EVE Valkyrie
Cologne, Germany – August 21, 2013 – CCP Games, the leading independent developer of massively multiplayer online games, today announced it has begun development of EVE: Valkyrie, a multiplayer spaceship dogfighting shooter set in the EVE Universe. The game uses virtual reality to give players the sense of being a real pilot in an EVE Online spaceship and will be released in 2014.
EVE: Valkyrie is the evolution of “EVE-VR,” the amazing virtual reality tech demo that debuted at EVE Fanfest 2013 and went on to win numerous awards at E3 2013 — including “Game of E3 2013” by PC Gamer and “Most Innovative” by IGN. The game will be developed at the company’s Newcastle studio.
“From the moment this year’s Fanfest attendees first got their hands on EVE-VR, the question has been, ‘When can I have this?’,” said Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP. “What started as a passion project by a small, incredibly talented group of CCP developers became one of the most highly anticipated games of the year — before we even announced it. We have big plans for EVE: Valkyrie and I can’t wait to share more details later this year.”
Hacking in Oydssey
EVE Online: Odyssey is coming on the 4th of June and Exploration as a profession is seeing a lot of love from the developers at CCP. Team Prototyping Rocks has been working hard on improving the depth of gameplay that explorers will enjoy in their day to day lives. The devil is in the details and until this release the details behind Hacking and Archaeology have been very sparse. Our brief was to make the tasks you do in sites much more immersive and interactive. In other words, to remove the "sit and wait" aspect of Exploration gameplay and replace it with something interesting to do.
How Hacking Will Work
Our approach to this task was to start with what we know best, prototype creation. This let us come up with ideas for mechanics without investing an awful lot of time. Our final feature design came together as a card game. The feature itself takes the mechanics similar to those found in exploration based dungeon crawlers, roguelikes, etc., and gives them a hacking twist. We like this because it furthers the feeling of exploring unknown, hazardous places in the computer system controlling the object you are hacking. We hit most of the roguelike tropes, with procedurally generated levels, turn based combat and "permadeath" - albeit on a scale that is suited to shorter games.
This work in progress image shows a Hacking attempt in progress, although the hacker in this case faces a pretty stiff challenge to defeat this System Core.
The player begins by activating their Hacking or Archaeology module on the appropriate target and is then presented with the UI window for their module. The gameplay remains the same between both Hacking and Archaeology with the latter being appropriately themed as an older computer system both visually and aurally. The window shows the user the computer system mapped out as a network of interconnected nodes. One of the node's contents is already visible as this was the penetration point of the activated module. Users hack a system by exploring the nodes adjacent to the nodes that they have already explored. Their goal is to find the core or cores in the system and taking them over by destroying them. Once the core is destroyed the system has been hacked and the module forces the site to scatter its contents from the cargo hold into the vacuum of space. The hacker, his friends and anyone else around can then collect the scattered contents. We'll be releasing another devblog shortly that will go into details of how the contents of the site are distributed and how they are collected.
Along the way users are going to encounter a variety of different subsystems:
Defense Subsystems
These are the protectors of the system, once uncovered they prevent the module from spreading to nodes adjacent to it. Some advanced defense subsystems also have other abilities to confound attackers.
Utility Subsystems
Scattered throughout the computer system are various utilities that the user can take and either use to bolster their module or attack defense subsystems and the cores.
Datacaches
These encrypted nodes are typically benign. The user can choose to decrypt the node to discover its contents. This might uncover a great utility or it might bring some particularly nasty defense subsystem online.
Cores
Mentioned above already these are the heart of the system being hacked. Destroy all the cores in a system and you gain control.
The modules, defense subsystems and cores have attributes that define their coherence (hit points) and strength. Combat is resolved through the attacker going first. The defender's coherence is reduced by the attacker's strength and visa-versa if the defender survives.
Modules also have a number of utility slots, this limits the number of active utilities that a module can have at a time.
A hacking attempt is failed when the module loses coherence in the system. Fail too many times and the system will self-destruct the object destroying all its contents. Hacking attempts can also be failed by flying too far away from the object being hacked, by taking too long and being kicked out of the system or by closing the module UI. On top of which only one person can hack an object at a time.
Modules and Skills
EVE's Team Superfriends are working on broader changes to Exploration and are supporting us in updating the modules that you will be using. All existing modules and skills have been mapped over to this new system so those who have already trained them will have similar advantages that they currently enjoy.
