New EVE Expansion Nears, Possible Mobile Plans 74
As the EVE Online creators ramp things up for the free Apocrypha expansion due out next week, lead designer Noah Ward sat down with MTV's Multiplayer blog to discuss the future of the game and what characteristics continue to keep players interested. Ward says they've considered branching out to consoles, but ended up deciding that the game doesn't really lend itself to console play. He left the door open to using smartphones for "augmenting" gameplay. Ward also mentioned that upcoming space MMOs Jumpgate: Evolution and Star Trek Online are so different from EVE that they're not really worried about direct competition; EVE thrives in part because of the player-generated drama and scandals, which few games pull off as well. Massively has gathered a variety of details about the Apocrypha expansion, which includes the game's first epic mission arc, and they've also posted some screenshots. CCP Games launched a website for the expansion containing concept art and interviews with some of the developers.
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How exactly is this a troll? If anything, it should be modded insightful.
New Space MMOs out soon! (Score:2)
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Because EVE is far more tactical, and offers strategic play too.
And don't bring up the nonsense about how "Jumpgate requires SKILLBASED piloting", it's just bullshit. It requires twitch-based reflexes and some skills pertaining to that, while EVE requires a more tactical skillset, that is, analysing your position, strengths and weaknesses of your group/ship, of the ships of your enemies etc.
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Missiles and torpedoes used to deliver splash damage, but they got rid of it due to the fact it was too easy to get owned by Concord in empire space. If you were doing a mission in a missile boat and someone outside your corp decided to sit next to one of your targets you were pretty much stuffed.
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look, i used to play eve, so im no hater.. but ive always felt icky about using an oddity of the game mechanics (that you bounce off things rather than crashing) as a legitimate space combat tactic. eve players regularly run into another players ship just to bounce them away from safety, such as a stations dock or a jump gate, as if ship webbers and warp disruptors were not enough. heaven forbid you might have to chase your target!
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It's been available for beta testing for a while now ;)
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O.o
Since when? I track the site religiously, and haven't heard a peep about beta. Either they're playing it very close to the vest, or I'm a bad reader.
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Signups have been open since summer last year, and I got my beta account in december
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Damn liars, always saying beta hasn't started on their forums!
...please tell me it doesn't suck. I'm counting on this game to give me my space combat sim fix!
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*Shrugs* Don't really know. I know I'm not alone there either. But I also betatested the original Jumpgate so that could be the reason.
As to the game. It's... nice, though I still prefer the more tactical and strategic elements of EVE.
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My biggest beef with eve-online is the huge "empty" spaces in time at start.
After the tutorial, you basically can't do much more than mine and train skills for several weeks before you can even think of starting to do more interesting stuff. There really should be a better, longer tutorial style introduction, also, the agent system is terrible. After my second tutorial agent, i was basically completely unsure where to go for "my level" of missions, trying in the next 1.0 space system got me blown up in the
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And there we get to both the massive multiplayer part, namely, ASK, and the curiosity part, namely start looking around.
One of the big drawbacks with the game having grown, and it having been made easier and more "accessible" over the years, is that rookies actually have it harder now. Sure, it's easier to get into ships, it's easier to be a tackler in PvP etc. But you can't really luck out in your exploration. For that, you need to train lots of skills. I remember back in late 2004/early 2005, a friend of
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Indeed.
What's it with /. and Eve anyway? There are more Eve-related "news" here than on the rest of the net combined :D
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That was impressive! I've never seen or heard so much gay porn in my life, and the dancing windows were so much fun to watch. Do you have any more of this kind of material? I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter, too.
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They already made a native version [rakshasa.no] for linux.
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Didn't they just abandon the real linux client?
Re:Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they decided that there will be no more Eve Online for Linux [slashdot.org] and despite that they are expanding their market. I suppose that the the Linux devs are being moved to other platforms. What does that say about Linux marketshare? If we _really_ want to see games on Linux we need to start buying them, not buying the Windows version and running it in Wine (even if it runs better). If we don't encourage the software houses to write the games (encourage==buy) then they won't write them.
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I see.
I suggest then, that those who run _any_ application in wine, Eve Online or otherwise, contact the devs and ask for a Linux version. Else, you are just pinning yourself to Wine and the moving target that it is.
Alternatively, use an OS that runs the apps you need. If that is not a solution, then write to the devs!
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That's why the linux version was made in the first place.. but it was just a cedega wrapper and everyone continued to use wine. Eventually CCP dropped the "official linux client" since wine was better anyways.
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Alternatively, use an OS that runs the apps you need. If that is not a solution, then write to the devs!
Writing devs doesn't do a darned bit of good. You need to demonstrate that there are enough paying customers on a given platform to defray the costs of developing for and supporting that platform. They tried Linux, and they couldn't make money doing it. The WINE solution is perfectly usable and was superior to the Linux client in performance anyway.
Folks need to understand that supporting a platform is a decision based on economics, not religion, geek street cred, or write-in campaigns. Put your dollars
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I've got the money sitting there that I want to give to Solidworks, the minute that there is a Linux version available. I'll buy Photoshop, too, just to help support them even though I've become comfortable with Gimp. I've written to both companies to let them know that.
Re:Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
When the last expansion was released it introduced a brand new graphics engine. The Transgaming client (Cedega) didn't support it and neither did Wine at first. However within a few weeks Wine got it running whereas Transgaming dragged their heels.
