planetary-interaction
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EVE Evolved: EVE needs real colonisation now
MMOs have absolutely exploded in popularity over the past decade, with online gaming growing from a niche hobby to a global market worth billions of dollars each year. Once dominated by subscription games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, recent years have seen free-to-play games take centre stage. Global MMO subscriptions have been reportedly shrinking since 2010, and EVE doesn't appear to be immune to this industry-wide trend. Though February 2013's figures showed EVE subscriptions have technically grown year-on-year, those numbers were published just after the Chinese server relaunch, and CCP hasn't released any new figures since. Developers have done a good job of catering to current subscribers and polishing existing gameplay with the past few expansions, but the average daily login numbers are still the same as they were over four years ago. EVE will undoubtedly hook in plenty of new and returning subscribers when its deep space colonisation gameplay with player-built stargates and new hidden solar systems is implemented, but time could be running out on these features. Hefty competition is due in the next few years from upcoming sandbox games such as Star Citizen, EverQuest Next, Camelot Unchained, and Elite: Dangerous, and CCP will have to release something big soon to bring in some fresh blood. In this week's EVE Evolved, I ask whether CCP should focus on new players and suggest plans for two relatively simple colonisation-based expansions that could get EVE a significant part of the way toward its five-year goal in just one year.
EVE Fanfest 2013 day one: DUST 514, wormholes, and lowsec PvP
The 10th anniversary EVE Online Fanfest is beyond massive, with over 1,400 players piling into Reykjavik's Harpa building for three days of intense internet spaceshippery. Players fly from across the world to meet their corpmates and chat with other players as passionate about EVE as they are. CCP runs a packed schedule of game design presentations, reveals, and roundtable discussions with players, but for many attendees, the event is about being a part of a tight-knit community that usually exists only inside a game server. CCP made the bold statement to the press team this morning that its goal is "to create virtual worlds more meaningful than real life," and with so many people flying across the world to meet other players face to face, I'd say the studio has succeeded. Today saw talks on EVE's hugely successful Retribution expansion, ship rebalancing, map generation in DUST 514, and lowsec PvP, and of course, we attended the DUST 514 keynote speech. There were also some hilarious shenanigans with the wormhole roundtable room filling to bursting and a guest science lecture on the possibility of faster than light travel in real life.
EVE dev blog teases new player customs offices
How does the prospect of a player-owned customs office in EVE Online grab you? Whoa, settle down there, Mr. flying-in-space troll, as we're not talking about Incarna-style player housing here but rather a new mechanic that seeks to add a bit more sand to New Eden's sandbox. CCP Omen has the details in the latest EVE dev blog and in a nutshell, player customs houses exist to enable planetary taxation and to add a new wrinkle to the game's planetary interaction mechanics. You'll need to erect a customs office in orbit around a planet (note: there can be only one), and of course it can be attacked and destroyed by your fellow capsuleers. For a list of materials, costs, and associated corporation functionality, warp on over to the official EVE dev blog.
CCP releases EVE Online planetary interaction video tutorial
EVE Online's learning curve is somewhat notorious (if not downright legendary) and may even be part of the reason the game's hardcore fans are so hardcore. There is truly nothing like it in the MMO space (and not much in gaming period aside from Elite and the X series). Getting into the ebb and flow of New Eden is challenging even for seasoned video game vets, and that was before CCP added a new wrinkle in the form of planetary interaction. Luckily, the Icelandic development firm is also producing some spiffy video tutorials to help capsuleers wrap their brains around everything from scanning to harvesting resources from planets. A new planetary interaction video covers the basics including required modules, skills, and the successful manipulation of the new interface additions, all of it presented with in-game footage and voiceover narration. Check it after the cut or via CCP's YouTube portal.
EVE planetary interaction improvements deployed
When EVE Online's Tyrannis expansion was first released, developers promised that a team would be assigned to iterate on the core planetary interaction feature. Numerous user interface tweaks have been deployed since then in hotfixes, but the biggest gameplay improvements so far have just arrived with last week's final Incursion expansion deployment. Developers Kristinn Þór Sigurbergsson and Cat Pinson discussed the major updates in a series of video devblogs leading up to the expansion. In a new devblog, CCP Omen has provided a more detailed explanation of the improvements and how you can take advantage of them. A welcome change for players is the ability to upgrade a control center without tearing down the entire industrial chain attached to it. The biggest changes are with the resource extraction process, which has received a complete overhaul. Individual extractors have been replaced with a central Extractor Control Unit, from which movable drill heads can be deployed. Resources also now deplete when they're mined, so you'll need to move your drill heads around periodically to keep the operation running smoothly. Head over to the official devblog for the full details.
