Devchattið sem átti sér stað á irc.stratitics.net á #eveonlinehoc fyrir nokkrum mín
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[@beans] Welcome to the latest, greated EVE Online House of Commons discussion; you're chance to talk directly to the EVE Online developers
[@beans] I will be your moderator today
[@beans] To ask a question, please /msg or /query those with [QT] in front of their names
[@beans] those are: [QT]Gallahan, [QT]Lord-Xanthor and [QT]Nabisco_Lobstrosity
[@beans] (who's name i can never spell)
[@beans] DO NOT message either myself or the developers
[@beans] those will be ignored
[@beans] Also, please be sure to message different QT's at different times to balance out the load
[@beans] And now, without further ado… the developers
[@Pann] Hi, everyone. I'm Pann, the Eve Online Community Manager.
[@Pann] We had hoped to have our art director and the creator of Eve, Solaris, here today, but he's apparently been kidnapped by aliens or something.
[@Pann] We do have our lead designer, LeKjart, and our public relations director, Booster.
[@LeKjart] Hi folks.
[@LeKjart] nice crowd
[@SSIBooster] Hi all.. Booster here, the PR guy from Simon & Schuster Interactive
* @SSIBooster waves to crowd
[@Pann] If we are slow to answer, please bear with us. We are experiencing some pretty hefty lag, apparently.
[@Pann] Before we get started, we wanted to go ahead and give you some information that we know most of you are anxious to hear about.
[@Pann] The main question on everyone's minds seems to be about Beta Phase 6.
[@LeKjart] Yes. Phase 6.
[@LeKjart] Phase 6 is suppposed to start next week
[@LeKjart] we have been installing hardware in our hosting centers
[@LeKjart] in order to scale up dramatically
[@LeKjart] up until now we have been running our tests in what we wanted to be the minimal cluster setup
[@LeKjart] to be able to gauge and test the hardware limit.
[@LeKjart] we think we have now all the scalability parameters figured out
[@LeKjart] so we are ramping up the hardware
[@LeKjart] at the same we will be introducing a lot of new content, that was supposed to go into phase 5
[@LeKjart] but that was decide to delay, as we saw, we needed the scale for it.
[@LeKjart] We are just about finished with all content now.
[@LeKjart] We are aiming at ramping up to 5000 subscribers quickly, and then move up from there.
[@Pann] We also wanted to address the NDA questions we've been asked recently.
[@Pann] Why it's still in effect and when we will drop it.
[@Pann] The purpose for the NDA is because Eve is still in development. A feature that we put in may not work the way we want it to initially, there are interface changes, etc.
[@Pann] By having the NDA, we hope to have better control on what sort of information is made public, to avoid confusion.
[@Pann] We have planned to lift it during Phase 6.
[@Pann] We will still do that, if everything goes according to plan.
[@Pann] As for having an open beta, we have always tried to be very clear about the fact that we have no plans for an open beta.
[@Pann] That hasn't changed. There will not be an open beta for Eve.
[@Pann] Currently, we have about 10,000 testers invited. We will continue to send invitations until we reach about 20,000
[@Pann] Invitations will start going out again within the next couple of days. I will put a message on the Eve boards when we start sending them, so people will know when to start camping their mailboxes. =)
[@Pann] Lastly, about the shipping date -
[@Pann] We will be shipping Eve at the end of March.
[@Pann] We have every confidence that the game will be ready. =)
[@Pann] And now, we're ready for questions…
[@beans] For those of you using mIRC, to turn off the join/part messages, open up your option window, then click on IRC, and uncheck the appropriate checkboxes
[@beans] We're going to start taking questions. Be sure to send a /msg to a person with @[QT] in front of their names and send it to different question takers to balance out the load
[@beans] *Declarent* One of the dramatic highpoints of Sci-Fi shows is when you see an enemy power up weapons or raise shields. Can we power up weapons and raise shields, and can we detect it. That would be much more fun that going around powered up all the time.
[@LeKjart] yes it is.
[@LeKjart] We actually have taken this into consideration, and our underlying module model provides for it
[@LeKjart] e.g. you are theoretically able to overcommit on power req of your ship
[@LeKjart] so you are basically forced to turn module off to turn other on.
