Hilmar's 'Apology'

A Letter to the Followers of EVE

Last night the CEO of CCP unleashed a political masterstroke and a heartfelt plea to the EVE community all at once. The politics of business: making a stand as a man, with the gesture of an apology, but without the recognition of root causes and concerns. Commendable and smart in many ways, but is the mere gesture sufficient?

A Letter to the Followers of EVE

I've been very vocal about my support of this letter both on the forums and on Twitter. It reminds me of why I dropped everything in my life back in 2006 to go to work for CCP. This sounds like nothing else that has come out of CCP in a looooong time. I'm very impressed with the candor and tone of this letter. Hilmar has done something that few CEO's do in public which is outright admit he was wrong and say so effusively and sincerely.  For that, the man has my thanks and has re-kindled my hope that EVE might one day reclaim the wonder that caused players like me to crusade for new subscribers and even end up working at CCP.

Almost exactly a month ago, I released what I considered to be my 'last straw' blog.  Reality Check was my attempt to get across a message that summed up everything I felt about where EVE is and the black hole it seemed to be spiraling into. Over this past weekend, the Reality Check blog surpassed 15,000 reads making it the most viewed article I've written so far. While I received comments from several CCP employees about it, which were unanimously positive, I have no idea if Hilmar read it but his letter did address several points I made and that's a good thing.

I believe Hilmar's letter represents the first tangible step required to take for CCP and the player base that has spent most of the last 18 months in a state of disbelief with regard to the direction CCP seemed to be taking their product. The reactions to the letter are very warm, with players welcoming the sentiment of the letter.  The most telling of those reactions are those of CCP employees on the forums, Twitter and Facebook roaring their approval for this admission of wrong thinking and change of course. Hilmar spoke of not paying attention to people in the company "raising red flags"; it really makes you wonder just how much the internal communications of CCP need to be improved so things do not get to this point again.

Regardless of what happens in the future, things are never going to be as they were again. Many in the playerbase have compared Hilmar's letter to the old Peanuts cartoon, where Charlie Brown trusts Lucy to hold the football for him to kick and she always pulls it away at the last second, sending Charlie crashing to the ground. Over and over, she promises to not do it and over and over she does it anyway. It's an apt analogy because EVE players have seen ~words~ and heard promises before. This time it is going to take more.

This reminds of of something I saw a while back and I'm going to include a link to it here:

Remember how we got growth?

There's a lot of wisdom in this chart that should be heeded.

The next CSM summit in Iceland is going to go a long way toward my (and other CSM's) continued investment in it all. I know a lot of folks don't want to give us any credit but the CSM has spent a shitload of time these past few weeks hammering away at every mis-step and reminding CCP of where their mistakes are / how to fix them. I am satisfied at the moment that we, as a community, have successfully managed to get our message across. I have a much different outlook going forward than I did a few weeks ago but I won't stop pushing for iterative gameplay that allows players at all levels of EVE to enjoy the game again.

The Doomsday 'Nerf'

Official CCP artwork.

A quick word on the change that hit SiSi over the weekend. Supercaps have sat untouched for two years now.  There was supposed to be continued iteration, balance, tweakage, new modules, counters, etc… but after CCP's self-inflicted debacle of rolling them out hap-hazard in early 2010, no one at CCP could even be bothered to realize (scared to touch them) what was going on until the problem was so far out of control that we are where we are today.  However, change is coming and all that!

I can pronounce this. Can you?

The Doomsday weapon for titans has finally been iterated on to where it can only fire on capital-sized ships.

I will never regret getting rid of the AoE DD. Changing the DD to a single shot pop gun was a good alternative.  As the person that actually made this change, I'll state publicly that this should have been done sometime last year during or shortly after the Tyrannis patch.  After seeing how stupid it was getting (dozens of titans one-shooting entire logi wings) it should have been iterated on and changed but apparently there was no one at CCP that ~played EVE~ or cared to follow up on the work done during Dominion.

It's fine for people to look back over the last two years and say, "It should have been like this in the first place!" and froth at the mouth if it makes them feel better, but the real issue is that this sat unchanged for the better part of two years. This is the price of Flying in Space features not having a dedicated team or a designer dedicated exclusively to balance issues, both of which are being effectively solved now.

