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EVE Fanfest 2013 day two: World of Darkness, Odyssey, and EVE Virtual Reality with the Oculus Rift
EVE Online's tenth anniversary Fanfest promised to be its biggest yet, with over 1,400 players packed into Iceland's Harpa convention centre to find out the latest on EVE Online, DUST 514, and World of Darkness. The first day focused mainly on DUST and its link with the EVE universe, but today the focus largely switched back to internet spaceships. There were plenty of roundtable discussions, and the CSM and Alliance panels were as awesome as ever, but it was the EVE Keynote that really blew the crowd away. The day got off to a good start with the highly anticipated World of Darkness talk. Most fans were probably expecting to see more airy game design ideas and another shiny trailer, but this year CCP just came out and put all its cards on the table. We saw that the game is still firmly in pre-production, with much of the previous work going into developing the engine and cool content creation tools and shaders. While I was initially disappointed at the lack of gameplay progress or shiny cinematics, I found this approach of being open and direct with fans very refreshing. As I told WoD art director Thomas Holt, honest beats shiny every time. Read on for a full run-down of the EVE reveals from the second day of EVE's tenth anniversary Fanfest, including in-depth details of the Odyssey expansion's features.
EVE Evolved: Bring on the big expansions!
I don't normally jump out of my seat shouting "hell yes!" to an EVE Online dev blog, but this week's announcement on the direction of future expansions has me a little bit excited. In two somewhat dry and lengthy posts, Executive Producer Jon Lander and Senior Producer CCP Seagull detailed the approach they intend to take to ongoing development in 2013. Instead of announcing any big headline features or making vague promises, the developers looked back at the success of 2009's blockbuster Apocrypha expansion. Apocrypha was hands-down the best expansion EVE has ever had, adding 2500 hidden solar systems accessible only through shifting unstable wormholes. We saw a renaissance of exploration, collaborative research, and colonisation efforts that defied EVE's war-like reputation, and moreover, we saw a rebirth of small-scale PvP. The magic sauce that made Apocrypha work was lateral design: Rather than add one massive vertical feature, the expansion offered a little something for everyone. Apocrypha was EVE at its best, and hearing that developers are going back to that style of expansion honestly makes me a little giddy! In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the future for EVE's expansions, why the Apocrypha model works, and why I'm optimistic for 2013 and beyond.
CCP: It's 'deeply wrong' to assume that repetition is the way forward
CCP's got opinions. This isn't news. The Icelandic developer behind EVE Online isn't afraid to share its opinions, which is also par for the course. MMO developers rarely comment on other games, though, and so we read lead EVE designer Kristopher Touborg's thoughts on The Elder Scrolls Online with some interest. PC Gamer provides the setup, in which the magazine shares a quote from TESO's Matt Firor with Touborg. "At this point in the evolution of MMOs, every MMO has tried something at one point or another that you're going to do in your game. There aren't any more truly innovative features," Firor said. Touborg's response was lengthy and fills out most of the source article listed below. "It's kind of waving a white flag. Like, yeah. I don't like that statement. Because I think that's part of why there's such an attrition with MMOs. People go in and play an MMO for a month and they just want to throw up because they've leveled to 60 in ten different titles," Touborg says before going on to express his hopes that developers try something new. "Otherwise the same [MMOs] are just going to continue on the trend we see every time, where they sell a load of boxes and people play it for three months and then they go somewhere else. There has to be something else out there."
New CCP interview recaps recent EVE turmoil, looks forward
"It's not our game," says CCP's Jon Lander. He's talking about EVE Online, and he makes no bones about the firm's role in the ongoing internet spaceship drama that is New Eden. "We're the janitors of it; we sweep up and make sure the power's still running and whatever, but it's their game. EVE is the sum history of their personal interactions, and we don't own that. We just look after it." The "their" Lander refers to is the game's playerbase, of course, and he tells GamesIndustry.biz that despite the turmoil of the last 12 months, the EVE property is none the worse for wear (and in fact it may be getting stronger due to a design re-focus and the imminent arrival of DUST 514). Ultimately the interview brings no new information to the table, but it does serve as a handy recap of recent EVE events. It also offers up more than a few juicy quotes from both Lander and lead game designer Kristoffer "CCP Soundwave" Touborg.
