iGame Radio

CCP announced last week the 15th expansion to their vast sci-fi space MMO, EVE Online. Getting back to the basics, Crucible is focusing on the combat aspects of EVE, with updates to ships, graphical improvements in combat, time dilation, ship rebalancing, and more.

Four new battlecruisers will be introduced: The Minmatar Tornado, The Gallente Talos, The Amarr Oracle, and The Caldari Naga. More bosses, exploration sites, loot, and modules are being added as well. There will also be three new racial captain’s quarters added to the game.

A lot of the changes are heavily based on feedback from players over the past year. For example, players have been complaining about the font size within the UI. Because of technicalities within the foundational design of the UI, CCP found they couldn’t change the font size or make it scalable. So they have introduced UI scaling instead, which will allow you to scale the size of the frame. It won’t, apparently, result in blurry fonts or images because of the size of the fonts to begin with.

Many, many of the features added are little things that might go unnoticed but are meant to make a gamer’s life that much easier while gaming. Buttons that will let you grab all loot within a range rather than pick it up individually. Changing how fuel is managed so gamers won’t be spending so much time fueling at starbases, or wondering if a starbase has the right fuel. Removing the need for passwords for jump bridges so gamers don’t have to keep remembering many, many combinations of letters, numbers, and weird-ass symbols. And on and on.

Crucible looks like a dense expansion of little things that will really make life a lot easier, along with some big comfort food for EVE Online gamers. The expansion releases on November 29th, next week, and is completely free for all current EVE Online players.