EVE Online: Inferno Update 1.2 Goes Live this August

MikeB

CCP Games has announced that Inferno 1.2 will go live on Wednesday, August 8. The update introduces V3 shaders for Angel pirate-faction ships, an improved 'New Player Experience', and a bevy of balance fixes, with improvements to frigates and additional moon alchemy reactions of particular note.

 

Coolit

I don't play eve but I love the art design and always have, pretty cool trailer also. 

CujoSWAoA

How many New Player Experiences has this game had?

bubaluba

I never understand something in EVE, why is update always so stretched over few months? How i can remmber Inferno started some month ago

Malcanis

Originally posted by bubaluba

I never understand something in EVE, why is update always so stretched over few months? How i can remmber Inferno started some month ago

 

The answer to this is quite complex but I'll try and give you a tl;dr

(1) In the past CCP used to do "monolithic" expansions, but these were very notorious for breaking stuff. EVE is fantastically complex and it's very easy for changes to cause unexpected secondary effects. By rolling out changes in a  "little and often" model, the game can be updated step by step, in a much more controlled, stable way. It also makes QA's job hugely easier. The players themselves were strongly in favour of the "little and often" model when CCP asked us.

(2) A large part of EVE expansions are modifications and tweaks to existing features. This is no bad thing - EVE is almost 10 years old and has an incredible array of components, so a heavy focus on updating and improving existing features makes good sense. There's no real reason to delay releasing fixes, and holding them up for no better reason than to be able to publish an impressive patch notes list was one of the major grievences cited by players in the Summer Of Rage - that changes which were minor in complexity but far-reaching in their implications were taking far too long to go live (if they ever did)

(3) EVE "expansions" are both free and mandatory. There's no intrinsic reason for CCP to adhere to the traditional expansion model which arose from games with optional paid expansions. Nowadays an EVE "expansion" is basically a development theme for the next 6 months. This means that new features can be rolled out when they're ready. It also means that new features don't have to be dropped (with all the wasted effort and unhappy players that causes) if they're not ready for "patch day", which has been a major problem in past expansions (especially Dominion). CCP can now smooth out their development cycle and avoid the issues of "crunch time" that cause so many of the problems we see in MMOs today.

Overall it's a really good thing. But we have lost a bit of the excitement that a new expansion used to bring. Of course, part of that excitement used to be speculating about how long it would take after patch day for the game to be playable again, and fretting that we hadn't set long enough skills... something that's no longer a problem.