Saturday, April 23, 2016

Fanfest 2016 - Day 3

My brief notes on the final day. As usual my interpretation of both sides (CCP and players) and I was seriously hungover! I mean seriously hungover! Covered:-

Art and Graphics Panel
Structures Presentation
Fiction and Lore Roundtable
NPE Roundtable
Closing Cerimony

Art and Graphics Panel
Lots of cool shit. New ship redesigns. Looking at putting citadel explosions on ships. Capital models to get new tech-art from citadel (Chimera remodel on hold). New generic wrecks planned. Eye glasses for avatar. Yeah its short. I WAS HUNGOVER!!!


 
 

Structures
Citadel first line of many. They want structures like ships. Big choice and you pick the right one for the job.
Jumping between clones now charges a fee. Station where you are jumping out of receives cash. 900k for NPC station, Citadels as per owners charge that they set.
Swapping jump clones inside the same Citadel does NOT activate the cooldown. 
Reprocessing service includes compression.
Tax from reprocessing now in ISK not percentage of minerals.
Lots of new weapons. Guided bombs that move slow. You can fire at a friendly and get them to lead the bomb to the enemy in a suicide run!
The point-defence batteries extend 2.5km outside the "flashy light perimeter". It also damages friendlies unless they are tethered.
Doomsday hits first target and then jumps to next largest mass. Up to 20km and chains on. Does also hit friendlies!
No guns on citadels as transverse mechanic doesn't work with 100km long objects. Thats why missiles and AoE.
YOU CAN SPIN YOUR SHIP IN A CITADEL!
Tethering auto repairs your ship including burnt out modules and drones inside the drone bay.
Cannot tether if you have someone locked, a weapons timer or an active module.
You cannot dock if you are pointed!
New station browser. Shows where you can dock in the region and what services are available.
Managing structures easier with profiles.
Not restricted to corp or alliance. You can set permissions for any entity or person or deny specific entities or individuals (everyone can dock at my station except THAT guy!).
Contracts not ready to be implemented in Citadels yet. Soon (TM)

Coming next?
Fixes first. Keeping resources free for when we break stuffz.
Contracts in citadels.
New mods - Tractor beam and repulser fields for moving enemies closer or further away.
Same eWar projectors as supercarriers and the GTFO superweapon.
Location Painter - Place a beacon anywhere on grid. Enemy fleet 300km away. Drop beacon and your defence fleet can warp to them.

Industrial array.
Autumn.
For now includes research labs. Long term plan to seperate these off though. Rigs will allow you to gear the array to building or research.
M, L and XL
XL will be able to build super caps in Null.
Cheaper than citadels
Have weapons but will be less effective.

Drilling Platforms.
Winter?
T2 resource collection (moon goo).
To become an active process not passive like current moon goo. 

Next Next?
Who knows? CCP want feedback.
Medium Stargates (jump bridges)
Admin Hubs (Sov Structures)
Observatory Array (Mess with map/local intel)

Transition.
No rush.
Outposts will be stopped being placed by end of year.
Start of Starbase reimbursement by winter.

Player questions...

POS useful for storing Titans. What happens after POS go.
If you can afford a titan you can afford a Keepstar

HALP! Save us from ebil AFK-Cloakies. We cannot wait until the observation array. Can we have a citadel mod.
No. Wait for observation arrays. Looking at interesting cat and mouse gameplay for AFK-cloakers.

Will the Drilling Array do more than moon mine and process minerals.
May be. Could spawn belts like the iHub upgrade does. Could give a boost to a corps mining in system. Could generate T2 asteroids once a month but everyone can try for them etc.

Does tethering stop bumping?
Not yet.... soon (tm)

Cost of Industrial Arrays?
Who knows!

How many Palatine Keepstars are they expecting.
THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!




Fiction/Backstory
Very busy!


Jamyl dead. [Some] Amarrian role-players are scary. Apparently not pleased about the BOOM HEADSHOT! style assassination. Falcon made ace Kennedy comparison and we moved on (they didn')
New fiction portal being worked on.
Scope to be pulled out of Federation and be independent news outlet.
Complaints news videos not using Amarr Certified News. Can we have Amarr news from ACN? CCP - No - CCP Loki's head would explode. Also would need propaganda spin. Player - Then hire the Mittani.
Lore/NPC Corps from DUST likely to be rolled over to Nova. Cross population from Valkyrie and Gunjack.
New fiction book? - Number of chronicles (5) planned for rest of year. Possible ebook but nothing planned just bite-sized chunks. Only planned book is Frigates book.
The Citadel Super-weapon, the GTFO. Teleporters? Lore basis? - It's not a teleport. It's a localised work hole.
Yes CCP want to use player actions in the fiction/back-story.
DUST didn't feel Eve enough. What input to Nova? CCP - FPS attention span is different to Eve Online so not as much need.
Mercury keeps eye on the role-players and does listen. Send them stuffz.
Loyalty thread on forums for players and organisations to cast their allegiance. Falcon still watches it. Especially for Scope tickers that sort of thing. Not as much used due to smaller team size.
Falcon would like something on character sheet to show player "loyalty". To NPC Corp or House etc. Just a Falcon-wish.
The Hyper Gates - Are they still in the lore? Probably.
How far in front do CCP plan? - Loose high level vision. Difficult to plan as game play and game development changes. e.g. Upwell Consortium came after idea for Citadel.
RP rewards from NPC for high standing. CCP - Would be nice to have things tied to standing but no planning.
Old mechanic that turned slaves to freed slaves - What about things like that. Also turn tourists and passengers to slaves etc.
Choosing race before you really know back-story - Possible 90% change in race?
Succession trials - Yes heirs will have to commit suicide. New replacements already drafted.

