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[Interview] EVE Online: Foundations of a Galactic Future
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In the EVE Universe, change is the only certainty. During this year’s EVE FanFest, Gareth Harmer spoke to Senior Producer Andie Nordgren about the vision for EVE Online, and with Architect Kjartan Emilsson about integrating all EVE games into a single Universe.
Read more of Gareth Harmer's EVE Online: Foundations of a Galactic Future.
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Comments
I am all for anything that brings EVE Online closer to the "vision" of EVE Online and the "dream" of what is EVE Online.
The universe that brings players in after watching CGI trailers and dev videos and reading about epic moments at this point is far different in many ways than the actual game and gameplay itself.
The more they can bridge that gap between actual game/gameplay and their vision/trailers/and that real sense of "wow" that comes from the awesome things that CAN happen in this game, the better.
The trailer is misleading propaganda.
CCP are developing 3 separate games: Eve Online, Valkyrie, and DUST. However, the video implies they are integrated into same game. This is an impossibility and CCP have no plans to even attempt this. They are 3 entirely separate games.
Even worse - CCP will stop the 6-monthly expansions. So look forward to seeing even less evolution than ever before.
The last significant evolution was the introduction of wormhole space and T3 ships - that happened way back in 2008.
I believe that all 3 Eve games will be superseded by Elite: Dangerous, which is rather poetic when you consider that Eve is a re-imagining of the original 1984 Elite game.
This guy doesn't even know what he is talking about! just saying that they only develops 3 games (Project Legion is the fourth) and that they stopped expansions without mentioning that they are just changing they update schedule means a lot... Also I don't see why they can't implement Project Legion into Eve Online?
Content release schedule is rather a cosmetic change since "expansions" were already released in several batches. Only what is changing is that it will be official release schedule now - just batches without an expansion label.
However, EVE has stopped evolving long ago anyway.
There is a big difference between releasing 6-monthly expansions compared to releasing an update schedule.
For example, an expansion is something like Mists of Pandaria - it implies significance and it's worthy of professional 3rd party review. An update is like a minor patch.
In other words, it's a way for CCP to make less content and evade critical review.
I have to agree with the guy above. You do not have a clue. Expansions in EvE were never comparable to "expansions" in WoW or its clones where they are just a way to generate hype and charge additionally.
EvEs two annual updates were always free of charge and were not even needed to create additional hype.
Nice for you that you like Elite:Dangerous, but it is in no way comparable to EvE, let alone to a possible combination with the upcoming titles.
The core features of EvE, completely player driven economy, transport, logistics, RTS and empire building are just not there in E:D. And the main selling points like "realistic galaxy with 100 bn stars" are just ridiculous when you think about it. 100bn procedurally generated star systems don't make a game but just a silly big number.
I will very probably play E:D for fun, but not as a replacement for EvE.
I know right?
Even if only 1% of those star systems have planets and/or asteroids/bases etc. etc. you can interact with, that's 1 billion star systems full of bland, repeated, cookie-cutter "content" and a whole lot of wasted space.
If every single one of those 100 billion star systems has planets/asteroids/bases etc. you can interact with and colonize, mine, conquer, build on, etc. etc. then THAT would be a feature.
You're happy to pay over $130 per year subscription for no significant updates?
A game that's had no significant updates since 2008.
Personally, I think you're being ripped off.
to me it sounds like CCP is very well aware or what the emerging competition is offering (SC and Elite) and have realized that EvE needs to evolve, and quick, for any chance to survive.
i mean, SC alone has already 10 times the "paying supporters" that EvE has on it's best days, and it hasn't even launched yet.
If CCP manages to truly tie in all their 3 games (EvE, Valkyre, Dust), perhaps add walking inside stations, Oculus support, maybe walk inside large ships, i think EvE might actually survive the incoming wave of space mmos. They have by far the best economic model for a space sandbox, not to mention a very loyal fan base. However, the game has become stale after 10 years and it needs major changes.
i'm very happy that CCP is going down this road, and i hope the existing EvE players will embrace these changes. there are no a lot of other options right now. it's try and stay with the competition or risk becoming the UO of space mmos.
You'll probably like CCP Seagull's Keynote speech then. She revisited the vision she had posted last year and went over the steps CCP has making toward that vision since then.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
CCP have no intention to tie in Eve, Valkyrie, and DUST. If they had, all 3 would be in the same game.
However, CCP will get a lot of money if they give a convincing enough impression that this is what they hope to do.
It's propaganda. There is a huge amount at stake because CCP have made lots of really big mistakes. And now they should have some serious competition.
if that is the case then the above article is intentionally misleading. When they talk about " and so other games can play with the same sand as well" truly had me thinking about all 3 games being tied together in a very meaningful way.
then again the same idea was given about Dust before it came out, but in the end there was a very minimal conection between the 2 games. So disappointing in fact that i stopped playing Dust almost immediately.
i just don't think EvE will be able to survive with their current set up. even if Valkyre is a great game in it'self it won't be enough to stand up to games like SC and Elite.