EVE is an ever evolving game. This applies to all aspects of the game, even giant e-peens. Folks that are pissed about this change need to just be happy they had a couple years of ~good fights~. I'm glad some work is finally being done on these ship classes

UPDATE - I've seen several comments on this change that follow this line of thought:

Now where's the solution to logistics wings having more combined repair capacity than opposing fleets have DPS? I'm not looking forward to Titan level alpha being the only way to clear capitals off of the field, which does not feel like an unlikely scenario.

I don't disagree with the sentiment here and this seems to be the main line of argument being taken by people that are opposed to the change. However, ~overpowered~ logis should be addressed at a different level of balancing. Titans shouldn't even be in the discussion. "Balancing" spaceships is a full time job, one reason CSM 6 has pushed heavily to keep a dedicated designer on it.

MY Captain's Quarters?

All by myself... :(

Yesterday CCP released a new dev blog announcing the completion and future addition of the three other racial Captain's Quarters for Incarna:

Racial CQ Dev Blog

I've had a surprisingly strong reaction to this blog and I'm going to explain why.  I'll try not to cover old ground much but some things bear repeating.

This looks better than the Minmatar craphole.

The Good

The damn things look great. I mean, seriously. The one thing you can never fault CCP at is their artwork. Releasing just one CQ initially was a mistake; releasing the Minmatar one and making it look like a cheap hotel in downtown Tokyo was even worse.  With these three new CQ's, we finally see something that says 'sci-fi'.

The best thing about this dev blog tho is that CCP finally took heed of something the CSM said back at the May summit which was, "If you are going to show off something really cool, please please please include a video of it!" Look what we got!

It's atmospheric, well-made and shows off the new shiny stuff in a way mere pictures and words never could.  So kudos to CCP for going the extra mile and doing this.

The Meh

Shortly after the blog was released I began tweeting about it and made a somewhat snarky post on the first page of the thread referencing the fact that a lot of people that just don't like this stuff would summarily disable it and go back to having 'the door' which was the crappy default background image if you didn't want your video card to melt.  So the question was asked, "Will those of us with CQ turned off be receiving updated door pictures?"  We got a rather surprising answer from Torfi himself:

"The door will be replaced by a ship spinning in a hangar, actually."

If this is true then it's great news.  The 'meh' of it is, why not include such an obvious piece of information in the actual blog? If you have forgotten about all the Ship Spinning info, here's the dev blog on that.

The other thing that got left out and had to be clarified is that, according to CCP Fallout,

"The CQ you get is based on the race of the station!!"

I suppose not tying the CQ to the race of your character makes it an interesting way to ensure that players get a chance to see all four styles, but it also leads to something that really worries me: the complete lack of choice and customization.

I am no longer in MY Captain's Quarters; I am just in a hotel room that I hang out in when I dock in a station.

Meh.

The Bad

The NeX store is missing some key items...

I understand it needs to be done in steps and I understand it can't all come out at once, but five years after the concept was first shown at FanFest 2006 we have:

• No interaction with other players.
• No defined game play.
• No definitive information on when either of the above will happen or what shape they will take.

It's actually been longer than five years, but just so people don't think I'm pulling that number out of my ass, have a look at this post-2006 FanFest dev blog published by Torfi on November 17, 2006:

Walking in Stations Dev Blog

It's kind of mind blogging when you think about how much else has happened in EVE, yet how little has happened with regard to Walking In Stations / Ambulation / Incarna.

The latest blog did not contain one word about 'Establishments' or anything else related to actual character interaction and / or gameplay.  What has been said was said by Queen of Straight Talk CCP Fallout in one of the forum replies:

"For those of you inquiring or wondering about walking in stations via establishments: we will be releasing more information. I currently don't know the timeline for the info release. I do know that my answer will annoy some people, and I apologize. If I run into Guard later (he left for the day) I will see if he's familiar with when that info will be out (Guard is the new king of blog publishing :)).

Adding an update: we are currently expecting more information on this next week."

I'm curious to see what information is coming because this is where I start to get annoyed again. Seriously, what is the point of making my character all snazzy if there's no way for other people to see her / him strutting by?

Where is the personality?

If I am ever going to appreciate or use Incarna in any way, I have got to be able to make the content I see on my screen actually MINE.  I love Legos. I like to build things. My old alliance, Mercenary Coalition, was the first alliance in EVE to build all four racial outpost types. The Caldari one was shit, but we did it anyway because... FIRST! I've spent at least as much time in EVE building stuff as I have destroying it which is why Incarna is such a disappointment to me.

