With the keynote of Eve Fanfest wrapped up, we now have all the details of what CCP is working on for the next year, including its new expansion: Into the Abyss.
Into the Abyss’ Abyssal Deadspace is essentially Eve Online’s first single-player raid.
Abyssal Deadspace
Into the Abyss brings with it a huge new region for players to explore, Abyssal Deadspace. It’s a radical shift for Eve Online, an instanced location that can only be accessed solo. The raid is populated by extra tough enemies but the potential rewards are massive, with destroyed ships dropping blueprints and skills unique to the abyss.
You can build those blueprints or train those skills yourself or trade them on the Eve market.
Faction structures
Eve Online’s lead developer, Andie Nordgren reaffirmed plans to create ”a deeper, richer ecosystem of space colonisation.” The next step for this is replace outposts and conquerable stations with “unique heavily bonused faction citadels.”
On June 5th, anyone owning a station will discover it replaced with a faction structure. “If you want this you will have to take or defend the outposts and stations and hold them on the date of the change,” Nordgren said, essentially flicking a match into the fuel of Eve player rivalries.
Activity Tracker
CCP have built a “new tool that helps people get an overview of the myriad of activities that are available in Eve Online,” Nordgren reveals. “It will show you what your character has achieved in New Eden and it will also show you what else there is to do.”
As a lot of the data that is now being captured to fill this tracker wasn’t previously being recorded, the tracker won’t retroactively fill with your entire Eve career. However, as soon as it goes live on Into the Abyss’ release date, the tracker will start updating with your movements.
More like Eve Online: check out the best space games.
“You’ll be able to see your career in Eve unfold,” Nordgren says. “And see how you can go deeper into what you’re currently doing or find whole new areas of the game to try.”
Bot banning
“We are also upping our efforts to deal with bots and hackers, who really don’t belong in Eve Online,” Nordgren says. This is an ongoing part of CCP’s private war with botters.
Kill reports
Thanks to the new activity tracker, CCP are using the same technology to “vastly upgrade” Eve’s kill reports. The kill mail will now record logistics, kill marks, skins, and detailed damage information
Planetary Interaction UI update
The biggest cheer of the night went to the news that planetary interactions are getting a quality of life and UI overhaul. “There are many capsuleers who work with planetary colonies every day and some attention was well overdue,” Nordgren says. “We’ll have over 20 UI tweaks and quality of life fixes.” The details are getting filled out in an upcoming dev blog.
Balance changes
Nordgren also revealed that the team are working to address the balance issues surrounding 500mn heavy interdictors and after that the team will move onto tweaking “underused ships”. CCP will start with the navy battleships.