EVE General Discussion

After the interesting announcements for DUST and EVE yesterday it's going to be exciting to see what's coming in Inferno.

Keynote streamed live at 15:30 GMT here.

Keynote all about 2012 updates.

Many thanks to Velicia Tuoro for compiling the list before me!

Everything in here is happening this year.

Goals for 2012:
Core spaceship game. No Jesus features this year
April 24 Content "escalation to Inferno
Inferno May 22nd
1.5 August
Sep point release
November next release
10th alliance tournament end of June Finals mid JUly
1st of May you can pay in pounds. £9.99
End of April Player gathering in London.

Stuff in progress

War decs being redone.
removing loopholes
comprehensive war report
mercenary marketplace (contracts for mercs)
More info tomorrow.

Faction warfare
make it meaningful
See faction warefare notes: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=85156

Unified Inventory
drag and drop inventory system
isk values on containers and contents

New modules
different size web drones
Resist mods that switch resist type on the fly. Not as good as active mods
microjump drive
10-15 in the pipeline

POS going to be redone.
Should be from a cheap captains quarter to a massive flying deathstar with lots of guns
Needs to scale and needs to be something everyone wants
shouldn't be a management nightmare
Everyone should want one.

New ships
Finding gaps in the tree for new ships.
New ships once or twice a year

Dust
The rollout of link to eve will be gradual but constant.

New UI.
Example with changes for drone control through module-like interface

Mining
Improving Mining for fleet activity. Perhaps something like the current ship scanner.
Moon minerals in mining? Would rather reward small group mining activity and large 0.0 alliances.

Infrastructure
Tough to pull details out of the client due to assumptions in the core code about being logged in.
Been working remove this over the last year.
New interface CarbonREST to allow an app to connect to the cluster like the client.
DUST<->eve interfaces through this.
cREST access for 3rd party developers
Possible to write back to the game!
cREST API opening for Contacts and Standings management.
Licensing: No restrictions, no fees.

Web Site
Improvements to the Buddy Program coming soon
Cross site sign on to preventing having to log in and out across the different sites.
Real time information on the Star Map from the commuinuty site
Timeline views on starmap
Starmap will be offered as a plugin, allowing web sites to feed in data they want to display.
Ship viewer will be offered as a plugin as well.

Gridlock
Looking at improving the smoothness of the client.
Looking at improving general FPS of the client
Planning on moving the tear down/set up of skills/attributes away from main cluster to improve the ship change/gate jumping load
Trying to multithread on the server, move the notification processing to a separate thread/cpu.

Art
Dancing avatars! (Demonstation that a lot can be done with the avatars that isn't being used yet)
No current dev on captains quarters. Focusing on direction first.
Tortifrans recreated Dagobah at home!
Adding more skin color options
Sleeve tattoos.
Race blending Figured out a way to blend races. You can vary the blending. Should be this year
A salvage drones. Cleans up after you in missions
V3 shader rollout continuing with Amarr.
Once all ships are all V3s, we will be able to do spot illumination from explosions and bounce lighting from planets etc.
Decals will come after this.
Corporation logos on ships.
New stealth bomber models.
Launcher models and models for missiles in flight. Comes with video of them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXNWgeQmiOE&feature=plcp&context=C4c7144cVDvjVQa1PpcFOEzQi5G2x0m1-RNf4_2zPI7cvjhbO1mlI=

I call corporate/alliance planetary infrastructure. Clone facilities, factories, R&D Labs, and such for Dust Mercs to protect/attack. Also, the Door will open to a place where Dust and Eve players can meet.

You deserve it...

10 minutes to go, will try to add key points to the OP as we go along.

Loved the missile trailer!!

This is excellent news.

The mercenary market might be appealing - but then we need the current bounty system revamped, and the new wardec system they are plotting on needs to be re-thought. Just like FW being "like nullsec" = CCP start in wrong end, and uses a broken current mechanic to add something that is linked to it. They should just work on core mechanics and then expand from there. New ships and modules in existing trees = good. Preferably with new skills attached to them as well.

* The ideas for FW revamp = really ****, what the hell are they thinking (are they?)..
* Inventory drag and drop? We can already do that.. I drag modules from my cargo and inventory back and forth every day. o_O
* Web drones? How about getting all the ewar drones out, and adding new options, not just adding sizes to a single one of them.
* Salvaging drones? Ok. Not very exciting, can be good/bad, who knows, cosmetic addition. *shrugs*
* Drone UI like current modules sounds somewhat positive, altho mainly cosmetic.
* POS remakes: well even mentioning CQ with POS is fail. CQ has zero content, why the hell would I want to walk inside a POS when the first is just annoying and useless to begin with.. the CQ potential is in the social environment, and what kind of social interaction do you expect in a POS? Dumb beyond belief. Having them improved, easier management, more variation etc is all good but if you mention that in the same breath as CQ you really lose all respect and trust by default..
* Dust? Who cares, it is not on PC and not for the EVE playerbase but a new one, CCP already told us that. Why waste the EVE players time with Dust info? Leave it for the Dust-players.
* Mining definately needs love, and it's more related to the current mineral system than make fleet initiative or moon goo mining. Fact is exhumers are so powerful that you don't even want a fleet of them in null, as a solo player will rip apart belts in notime. Unless it takes alot longer to clear belts, it's no point mining beyond "guy and his alts". Look at minerals, not fleet incentitives!

Where is PvP incentitives? Where is the increased risk in highsec? Where is the smallscale PvP boosts? Why are FW being raped from behind repeatedly instead of getting love? Where's the nerfs to nullsec fortresses (upgraded systems, jumpbridges etc, need incentitives to spread people out and get them in belts rather than anomalies - both NPCing and mining). Where's blob nerfs? Where's a proper supercap balance (make them appealing to use in small scale rather than grand, i.e. make them less powerful the more you bring, they will die alot more frequent if they are used alone/small scale).

So basicly what the keynote from FF tells us:
CCP loves blobs, highsec safety, highsec income should be same or higher than nullsec even tho nullsec risks.
CCP hates the sandbox, fluid and roamy PvP that the game used to have, lowsec.

Nothing new, but damn sad to see it in print.

Yep.


Overall I am kinda supprised how soon Inferno will be coming. WIth 1.5 Just being released, it feels like Inferno is right around the corner.

Either way I am looking forward to it. DoomsDay Naysayers or not. CCP is either telling us exactly what we want to hear, or they really did a 180 at Crucible and are continuing in the same direction. Awesome stuff.