The Variant Transponder

 

This week I had one of the most boring days I've ever had in Eve Online. Nothing happened. No fights. No engagements. Everyone just turtled up or ran away. And while I am used to that happening when I fly around, that specific day it was unusually bad. It happens and when it does I'll try anything I can to try and drum up some content. But the Summer Doldrums are here and there is really nothing you can do except suffer through them. And make up weird shit.

Way back in 2010 I imagined a high-slot module called the "Chameleon Module" that would allow ships to visually alter their appearance to fool predators. Those were the halcyon days of a series of insane ideas I wrote called "Gooder Eve" and while many of those concepts were wild - a surprising number of them have been implemented over the years in one form or another. While we don't have a Chameleon Module, we could have a Modulated Ship Transponder that hides fleets from d-scan. But we don't have that either, even though Google tried to tell me we did this morning.

But what I imagine is something a little more specific and targeted at a single ship. What if T2 variants could momentarily appear on d-scan as their T1 cousins while a module is active? And yes, I totally 100% freely admit to making up things to encourage more people to engage me. So, in this case, a Wolf would appear as a Rifter on d-scan. This concept really illuminates the issues regarding coming up with new ideas for Eve Online. We can all sit around and make up stuff that sounds cool. But is it really a good idea?

To be honest, probably not. We don't really need more trickery in Eve. What we do need is more conflict drivers to push engagement across the board. It is far to easy right now to turtle up and hoard your own gold coins in your own little corners of space. Building wealth is fine, but to what ends? Eve survives as an engagement engine and I think we can all agree that engagement is hurting. My people are challenged every single day to create content and it is only getting more and more difficult to do. 

These issues will not be solved by a new module, or an updated UI. Instead of adding more to Eve Online to satisfy everyone, maybe we need to consider taking some things away. And I know saying that opens up a can of worms. Don't touch my corner of Eve! And I certainly do not want to take anyone's game away from them. I don't. And I am not advocating for that.

In comics when a universe has gotten too big and complicated a Secret War or Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover happens and the entire universe gets re-set. Some heroes survive and others do not. the MCU is about to do this with Avengers Secret Wars and reset the entire film franchise in a year or two. So maybe something like that needs to happen to Eve? But limited to actual space. Eve Online has almost doubled in size since it started back in 2003 - Pochven, Wormholes, and other new areas of space. All good. But what if there were a Crisis that threatened to eliminate 25% of known space? Would Eve be better if we were squeezed together a little more?

This is not a post about solutions. This is just a post asking questions. I don't have any solutions and I am not suggesting that we eliminate 25% of New Eden. But I do think that we should consider something big to shake things up. Two decades is a long time and maybe New Eden needs a nice kick in the ass.

What that would be exactly... I honestly don't know.