The server problems of the past week seem to have settled down, the situation is much better and the game is playable even in the heavily trafficked systems. Another client patch is expected later this week to fix some more issues, then I think CCP will go quiet for a couple of months as Kali goes in full development.
It’s still truly impressive to see 600+ players packed in the same system without much lag and more than 20k indirectly interacting within the same universe. Eve is probably the only game that could be considered truly “massive”.
An interview with Eve’s senior producer reveals some interesting informations about the plans for Kali and what’s next along the year.
The first big feature is about the “factional warfare”. It’s still an obscure system but it seems to work as a much needed “bridge” between the secure empire space and the low-security systems where the wars between the player corporations take place. The factional warfare should finally bring some dynamism and intense, competitive gameplay even in the empire space, allowing the players to join a NPC faction and participate in a more structured conflict. There’s a lot of potential because it could finally tie together the two extremes, making the true potential of the game much more accessible for all players instead of just the minority deeply involved in player’s alliences and corps.
Knowing CCP this whole thing will be developed in progressive steps, adding more to it as they get more ideas and see them moving in a positive direction. So Kali here is probably just the beginning of what they are going to do (and potentially close to my ideas).
It’s also interesting the comment about the possibility to use NPCs. Which really resembles closely to my idea to use NPCs as a work force to automate the boring activities:
Whether to include NPCs in Factional Warfare or not is also heavily debated. The question is, how to use them and where. Many want NPCs to be a part of Factional Warfare but only in a supportive role.
Objectives might have a minimum NPC garrison which helps the player soldiers defending it, but the NPCs would never be something which rivals a real player force. As such, NPCs might be an objective or part of an objective, but you should always expect other player soldiers to be either at the objective or right around the corner.
Ahh, my ideas… They are really anticipating and realizing concretely so many of the plans I was incubating along these months and years. It will be truly interesting to observe how all this pans out.
It isn’t even all, still with Kali they are bringing up another utopia of the whole genre: player created missions.
The Contract system aims to formalize a subset of all the agreements you can do. It’s more focused on complex combinations of escrow, auction, courier, collateral and prerequisites rather than putting in some arbitrary conditions which then need to be measured and/or enforced.
As an example of an “official” contract in our new system, I can easily create a Bring-Your-Own-Materials deal, where I specify what materials I want in exchange for release of an item or set of items. As such, I could require the mineral ingredients for a certain item, X amount of ISK and a number of Tags, in return for which I will give the ship with a full fitting of named modules. When the items I require are at the location, my contractor simply fulfills the contract and the items I said would be given in return are released. With this system I can’t back out of the contract, since when I create it, the items are taken into escrow and can be released only upon fulfilment of the contract.
Likewise, you can utilize contracts in a limited trust relationship, where you put up contracts only for your Alliance or Corporation members. For example, you could easily create mining contracts, which would give you a mining ship when you accept the contract, but to fulfill the contract and get the cruiser which is the completion reward, you have to give the mining ship back along with 1 million units of Tritanium.
With this you have “corporation missions,” where the directors can issue what has to be done and members can then fulfill the contracts – and add that to their track record, because we keep the player’s contract history.
Here I underline how this whole system is possible thanks to the “truly communal objectives” that unite the player’s corporations. Even the boring activities like mining become much more interesting when they are part of a much bigger scheme and contribute to a communal effort. Without this depth to found the game none of this would be possible because the players wouldn’t be able to be the real subjects of the game world, using all the tools available to create something unique and affecting the overall equilibre. The player’s mission would be just “grind” content without a mean and an end.
Even here Eve demonstrates to be a true pioneer as no other.
Oh, and I love Nathan Richardsson when he says these nice things (and I already praised him in the past):
It’s probably more correct to say that the rapid frequency of expansions enable us to react to the feedback rather than the other way around. We firmly believe in iterative design, where we have a system developed in staged deliveries, with the functionality constantly adjusted based on usage statistics and feedback.
Yes, they are probably the only ones to have truly understood the strength of the genre. The possibility to observe and react dynamically, try new ideas and slowly adding depth and substance to the game, instead of just stretching it till it breaks. Iterate, observe. That’s the utopia of game design made concrete. The “living worlds” done the right way.
Finally there’s a rumored “graphic update” that should also arrive before the year is over. Here I really don’t know what to expect because the graphic engine does already its duty at the best of what you could expect and I don’t see how it could be improved. There are some major glitches that I’d like to see solved, like the flickering textures and the wrong FOV that makes all the objects at the margin of the screen appear distorted (for example the planets look elliptical instead of… round), but nothing that would really justify a graphic update. Maybe larger textures on the ships? They already look gorgeous, imho. If it was for me I would allocate resources to make the graphic representation more meaningful and consistent (the second idea in the link), but I’m still curious to hear more details about their plans.
We probably won’t know anything else till around May, when the third issue of E-ON (Eve-Online’s paper magazine) will be out.
Interesting stuff going on. I wish I could say the same for the other companies out there who just seem to reheat the same food without really impressing anyone anymore.