Intro
This is my exclusive CCP Collins interview about the future of EVE Vanguard. I met Scott Davis—better known to the community as CCP Collins, Game Director at CCP Games London—during my visit to Reykjavik for EVE Fanfest 2025, where we had a deep dive into design goals, genre evolution, and what’s next for the game.
To give you a bit of background, I’ve played all the public EVE Vanguard playtests since their launch in December 2023, joining other creators from JustAbout.com. You can check out my fan-made Vanguard musical trailer here or watch this hilarious compilation of bloopers, bugs, and brilliant moments from early builds on my channel.
EVE Vanguard also plays a major role in my New Eden fanfics—you can read those here if you’re curious about how it all fits into the universe.
Now, let’s dive into the conversation—from stealth mechanics and suit customization to Bastions, lore integration, and what’s coming next for this evolving MMOFPS.
This interview was part of my journey through EVE Fanfest 2025 — read the full saga here.
Early Feedback on EVE Vanguard: Stealth and Immersion
I’ve played a lot of EVE Vanguard during the early tests—around 100 hours so far—and wanted to use this opportunity to share some feedback, if you don’t mind?
Oh nice, sure—fire it up. This is something we really enjoy.
During the keynote yesterday at the CCP Games office, you probably noticed my reaction when you mentioned NPC enemies would have different shaders or name tags for better visibility and friend-or-foe recognition?
Yeah, that’s something we’ve received a lot of feedback on—players struggling to identify targets blending into the environment, or not being able to tell if it’s a real player or an NPC.
While I absolutely welcome that change, I wanted to highlight one thing—you might consider preserving that ambiguity in specific maps or mission types. Back in the early tests, identifying targets was purely based on sound—gunfire, mostly. I often had to pause, scan the area, and think several times before pulling the trigger. Firing gave away my position and intent immediately. In some cases, I even shadowed a player for several minutes, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Yeah, that stealth gameplay—I really like that. That’s how I play too. I play a lot of Hunt: Showdown, where just making a sound is dangerous. Firing a weapon gives away your position. So I’m always thinking about the environment and my decisions.
It’s great that you’re already playing Vanguard like that. We want to add more in terms of modules and player configurations, so people who prefer that kind of style can really lean into it. That’s really cool.
What Makes EVE Vanguard an MMO FPS?
Alright, that covers the experience—now let’s talk genre. During the presentation, I noticed you called the game an MMO. Was that serious?
Yeah—MMO FPS. I was joking a bit with our team when I called it a Momorphopus (pronounced: mo-mohr-puh-fus), but yes, it’s an MMO FPS.
So it started more like an extraction shooter, but now it’s grown beyond that?
Exactly. When we first released First Strike in 2023, the playable scope was pretty small. It felt like a modern extraction shooter. But even back then, we knew we wanted something larger. Over time, we’ve been adding more systems and features that push it beyond genre boundaries.
It’s only in the last year that we’ve felt confident saying, yeah—we’re making an MMO. That’s what’s required if we really want to tap into the EVE universe. The gunplay matters, sure, but what’s even more important are the connections between players, the motivations behind your actions, and how it all ties together.
We needed to prove the shooter fundamentals first, which is why we started smaller. But now, heading into early access, I wouldn’t call this an extraction shooter anymore. It’s an MMO FPS—with extraction as just one part of the experience.
You mentioned early access—can you share more about when players can actually get their hands on it?
Yeah—so, heading into early access, we’re targeting Summer 2026 for the Steam launch.
Before that, though, we’ve got something special coming. On September 16, 2025, players will be able to jump into a limited-time Nemesis Event and play the same build we’re showing here at Fanfest, in the Vanguard room at Harpa. It’s a big step, and we’re really excited to see what kind of stories players create with it.
Awesome news. Now, back to the MMO side—if I understood correctly, Bastions play a key role in player interactions outside of deployments. But just to clarify, that’s not just a fancy name for match lobbies, right?
Not quite—they’re much more than just a lobby UI. The Bastion that you’re at will have its own group of players congregated there—a bit like an MMORPG. When you’re in a particular town, there are other players, there are quest givers, and the meta in that area is different from others. That’s the kind of inspiration we’re taking with Bastions.
