Team Size Matters has opened up Duality to present pilots with an early look into Fleet Abyssal Deadspace gameplay. While there will be instruction on how to connect to Duality at the bottom of the post, is more fleet PVE what EVE Online needs, right now? Diving into this early look at fleet abyss gameplay -up to three Frigates- is designed to allow pilots to provide feedback regarding the feature with additional time to grant CCP more time to make changes.

How it works!

Form up a fleet of frigates -up to three members can enter- (valid list below) and activate any abyssal deadspace filament. Two options will appear, “Activate for Fleet” and “Activate.” To include your fleet members, select “Activate for Fleet.” In a similar manner to the standard abyssal deadspace filament activation, an Abyssal Trace will be created in space. However, “Activate for Fleet” makes the Abyssal Trace like a jump gate or acceleration gate.

The capsuleer activating the filament will NOT automatically enter the abyss. Allowing the whole team to jump into the pocket together. The encounter timer will not start until the first person jumps through, so making the jump together maybe a best practice. The Abyssal Trace itself will stay in space for 30 minutes before collapsing, should nobody have entered the pocket.

Frigates currently available to enter co-op together:

Assault Frigates

Frigates (The actual group, so this includes Tech 1, Faction & Pirate frigates for example)

Interceptors

Logistics Frigates

Covert Ops

Electronic Attack Ships

Precursor Frigate (Damavik)

The Damavik and Venture were originally left off the posting’s list, but are actually allowed. A small clue came with CCP Paradox saying, “Why not try an adventurous trio of Ventures in the Abyss!”

Still in Development

Please remember this is still in development, the experience is not the final product and will change. Art Assets will change for the final release, as well as new assets being made available. For example, the fleet deployable Abyssal Trace left in known space is currently visible as a Triglavian Gate. Because CCP is opening this earlier for feedback, please keep this in mind.

Feedback

At the moment, the NPCs you will encounter are the same spawn groups as their Cruiser counterparts. Here at CCP, we have tried out several frigate fleets together with varying degrees of success. We are very interested to hear how you can adapt to the fleet based abyssal gameplay concerning the NPC balance.

The balance, however, will not remain equal to Cruiser Abyssal Deadspace. You can definitely expect that in the Winter Release, fleet abyssal Deadspace encounters will have their own balancing, entirely different from the Cruiser encounters. While we have our own ideas how different that balancing can be, we are eager to hear your feedback on this area. You will be able to help shape flee

Currently, the feature only requires one filament for three players, but in the final version, it will consume three abyssal filaments for deployment. Pilots should also be able to see that three times the amount of loot is available from the Triglavian Bioadaptive Cache.

How to access Duality

In case you have never connected to the Duality test server, it is just as simple as connecting to Tranquility or Singularity. The server can be selected directly in the EVE Launcher with no change or modifications required. Further instructions for accessing Duality: https://community.eveonline.com/support/test-servers/duality/ 24

Whether your familiar or not with the way test servers work, the current database on Duality is a mirror of Tranquility from July this year. A newer mirror may be applied shortly. Please remember CCP will be unable to help with any account issues such as old/forgotten passwords for the test servers. At the time of posting CCP Paradox was attempting to fix the market seed on Duality.

Thoughts?

A good number of my corp’s PVE content is done solo, often while on comms. We have had “Corp Dates” for standing grinds for new members which have us fleeted up and doing missions. Would my corp do this content? No. “Three Times the Loot,” for the same requirement of input materials is not a going to cause great droves of pilots to utilize this. Now with that said, the final version is not out, and it could become more entertaining or better yet, more profitable than it’s currently. Still, due to the additional coordination, similar to the way incursions work, the payouts should “feel” grander. Team Size Matters has asked for capsuleers to, “Please try this out and tell us what you think of the feature, and what you would like to see.”

Updates:

The title has been updated to reflect a more accurate analysis of Team Size Matters design. Fleet Abyssal Deadspace – CCP Games “Triples” Down, as three ships can enter and they are Triglavian. Thank you for pointing this out @Mikeazariah.