I've written several times about how I think CCP has completely missed the boat with their ridiculous vanity items pricing strategy for dresses and pants, etc... It seems the obvious next step of this would be allowing players to choose whatever CQ template they liked the most and then accessorize, more importantly personalize, it with all manner of crazy shit. I want carpets from endangered animals, a desk made out of wood sacred to some hippies, a couch shaped like a doughnut, mirrors all over the ceiling a disco ball and pet slaver hound.  

I also want to add onto my CQ, kind of like the old XCOM game where you could customize your base layout and make it your own. I want a frozen corpse trophy room so I can show off my old XirtamVOTF and KIAEddz trophies or a big walk in closet that stores my various shoes, trench coats and handcuffs.

Of course, so long as CCP is charging $20 for a shirt, they'd probably want $500 for a disco ball so maybe it's better that none of this ever sees the light of day.

Spaceships?

There is literally nothing wrong with this.

All of the above is my attempt to write down some of my frustrations with where things stand in Incarna. In the end, I still subscribe to the idea that EVE is, first and foremost, a game about spaceships. It's where my passions lie and where I put most of my energy into as a player and a member of the CSM. However it doesn't mean that from time to time that I don't think about the missed opportunities of Incarna or how it might be improved or better sold.

Lack of Communication

Tony Montana is disappoint.

It's obvious to anyone that's been paying attention that 'something is up'. It should be obvious due to the fact that the CSM has slowed down our rhetoric a bit after a couple Skype meetings with CCP Zulu, EVE Online's Senior Producer, and the fires burning in the player base didn't turn into full fledged forest fires. For anyone wondering why players are on the edge of walking away from EVE or the reasons for their frustration, go read my Reality Check blog that I published a couple weeks ago.

Back?  Okay.

In a nutshell, I can sum a lot this up by pasting a comment from one of my corp members last week.  This is a guy that's been playing EVE for about four years that's decided to leave the game and here is why:

"You get to a point where you wonder if you're going to see anything new in the game you've played for so long. I don't think that I am, which is why my last paid subscription runs out 12 October. When I say I want something to do, I mean I want something else to do. Going on ops and doing the same thing I've done countless times before isn't the be all end all for me. EVE used to evolve along with its players and that's just not happening anymore."

If you play EVE, how many times have you read something like this over the past year or longer? It's something I see happen constantly, especially with people that have been playing at CEO / Alliance leader levels for years.

Many players have hung on just to see if anything will change and if EVE will ever return to pushing the envelope as the spaceship MMO that made it what it is today.  I don't think it is coincidence that CSM6 is largely made up of that demographic - long term veterans with a mind to wake CCP up and help convince them that features like Incarna may eventually (if it's ever finished) bring in new subscribers, but it's going to lose them the people that have been paying the bills for the past eight years.

This is pretty accurate tbh...

Time Machine Dev Blog

The potential rage of both the players and the CSM have simmered down a bit due to the implied promise that 'change is coming'.  The fruit of the meetings CSM6 has had with CCP Zulu and the information in them will be borne over the next few weeks.  I believe the reception to what's coming will be positive. CCP has already started to put out a series of dev blogs last week detailing a few bits and pieces of things they are finishing up at the moment but the dev blog we all seem to be waiting on hasn't materialized yet.

As the CSM understood it, the 'big reveal' was supposed to be early last week.  That got pushed back a couple times until CCP Zulu released 'The Moments that Define History' last Thursday which left pretty much everyone that read it saying, "That's it?" For our part, the CSM was unhappy to say the least. We'd been led to believe that there would be some actual meat in the blog for players to chew on over the weekend. It made no sense to whiff such an opportunity to get some good PR for a change.

Since Thursday, the CSM / CCP Skype channel has been a near constant wall of text with us voicing our frustrations at the current situation.  One of those things we've done the wake of CCP Zulu's last dev blog, is start a thread on the internal forums (the CSM / CCP ones) that we, once again, be allowed to review dev blogs with potential major impact prior to their publication. To best illustrate our intent, I'm going to publish the post I made to CCP on the internal CSM / CCP forums.

