Elite Feet: Applying Lessons learned from Eve Online and other MMOs in transitioning from ship-centric to pilot-centric.
Now that 2.3 is on the final stretch, we can turn our eyes towards future development. While EliteFeet (ie characters leaving their ships) may or may not be the next feature, it is in the road map. Having been an active Eve Online player through their failed attempt to make a similar transition, I have some thoughts on how Frontier can avoid a similar fate.
TL;DR: A brain dump of ideas of how to make EliteFeet useful and fun, without stepping on existing gamepay.
Types of Features
Broadly, features in any 1st person module will fall into two categories: Gameplay and Social. The goals, gameplay loops, and limitations for these are fundamentally different, so I will comment on them separately.
Gameplay
When Eve Online announced that characters will be able to leave their ships and walk around stations, the player-base reacted with a single question: “Why?” Hardcore players who were heavily into the grind did not want anything that would slow or penalize their mission-grind. The concept of taking an extra 5-10 minutes between missions to walk across the station and talk to their mission giver seemed like it would just be extra work, extra grind with no reason.
While they had a point, I don’t believe that the solution Eve Online eventually settled on – no further development of the feature – was the right way to go.
One possible solution is to accept that hardcore grinders will not want to get out of their ship, and instead target the gameplay for more rare or non-looping gameplay.
Missions:
Mission running has a large potential for 1st person gameplay, but care needs to be taken to avoid disrupting existing grinds too much. Some possibilities include
· Force pilots to meet face-to-face for the first mission for a mission giver, introductions
· Reward pilots with extra influence and reputation for face to face hand-ins, but do not change the existing rewards for commlink hand-ins
· Have special missions, including rank and permit rewards, require face-to-face contact.
Trade:
Big haul trading would likely not have a large amount of face-to-face contact. It doesn’t make sense to penalize traders by requiring them to leave their ship to buy or sell goods. However, rare-good traders, small-haul traders, and smugglers could benefit from an off-ship marketplace, which could include:
· First contact with Black Market. It might make sense to require commanders to make face to face contact with a black market buyer the first time they want to sell at that station. Further contact could be via comlink
· Out-of-place rare goods. Small-haul traders might find a few bottles of lavian brandy to buy in Sol or some other system. While the profit may be smaller than a full rare-good run, it would still be good to pick it up and take it farther for a tidy profit.
· Specialized buyers. Merchants looking to buy small-to-medium lots of goods at better-than-market prices.
Exploration
Normal Exploration gameplay doesn’t have a lot of station-side interaction of any kind. There are plenty of possibilities for cool mystery stuff off-station, but I’ll leave that out-of-scope of this post.
· Story: I expect this is where Frontier already has big plans for station-side interactions. There are tons of possibilities for moving the story forward through face-to-face interactions.
Other
· Engineers: Since engineer interactions aren’t really grinded (ground?) it might make sense to make them face to face for pure coolness.
· PowerPlay: I haven’t played this much, but “bonus” interactions similar to missions might be beneficial
· Shipyard. Buying and selling ships potentially could benefit from 1st person. Moving from ship to ship, though, might be too much.
Social interactions
A common theme in 1st person MMOs is the concept of a tavern, inn, bar, or other social space. These have had mixed success, and often end up being part of the scenery rather than a destination.
Part of the problem with social spaces in a 1st person MMO is that while it is tempting to re-create real world social spaces such as bars and night-clubs, the reasons people gather in such spaces in real life –namely eating and drinking – don’t apply in MMOs. Instead, developers should look at the reasons people may want to gather, and what they’d like to be doing while gathered.
Why would I go to a bar?
· The main reason to go to a bar I think, is to wait. Perhaps the last member of your wing is flying from 10 jumps away. Perhaps you’re waiting for the mission board to update. Perhaps you are waiting for your ship or module to be delivered. Larger groups might wait at the bar while everyone arrives. Why wait in your ship when you could wait in a social space? Obviously, some will prefer to wait in their ship, but enough, I think, would want to get together
· A secondary reason might be for a meeting. It might be “cool” to meet in a tavern instead of getting on voice chat. This would especially be true if tools for presentations were available in social spaces.
What does it need to have?
In order to be a part of the game, social areas need to have a real-time connection with the game itself. This means players must feel that they are actually where they are in-game, rather than a chatroom that they linked to from the game. As a result, they should have:
· Windows. Real windows showing the real-time comings and goings are a must for these spaces. The view outside is really what is going to anchor the space to a location in the galaxy.
· Arrival and departure board. Most if not all of these stations will be at spaceports. So a board that lists Pad number, ship name, cmdr name, and ship class for both arrivals and departures updated in real time would give a great connection to the game at large.
· References to station state. Lighting changes, changes to decorations, NPC denizens etc. could reflect the current state. You might even shut it down during outbreaks and civil unrest.
What would I do there?
Activities in social spaces, I think, will likely “break immersion” in some way. The reason for that is that the one social space activity that does transfer over from the real world is the consumption of media. So, I envision a space where
· Some sort of concept of a jukebox. This would be an interface where I can pay credits to add media to a queue that plays for all the people in the space. This could be audio, or it could be video. Frankly, just having a screen that plays Youtube videos would probably be perfect.
· Bulletin boards. Players can leave messages/ads on a board. Different prices for leaving messages for different periods, and for coverage (station, system, 10 ly, 50ly, etc.) Handy for player faction recruiting, and other social gatherings, etc.
· Minigames. Poker for credits, LAN CQC, darts with Coriolis force. Short, fun, and limited to players in the bar.
· Check station services. I should be able to check the mission board from the bar.
