EVE Evolved

This week saw another landmark event in EVE Online grab the gaming community's attention as over 3,000 players from dozens of alliances battled it out in the lowsec system of Asakai on the Caldari border. The battle reached 2,800 concurrent players at peak, falling just short of 2011's record-breaking siege of LXQ2-T which hit 3,110 simultaneous combatants at its peak. There were livestreams, tons of after-action reports, and the story of this immense battle started by one man clicking the wrong button really captured our imaginations.

EVE is one of those rare cases in which a lot of people find the media that surrounds the game more fun than the game itself. News of big in-game events like scams, heists, and huge battles spreads across the internet like wildfire, even among people who hate the game or have never tried it. When news of the Asakai battle emerged, someone on Reddit suggested that people should play EVE for only a few months to get some background and then quit and just read the stories. I've seen a lot of similar comments over the years saying that EVE is more fun to watch and read about than play, and it makes me wonder if the game is becoming a bit of a spectator sport.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at why stories like the Battle of Asakai are so pervasive and explain why I think EVE should embrace its role as a spectator sport.

Continue Reading

It's no secret that I'm nuts about wormholes! Last week I looked at the reasons why EVE Online's Apocrypha expansion was such a big success and rejoiced at the recent announcement that CCP will be developing similar laterally designed expansions from now on. In the announcement, developers wrote that they would ideally have liked to iterate on Apocrypha's wormhole gameplay for several releases, which got me thinking about how that gameplay could be expanded on now. Wormholes were a massive catalyst for exploration, small-scale colonisation, industry and PvP, but would it be possible to recapture that magic in an expansion?

The Sleeper storyline certainly evolved with the Incursion expansion as it became known that Sansha forces were able to control wormholes and had invaded Jovian space, but that story sadly didn't translate into gameplay for people living inside wormholes. There's no risk of running into the Sansha home system on your travels, and Sansha forces will never lock down a wormhole system and attack your starbase. That feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity to me, and I worry that a new wormhole expansion could similarly pass up the opportunity to add interesting new gameplay. Adding more hidden wormhole systems and combat sites would be fun for a while, but the underlying wormhole mechanics and NPC capabilities are already common knowledge.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at various ways that a future wormhole expansion for EVE could recapture the magic of Sleeper space.

Continue Reading

I don't normally jump out of my seat shouting "hell yes!" to an EVE Online dev blog, but this week's announcement on the direction of future expansions has me a little bit excited. In two somewhat dry and lengthy posts, Executive Producer Jon Lander and Senior Producer CCP Seagull detailed the approach they intend to take to ongoing development in 2013. Instead of announcing any big headline features or making vague promises, the developers looked back at the success of 2009's blockbuster Apocrypha expansion.

Apocrypha was hands-down the best expansion EVE has ever had, adding 2500 hidden solar systems accessible only through shifting unstable wormholes. We saw a renaissance of exploration, collaborative research, and colonisation efforts that defied EVE's war-like reputation, and moreover, we saw a rebirth of small-scale PvP. The magic sauce that made Apocrypha work was lateral design: Rather than add one massive vertical feature, the expansion offered a little something for everyone. Apocrypha was EVE at its best, and hearing that developers are going back to that style of expansion honestly makes me a little giddy!

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the future for EVE's expansions, why the Apocrypha model works, and why I'm optimistic for 2013 and beyond.

Continue Reading

EVE Online's recent Retribution expansion brought forth a massive PvP revival aimed at new players and veterans alike. The new bounty hunting and flagging mechanics have added huge incentives to PvP and given industrialists a way to get revenge without getting their hands dirty. New players are also finding PvP a lot easier to get into thanks to changes to faction warfare and a complete revamp of all the tech 1 cruisers.

For the past few weeks, I've been exploring each race's tech 1 cruisers and coming up with new setups you can use in PvP. I've looked at the incredible damage output of the Gallente ships, the impressive tank on the Amarr cruisers, and the still-unmatched speed of Minmatar vessels. In this week's final part of the guide series, I look at the impressive and underrated Caldari cruisers. All of the fittings in this guide series are aimed at older players with at least six months' worth of skill training under their belts, but new players can use them too by swapping all of the tech 2 modules for tech 1 versions.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I give PvP setups for the Caldari Caracal, Moa, Blackbird, and Osprey.

