‘I think we’d accidentally created the most hardcore extraction game of all time:’ EVE Vanguard is taking hard-won playtest lessons into a ’24/7 Alpha’

Tomorrow, November 10, EVE Online is releasing a new expansion, Fractured Skies, and companion FPS EVE Vanguard is going into something Fenris Creations is calling a 24/7 alpha. Formal early access on Steam is coming late next year, but you can buy the game and play it through EVE’s own clientâ â€”and it won’t go away like prior playtests.

Tomorrow will also see Vanguard start to fulfill its promise as a linked game to EVE Onlineâ â€”completing contracts in the multiplayer FPS will create military campaign opportunities players can find and act on in EVE—marking the return of a dream Fenris (formerly CCP Games) has pursued since the ill-fated PS3 shooter, Dust 514. I sat down with Vanguard game director Scott Davis and EVE design director Greg Hennessey to talk about what’s coming tomorrow and further down the line.

From a pure gameplay perspective, Davis told me that NPC AI and new player onboarding are the biggest improvements in Vanguard since its last playtest. The NPC enemies inhabiting Vanguard’s levels just weren’t challenging enough, and while it’s easy to make them better shots, the problem was more one of tactical depth.

“We had a lot of people bounce off the game pretty hard in July,” Davis said of the other issue, Vanguard’s new player experience. “I think we’d accidentally created the most hardcore extraction game of all time, because we had some awkward intricacies to how weapon upgrading and healing worked in the game.” There will be more direct tutorializing to address this in tomorrow’s Alpha, and a lot of thought has also gone into how Vanguard introduces its modes to players.

New players will be introduced through a full co-op/PvE mode, which will then unlock the PvEvP from the last playtest. The final mode sounds the most exciting and unique, though: Davis described it as a PvP-first “3v3v3 procedurally generated labyrinth, where you just go in and only one team can get out alive.”

That sounds sick, and reminds me a bit of Marathon’s Cryo Archive pinnacle activity. I’m encouraged by the variety of playstyle options Vanguard is offering: Marathon seems to have ultimately been sunk by its pure focus on hardcore PvP, while Vanguard might have an advantage attracting and holding a healthy playerbase with such varied modes.

Nerds and jocks

The back of the box pitch for Vanguard is that what happens in the FPS will impact EVE Online’s one-of-a-kind digital economy, and vice versa. I keep saying it’s like the jocks (FPS guys) teaming up with the nerds (spreadsheet EVE guys), and people generally smile politely when I do.

The 24/7 alpha is coming with a first version of that interoperability, with mission completion unlocking mining and combat activities in EVE Online. The next big step in this connection is planned for the second quarter of 2027. At that point, Fenris plans for Vanguard players to be able to declare allegiance with one of the four main empires in EVE, then have their mission progress contribute to the Military Campaign and Conquest systems introduced in EVE’s latest two expansions.

Davis sees the empire allegiance system as a major step by Vanguard toward EVE’s style of emergent player behavior. One thing he’s looking forward to: Vanguard players adopting faction heraldry on their characters, and the sorts of Arc Raiders moments it may foment out in the wild. Maybe you hold fire on a stranger in PvEvP mode because you recognize you’re both aligned with the same faction. Alternately, maybe you go out of your way to hunt down a player because they’re aligned with an opposing empire.

I was curious if linking the two games had presented any technical difficulties, but both Davis and Hennessey told me it’s been surprisingly smooth sailing. “We’ve sent up many flares ourselves before, but we haven’t really had many messages back,” Davis told me. “And I wouldn’t call it a technical hurdle, because everyone’s been working really hard and they know how to do it. But I think that there will be a champagne popping moment of getting those first messages back from EVE Online.”

Hennessey, meanwhile, said it’s less an issue of connecting the two games. Rather, he pointed out that making a game is hard, making two is twice as hard, and that these two games of very different genres have to align with and compliment each other.

But I hope it pays off, because this vision of two, nested live games changing and influencing each other in real time is like nothing else out there. If it speaks to you, you can wishlist EVE Vanguard on Steam or check out its paid alpha tomorrow through the EVE launcher.