Ask CCP About EVE Online

The week after next, the annual Game Developer's Conference is happening in San Francisco. I'll be there providing coverage on the keynotes, and some of the talks that I think will appeal to the Slashdot sensibility. I've also been digging to see if there's any folks willing to speak with the Slashdot community 'in person'. The fine folks at CCP, makers of the Massively Multiplayer game EVE Online, have kindly agreed to take some time out of their busy conference schedule to answer your questions. So, what do you want to know about the present and future of this fascinating MMOG? One question per comment, please. I'll present your questions to CCP, and pass their answer back once I'm home from the event. Update: 02/22 19:51 GMT by Z : I asked Sharon Howell, the PR rep for CCP, who I might be speaking with at GDC. Unfortunately, they're still nailing down schedules. We'll be talking with one of the following: Hilmar Veigar Petursson, Chief Executive Officer, Magnus Bergsson, Chief Marketing Officer, Nathan Richardsson, Senior Producer, Halldór Fannar Guðjónsson, Chief Technology Officer. One of these members of the top brass will be available to answer your questions.

Comments

Re:Real advance in game mechanics

[scoser]

For instance, no matter how skilled a player, a 6 month player will always perish to a 4 year player.

This is actually wrong. Eve's skill system is set up on diminishing returns. For each of the 5 levels of a skill, the amount of time spent to train each level increases drastically. So while someone might have trained a skill to level 5 for 2% bonus at each level, a younger player might have trained it up to level 4 and only be 2% behind on the particular skill.

Ship fittings and player tactics also play a great deal into who wins a combat as well. Even if you're outskilled by an older player, get a friend or two to come and help you fight, and you will often have a great chance of overwhelming the older player and killing him, even if he's in a Battleship and the three of you are in Battlecruisers or Cruisers.

Re:Band of Developers?

[Andy Dodd]

"However, what you say about CCP trying to cover up does not in any way correspond to what I've seen. Every single dev-blog the last month has mentioned this, they are trying to change some of the mechanics to prevent anything like this ever happening again, not to mention that they haven't deleted a single (coherent) post about this on THEIR OWN forums."

I can't believe how utterly inaccurate your statement is.

There have been a total of three dev blogs on the subject. One was t20's confession, one was Hellmar's post, one was from the new "internal affairs" guy.

Keep in mind that despite clear evidence of wrongdoing, t20 wasn't fired or even really punished for his actions.

Kugutsumen discovered quite a bit of evidence that t20 was not the only developer doing "shady" things in regards to BoD. CCP has not responded at all to this evidence other than deleting threads and banning users, including Kugutsumen. (Your claim that CCP has not deleted any posts is blatantly false - CCP was deleting threads and banning users right and left to try and cover things up.)