EVE's Escalation video talks new status bar, missile effects, and more [Updated]
It's patch day in New Eden. Today's Escalation update is the first step on the road to next month's Inferno expansion, so CCP has rolled out a new dev diary video to give all you internet spaceship jockeys a heads-up on the more pertinent changes. Lead designer CCP Soundwave is today's talking head. He takes us through the changes to the drone regions, which CCP hopes will revitalize EVE Online's mining trade. "Mining will actually be done through mining rather than shooting NPCs," Soundwave deadpans. Incursion spawns and payouts are also being tweaked, though Soundwave doesn't spend much time on that particular detail in this video. He does show off EVE's new effect bar, though. Prior to the patch, pilots needed to hunt down aggressors via the game's overview, but now there's a little status bar above the hull/armor/shield readout that displays pertinent combat info at a glance. Finally, CCP has been hard at work revamping EVE's missile effects. The tweaks follow on from last year's turret upgrades to bring even more visual ooohs and ahhhs to EVE's combat. More details are available in the clip after the cut. [Update: While the missile effects are featured in the video, we've changed the title of the article to reflect the fact that they're not live yet. We've also flogged ourselves accordingly.]
From hero to 0.0: EVE Online deploys Crucible 1.1 update
It may not be a full-blown expansion, but don't let the decimal point throw you off: EVE Online Crucible's 1.1 patch is a beast of an update, and it's roaring onto the live server today. Crucible 1.1 "enhances and updates" many of the key features of the game, starting with a customizable NeoCom (user interface) that can be tweaked to the player's desire. The update also contains adjustments to Tech 2 modules, balances to blaster ammo, and the ability for alliances to enter into factional warfare. As a result of a significant change to how player-owned structures use legacy fuel -- as in, they won't any longer, but they will be switching over to fuel blocks -- CCP is urging customers to pay attention lest they log in and find themselves in the dark. You can get the full skinny on the update by either reading the full patch notes, reading through the list of major features, or listening to the grizzled voice of CCP Soundwave going over the 1.1 highlights after the jump.
EVE reforms dev teams and preps a new patch for liftoff
The dream is over. EVE Online's dev teams -- formerly known as Team Best Friends Forever and Team Pink Zombie Kittens -- are breaking up. Fortunately, this is because there are so many devs at this point that CCP is reorganizing its devs into three new teams: Team Super Friends, Game of Drones, and Five 0. Along with the news of the team reorganization, CCP brings us word of an upcoming patch arriving January 24th. The update will include a rebalance of null ammo and assault ships, buffs to modules, better search options, new calendar notifications, and the ability for alliances to join faction warfare. Even if you don't play EVE, these patch notes are both highly entertaining and informative, especially if you enjoy seeing devs unhinged and dispensing advice for mosquito repellant.
Six small changes that will make a big difference to EVE players
Last year, EVE Online developer CCP Games tasked its illustrious Team Best Friends Forever with a project aimed at fixing all those little things that annoy EVE players on a daily basis. Font issues, windows stealing focus, implants not showing on killmails, and the problem of agent standings being overly complicated were all tackled in no time flat. For the Crucible expansion, Team BFF's leader, CCP Soundwave, was put in charge of multiple teams that hammered out hundreds of bug fixes, gameplay balance changes and quality of life improvements. In a new devblog, CCP Punkturis reveals six small changes under development by Team BFF that will certainly make a big difference to EVE players. The skill queue will be getting a search feature, which is good news for older players with over a hundred skills to sort through. The watch list that keeps track of friendly targets in fleet operations will be able to hold 15 players, up from 10, and players will be able to re-order them any way they like. If you've ever seen a player's face appear in the bottom right of the screen to tell you he's just logged in, chances are you've tried to click on it to talk to him at least once. When the next big patch goes live, you'll be able to do just that. The agent list in stations and module overload indicator will both receive graphical updates, and a new compact user list for the local channel with no portraits will be an absolute god-send to nullsec fleets.