Let me preface this by adding that the actual 'Time Machine Dev Blog' was authored by former CSM Chair Mynxee and published on Failheap Challenge last week. It has been re-used with her permission.  Here is the text of my post to CCP:

For those that remember what EVE was like back in 2003, this game became great because in the early days the developers of EVE saw EVE's players as a resource to be tapped. A large part of what made EVE successful was due to the game duplicating and improving on things players were already doing without the in-game mechanics. Yet for whatever reasons, there are voices within CCP that see players as the enemy and the CSM as 'terrorists' whose input is designed to tear CCP down. I cannot fathom how anyone familiar with the political process of getting 'elected' in EVE combined with people having to take RL vacation days to come be Video Game Politicians thinks we would want anything other than for CCP to be successful. Our frustration is because we don't get how CCP continues to blow opportunities to energize the player base.

With the exception of CCP Soundwave and his team's clearly written and informative blogs (because tbh, when BFF posts, it's pretty Space Bro language), there is very little at all 'Fearless' about the complete lack of transparency about what is going on right now from the 'management' level. Technical / QA blogs are a whole other animal and don't tend to cause riots in Jita.

I'll just use CCP Zulu's last dev blog as an example since it's the most recent example of how things continue to break down.

*** Gets in a time machine and pretends we had some input on Arnar's last dev blog ***

---

Intrepid pilots of New Eden!

We are listening to you and we want you to know that your pleas for more attention to EVE's Flying In Space features have been heard. In recent weeks, CCP has been doing some extensive introspection about our focus and priorities in response to what you have been asking for. As a result, a decision was made to refocus and reprioritize on a scale unheard of within our company. These are indeed defining times.

Torfi’s most recent dev blog provides a small taste of what’s to come. Going forward, we intend for Flying in Space features to be primary and receive as many development resources as we can feasibly allocate to them. As discussed with the CSM, the Winter Expansion will focus on null sec changes, but there is a lot more to come. As you can imagine, such a large scale refocusing impacts a lot of people and resource dependencies. We are in the midst of working up a plan. As soon as we have it mapped out, we'll share it with you. Not the satellite view, not the microscopic view, but the big picture view with enough detail to provide a "warm fuzzy" about the immediate future of FiS features and to permit constructive feedback from the community.

You have often told us that we over-promise and under-deliver. Our tendency in that regard has bitten us in the ass many times. Not fun. So, to avoid it we're taking the time we need to produce solid, realistic draft plan for the FiS features you have said need the most love. By 'some immediate future date', we expect to share the plan with you for feedback and refinement. Meanwhile, I will post at minimum weekly briefs so you remain aware of our progress. Once we share the plan, I will keep the dialog going as the hard work of implementing that plan and tweaking it as necessary continues.

We all want EVE to be the very best game it can be, the game YOU love, the game you can't not play. Together, we can and will make it happen.

Watch this space.

Arnar Hrafn Gylfason
Senior Producer of EVE Online

---

See? There are even a few weasel words in there to allow for some "flexibility". But at least this kind of information would have given people something tangible to count on as well as the sense that there is a process happening that is organized and makes some sense.

I'm sure some will dismiss this as more ramblings of a former employee that has actually been playing the game for over 8 years and has some inkling of what goes on in player's heads. Yes, I'm mad, because it happened when I was at CCP and it continues to happen to the people elected by the players to liaise with CCP. I've watched this game and the company that makes it change from both sides and I don't understand why things continue as they are. It's obvious that I'm not alone in this feeling due to the number of current and former CCP employees that do speak to the CSM about how frustrated they are.

I honestly don't care about any sort of 'blanket' rule or anything that sounds like the CSM 'demanding' anything. What I am tired of seeing though, and I know that a lot of people inside CCP are tired of seeing, are the people in charge of actually talking to the player base through dev blogs continually screwing it up.

Once again, no one is asking for detailed plans or post it notes or meeting minutes from release planning. What is being asked for is a common sense approach to dealing with a very intelligent and involved player base. Part of that is using the elected representatives of that player base in a way that helps everyone feel they are getting maximum benefit from the process.

Responses to my post and those of the other CSMs have been fairly positive so far. I honestly don't think that CCP wants to continue stumbling over and over again with it's messaging but they have obviously got to change the way they are doing things.

It could happen.

Worth the effort?

The good news is that the CSM isn't alone in feeling this way. Certain folks in CCP are frustrated as well and are becoming more and more vocal about how communication with the players continues to fall short of where it could be.  So, yes, I believe it is worth the effort of the CSM to keep trying and for players to hang on just a bit longer.