Continue Reading

Ever since EVE Online's PvP-focused Retribution expansion landed last month, I've spent most of my play time hunting for kills in cheap PvP cruisers and loving every moment of it. The standard tech 1 cruisers used to be underpowered ships that new players used as a stepping stone into more capable battlecruisers or tech 2 cruisers, but Retribution buffed them to ridiculous proportions. Every tech 1 cruiser was given extra module slots and stats, and the low-tier cruisers were buffed up to the same level as the highest-tier hulls. Believe it or not, these cheap ships that new players can comfortably fly with just a week of skill training have become competitive PvP ships.

In the first two editions of this ship fitting series, I put together new ship setups for each of the Amarr and Gallente tech 1 cruisers. This week, I've been zipping about the universe at high speed in the Minmatar cruisers and putting together effective ship setups that can take down some huge prey. The Stabber has been transformed into a competent miniature Vagabond that can keep enemies at arm's length and nibble them to death, and the tanky Rupture remains a highly effective close-range brawler. The Bellicose now excels in an anti-tackler role, and the Scythe is a throwaway remote repair platform that uses speed to stay safe on the battlefield.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I give PvP setups for the four recently revamped Minmatar tech 1 cruisers.

Continue Reading

EVE Online's recent Retribution expansion overhauled many of the game's old PvP mechanics and rebalanced all of the tech 1 frigates and cruisers. These are the first ships new players get into when they start playing, and many found they just couldn't compete with more expensive ships in combat. In Retribution, the basic tech 1 cruisers have been buffed beyond all recognition and now stand a serious chance against battlecruisers and tech 2 ships. New players and veterans alike have found the updated tech 1 cruisers to be a lot more fun to fly and more effective in solo PvP and small fleet warfare.

Two weeks ago, I started a new series of ship fitting guides with effective PvP setups for each of the four Gallente tech 1 cruisers. In between hilarious sessions of baiting gankers with my ECM Vexor, I've recently been been getting to grips with the updated Amarr cruisers. The Omen is now a fast tackler that can project damage over 25km, the Maller is a fantastic support DPS platform for fleet warfare, and the Arbitrator has become a great anti-frigate platform. Even the humble Augoror should now be a welcome sight in PvP fleets, repairing almost as much as a Guardian at only a fraction of the cost.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I give new PvP ship setups for EVE's recently buffed Amarr tech 1 cruisers.

Continue Reading

I originally planned to put together updated ship setups for EVE Online's newly revamped Caldari, Minmatar, and Amarr Tech 1 cruisers this week, but I've honestly been having far too much fun baiting people in highsec with last week's Vexor setup. I'm having such hilarious fun doing it that I just had to dedicate this week's column to the dirty art of the bait-and-gank! There's absolutely nothing more amusing in EVE than baiting a ship twice the size of yours into attacking you for an "easy kill" and then turning it into a very expensive smoking wreck.

The basic idea of baiting is simple: Get yourself flagged as a suspect by committing a minor crime like theft, fly around waiting for someone to attack you, and then tear him to bits. Before Retribution, you were flagged as a valid target only to the individual people you stole from, but once they attacked, you were safe to engage. Now you're flagged to the whole of EVE, making it easier to get a bite but also a whole lot riskier to engage in a crowded area. It's hard to pick and choose your fights when the whole universe is gunning for you, but when you get a good bite, there are some insanely fun fights to be had.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I give some top tips on how to safely bait players in high-security space, where to find the best targets, and what ships are most effective.

Continue Reading

In last week's article, I mentioned that one of my favourite parts of the Retribution expansion was the tech 1 cruiser revamp that buffed all of EVE Online's cruisers to the same rough power level. Before the update, cruisers were arranged in a tiered system that gave higher-tier ships extra stats and module slots. As a result, only a few cruisers were actually viable in PvP, and the others served very little purpose elsewhere in the game. The Caldari Caracal was too slow to tackle anyone, the Amarr Omen couldn't easily fit a rack of full-sized guns, and don't get me started on the state of the tech 1 remote repair cruisers.