EVE Evolved: Returning EVE to the Crucible
When EVE Online launched in 2003, it was a barren game without many of the comforts we enjoy today. The user interface was abysmally worse than today's (if you can imagine such a thing), players with cruisers were top dog, and practically the only activities were mining or blowing up miners. The culmination of years of hard work by a small indie studio, EVE Online sold almost entirely on its future potential. When I was introduced to the game by an excited friend in early 2004 during the Castor expansion, he encouraged me to get in on the ground floor because he believed the game was going to be huge. Years later, I find myself introducing the game to thousands of readers on the same premise. EVE's continual success over the years transformed a fresh-faced CCP Games into a multinational game development giant. And yet, for all that growth and all the updates to EVE over the years, the fact that the game sells largely on future potential is still firmly embedded in both players and developers. Players subscribe not only because they like the game but because they want to support development to reach EVE's true potential. Two years with very little iteration on existing features sent the message that developers weren't trying to reach that potential, but it seems that trend is soon to be completely reversed. With the newly announced Crucible expansion, CCP will be adding countless small features, graphical updates and iterations that put EVE firmly back on the path to reaching its full potential. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at CCP's plans to return EVE to the crucible and reforge it into something awesome. Those waiting for the third part of my look at the new player experience can catch that in next week's column, as Kajatta is enjoying his final week in EVE before delivering his verdict.
Latest EVE dev video talks ship balance and features coming this winter
Several weeks ago, EVE Online developer CCP Games restructured its company and announced a new laser focus on in-space features for EVE Online. Since then we've seen an absolute deluge of news updates and devblogs on features due for release in the winter expansion. In the first two of CCP's new In Development video series, CCP Guard explored the art department and showed off the new nebula effects, EVE's sharpened shadows and the new tier 3 battlecruisers. In the latest In Development video, Guard talks to the EVE feature teams about the absolutely massive list of balance changes and features coming with the winter expansion. CCP Soundwave admits that developers have "probably done more rebalancing in the past month than we have in the past two years," before rattling off an impressive list of changes and new features. Skip past the cut for a brief summary of the changes and to watch the video in HD.
'Will the door open?': CCP opens up about the future of EVE's avatars
Tactical Gamers has a lot of nice things to say about EVE Online's latest expansion, Incarna, but more than just fawning over the truly revolutionary ability to make avatars who walk around in a room, the site roped in two of the game's leads, CCP Soundwave and CCP Flying Scotsman, to jaw about the latest and greatest in the game. The first, and probably biggest, question for the devs was, "Will the captain's quarters doors ever open to allow avatars to interact with other players?" The devs confirmed that, yes, such a day is coming and will take place over a series of phases. The first stage is to include what CCP is calling "Establishments" in which players can mingle and take part in "various activities." Interestingly enough, the topic of emotes is a divisive subject among the CCP staff, with some arguing for their inclusion and others fearful that emotes will turn EVE into World of Warcraft, what with the dancing Elves on mailboxes and all. Emotes will be eventually added, but they will have "meaning" behind them. For more on Incarna, super-capitals and the future of the game, give this interview a listen!
New EVE Online trailer highlights the player behind the space ship
Hot on the heels of today's announcement that EVE Online will soon be making its way to Japanese gamers, CCP released a new trailer for the Incarna expansion. Rather than focusing only on in-game action, the new trailer entitled "I was there" tells the tale of a memorable battle from the perspective of a player. Although the dialogue is pretty corny, the story and feeling behind it are things any player involved in gang or fleet warfare can identify with. We all carry stories of the epic fights we've turned around in our favour, and we all like to remember that we were there. The trailer highlights the very real rush of fleet warfare, the real bonds we form with the players behind the ships and the communities we build and defend together. That sense of community is even extended outward into the real world, as attendees at the annual Fanfest or any one of several unofficial EVE meet-ups find out every year. At the 2011 EVE Fanfest in March, CCP and EVE players in attendance raised $11,000 US for charity Get Well Gamers. Notable items sold included the official CCP Banhammer from the GM department, as seen in the company's absolutely not safe for work music video HTFU, and a tour of the CCP offices led by CEO Hilmar Pétursson. CCP Soundwave's impromptu art print auction raised a massive $1,500, bringing total donations up to the $11,000 mark. The money was delivered to Get Well Gamers this week and will go to help buy gaming systems for sick children to play during their stays in hospital. Skip past the cut to watch the new Incarna trailer, embedded in HD.