Massively's EVE Online Incursion video devblog roundup
Having progressed from being a small independent studio in Iceland to a successful multinational industry leader, EVE Online's developer CCP Games has always had a reputation for being very close to the game's playerbase. Back in July, this view was soured when information from devblogs and the June CSM summit seemed to suggest that EVE would receive no bug-fixes or iterations on old gameplay features for at least 18 months. Players were in an uproar, and a growing perception began to spread that CCP was selling current EVE players short in order to focus on Incarna. In the past six months, things at CCP have take a complete 180-degree turn. Planetary Interaction has received the iteration players were promised, with gameplay tweaks and user interface fixes being deployed at a rapid pace. CCP also instituted team GridLock, whose purpose was to wage an all-out war on lag and fleet issues. In a refreshing and extremely welcome turn of affairs, CCP has been making a gargantuan effort lately to communicate with the players about upcoming changes and collect feedback. Though regular technical devblogs and pre-released test-server patches, players have been kept more informed than ever about what's going on behind the scenes at CCP HQ. Most recently, a series of 18 developer videos was released leading up to the Incursion expansion's final release today. Topics covered include battle reports from the ongoing war on lag, information on server optimisations that have been made recently, updates to planetary interaction, and other interesting topics. Skip past the cut for a detailed roundup of all 18 videos, all hosted on CCP's official YouTube page.
Changes on the way for EVE's planetary interaction feature
When EVE Online's Empyrean Age expansion brought us faction warfare, thousands of would-be PvP-addicts rejoiced. When Apocrypha brought us wormholes, I could talk about nothing else for at least six months. With the Tyrannis expansion, however, there was no such giddiness. Tyrannis, with its main planetary interaction feature, was clearly not one of EVE's most popular expansions. Even the developers at CCP said they weren't happy with it, and further work was promised after launch. In a new devblog, CCP Omen has explained some of the changes that are on their way for planetary interaction. Command centres will be upgradeable in-place, eliminating the need to tear down an entire industrial network just to upgrade to the next command centre. The biggest changes are coming to the cumbersome surveying and extracting processes. It will be possible to move extractors around to find new mineral deposits rather than deleting and rebuilding them. The new survey mechanic will also show a graph on which the duration of an extractor cycle can be adjusted. Extractors can now feasibly be left for up to 14 days without needing to be moved or reset, which is good news for pilots risking RSI under the current mechanics. Most of the upcoming changes have been taken from talks with the Council of Stellar Management, which has published a clear list of changes its members would like to see implemented.
EVE Evolved: The EVE Online that could be
Each of us has a different idea of the perfect game, whether it's an existing game with a few tweaks or something completely new. Game designers work tirelessly to make their own vision of the perfect game a reality, but there's no telling what players will think of a feature until it's finished. In the process of transforming a feature from a gleam in the game designer's eye to a finished product, something is unfortunately often lost in translation. Limitations in the technology being used or the manpower available can render the ideal implementation infeasible. As players, we don't really see that full development process. That doesn't stop us from painting our perfect vision of an upcoming or potential feature and how awesome it could be. In the coming years, the EVE Online developers will be going through the process of making some of their most incredible visions a reality. Ideas like walking in stations and integrating the upcoming MMOFPS Dust 514 with EVE's planetary interaction feature will be put through a potentially brutal development process. We can only hope that as little as possible of those visions we've heard from EVE's developers gets lost in translation. In this speculative opinion piece, I look at a few areas in which EVE is sure to be expanded in the coming years and discuss what I'd consider to be the ideal way they could be implemented or handled.