Retribution abolished those tiers, buffing every underpowered cruiser up to the same level of power as the previous top-tier version. The Caracal got that speed it always needed, and the Omen got enough powergrid to fit a full rack of guns, but what really impressed me was what CCP did to the Vexor. With its extra module slots and the recent addition of drone damage amplifier modules, the Vexor has been transformed from a poor man's Thorax to an absolute monster that can stand toe-to-toe with battlecruisers. The Exequror and Celestis have been similarly buffed but are still specialised into logistics and electronic warfare roles.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I give new PvP ship setups for each of the Gallente tech 1 cruisers buffed in Retribution, including a setup that will make you think twice about engaging a lone Vexor.

Continue Reading

Shortly after the Retribution expansion's deployment, a thread popped up on the EVE Online forums that proved to me that the expansion had been a massive success. In the thread titled So that's what victory in this game feels like, miner Tiberius StarGazer explained that he has always felt like he had no way to get back at people who wronged him. After losing millions of ISK in ships to pirate attacks, he was almost ready to give up on EVE. But when Retribution landed, he was able to sell his kill rights to the public so that every player vigilante who crossed his attacker's path could try to take him down without warning.

After just a few hours, Tiberius got a notification that put a smile on his face: He had his first taste of revenge. He'd dealt more damage back to his attacker by clicking a button than had ever been done to him, and the attacker wasn't happy about it. He threatened to find Tiberius and kill him again, and that simple miner's reply said all I needed to know about how successful Retribution has been:

Continue Reading

EVE Online's PvP-focused Retribution expansion goes live in just a few days on December 4th, bringing with it a whole series of balance changes, UI updates, and new features. In addition to a whole new bounty hunting mechanic, we can look forward to a new combat UI, some serious ship rebalancing, and a new crimewatch system that puts players in the driving seat of antipiracy. Faction warfare is also due for a bit of a revamp, and a new safety system will help newer players stay within the bounds of the law.

CCP has been releasing torrents of information on the expansion this month in the run-up to release, covering everything from the new UI updates and ship balancing to kill rights and corp hangars. There are some interesting changes on the way that might affect your everyday life in EVE. If you haul ships and items around EVE inside an Orca's ship and corp hangars, be aware that the hangars will no longer be immune to cargo scans and their contents will now drop as loot when you're destroyed. Expect suicide attacks on Orcas to spike immediately following the expansion's release, and keep your expensive toy out of harm's way.

In this week's EVE Evolved, we'll dig into this week's Retribution expansion and look at a few of the highlights in depth.

Continue Reading

If you like to watch spaceships shoot at each other with graphs and numbers all over the screen, then the New Eden Open might be right up your street. It's EVE Online's latest competitive tournament and the first one to have a cash prize, pitting teams of players against each other in a bid to win a cut of $10,000 US. Until now, EVE's only foray into the competitive gaming space has been its annual Alliance Tournament in which in-game alliances compete for billions of ISK and blueprints for rare ships. The addition of a cash-prize tournament with fewer entry restrictions is a welcome change; hopefully there are more to come.

The Alliance Tournament has historically been filled with drama and politics, with some teams using spies to manipulate the outcome of matches. With real cash prizes on the table, players have worried that even more rampant spying would ruin the New Eden Open. After three weeks of great fights, however, the tournament seems to be going strong. In fact, EVE's metagame has actually helped the tournament in a way that no one expected.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I give my impressions of the $10,000 New Eden Open, highlight an early match I liked, and look at the strategies players are using to win.

Continue Reading

Themepark MMOs and single-player games have long dominated the gaming landscape, a trend that currently seems to be giving way to a resurgence of sandbox titles. Though games like Fallout and the Elder Scrolls series have always championed sandbox gameplay, very few publishers seem willing to throw their weight behind open-world sci-fi games. Space simulator Elite was arguably the first open-world game in 1984, and EVE Online is currently closing in on a decade of runaway success, yet the gaming public's obsession with space exploration has remained relatively unsatisfied for years.