CCP tweaking EVE jump bridges, eyeing nullsec changes
Changes are coming to the lawless regions of EVE Online, and a new CCP dev blog has the details. In a nutshell, CCP devs feel that jump bridges have removed some of the danger inherent in traveling around nullsec, and the company will be tweaking the gameplay accordingly in both the short and long term. CCP Soundwave blogs about three upcoming adjustments, the first of which is the removal of jumpdrive-equipped ships from the jump bridge eligibility list. Soundwave says this will go live on May 17th and also notes that Black Ops ships are exempt from the new rule (i.e., they can still use the bridges). The other two changes, which involve limiting the number of jumpbridges in a system and upping the respective fuel bays, will go live with EVE's June patch. Finally, the dev blog hints at more dramatic nullsec changes on the horizon. Soundwave doesn't go into specifics but does say that the region "is in need of a bit of an overhaul."
EVE Evolved: Incarna and the captain's quarters
When we first heard about Incarna, it was as "Walking in Stations" back in 2006. At the 2006 EVE Online Fanfest, details of the ambitious project were released to excited fans, which was followed by a lengthy devblog from CCP t0rfifrans on what would be involved. The sheer scope of Walking in Stations seemed immense, but in-engine screenshots of what came to be known as "Ambulation Man" created a sense that a lot of work had already been done on it. Over the years following that announcement, we saw snippets of information and work-in-progress screenshots from various prototypes. Players saw those prototypes as the current state of the feature in development, and it became reasonable to expect a release in the near future. Miscommunication In reality, CCP's insistence on doing the feature right has caused several prototypes to be completely scrapped. Walking in Stations became Ambulation, and we were shown a full work-in-progress demo of a character walking around in a bar and playing a minigame. That prototype was similarly scrapped, being reborn as Incarna at the 2009 Fanfest. In developing each of these prototypes, CCP quickly discovered that the underlying technology to do it the way the team wanted to simply didn't exist. In this opinion piece, I look at the summer expansion's planned captain's quarters event and what it could mean for EVE Online.
EVE Online Fanfest 2011 roundup: Day 1
Once per year, EVE Online developer CCP Games throws a colossal party in its home country of Iceland. EVE players from around the world fly to Iceland to meet up with other players, talk about internet spaceships and usually get completely drunk. CCP hosts a series of events, round-table discussions and presentations all about EVE, showing what the team has been up to over the past year and revealing plans for the game's ongoing development. Fanfest has typically catered to EVE's most dedicated fans, or at least those motivated enough at the prospect of an EVE convention to brace the Icelandic weather. This year, the focus is much wider, with over 3,000 players in attendance and a huge contingent of press. Day one of the EVE Fanfest has come to a close, and the event is now in full swing. Read on for a roundup of what happened today, along with detailed explanations of a few personal highlights from today's festivities.
Tune into EVE's live dev blog on fiction and content design tonight
Back in January, EVE Online developer CCP Games revived a much-loved old habit by bringing back regular live dev blogs. Up until a few years ago, live dev blogs were used as a way for players to chat with developers directly and ask them questions about upcoming changes or features. As EVE's playerbase grew, it became impractical for the devs to host live chats and answer the questions of players directly. At the start of this year, CCP took advantage of EVE's integrated voice chat service, EVE Voice, to bring back live dev blogs. The first developer chat on game design in the Incursion expansion was a big success, with a large number of players tuning in to participate. Tonight at 5:00 p.m. EST (22:00 EVE Time/GMT), CCP Shadow will lead a new live audio dev blog session on EVE fiction and game content. Developers t0nyG and Abraxas will be talking about the Immersion project, which aims to link EVE's powerful backstory with gameplay. CCP Soundwave, Gnauton, and Big Dumb Object will then be tackling the topic of content design. Players have written in with plenty of questions for the team on EVE's backstory and content development, which will also be answered in tonight's session. To join in, just log into EVE, join the chat channel "Live Dev Blog" before 5:00 p.m. EST tonight and join EVE Voice.
