EVE Blog Banter #8: Signature Characters

OOC:
Welcome to the eighth installment of the EVE Blog Banter , 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!

This month's topic comes to us from me, Ga'len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility. He asks: "What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a 'nerf this, boost my game play' post like we see on the EVE forums."

Well I guess there exists a universe of ideas already that all do have their positive and negative sides. Among others it would be really nice to see more of planets, to perhaps see more about our crews (who they are, if they are happy or if they are slaves, if they could be freed – if slaves – or cared for better I am sure the performance of the ship would increase as well). There are ideas about planetary rings, and comets as well ideas about fleet maneuvers. All of those look very promising and sound quite nice! My addition to these cool thoughts would be a better integration of the rich background story into the game itself. One way to do that would perhaps be to create missions where it might be possible to meet EVE's signature characters.

I spelled out the idea already on the EVE-O forums in this thread:

First of all I was quite happy to read the new rediscovered scrolls dev blog and am really looking forward to see more epic mission arcs. In regard to players interacting stronger with the core storyline elements of the EVE universe I guess a highlight of some such arc might surely be the meeting of an EVE signature character (like as a mission "agent"). Examples might be:

For an Amarr character e.g. it surely would be epic to be able bring a report on sleeper activity to Jamyl Sarum herself.

For a Minmatar it might be as epic to step onto an Eldar Titan and get a nod from one of the legendary elders e.g. for helping in the survival of a forgotten Minmatar tribe.

A Caldari might be honored to get an interview with a megacorp CEO upon getting a report from Heth to deliver (with the choice of either helping the CEO or Heth).

A Gallente would surely be honored to get a letter from his President for a secretive meeting with and advisor who might propose a secretive mission.

And so on and so forth. Even if this interaction is more like PC-agent interaction (well cut-scence would also be HUGE but probably much more time-intensive to implement) I guess such an interaction with the EVE signature characters would help a lot immersing players in the interesting backstory of the universe they are playing in.