It’s one thing to try to jar the Jenga tower of a sandbox title, but chaos? That’s a word that’s been bandied about by some of the folks at EVE Online during a recent interview on the Talking in Stations podcast. CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Petursson, community manager CCP Falcon, and EVE brand manager CCP Goodfella were guests on the podcast, taking some time to discuss the ongoing comms blackout and what’s next for the game.
A reddit synopsis pulled several choice quotes from the podcast, which all seemed to indicate that the devs are looking to break up stagnant, safe play, particularly in nullsec. “Over time the chaos of EVE Online has been drained into order, the sand in the sandbox has turned into cement,” noted Hilmar. “EVE Online will enter into a new chaos era.” CCP Falcon also chimed in agreement, remarking that “…if up to me, [the game] would be a very harsh dark dystopian place where bad stuff happens, EVE should be an absolute hellscape of terribleness.”
While the shape of that hellscape isn’t exactly clear, Hilmar did state that the devs are able to better collect data and metrics, allowing the team to perform more experiments and apply changes more frequently. Hilmar also promised that a number of different things are due to arrive in the coming weeks to intentionally destabilize the game. As quoted from Hilmar himself:
“…ideally something should be changing every week, some sweeping changes some will be widely unpopular, some will be wildly popular behind the scenes, we will be bringing about a different state which I strongly believe EVE needs right now. Over the next 18 months we will be a wildly different position than we were at the beginning of the year.”
Initial response is already beginning to bubble within the EVE community. The Ancient Gaming Noob, for example, seems to think most of the promises were from developers who are not directly involved with the creation of content in EVE and so generally seems to advise taking the interview responses with a grain of salt. All anyone can do for now is wait, wonder, and keep eyes on the game’s website for a dev blog.
As for more immediate changes in EVE Online, the player-created ARC news show The Discourse has put together a piece discussing a recent CONCORD-approved 5% increase to tax and brokerage fees to interstellar markets. That video can be seen below.