Eventually, they’ll become true social spaces—places where you can walk around, meet other players, form a group, and deploy together down to the surface to fight.
But during the press keynote, you mentioned it’s possible to switch Bastions—just not easily?
Yeah, so you won’t be able to just say, “I want to play over there now,” and be there in two minutes. You’ll have to transition, and that journey from Bastion to Bastion will matter.
If you’re aiming for a particular Bastion, you’ll need to travel to it—and that travel isn’t instant. Not everything you’ve built up will come with you, either. There’s a kind of soft reset involved. We’re still working on how gear will transition, since we don’t want players to lose everything, but you might have to bootstrap back up at first.
There could be a system where you requisition someone in EVE to courier your ship between Bastions. While that happens, you’d have to rely on the basics until your gear catches up.
The reason I ask is because I’m playing EVE Galaxy Conquest, and the seasonal server structure currently works against the game socially. I can’t play with friends unless I reset all my progress.
We want to avoid that. We’re still developing the feature set around this, but we know we want Vanguard to be a social game. We can’t expect everyone to start at the same time.
If you’re in a Bastion deep in one part of space, and your friend just joined, we want to give you a way to play together. Maybe there will be a method to bring them to your Bastion in a one-way transfer. Or maybe we’ll find ways to reduce the penalty when you transition to meet someone.
The key thing is—we don’t want to build a system that blocks players from teaming up with their friends. That’s not what we’re aiming for.
Toys of Destruction – Weapons, Suits, and Combat Roles
About the new weapons—you showed a pistol, a shotgun, and a rifle. Can we get the sound files, please? That rifle had a fantastic firing sound—THUMP followed by that urrrrrr-rrr as the slug tore through the air. I want that on my messenger.
Yeah—wait until you hear it in the the game. Oh man, with all the bass behind it? It’s great!
The sounds are slightly placeholder right now—they were done quickly just to emphasize the vibe—but our sound guy is amazing. They’re going to be really good.
Would you say sound design plays just as big a role in weapon feel as the mechanics themselves?
It’s part of the experience—like you said, for a shooter, the shooting itself is the core. The handling, the effects, the sounds—it all matters.
We’ve been discussing this a lot with the design team—you’re 21,000 years in the future, and the weapons and gear need to feel like it. They can’t just sound like today’s SMGs or AR-15s. They should sound completely unfamiliar—futuristic. And they need to carry real weight when you use them.
During the keynote, I noticed a lot of suits—are they just cosmetic, or do they define your role?
Oh yeah, you’ll be able to choose your own warclone suit. There’ll be lots of different types, starting from a base suit. If you want to go stealthy, you pick one that leans that way. If you want to be a mule and carry loads of stuff, you choose a suit for that.
Each has pros and cons. Eventually, there will be micro-customizations too—down to how you want the suit laid out. But we don’t want it to be a rigid class system. You can be a jack-of-all-trades if you want. Still, if you want to specialize—say, in industry or combat—the suit and your gear will shape how effective you are in that role.
You mentioned industry—it’s not going to be mining rocks into your backpack, right?
Yeah—well, actually, it could be. We already have mining in the game. Resource gathering is a huge part of what makes New Eden tick, and we want that in Vanguard too.
There are a lot of players who enjoy that playstyle. We’ve had requests like, “Can you just make a map with no enemies so I can mine?” And we’re thinking about how to create PvE environments that lean into industry.
At a Bastion, you’ll want those specialized players. You’ll need defenders, resource gatherers, explorers heading into uncharted zones. Building a strong Bastion will mean creating a balanced community where everyone contributes to growth and survival.
So you’re planning for small dungeon-like environments too?
Oh yeah, 100 percent. That’s something we absolutely want to explore. We’ve already got a PvP sandbox at the core and insurgencies for structured PvP, but we’re aiming to build PvE experiences as well.
For me, the PvP side of things feels a bit too intense at the moment—especially when I’m just trying to explore or complete objectives. Are you planning to adjust that balance?
We’ve heard that—and we’re dialing it down. I was talking to some VIPs during a recent fan meet and they said the PvPvE feels more like PvP. Like, you’re trying to do something and constantly getting interrupted.
I completely agree. What we want is for finding another Vanguard to feel like a miniboss encounter—a “holy molly” moment. But if there are too many players in the environment, that tension is gone. It just feels like a PvP arena with some enemies tossed in.
