For years I've been trying to make Eve Gooder. I've written thousands of words in an attempt, often a humorous, tongue-firmly-in-cheek attempt, to suggest ways in which Eve could be much Gooder. Most of these ideas are what people call 'thought-starters' which are used to white board concepts for open discussion. Yes, I work in advertising.
My friend Johnny over on Fragmonkeys posted about cleaning up the Corporation database, which is an idea I posted about back in 2011 as part of the Gooder Eve series. Which got me thinking about where some of those ideas stand in light of recent CCP developments. So let's take a walk back thru history and see how the Gooder Eve posts stand up today shall we?
Gooder Eve: Time to Clean the Database
Let's start with that one. CCP recently did a good job of cleaning out some old character names that haven't been used. And I continue to believe the same needs to be done with Corporations. Johnny is right, too often a great idea for a name is already taken. I get asked a lot to help name things in Eve and I'm always frustrated by how many times the name already exists. Usually by a one-man Corporation that hasn't been active in a long, long time. Stay Frosty is a great example. We had to add a dot to the end in order to use it! Time to clean house.
Gooder Eve: Tactical Bookmarks (DONE!)
This one is done. Not only that, but CCP did me one better and incorporated bookmarks right in space. Nicely done.
Gooder Eve: Battle POS
This is actually several posts about transforming the POS and its capabilities. I remain hopeful that some utility will be injected into POS structures down the road. And while they may not turn out to be Battle POS, the idea here is to take a clean look at what they are and how they work. As a thought-starter I think the ideas still hold up.
Gooder Eve: Cap Buster
Another one that has several posts behind it, but the general idea is of a ship or module that essentially "banzai's" Cap Ships. As a solo and small gang guy the idea is extremely biased and I make no apologies for that. I think the "Array" idea is a lot of fun. This one will probably never ever happen. But I can dream.
Gooder Eve: Skill Smarts (DONE!)
Again, CCP does me one better by not only incorporating intelligence into the Skill train, but expanding functionality and allowing us to add years worth of skills into the list. Well done CCP! I was trying to be realistic in my expectations.
Gooder Eve: Majestic Time (DONE!)
Granted, it is a bit of a stretch for me to take credit for this one, but I'm going to anyway. The essential argument here was to make New Eden bigger by slowing it down a little, which is exactly what Jump Fatigue has done. I didn't suggest Jump Fatigue, but the results are the same, so there.
Gooder Eve: Harvester Class
This one may never happen. But that doesn't mean the general idea isn't worthy of consideration. The idea is simple, this is the future and we have a huge source of energy in every system that we do nothing with, the Star. Would be interesting to find a way to incorporate Stars into Eve.
Gooder Eve: Gate Jammer
A module or ship or device that momentarily disables a Gate. I have a feeling that once we start building our own Gates that something like this may be coming.
Gooder Eve: Module Based ECM
I love the idea of ECM affecting module classes. Missile ECM turns off Missiles, Propulsion ECM turns off Propulsion, etc. This may never happen, but I think it is a much better way of using ECM than the current, "you are screwed" way.
Gooder Eve: Universal Standings
This one is a bit crazy I admit. I'm not even sure I like it. But thinking about standings is important since they are a crazy jumble of messed up right now.
Gooder Eve: Counter Measures
I love the general concept. This was written in 2010 and Eve has come a long way since then, but we remain essentially trapped by the same PvP constraints we always have been. Funny, for a PvP based game, not a lot of thought gets mentioned about actual PvP in the game. Isn't that weird?
Gooder Eve: The Combat Tractor Beam (SORTA!)
This kinda happened, didn't it? We do have Mobile Tractor Beam thingies. I'll take some credit for it thank you.
Gooder Eve: Maker's Mark
I still like the idea of ship history. This has been brought up after this post by other people time and time again, but essentially the idea is a running history of the ship you are flying. Who made it, when, and whatnot.
Gooder Eve: NPC Corps
This one still needs to happen! We should be able to show/hide the NPC Corps from our Corp history! Easy fix that would clean things up a lot for us players. Make this happen.
I skipped a few in this round-up. Feel free to use the Search function to find the rest if you are interested.
So what are your thoughts about these ideas?