EVE Evolved: The Industrial-Sized Knowledgebase
The EVE Evolved column has been home to dozens of in-depth guides on various aspects of EVE Online. Over the past two years, I've written multi-part guides to many industrial and PvP-oriented topics. On the topic of research and development, we've covered tech 1 research, invention, reverse engineering and five top tips for researchers. Perhaps more useful was the three part series on trading, which first covered the basics before delving into advanced trading strategies and a few useful tips. Other guides which have proven popular among newer players included our three-part guide to mission-running, and the recent three-page guide to exploration. Members of the EVE community regularly produce new guides and tools to help players make the most of their time in New Eden. This week, EVE player Laci surprised the EVE community with the release of an impressive new guide aimed at new players and industralists. The comprehensive 416-page Industrial-Sized Knowledgebase (or ISK for short) covers practically everything a new player could want to know about the game. Until now, the guide had been available only in Hungarian. After intensive translation and design work, the full guide has been released in English. In this week's EVE Evolved, I take a look at this impressive guide and ask its creator Laci a few questions about it.
E-ON Magazine issue 20 hits the shelves
The magazine industry is a behemoth, catering to practically every hobby there is. No matter how obscure the hobby, you're sure to find a magazine on the shelf all about it. While there are plenty of magazines dedicated to gaming, only a few MMOs have their own dedicated magazines. Despite the rise in popularity of web-based publications, there's something special about having a physical magazine you can flip through. Since I am a massive nerdy fan of EVE Online, each issue of the quarterly E-ON magazine feels like a proper treat. The production values are very high, and it's pure EVE from cover to cover. The publishers even go so far as to include advertisements for EVE corporations and services rather than paid ads for other games or gaming services. Issue 20 of the magazine was released last month, but the postal fairy decided I had been naughty and didn't deliver it until this week. I've spent the majority of today reading this magazine all about internet spaceships, and I've loved every nerdy moment of it. This quarter's issue has a strong focus on the impact of EVE's recent Tyrannis expansion and its planetary interaction feature. In addition to a guide on setting up planetary harvesting infrastructure, the magazine's editors ask whether Tyrannis was everything we hoped or a missed opportunity to breathe new life into the planets of New Eden. Other topics discussed in this issue include EVE's controversial Council of Stellar Management, the history of the alliance tournament, and a look at the new rebalanced supercarriers. Skip past the cut for a breakdown of what you can expect in E-ON issue 20 and my impressions from reading it.
One Shots: So happy together
With the advent of Planetary Interaction in EVE Online, more and more corporations are finding reasons to work together -- after all, there's a lot of ISK to be made! But what is sometimes surprising is just what form those interactions wind up taking. Today we have a rather silly image of just how far inter-alliance fleet maneuvers can go when you're not paying attention. This image comes to us from Clovermite, who writes in: "I was managing my Planetary Interaction structures while doing a mining op. It was actually a pretty significant event, as it was the first inter-alliance fleet we formed since signing a non-aggression pact. When I exited out of the PI interface, I was a bit baffled to see such a strange looking ship... Then it dawned on me -- the guy from the other alliance had unwittingly sidled the fore of his ship into the aft of mine. But hey, I guess there's no better way to seal inter-alliance cooperation than an interracial 'transaction' between an Orca and an Osprey. We both had a good laugh and took screenshots." Have you caught an awkwardly silly screenshot in your favorite game? Feel like sharing? We'd love to see it. All you have to do is email it to us here at oneshots@massively.com, along with your name, the name of the game, and a description of what we're seeing. We'll post it out here and give you the credit! %Gallery-85937%
All EVE players to receive free Primae planetary industry ship
Following the unscheduled extended downtime caused by the recent EVE Online server move, CCP Games has promised to reimburse players for the lost play time with a small pool of additional skill-points that they can distribute any way they like. CCP went on to hint that they'd been working on a different gift for all players, a cryptic remark that had players both excited and bewildered. In a new devblog, CCP Zinfandel outlined exactly what this gift will be and how players can claim it. To be released on the 29th of June, the Primae joins the ranks of the Apotheosis and Zephyr as another one-time gift ship delivered to all EVE players. Supplied free of charge by NPC industrial corporation Outer Ring Excavations, the Primae is a ship designed to help in planetary industry. This lightweight hauler features a low signature radius and significant hit-point buffer, making it a more defensible ship with which to haul materials between planets. To ensure it doesn't displace its paper-thin industrial cousins in the general hauling scene, the majority of the ship's cargo space is reserved for planetary equipment and processed materials. Two special bays able to hold only those materials ensure that the ship remains a tool for the planetary industrialists among us. For more details on the Primae and how to claim it after June 29th, read the latest EVE devblog.
