leverage

Eve Vanguard is a strange proposition: part-MMO, part-FPS, part-companion game to the seemingly eternal juggernaut that is Eve Online, it’s developer CCP’s latest attempt to make a shooter that works as part of the storied universe. And I think, so far, it shows a lot of promise. The potential in Vanguard is the result of a passionate team being given (relatively) free rein to do what they want, as long as it’s fun and abides by the Eve bible. In a world where many developers are looking at smaller games with shorter development cycles, Vanguard’s gestation time – and trust from its parent company – is an increasingly rare thing.

But it’s driven by trust, and a genuine desire to see something like Vanguard finally take off. Bigwigs at CCP have told me, directly, that getting a shooter in the world of Eve to work is “an age-old dream CCP has been wanting to realise.” And it’s not for lack of trying. Previously, we’ve had Dust 514, the cult MMOFPS PS3 game that CCP worked on with Sony in 2013, which shut down in 2016. Since then, we’ve heard about both Project Nova and Project Legion, neither of which made it to release. Now, there’s Vanguard – a game I’ve personally been following for quite some time.

CCP’s vision for the world of Vanguard is as expansive as it is pretty. | Image credit: CCP Games

As such, I’ve seen the development process first-hand, seen how the ambitious shooter fleshes out. I’ve played it when the guns didn’t even really have models, when enemies were just amorphous grey blobs. But CCP London has been open about it every step of the way – and when it unveiled the new direction (more 00s space shooter than bland military sim), I was thrilled. It offered something different: a take on the Tarkov-like shooter that puts fun before punishment.

Now, the developer is ready to show off the next aspect of its vision: from the FPS side to the MMO side. Right now, there’s a flotilla of dissatisfied players from Destiny 2 looking for a new home. Marathon’s internal and external issues are well-documented, and it doesn’t bode well for launch. There’s Arc Raiders, which has some hype, and Helldivers 2 continues to dominate the landscape, but there’s just about enough room for Vanguard to muscle in on the action, thinks CCP London. But the social aspect of these games is skinnier than what Davis envisions for Vanguard.

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This past week, Vanguard launched ‘Operation Nemesis’, a huge update that was designed to explain the tenets of the game. It has a complete tutorial, a taster of the sort of content you can expect in the final game, and – perhaps most importantly – a live environment where you can meet, interact with (and perhaps get absolutely obliterated by) other players. Generally speaking, when you’re on the ground, you’re fair game: you can work with other teams to extract loot and materials – a rising tide helps all ships, so they say – or you can be a dick and eliminate another team and snatch their loot. It’s the PvPvE way, alas, and has a high-percent chance of being incredibly toxic. But therein, perhaps, lies the fun.

“There are some safeguards we can already draw in,” explains Scott Davis, game director on Eve Vanguard. “Eve Online already has this concept of high-sec, low-sec and null-sec.” For clarity, high security spaces have a higher presence of NPC enforcement troops, which diminish as you go down in classification – mess with other players in high-sec, and you’re going to get some bad attention. “You always start at high-sec, and you tend to be moving into low-sec areas. And that helps to give some guardrails or some safety nets around the more player-versus-player driven parts of the game. We’ll be using those same aspects in Vanguard.”

The baseline of the Vanguard experience is the gunplay – and let me tell you, it is excellent.Image credit: CCP Games

Some of the persistent, strategic zones (which are called ‘bastions’ in Vanguard parlance) will, therefore, have no PvP at all. If you don’t want to get ganked whilst going on a nice mining mission to pick up some ore, you can chill out there. “I play Final Fantasy 14 like a single-player game,” explains Davis, “just with lots of other people around me. And it feels richer because of that. And that’s something I think we can lean into.” That’s what these high-sec ‘bastions’ will look like: pleasant MMO hubs, with “me and my friends running around, doing lots of PvE things”. It’s “mingleplayer”, says Davis.

I love that term: that’s how I spent a lot of my time in both Destiny and FF14. In Destiny, I’d often go off and play PvP as a lone wolf, head back to The Tower, dance with some randos, and then jet off to do some strikes. Seeing other people going about their business was all part of the joy. In Final Fantasy 14, I liked to play a chef; getting ingredients and cooking dishes for players before hitting up a raid. It’s a good way to make friends. But any game operating in an online space has the potential for bad behaviour. That’s not a problem for Vanguard, though.

“But even in that first bastion, you’ll be aware that there are these high-sec planets and low-sec planets and null-sec planets. So if you want to be an absolute bastard, there are specific places you can go to do that. And then anyone who goes there knows that there’s a higher propensity for bastardry in those spaces.”

But that’s not to say that the high-sec portions of the game will be completely safe for the pacifists amongst us. “We’re also thinking, ‘how can we make high-sec cool?’,” explains Davis. “The idea that I shoot you but I’m just not dealing damage to you is an easy way of solving that problem, but are there much more interesting ways of doing that? I think there are. In Eve Online, you can destroy other ships, but then you get a ‘wanted level’, and then police are after you – what if, in these high-sec worlds, you can kill another player, but then all this stuff happens.

“Suddenly, a Space Police Concord drops right next to you. You show up on the map. Security forces announce: ‘right, everyone’s got infinite respawns until this person dies!’ It takes me back to playing DayZ, when you get a player-killer on the server, and then all of a sudden the whole server now wants to rally against the player killer. It’s putting more power into the people to solve the problem. It dissuades you from wanting to do PvP, but sometimes you might just think, ‘I want to cause that to happen. I want a big fight, I want the whole server against me’.”

A fresh batch of Vanguard screenshots, showing off one of the ‘sandbox lite’ areas of the game, alongside the latest version of Vanguard’s brilliant weapons. | Image credit: CCP Games

One of the very Eve Online anecdotes I was told at CCP’s studio is that, recently, the leader of an in-game corporation sided with another corporation out of nowhere. This person started deleting the assets of all the other corporations before he was caught. It was a scandal. “That’s not something you would ever engineer,” laughs Davis. “There’s a system that you make and players just rip, tear, and rend in their own way.”

It very much sounds like CCP London wants to take that philosophy from the main Eve game and shape it into something that works in an MMOFPS. As we see Helldivers 2 devs act like dungeon masters as players opt to cause in-universe havoc, and people bounce off Destiny 2 as its narrative and development direction feels increasingly out-of-touch with the players, it’s a fascinating prospect. Of course, it’s still early days and there is plenty that will be ironed out as the game heads towards a proper early access release next year, but for now, I’m very much picking up what Vanguard is putting down. I just hope it can stick the landing.

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