Blog Banter 30: Stealth Storefront Implementation

Blog Banter 30: The Melting Pot

"With the Winter expansion possibly being named 'Crucible', it certainly is a melting pot of refinements and tweaks aimed at making the EVE experience smoother and more wholesome. If the developers suddenly found themselves some spare resources and approached you for an additional feature to include before release, what single concept would you pitch them and how would you implement it?

For bonus points, the one thing lacking from this "patchwork" of iterations is a cohesive storyline to package "The Crucible" together. How could this expansion be marketed to potential new customers?"

Well we now know the "Winter" expansion will be called Crucible and with approximately fifty changes to the game announced so far it has the potential to be a good one.

However what would I change that has not been announced so far?

Well many things but something which I believe would be obtainable is influenced by the "Winter" expansion changes to the Customs facilities.

In high, low and null security space the markets let you buy and sell, with some scamming potential thrown in for good measure.

However what if you could modify your prices based on the standings that individual, corporation, alliance has with you or your corporation?

While I believe this would be of more use in null security space it could certainly be used all over.

As an example I wish to sell some 425mm Railgun II's at a station somewhere in null, but I prefer to supply my friends rather than my enemies.  So a discount of 20% will be given to those who are +10 to me, and 10% to those who are +5.

Now the discount figures are not linear so a dastardly Goonswarm pilot tries to buy out all the stock and resell for profit, or just to deny our magnificent men and women in their flying machines some shiny guns.

I, seeing this as a potential problem, have Goonswarm set to -10, and I have a 100% surcharge for those lucky enough to have that standing, so while I cannot totally deny the sale I will make more ISK from his action which helps me and maybe my corp/alliance.

Certainly you could not set standings, discounts or surcharges, and you may move more product or make more money, but the option would be there if you wish.

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Tying the Crucible expansion together is tricky.  I considered the selling point of:

We listened, we changed, we delivered!

However this could be a little too much like the NGE or some pizza chain.

Otherwise some sort of storyline which includes Concord and Interbus updating various systems including the Neocom could be implemented?

/me shrugs