We had a chance to attend EVE Vegas this year and sit down with Snorri Árnason, aka CCP Rattati, and ask a few questions about his involvement in Project Nova, the new FPS game being developed by CCP Games and set in the New Eden universe. Rattati is in charge of Project Nova’s development and played a very influential part in the latter part of DUST 514’s lifecycle.

Major Takeaway

Obviously an event where a live demo is available for the public to try is both stressful and exciting for any developer who is working on a project. We wanted to find out what Rattati thought about the reaction to the reveal. He explained that the crowd as well as the development team seemed “Cautiously Optimistic”.

“I came here with one objective, to show core experience…and no one is talking about the core experience except that it’s great and no one wants to talk about it! That’s the check the box thing, then they talk about aesthetics or a broken reload animation or something,” he says, “we did what we came for and I think that’s the good takeaway.”

Risk and Reward

A major point that was brought up during the keynote was a shift away from losing assets every time you die and shifting to a single guaranteed loss at the end of the match. This is obviously a potentially very contentious shift in design philosophy but we wanted to get his take on why the team has decided to go this route for Project Nova. “It works better for an FPS, and we’re pretty sure it’s the right way, and I haven’t seen a single compelling argument except that ‘it’s not that way in EVE’. But I think if you compare the loss mechanic to a time-based mechanic, I would still say you’re losing your ship less often,” he continued, in Project Nova “you’re completing a battle in 15 to 30 minutes, I don’t think you have a guaranteed loss of a ship every 15 to 30 minutes in EVE.”

Their approach is less about loss per death and more about how often the player experiences loss. “It’s a question of game-time scale — the loss that you’re experiencing,” in an FPS, “If you’re experiencing that loss per death, its continuously terrible. It’s like being podded continuously for an hour and I don’t think anyone does that in EVE”. He continued on with an idea that there could be “an implant or [the] body, like the actual biomass” that could be consumed per death or a fixed currency loss per death for the cost of the biomass. He elaborated that the cost of the “weapons and dropsuit are the fixed cost, you have the biomass which is your variable cost, and then you have your commitment cost which is the expensive equipment you put on like the modules.”

The Social Pillar

When asked if player made corporations will appear in Project Nova, Rattati explained “It’s one of the first things we want to do. I think we are going to call them ‘Gangs’ because we want to kind of mirror the journey of the warclone into society”, he said “we’re saying he isn’t a member of society yet so he needs to prove himself. But obviously in this kind of camaraderie, they’re kind of convicts; so ‘gangs’ for mutual friendship or interest. We could have also used the [groups from] Masonic temples, like a ‘Brotherhood’ type of thing, but we think ‘Gangs’ goes [with their] more criminal nature.”

He explained that it’s something important to the team and that it’s something they’re “aiming for. It’s one of the social pillars or the ‘Authentic EVE’ one [which is that] we need to have social gameplay. But that wouldn’t necessarily be like a full corporation as in a full corporation in EVE.” He essentially explained that many of the very specific corporation roles and tools that are seen in EVE such as accountants and corporation stocks are not necessary for a compelling FPS game and would not be featured in the final iteration of corporations. However initially, ‘Gangs’ will be “like 50 of us show up on a friends list, that’s the first iteration”.

Memory Fragments

Several people in the community had noticed that in the teaser trailer, a figure wearing a CONCORD SARO armor suit was seen executing a DUST Mercenary. This is particularly interesting because Project Nova player characters will be fighting for CONCORD’s newly formed AEGIS division. We pressed Rattati and asked if he had anything to say about this revelation to which he replied, “Absolutely not.”

He let out a chuckle and said “people are starting to pick up on the memory fragments thing and this is exactly what we want. Jigsaw puzzle storytelling is something we are very interested in and you can expect to see tidbits like that in loading screens over time.”

Legacy Content

Project Nova features a wealth of new weapons that were seen in both the gameplay and the keynote. However, there were several weapons that originally appeared in DUST that will be getting a makeover with some new visuals and effects and being introduced into Project Nova. We asked if legacy DUST dropsuit would also receive the same treatment in Project Nova. “They’re much more difficult to make,” and that the new dropsuits should be thought of as “a reimagination or a Mk.II.” He referenced the Gallente Commando, stating that it’s a “more realistic, more brutal, Mk.II version of the Commando” we saw in DUST and that “the Caldari Sentinel is similarly reimagined. I don’t believe that we would literally copy or remake” DUST dropsuits.

During the keynote, Rattati showed off four classes and discussed a fifth. However, in previous information releases on other outlets such as the DUST Forums and the DUST Veterans Discord server, he had mentioned a sixth “marksman” class that wasn’t brought up at the keynote. “It exists, the Light Support” he explained, “it’s been made, its the Amarr suit, the concept exists. We really wanted to think about that as not a traditional sniper, we call it mobile artillery. The vision exists but it’s the least developed one.”

Why We Fight

The narrative behind the PvE game mode was fairly well explained. Sansha forces are deploying infantry in an attempt to capture ships and the people inside, and player infantry is being deployed to fend off the attack. However while the game mode for PvP was explained during the presentation, the narrative behind it was not explained in depth. “Theoretically you’ll have to earn your license to fight these NPC corporations, so you’ll have to unlock the ability to do PvP after doing a couple of PvE missions for CONCORD.” he continued, “that’s the introduce the player to the weapons and mechanics before we unleash them into the PvP so it’s kind of like training missions. The narrative is that the same thing is happening and that NPC corporations are seeing that it is viable to steal [ships] instead of just blowing them up. So they’re just following in the footsteps of the Sansha and using similar technology” to capture these ships. However he did explain that they’re inspired by the EVE Prophecy trailer and like the idea of defenders already being on the ship ready to defend with attackers landing on the surface with a deployment ship, but the exact details of what they will look like are still in the works.

