EVE Online is currently one of the few science-fiction MMO's out there. It's popularity has been rising steadily and just recently CCP Games, the company responsible for EVE, released a new free expansion called Revelations I. We had the chance to ask the developers a couple of questions, so we pulled the ForceFeedback EVE addicts out of their pods to make sure we would make good use of this opportunity. So here it is, we would like to thank Valerie "Pann" Massey for making this Q&A possible, and of course the CCP developers for answering our questions! FFB: Are there are any things that you that wish would have gone Live with Revelations I, but couldn't because of time restraints?CCP: Without a doubt, Factional Warfare was the most anticipated feature that was originally planned for Revelations, but during the design phase we had to admit that we wouldn’t be able to include it in this expansion. We have a very clear plan for what Factional Warfare should be and it will require the talents of nearly every member of the development team to bring it to life. To push forward and try to have it ready for Revelations I would have meant letting other things slip – like the seamless map, invention or the contract system. In the end, we chose to schedule Factional Warfare as a major expansion of its own, allowing us to utilize existing mechanics that were crucial to the system and giving ourselves time to really give it the attention it deserves because, as a wise man once said: “Make it good instead of so that it sucks.” FFB: EVE Online is one of the few games that have one giant server which harbors every player. What has been your biggest server problem technically seen?CCP: In the initial technical design for EVE, the server architecture was assembled with the goal of supporting up to 100,000 subscribers. Today we are well past that limit. It goes without saying that through the years we've had to upgrade, optimize and rethink some of the subsystems that make up the overall architecture. However, the high-level design has proven quite robust and scalable. Our biggest technical problem has been related to clustering of players and our systems broadcasting too much data between players. Usually these bottlenecks don't become apparent until many months (or years) after the system is deployed simply because at the time of deployment the number of players (or people using the system) was an order of magnitude smaller. However, sometimes we notice scalability issues right away when we deploy a change and therefore have to patch the server as quickly as possible in order to provide our subscribers with an acceptable level of service. Most potential scalability issues are addressed during the software design stage but there is always the exception where, due to the complexity level, we haven't been able to reliably predict how it would scale. That's when we blush, apologize to the community and scramble to unclog the bottleneck we just introduced. Our methods have improved through the years and metrics is becoming a bigger and bigger part of our development efforts. We religiously measure the impact of changes on our test servers but unfortunately these measurements aren't always indicative of how these changes will impact Tranquility. We are putting more resources into our testing and hardware to make testing a better indicator of how things will pan out when we deploy to Tranquility. FFB: Are the traffic advisories a temporary solution for a bigger problem, or is it something that will stay ingame for some time?CCP: We are working hard to increase the capacity of the server and thus reduce the occurrences of traffic advisories. You might say that we are essentially racing against our growing subscriberbase. The software and game design teams are now working on some pretty drastic improvements in this area so hopefully these advisories will become a faint memory in the near future.FFB: Do you have plans to make 0.0 an easier goal to reach for new players?CCP: The goal for 0.0 is exactly as it’s always been: a lawless area that is controlled by player alliances. The area that we want to bring new players earlier into is the lower security areas (0.1 – 0.4 security) colloquially known as “losec”, where the thrill (or fear) of player vs. player engagement can begin.Adding more content and rewards into these areas doesn’t necessarily work for all players as a carrot on a stick, so we have been looking at other avenues of persuasion. Factional Warfare, coming in Revelations II, will play a large role in encouraging players to venture out to low security space where they can count on their fellow player soldiers for protection against low security pirates. Of course, there is no guarantee that it will be enough to keep you alive, which is the thrill that new players will get when they know that they are no longer protected by NPC police forces. FFB: How exactly do you plan to make wars in 0.0 more fun or challenging?CCP: The initial step we’ve taken is the revamped gang system which improves the tactical side of fleet warfare. Beyond that, we are looking at the various places combat takes place in 0.0 wars and exploring ways to make it more fun. One option we’ve considered would be to revise starbase and sovereignty warfare. We want to allow smaller groups of people to go in and cause damage to starbases without being capable of taking it out completely in one run (as a large groups do today.) Another idea would be to move all the weapon systems of starbases to outside the force field, while we would bump up their hit points and make them more challenging to fight. For the defending side, we really want to allow the defenders to take control of the defense systems and hone in on specific targets.The biggest issue we have been facing with general fleet warfare is simply the massive “blob” of ships that congregate around long-ranged turrets and dogpile on single target at a time with no other tactics involved. We decided to place large-scale combat on our drawing board a while ago and since then we have come up with a lot of feasible options that could be a means to achieving our goals. A couple of changes we’re considering are to introduce expensive area effect bombs that could be used by the (underpowered) expensive stealth bombers (which, in numbers, could mean destruction for a large fleet in one place) and a small “deployable” force field that could be placed around friends that are under focused fire. These are just two ideas from a very big list of things we see both as part of a solution and as a lot of fun to play around with from a strategic standpoint. Our current goal is to release a part of that list with Revelations II, along with Factional Warfare, as it will play a major role in encouraging people to participate in group combat.FFB: Heat will be the ability to overload your modules and will enable players to gain bonuses that way. When can we expect this new feature ingame, and is this feature comparable to the rigs currently ingame?CCP: Rigs are far from comparable to Heat™, the difference being that Rigs are simply “pimp up your ship” while Heat™ will be Big™. Heat will allow us to give combat more diversity by racial flavor to the different weapon arsenals or to counter existing problems. An example of what we could achieve through Heat is to allow more overloading on defensive modules, rather than damage dealing modules, which could give players the ability to counter focused fire in group combat. Heat is currently on schedule to be introduced at some point this year, though Factional Warfare is a higher priority and will be released first. FFB: When do you plan to release the new DX10 graphics, and how long will the old DX9-client be supported?CCP: The DX10 client will be released in 2007; it's hard for us to commit to a more specific date than that. The majority of the programming team is busy with improving the performance of EVE (both server and client) and until we've made some leaps forward in that area, the DX10 work will proceed but not at maximum development speed. We have currently no plans to discontinue support for the DX9 client. It appears that DX9 will be significant platform for EVE in years to come, so we are actually increasing support for it by developing a host of graphical enhancements for DX9 as well.FFB: How do you plan to make the walking in stations feature a significant part of the game, instead of just a gimmick?CCP: The vision we have for the in-station atmosphere is to initially create a purely social hub where players can engage in non-combat activities. While we have some ideas that we’re working toward, we’re also very interested to know what the players themselves feel would be points of interest or venues they would like to see there, so we’re keeping an eye out for that sort of feedback as we move toward introducing this feature. One aspect of walking in stations that could really add immersion is the Corporate War Room where corporation members can all gather and view a shared 3D map and discuss strategy.FFB: Could you tell us more about the "offline products" (any EVE merchandise?) we can expect from White Wolf, and when they will be released?CCP: The CCP/White Wolf merger opened a world of possibilities -- not only for EVE but for a number of other projects we’d like to pursue, such as the World of Darkness MMO that’s currently in the early stages of development as well as an EVE tabletop RPG. We’re still cooking up ideas and more information will be released as it’s available. They are no release dates yet, but you can expect a full line of EVE-based RPG books at a store near you soon™.FFB: Is there a possibility that White Wolf will also add extra content to EVE itself? They are talented writers and dungeon masters, so I could expect them to come up with a few nice cosmos missions or events.CCP: Short answer: YES. EVE will definitely reap the benefits of the merger as we tap into the terrific resources available to us now.
kacke. das wichtigste für mich atm dauert noch: das grafikupdate
