so what's next?

Comments

• imasig Member Posts: 149

  May 2004

  Plain and simple EVE was designed to be heavily focused towards PVP.  If you get involved with PVP you'll be pleasantly surprised how little maxing out your skills matters and how your teamwork with other players does.  No matter how good your skills are and how many ships you can fly or items you can use it doesn't matter because your limited to what you can use by the amount of items you can fit on your ship.  I've tried very hard to find the perfect all around setup for a ship that lets you do anything.  What I've found is it's not possible and what you have to do is equip your ship for certain situations and then have your friends equip their ships in a way that compliments yours.  So you can see there can be a great deal of iteraction and coordination between other players.  Get in a group and go PVPing, you don't have to be uber to do it.  If you can use a warp scrambler (less than 1 day of training) then you can be useful.  I have never got a rush from a game like PVP in EVE.  Blow up a battleship and you'll know what I mean.

  To answer a few of your questions:

  can i be a spy?

  Oh yes and you will be hated for it.  You can work for one corporation or alliance and act like you want to work for an enemy corporation or alliance.  If you're witty they'll let you join the corp and alliance.  Then you can relay information back the corp you'll really working for.  And if you're really cold hearted you can rape the corp hangers of all the items you have access to before you leave. 

  can i be an assassin?

  Yes.  You can hunt both good or bad players depending on which side of the fence you want to be on.  You are limited where you can attack people in empire space but in 0.0 anything goes.  It's difficult many times to actually succeed at assinating someone if they are expecting you.  They usually have friends around or are ready for battle themselves and then it's a chess match. It's best to catch someone off guard if you want to assinate them.  (i.e. catch them mining, undocking from a station in 0.0 space.

  can i board and steal other people's ships?

  Yep.  It's not as simple as just flying up and click board though.  You have to convince them to unboard their own ship.  Why would anyone do that?  If they're convinced they're going to get blown up you can park their ship in a station until they pay a set price to get it back.  (Kinda like getting your car towed in real life.)  You can make money that way or just be an ass and steal the ship.

  will i ever be able to change the layout and spes of my ship?

  You wont be able to add an extra slot to your ship or anything as far as I know.  They might change that in a patch.  But you can train other races ships so there is probably one that has the setup you need.  As far as the specs you do have skills that alter the specs of the ship.  (i.e. each shield management level increases base shields 5%.)

  will i ever be able to have a bad rating with concord and fly right past them without them noticing because i've disguised my identity?

  Not really.  There are different levels of bad ratings and concord will ignore you to a certain point depending on the security rating of a system.  If you have -2.5 or below you're banned from .9 and 1.0 systems.  If you have below -5.0 you're banned from all empire space .5 and above.  You can always attempt to raise your rating back up...but it's a pain.  This could all change in a patch though.  Eve has been great about adding content.  Next big patch has a code name of Shiva.  Get on the website and see some of the new features being added to it.

  will my ship ever be able to change colours?

  God I wish.  Hopefully that will be a patch too.  It doesn't seem all that difficult for CCP to add.
• imasig Member Posts: 149

  May 2004

  You also might want to check out this site.

  http://m0o.org.uk/

  That is the URL for the pirate corp moo.  They've recorded many of their big battles so you can get a good idea of the amount of coordination PVP takes.
• FungKoo Member Posts: 17

  May 2004

  hi,

  Thanks for responding to me.  I was worried I was going to get flamed by some ignorant hardcore fan. It's good to know that these things are possible. I think I'm going to give Eve a try for at least a couple months.

  I do really hope they address some cosmetic issues in the game though. The graphics are fantastic, but I really want to be able to differentiate my ship from everyone elses, using either colour and specific marking, or even be able to generate an entirely new ship. My dream sci-fi online game would allow players to develop ship/station construction skills and come up with new designs on their own that the parent game company would (dis)approve and add to the game.

  As a tactic, being able to add hardpoints or change certain slots on your ship could add an amazingly cool dimension to the game. I'm thinking specifically like loading a shuttle up with an emp canon and sending those speedy little guys into the fry your enemies shields. Clearly the interceptor could serve this function, but frankly, the shuttle (the Caldari one, anyway) looks faaaarrr cooler than the interceptors. A simple ratio feature of power vs. hardpoints could allow that to happen - so a guy with a ship alteration skill could sacrifice certain ship features to enhance others. Targetting computers would also be a cool addition to ships, ala Privateer.

  Oh well, before I rant, I go.

   

  Thanks again

  ___________________________
  Fung Koo :: President du Canada
  ---+---
  "i want a god who stays dead, not plays dead.
  i, even i, can play dead."

