New EVE Online Expansion Detailed

Eurogamer reports on the EVE Online Fanfest, at which developer CCP revealed details on the game's next expansion, due out in March. It will be the biggest expansion yet for EVE, and it will "introduce 'Tech 3' modular ship designs, branching epic mission arcs, further improvements to the new player experience, and exploration of uncharted space through unstable wormholes. ... The focus of the expansion will be 'true exploration,' with players using new skills and modules to travel through wormholes into all-new, unconnected space." CCP also hinted that further graphical upgrades would be coming, and a standalone first-person shooter based on EVE may be in development for a console release.

Will it be enough?

[lordsid]

Will it be enough to bait old players to come back? I doubt it. I certainly won't be.

Re:I must say this:

[lordsid]

That is more a reflection on you then it is on the game. It is utterly simple if you follow the tutorials. They actually already have a pretty decent new player experience. But then again it doesn't sound like you have been playing mmorpgs for that long. Personally I started with Ultima Online over 10 years ago.

Re:It's going down the toilet

[ChinggisK]

I don't think it's fair to accuse them of not listening to players about the speed nerfs without mentioning that most of the players complaining about it were flying ships that could go so fast that they were pretty much invincible, something that CCP never intended to be possible. Also, IIRC, they did delay the rebalancing a few times because they were listening to player input coming in from the test servers and making adjustments. I haven't been following it that closely but apparently the finalized plan is quite different from what they originally intended to do.

Re:It's going down the toilet

[MindlessAutomata]

If anyone laughs at your complaining, or rolls their eyes, they have no idea just how big of an effect such a nerf is.

For those who haven't played EVE for any appreciable amount of time, here is how skills are trained:

Skills are trained over real-world time. Some skills can take over a week, month, or longer to train. You can only train one skill at a time.

That means over a month or more can be wasted on your skill-ups, and training skills in EVE is not a trivial thing. EVE is built around players staying for the long term, and to do anything you need to train up skills for a long period of time. There's not a real comparison situation in other MMOs. This type of thing is a real kick in the balls to those people who spent training that skill. It's not like a nerf to some "epic loot".

I haven't played EVE in a long time, and I didn't even play very long, but I understand enough to know that's a real big safety pin through the testicles.

Re:I must say this:

[KDR_11k]

Those three things ARE bad design, a well designed game would teach you that by itself.

Cheating?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it have new and improved cheating by the developers?