced by players), which allow them to receive a certain percentage of profits from each produced/sold module/hull of this type for next several years, as sort of “Intellectual Property licensing fees”.
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Production of “customization kits” which can be applied to a basic BPC to produce your custom version of BPC with certain properties of the module changed according to your vision (still extent and freedom of those changes should be governed by some new invention mechanics in such way that the more you change a certain property(s) of a module, the more drawbacks and flaws it adds (some static, some randomly added upon completion, either negative, positive or neutral mostly; the more you make it better in some regards, the higher is the chance it will get some negative random flaw(s), and the more harsh they will be), and more it inadvertently change some other its properties - so there always will be some trade off, like you rise speed boost of your custom MWD module by 20%, but it now burns more capacitor, lowers your shield resists and also slowly overheats even when overheating isn’t enabled) I.e. it basically allows players to create a very small series of their own customized modules and ship hulls from the standard ones.
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Some of those materials will be used in producing new items with main theme of facilitating different navigation activities throughout New Eden (matching the overall vibe of this new space). A thing like wh entrance appearance predictor, which, when used in any system of k-space will set a trigger of sort, notifying you 12 hours in advance when wh leading to system of type you need will appear there. Or boosters/implants lowering jump fatigue effects a bit, and increasing jump range a bit. Or advanced surveillance array allowing you to get a limited intel on situation in a selected system in a certain radius (a more detailed intel than one you can get from statistics on star map). Or some new “system override” boosters, which grant your ship some navigation option you usually need a specific module installed to use, for a very brief moment; like, upon injecting it, you are allowed to conduct a 50km jump as if you were using micro-jump drive, at a cost of all your propulsion modules get severely overheated and will be inactive for some time, once per each such booster injection, with some additional personal side-effects accumulating with each injection.