Here ends the brain dump. Comments are welcome.
Now that 2.3 is on the final stretch, we can turn our eyes towards future development. While EliteFeet (ie characters leaving their ships) may or may not be the next feature, it is in the road map. Having been an active Eve Online player through their failed attempt to make a similar transition, I have some thoughts on how Frontier can avoid a similar fate.
TL;DR: A brain dump of ideas of how to make EliteFeet useful and fun, without stepping on existing gamepay.
Types of Features
Broadly, features in any 1st person module will fall into two categories: Gameplay and Social. The goals, gameplay loops, and limitations for these are fundamentally different, so I will comment on them separately.
Gameplay
When Eve Online announced that characters will be able to leave their ships and walk around stations, the player-base reacted with a single question: “Why?” Hardcore players who were heavily into the grind did not want anything that would slow or penalize their mission-grind. The concept of taking an extra 5-10 minutes between missions to walk across the station and talk to their mission giver seemed like it would just be extra work, extra grind with no reason.
While they had a point, I don’t believe that the solution Eve Online eventually settled on – no further development of the feature – was the right way to go.
One possible solution is to accept that hardcore grinders will not want to get out of their ship, and instead target the gameplay for more rare or non-looping gameplay.
Missions:
Mission running has a large potential for 1st person gameplay, but care needs to be taken to avoid disrupting existing grinds too much. Some possibilities include
· Force pilots to meet face-to-face for the first mission for a mission giver, introductions
· Reward pilots with extra influence and reputation for face to face hand-ins, but do not change the existing rewards for commlink hand-ins
· Have special missions, including rank and permit rewards, require face-to-face contact.
Trade:
Big haul trading would likely not have a large amount of face-to-face contact. It doesn’t make sense to penalize traders by requiring them to leave their ship to buy or sell goods. However, rare-good traders, small-haul traders, and smugglers could benefit from an off-ship marketplace, which could include:
· First contact with Black Market. It might make sense to require commanders to make face to face contact with a black market buyer the first time they want to sell at that station. Further contact could be via comlink
· Out-of-place rare goods. Small-haul traders might find a few bottles of lavian brandy to buy in Sol or some other system. While the profit may be smaller than a full rare-good run, it would still be good to pick it up and take it farther for a tidy profit.
· Specialized buyers. Merchants looking to buy small-to-medium lots of goods at better-than-market prices.
Exploration
Normal Exploration gameplay doesn’t have a lot of station-side interaction of any kind. There are plenty of possibilities for cool mystery stuff off-station, but I’ll leave that out-of-scope of this post.
· Story: I expect this is where Frontier already has big plans for station-side interactions. There are tons of possibilities for moving the story forward through face-to-face interactions.
Other
· Engineers: Since engineer interactions aren’t really grinded (ground?) it might make sense to make them face to face for pure coolness.
· PowerPlay: I haven’t played this much, but “bonus” interactions similar to missions might be beneficial
· Shipyard. Buying and selling ships potentially could benefit from 1st person. Moving from ship to ship, though, might be too much.
Social interactions
A common theme in 1st person MMOs is the concept of a tavern, inn, bar, or other social space. These have had mixed success, and often end up being part of the scenery rather than a destination.
Part of the problem with social spaces in a 1st person MMO is that while it is tempting to re-create real world social spaces such as bars and night-clubs, the reasons people gather in such spaces in real life –namely eating and drinking – don’t apply in MMOs. Instead, developers should look at the reasons people may want to gather, and what they’d like to be doing while gathered.
Why would I go to a bar?
· The main reason to go to a bar I think, is to wait. Perhaps the last member of your wing is flying from 10 jumps away. Perhaps you’re waiting for the mission board to update. Perhaps you are waiting for your ship or module to be delivered. Larger groups might wait at the bar while everyone arrives. Why wait in your ship when you could wait in a social space? Obviously, some will prefer to wait in their ship, but enough, I think, would want to get together
· A secondary reason might be for a meeting. It might be “cool” to meet in a tavern instead of getting on voice chat. This would especially be true if tools for presentations were available in social spaces.
What does it need to have?
In order to be a part of the game, social areas need to have a real-time connection with the game itself. This means players must feel that they are actually where they are in-game, rather than a chatroom that they linked to from the game. As a result, they should have:
· Windows. Real windows showing the real-time comings and goings are a must for these spaces. The view outside is really what is going to anchor the space to a location in the galaxy.
· Arrival and departure board. Most if not all of these stations will be at spaceports. So a board that lists Pad number, ship name, cmdr name, and ship class for both arrivals and departures updated in real time would give a great connection to the game at large.
· References to station state. Lighting changes, changes to decorations, NPC denizens etc. could reflect the current state. You might even shut it down during outbreaks and civil unrest.
What would I do there?
Activities in social spaces, I think, will likely “break immersion” in some way. The reason for that is that the one social space activity that does transfer over from the real world is the consumption of media. So, I envision a space where
· Some sort of concept of a jukebox. This would be an interface where I can pay credits to add media to a queue that plays for all the people in the space. This could be audio, or it could be video. Frankly, just having a screen that plays Youtube videos would probably be perfect.
· Bulletin boards. Players can leave messages/ads on a board. Different prices for leaving messages for different periods, and for coverage (station, system, 10 ly, 50ly, etc.) Handy for player faction recruiting, and other social gatherings, etc.
· Minigames. Poker for credits, LAN CQC, darts with Coriolis force. Short, fun, and limited to players in the bar.
· Check station services. I should be able to check the mission board from the bar.
Here ends the brain dump. Comments are welcome.