EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Ten Ton Hammer: Is that one of your anti-fleet warfare measures that you’re trying to implement?

Magnus: Yeah, that’s one of them. We want to make it feasible for small group combat, because, in general, it’s more fun. So we’re trying to implement stuff to do that. But as we said before, we just can’t always predict what the users are going to do. We can try to influence them, but that’s often hard to do.

But, yes that is one of the anti-fleet measures. Another thing that’s being added is the ability for the Motherships to be scrambled, which you weren’t able to do before. They were a bit too powerful, but now they can actually be killed.

Motherships are no longer "instant win" buttons in EVE Online

Ten Ton Hammer: They’re not invincible anymore?

Magnus: No. Before they were almost like a “win” button in big combat. They were really, really powerful. Even more powerful than a Titan.

Ten Ton Hammer: So for the new players like me, what’s the benefit of having a Titan?

Magnus: First, Titans have the Doomsday Device, which obliterates smaller ships.

But Titans aren’t actually combat ships. Their main purpose has more to do with transportation. Titans can open up jump portals that other ships can travel through. When the bigger alliances want to start moving a large fleet, they can really get going because of the Titan. The alliance, Band of Brothers, is doing this really well, and now some of the other alliances are starting to pick up on those strategies too.

Ten Ton Hammer: Since I’m such a fresh new player to the game, so much of this end-game content is so complex to me. It’s hard to wrap my head around.

Magnus: It’s part of the progression. I started just like you did, in Empire space. Then I eventually moved to 0.0 space and my life completely changed. It’s all a part of the progression.

Ten Ton Hammer: Back to Revelations 2, you’re broadening the sovereignty scope a great deal. Are you ever going to expand the sovereignty level beyond the constellation size?

The size of sovereignity has changed from solar to constellation size in Revelations 2.

Magnus: There is a possibility of that happening, but I personally don’t foresee that happening any time soon. This type of change opens up a huge number of opportunities to the alliances, and I think it’s something that many of them are going to strive for. They’re really going to have to work their butt’s off to acquire the highest level. Whatever alliance succeeds is going to need SO many active pilots, and when alliances get too big, they always start having problems. I think there’s going to be a lot of self-regulation.

Ten Ton Hammer: Why did you make the decision to go to the constellation size of sovereignty?

Magnus: The alliances had already reached a place where they really needed to start growing. The alliances that are in this type of gameplay are already at the place where they need more pilots. This would give them even grander goals to try to attain, because it’s really going to be worth it for them.

Ten Ton Hammer: Had you expanded the sovereignty size before? Or is this brand new?

Magnus: It’s totally new.

Ten Ton Hammer: In the dev logs, you mention that Agent Missions are going to be boosted to five or even up to six. Is it getting boosted to six, or just to five?

Magnus: The Agent Missions are only getting upgraded to five. Six isn’t being added. However, we’re also adding in loyalty points, which wasn’t in the game before

Previously you would run Agent Missions with one agent and built up a sort of ‘relationship’ with that agent. But when you corporation moved or you join an alliance, you would have to travel up to thirty jumps away to get back to your agent to run missions.

Now you can actually move your loyalty points, within boundaries. You can get an agent of significant quality much closer to where you had been working previously. That’s a big thing for the people that live in Empire.