EVE Spotlight: An interview with CCP Soundwave
EVE Spotlight is a new bi-weekly feature in which we interview prominent members of EVE Online's player community or development team. Every two weeks, we'll be shining the spotlight on a player or developer who has a significant impact on EVE so that we can highlight the efforts of EVE's most influential people. If you've ever tuned into EVE's annual Alliance Tournament, chances are you've seen CCP Soundwave in action. Through his work on EVE-TV, Soundwave has been a big part of the alliance tournament's studio team. Most players would recognise him for this work on the Alliance Tournament, but he's probably done more for EVE in his normal job than through EVE-TV. As a Game Designer for CCP, Soundwave has worked on some major features like the Tyrannis expansion's planetary interaction. Most recently, Soundwave worked alongside the other members of Team Best Friends Forever to produce the impressive Sansha incursions that are currently hitting New Eden. With the expansion having now been released, the team had been moved on to a project with almost universal support -- the quest to fix all those little issues with EVE that collectively add up to a big headache. In this EVE Spotlight, I talk to CCP Soundwave about the upcoming ninth Alliance Tournament, game design at CCP, the Incursion expansion, and CCP's new commitment to tackling all the small issues with EVE.
EVE devblog tackles CCP's committment to fixing small issues
Several months ago, EVE Online forumite Akita T began the "thousand papercut project." The aim of the project is to collect a list of all those tiny issues that irritate players about EVE. Putting aside any large balance or mechanic problems, Akita T suggested that all the little issues developers have put off dealing with are now all adding up to have a huge negative impact on players. Supporters of the project will be pleased to know that CCP has taken notice. In a new devblog, game designer CCP Soundwave has explained plans to work on a long list of small issues during the current development cycle. Having previously worked mainly on large projects like the Sansha incursions, CCP Soundwave's development team "Best Friends Forever" has already been hard at work on a variety of small issues, bugs and improvements that will be deployed soon. Among the many changes are improvements to the recently deployed incursion mechanic, including a much-needed change to deny the use of remote armour repairers and shield transporters on criminals. This closes a loophole griefers were using to trick incursion fleet logistics ships into being destroyed by CONCORD. Incursions should also last longer in highsec, and Sansha's forces shouldn't recapture lowsec or nullsec systems as quickly when encounters aren't being run. Head over to the devblog for a list of the first round of small issues tackled so far by CCP Soundwave and friends.
EVE live developer chat tonight to discuss Incursion game design [Updated]
In years gone by, EVE Online developers CCP Games interacted with the game's playerbase very directly through the forums and live audio developer blogs. As EVE's subscriber-base has grown, developers began to take a more hands-off approach to forum discussions and the live dev blogs gave way to solely written blogs. Back in July, reactions to the June CSM summit highlighted problems with CCP's approach to communicating with players and the way feedback was collected. Since then, CCP has been making an absolutely colossal effort to communicate more with players through focused technical devblogs and a recent series of video blogs. Tonight, CCP is kicking that communication up another notch with the first of a new monthly live audio developer chat series. The first live dev blog will begin in just two hours at 22:00 EVE time (GMT/UTC). The discussion will focus on game design in the Incursion expansion, with EVE's lead game designer CCP Hammer being joined by senior game designer CCP Flying Scotsman and game designer CCP Omen. During a question an answer segment, players will have an opportunity to ask specific questions on the new character creator, Incursion game design goals and improvements to the planetary interaction feature. To join in, just log into EVE and join the chat channel "Live Dev Blog" and join EVE Voice. [Update: CCP has contacted us to tell us that it's received far more questions via the forum than the devs can answer in today's Q&A session, so the team will be unable to take additional questions from the live chat channel.]
EVE Online: The taxman cometh
When EVE Online developer CCP Soundwave isn't entertaining fans of internet spaceships with his wit during the EVE Alliance Tournament, he's apparently finding new ways to ... impose taxes on players? His dev blog today explains that CCP Games will tax the earnings of players in NPC corps and their reasons for introducing this taxes. This won't apply to those in EVE's player corporations or those enlisted with a militia for factional warfare. "Service guarantees citizenship and all that, so keep on trucking," he writes. (Note: For those less familiar with EVE Online, this deals entirely with in-game currency of course, InterStellar Kredits or ISK. No real world taxation is involved.)After all these years, why impose taxes on players in NPC corps? CCP Soundwave explains it all in "I Bring Gifts! (By Gifts I Mean Taxes, Sorry)". NPC corps have a few advantages over player corps in that they cannot have wars declared against them by player corporations; immunity to wardecs is perhaps a key reason some players don't move on to player corps. In addition, members of NPC corporations don't have taxes subtracted from their NPC bounties and mission rewards, which most player corporations impose.