For anyone who hasn't followed the Transgaming story, they forked Wine a long time ago and then went closed source. They developed quite a lot of good directx (shader 1.x/2.x/3.x) code but they have never submitted it back to the Wine project. Wine basically restrict them from using any of their code since Transgaming decided to screw them. The end result is Transgaming's Cedega code base is horrifically out of date in places compared to the Wine code base.
In my opinion they should try and fix those bridges and merge the code. Transgaming still has a decent corporate structure to approach companies like CCP, as well as their successful MacOS range. The Wine developers aren't interested in that, only further improving Wine. Transgaming simply haven't got the balance right.
Re: Transgaming (Score:2)
From the Wine homepage (http://www.winehq.org/history [winehq.org]):
At this point, obviously Transgaming was n
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Web browsers are _supposed_ to support HTML, which is not platform or software dependent.
Linux is POSIX-compliant, which does not cover the type of usage that a game would need. The best that you could hope for is to standardize win32, and help Wine develop an implementation of win32 on Linux.
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If you do win32 you MIGHT as well just use wine.
That was exactly my point! Asking for a 'standard' is akin to asking for devs to code to MS 'standards' and then have Linux devs reverse engineer them.
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However, perhaps if they will start fully supporting the Wine implementation as much as possible, perhaps there's still hope for them and other apps to improve
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Re:Linux (Score:4, Informative)
There never was a real linux client and CCP had no dedicated linux developers as far as I know. It was always the Windows client wrapped in Cedega [cedega.com] maintained by TransGaming. I believe most linux users were aware that plain Wine with the regular Windows client performed better in most cases, thus the official linux package was hardly used. Why maintain something that noone uses, right?
They still have a Mac version, but that is also the Windows client, wrapped in Cider [transgaming.com].
Re: official linux package (Score:2)
I've tried the official Linux package and it did not work that well. So I'm not surprised in the least that it got little use. If plain Wine (which I didn't try) worked better, I'm even less surprised.
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EVE Mobile? (Score:1)
A mobile version?
EVE Online from my Blackberry at work?
I'll be in heaven, and I won't get much work done.
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Yeah console gamers generally like to play games more involved than watching your spaceship mine an asteroid for six hours.
The advantage of EVE Online is that it doesn't really have any graphics so you could play it on anything, even a normal phone. Just select your spaceship to mine an asteroid or travel across the galaxy, put the phone back in your pocket and come back the
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IF you decide to mine. I'm doing the missions this time (second character) and it's far away from boring (weeee! Firing three ships at the same time!)
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advantage of EVE Online is that it doesn't really have any graphics so you could play it on anything, even a normal phone. Just select your spaceship to mine an asteroid or travel across the galaxy, put the phone back in your pocket and come back the next day.
I know you are trying to be sarcastic. It's true that mining in secure systems is just about as exciting as watching paint dry, but these days it's a very minor part of EVE.
And as for the graphics of EVE - you are wrong. EVE has upgraded the graphics engine about an year ago and with Apocrypha they are phasing out the old "classic" client and adding new models and effects to all the bits that weren't upgraded last time (weapon effects, asteroids, some mission-related models). The minimum for playing EVE aft
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Actually, while testing the Apocrypha client on SISI, my GMA950 equipped laptop is actually getting more FPS in space using Premium Lite than it ever got with the classic client.
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I'll have to try my eeepc with that, it got 15 fps at the highest when I tried the classic client on it.
It has a GMA 945 IIRC.
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I think I get 20 fps with my Mini 9 wigh GMA 945 and 1GB of mem. Of course, I had to reduce
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Still a nice feature though. I really wish WoW would implement something like this. Give me access to my in-game mail, guild chat, and (assuming I logged out in a major city), the auction house, and I might actually have a reason to finally get a smartphone + data plan :).
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Eve is a sandbox. When you go play in a sand box you're the one that has to make it fun by using your imagination and finding something that you consider fun. You can do an almost limitless number of things in the game and there are very few rules. I usually recommend that new people join one of the training corps that exist, Eve University being one of the larger ones. That's the fastest way to get a handle on the game and find the things that are fun for you. People who do this are usually highly regarded
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As someone who's sick of crap like walking into the famed cantina in Mos Eisley and hearing the music and seeing the patrons drinking, only to realize there isn't one damned real human there, I love the PvP.
It's not like PvP in other games, which is mostly 1 person getting ganked by a couple of roaming punks with way too much time on their hands.
No, this is essentially Realm vs. Realm PvP, where the realms self-assemble and carve out their own "realms".
By the way, this expansion pack introduces several thou
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As a kid, I had a real sandbox. Actually it was just a large pile of sand. But I could make whatever I wanted without someone else coming along and destroying it. You obviously had a horrid childhood if you think sandbox equals gankerland.
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> You know what I found out? PvP is a *lot* of wasted time waiting around to get the
> advantage over the other guys who are waiting around doing the same thing to you.
Yes, but when you do, it's a beautiful thing. Unlike your FPS kill which 99% of the time is not. And I love FPS games, was in a very good Quake clan way back before most of you were even born.
On the flip side, when you're "popped" trying to scurry through 0.0 (no guards whatsover space) because you warped to a gate crowded with punks,
The new release is looking good for a lot of us (Score:1)
And for some of us who are diving into wormholes with a passion it's absolutely outstanding. I know I'm currently building up a small alliance or corporations to go in and build a colony.
It's re-invigorated my game to be sure.
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