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EVE Evolved: Has colonisation been forgotten?
At last year's EVE Online Fanfest, CCP revealed its ambitious plan to take the game where no sandbox MMO has ever gone before: full deep space colonisation. The plan will be delivered over the next five years and will end with the incredibly exciting vision of players building their own stargates and colonising brand-new solar systems that lie off the grid. Rubicon was intended as the first step toward this glorious plan, and its new focus on deployable sandbox structures certainly seemed to be introducing a more player-directed form of colonisation. I've been cautiously optimistic about the whole endeavour so far, but five years is hell of a long time to wait for that vision to come to fruition. Rubicon's Mobile Depot structure was a great first step toward player-run empires on all scales, but none of the recently announced Rubicon 1.1 deployables has continued along the same theme of colonisation and exploration. The Mobile Micro Jump Drive and Mobile Scan Inhibitor structures I looked at last week provide extra tactical options in PvP, and the three new structures revealed this week are all designed to steal money and resources from nullsec corporations. In this week's EVE Evolved, I ask whether the newly revealed Encounter Surveillance System and alternate Siphon Units are a step in the wrong direction. With games like Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous on the way, CCP may not have five years to deliver the promise of colonisation.
The Art of Wushu: Doing the time for doing crime
Bounties are the primary way that PK victims in Age of Wushu get to fight back against their assailants. If you murder someone, your victim can force you to spend time in jail and pay a constable for the service of putting you behind bars. Much as in EVE Online's original bounty system, there are a few kinks. Overall, it works reasonably well, but there is a disconnect between the intent of the system and how it actually works. As a career criminal, I feel that having a bounty and dealing with it is what separates professional killers from mass murderers.
EVE Evolved: Ghost Sites and PvE goals
PvE in most MMOs revolves around killing hordes of NPCs for currency, XP, tokens, or loot, and EVE Online is no exception. Players can hunt for rare pirate ships in nullsec asteroid belts, farm Sansha incursions for ISK and loyalty points, or team up against Sleeper ships in dangerous wormhole space, but most prefer the safe and steady income of mission-running. Missions are essentially repeatable quests that can be spawned on request, providing an endless stream of bad guys to blow up in the comfort of high-security space. Completing a mission will earn you some ISK and a few hundred or thousand loyalty points, but most of the ISK in mission-running comes from the bounties on the NPCs spawned in the mission sites. Similar deadspace sites with better loot are also distributed randomly throughout the galaxy and can be tracked down using scanner probes. But what would happen if the NPCs in these sites were a dangerous and unexpected interference that could get you killed, rather than space piñatas ready to explode in a shower of ISK? This is a question CCP plans to test with the Rubicon expansion's upcoming Ghost Sites feature, which promises to introduce a whole new form of high-risk, high-reward PvE. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at EVE's upcoming ghost sites and explain why I think its goal-oriented approach to PvE should be adopted in other areas of the game.
Star Wars: The Old Republic outlines the Bounty Contract Week
Bounty hunting is a thing in Star Wars: The Old Republic, to the point that there's an entire class focused around bounties and the hunting thereof. But even if you're usually a meditative Jedi, you can still pick up a few extra credits in the upcoming Bounty Contract Week coming to the game in August. A new development blog details what players can expect from this event, offering players of nearly all levels a chance to earn reputation for taking down violent criminals. Each day, players can select a single contract to hunt, with the Bounty Brokers Association providing a selection of different planets with available contracts. Veteran hunters can also hunt for a single Kingpin target, a high-threat individual who requires more accomplished hunters. Success means credits and reputation with the BBA. Players from level 15 and up can take part in these missions, which scale to the level of the participant, ensuring that anyone who wants to get in on the hunt can start taking down criminals for credits.
