EVE: Valkyrie exploring Wormholes from 15 Feb
Cyberholes
CCP make bloody good trailers, don't they? This one for EVE: Valkyrie [official site] and its Wormholes update a) reminded me that EVE: Valkyrie is the VR game I definitely enjoyed playing when it was in the preview stage and would like to play more of and b) just makes space look really cool with rainbow trails and explosions and dogfighting extravaganzas.
It's kind of light on actual info though so I've been checking in on the official blog. If you're a bit lost as to what the base game is, Valkyrie is the VR dogfighting project set in the EVE universe which is made and maintained by the CCP Newcastle studio. Wormholes is the first update of 2017 and it brings a new game mode called Wormhole. The game mode is being kept deliberately mysterious so I'll need to see what happens when the update actually launches on 15 February.
However, slightly more in-depth info is available on some of the other elements Wormholes brings. Competitive play is getting an extra smidge of support with the introduction of a Valkyrie League as a feature in alpha-release form:
"The alpha release of this feature will also allow us to evaluate and tune it using live player data, balancing everything to a nice sweet spot for when we introduce our first Valkyrie Season in the coming months."
There are also some changes to the new player experience, so tweaks to the pilot training section to try and reduce VR discomfort, particularly when players are asked to perform a roll. This bit's interesting if you like knowing more about how devs are learning what works and what doesn't in VR, although I'd love to hear more about how and why the horizontal line stuff works:
"In a series of playtests, we experimented with different backgrounds. Some backgrounds had prominent horizon lines, and others did not, and we also looked at the tolerance of the roll objective (how accurate pilots needed to be when flying through the gate). Based on the feedback we gathered, we have updated some of the backgrounds in our training modules and increased the tolerance of the checkpoint gates. These initial changes are subtle, but should help to make training more comfortable for players sensitive to these objectives."
Other than that it's more the kind of standard stuff you find in patch notes - changes to accuracy, visual feedback, comms options, UI, trying to alter perceptions of grindiness and some map tinkering. Those are listed out in far more detail on the Valkyrie blog.
Given I can't dip back into Valkyrie at present and given I know for a fact some of you have VR headsets, are you playing this particular game? If yes, how's it shaping up in terms of being an engaging shooter?
Valkyrie comes in at around £50 on Steam and you can choose to engage with microtransactions for in-game currency if you want XP boosts or paint jobs and the like but I believe the content updates like this and Carrier Assault are free of charge.