If there is a question I haven’t answered, or not answered as fully as you would like, please feel free to ask me via my formspring account – you can even ask the questions anonymously. I will keep updating this as more questions come in.

What is your opinion; Is DUST 514 a benefit or a mistake to let it involve in planetary interaction?

DUST itself has a great deal of potential, especially after the recent announcement that the ‘cover charge’ has been dropped.

There’s not really enough detail at the moment to determine if DUST will be a significant benefit or hindrance with its links to EVE, although as an old PlanetSide player, I’m looking forward to trying it at Fanfest and attending the presentations and so on.

Similarly, its hard to say just what interaction it will have with PI, however it does seem that PI was built with the specific intention of it being the ‘resource’ fought over by the DUST players, and CCP are likely to be wary about upsetting the balance in EVE by adding any ‘game-breaking’ linked content.

I also expect further ‘industrial’ opportunities for EVE players to eventually supply the DUST player base with resources (tanks, guns, etc), and relevant timers/delays to prevent someone from getting ‘evicted’ from their installations without warning, but I suppose we’ll see in a couple of weeks as the information is released.

What is your thoughts on ship balancing, in particular Gallente? I know that hybrids have had a modes boost but overall Gallente boats still suffer from many well documented problems in the forums, beyond just their guns. Drone boats also.

The recent hybrid fix has brought a lot of the Gallente stuff more in-line with other other races, but due to their fragility, time to get into range and engage and so on, drones are not significantly used in PvP, which of course affects Gallente the most.

The clearest fix to this would be to improve the drone interface, for example making them work like a ‘normal’ module, and allowing a single hotkey to launch and have drones engage could be one way of doing this. The current system is horrible, and requires a rewrite as soon as possible (why does the window disappear when you launch all your drones? Why does it keep collapsing the sections? agh!).

How would you rank the following areas, in order of importance? 0.0, LowSec, HighSec, W-Space

It’s not really possible to rank areas of space in in ‘importance’, as each of them needs the others, however in decreasing order of ‘development focus need’:

1. LoSec – Needs development for FW/Piracy/Combat. People need reasons to go there.
2. W-Space – Needs a expansion of POS mechanics and a new POS/corp UI.
3. HiSec – Needs more mission content, and expansions to ratting. Bot
4. NullSec – Needs a solution to SuperCap proliferation.

Note that each of the above will effect each other, for example the POS/Corp UI stuff would benefit all the other areas of space.

How would you rank the following parts of EvE, in order of importance? That you think CCP should improve upon. Industri, Mining, Missions, Ratting/Plexes, Incursions,Pirating Small Gang PvP, Faction Warfare, SoV Warfare

With everything in EVE linking to everything else, its impossible to rank things in order of importance, however in decreasing order that CCP should improve them:

1. Pirating/Small Gang PvP
2. Faction Warfare
3. Missions
4. Industry
5. Ratting/Plexes
6. Incursions
7. SoV Warfare
8. Mining

What is your view on the Noble Exchange?

The launch and handling of it was a complete mess, and couldn’t have been much worse. I would still suggest CCP either drop the prices, or introduce the remaining items (those which are listed on the market but not current available anywhere) at significantly lower price-points, however they need to be careful to avoid devaluing the current items.

Similarly, I’m not against ‘customised’ ship skins, as long as they make no changes to the base stats of the ships they are applied to, but only as the current updating of all the ships is what makes this possible so there is not a massive developer resource requirement in adding them.

‘Gold ammo’ or anything else with provides a benefit, though? Never.

You mention using wardecs to encourage fighting. We can assume that you completely discount psychological and economic factors as reasons for people to go to war?

Not at all, in fact, quite the opposite. War for any reason (including denial of resources and similar) is fine, however there should be some level of fighting, at least.

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