The Future
This first release of changes to Hacking and Archaeology are just the tip of the iceberg. In the future we hope to add in much more variety into the subsystems you encounter whilst hacking. We would like to add some rare, unique things for hackers to find and interact with.
We also need to tie the Hacking activity much closer into the EVE Universe. To do so we are going to find a way for hackers to pre-prepare themselves for hacking and gain items useful for Hacking from engaging in the activity itself. This may be allowing hackers to retrieve unused utilities and sell them on the market or create them themselves through some form of production line from data resources gathered whilst hacking. Either way we want to open up the Hacking experience to the economy of EVE.
We'd also like to expand the variety and complexity of things that you can hack in EVE to bring it out of its current niche and into the wider world, allowing us to create situations where hackers are valuable for more than just their ability to gain ISK.
Lots of people have asked about competitive or cooperative hacking and that's something that we may well explore but for now we wish to deepen the current experience and how it connects into EVE.
Probe Scanning and other Goodies for Odyssey
Hello capsuleers!
This is SoniClover from team Super Friends, telling you about some of the things the team has been working on for EVE Online: Odyssey's June 4th release.
The team took part in the theme-conception work overseen by CCP Seagull earlier in the year. From that work the exploration theme emerged as something we wanted to focus the expansion on. Super Friends part in this work was looking at the current probe scanning system to see what changes were needed to fit the overall vision.
What is this overall vision? The overall vision for exploration is to make it a more noticeable part of the game and lower the barrier of entry. Exploration is something that appeals to a lot of players, but because it is so obscure it was rarely something that newer players entered early. Instead, newer players tend to go for easily accessible systems like missioning or mining as their first careers. The goal was to try to make exploration as easily accessible in the early stages as those two, as exploration allows players to experience better the unique flair of EVE than mining or missioning does.
This is no easy task, as this has to be accomplished while at the same time retaining the functionality of the scan probing as a whole for other users of the system, such as veteran explorers, wormhole dwellers and scouts. While the focus this time around was on accessibility and basic mechanics, we feel this is only the tip of the iceberg and the changes we’re making now give us an opportunity to expand the exploration mechanic at the higher end, adding more depth of gameplay, in the future.
It’s full of probes!
With the vision discussion out of the way, let’s delve into the meat and bone of this dev blog – the changes coming in Odyssey.
So let’s start with the changes we’re doing for probe scanning:
You launch all probes in your launcher at once, regardless of how many you currently have loaded. You can have a maximum of 8 probes in space at the same time. All players can use 8 probes now by default as the Astrometrics skill no longer limits the number.
There are two pre-set formations coming in Odyssey for players to use – Spread (probes aligned to cover a large area) and Pinpoint (probes aligned to focus on one point). These are not intended to be the absolute best possible formations, but rather a solid starting point for budding explorers.
The probes launch into space next to your ship, but the formation view in the solar system map is centered around the sun and is not indicating the current position of the probes until you hit scan and they warp to the positions you've determined.
The default method for moving probes is a single handle for all probes you have out. Holding Shift will give you an individual handle for each probe, same as the current default. Holding Alt allows you to move your probes closer together.
Probes will also resize together by default, holding Shift allows for individual resizing. Note that this is the opposite of the previous system. Resizing probes keeps them centered. We’ve also made the celestial brackets be less in the way when moving/resizing probes.
The recall and expire options have been changed a bit – recall is now instantaneous and happens automatically on system jump or dock. Probes still have a timer, but instead of being lost when the timer is out, they automatically recall instead. The system remembers your last probe setup before they were automatically recalled so they can be quickly deployed again in the same pattern (by activating the launcher). No more forsaken probes in space!
On the visual side, the scanner window is changing a bit. Apart from some basic polish, we’ve added the buttons for setting formations. The formations only work if you have 8 probes total, they do not support fewer than that at the moment.
The scan result list is seeing the biggest amount of changes. The progress towards getting a warpable signature has been made much more visually clear, as well as indicating the difference between your current and last scan results. This allows players to get a better sense of how well they’re progressing towards the signature they’re focusing on.
As mentioned above, the Astrometrics skill no longer dictates the number of probes you can use. Instead, it now gives a bonus to all of the relevant areas of probe scanning (scan strength +5%, scan deviation -5% and scanning time -5% per level). The specialized skills (Astrometrics Rangefinding, Astrometrics Pinpointing and Astrometrics Acquisition) instead give lower boost per level (5% instead of 10%). Another change is that Astrometrics is now a starting skill for new players, same as Mining for instance. The skill was given out in the exploration career agent chain, but it is much more straightforward to have players start with it, plus it aligns better with the vision of making entry into exploration be on equal footing to mining.