EVE Evolved: Retribution expansion highlights
EVE Online's PvP-focused Retribution expansion goes live in just a few days on December 4th, bringing with it a whole series of balance changes, UI updates, and new features. In addition to a whole new bounty hunting mechanic, we can look forward to a new combat UI, some serious ship rebalancing, and a new crimewatch system that puts players in the driving seat of antipiracy. Faction warfare is also due for a bit of a revamp, and a new safety system will help newer players stay within the bounds of the law. CCP has been releasing torrents of information on the expansion this month in the run-up to release, covering everything from the new UI updates and ship balancing to kill rights and corp hangars. There are some interesting changes on the way that might affect your everyday life in EVE. If you haul ships and items around EVE inside an Orca's ship and corp hangars, be aware that the hangars will no longer be immune to cargo scans and their contents will now drop as loot when you're destroyed. Expect suicide attacks on Orcas to spike immediately following the expansion's release, and keep your expensive toy out of harm's way. In this week's EVE Evolved, we'll dig into this week's Retribution expansion and look at a few of the highlights in depth.
CCP lays out the details on EVE's revamped bounties, kill rights, and more
It's time to learn about what CCP has been up to in EVE Online! The newest dev blog is just brimming with juicy tidbits on the team's work for Retribution, especially concerning the bounty, kill rights, and war systems. Bounty Hunters now have their own listing in the Bounty Office. Any bounties a player has posted can be tracked via the "My Bounties" tab. The minimum price for bounties has been lowered, and you'll be informed of precisely who has placed a bounty on you (which is marginally better than the looming knowledge that some faceless someone, somewhere, wants you dead). The kill right system has been retooled, clarified, and made more accessible through players' character sheets. Aggressors now have an option to retract wars that have been made mutual, thereby ending the war in 24 hours. Cost multipliers for multiple wars have been eliminated, and cost scaling has been retuned. Read all the details over at the official blog.
EVE Evolved: Three ways to break Retribution
EVE Online's upcoming Retribution expansion is set to revolutionise PvP with its brand-new criminal and bounty hunting systems. Players will be able to hunt down criminals who show their faces in highsec, and bounty hunters will track not just individuals but also entire corporations and alliances. If past expansions are any indication, however, the first thing players invariably do with any new feature is to try to break it. Some people will undoubtedly find ways to bend the new gameplay into scams, others will trick players into getting themselves killed for a few laughs, and a few will hunt for borderline exploits. We now know enough about Retribution's new features to figure out some of the ways they can be potentially abused. The ability to sell kill rights opens up a whole new scam based on tempting players with a juicy target and then pulling the rug out from under their feet. The new Suspect flag that lets players dispense justice to criminals can also be used to bait innocent players into getting themselves killed. There may even be a way to get rid of bounties for free, undermining one of the expansion's core mechanics. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at three potential pitfalls in the upcoming Retribution expansion, how they might work when the expansion goes live, and how to protect yourself from falling victim to them.
EVE Online dev blog discusses Bounty System revamp
It takes some impressive cojones for a game developer to come right out and say that one of its game's systems is broken, but that's exactly what CCP has done in the latest EVE Online dev blog. "The bounty system is broken!" reads the opening to the post, which -- surprise! -- focuses on all the ways the game's current bounty system is borked, and more importantly, how CCP plans to go about fixing it in the upcoming Retribution release. CCP's main goal with the bounty system revamp, according to the post, is to "give people faith that money they put into the bounty system has a fair chance of actually leading to their target crying tears of fear and frustration." Lovely! CCP also wants to "support bounty hunting as a career choice, preferably in a way that makes it possible for newer players as well as older players to get involved." To top it all off, the studio is expanding the bounty system to cover corporations and alliances as well, so if you've got a grudge against a corp and the money to put all its members six feet under, you're in luck. The full list of changes coming to the system is mind-numbingly extensive, but if you'd like all of the fine details, you should head on over and give the official post a read-through.
Dominus reveals its bounty hunting mechanics
We're not sure what it is about bounty hunters that makes them cooler than cool, but there's no denying the appeal of a profession that characters like Boba Fett, John Marston, and Rick Deckard call their own. Dominus is hoping to capture some of that badassery in a bottle via its bounty hunting system, and a new update on the game's official website has all the details. In a nutshell, players are able to place bounties on four of their enemies at a time, and the only other consideration is the amount of money you're willing to put toward your revenge. Hunting a bounty involves accepting a contract via an NPC, and you'll be alerted as to your target's zone location if he's online. After you make the kill, you'll be paid on the spot, and any other players who accepted the same bounty contract will find it removed from their mission log. There's more, but you'll need to head to the Dominus website to read it.
