Over at the official EVE Online site, CCP have begun to reveal details relating to the new Captain’s Quarters that players will be able to experience by the summer. The dev-blog describes the Captains Qaurters as:
“your place of power, center of your control, operational nucleus, living room and home office. They are the dusty motel room for the vagabond capsuleer. Whether docking your ship to a station or entering EVE for the first time through the character creation, you will enter the Captain’s Quarters as the living, breathing EVE You. It’s a new dimension of immersion. For all players (the future newbies/future points on your killboard), it finally gives EVE a human face, a sense of familiarity to “real life” and other games.”
For those unfamilar with EVE, this is a big step for the developer and community. Although the game draws in excess of 350,000 subscribers, it’s an odd experience for many newer players (and old) to have never had the opportunity to leave your ship. Many of today’s MMOG players are inevitably used to the physical representation an avatar provides, as opposed to just being represented by a hulking great ship.
If you havn’t already seen, you really should watch the new EVE Online character creator as well as the tech-demo of the clothing simulation Incarna will use. It simply wipes the floor with all competition. And while your at it, check out the Incarna teaser trailer and the first footage of the “walking in stations” shown at 2008’s Fanfest.
It’s all looking rather good and might just be enough to tempt me and many others.
Email the author of this post at lewisb@tap-repeatedly.com
Do you remember when I was watching you play Eve and I asked if you could exit your spaceship and walk around? When you told me you couldn’t I said that instead of playing a dwarf or an elf you played a spaceship. It seems that that’s all about to change. Eve looks beautiful though, but so intimidating. What did you think of it back when you played it?
Anyway, what’s going on Lew? You trying to get me into two MMOs? No.
That’s the key reason I never got on well with EVE – being a sentient spaceship – or, specifically an inflexible polygon with some glowy emitters for an arse.
No expression, no personality. No ability to say “This is me.” and floating in a void so absent of anything you need to think about, you enter a layer of gaming abstraction solely occupied with market shares and targetting computers. This may be the realm of specific roles aboard a spaceship, but the notion that a single pilot lives, naively trusting inside a perfectly automated craft, simply ‘willing’ it to perform basic tasks is too much for me. Or too little.
I want to run down corroded catwalks waving a fire-extinguisher at plasma fires arcing fromscarred wounds in the walls as the entire deck de-pressurises and the doors begin to slowly close with wailing klaxons and whirly red lights.
I want the Titanic experience of the ship going down, I want the Star Wars experience of punching consoles to make the hyperdrive work, I want the Star Trek experience of everyone dramatically banging into walls when the ship gets hit and the camera shakes around.
I want to run a spaceship and have to deal with every micrometeor impact, every machine breakdown, and work with a crew.
I don’t want to trade stocks and click my shielding systems on and off using a third person camera and HUD.
This is a tiny step closer to what I want. A very, very tiny step.
Jakkar, I couldn’t agree more. EVE Online while a stunning game, is so incredibly dull at the same time.
The combat is so static and uninvolved. I was stunned when I first played it, because everything leading up to it is brilliant. Having a physical Avatar will make a big difference, but, it still doesn’t change the core of the game which is poor combat, poor quests/missions and a general lull of nothing to do, if like me you don’t enjoy trade or crafting.
So, you can craft a face, dock, and walk through the mall. Is there any gameplay added or is this a useless, however well done, feature for the sake of feature existing?
I know it’s been requested since the game launched but it seems to have no connection to the game itself, to what makes EVE great. (Note: I am not an EVE player, but I do admire the heck out of it.)
@Jakkar: you are are a) not describing something possible in a sustained MMO and b) most definitely not anything EVE will ever be. EVE is a game of economics and realpolitik
You look good Fink, just look good. And frankly, what other reason do you need?
Fink: It’s not remotely beyond the scope of even current MMOs – if you want to think in terms of action gaming you could instance an event akin to attacking a Scarab in a co-operative game of Halo 3, or fighting a giant Akrid in Lost Planet 2. Movement upon/within a larger object with interactive features and flexible movement has been a feasible reality since Shadow of the Colossus – at this stage, lag is the only barrier remaining, and one fading as internet speeds increase and costs drop in many countries.
In a more conventionally clunky MMO space this becomes even more achievable – Instead of all the players living in the world then entering an ‘instance’ dungeon as we see with World of Warcraft, all the players would live in the instance, on their ship with their crew, travelling between planets/spacestations, docking, mingling, trading, taking missions.
Seriously, all you need to do to make this a reality is a simplistic space-shooter game like Star Trek Online’s space play, or indeed EVE’s more sophisticated model coupled with instanced internal spaceship levels with customisation akin to the player-housing of SWG.
The ability to bind two instanced ships together during a ‘boarding action’ in space after using tractor beams or harpoons to lock them together would allow the two levels to interface with one another as crews move back and fore between ships fighting in the corridors.
While the standard ‘player hub’ structure used by games like Guild Wars would allow activity in space stations.
It’s ambitious, but don’t tell me it’s impossible when every single bit of it has in one way or another already been done 😉
eve is both the best multiplayer game ever and the worst singleplayer game ever,
if you don’t break out of your own bad gaming habbits it can be the most incredibly dull experience on the planet, if you get involved with organised players it can be some of the biggest adrenaline type pvp I have ever played