We’re adding new modules that affect scan probing. These are three types of modules that affect the same things as the specialty skills (scan strength, scan deviation and scanning time). Each module type has a tech I and tech II versions, the tech I version has BPOs on market, the tech II versions can only be acquired through invention and they require a new ingredient only found in archaeology sites to build.
Deep Space Probes (DSP) are being removed. With the overall changes to scanning (not just probe scanning, but also the addition of the Sensor Overlay), players are getting a fairly good overview of non-ship objects in a system. Combat probes exist to track down ships and are intended to become the new main avenue of scanning down ships. The other changes and additions coming in Odyssey speed up scanning down ships and removing the DSP counters this a bit. This means that on the whole, scanning down ships is going to take approximately the same as before, but with greater variations depending on circumstances. Existing DSPs will be changed into their corresponding combat versions.
The career agent missions and tutorials have been updated with the changes coming in Odyssey.
The Name of the Game
We’re changing the terminology of a few things, plus adjusting distribution somewhat.
We changed the terminology of some of the exploration sites:
- Radar sites become Data sites
- Magnometric sites become Relic sites
- Gravimetric sites become Ore sites
- Ladar sites become Gas sites
- The Unknown type has also been split into Combat and Wormholes.
The main reason for this change is that the Radar/Ladar/etc. terminology is already in use elsewhere in the game and having the same term for two different things can only lead to confusion.
We’re also changing the name of the hacking and archaeology modules:
- Codebreaker becomes Data Analyzer
- Analyzer becomes Relic Analyzer
The main reason for this name change was to tie the two module types better together and reduce confusion, especially when it comes to the Analyzer name.
A final name change is for decryptors. The old decryptors had thematically strong, but very random names. The new naming scheme is easier to grok, while retaining a bit of the thematic appeal.
We’ve removed Salvaging as a thing of its own in exploration sites. No salvaging sites will be distributed post-Odyssey and there are no special salvaging containers.
As part of the work Team Five-0 is doing, Ore sites (aka Gravimetric sites) are being made Cosmic Anomalies instead of Cosmic Signatures, meaning you no longer need probes to find them.
Finders Keepers
We’ve made several important changes to loot drops in exploration sites:
To compensate for salvaging sites no longer appearing, archaeology sites drop more salvaging materials now than before (there was no special salvaging-only loot in salvage sites).
Because players are no longer guaranteed to receive all the loot when opening a profession container, loot drops have been increased to compensate. This is a combination of increased drop chance, increased quantity, higher number of runs, etc. On average, a solo player should receive loot of equal value post-Odyssey as he receives now.
We’ve added some new loot into the mix to make exploring a bit more interesting:
- Three new decryptors, one has similar drop rate as existing ones, two (with the prefix Optimized) have a lower drop rate.
- Capital rigs, tech I and tech II versions. Tech I is seeded on market, tech II BPCs you get from exploration sites or through invention.
- Faction POS structures, BPCs for both versions (i.e. Blood/Dark Blood) can now drop in exploration sites. These have a very, very low drop rate.
Market Mania
We’ve made a few changes to market groups, to make it easier to find some items:
Decryptors are now listed in a more rational way. Instead of being under faction groups in Prototypes and Datafiles under Research & Invention, it is now listed under the empires and the group name is Prototypes and Decryptors.
There are two new groups under Ship Equipment, named Scanning Equipment and Harvest Equipment:
- The scanning equipment group has the ship, cargo and survey scanners as well as the hacking (Data Analyzer) and archaeology (Relic Analyzer) modules. This group also has the probe launchers. The survey probe launchers now have their own sub-group.
- The harvest equipment group has all the different mining equipment (lasers, ice, gas, etc.), as well as salvagers and mining upgrades.
Some POS work
In addition to the exploration work described above, Super Friends also did a couple of POS stories:
We added Personal Hangar Array. This is similar to the Corporate Hangar Array, but, as the name implies, is for personal storage only. The PHA has a storage capacity of 50,000.
We adjusted the arrows and camera when positioning POS modules, to make it less of a hassle.
