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.

real sense of loss

[Digitus1337]

If you lose a ship in EVE it's gone, no free respawn once you walk back to your body. Diablo 2 is the only other game that offered anything like this. Why haven't other games caught on?

Come clean and do the right thing..

[Taelron]

Will they ever give the game community a satisfactory resolution to the incident where their staff have cheated in the game? Any other game company would have fired those employees... Theirs kept their jobs and simply created new accounts, that with their developer access, can just quickly ramp back up... The way they treated the whistle blower was much harsher than those actually guilty of deceiving and betraying their player base. I know I will never purchase any additional services or titles from CCP as a result of this gaff.

Employee Players

[Vrallis]

Given the recent events (mainly surrounding Band of Brothers) of employee misconduct, have you considered changing your privacy policies in cases where an employee is involved?

I understand the privacy policy concerning the average player, and not wanting to discuss GM actions. However, when it is an employee involved who has been found guilty, some things need to be aired out in public in order to instill confidence in CCP by your playerbase.

We aren't looking for their real names. We want to know:

1) What exactly was the offense?
2) How was the offense corrected? (ISK or items removed)
3) What characters were terminated as a result of the investigation?
4) Is the person still a CCP employee?

*avoided mentioning BoD even once!
**oops!

Re:OS X client

[LakeSolon]

While most of the high-level logic is written in Python there's still a great deal of C++ code, but the main issue is that it's written against Microsoft's DirectX.

Re:Come clean and do the right thing..

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the way they behaved when it was revealed, I'm going to go out on a limb and say no, they will not. The funny thing about MMOGs is that once people have invested enough time and money into their characters, they'll bend over and take just about anything from the developers. Sure, they'll complain on the forums until they're blue in the face, but they keep paying and playing.

Re:Physics, the Legal System, and Geography

[LakeSolon]

First of all, why is there no Mac OS X or Linux client?

Short answer: Microsoft's DirectX. Slightly longer answer: this comment [slashdot.org].

The second thing I'd like to know is why the physics are all screwed up

Simplicity. I couldn't tell you if it was simplicity for the purposes of the physics engine/network coherency or game balance that came first, but both contribute. Trying to balance the gameplay without an over-simplified speed model (I can't actually think of any games off the top of my head that respect real-universe physics in a space environment, though I imagine someone has tried it) would be excruciating if not impossible. Even in the simplified model there have been issues and several overhauls. Just the other day there was a dev blog that mentioned the issue of the "Nanophoon" (a particular ship+configuration that's hard to counter in PvP).

Thirdly, what's up with the seemingly bizarre layouts of the solar systems, as relates to the legal system?

You might be referring to something else, but my first guess is that you're trying to get from one empire's hub to that of another. There are barriers of low security between center of each of the Amarr, Caldari, Minmatar and Gallente empires. There are higher security paths available, but you'll likely end up going slightly out of your way. You can adjust your autpilot to prefer safer routes.

The construction of a station would require a massive investment, making it highly unlikely that any entity would choose to locate such an expensive piece of hardware in such a place, unless they felt they could defend that space easily, which almost by definition would make that space relatively high security.

Actually, there are many player-constructed stations in EVE these days. Every single one of them has been (and must be) placed in "zero security" space, purely controlled by players. You're right, they're not cheap.

I suppose that you could some up my questions here by saying that I'm really requesting that the game be made much more realistic than it is.

Warp Drives, Jump Drives, wormholes, tens of thousands of years in the future... but you want realism you say? =)

Re:Game Developer should not be able to play your.

[elfurbe]

Oh my god get out.

I can work a scram myself. The skill training is pretty minor, so I'm not sure what your beef is. They're handy, cause it keeps the other ship from warping away while you kill it. But I think you mean scam, and frankly, scams are half the fun of Eve. I've been subject to a few, it's just part of the experience. As to the IRS angle, you can't really address a taxable income issue where the taxation would be on illegal funds, as CCP does NOT sanction selling time cards for real life currency except through their licensed dealers. If we're going to try to enforce that, I'd like to see all the illegal gambling income from last year reported as well. While we're at it, I'd like a unicorn and the power of flight.

Your only salient point is the concern of cheating. Fact is, game developers SHOULD play their games, they SHOULD participate in the community. As far as I'm concerned, a game developer can run an alliance or rule the known universe as long as CCP is ensuring the guy/gal isn't cheating. I want devs interested in the game, improving mechanics, finding problems, sitting through the system lag. I want them invested in the project. The problem is tracking their activity, and generally one of trust. If I'm CCP, I'd have clear policies denoting real-life consequences for employee in-game misconduct. A dev doing what this dev did has opened a Pandora's Box of paranoia and a chorus of players claiming every victory/loss is a result of developer intervention and player misconduct. If I found one of my devs cheating in-game, I'd can them outright. Their head would only marginally account for the potential damage to the community's trust and the changes in both meta-game and in-game politics and social order, not to mention the massive number of issues it creates for game masters and other devs who play fair and have fun.

Also, I just can't help myself:
-Spaces come after commas, not before as in "That grammar nazi is awesome, isn't he?"
-Without is one word as in "Without grammar nazis, the whole world would exist in chaos."
-"As in" in your context is a sentence continuance not a start, as in this usage right here.
-Time card requires an article to address it, as in "That grammar nazi has a time card."
-"can also" negates the need for "as well"
-Where denotes a place, were denotes a state of being, example: "Where is that grammar nazi? We were going to give him a hug for improving our writing by an order of magnitude!"
-Thing is not think
-There as in "He's over there with the grammar nazi.", They're as in "They're being grammar nazis.", Their as in "Their grammar nazi is the best grammar nazi in the whole world."

I don't claim writing perfection, but I do claim due diligence in ensuring I did my best. The parent does not demonstrate this effort. Shun the non believer!

Why not ban SirMolle?

[X.25]

Why you ignore any questions in regards to banning SirMolle, for posting someone's real-life information on forums? Yet you decided to ban others who did the same?

Is it because he's the CEO of alliance that houses biggest number of CCP developers? Or he is also developer, and they don't need to follow rules that we mortals need to?

Thank you.

Why do you keep a cheater in-house?

[X.25]

Why is it that developer who has been found to abuse privileges can keep his job, while you permanently banned person who exposed the whole thing?

Re:Band of Developers?

[Anonymous Coward]

When the majority of the devs play in the same alliance, it's hard for me to believe an internal affairs group will be impartial to everyone else's claims of impropriety.

Re:real sense of loss

[Sobrique]

I like the fact that there's a 'real loss'. It means it's actually possible to defeat someone strategically. If a pirate's harassing your mining operations, kill him and he's lost his ship. He may have a spare, but there's not many who keep a larger number of spares with Tech 2 fittings.

This of course, becomes increasingly relevant in alliance warfare, or 'group' PvP - it's possible to 'win'. (and lose) which makes the PvP so much better.

Other means of CCP suppression

[StCredZero]

Eve Online devs and GMs also:

• Summarily "lock" forum threads they don't like. (Particularly ones mentioning corruption.)
• Orders players to stop trying to escalate a petition
• Threaten players trying to escalate a petition
• Ignore attempts to escalate a petition

If the 1st GM is corrupt, and players cannot escalate, then what recourse is there? What checks and balances are there? None. So it should be no surprise that there is widespread corruption in Eve Online.