We asked if it was safe to assume that we will ultimately see interiors of ships as well to which Rattati explained that “the decision we made after Fanfest is that that was not the most interesting way to go. For the foreseeable future, we will remain on the exteriors.” he elaborated that “it is very difficult to create a new environment within a space station” without it looking too similar to other well-recognized sci-fi interiors. “It doesn’t showcase anything we have in our game. So we want to use EVE nebulas, asteroids, planets, and fleet fights” in the skybox of the battles.

Blended Gameplay

We were very excited to hear Rattati talk about an idea for a game mechanic in the roundtable where players can spawn as a Sansha officer and invade other players’ PvE missions to disrupt the gameplay. This brings up several interesting concepts such as the players siding with Sansha instead of CONCORD, “I think it definitely exists in the EVE universe to earn standing with a pirate faction, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to in the future.”

He continues that adding an enemy player is far more interesting and easier than designing a boss for PvE content. “There are infinite ways that that player might show up.” he said, “there are a million ways he can be inventive about annoying or griefing the other players.” Rattati recognizes that the industry is going the direction of blended PvP and PvE, citing some popular PvEvP game modes such as Destiny 2’s Gambit mode. The team realizes that the human element adds a lot of replayability rather than constantly adding content. “We don’t want to be a content furnace, we know we’re a small studio and know we won’t be able to do loads of new enemies or a new race. We really need to go to our roots and find out how we can make this compelling and humans make it compelling, not AI.”

“PvE becomes the way to get materials, it’s the equivalent to mining in EVE, it’s something you do for a certain ‘currency’ if you will.” We pressed further asking if there were any other blended PvE and PvP game modes the team was considering. “It’s very easy to see two teams fighting over this resource while the Sansha is attacking with both teams trying to look while fighting both PvE and PvP.”

Managing Expectations

Players are obviously excited and eager to get their hands on the game and with the Alpha just around the corner, we wanted to find out what sort of experience players in the Alpha can expect. “The point of an Alpha is to test,” he explained, “They will be able to see all of the content we have, which is all of the weapons and the dropsuits and the various combinations of those so we can test those versions.” Players will be able to play all available game modes and difficulties, but they may have to “focus fire [testers] on Saturdays or the occasional weekend so everyone shows up. It might we ‘we are playing medium difficulty on Saturday with this suit’ and a week later ‘we are only playing on hard difficulty but can only pick from these four [suits]’ something like that. So you’ll be exposed to the content, but it won’t be an open season” on all of it at once. He also explained that in terms of fitting and customization, it’ll simply be in the client in the state that it’s in as it’s developed over time.

DUST Veterans have been reserving their names and registering their veteran status for about a month now. One of the rewards mentioned was an exclusive veteran “Phoenix” dropsuit skin but many players were curious if any other veteran rewards would be distributed. “I see it as a VIP club really, that just gets perks and benefits over time. It might be that they’re the first to test something like a feature of expansion.” he explained, “this group has earned the right to be important, the ultimate VIP club.”

“I talked about tiered veteran rewards, some people spent way more money than others and we want to embrace that further, but I would always think of it more on a personal level and prestigious level rather than some kind of ‘money in, money out’ system.”

In regards to Alpha access, attendees at the event were guaranteed a spot in the Alpha, but we wanted to find out if veterans would get any preferential selection for the Alpha. “I want to discriminate for those who have been contributing for sure. I would try to get people in who have a certain expertise as well. But there are some people who didn’t play DUST or EVE so a portion of it would be a raffle as well.”

A Message for the Fans

Finally, we wanted to give Rattati the opportunity to address the fans and asked if there was anything he wanted to say.

“What I’m most worried about are the lofty expectations and the harsh judgment about ‘is this it?’. The only thing that I would ask [for] is patience. More patience.” He commented that someone asked him about the tech demo that was shown in 2016 and noted that it felt like not much had changed in the last two years and if we should expect the development to be this slow moving forward. “I want to point out that we moved the project from Shanghai to Iceland and hired a whole new team, so that’s obviously a lost year. Second of all, PvE is super hard to make. This is the fourth or fifth iteration of gameplay that we’ve tried and we’ve terminated one, two, three, four prototypes of PvE before. It’s not something that you can just pull out of a hat. Now we need more eyes on it to see if it is what we intended it to be, but the point of the matter is that PvE is never going to be as compelling as PvP. I think I speak for almost everyone when I say that. PvE is something you do, you can enjoy it especially with friends. But it can never be the ultimate goal of the game to do that, it’s a supporting activity in that sense. But we really wanted to make it a compelling activity and it may be. Just like in EVE, I don’t think anyone ever intended for anyone to sit in a station all day buying and selling in the market. But it became a passion for people, and PvE can become a passion for people if it’s fun enough so we should treat it in that sense. We still want to make sure that PvE and PvP are both good pillars. Just like mission running and ratting — it’s a thing people do for currency. You do the work in PvE and you spend it in PvP.”