Future Maybes
There are a few things that we want to get in, but aren’t able to in Odyssey. We aim to get these things in for a point release, but can’t promise it. Here are the most pertinent ones:
Custom formations – Odyssey will only have a very basic formation setup. We want to expand this and allow players to save their own formations and support formations with variable number of probes in them.
Scan history – the colored bars in the scan result list give an indication of whether a specific result got better or worse from your last scan. We want to take this further and allow players to essentially ‘go back’ to a previous result.
Improved visual clues – we want to make it clearer in the scan result list what results are at maximum signal strength for the current scan range set.
That’s it for Team Super Friends, we hope you enjoy these changes and have a great summer!
50,000 Skill points
With the deployment of Retribution 1.2.4 and the deployment of the new launcher, we received reports internally and externally that people were unable to connect to Tranquility thanks to some misconfigured servers. While this issue was not universally experienced and over 30,000 pilots were able to log in normally before we fixed the issue, we do feel this special case does require a special thank you (for your patience) from CCP.
During tomorrow's downtime we will add 50.000 skillpoints (representing roughly a day’s worth of intense skill training) to the character with the highest number of skill points on each active account (the presumed main). Here’s a quick guide on how to apply those skillpoints.
We're sorry for the inconvenience and we hope you can use these skill points on your adventures.
Your voices have been heard loud and clear and we've been busy taking notes so we'd like to ask you to help us move forward in this thread and keep the feedback focused and constructive. Thank you.
The Radial Menu
CCP Sharq explains the new Radial Menu that is scheduled to make an appearance in the coming Oydessy expansion.
Hello pilots.
My name is CCP Sharq and I‘m a UI designer for EVE Online. I‘m a part of Team Pony Express, that focuses on User Experience for EVE Online.
When looking at and playing EVE one day, looking for what to tackle next for our team, we noticed that the left mouse button is more or less underutilized when interacting with the client. Primary interaction pattern with objects in EVE are through a cascaded contextual menu that is better known to you the players as the “Right Click Menu“. That menu has been bloated with options and submenus upon submenus for the last 10 years and is often hard to find what you’re looking for and navigate to it without doing a lot of reading. The Contextual menu for a ship in your hangar lists out 20 options or more in some cases!
Found this in the backyard…
When researching alternatives to Right Click as a primary interaction, we remembered the Radial Menu that’s available when flying around in space. That control was implemented a long time ago and hasn’t received any love since then so it was time for giving it a second chance. In fact the radial menu UI pattern is going through a bit of a renaissance these days due to touch screen interfaces and it is becoming the weapon of choice for many UI developers both for touch and mouse input interfaces. This fitted perfectly to the plan; We had found our silver bullet.
Prototype, best type
The development of the radial menu was done using rapid prototyping, working closely with UI programmer CCP Karkur. We made a crude radial menu, just to get the look and feel right and then we put it through numerous iterations, mercilessly throwing out ideas that didn’t feel right, and trying out all sorts of different things to tackle the issues we encountered (and sometimes to create new ones). We went through this process without creating any client-quality code so as to keep progress fast. Later we User-tested a more complete version of the menu internally and also at EVE Fanfest, from that process we steadily ironed out kinks and optimized the experience.
How it works
To call up the radial menu you need to hold down the left mouse button on an item for a moment like on the original Action Menu. That works on brackets in space, the overview and on your Targets.
Different from the old radial menu, there is no need to hit the little button to trigger options, with the menu open the screen is divided into segments allowing for quicker interactions using gestures. Your commands can now be made quicker than through the old radial menu or the Right Click menu.
Designing the radial menu using only 8 slices is constraining, yet liberating. We went through numerous iterations on the layout schema and ended up with something we were happy with.
Primary actions are at the 12 o’clock position in the menu. Primary actions are actions we feel are most used or unique to a particular type of object. Some examples:
Jump for Star gates
Board for Ships (in space)
Dock for Stations
Open Cargo for Containers
You get the picture.
Targeting is always at the 6 o’clock position. That allows us to keep that consistent across the board. We tried having it as the primary actions for some things, like ships, and then it had to be elsewhere for items with other primary actions. It became messy pretty quick.
Show Info is always on the 9 o’clock position for a quick access to vital info.
Plus / More options are at 3 o’clock. There are options like Bookmark and Look at. We made a conscious decision on not going all in on migrating ALL THE OPTIONS into that submenu, some things are better left in right click menu.