NPE
OK, Lore RT was Busy! Thus is BUSY!


Delegate Zero, Surge and Ghost plus more. New team - Genesis.
Story/missions or little things that could improve for new players - If it's critical or a barrier then it is within their scope.
Biggest issue right clicking! UI not intuitive - It's not going away. Need better job of showing right click is the way to go. Prompts in space? Character creator?
Opportunity to join Corp has people joining Corp to complete and then they leave - Been watching opportunities and most players do them linear. CCP might have to do a linear NPE and very very very aware backlash. Want strong hand holding to start slowly reducing to casual guidance.
Rookie only system/simulation for new bros. The Eve Online "Kobayashi Maru" - Ghost takes over. No problem attracting players, it's the ability to play. One and a half million new bros, 51% last less under 2 hours. Same info - "This game is like 10 different games. It doesn't help me learn to be an industrialist/miner/trader/pirate. It just teaches mechanics."
People come in after seeing This is Eve. Then realise nope, long way off ISK. - NPE to show how to make money.
Gankers put players off. PvE server - Not no no no no no
Mentors employed by CCP? - ISD already there. AI mentors being looked at. Voice guidance. People want safe space to ask questions.
Potential to give false impression. - Not approaching it to make 10hr single player game and then dump them into Eve. Want to point players to a career. Don't want to give them the answers but the way to ask the question.
Storyline yes or no? - Yes. However... Opportunities no context. Do this, that and this. Make it Mr Empire wants you to do this, that and this because this will help the Empire.
AI like Aura? - We had one.
Noob ships are very disappointing. How can you know you want to be a miner when you only flew an Ibis - Potential to give you a bite of pinnacle game play like an epic 200 person battle (NPC).
Biggest problem of first 2 hours is PvP aspect. Nothing in tutorial about PvP. Starter Corp could be an answer - Floated thought of veteran players being able to return School Corp. CSM was receptive. Issue with 5000 players in one chat channel.
Risk vs Reward. Investment? How about achievements/medals/badges. - Something to think about.
Lots of stats. How about the intangibles? - Tried before by asking new people to try Eve for the first time and watching what they do. Ghost is looking at doing more.
Move character creator down the line - Double edged sword. Yes takes time and you don't know backstory but create emotional link.
Do metrics show anything why those 51% quit so early - Yes data scientist looked into this.
Make sure we have something to bypass NPE for alt creation.

Close
Using CCP Quant's stats someone has calculated that the player assets in game are worth $55m dollars and a Palatine Keepstar would be worth $3.5m kill mail!
In real life money we raised $16k for Childrens Hospital of Iceland.
The "wall" we could write on, CCP had a KPI of "Time to Penis". It was 4 hours in the end.
Eve Vegas 28-30 October.
Fanfest 2017 - 6-8 April 2017.
Will be CCP's 20th anniversary in 2017.




A bit rushed. Party starts in 6 minutes and I'm still blogging.... in my underpants! I'll leave you with that image!

6 comments:

  1. Looks like the next 1-2 years of EVE development can be safely ignored unless you're into PvP. Not a single word on PvE? FFS!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There was a PvE Events in Eve Roundtable at the same time as the NPE I was in. Also new Rat capitals announced elsewhere. Low-Sec PvP is also getting nothing remember.

      Delete
    2. They get a tax, which is...

      Yeah. Let's not go there.

      Delete
    3. You mean, the NPC market order tax? The one that's gonna hit all highsec trade hubs in an attempt to make Citadel markets look like a good idea?

      Delete
    4. When I said "don't go there", I meant in the serious sense, not the horror movie sense :P.

      Delete

  2. POS useful for storing Titans. What happens after POS go.
    If you can afford a titan you can afford a Keepstar

    Impressively imbecilic. How glad I am that we have a wholly encompassing CSM to represent us...

    Honestly not tempted to represent re up, despite the free plex I got from CCP. How they managed to turn two and a half days of hype around in 4 sentences*, I don't know.

    Ahh well, there's always other games.

    * the above and the moon mining changes.

    ReplyDelete