Hands Off, My Loots!

Welcome to the twelfth 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 banter comes to us from CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following: First there was the MMO on the PC, and now with the recent announcement of DUST 514, EVE will soon be moving onto consoles. But what about mobile? Allow your imagination to run wild for a second and describe how you would see EVE being ported to mobile devices, whether the iPhone/iPod touch, Blackberrys or Android-based devices. Dream the impossible for us!

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I’m always late on these Blog Banters…ALWAYS!  That changes this month, I have my post done, and scheduled to go live at 1 minute past midnight on the 29th…eat that you on-time bloggers!

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I’m a little partial to Android-based devices for the simple fact that I own one, though for the purpose of this post it doesn’t really matter since my opinion and ideas would work for any type of smart phone.  While I normally let my mind roam free and think about all the huge “what-if”…the first thing that came to mind after seeing CrazyKinux’s question is that a mobile version of EVE would have to be extremely limited.  Limited so much in my view that it would be more of an official mobile “tool” than a mobile version of the game.

If you think about it, there is just no way to port a game as massive as EVE onto a mobile phone and still be playable.  I’m sure the technology will exist eventually…but the screen size alone would kill the experience, not to mention having a touch-screen.

I could go on and on about the drawbacks of a touch screen too, since that’s something I’ve actually contemplated trying out with EVE.  While I haven’t actually tried it, I talked myself out of buying a touch screen monitor because of a few reasons…the most prominent being issues with EVE’s menu system.  How would you open them?  Single tapping wouldn’t work…that’s how you’d select stuff.  Double tapping should move your ship.  That leaves holding (touching the screen with your finger and holding it there until the menu pops up.  That would work wonders you say?…have you ever tried to do something in EVE?…shoot, recall drones, lock someone…they all require quick reflexes and speed…which would be impossible with a touch-and-hold menu system.  This problem alone is enough to kill the playability on a mobile device.

Then you have the sheer size of EVE.  Installing it on a mobile phone, while possible, would mean you’d have to buy a huge SD card, or just not install anything else at all.  And for those of you who think “well, make an EVE-Light”…mind explaining what an EVE-Light would be?  What would you do away with?…remove one thing to make it fit on a Mobile…and you aren’t playing EVE anymore .

Another aspect of EVE is a network connection.  I don’t care if you have the most advanced phone out there…a mobile device massively limits the playability of the game due to the uncertain nature of a mobile network.  If you’ve lost a ship due to a shaky home connection…could you imagine how many you would lose while roaming around and hitting a mobile deadspot?

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So…what could you do with EVE on a mobile device?  Well my idea is simple…and I actually think it might be closer than we might think.

Why not be able to chat, change skills, update your bio, shop the market (in your current region…no flying somewhere else), etc.  Anything that you can do while you are stationary.  Though truthfully I’m not sure I’d like the idea of the market part…would be unfair for the normal pvpers if the market pvpers could play their full game from the phone!

While it wouldn’t be “EVE”…it would still be awesome to be able to chat with people in-game while you are sitting at the doctors office.  Forget to put a skill in the queue and don’t feel like getting out of bed?  Have a sudden urge to increase your corp tax to 75%…do it!

The possibilities of EVE and a Mobile Device are certainly numerous…I just don’t think it would be wise to try and push them too far…bad things could happen.

Oh…and…heard about COSMOS right?…seem to me that it could easily be the start of something like what I mentioned above…

List of Participants:

1. CrazyKinux’s Musing - Tying the dots and locking me in!
2. A Merry Life and a Short One – I Don’t Own a Working Phone
3. Yarrbear Tales - EVE on Mobile Devices? Eh.
4. Hands Off, My Loots! - EVE Mobile…Possibility?
5. Achernar - Trapped on Planet Horror
6. Rettic’s Log - The Cronofile – Blog Banter: EVE Mobile
7. A Mule in EVE - EVE Mobility
8. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah - EVE Mobile
9. My Life in EVE - 12th Blog Banter
10. My God, it’s Full of Stars! - 12th EVE Blog Banter
11. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility - WOW, look at that ‘micro-Dust’
12. Adventures in Mission Running - 12th EVE Blog Banter
13. Ecliptic Rift - EVE Everywhere
14. Roc’s Ramblings - EVE Mobile
15. EVE Monkey - EVE on a Mobile Device?
16. Nashh Kadavr’s EVE Blog - I-pod Capsuleer
17. Escoce – EVE Trade - Dynamic System Security
18. Break Vol - EVE Blog Banter 12
19. Mikeazariah - EVE Mobility
20. Pods and Pills - The 12th EVE Blog Banter: EVE on the MOVE!
21. Lords of Space - EVE on my Iphone?
22. Cle Demaari - Is that EVE in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
23. Life in Low Sec - Wormholes On the Go
24. The Elitist - EVE On Mobile Devices
25. Many more to come…