Navigation options are placed on the 45 degree axis; Align, Warp To, Keep at Range and Orbit. The range of these options depends on the distance of the mouse pointer from the center of the menu. So all ranges can be set in a single motion, their placement is deliberate to minimize errors.
Radial menu beyond Odyssey
The idea is to implement the radial menu in more places if you guys like it and will use it. Examples: When using the inventory, interacting with your ship in the hangar even for options on your weapons in the ship HUD.
We have also been playing around with a different radial menu to use for navigating celestials within your current system instead of the deep, deep right-click in space menu. Let’s see if we get around doing that.
Just go to Singularity and test the radial menu out!
… And one more thing, Fly safe!
CCP Sharq
EVE Book
Can we have your stuff? (for a book*)
If you were watching the "CCP Presents" keynote at Fanfest this year you'll recall a slightly bulbous English fellow bumbling on about some book or other. Well that fellow was me, Richie Shoemaker (aka Zapatero, ex-EON), and the book I was bumbling on about was "Into The Second Decade*", one of many delights going into the Collector’s Edition box set that will hopefully be taking pride of place on your gaming shelf come October.
Just to recap, the book aims to tell the development history of the EVE universe; not just the making of EVE Online and DUST 514, but the influence of the players in shaping New Eden and the community that has served it. A significant part of the book we’re planning is a chapter, tentatively called "This Is New Eden", in which we hope to show just how vastly creative and important the New Eden player base is, so that when you flick through the glossy pages in 2023 as EVE enters its third decade, your brain will be awash with glorious memories that might otherwise have been lost (on account of the ravages of middle age).
You can contribute to this time capsule-publishing endeavour in one or both of two ways: by submitting words and/or sending in some lovely pictures.
The words are easy. We want to compile your predictions for the EVE universe during the second decade. You can second guess gameplay changes, lore developments, advances in technology that might impact the game or the community, and you can be a bleak or as upbeat as you see fit. Don’t go writing sweeping essays though, 30 words on a matter of your choosing will suffice.
As for the pictures, you may need to do a bit of digging around on an old hard drive or the internet, but here’s the kind of thing we’re after:
Pictures of important in-game events from the last 10 years, such as fleet fights, either as screenshots or grabbed from hi-res video footage.
Pictures from current and old websites and apps, such as skill trainers, killboards, ship-fits, blogs, etc.
Ads, motivational and propaganda posters and other bits of eye candy from ages past.
Pictures from tournaments and other in-game sporting events.
Fanfest photos from over the years
Photos from player or corp meets (inc. player weddings) you may have attended.
Anything else that doesn't quite fit into any of the above not-quite categories, such as EVE cakes, etc.
When you’ve assembled your words, pictures and/or links, simply email them to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. before Saturday, 1st June. I will then sift through everything and pick out the best stuff for inclusion. Don’t worry about copyright and all that gubbins for the time being. I will ask permission from the necessary parties if and when necessary once all the required assets are assembled. So if you recall something from long ago that someone else who no longer plays EVE created, remind me about it and we’ll see what we can do about getting it in.
Alas we can't offer payment for your contributions, but you name will forever be noted in the annals of EVE history, likely on the same page as Brendan Drain (Massively), Alex Gianturco (The Mittani), Michael Lastucka (Warp Drive Active), Jim Rossignol (Rock Paper Shotgun), Bryan Ward (Eveoganda), Mat Westhorpe (Freebooted) and Robert Woodhead (CSM) - in other words some of the brightest and best commentators ever to devote themselves to understanding EVE. Exalted company, indeed. Oh, and some guy called Richie Shoemaker.
Thank you in advance for your contributions. I look forward to getting as many of your thoughts and memories into the book as possible so that the story of the EVE universe can be told in as full a way as possible.
- Richie "Zapatero" Shoemaker
Dual Character Training
Dear alt-loving capsuleers,
Many of us here have been playing EVE long before we started working at CCP. As such, a lot of ideas and improvements come from our own experience and (sometimes) frustrations with EVE. Alt accounts play a large role in EVE so training and keeping them shouldn't be a hassle. Take these two cases for example:
Case 1: You have an alt and you just need a few days or weeks of training but you can't be bothered with logging into your main, pausing the skill training, logging out and then back in again to resume training on your alt. That or you simply don't want your +5 implanted, carefully EVEMon-planned main character to stop training.
