Attention Vanguard,
It is nearly time to go planetside once more. The next First Strike playtest for EVE Vanguard is taking place from 12:00 UTC 25 January - 12:00 UTC 29 January, opening the doors once again to the in-development FPS module for EVE Online. The event is open to all Omega players as part of Founders’ Access.
ADVANCING IN FORMATION
EVE Vanguard is a work in progress, being developed in collaboration with you, the community. This upcoming playtest will welcome even more warclones by opening server access in the Asia Pacific and South American territories.
The First Strike playtest event in December provided a wealth of insights which have already been put to good use in the upcoming build. Issues have been identified, bugs have been fixed and minor changes have been made, all of which would not have been possible without participation and feedback from you, the Founders. We look forward to welcoming you to the First Strike January playtest, whether you were a part of the last playtest or are a brand new Founder, and want to thank you in advance for providing vital insights to help further develop the FPS module for EVE Online.
Among the improvements and adjustments that were made based on player feedback after the playtest in December are fixes for some exploit issues discovered by players, UI changes, bugs, and more, along with numerous smaller alterations.
Here is the full list of changes made for January’s playtest build:
- An exploit allowing players to avoid melee cooldowns by switching ammo has been fixed.
- An exploit related to fire rate being connected to mouse clicks, allowing very rapid firing with no cooldowns, has been addressed.
- A UI change has been implemented, fixing an issue that prevented players from looting if their inventory was full.
- Clones appearing to be walking around after being shot dead have been addressed.
- A problem that caused issues with reporting players after they had left their squads has been fixed.
- Collisions and assets have been adjusted to address an issue with multiple players falling through the floor.
- An issue causing squad mates’ ping markers to get stuck on screen after re-cloning has been addressed.
- An error causing the contract UI to stay on screen when extracting and redeploying into the same session has been fixed.
- A fix was made to prevent AR map icons from disappearing when switching window across monitors.
- An issue with changing input and output audio devices has been addressed.
- An issue that caused ammo to be duplicated when shooting and changing ammo type has been fixed.
- Streaming stats have been fixed to prevent flickering.
- A fix has been implemented to prevent the use of macros to increase fire rate.
- An issue preventing users from quickly looting energy cells has been addressed.
- Numerous crash fixes have been implemented.
- A new informational splash screen has been added.
- Numerous installation fixes have been made around EAD and Unreal prerequisites.
Following the December playtest, participants ran into challenges with uninstalling Vanguard from their devices. We understand the frustration this has caused and have been working towards a solution. Unfortunately, we do not have an uninstaller for Vanguard at this time. However, you can reference this help center article which outlines a method for removing Vanguard-related files from your PC without affecting your EVE Online installation. We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve this and plan to have a solution in place for the March event.
TO THE VICTOR GO THE SPOILS
There are quite a few rewards available to earn throughout the playtest that will be tied to your achievements and activities.
Vanguard completing at least one deployment as part of a squad of 2 or more over the course of the event will get an Executioner Arkombine Arisen SKIN. This EVE ship SKIN is exclusive and non-tradeable, and the reward is only available if the deployment is played all the way through.
Delivering the killing blow to 50 threats, including NPCs, other Vanguards, and turrets over the course of the event will reward you with the exclusive but tradeable Dragoon Arkombine Arisen SKIN in EVE Online.
In addition, a wealth of PLEX is up for grabs, depending on how you stack up against other Vanguard players in number of contracts completed during the playtest. The results will be tallied up when the playtest officially ends at 12:00 UTC on 29 January.
| Leaderboard Rank | PLEX Reward | [/tr]
|---|---|
| 1 | 3,000 | [/tr]
| 2 | 2,000 | [/tr]
| 3 | 1,500 | [/tr]
| 4-5 | 1000 | [/tr]
| 6-10 | 500 | [/tr]
Lastly, each playtest presents unique challenges you can complete for special rewards. For the January playtest, completing at least one deployment as part of a squad of 2 or more will make you eligible for an additional reward down the road. More will be revealed in further playtests and beyond.
BECOME A FOUNDER
As with the previous First Strike playtest event in December, the doors to Vanguard will be open to players with Founders’ Access, meaning the only requirement to join the event is to have Omega access. There has never been a better time to upgrade, as both the EVE Store and the New Eden Store are offering 14 days of Omega access for a limited time, giving anyone interested in jumping into EVE Vanguard an unmissable opportunity.
From now until 23:59 UTC on 28 January, you can upgrade to 14 days of Omega time for only $9.99 in the EVE Store, or 250 PLEX in the NES, giving you Founders’ Access to the First Strike January playtest.
THE BATTLEGROUNDS AWAIT
We look forward to seeing you in the EVE Vanguard First Strike January playtest, and continuing to work with you on creating the ultimate FPS experience set in the EVE Universe.
Make sure you tune in to CCP TV at 16:00 UTC on 25 January as EVE devs will be going live to talk about all things Vanguard, and join the AMA on the Discord server at 16:00 UTC on 26 January. In addition, the Live2Feed stream from 14:00-16:00 on Friday 26 January will feature EVE Vanguard, so stay tuned for that.
o7
