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EVE Evolved: Making ISK from the Crius release
EVE Online's economy has been studied over the years for its resemblance to the real world, and it is often cited as an example of a hyper-capitalist society with no laws or regulation. But underneath the emergent interplay of supply and demand that has fueled everything from freighter businesses to virtual investment banks, EVE is ultimately a game. The biggest influence on the markets by far has always been CCP Games and the changes it deploys in expansions, which shake the universe up and force players to adapt to new circumstances. There's always money to be made from major gameplay changes, and accurately predicting how an expansion will impact on the market can put you on the head of a short-lived but very lucrative gold rush. Though EVE's updates now come in the form of ten smaller releases per year, the upcoming Crius release scheduled for July 22nd has practically a whole expansion's worth of changes to industry and research. That gives you just over two weeks to prepare for the change, train any skills you might need, and figure out how to cash in on EVE's industrial revolution. In this edition of EVE Evolved, I run down some tips for how to prepare for the upcoming industry revamp in Crius and make some ISK.
MMO Mechanics: Encouraging the daily grind
I've written before about how developers use clever mechanics to lower the barrier to entry in order to encourage more people to play MMOs, but how do they keep players interested after they have rolled a new character? More often than not, MMOs greatly benefit from hanging onto players for as long as possible, so encouraging regular play is a massive priority for development teams. As a genre that thrives on creating a connected and dynamic community, MMOs are strengthened by keeping up the number of players that log in daily. This also encourages longevity since players make meaningful connections with the people they are linked to through daily play. Utilising daily quests, creating an ongoing need for crafted equipment, and necessitating the farming of materials for the good of the collective are all very accessible ways to encourage players to log into their favourite MMO world on a regular basis. As useful as developers may find them, though, the appeal of repeatable daily content is hotly debated by MMO players. For some, low-octane daily content is a brilliant way to unwind that doesn't require a regimented schedule to complete, but many others find the repetition inherent in some daily content tiresome and uninspired. In this week's MMO Mechanics, I'm going to look at the various applications of daily content in today's MMOs while weighing up the pros and cons of several of these techniques.
EVE Evolved: Everything we know about Rubicon
Back in April, EVE Online Senior Producer Andie Nordgren delivered an incredible long-term vision for the game's future that included deep space colonisation, player-built stargates, and players controlling practically everything that's currently run by NPC empires. This vision sets the tone and direction for development over the next ten expansions, each of which will introduce a small component of the overall goal. In a live interview session earlier this week, CCP revealed the first steps it will take toward space colonisation in its upcoming winter expansion. Named Rubicon, the expansion will be in players' hands on November 19th and promises to give individuals and small groups unprecedented control over the sandbox. It will let players fight over planetary customs offices in high security space, significantly buff the ability of small ships to participate in hit-and-run style warfare, and even introduce a new set of personal deployable structures that can be hidden anywhere in space. All this comes alongside two new Sisters of EVE ships, twitch livestream integration, and significant balance changes to Marauders, Interceptors, Interdictors, and Electronic Attack Frigates. In this week's EVE Evolved, I run down all of the new features and changes announced so far for EVE Online's Rubicon expansion.
Captain's Log: Star Trek Online year in review, part two
As 2013 gets underway and before Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment begin hinting at upcoming material due out for Star Trek Online's third anniversary next month, I'm taking the opportunity to go over the past year in the game. It's a great time to sit down and be reminded of just how much transpired in the last 12 months. Last week, I barely scratched the surface of what happened in Star Trek Online during 2012, but I was able to touch briefly on some of the minor changes that occurred with user-generated content tool, The Foundry. Join me while I continue my look back on what 2012 brought to STO!
Star Trek Online celebrates Fleet Week
Space may be a cold, dark, unforgiving place, but it's also filled with exuberant co-op adventure, so say we all. The Force is strong with Star Trek Online, as Cryptic is launching an end-of-summer event in the hopes of encouraging players to unite and work for a common purpose. That's right: It's Fleet Week in STO. Through Thursday, August 23rd, players can earn bonus fleet marks for participating in solo and group content. Cryptic even has a special Foundry daily mission that awards bonus marks, and many other multiplayer activities will also result in extra currency. Fleet Week may well prove crucial to fleets attempting to construct their starbases, as the fleet marks earned during the event are used to fund these projects.
Captain's Log: Star Trek Online launches Season Six
Season Six has finally made its way to the Star Trek Online live servers! It was pushed to the Holodeck server last Thursday after a day-long maintenance period and a couple of patches that followed into the wee-hours of the morning on Friday. By Friday afternoon, the majority of issues seemed to be resolved, and players, especially those who belonged to fleets, crowded into the game to begin construction on their new starbases. Others jumped in to play against the new Tholian enemy in a hostile environment. Most now seem very happy with the new content and are eager to work with their fellow starship captains to create and defend their fleets' bases. Join me after the jump as I go over more of the new stuff!
