Will Stationary complexes be removed? If yes, then for when is this planned?
NW: We’re removing the majority of static complexes in exchange for exploration sites. 1/10. 2/10 and COSMOS complexes will remain static but you’ll need to get out your scan probes to find your favorite 10/10. These changes will go live with Revelations 2.0
Will Agents #5 be available? What types of missions will they give out?
NW: Level 5 agents are part of Revelations 2.0. The goal of level 5 missions is to give a challenge to players who are running missions in groups. Level 5 missions are balanced to be much too hard for solo players to complete. Along with these group missions, we’re introducing features to promote running missions in a group such as sharing loyalty points, standings increases and ISK rewards between gang members when a mission is completed.
What exactly will the sovereignty of constellation give and what will be the conditions of claiming constellations?
NW: By the time readers see this there should be an extensive dev blog that outlines everything involved with the new sovereignty changes. The biggest new features are outpost upgrades which can increase an outpost’s manufacturing, refining, research or offices. There are also new starbase structures like system scanning arrays and the jump bridge. With the highest level of constellation sovereignty all of the structures in your capital system become invulnerable to attack.
Are there any plans to change POS Warfare, which will reward battles, not POS-spam like it does right now?
NW: Starbase Warfare is undergoing a lot of change in Revelation 2.0. POS-spam is going away with the new staking nerf on anchoring time. The more towers you lay down, the longer they will take to anchor. The next thing players will notice is that they can now place guns outside of their starbase and with a skill they will be able to take control of them. This means a well-defended starbase will be much more deadly but also means attackers will be able to do hit and run tactics against individual structures.
When will battleships and battle cruisers from technology 2 appear in the game? What will they do?
NW: We’ve already got tech 2 battlecruisers in the form of Command ships and they are quite popular. Tech 2 battleships are definitely somewhere on the horizon but we won’t be seeing them in Rev 2.0. Don’t expect tech 2 battleships to fill a heavy assault role; we want them to fill more specialized roles when they are introduced.
How many people are involved in the development of EVE online? How much did the CCP grow, compared to the launch of the game in 2003? Are you planning to increase the amount of GMs and developers?
NW: If we’re counting volunteers — who, by the way work very hard on EVE; I should know since I started as one — then there are over 700 people currently involved with EVE’s development. If we get picky and only count the people on the payroll then the number is just under 200. CCP has grown quite a bit since its inception. At launch there were 25 employees. I was employee #35. Now I can look out through the glass walls of my office and see most of the 34 members of my department. I’m really happy with how far we’ve come since I’ve been part of the team. We’re slowly increasing our team and using some outsourcing when it seems prudent. We’ve got new GM teams in Shanghai and Atlanta which helps the Reykjavik staff cover all 24 hours of the day. If readers are interested in moving to Iceland or America they should check out our jobs page at http://www.ccpgames.com/jobs.aspx.
EVE online has a powerful PvP aspect, but it’s though that PvE (missions) in the game are undifferentiated and repeated. Are there any plans to diversify this part? You could, for example, add interesting chain errands, the completion of which would take a month’s game time. Or something of the sort.
NW: We’ve ramped up our content creation staff quite a bit recently. We used to have one dev (Zrakor) writing missions and now we’ve got three full-time agent mission authors and three full-time exploration encounter authors. But that’s just who we’ve got in-house here in Reykjavik. There is also the new team of writers from White Wolf and their large pool of freelance writers that we now have to draw from. We’re just starting to feel the effects of the White Wolf merger in the content creation side and so far things are working out great. Everyone is really excited to work with each other because there is a ton of mutual respect between the two groups.
It’s obvious that with the development of EVE Online, new ships will be added. Please tell us what the players should expect. Will there be some kind of new Doom Stars that are indestructible? Or maybe some highly specialized ships? If you can, give us some examples of the prototypes that are being worked on.
NW: There are no new ships coming in Revelations 2.0 but we will be introducing Heat. Heat is going to open up a lot of gameplay possibilities for us. Tech 3 ships and modules will be making better use of Heat than their tech 1 and 2 counter parts. More play testing needs to happen before we can really decide the direction we want to go with all these new tech 3 ships.
Is the improvement of graphic effects planned? Will the client be made for Direct X 10? What will be improved? Are advanced soundings planned?
NW: Currently all the graphics in the game are being redone in high resolution to support modern hardware and software that people have now. That coincides with the new version of our rendering engine that both looks better and performs faster. The stuff I’m seeing come from the artists looks amazing. I’m actually predicting some players will get blown up in the days after this stuff is released because they will just be sitting in space outside a space station amazed at how cool it looks. On top of all the graphic upgrades we’re doing we’re also improving the sound. We now have a full-time audio engineer working on the engine and our composer has been cranking out 5.1 versions of the audio tracks. These are exciting times indeed.
Originally from Goha.ru
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April 2008
