There is actually a precedent for this already. Eve Online - an (actual) MMORPG which historically had no physical representation of your person - introduced a feature they called "Ambulation;" literaly, to walk around.
The game is set inside space ships instead of BattleMechs, and players interact through the actions taken by their ships, whether that be trading or blowing each other up. Then the developers got the idea to increase social interaction by allowing you to step free of your ship and walk around the plentiful space stations that liter the galaxy of New Eden. Sounds good so far. You'd have your own Captain's Cabin. You could walk in to your hangar and see your enormous to-scale war ships and trading vessels floating in zero gravity. Cool. You'd step out in to the commons area and drink and gamble and be the crass space pirate you always dreamed of. Awesome. And you'd have your own guild/corporation office where you could meet your mates and call up three dimensional galaxy maps and make business or war strategy. Sweet!
That was years ago. Many years. We're still waiting. All we've got so far is a tiny hallway (which admittedly looks rather nice) which constitutes your capt'ns quarters.
Point of this ramble is that, while good for the game, PGI almost definitely doesn't have the resources to execute it in a timely fashion. If they did decide they were going to make a rich, immersive front-end, I would feel a whole lot better about it if they were honest about their resources and limitations and set a more realistic goal for its completion. I think that having a 3D humanoid - whether first or third person - is generally a poor idea. Piranha has painstakingly created an excellent mech sim, but making a sim including people is very different and I think it'd be two steps back - time that could be better spent on other things.
What if they could make a compromise like:
- The lobby window includes a three-dimensional internal rendition of a drop ship.
- Its been hinted that we'll be able to purchase drop ships later on; bonus points if your lobby reflects your current drop ship.
- The drop ship can be customized re: vanity, and re: in-game features, which are visually reflected on the lobby screen.
- Clicking to different lobby pages, such as the Mech Lab, pans to different areas of the drop ship hangar, giving you a different perspective, and one which is relevant to your current task. When you start tweaking your Atlas, you are panned over to your Atlas in its holding chamber. This isn't a far deviation from the existing Mech Lab, allowing reuse of resources.
Edited by Kivin, 10 December 2012 - 11:38 PM.
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