EVE Evolved: First impressions of planet industry
As I sat down to write a guide to planetary interaction in EVE Online, I realised that I hadn't explored the system fully enough to come up with any definitively good deployment strategies. A few great guides to planet industry have been circulating since the expansion came out, but it will be some time before people really start to figure out the best ways to use EVE's newest feature. It's a complicated business and since a lot of the products made on planets are still currently available to buy from NPCs, the market potential hasn't yet been fully realised. In this short opinion piece, I give my first impressions of planetary interaction and the Tyrannis expansion.
EVE Online's planets are open for business
When EVE Online's Tyrannis expansion went live last month, its main planetary interaction feature was initially disabled. The command centre structures required for planetary interaction weren't released as more time was needed for testing. This had the unfortunate side-effect of causing havoc with the starbase market. Until now, players were only able to scan planets for resources and train the required skills in preparation for the inevitable planetary gold rush. Today the markets in EVE were seeded with command centres, opening the flood gates on planetary exploitation. To help you get to grips with planetary interaction, several helpful guides and instructional videos have already been made. EVE University have produced an impressive and thorough guide, along with a handy chart of what you can produce with each of the planet materials. Similarly, EVE player Korai Iarok has taken the initiative and produced a great flow-chart style PDF showing the manufacturing processes for each item. With these helpful guides and CCP's own video tutorial, even new players should have very little problem setting up their own planet-based industrial networks. Skip past the cut to watch CCP's official planetary interaction video tutorial.
Tyrannis launch oversight destroys starbase market
After what seemed to be a smooth launch, it soon became apparent that EVE Online's Tyrannis expansion had brought with it several broken features. While the planet-scanning interface works fine and looks fantastic, the deployment of command centres was pushed back until June 8th. The materials produced on planets could not possibly be made until June 8th but on May 26th, tier 4 products from planetary interaction began appearing on the market. It wasn't long before EVE players figured out that you could refine NPC-sold starbase structures into high-end planet products. Starbase structures are one of the many things that CCP is switching from being supplied at fixed prices by NPCs to being produced by players through planetary interaction. The NPC supply was meant to be removed on May 26th but as players were currently unable to produce the structures, that change was delayed until June 8th.
Help develop Tyrannis on the EVE test server
EVE Online's Tyrannis expansion is due for release in a few months and players are looking forward to the new planetary interaction mechanic. Although the core ideas for the expansion have been settled on, many of the game mechanics have not been fully fleshed out. In an effort to get players involved, CCP have begun releasing early prototypes of the planetary interaction feature on the EVE test server Singularity. It's important to keep in mind that nothing on the test server is final. As a studio that makes heavy use of agile development strategies, CCP will use feedback from players on the test server to incrementally refine the design. Dierdra Val, director of EVE University, has been on the test server to bring the EVE community details of CCP's current designs. They've released a video showing the process of installing structures on a planet and setting up factory links. So far, planetary interaction seems very similar to the moon mining and reacting industry but it's definitely a much more active process. While moon mining operations produce an endless supply of moon minerals at a steady rate, planet-based material deposits will vary in total size and yield per cycle. The materials produced on planets are also different than those produced by existing industrial operations. Skip past the cut to watch EVE University's test-server planetary interaction tutorial or set up a test server client and try it out for yourself.
MicroWarpCast interviews EVE lead game designer Noah Ward
The EVE Online-focused podcast MicroWarpCast returned this week, hosted by our friend CrazyKinux with guest Noah Ward (aka CCP Hammerhead), who is a Lead Game Designer at CCP Games. We mentioned a while back that the winner of a contest CrazyKinux was running would get to interview an EVE developer on the podcast. People entered by writing an article on planetary control and how this could be implemented in EVE Online. The winner was Xiphos83 from the EVE blog "A Misguided Adventurer" who wrote about about a siege system that could be used in planetary conquest. As the contest winner, Xiphos83 posed questions to Noah about some of the current or controversial issues in the game. This led to Noah explaining CCP's reasons for limiting the use of the directional scanner with a timer -- a major issue cited by many players who either hunt others or want to evade attackers -- due in part to player macroing of directional scans. The directional scan will never go back to how it was since that system was too easily exploitable, but he asserted that the devs have tried to balance performance for the players with server demands.