Crowdsourced funding now allows gamers to cut the publishers out of the picture and fund game development directly. Space sandbox game Star Citizen is due to close up its crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter tomorrow night, adding over $1.6 million US to its privately crowdfunded $2.7 million. The creator of Elite has also launched his own campaign to fund a sequel, and even the practically vapourware sandbox MMO Infinity has announced plans to launch a campaign. While not all of these games will be MMOs, it may not be long before EVE Online has some serious competition. EVE can't really change much of its fundamental gameplay, but these new games are being built from scratch and can change all the rules. If you were making a new sandbox MMO from the ground up and could change anything at all, what would you do?

In this week's EVE Evolved, I consider how I'd build a sandbox MMO from the ground up, what I'd take from EVE Online, and what I would change.

Continue Reading

Today's EVE Online is packed to the brim with warring alliances smashing each other's property to pieces, but it wasn't always like that. In EVE's early days, there were so few players that much of nullsec was wasteland and you could often go 40 jumps across the lawless regions without seeing a single soul. Conquerable stations were added for players to fight over in 2003's Castor expansion, but they were few and far between. It wasn't until player-owned structures were first introduced with Exodus that nullsec really started out on its path to full-scale colonisation and all-out war.

The first player-owned structures introduced were Starbases, which offered not only a place to stash your loot and ships but also a whole new industry based on reacting moon minerals together. Moon minerals have been a major point of contention in nullsec balance discussions over the years, but most alliances weren't all that interested in moons when the industry first appeared. Starbases took all day to set up, refueling and emptying them required constant hauling, and just scanning all the moons in a region for minerals was a massive undertaking. In the summer of 2005, player Count TaSessine saw this problem as an opportunity and grabbed it with both hands as he formed the Interstellar Starbase Syndicate.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at the history of one of EVE's early alliances, its creator's dream for a civilian nullsec, and the changes that eventually led to the alliance's destruction.

Continue Reading

When console MMOFPS DUST 514 was first announced, players were cautious of the game's ambitious goals. Developers promised that DUST battles would decide the ownership of planets inside PC MMO EVE Online, and that this would tie into system sovereignty and ultimately ownership of entire regions of space. We expected the two games to have separate communities and economies that would interact only when EVE players hired DUST mercenaries to take over sectors of particular planets, but we couldn't have been more wrong.

Two years later, CCP blew our expectations out of the water with details of how DUST and EVE will be practically joined at the hip. We learned that the two games would share the exact same corporations and that ISK would be transferable between games. We also got a glimpse of the incredible plans for realtime integration, with EVE ships able to deliver air strikes to planets and DUST players able to shoot down ships in orbit with ground cannon. But have those ambitious goals stayed in focus during development, and what can we expect from DUST when it launches early next year?

In this week's EVE Evolved opinion piece, I look through the public information on DUST 514's launch integration with EVE Online and speculate on how the link may evolve after release.

Continue Reading

It's been called "boring," "confusing," and "the world's biggest spreadsheet," but every now and then a story emerges from sci-fi MMO EVE Online and grabs the gaming world's attention. Tales of massive thefts, colossal battles, high-value kills, record-breaking scams, political dirty deals, and controversial player-run events never fail to grip us. Perhaps it's the fact that these events have such huge impacts in the EVE sandbox that captures our imaginations, or maybe we just want to watch with morbid curiosity as a virtual society self-destructs.

Whether it's innocent interest in quirky stories or a secret sense of schadenfreude that keeps us glued to EVE's most illicit events, the game continues to deliver them with startling regularity. Most scams, thefts, and high-profile battles will never make the news, instead becoming another forgotten part of EVE's history or just a story for a few friends to reminisce about. But those stories that do reach the news always draw in a huge audience that wouldn't play EVE in a million years but can't get enough of its engrossing stories.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I run down a list of ten incredible EVE kills, scams, heists, and sandbox events that have made it into the news over the years.

Continue Reading