Another effort the CSM has started is this thread here to make sure it is public record exactly what we unanimously support in terms of EVE Online's resource allocation:

CSM Statement regarding CCP refocusing

Have a read and please give the thread your support.  Don't 'like' it tho because Trebor is whoring up the likes and rubbing our noses in it, the bastard.

As I noted in the post I made to CCP above, some within CCP already use the CSM regularly to funnel ideas and blogs through but, so far, it's not been an issue we've pushed hard for. Considering the potential for large amounts of information starting to emerge for the 2011 Winter expansion and the course of CCP in 2012, the CSM is doing everything we can to make sure those in CCP that want to improve communication with the players have an opportunity to do so.

We have another meeting with CCP Zulu scheduled for this Wednesday (Sept 28th). Hopefully we'll see something in the next few days that shows they 'get it' and I can start blogging and talking about happy things. I'm tired of all the negative crap tbh but it's been a frustrating road to walk lately.

"Watch this space."  Heh.

Minutes & Meetings

Sup?

So, at long last the meeting minutes for the Emergency Summit held a couple months ago are public.  I blogged about the issues with the delays last week, complete with a timeline as to what happened and when.  Early this week, everything seemed to be resolved and here they are:

Dev Blog LINKAGE

Actual Minutes LINKAGE

Official Forum Thread LINKAGE

FHC Forum Thread LINKAGE

As expected, people haven't wasted time in diving right in and finding what's not there, dissecting the layers of meaning and whatnot. Unsurprisingly, my favorite prolific blogger Jester has already published his overview.  Here's an even more succinct / humorous version on EVE News 24.

What's my overall take?  Well... heh, it could be a lot worse. It almost was! I know some folks are pretty bent over the fact that the minutes aren't full of the CSM going full retard and raging constantly but that doesn't mean there weren't some very loud and heated exchanges at the summit. I've been reading a lot of the forum replies and I'm kind of freaked out that just because the minutes do not read like a Stephen King novel everyone assumes that the CSM quietly sat around and nodded our heads at everything. That's not the case at all; it just doesn't look good to anyone for the minutes to sound like Shadoo FC'ing a PL Fleet. Take this, for example:

After reading the CSM statement, Hilmar made some suggestions as to its tone. The CSM thanked Hilmar for his advice, but decided that it properly expressed their conclusions. It was released unedited.

It doesn't take much to realize that the CSM is trying to be nice here. I listened in on this entire session and we were all pretty much, "Huh? No. Dude! This IS the nice version."

I've seen these summits both as a CCP representative for Game Design and now as an elected CSM member.  I can say with all honesty that the tension in the room for this summit and the level of, "No, that's bullshit WTF is wrong with you guys?!" far exceeded anything I've seen previously.  It was a complete 180 degree difference from the much more cordial setting of the first official CSM 6 summit. It was a very emotional couple of days. So... like... relax.  We raged when it was appropriate.  Hell, I'm pretty convinced that Trebor performed a ritual that caused the volcano to go off that weekend.

So, moving on, something truly interestng / cool happened this afternoon...

CCP Zulu has the eyes of a serial killer.

The Bat Phone Rang

The Senior Producer of EVE, CCP Zulu, arranged to speak to the entire CSM (those available) on a group Skype call today. The official version of what went down was published on the EVE forums but I'll re-print it here because it will make this blog entry look longer:

Forum LINKAGE

Hello Everyone,

Amidst the recent forum activity about reports of decreased subscriber count, discontent about lack of resources allocated to "Flying In Space" (or, as we know it, Eve Online) and, despite Gridlock and Team BFF's efforts, general stagnation when it comes to fixes and improvements, the CSM just met with CCP's Senor Producer for Eve Online: CCP Zulu.

During that meeting, we discussed the players' concerns with the man who has the ability to resolve them. We cannot share the details of the meeting itself because it is heavily NDA'd, but ways to resolve your concerns have been discussed and a follow-up meeting is planned.

Stay tuned...

Meissa Anunthiel, Vice-Chairman of CSM 6

So, that's the basics.  WTF does it mean? Well, I made myself pretty clear on my stance on things in my Reality Check blog a couple days ago. This meeting was something of a surprise and the content of it was enough to convince me that CCP is taking the concerns of the CSM and the players very seriously. Beyond that I cannot say more other than Zulu doesn't tend to bullshit people.