[@LeKjart] We have chosen until now not to activate this feature
[@LeKjart] there are various reasons for that, but mostly we want start with a simple model
[@LeKjart] and see how that goes. Sometimes too complicated things tend to get into the way of gameplay
[@LeKjart] there is also another thing to keep in mind
[@LeKjart] and that is that the equipment installed on the ship of others is not visible to you
[@LeKjart] except for their external manifestation
[@LeKjart] having many effect that rely on power management pauses some issue with cloaking that information
[@LeKjart] But I think that eventually that is something that we will pursue. But until then we stick with modules
[@LeKjart] being online all the time except when they get damaged and automatically power off
[@beans] *Iribaar* A question on ship balancing: I think about the eve universe after one year played time. Which battle strategy will survive? Mixing up different ship classes or form a battleship only fleet, because firepower is always superior to the strategy improvements of smaller ships. I hope you know what i mean.. :)
[@LeKjart] Frankly, I don't think I can give you a definite answer to this.
[@LeKjart] I think that in all games multiple winning strategies emerge
[@LeKjart] and often they are not the one originally thought of by the designers
[@LeKjart] we have aimed at making the balance such that with some *really well equipped
[@LeKjart] frigates and good skills you should be able to cope with a battleship
[@LeKjart] And we also want to strike a balance such that a battleship always need support from other units
[@LeKjart] to be trully effective
[@LeKjart] I think that is pretty standard
[@LeKjart] but the variability of modules and their effect can lead to unexcpected behavior
[@LeKjart] for example
[@LeKjart] we figured out in the last beta phase that we had some wrong settings on turret rotation speeds
[@LeKjart] so that relative speed of ships wasn't taken into account in combat like it was supposed to
[@LeKjart] we fixed that, and that changes the balance of combat a lot
[@LeKjart] a small frigate can really worry a battleship at close range.
[@beans] Woody_ - “Are there any plans to host Dev Chats after the game is offically released, so as to get feedback from the players?”
[@Pann] Certainly! Releasing the game is just the beginning. We will still strive to have a lot of communication flowing back and forth with the players.
[@Pann] That's very important.
[@LeKjart] I would also like to add
[@LeKjart] that I personally consider a game like EVE is about building a world
[@LeKjart] and a lot of the ideas and concepts about how EVE is going to evolve will come from the people
[@LeKjart] inhabiting it
[@LeKjart] thats really the only thing that makes sense IMHO
[@beans] [Aremedis] concerning custom titles: will CEOs of companies be able to assign a custom title to other members of their corporation? ie. assign the captain of the coporations fleet the title “Knight-Templar” or other such titles, so that they may be viewable in-game by other players
[@LeKjart] That's not currently in no, but it is a nice idea and trivial to implement.
[@LeKjart] so it might pop in one day.
[@beans] *Rogerthat* i need to know when the pc requirements will be published because it is of my importance of how much I should spend on upgrading my computer. the left over cash will determine what type of broadband connection i can afford.
[@LeKjart] well, we have published requirements some time ago
[@LeKjart] and in our development we are sticking with those.
[@LeKjart] For example, when I'm developing I use my laptop
[@LeKjart] and I'm running an SQL server, a proxy server, a sol server and the client
[@LeKjart] sort of keeps me in the realm of reality regarding performance
[@LeKjart] its an 800 Mhz thing with a GeForce2 card
[@LeKjart] so you do the math.
[@LeKjart] Obviously everything will be snappier with a faster card, and I think that if you want ot invest
[@LeKjart] that is where you should put your money
[@LeKjart] all the rest doesn't matter that much.
[@LeKjart] But like I said, if the game doesn't run well on my laptop, then I'm pissed.
[@beans] Please send your questions to people with [QT] in front of their names. Questions to myself and the developers will be ignored
[@beans] also: we'll be sending a copy of all questions we receive to CCP
[@beans] DrBob - “Will there be some output of corp stats, char stats and skills, etc from eve in a defined format like XML for integration in, for example websites?”
