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RuneScape's Clan Citadels puts game design in the hands of players
Last week, we brought you the news that browser-based fantasy MMO RuneScape would be introducing clan citadels in its next expansion. We heard that these customisable castles in the sky would feature a tier-based progression system, but until now we didn't know what the actual castles would look like or if any kind of new gameplay would come with them. Jagex has just revealed that the expansion's gameplay element is potentially as huge and revolutionary as their massive Dungeons of Daemonheim update. The new floating castles act as meeting places for clans, and will contain exclusive skill-training areas for woodcutting, mining and other skills. Working on the clan's skill plots will add resources to upgrade the castle and pay for its upkeep, but may provide slightly less experience gain than traditional skill-training areas. Customisable clan battlefields provide a sandbox map editor tool, letting clans design and build their own battlegrounds and minigames. Players will be able to design their own arenas and gameplay for the first time in RuneScape's ten year history, creating anything from capture the flag style matches and monster hunts to basic clan versus clan PvP battles. Perhaps the most exciting part of the feature is the ability for clan members to invite other players to try their games and challenge rival clans to competitive battleground matches. The expansion launches on 26th July. Skip past the cut to watch the official clan citadel trailer and get a sneak peek at the castle's in-game visuals.
EVE Evolved: Third-party development
When EVE Online was first released in 2003, it was a primitive beast from a small indie studio operating out of a tiny office in Reykjavik, Iceland. Although EVE has been expanded over the years, not all of that development has come from creator CCP Games. EVE players routinely step in to fill gaps in the game's functionality through the development of third-party applications, websites and tools. Early apps like the EVEMon skill planner were very limited in what information they could access about a player's character, but with the introduction of the EVE API system, a huge wealth of information became available. Since then, we've seen a resurgence of third-party app and tool development, producing impressive apps like Capsuleer and Aura for the iPhone. We've also seen some incredibly useful websites like the ICSC jump planner suite, gambling site SOMER.blink and the Dotlan EVE maps with regularly updating statistics. Most app developers work on the projects in their spare time, and until now they've relied on donations or advertising revenue to keep up with server costs or keep development worth the time invested. As EVE is CCP's intellectual property, it's illegal for anyone to make money from it without the company's permission. This week, CCP released the first draft of a contract that would allow developers to monetise their apps, but the proposal was not received well by the EVE community. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at third-party app development and what's wrong with the proposed deal.
EVE Evolved: Building a better UI
It's no secret that EVE Online has a poor user interface. With its drop-down menus for interacting with objects and text lists to show information like market orders and nearby objects in space, EVE has thoroughly earned the nickname "spreadsheets in space." The UI has changed drastically since I started playing in 2004, but in recent years, it's fallen behind the development curve. In a new devblog this week, CCP Snowlax suggested that the UI developers at CCP have lacked the framework necessary to do what they wanted with it. The existing framework had become bloated with eight years of development, and the underlying rendering engine wasn't even capable of using custom shaders. With Incursion 1.6, CCP pushed live a completely new UI framework that makes cool features like holographic UI elements possible. With the new Carbon UI framework in place, developers are taking another look at redesigning the EVE user interface. Screenshots of the new features being used in the upcoming Incarna expansion are impressive, but that's all taking place inside stations. I can't help but wonder how these new technologies could be applied to the space-faring portion of EVE and whether there are more fundamental challenges to overcome in UI design than adding flashy graphics. In this week's EVE Evolved, I give some thoughts on the development of EVE's UI, from the necessary evil of the overview to some things I'd like to see change.
Massively's EVE Online CSM 6 candidate roundup
Starting life as a humble indie MMO development studio, CCP Games was always noted for its close relationship to the players of its flagship game EVE Online. That relationship diminished a lot over time as both the size of the playerbase and the scale of EVE's development grew to immense proportions. Today CCP relies on players to guide development more than ever, but it needs a lens through which to focus feedback from such a large community of players into a form that the team can use. The democratically elected Council of Stellar Management (CSM) is that lens. Fifty-seven players submitted their applications to join EVE's elected player council this year, and all this week, players have been voting to decide who will represent them in discussions with CCP. With so many candidates in the running and only four more days to make up your mind, it can be hard to pick one individual from the list. To help you decide, Massively has compiled a full list of every applicant in the running along with a short message about his or her campaign and handy links to available campaign resources. When you're ready to vote, follow this link to the voting page, log in, and click the vote button to the right of your chosen candidate. Remember to get your vote in before March 23rd when polls close! The results will be published on March 30th, and we'll find out who will be representing the EVE playerbase to CCP for the coming year.
