There was an interview posted on US Gamer a couple days ago with CCP Fozzie, taken a bit before Rubicon was released. It had a couple little comments of interest to me.
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/what-are-ccp-games-future-plans-for-eve-online
Again CCP Fozzie confirmed that there was support within CCP to make changes to Local as an intel source. Having said that – it was viewed as difficult and time consuming, and it would only be done if there was some way to provide similar details. At first glance you are left wondering why replace it if all you are doing is mimicking what was there before, but I get the feeling that they just don’t want it to be as easy / effortless as it currently is.
They have eventual plans to make high-end PVE sites that require extremely high scanning skills to find. At the moment you don’t actually need rank V to find all available exploration sites. Cool is all I can say (I am 9 days and 11 hours from maximising my scanning skills).
We should expect some balancing tweaks for the Mining Barges (I guess to make the Hulk and Covetor more viable, either through buffing them, or nerfing the Retriever and Mackinaw.) There should also be some additional Mining ships sooner rather than later. I won’t complain about that, although I am not sure what hole is out there to fill aside ships needed for new types of mining?
There is a team focused on improving PVE – but who at the moment have mostly been building tools that will allow better content in the future. This is a good thing.
There was a hint that maybe Player Star Gates are just one of a number of planned major build projects for players in the future.
CCP Fozzie used the statement “player controlled and player built star gates” – which might be nothing, but might also suggest they are two different areas.
Last of all was the statement that they wanted to ensure Hi-Sec feels very different from Null. It is kind of obvious, but takes on more importance if CCP continue with the thread of trying to have Capsuleers become more self-sufficient from the Empires, and that POCO in empire was just the first step.
Evehermit 