[@LeKjart] Here, I must promise you one thing:
[@LeKjart] yes, we will have such access, but to tell you the truth, we just haven't had the resources yet to produce that
[@LeKjart] but it so happens that the way our cluster is designed, things like that are really really easy to do
[@LeKjart] we already have opened the path the other way round, by making corporation web sites available in game
[@LeKjart] so the next logical step is in the other direction
[@LeKjart] the only thing really needed to make this a reality is some work on making this reasonably secure
[@beans] *BigBadButchUK* There's been some concern on the boards about the amount of player skill involved in ship to ship combat - how big a part will the skill of the player (as opposed to the stats of their character and ship) make in combat?
[@LeKjart] I think that most people worry about whether combat is a matter of targetting someone
[@LeKjart] and then just wait.
[@LeKjart] What I can say to that is that if you are dumb and you meet a dumb opponent that's precisely how the combat might go
[@LeKjart] but if you meet someone that knows how to strategically use his weapon, he will kick your ass
[@LeKjart] there are issues concerning the range and speed of your ship
[@LeKjart] and how you handle multiple targets at the same time
[@LeKjart] how you defend yourself against target jamming, warp scrambling, loss of power etc.
[@LeKjart] obviously these are all issues that get more and more complicated with the number of modules you have
[@LeKjart] but we decided very early on not to incorporate factors that relied on precise manual aiming
[@LeKjart] though we are introducing new weapons now that rely on judicious time of release and some sort of aim
[@LeKjart] such as torpedos, these will not be the typical module.
[@[QT]Lord-Xanthor] *NoSkill* I am under the impression that new blueprints are put into the game by administrators of some sort meaning that they will appear only when they are “told” to. Is this true? And what can researching do beyond improving on this blue prints and copying them? And if that's all researching does, doesn't that limit the options for people to persue scientist roles?
[@LeKjart] it is true yes that currently the introduction of blueprints into the world is not automatic
[@LeKjart] we could have done a more complex system for research of the blueprints but decided against it
[@LeKjart] purely as an economy of design
[@LeKjart] but we still think that we can make the blueprints an interesting option for those whoe really want to pursue them
[@LeKjart] for example we have been thinking that to introduct the ‘first’ blueprint of a given tech level
[@LeKjart] we would randomly select someone currently researching a level 1 blueprint and promote the research to level 2
[@LeKjart] it's a little bit like a lottery
[@LeKjart] but admittedly it is not something that you put conscious thought into.
[@LeKjart] I have read with interest many suggestions on the forums about the various ways to make blueprint research truly a role in the game
[@LeKjart] and I think many of these are extremely good ideas.
[@LeKjart] We will see how this goes.
[@LeKjart] the introduction of level 2 blueprints is not scheduled until maybe after 2 months of gametime
[@LeKjart] and 2 months is an eternity from my point of view ;)
[@beans] GreyFish - “Eve has a closed economy as did UO origonally - how do the developers propose to solve the problems that the UO developers had with players hording resources, and halting the economy by taking them out of circulation?”
[@LeKjart] We have many ways to do that
[@LeKjart] and the most simple one is to tax for storage
[@LeKjart] the other way is to influence things such that the destruction of the harvested resources becomes a very cute target for many people
[@LeKjart] but frankly I am not worried about this too much
[@LeKjart] the economical tools that we have to steer the economy would allow us to keep it in a dynamic equilibrium even if there was a leak somewhere
[@beans] We have time for one last question folks
[@beans] ironically right after lag clears up
[@beans] =P
[@beans] *DreadPirateRoberts* Leifur, is buying you guys beer and pizza at ccp a good idea for us icelanders who like bribing people? :D
[@LeKjart] no no beer
[@LeKjart] now !
[@LeKjart] please
[@LeKjart] or we delay phase 6 for 2 months ;)
[@Pann] But we'll take rum, vodka, tequilla…
[@Pann] Just make sure you send it between Feb. 14th and 20th (when I'm in Iceland ;) )
[@Pann] Thanks for sticking with us through the lag. I'm going to get the questions that we didn't have time for
[@Pann] and try to answer as many as we can. I'll put it on the Eve forum tomorrow.
[@beans] I'd like to thank CCP and S&SI for joining us today to answer your questions, and of course, all of you for coming!
[@beans] The log of this chat will be on http://eve.stratics.com shortly
[@LeKjart] thanks to you all, and see you in EVE soon
[@beans] if you wish to publish the log on your site we do ask the following
[@beans] have a great day everyone and sorry about the lag