Case 2: You need an alt, you create a new account, pay a signup fee, a month, two or three, then train the alt. After all requirements are met for the alt to do it's new job efficiently, you transfer it to your main account, i.e. consolidate, and pay a transfer fee. Sooner or later you're facing Case 1 because after all, your industry alt will need to invent new things, your market alt will need higher order capacity and your cyno alt could be turned into a covert cyno alt. Then later a covert recon cyno alt... then later, well you know where this is going.
A simple solution to this is to offer users to enable secondary training slots on their accounts using PLEX. Changes made to subscriptions need to be taken seriously so we in Research and Statistics teamed up with Team Game of Drones to analyse the feasibility of such a solution and shipping it with Odyssey on June 4th. The research on our part involved detailed scenario analysis of the effects on the in-game PLEX market, subscription changes due changing payment patterns, and needless to say, effects on our revenue. After we had conclusive results that this did not pose any serious operational risks to CCP or the EVE economy we finally ran the idea through the CSM and got really positive feedback from them. Team Game of Drones took the ball from there, did careful analysis on different scenarios, edge-cases and estimated the total implementation work needed to be done on their end. Soon after they were ready with an implementation, so this feature will ship with Odyssey!
Now over to CCP Ytterbium of Team Game of Drones for details on the implementation itself.
How to enable Dual Character in Training?
There are several ways to activate this feature. The first, and most obvious one is to right-click any PLEX you have in your account possession and select “Activate Dual Character Training”. Dual Character Training is account based, not bound to an individual character, so there is no harm enabling it from any character so long as you are sure this is the account you want to apply it for. Just remember time will count down as soon as it is enabled.
If you don’t have a PLEX as an item available in-game, another option is to go to the EVE Online “Account Management” website, log in and activate the service from there, with the same particularities as mentioned above.
Alternatively, attempting to start skill training on an account´s second character will cause a notification to appear. This message states if you wish to enable Dual Character Training by using a PLEX you already have, or by acquiring one from the EVE Market or account management.
How does Dual Character in Training actually work?
Activating Dual Character Training on your account allows two characters to be trained at the same time for 30 full days. However, an important point to note down remains the system doesn’t care which individual characters are trained, as long as the simultaneous limit is not reached.
For instance, you could have 3 characters named A, B and C on the same account; activating Dual Character Training allows any combination of A+B, A+C, B+C to be trained at the same time. This provides extra flexibility for the user wishing to train up several alternate characters.
Is Dual Character Training Time the same as my account main game time?
No, and this is a crucial detail to keep in mind. Buying 30 days of Dual Character Training will not extend your account expiration date at all – it will just enable this extra functionality during the specified period. If your account main game time expires while this new feature is running, Dual Character Training remaining time will be paused, so nothing will be lost until your account is re-activated again.
As an example, if you activated 30 days of Second Character Training while 13 days of regular account game time is left, you would have 17 days remaining of this feature paused when your account expires.
Which character training do we prioritize when Dual Character Training time expires?
By default, we always favor the most experienced character. That means in the event Dual Character Training time expires, the character with the least skill points available will be stopped. We advise you to plan accordingly.
Can Dual Character Training time be purchased several time at once and stack?
For being a new and somewhat experimental feature coming out for Odyssey, we did not wish to allow Dual Character Training time to stack up indefinitely for now. In practical term, that means that for the time being, it is not possible to renew Dual Character Training on an account until you have 7 or less days remaining for it. This may be changed in the future if and when we feel comfortable enough with this feature to allow full queuing.
For improved visibility, please note that activated and remaining Dual Character Training time may be seen at any time in the Account Management page.
Delivering EVE Online into its Second Decade
Dear EVE Players,
What a year 2012 has been for EVE Online. With Crucible 1.1 coming out at the end of January, through an amazing Fanfest in March, the Inferno release in June and then the great success of Retribution in December, we have had a year where we have gone back to the core of EVE Online and done the right thing. We have iterated on a vast number of player facing and underlying technical systems as well as our own internal development processes and technology. As I repeated often at Fanfest and since, 2012 was about spending time dealing with the things which build up in a game that has been running for nearly 10 years. We have learned a lot of lessons in 2012 and we are using these as well as the things we have achieved as a foundation for 2013 and the entry of EVE Online into its second decade.