  ___________________________
  Fung Koo :: President du Canada
  ---+---
  "i want a god who stays dead, not plays dead.
  i, even i, can play dead."
• imasig Member Posts: 149

  May 2004

  
  FungKoo,
  The concept of creating your own items is somewhat in the game already. This comes from doing agent missions for certain research companies. The more agent missions you do and succeed at then the chances of you getting a unique item increases. If you do enough agent missions you get put in a lottery to recieve a blueprint for an item whenever it is first released into the game. If you get one of those blueprints then you literally are the first one of the first one to release an item into the game. I know it's not the same as designing your own ship, but you still get the feeling of introducing a new item into the game. Not to mention it will make you billions. Don't qoute me to the way the agent missions work as far as the lottery. I don't do agent missions myself...too much grind for me. But that is close to how it works.
  The reason you can't add hard points is because it would through the game out of balance a little bit. CCP doesn't want one ship to be able to wipe out an entire army. You're idea of reducing the power for hardpoints is interesting though. The shuttle hardpoint idea was sorta funny. Really the shuttles are only used for picking up a new ship or moving small items. The shuttle wouldn't have cpu or powergrid to run any modules. However, I would love to see the expression on some ones face the first time they get blown up by a couple of shuttles.
  Oh well, now I'm ranting.
  BTW, there are targeting computers in the game. They increase the targeting speed and range. Maybe we're thinking of different types of targeting computers though.
   
• FungKoo Member Posts: 17

  May 2004

  I think the problem that a lot of game developers have (especially in MMOG's) is that they fail to realize that if they introduce something into the system, then inevitably something to counteract that change will have to occur. For example, if alterations to your ship, such as adding hardpoints or changing the level/number of loading slots for your ship gear, caused other functions to change, you'd still see many people opting to go with the basic layout. If adding one new hi-power slot required sacrificing 2 mid-power or 4 lo-power slots for the change, then you'd have people with strong offensive ships with little to no defence. Or you'd see industry ships with higher numbers of Miner 2's, but decreased cargo space. So it's six and one hald dozen the other, if you set it up that way. And since hi-power slots require more power and often more cpu, then the ratio is still self regulating.

  Similarly, if I wanted to get rid of hi-power slots from my ship, the reverse should also be true. I give up 1 hi-power slot for 2 mid-power or 4 lo-power slots. Then you could have ship designed to do nothing but take punishment. It might seem useless, but the applications still exist. For example, you could get an industrial ship with like 16 lo-power slots (i'm just making up a number here), and have the most enormous cargo space ever. So it would be a great hauler, but it would be slower than anything and easy prey.

  As for the suping up of a shuttle -- I agree, it would be hilarious I think if there was a skill like "Ship Modification" that regulated the above example, there should be a bonus when you train that skill to level 5 that allows you to add 1 hi-power, 2 mid-power, or 4 lo-power points to any ship. Level 4 you could add 1 mid-power or 2 lo-power, level 3 add 1 lo-power, level 2 increased power grid or something, etc... But never all of them, you could do it only once to one ship. And the modifcation itself would take like 3 weeks real time. Then you could have a shuttle with larger cargo-space, but slower speed, or a shuttle with some shields for couriering through dangerous areas but would have less power for warping, or an emp turret for quick attacks on larger, slower vessels but sacrificed maneuverability.

  The great thing about MMOG's is that there is usually constant support from the developers, so any serious cheats or exploits could be fixed or tweaked as they happen.

  I also think that MMOG developers need to use the Mod community that games like Quake fostered. These people often have great ideas for things that can be built into the game, like new ships or game features. Making a viable avenue for them to add to the game just fosters a broader community for the game, and a more dynamic universe. The blueprint idea is cool, but you basically just get handed a design. I'd rather be able to play the game until I have trained an extremely long and slow to develop "Ship Building" skill that when at level 4 or 5 would mean I could introduce an entirely new design concept for a ship into the game. Clearly the developers would have to pass on a new design, definately considering things like adherence to culture and style for the species of the designer, as well as overall balance. Of course, the game could end up with literally tens of thousands of ship designs, which has it's own set of problems... But I still think some kind of feature like that would make the game and it's community stronger.

  At the very least, I want to be able to make my damn Condor Interceptor ship appear symmetrical and cool like a bigger version of the shuttle instead of the off-kilter foolish looking thing that it is. I dig the symmetry And I want it to be black with red streaks that look like black-work tattoos. Sa-weeeeeet.

  (IG - Braeden)

  ___________________________
  Fung Koo :: President du Canada
  ---+---
  "i want a god who stays dead, not plays dead.
  i, even i, can play dead."

  ___________________________
  Fung Koo :: President du Canada
  ---+---
  "i want a god who stays dead, not plays dead.
  i, even i, can play dead."