It was one of those pie-in-the-sky things that somebody from CCP made mention of, probably at a Fanfest. It's not a comment I have a link to, but it is something I recall being said, at some point by someone. I know. Vague.
It's not likely one of those things that is on the development radar any time soon at CCP. More likely it's one of those things said at Fanfest, one of those we'd love to do something like this and we know you'd all love it things. Crowd cheers. Everyone leaves the session feeling CCP is on top of things.
Let's assume it is on the development radar. For fun. Would this be time well spent for CCP?
As players, we already have a very robust and excellent fitting tool called EVE Fitting Tool [EFT]. It's one of those third-party applications that every player has installed. It is simply indispensable. There is no better way to build out ship fittings, and then experiment with them, taking fully your character skills and implants into account.
Some people are bothered by third-party applications. Mainly because they are not easily integrated into the game platform itself. Getting fittings from the game into EFT requires exporting and importing. Getting fittings you build with EFT into EVE requires exporting and importing. It's not a difficult process, but it is time-consuming and repetitive, especially if you want to redo fits, or replace them.
So, the idea of something like EFT being built-in to EVE Online is an attractive thought. Again, is this time well spent for CCP?
Unless CCP can design an in-game fitting tool that equals or surpasses EFT in functionality and ease-of-use, then it would not be a good use of development time. If CCP's fitting tool did not meet EFT standards, that development time would be a complete wasted effort. If EFT continued to be the superior fitting tool, then the in-game fitting tool would go mostly unused (it would, no doubt, be occasionally useful.) That's development time CCP could have put elsewhere, to better effect.
What CCP can do, though, is to allow for deeper integration between client/server and third-party tools. Where EFT is concerned, CCP could build CREST functions that allow for direct reading and writing of ship fittings from the server. That sort of integration is definitely development time well spent.
liking that pic concept
ReplyDeleteTechnically, CCP already has a fitting tool, and it's quite accurate. It's called Singularity. You still have to export->import them into your Tranquility client, of course.
ReplyDeleteEven if CCP comes out with a fantastic fitting tool I'd hardly ever use it. First I can make fits for all my characters within one application using EFT, you'd have to load a new character session every time you wanted to switch if using the in-game one. Second, I can use EFT when I'm not able to log into the game, like at work or on a shitty laptop. Thirdly, unless CCP let you copy-paste in the exact same format that EFT uses all the current fits posted out there would be tedious to transfer.
ReplyDeleteCCP could offer to buy EFT and contract with Gripen to manage or advise on it for perpetuity. They get the milk for free now, but if he decides to starting winning at EVE then they suddenly lose something important. They did just make a boatload of cash on their IPO.
ReplyDeleteThey should first fix up their in game fitting window.
ReplyDeleteSpecifically, be able to see the effects of switching modules on and off. Be able to see how things change when you overheat. Be able to look at a fitting without actually fitting a ship.
Once they got those things sorted, then they have a fitting tool. Then we can talk about making it available online.
My pie in the sky idea of all this is CCP fleshes out some more functionality with the in-game browser and all of this moves to a webpage or webapp accessible from the browser through CREST. CCP then finds the best ones and adds an "unofficial" list of bookmarks to the ingame browser for everyone for crap like this. A list of websites you might find useful but aren't actually owned or controlled by CCP.
ReplyDeleteNo telling new players you need to download this or that or blah blah blah. Just open the in-game browser and open the bookmark already listed. Player gets a pop-up box with some legal speak saying "We are only putting this here for your use, we don't actually control it, blah blah blah". They accept once, and everyone goes about their day hassle free.