What do you name a weekend-long meet in Amsterdam for Eve Online gamers? Actually, don’t trouble developing with a solution, as developer CCP Games has already nailed it: Evesterdam. While there have been no area desserts at this 12 months’s occasion there have been loads of spaceships, and that was sufficient to interrupt attendance information, with over 350 followers becoming a member of up within the Dutch capital to share struggle tales, chat to builders, partake in tournaments, and attend panels.
This 12 months, Evesterdam is step one on a world tour referred to as Eve Invasion, which can take CCP’s area MMO to the likes of Sydney, Toronto, Vegas, and St. Petersburg, earlier than a no-doubt raucous London finale in November. The bold imaginative and prescient for the game that CCP offered over the weekend made it clear that, after a exceptional 16 years since launch, the studio is poised to shake up Eve’s universe in an unprecedented method this 12 months.
Now, in case you haven’t been totally retaining up to the mark with all of the spaceship shenanigans – and let’s face it, the game launched in 2003, so I’ll forgive you for that – Eve Online continues to recurrently make headlines for the unbelievable, emergent tales it conjures up. From sentencing hackers to menial labour (just about, that’s), to staging public executions on dastardly bots, Eve Online is at all times fascinating to examine, no matter your expertise with the game.
So whether or not you’re a fleet commander or a complete beginner, it doesn’t matter, as the next roadmap of large updates and incoming content material provides you with a lot or motive to gaze on the stars, daydreaming about the place CCP’s unpredictable enterprise will go subsequent.
Story time with the Triglavians
As the primary a part of an enormous new storyline, Eve is getting three Tech 2 Triglavian vessels in spring – the Nergal Tech 2 Assault Frigate, the Draugur Tech 2 Command Destroyer, and the Ikitursa Tech 2 Heavy Assault Cruiser. The reveal of that final one specifically prompted a spherical of gleeful gasps throughout the Evesterdam keynote.
It’s going to tug our graphics capabilities as much as a brand new degree
“2019 is going to be an interesting year,” CCP artistic director Bergur Finnbogason says. “Early 2018, a new race came onto the scene, the Triglavians, after players figured out a way to get into their space. Recent events have indicated the Triglavians are not particularly happy about that, and it seems they’re putting out some pretty serious threats.”
The Eve neighborhood could be well-advised to take these threats critically after they begin taking form within the coming months.
DirectX 12 may change every little thing
Eve Online will likely be shifting over to DirectX 12 quickly. These new software-building instruments could have wide-ranging results on the game.
“It’s going to pull our graphics capabilities up to a new level,” Finnbogason says. “We still support DirectX 9, but it’s become quite a hindrance for us. I think it’s impossible to squeeze more out of it. We managed to get DirectX 9 to do amazing things. But it’s a way for us to modernise what we have.”
Not solely will DirectX 12 let CCP go away behind legacy points corresponding to poor texture compression and incompatible shaders, however as Finnbogason says, “it will open up that treasure chest of tools. There will be so many new possibilities for game design and art.” Expect extra information on what precisely emerges from that treasure chest additional down the road.
Huge battles in Eve: Aether Wars
In phrases of contemporary content material, essentially the most noteworthy is new large-scale PVP mode referred to as Eve: Aether Wars. It’s already been stressed tested at GDC 2019, the place a complete of 14,274 pilots – together with AI pilots – engaged in seamless, real-time fight. Incredibly, near 15 million missiles have been fired in that battle alone. CCP is working along with Hadean to ship Aether Wars within the coming months.
prepare for The Activity Tracker
Eve can also be getting a brand new Activity Tracker. This visualisation instrument permits you to chart your progress in New Eden. It’s grouped into 5 headings: trade, exploration, useful resource harvesting, encounters, and fight. This will allow you to see, for example, how a lot moon ore you’re harvesting, or what your hit price is throughout battles, and in the end reexamine your function within the universe. There’s nothing like a little bit of perspective.
For busy gamers like Jin’taan, that’s a life-saver. Jin’taan tells me at Evesterdam that he’s adopted many roles over his ten-year historical past with the game: fleet commander, struggle correspondent, and even Russian spy. So is he enthusiastic about Eve’s 2019 roadmap? “Oh, 100%… I don’t think it goes quite far enough,” he says of all of the incoming updates introduced throughout the presentation, “but I think CCP is on the right track. And I’m really excited to see those later balance patches.”
A serving to hand for contemporary gamers
For new Eve Online gamers there’s one thing referred to as ‘UI pointers for mentors’. This characteristic enables you to hyperlink instructions to UI parts in chat, permitting skilled gamers to information newbies by highlighting particular elements of Eve’s infamously intimidating menus. May is the proposed rollout month for that, and it’s one of many many adjustments that bend and mildew Eve right into a extra interesting form.
For CCP senior neighborhood supervisor Paul Elsy, now could be an excellent time to be an Eve fan. “I think it’s doing great,” he tells me. “I think it’s got a couple of underlying issues just because it’s been running so long. The game itself is in a really good place right now. It just needs a few tweaks and a little bit of housecleaning.”
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As effectively as UI pointers, different quality-of-life enhancements vary from fixing the difficulty of Plex vanishing from wallets, to including a brand new leap tunnel impact when warping. And CCP continues on its bot-slaying escapade: this 12 months the corporate has already banned 2,100 accounts, and seized one trillion ISK.
With a wholly new graphics engine on the horizon, an upcoming large-scale PvP mode able to supporting tens of hundreds of combatants, a revised UI to welcome new gamers, and quite a few quality-of-life adjustments, Evesterdam demonstrated how Eve Online will fly a course in direction of much more greatness.
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