Star Wars Galaxies producer's letter talks space bounties, new player ships
Star Wars Galaxies just launched its 19.12 Entertainer update, but that doesn't mean the dev team at Sony Online Entertainment is taking it easy. Tony "Teesquared" Tyson has posted a new producer's letter to the official SWG forums that offers a hint of what's to come over the next few patches. The main thrust is the ongoing development of Galactic Civil War 2, and Tyson says the update will be released in three parts. Part one will focus on the space game, part two will involve player cities, and part three will be "a balance pass on the different GCW systems including planetary control." The space update looks to be particularly juicy, with a new player ship and space-based bounty hunting on the way. The new hardware is a Scurrg H-6 prototype bomber, an example of which is the heavily modified Havoc flown by the Feeorin pirate Nym in Star Wars lore. The Scurrg will be available to freelance pilots, and Tyson says the team is also planning to add new craft for Imperial and Rebel pilots in a future patch.
EVE Online player creativity -- Papercraft pod edition
Every month, EVE Online developer CCP Fallout trawls the forums to find the best of the community's creative efforts. Previous editions of the Celebrating the Creative Player blog have looked at in-game news websites, a Gallente shuttle remade in Minecraft, and the cross-platform Python Fitting Tool. This month's bumper edition starts off with one of my favourite recent creations -- a flowchart designed to help players pick what they want to do in EVE. Each option is linked to further reading on the topic, making it a handy tool for new players who find themselves lost in EVE. Also impressing the devs this month is a tool designed to track the bounties gained from missions. It's often difficult to work out what the most profitable missions are to run, and this tool simplifies that by recording a log of bounties on each mission. My personal favourite highlight this month was EVE player Guindel Angeline's papercraft escape pod. We've seen some incredible papercraft EVE ships before, but I think this is the first time someone's made the escape pod.
Officers' Quarters: Accelerating guild achievements
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press. News broke last week of a new Cataclysm beta patch that added a host of guild achievements to the game. MMO Champion has the full list. Some of these achievements -- such as looting 200,000 gold from creatures -- you may decide to allow to simply accumulate over time. After all, most of them can be earned through the natural course of events, assuming your members participate in all aspects of the game. However, if you'd like to pursue these guild achievements aggressively, this column is for you. Let's take a look at how you can accelerate some of these achievements and how you can motivate your guild to help. First of all, let's talk about the motivation that the game itself will provide. Earning guild achievements, according to August's guild advancement Q&A, provides "nice, fat chunks of experience [that] feel great when you get 'em." We also know from blue poster Mumper that "anything that grants guild XP will also grant guild faction." Putting two and two together, we can conclude that earning a guild achievement will also award the players who earned it a hefty dose of guild reputation. This extra guild rep and guild experience may be motivation enough. But why stop there? Let's take an active role, as officers, in providing organization and incentives.
EVE mission runners and their tormentors rejoice! New Level 4 agents added
Mission running in EVE Online is one of the more lucrative activities players can spend their time doing, at least while in the safety of high security space. The cumulative rewards from NPC bounties, loyalty points, salvage, and loot -- in addition to the mission rewards from NPC agents -- make Level 4 missions a decent ISK/hour income for many of EVE Online's pilots. Level 4 missions are the most popular, due to their relative ease and multiple battleship (high bounty) NPC spawns which yield better loot drops and more salvage components, as well as optimal loyalty point gain. However, the grouping of agents that give the best missions leads to 'mission hubs' where hundreds of players operate in the same solar systems. The latest dev blog by EVE's lead content creator CCP Molock is simply titled "New Level 4 Agents", and deals with dispersing the crowds (and clutter) from some of the high sec mission hubs in New Eden. CCP Games has added twenty-three new level 4 agents to the game in locations a bit removed from the heavily populated mission hubs, hopefully encourage more mission runners to fill quieter solar systems in the galaxy. Molock lists the new agents, along with their corporation and quality, as well as system security ratings for each location.