"So this is a good excuse to do some spring-cleaning, and you can do it in a gradual way: isolate certain parts and functionality, take this and do bypass surgery around the old stuff. Maybe the new projects will use the new thing and the old projects will use the old one for a while and move to the new ones when they’re ready.”
Please tell me why would you even have a new product use your OLD P-O-S code instead of writing their own? I mean, srsly? Did he srsly just say that? ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
cause it saves time? Writing everything new each time is just stupid. Ideally you do it once right and reuse the building block every time you need it.
Pi*1337/100 = 42
Well CCP've certainly got competition in the "get people to give you money for making a convincing impression" market.
Competition in the "get people to give you money in return for playing a game that actually exists" market is still a little thin in the space sim sector, however.
With respect to EVE, well by the time either of those two appear, CCP will have had at least another year to push out codebase reworks, rebalances and new features. By then we should have had a structures rework, a corp/alliance rework and be close to or even actually in receipt of a sov rework.
The hill any competitors have to climb to compete with EVE will be that much higher, and it's not like CCP will slow down if & when a serious competitor actually appears. And because by then they should have cleaned up the biggest sections of legacy codefucked features, new development will be considerably easier for them. Any stuff they want to change or new stuff they want to add will link to their new "pretty" code, and that, I am told, makes developing significantly easier*.
I've also been wondering for a little while now just how much of a coincidence it is that Seagull's plan should** come to maturity and give CCP the first new EVE "Jesus Feature" for 6 years to announce at about the same time (give or take a quarter or two) that SC is due to launch. I suspect that even if it originally was a coincidence, CCP are now going to make damb sure that it isn't one. It must surely have occurred to them.
*A large part of the reason for the development strategy of the last couple of years is that, so we were told in various FF panels and presentations, the expansion strategy has been something like this:
1) Choose gameplay area for expansion theme (eg: crimewatch, FW, Industry, exploration, structures, sov)
2) Scout out just how badly the feature is codefucked. If it's too codefucked and links to too many other codefucked features, pick an easier one.
3) Map out a model for what this horrible unreadable uncommented code actually does in game: this input under those conditions gives that output. This is a non-trivial process, and when it affects another feature that's still codefucked, it's extra horrible bad.
4) Write meticulously commented, modular, pretty code that replicates those functions, and also take the opportunity to fix any longstanding "This happens because we have no idea how to change it" type issues, eg: secret aggro timers, rebalance things, and maybe add in a few relevent longstanding feature requests. This is the visible part of the expansion that people dismiss as "Huh, another 'Fix expansion' of minor tweaks, man CCP are so unambitious these days, remember when we used to get 1500 lines of patchnotes?"
5) Optional section: Rework or merely tweak the UI as required if the features has a particularly awful UI and make it into something that looks as if it was made this decade. (eg: industry)
6) Have a couple of teams doing low-cost, high-return stuff like "Little Things", Ship balancing and so on. Stuff that only needs a small amount of actual developer resources to have a relatively large in-game effect in order to up the feature:effort ratio of the expansion cycle. Also ongoing stuff like Gridlock's work on performance, etc.
So: every codefucked feature that gets this treatment makes reworking every remaining feature that touches it that much easier. So the work done on Kronos will for instance make reworking the corps & alliances feature code that much easier, because corps and roles link to industry in quite a lot of ways. All those links will be much easier to write code for when CCP start the Corps & Alliances rework, and likewise the Structures rework.
CCP Greyscale told us in the industry panel that Kronos required basically a complete rewrite of the S&I code, over 10,000 lines, and that it was the biggest rewriting project they've done so far. Vaster and more horrible than the science & industry code used to be is the Structures code, and then the C&A code is the horriblest of all. That's why they've basically been left until last.
As you will have already worked out, once Structures and C&A are reworked, then doing Sov code is going to be relatively easy; the Sov project is actually a bigger game design challenge than a code challenge and I'm sure you'll all be as pleased as I was to learn that Greyscale is working on that as his "20%" project. With luck, a sov rework will follow pretty quickly after Structures and C&A are done.
At this point, CCP will be in a position to roll out genuinely new stuff relatively easily. Relatively. Writing pretty code when you care about making it actually work properly with other parts of your code intrinsically takes longer than shotgunning a few Gulls and shitting out a bunch of fuckcode as fast as you and a few other beer-addled vikings possibly can because hey, :awesome: right?
EVE will still be outrageously complex, and the game design part of any new content is going to be kind of a Big Deal. But they'll be working with better dev tools on much higher quality code, and once the decision has been made on what they want to do, then it should be significantly easier for them to deliver it.
Timescale: who knows. But you can bet your ass that CCP want the new stargates part of the plan ready to go live when (if ) Star Citizen appears on the horizon as a game that actually exists on people's computers. Or, more credibly, Elite : Dangerous.
**Standard :CCP: disclaimers apply, of course, but we also need to apply :CGI: disclaimers also so v0v
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Give me liberty or give me lasers
stop compare EVE with single play +MP space sim games,compare with Valkyrie but not with EVE ,It is an MMORPG
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance