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EVE Evolved: Three exploitable game features
If there's one thing EVE Online players are good at, it's finding ways to get an advantage over each other. The hyper-competitive PvP sandbox breeds players with an investigative streak who will constantly figure out ways to bend and abuse new features to make ISK or get an edge over other players in combat. The most obvious cases include abusing bugs, as happened in 2009's starbase exploit that corporations used to generate valuable tech 2 materials out of thin air and 2010's MonkeySphere exploit that let players hide themselves from the local chat channel and sneak up on unsuspecting victims. Most cases of abusing features for profit or advantage aren't as clear-cut as these obvious exploits, as some have negative consequences but still use completely legitimate game mechanics. When players figured out how to abuse Faction Warfare's kill LP rewards to farm five trillion ISK, for example, they did so using in-game mechanics that just hadn't really been thought through. Many more subtle cases of broken game mechanics that undermine EVE's core design ethos still exist, some of which have been recently introduced and others that have managed to remain unchallenged for years because there isn't really a good alternative. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at three features in EVE Online that I think fundamentally break the design ethos of the game but don't have very clear solutions.
EVE Evolved: Lowsec isn't impenetrable
When EVE Online was created, one of its core design philosophies was the idea of risk vs. reward -- that higher-value activities should expose the player to greater risk of loss. This rule naturally follows from how the world of business and competition works in real life, and I think it will always arise organically from sandbox MMOs with limited resources. If something's risk-free and easy to do, you can bet there are countless other people already doing it and squeezing the profit margins. This idea was also built into EVE at a fundamental level, with the galaxy split into police-protected high-security systems, the pirate-infested low-security borders between nations, and the chaotic uncolonised wilderness of nullsec. The steep step up in risk when transitioning from high- to low-security space has always been a major point of contention with gamers, as those who don't know any better often charge straight into deep space to their deaths. The story of the newbie working his way up to get his first cruiser or battlecruiser and then losing it to pirates is repeated so often on forums and in the comments sections of articles that it's almost become a cliche. While the idea that pirates wait around every corner lingers on, this impenetrable barrier hiding all the best content from new players no longer really exists. Through the addition of wormholes and the changes made in Rubicon, no star system is now off limits to a pilot with just a few months of skill training under his belt. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at what you can do to safely travel and operate in EVE's dangerous areas, why the barrier into low-security space needs to remain low for new players, and how CCP has expanded the EVE universe through the introduction of riskier areas of space.
EVE Evolved: A game of cat and mouse
Outside of the annual Alliance Tournament, it's rare to find a fair fight in EVE Online with both sides being evenly matched in numbers or odds of success. On the actual battlefields of EVE, lone pilots and fleets alike hunt for fights they can win and tend to shy away from fights that aren't stacked in their favour. A bold few will intentionally engage when they're outmatched or outgunned in the hopes of getting a lucky and impressive-looking kill, but most of the time, that kind of fight is the result of a poor judgment call or misreading the situation. Something new EVE players tend to have trouble accepting is that the outcome of a fight is often decided before the guns even start firing. EVE PvP is a massive game of tactics in which the goal is to catch weaker enemies at a disadvantage, so the fight could already be lost the moment you're caught by a superior foe. A lot of PvP is psychological; you trick enemies into thinking they have the upper hand, and you hide your true intentions and abilities until it's too late. Fleets of all sizes roam around EVE appraising the smaller fish while avoiding the sharks, and I wouldn't trade that cat-and-mouse gameplay for any level of pre-arranged fairness. But what motivates people to fight or flee, and how can we win the psychological battle to gain an upper hand? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at three tricks you can use to catch targets off-guard.
Plasmonic cloak makes objects invisible, but only in the microwave region of the spectrum
Okay, so we're not up to USS Pegasus levels yet, but for the first time researchers have been able to cloak a three dimensional object. Don't start planning your first trip to the Hogwarts library restricted section just yet though, the breakthrough is only in the microwave region of the EM spectrum. Using a shell of plasmonic materials, it's possible to create a "photo negative" of the object being cloaked in order to make it disappear. The technique is different to the use of metamaterials, which try to bounce light around the object. Instead, plasmonics try to deceive the light as to what's actually there at the time -- but because it has to be tailored to create a "negative image" of the object you're hiding, it's not as flexible, but it could be an important step on the road to that bank heist we've been planning.
Star Trek Online unveils cloaking Klingon warship: Vo'Quv Class
Some of us at Massively are big fans of stealth classes and gameplay in MMOs. When it comes to space combat, even moreso when you can decloak with enough firepower to wipe out an opponent before they realize what's happening and disappear just as fast. However, will this stealth-focused gameplay be viable in the tactical PvP of Star Trek Online? We can't say for sure yet as there hasn't been much in the way of in-game combat footage, but the info they've released on this latest Klingon Empire warship, the Vo'Quv Class, suggests this type of gameplay might just be possible. Of course the ship profile is heavy on the lore elements we're sure Star Trek Online fans will want to sink their teeth into, but the specifications released for the Vo'Quv Class offensive and defensive systems list a "Class 7 Cloaking Device" backed up by a complement of disruptor beams which can fire in any direction taking out enemy shields, while multiple torpedo launchers finish the job.
EVE Online exploration video tutorial
EVE Online blogger Morphisat recently unearthed a good video tutorial on the profession of exploration, by a player called SRRAE. In a vast, open galaxy like EVE Online's setting of New Eden, the option of becoming an explorer is an appealing one. However, despite the name 'exploration,' players cannot actually discover new solar systems. They can, however, find hidden content throughout space, both in highsec and lowsec. This can include hidden asteroid belts (presumably with rarer ores to mine), hacking and archaeology sites, harvestable gas clouds used in drug production, and numerous combat encounters. Admittedly, exploration is not an easy profession to pick up for beginners, but with enough skills related to scanning and covert ops, paired with a decent understanding of game mechanics and the value of a cloaking device, exploration can be lucrative -- particularly in 0.0 space. Of course, there will inevitably be times where an explorer is simply burning off scan probes in the futile hope of finding something new. Perhaps SRRAE has become a victim of his own success, as he recently lamented the downside of exploration's growing popularity among New Eden's capsuleers.[Via CrazyKinux]
US physicists build teensy 2D cloaking device
Drop what you're doing, friend. Cloaking devices are real now, meaning all we need are force fields and some spandex jumpsuits and we'll be bonafide dwellers of the future. The good news comes to us from physicists at the University of Maryland, lead by Igor Smolyaninov, who successfully cloaked a 10 micron gold ring by bending two dimensions of visible light. This follows up successful research last year that had worked out an invisibility cloak in the electromagnetic spectrum, but is still a far cry from a true 3D cloaking device, since such an object would have to bend light waves both magnetically and electronically simultaneously -- this 2D model is just pushing around "surface plasmons" created out of the light waves. While the tech probably won't make the jump to 3D cloaking, it might be used in computer chips or as a replacement for fiber optics some time down the road, which we suppose is alright.
Duke scientists build theorized invisibility cloak. Sort of.
Yes, everyone wants an invisibility cloak. Yes, it's been theorized and in development before. But now, what our friends across the pond have only imagined, scientists at an American university have actually built. A group of brainiacs at Duke University have built a device (based on the Imperial College London theory) that can deflect microwave beams so the beams flow around an object almost as if nothing was there, with not too much distortion (but only in two dimensions). In order to do this, the group built a series of concentric circles made up of "metamaterials," or "artificial composites that can be made to interact with electromagnetic waves in ways that natural materials cannot reproduce." Don't get too excited yet, as scientists warn that this is merely a "baby step." The next step is to make the cloak work in three dimensions, and make improve the cloak's effectiveness. And even still, we're a long way off from making something completely disappear from visibility, which "would have to simultaneously interact with all of the wavelengths, or colors, that make up light." said David R. Smith, a member of the research squad. Hey Duke team, if you ever need human test subjects, we'd definitely be willing to volunteer.[Via The Associated Press]
UK scientists working on cloaking device
We've heard of these kinds of guys before. They've spent too much time engrossed in Harry Potter books or old Star Trek episodes, and dream of some sort of device that will make them invisible. Every couple of years, one of them surfaces with a new idea about a "cloaking device" that can bend light around solid objects, making them appear to be invisible. This time, two separate teams in the UK are racing to show that the concept is feasible. One group, at Imperial College in London, believes that light-bending metamaterials can be produced within the next decade. Meanwhile, two mathematicians have published a study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, which claims that a "superlens" placed close to an object could produce an "anomalous localized resonance," essentially rendering the underlying object invisible by creating a phantom light wave using the same frequency. The scientists envision building a device soon -- one that could conceivably cloak particles of dust. We'll check back with both parties in a few years. In the meantime, we'd like to present our detailed artist's rendering, prepared at great cost and with much research, which we believe truly shows what a cloaked object will look like to the naked eye. Read - MetamaterialsRead - Superlens
