You’re Fired

Welcome to the ninth installment of the EVE Blog Banter and its first contest, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

“Last month Ga’len asked us which game mechanic we would most like to see added to EVE. This month Keith “WebMandrill” Nielson proposes to reverse the question and ask what may be a controversial question: Which game mechanic would you most like to see removed completely from EVE and why? I can see this getting quite heated so lets keep it civil eh?”

Recently the question was proposed, “which game mechanic would you like to see removed completely from EVE and why?”. It’s part of a blogging competition by CrazyKinux and I figured, much like the British army going into Iraq too soon without full equipment or supplies, i may as well start my amateur blogging career in a full on competition advertised by CCP themselves.

Now it’s counterpart question (the opposite concept of the one in hand) is very easy to answer, i have many items on my EVE wish list such as cosmetically customisable ships, more ship animations (barrel rolls for smaller interceptors etc), voice-overs for NPC ships (such as a voice from a Conchord ship telling you it’s scanning you for contraband) and a missile launcher that shoots rabbits at enemies for massive EM damage. That last one may be a little out of reach but a man can dream can’t he? Still, to answer this question, one has to consider it as carefully as one would consider, “which part of your body would you most like to see removed and why?”  It’s hard basically; hard because EVE works for the most-part and it works because all of its mechanics work well together… for the most part.

So to answer this, i’m going to go through a couple of the mechanics i really don’t want to see gone and then give one or two that bug me quite a bit. So first of all, i don’t think it would be a good idea to see the Wallet system gone, because the Wallet is money and money is power (i’ll be dealing with that in a future blog). Next, the Market would have to stay because you generally can’t do much without a means to acquire in-game items quickly (especially in a game with the pace of EVE, one second you have your lovely proud cruiser, the next you’re paying a pirate 10 mil just to leave your pod alone, *sob*).

Moving on from the regression of painful memories, i’ll just go and summarise right now that the two mechanics mentioned above are staying since they go hand in hand like fish and chips (its a British thing). My next point is the product of a thought that was bugging me for quite some time, the character sheet. Is it an umbrella for many different mechanics or is it one mechanic in itself that can perform multiple roles? If we consider it to be the former, then this next point can be explained a lot easier. Most of the things on there are fine, skill training, attribute mapping, kill list, standings but the one thing I have found literally no use for is the certificate system.

I can’t imagine the certificate system being used for the things CCP envisaged it would be used for, for example, to benchmark your character against the use of a new ship or weapon. If you don’t have the skills, you cant use the weapon, but you don’t need to necessarily have the certificates to be able to use that same object, it’s merely a suggestion, and considering EVE is filled with 300,000 immortal pod pilots with superiority complexes, the power of suggestion is somewhat diminished.

Even though this is the case, the certificate system does somewhat lie in the background, only annoying me when i click on its little tab in the character sheet/item description of an object; it doesn’t make a big faff of the fact it exists so it does gain some redemption there.

Now this article asks the writer to talk about the mechanics to be completely removed, which completely removes a lot of what i could have actually rambled on about, such as, get rid of the auction system and meld it with the Market system, split People and Places apart and make them into their own standalone mechanics for ease of use and stop making Gallentean battleships the visual product of a certain Freudian stage of cognitive development, but the constraints really choke down what, well, anyone could say really because CCP are nice, friendly and no nonsense. If something doesn’t work, it gets changed or canned and even the mechanics that work extremely well are still improved upon with every expansion. Now this is an applaud-able feat since you’re reading the writings of a self-confessed morbid cynic. If CCP can do enough to only give me the certificate system to chew up and spit out then they’re some hardworking chaps.

I think it’s time to summarise. EVE is great, it will always be so, and will always improve, but get rid of the Certificates system. Like the human appendix and Pierce Brosnan for James Bond films, it may have been a good idea at some point, but no’ one is going to die tomorrow without it.

Griff.

List of Participants:

1. Diary of a Space Jockey, Blog Banter: BE GONE!
2. EVE Newb, (EVE) Remove You
3. Miner With Fangs, Blog Banter – It’s the Scotch
4. The Eden Explorer, Blog Banter: The Map! The Map!
5. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, “Beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, mushroom, MUSHROOM!!!”
6. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Kill the Rats
7. Mercspector @ EVE, Scotty
8. EVE’s Weekend Warrior, EVE Blog Banter #9
9. A Merry Life and a Short One, Eve Blog Banter #9: Why Won’t You Die?
10. Into the unknown with gun and camera, Blog Banter – The Hokey Cokey
11. The Flightless Geek, EVE Blog Banter #9: Remove a Game Mechanic
12. Sweet Little Bad Girl, Blog Banter 9: Who is Nibbling at My House?
13. One Man and His Spaceship, Blog Banter 9: What could you do without?
14. Life in Low Sec, EVE Blog Banter #9: Stop Tarnishing My Halo
15. Cle Demaari: Citizen, Blog Banter #9: Training for all my men!
16. A Mule in EVE, He who giveth, also taketh away?
17. Dense Veldspar, Blog Banter 9
18. Morphisat’s Blog, Blog Banter #9 – Randomness Be Gone !
19. Facepalm’s Blog, EVE Blog Banter #9: What a new pilot could do without
20. Memoires of New Eden, You’re Fired
21. Kyle Langdon’s Journeys in EVE, EVE Blog Banter #9 Titans? What’s a Titan?
22. Achernar, The gates! The gates are down!
23. Speed Fairy, EVE Blog Banter #9: Down with Downtime!
24. I am Keith Neilson, EVE Blog Banter #9-F**K Da Police
25. Ripe Lacunae, The UI… Where do I begin… (Eve Blog Banter #9)
26. Clown Punchers, EvE Blogs: What game mechanic would you get rid of?
27. Estel Arador Corp Services, You’ve got mail
28. Epic Slant, Let Mom and Pop Play: EVE Blog Banter #9
29. Deaf Plasma’s EVE Musings, Blog Banter #9 – Removal of Anchoring Delay of POS modules
30. Podded Once Again, Blog Banter #9 – Do we really need to go AFK?
31. Postcards from EVE, 2009.07.02.00.29.06
32. Harbinger Zero, Blog Banter #9 – War Declarations & Sec Status
33. Warp Scrammed, Blog Banter 9 – Never Too Fast
34. Ecaf Ersa (EVE Mag), Can a Tractor Tractor a Can?
35. Thoughts from an Accidental Minmatar Revolutionary, EVE Blog Banter #9 – Aggression timers, WTs and Stargates
36. Mike Azariah, I don’t put much stock in it…
37. More articles as they are posted!

~ by Griffolion on June 30, 2009.