Star Trek Online posts patch notes for the Season 6 launch
Star Trek Online is mobilizing the fleets today. With the launch of Season 6, fleets will have new starbases to explore, new projects to develop, and new tasks to undertake as a single cohesive unit. The full patch notes elaborate on a number of the new features that fleets can focus on and what awaits the stalwart captains who pursue those goals, including the details of assembling and reinforcing starbases over time. But even if your fleet isn't planning on focusing on all this new content, there's still plenty in the update for you to enjoy. New group content has been added in the form of the Colony Invasion and the No Win Scenario. There have also been a variety of balance changes and user interface tweaks as outlined in the full patch notes, including several tweaks to the Foundry and ship systems. All in all, the new season should give players in or out of a fleet a more enjoyable experience all around.
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.
Captain's Log: The reverse slingshot effect
Captain's Log, Stardate 65056.3... Hello, computer (and players)! The slingshot effect is a maneuver, shown throughout the Star Trek franchise, which allowed starships to move back through the time continuum. By traveling at a high warp factor towards a star with a large gravitational pull, the ship would whip around it and time travel. While this seemed to only exist within the realms of the IP, it looks as though Star Trek Online's Executive Producer Dan Stahl took us on a reverse slingshot course, giving us a glimpse into the future of the game. Before we returned to the original timeline, he made sure to write up everything we saw along the way for those who couldn't make the trip. In layman's terms, for those of you who missed the news earlier this week, July's Engineering Report has been released. While this is a monthly publication that contains the development pipeline for STO, including some items that have been featured in past issues, there are always a few bullet points added that seem to spark a healthy amount of debate -- one of these includes the ability to auction off your in-game Emblems, a form of currency, for C-Store points that have been paid for with real money. For information on this, including a response from Cryptic's PR department, and more, read ahead past the jump for this week's Captain's Log entry. Ensign, warp 10! Let's pull a slingshot maneuver of our own...
Star Trek Online posts the latest Engineering Report
With the launch of Season Four now behind the developers at Star Trek Online, the team is now focusing on what lies ahead for its Captains. The latest Engineering Report, a monthly forum post that is released and written by Executive Producer Dan Stahl, foreshadows some upcoming content that we will see soon™ and commits to the eradicating of bugs that recently came to life. There are even some new additions that are sure to bring some "healthy" discussions to the Cryptic forums. Between now and Season Five, we will see the introduction of the Duty Officer system, STF revamps, new gear sets, more Klingon updates, and the advancement of the Borg into Federation space. While it has been said that Season Five will most likely not be released until 2012, players can look forward to seeing major updates for fleets, a rework of how exploration works, more in-game species, and the introduction of fleet starbases. Make sure to take a look at the full report, as well as this week's upcoming Captain's Log entry, to read about these and other updates coming to a starship near you.
Star Trek Online Ask Cryptic talks starbases, ground combat, and more
How would you feel about a cover system and/or first-person-shooter elements in your daily Star Trek Online diet? Producer Dan Stahl tackles the feasibility of both of those features -- and a host of others -- in the latest Ask Cryptic. The STO version of the community Q&A feature went live last night on the game's official website and boasts a large number of subscriber-generated queries ranging from integrated voice chat to a time table on the ground combat revamp to the addition of starbase functionality to the Foundry. "We anticipate the next major feature to the Foundry being the ability for fleets to design and run their own starbases. This is a monumental addition to the Foundry, so don't expect it right away, but it is the next big thing for that feature," Stahl says. Check out the full list of questions on the official STO website.
Rumored four-year, multi-trillion ISK exploit in EVE Online
An exploit in EVE Online has come to light that may have some major repercussions for the game. Massively does not have solid confirmation on the details (and allegations as the case may be), as this has just come to light. The exploit was publicized on a third party EVE forum called Scrapheap Challenge, on Wednesday, December 10th. If this isn't a hoax or an exaggerated account of events, how serious an exploit might this be? Very serious, if the details listed prove to be accurate... The exploit was really a bug related to a network of player owned stations (POS) paired with a moon mining operation, which yielded far too much valuable material far too quickly. Four years and an estimated 2.5 to 3 trillion ISK later, the exploit was found and patched, and the offender(s) banned. Given the claimed amount of ISK involved, it's serious enough to potentially have an impact on the game's economy. The individual who posted the details of this exploit remains anonymous, and has only identified him or herself as "anotherone", but tells a story of how the exploit came to be: "I would like to tell you a short EVE story. Today all of my EVE Online accounts were banned. I was sure this day would come. What surprises me is that it took CCP this long to catch up with me. Even though they knew about it." It's that last sentence that is sparking so much response from the playerbase -- anotherone asserts that this issue was actually petitioned to CCP Games back in 2004, and subsequently ignored.Read on for more details on this economic drama.