Balance is really important to us, and we’re working on refining that PvP-to-PvE ratio.
Map Design, Biomes, and EVE’s World-Building in Vanguard
Let’s talk about biomes—you introduced some new, really grim, swampy ones. Can you tell me more about them?
Yeah. What you saw was one of the darker versions, but we’ve made some shader changes to make characters stand out more in low-light environments. The thing is—if you can’t see well, enemies can’t either. They’ll rely on flashlights or other cues, which helps balance the visibility issue.
Lighting conditions will vary across those biomes. You’ll get everything from broad daylight to misty mornings and full night. We’re using Lumen in Unreal Engine 5, which lets us dynamically change lighting conditions easily.
I remember your reaction during the demo when I said we’d tweaked shaders to make enemies more visible—you were jubilant. So yeah, even in our darkest test environments, we made sure enemy silhouettes remain readable. That was intentional from the start.
You also mentioned a map generator—are you doing procedural maps?
We’re definitely staying away from fully procedural maps. We don’t want to hit a button and get a random map.
There needs to be authorship—good design comes from someone thinking carefully about the space. In a lot of procedurally generated shooters, environments can feel stale. What we’re doing is procedural support tools for our designers. They plan the layout—say, a long-range combat area with cover here and there—and the tools fill in the geometry based on those design goals.
So you’ve built an editor that helps generate those maps?
Exactly. Designers start with a greybox—basic layout—and the procedural tools fill it out using the biome assets. Then we apply lighting conditions, and just like that, we have a new map. It helps us make maps more quickly while still keeping them distinct and well-designed.
Speaking of maps—it was awesome to see actual EVE ships crashed into the terrain
Yeah—and don’t forget the ones in the sky too! Our designers did a fantastic job of crashing those ships into the terrain, leaving visible scars on the surface. It’s almost like terraforming through disaster. That effect is especially noticeable in our new swamp biome.
The first map during the playtests featured a crashed Bowhead—it was impressive to finally feel its true scale. In EVE Online, you don’t really get that sense that some hulls are actually kilometers long.
Yeah, that thing is massive. In EVE, the scale doesn’t always land—especially when you’re flying smaller ships. You can orbit a capital, but it still doesn’t feel huge.
You really have to be inside or around the wreck to get that physical sense of it. That’s what sells the scale.
We’re adding more ships too. We want the skybox to feel alive—reminding you that this is still New Eden. For example, in the onboarding mission, you’ll be fighting Mordu’s Legion with their ships flying overhead. It’s going to feel really cool.
And sadly—that’s where we had to wrap it up! CCP Collins is clearly passionate about Vanguard, and honestly, we could’ve kept talking for hours. But with the next wave of meetings (and playtests) waiting, we had to part ways.
Closing Thoughts and What’s Next for EVE Vanguard
From stealth gameplay philosophy and warclone suits to Bastions, travel systems, and dynamic biomes, this interview gave us a look at how EVE Vanguard is evolving into something far bigger than just another extraction shooter. As CCP Collins explained, this is shaping up to be a true MMO FPS—with deep social layers, meaningful PvE, and persistent world-building tied to the New Eden universe.
Another surprise? The sheer energy in the room during the Vanguard keynote. The audience was packed—and talking with players afterward made one thing clear: there’s still a huge number of DUST 514 fans out there. People are genuinely excited to finally see another shooter set in New Eden.
And hey, any Captain’s Quarters fans still dreaming about walking around stations, ships, or planets? This might be a thing! Drop a comment below—you’re definitely not alone.
If you missed it, the full Fanfest keynote is available to watch here: Watch the keynote video. It’s worth a look for a broader context around Vanguard‘s direction and how it ties into CCP’s long-term vision.
You can also wishlist EVE Vanguard on Steam right now: Visit the Steam page. As CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar (CCP Hellmar) mentioned during the keynote, hitting key wishlist milestones could help unlock stretch goals—more weapons, cosmetics, and who knows what else CCP Games has planned. So yes, go wishlist it—it actually matters.
Keep an eye out for the Nemesis Event this 16 September 2025—and if you’re planning your own drop into New Eden’s dirt, now’s the time to start prepping.
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