This is my first time participating in the Blog Banter, I look forward to participating in them more in the future.

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 otherEVE 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.”

I’m a newer player so I still have a lot to learn and discover about Eve Online. So far I’ve mostly been involved in mining, mission running, and a few highsec wars. I have a bit more skill points (at least on my miner) than the average new player because I originally started my Eve account a few years ago. I only played about a month or two back then before I got too involved in World of Warcraft to keep up with Eve. Essentially though, I’m still what most would call a “newbie”.

I say this because I know many that participate in this month’s Blog Banter are likely more experienced, longer time players. I still have so much to learn…

Anyways, my suggestion for a new game mechanic would be to implement a system that allows for NPC-based scenarios to be run by CCP. I’ve played many different MMO’s through the years and some of my most memorable experiences came from those games where the game developers participated more in the game by running storylines that the players could participate in. I played Ultima Online back when they actually did things like this and I will never forget those days.

I know that many may be against this, as Eve is specifically designed to be “run by the players”. Imagine though, when the latest expansion released and the wormholes appeared throughout space, how different would it have been if small fleets of NPC “rats” had of jumped into your home system and started attacking the local star bases? Would players have rallied to defend? What if the “rats” had of managed to actually destroy the local Concord defense ships, temporarily changing that highsec system into lowsec? Would pirates have used this as a chance to prey on the locals?

CCP has been working more on the storyline for Eve lately from everything I’ve read, which to me is always a good thing. I’ve been a roleplayer for many years, starting with D&D and even getting into it various MMO’s. I don’t roleplay in Eve but I always enjoy it more when there is a good back-story to the game I’m playing. These “scenarios” would be great to allow the players to get more involved in the Eve universe, more so than just fighting for sovereignty or the various 0.0 dramas I hear about.

Mission running can also get pretty boring fairly quickly. Many missions become the same, repetitive steps and grinding faction standing can get tiresome pretty fast. What if these scenarios allowed you to gain faction standing for participating? Perhaps even new faction rewards could be added in, given to only those who participate in the scenarios?

Eve Online was designed to be a sandbox game, I fully understand that. I’m not asking for these scenarios to be run all the time. Even if it was only with each expansion or with major change or event in the game, I think it would seriously add more to the game and perhaps draw in even more players to the game.

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