So a few days ago, CCP released the dates for the next Vanguard playtest in January, along with a roadmap for the first half of 2024. As a former CPM who is relatively familiar with CCP’s development process, I am really happy with this roadmap and what it says about Vanguard development. I also have a few thoughts about what this roadmap doesn’t say. So let’s dive in, talk about what this roadmap means, and what I still have questions about.
Monthly tests, quarterly feature updates
First and foremost, my biggest concern coming off of First Strike was not knowing when Vanguard would be back. Knowing not only that there’s a second playtest scheduled for January, but that we can expect to play Vanguard every month is really good. And it lets me know I can go ahead and plan for that monthly subscription.
Game development often works in terms of some sort of development cadence, often called “sprints”. What I see here is CCP ending it’s regular development pipeline with showing it to players. So players will get to respond to new work relatively quickly, and see their feedback addressed in a patch that shouldn’t be that far off. I would assume their cycle is longer than a month, so it’s probably safe to say CCP will already be working on the next build when you play one… I wouldn’t be surprised for feedback to really feel reflected in the playtest following the next one.
The other big thing here is, of course, the quarterly “feature update”. In March they are planning to prototype mining, which is a wild concept to see in a “first-person shooter”, and additional contracts which presumably need to support suppression generation. The “major” feature update for June mentions a new map, which is indeed a huge step forward, as well as weapon modification and fitting. Those are both massive items that will significantly add to the complexity of this module.
Rewards and reasons to play
The biggest limitation Vanguard has right now is limited progression. For an online game, progression is a key driver for people to log in and play. I would go so far as to say that only having limited play events is important right now, because it would be hard to maintain a significant playerbase without some form of progression for more than a few days at a time.
But CCP has ensured the deal is sweetened for people coming in each month. While everyone who participated in First Strike got the fantastic Capsule skin, there was no need to play more than briefly to qualify. CCP has stated “tiered” participation rewards are coming, so there will be some value in continuing to play throughout the event to earn all of the EVE ship SKINs that are on offer each month.
As a shiny SKIN collector myself, this will certainly hold my interest, though for Vanguard-only players, I hope we’ll see Vanguard SKINs in the near future, perhaps once that mentioned fitting system comes to pass. Vanguard SKINs would both bring a direct reason for Vanguard players to play Vanguard playtests, and also lead to a way to monetize Vanguard… in a manner that worked well for DUST and continues to work well for EVE Online.
The leaderboard rewards, however, will be PLEX. It will be yet to be seen how generous CCP is here, but this suggests the possibility Vanguard-only players may be able to play-to-earn their Omega subscription entirely within Vanguard. While my married-with-kids self will almost certainly always fall short of this one, this is another important step for letting people play… just Vanguard if they want to, and think of the rest of EVE as a mere bonus.
Not featured: Social features or guns
I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight the two big gaps I see here.
There’s no mention of additional weapons. I think that’s really interesting. In June, we may get fitting capabilities and weapon “modification”, but there’s nothing here yet to tell us if we should expect shotguns and snipers any time soon. Our current standard weapon with it’s multiple weapon types already is more flexible than a single DUST gun was, and with weapon modification coming, we can expect it to get even more adaptable.
Will we have less, and less frequently introduced, weapons because each weapon will be so customizable in itself? Or is weapon modification and fitting just things CCP needs to check off before introducing a cacophony of violence-generating options?
Social features are, to me, the bread and butter of an MMO, a persistent online game, and really the core of what CCP is good at. People don’t play EVE Online because of it’s spaceships at the end of the day. They play it because of the incredible social sandbox that CCP has created which people play spaceships inside of. I really want to see what the developers have in mind here for corporate or clan structures, additional methods of interacting with other players such as text chats or signals, and some sort of out-of-match communications. It’s hard to imagine this module being available for more than short playtests without these things… but it may also not make sense to introduce any sort of corporate structure when the game is going offline a few days later.
These are the biggest unknowns I take away from this roadmap, and I hope we’ll see more information on these fronts in the coming months.
Underpromise and overdeliver
At the end of the day, this is not an extremely meaty roadmap, and that’s a very good thing. Players who “expected more” from Vanguard are surely disappointed to see a roadmap with only a couple exciting features described, but the last thing we need is CCP to set a bunch of expectations it isn’t able to complete. While roadmaps are always subject to change, many players inevitably interpret them as promises.
In comparison, Star Citizen’s much beleaguered roadmap announced multiple major features and systems on every single release, and this meant that when things slid back, often many things slid back. DUST veterans likely recall a slide deck which laid out dozens of new vehicles and weapons, many of which DUST 514 ultimately never saw completed.
CCP has set itself a very reasonable and modest plan here, delivered fixes and minor improvements on a regular cadence while working to deliver significant steps forward for the title. They’ve given themselves a very achievable plan, left themselves room to adjust as the realities of development happens, and hopefully will deliver some surprises on the way.