During December we had an incredibly productive summit with the CSM. Thankfully, we have not had too many dramas during 2012 and so our time has been spent on constructive evolution of the CCP / CSM relationship rather than damage control. I feel that we are really getting to grips with what the CSM as a stakeholder really means and that through the lessons of 2012 the CSM really is adding a huge amount of value to what we are doing at CCP.
One of the really good sessions I had with the CSM in December was to really clarify what it was we were trying to do with EVE Online as we move forwards and to get both CSM and player input into that. The releases we have done just before and during 2012 (Crucible, Inferno and Retribution) have been focused on iteration and improvement of various systems. These features were not tied together in Crucible whilst Inferno had a loose theme of War. Retribution had a stronger theme in bounty hunting and also had a lot of other features not related to gaining retribution on your enemies. The feedback we have been getting from you, our players, the CSM and internally is that this has been good but “Can’t we reach a little further from now on?”
Whilst I never want to move completely away from caring for the game we already have and continue to update it as it grows more mature, I think it is time to be a little more ambitious. Nothing crazy or away from the core spaceship game that is EVE, but something more inspiring for everyone. Over the last 10 years we have done many different types of releases. From single systems dominating (Dominion - Sovereignty, Empyrean Age – Factional Warfare) to technology releases (Quantum Rise – Stackless IO and 64 bit, Trinity – DirectX 9 graphics update) to world building (Cold War – Outposts, Tyrannis – Planetary Interaction) and epic, co-ordinated themes as in Apocrypha so we have plenty of experience in what works well.
The interesting thing about Apocrypha was that it had a bit of everything. PVE content with the Sleepers, industry with Tech 3 ship construction, world building with wormholes, new ships and new PVP opportunities all bound together with a large dose of exploration and the unknown. In fact, it hit on all of the areas that are the foundations of EVE Online; harvesting, building, destroying and exploration. My only regret with Apocrypha (other than I wasn’t working at CCP at the time) was that we didn’t take that theme and run with it for another couple of releases.
So as we look to 2013 and beyond, I want us to start looking not at individual systems but rather at compelling themes which capture the imagination and give all of us something to strive for, be it as a player or a developer. Within these themes we can then tackle the various systems that are within EVE Online a piece at a time and weave them together to make expansions people will be drooling over to play. Something rather more ambitious without forgetting that we need to care for this game as we want it to live for many decades to come. The picture below gives you an idea of what I am talking about, themed releases which encompass a number of different systems which all combine together into something everyone will want to play;
N.B. The feature areas listed above are examples, exact details of what will be in the various releases will come at a later date.
One thing which I need to make clear at this point is that all things are on the table as we continue to build and refine our product plans. Some people have been looking forward to Modular POSes, Ring Mining and a host of other things we have talked about during 2012 and before. These are things that we certainly want to tackle but the intention is that we won’t deliver these things in one almighty release and we're looking at everything from a fresh perspective.
As you will see when you read the CSM Winter Summit minutes, as I described this future to the CSM they were supportive, cautious and full of great feedback and input. “That’s not going to be easy” seemed to be the common feeling. They are right, it isn’t going to be easy but it can produce something wonderful and that’s what we really want to do for EVE Online. Being at the forefront of making virtual worlds isn’t supposed to be easy.
To help us deliver on this in 2013 I have made a couple of tweaks to enhance even further the EVE Online Development group. I have split the former role of Senior Producer into 2 roles enabling each to be done with full focus on delivering greater things. The first is that of ‘Development Director’ whose role is fundamentally to make sure that as a development organisation we execute on our plans as well as is humanly possible. CCP Ripley, who should be familiar to you, is taking on this position and given her track record in delivering Retribution I’m confident of great things.
The second position is ‘Senior Producer’ which in its new definition is about solidifying the product vision and short, medium and long term roadmap with the help of people from across CCP, our players and of course the CSM and making sure that it becomes a reality. I am really pleased that CCP Seagull has agreed to take on this position and is posting a follow-up blog after this one to give you more details about our approach.
Both the Development Director and Senior Producer will work with me, the Executive Producer, and everyone else involved in EVE Online in order to bring to you a truly amazing experience as we evolve our beautiful world into its second decade and keep its place as the number one science fiction virtual world.
And so as we look forwards to the second decade of EVE Online it only remains for me to thank every single one of you who makes this world of New Eden come alive. We could not do this without you. You are foremost in our minds and we want to continue to bring you the most amazing world to live in.
Thank you.
Jon Lander
CCP Unifex
Executive Producer – EVE Online
