Ten Ton Hammer:
Why are the “Need for Speed” optimizations, as you
call them, important? I’ve never considered EVE a resource
hog, so why do these sort of enhancements need to be done?
style="font-weight: bold;">Magnus: We actually
have the “Need for Speed” in almost every one of
our expansions, and “Need for Speed” is almost
entirely server based, it doesn’t change the client much, if
at all. As we grow the user base, we always have to be one step ahead
of it. As we plan for growth from now until the next expansions we need
to make sure that we can service all the players at the proper speeds.
Almost all of the speed enhancements are being done on the server side
of things, rather than the client side. A lot of it has to do with how
the player’s client and the servers talk to one another.
Ten Ton Hammer:
Does the player actually see a performance increase whenever a Need for
Speed enhancement is implemented? Or is it mainly getting ready for the
next batch of users?
style="font-weight: bold;">Magnus: In the past,
we’ve always seen an improvement with these upgrades.
Previously, we would be right on the edge along with our growth, but
due to our previous enhancements to the speed we’re now ahead
of the curve, so the actual performance boost may be less than what
we’re used to. However, these enhancements are always
necessary to support our projected growth numbers.
alt="EVE combat" title="EVE combat" name="photo_j"
border="0" height="120" width="150">
Magnus is shooting for 300,000 EVE subscribers by the
end of the year.
Ten Ton Hammer:
Which could definitely help if you make you’re 300,000
subscribers by the end of the year. You’re still shooting for
that many subscribers by the end of the year, correct?
style="font-weight: bold;">Magnus: I may be the
only person in the company that still believes we can reach that mark,
but EVE is headed in that direction. We’re currently at
174,000 actives and 35,000 trials, so there are right around 210,000
people playing the game. That’s still a decent amount of
ground to pick up, but we have two large expansions coming out, and
they always generate quite a bit of publicity for us. We’re
still on track.
However,
even if we don’t reach that 300,000 mark, our operation plan
actually assumes a much lower number than 300,000 players. So, even if
we don’t make it, the company will be doing fine. Personally,
I’m still shooting for 300,000 this year, and
that’s what I’m going for.
Ten Ton Hammer:
Why did you decide to add an element like “heat” to
the EVE space combat? Aren’t there enough variables for
players to worry about already?
style="font-weight: bold;">Magnus: Heat
definitely adds more things to worry about, but it also gives the
player more things to work with on the ship that could benefit them in
combat. This comes down to the idea that PvP should be really skill
based and not skill points based. So a person that’s really
good at managing things like this would definitely be at an advantage
in a PvP encounter.
We
wanted to make combat even more engaging and more based upon a
player’s actual skill rather than his equipment or skill
points.
Ten Ton Hammer:
If a player overheats a certain module, is that heat damage random or
is there a way for players to know how much output they’re
going to get from overheating?
Overclocking and "heat" are new elements added to EVE
combat.
style="font-weight: bold;">Magnus: What players
will do is activate the overclocking and that will start to heat up the
modules. You will actually see the damage, and it goes by rack. For
example, if you start overheating high rack modules, all those modules
begin heating up. The same thing goes for all the low slots as well.
You have to really think about what you want to overclock and when you
should do it.
style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">It really allows you to do a
lot of fancy stuff in the game. It’s really, really
interesting, but you never know how the players are going to use it
until you actually get the feature in the game.
Ten Ton Hammer:
Jumping to ships, you’ve mentioned some work is being done to
Motherships in this iteration. What was done and why was it necessary?
style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Magnus
style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">: Really, the only thing that
has been changed in the Mothership is the addition of the ECM burst.
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