Eder
Mr. Standoff
I agree wholeheartedly with LOAF's ideas. I think that's the space MMOG that most WC fans would appreciate right there.
I've played a 14 day trial of EVE online earlier this year and I was really impressed by it - except for the fact that the interface sucks (no matter what you have heard, the game isn't actually as complex as people make it sound - it's just hidden behind the worst interface ever), and that you can never get out of your ship (even if it's just cosmetic as it was in Freelancer, where you didn't really get to walk around, you just clicked and watched your character walk from one menu to the next). In EVE, you only have a custom built 2D pic of your avatar that shows up when people talk to you
A few things that EVE does pretty:
- Each races has unique ships, and you can definitely tell the styles apart. Sadly, the only visual upgrades to your ships are weapons... no nose art, no paint schemes, no other upgrades that are visible externally.
- There's a lot of different station models for each race, and a lot of different space effects, meaning you are usually impressed when you visit a new place, and after a few trips you will recognize where you are visually. Sadly, there's only a few different station interiors, and most of the space phenomena are merely cosmetic (unlike in Freelancer, where the different space phenomena had actual effects).
- You can do pretty much anything. You can put bounties on people, you can hire people to transport things for you, you can manufacture ships, you can kill people to take their cargo, you can play the market (it's not one global fixed price market, but rather an open market that has specific stocks of items and buy/sell orders placed by both players and NPCs in each station, like Privateer on steroids). However, the NPC missions are repetitive because almost all of them are randomly generated variations of the same half dozen missions. A lot of "almost" random multi-mission small story arcs would be better, IMHO.
- Death, crime, and punishment are handled pretty well. Anyone can attack anyone anywhere, but doing so in "policed" space results in the police killing anyone that opens fire on a neutral target. The police's effectiveness varies depending on how secure the system you are in is. There's also unpoliced space, where anything goes. If someone steals from a cargo container you left in space, you can kill that person for it, even in policed space, for a set amount of time. Comitting crimes makes the person's record increasingly negative, and at some point they start being shot on sight whenever they try to enter a policed system, and then they have to live in unpoliced space. When your ship is destroyed, you are in an escape pod, which can also be destroyed. The police will never destroy your pod, though, and when a played does destroy it, you spawn at your nearest clone. You lose your ship, equipment, cargo, and have to pay for a new clone when this happens. The restult of all this is that unless you're a very attractive looking target, nobody will attack you in secure space, because it'd be a suicide run. Also, the most dangerous pirates can't even *get* into secure space to begin with. So you get to choose between safety and risk, and if you choose risk you lose everything except your character and his bank account. Maybe the player-killers should have restricted access to clones, but I guess MMOG players just don't want to lose the characters they built over years, even if they play as player-killing jerks who deserve to.
I've played a 14 day trial of EVE online earlier this year and I was really impressed by it - except for the fact that the interface sucks (no matter what you have heard, the game isn't actually as complex as people make it sound - it's just hidden behind the worst interface ever), and that you can never get out of your ship (even if it's just cosmetic as it was in Freelancer, where you didn't really get to walk around, you just clicked and watched your character walk from one menu to the next). In EVE, you only have a custom built 2D pic of your avatar that shows up when people talk to you
A few things that EVE does pretty:
- Each races has unique ships, and you can definitely tell the styles apart. Sadly, the only visual upgrades to your ships are weapons... no nose art, no paint schemes, no other upgrades that are visible externally.
- There's a lot of different station models for each race, and a lot of different space effects, meaning you are usually impressed when you visit a new place, and after a few trips you will recognize where you are visually. Sadly, there's only a few different station interiors, and most of the space phenomena are merely cosmetic (unlike in Freelancer, where the different space phenomena had actual effects).
- You can do pretty much anything. You can put bounties on people, you can hire people to transport things for you, you can manufacture ships, you can kill people to take their cargo, you can play the market (it's not one global fixed price market, but rather an open market that has specific stocks of items and buy/sell orders placed by both players and NPCs in each station, like Privateer on steroids). However, the NPC missions are repetitive because almost all of them are randomly generated variations of the same half dozen missions. A lot of "almost" random multi-mission small story arcs would be better, IMHO.
- Death, crime, and punishment are handled pretty well. Anyone can attack anyone anywhere, but doing so in "policed" space results in the police killing anyone that opens fire on a neutral target. The police's effectiveness varies depending on how secure the system you are in is. There's also unpoliced space, where anything goes. If someone steals from a cargo container you left in space, you can kill that person for it, even in policed space, for a set amount of time. Comitting crimes makes the person's record increasingly negative, and at some point they start being shot on sight whenever they try to enter a policed system, and then they have to live in unpoliced space. When your ship is destroyed, you are in an escape pod, which can also be destroyed. The police will never destroy your pod, though, and when a played does destroy it, you spawn at your nearest clone. You lose your ship, equipment, cargo, and have to pay for a new clone when this happens. The restult of all this is that unless you're a very attractive looking target, nobody will attack you in secure space, because it'd be a suicide run. Also, the most dangerous pirates can't even *get* into secure space to begin with. So you get to choose between safety and risk, and if you choose risk you lose everything except your character and his bank account. Maybe the player-killers should have restricted access to clones, but I guess MMOG players just don't want to lose the characters they built over years, even if they play as player-killing jerks who deserve to.