skye orionis
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Posted - 2009.11.09 17:06:00 -
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I posted this thread a while back about using the WIS engine for missions as a halfway step towards a full ambulation engine, the logic being that walking around these mission spaces would put pilots in a space suit, so there'd be no need for full on character customization, and no need to interact with other players initially.
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1085007
Quote: Ambulation is one of those features that stirs up a lot of emotion among players, sure, we'd all like it if (a) we could still use the point and click station interface and (b) CCP would fix other bugs first and not waste dev time on simething that doesn't affect gameplay in the grand scheme of things.
Walking in stations doesn't really add much to the game, I mean the demos we've seen are pretty, but relatively pointless. Walking in stations adds to the RP part of MMORPG, but that's just an adjective, it's the 'G' part that most people really want to see developed.
So, my proposal is that CCP should seriously look at ambulation as a component of missions and exploration. To get certain rewards in some sites you have to don a spacesuit, get out your ship and walk around that archaeology site.
It was pointed out that if the avatar is wearing a space suit then that immediately removes the need to develop a whole body character model, you can just stick your existing character head inside the helmet of the appropriate <male|female> <amarrian|caldari|gallentean|minmatar> standard issue EVA suit.
Now the actual tasks will be relatively simple things like 'fly to abandoned station x, kill the rats guarding it, then dock with the station and find the data chip' '..... dock with station and meet our contact, he doesn't trust comms and wants to meet with you directly' '..... explore archaeology site and photograph as many ancient heiroglyps as possible before your air runs out' 'your codebreaker can't hack this next gate, I need a direct connection to the mainframe, you're going to have to go inside that station and hack in manually.'
You don't need anything directly hazardous to the avatar so no need to develop any avatar combat code. I would suggest having some sort of time limit where the player will be punished if they exceed it.
Now, you can even go so far as to add new tech components that are only available from exploring sites on foot. Now, I hear you ask, why does the all powerful capsuleer do this, why not hire some lackeys to the the dirty work. Storyline demands some sort of justification and I was thinking, perhaps these ancient archaeology sites were created by a race that has a deep fear of computers and cover the sites with a dampening field that cause drones to break down and most electronics to become non functional. Maybe, these sites are actually special containers created by a race that have abandoned technology and sealed all their most powerful gizmos away in these locations. Your space suit life support is maybe marginally affected giving you only a few minutes to rush around on the end of a tether until you have to return, exceed this time and your ship winches you back.
There's a perception that CCP is developing ambulation primarily for other project and that it's really being shoehorned into eve as a test bed. Well this proposal has a lot of advantages for everyone involved
1) it reduces the technical requirements for developing ambulation (existing heads, limited number of bodies) 2) It gives ambulation a purpose within the greater eve universe 3) It gets tested with a much smaller subset of the user base, so ambulation bugs can be tracked down before unleashing WIS to the masses.
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