It's times like this that I loathe the "NDA" and wish we could say more. I understand why it's not happening now, but it doesn't change the frustration factor for anyone. I believe that CCP understands the current situation is something they cannot stay silent or inactive on, hence why Zulu asked to speak with the CSM today.

I know it's hard for people to accept but the CSM is pushing very hard for complete and solid information to be passed along to the players as quickly as possible. We are scheduled to have another meeting soon and the CSM will continue to push for MORE SPACESHIPS and less Incarna Catwalks (holy shit, right?).

Reality Check

It's September which means that we, as EVE Players, are usually returning from summer vacations and have more time to play EVE again... or not?  Historically, the summer always sends EVE into a lull of activity and then things get busy again as people come back and want to shoot each other. Anyone that's been paying attention to the daily PCU for EVE or actually playing the game has probably noticed that a lot of folks aren't bothering to log in at the moment. Some people aren't content to just speculate about this sort of thing and go a bit further.  Enter a guy named Jester.

Last week, one of EVE's most prolific bloggers published some information that has opened a lot of people's eyes to the fact that all of the 'EVE is dying (again)' hysteria might not be completely off base.

Some Curves Aren't

If you haven't read this, it's well worth your time. Go ahead.  If you don't like lots of words, I'll save you some time and post the graphs that has everyone like me saying, "See? I told you so!" These graphs represent the rolling averages of players online:

This is the 'all time' graph.

This is the '2011' graph.

Jester and others have written lots of stuff on what all this means but I'll sum it up: Something is WRONG with EVE.

If CCP's internal numbers look anything like this, it proves that Incarna and other recent expansions have done nothing to spike the interest of the gaming community. EVE is stagnating due to a complete lack of player interest in the state of the game. It is also obvious that whatever perceptions CCP had about what Incarna was supposed to do in terms of raising their subscriber base have not played out. Older players, like myself, are losing their enthusiasm due to the fact that much as CCP wants to work in the fashion industry and make games about vampires, their flagship product is a game about spaceships.

As CSM6 continues to say, "We need new things to do, not new things to wear!"

Behold all that EVE might be!

The Reinvention of Null-sec

This brings us to a pair of dev blogs published recently by my former colleague at CCP, Greyscale:

Nullsec Development: Rules and Guidelines

Nullsec Development: Design Goals

I'll let Taylor Swift's awesomely diverse range of facial expressions explain how most EVE Players greeted these blogs:

The Goddess of Being Surprised.

For the most part I think many were happy to see that anyone at CCP was even thinking along these lines. There was an almost audible sigh of relief that someone 'got it'. People spend so much time bashing CCP because of their terrible P.R. and bizarre top-down creative direction that it was refreshing to finally see some blogs come out that said things players, especially veterans, could unabashedly agree with.

However, due to the way things have been going the past couple of years in terms of Flying in Space (FiS) development, the skepticism meter is spiking. The fact is that no matter how much people like Soundwave and Greyscale 'get it', unless they get the resources and manpower needed to implement these ideas we will never see them hit Tranquility.

My personal take on the dev blogs is pretty simple: I've seen a lot of this before. Hell, I've said a lot of this before to players when I was on the other side of the table. It's great to see again but what saddens me is how Greyscale's 0.0 road map reminds me pretty much exactly of stuff that was discussed between Apocrypha and Dominion (about 2.5 years ago). I could go back and pull out old emails and (if I still had access) meeting minutes on the internal CCP 'Trac' pages that had shitloads of similar trains of thought to them. It's all been updated and thought through again, but the core principals and goals are the same: iterate on existing crappy game play and make it more better good fun awesome.

Dominion itself was originally a much larger expansion which everyone acknowledged would be the first in a staged series of expansions that went through the next 2-4 development cycles. Unfortunately, Dominion was never finished properly; it was chopped off at the knees and reinvented into something that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the lofty goals its original design aspired to. Multiple objectives, intel / stargate tools, a proper treaty system, wreckable outposts, real siege / sov warfare, mega alliance-sized industrial projects, wormholes leading to new, completely empty areas of 0.0 that had to be built up from scratch… Basically, a renaissance of industrialization and ISK sinks.

None of these ever made it to Tranquility because somewhere along the way, CCP forgot that what makes their game great is the core game play derived from Flying In Space. Instead, all of the iterative and interactive content was shelved and we got the expansions of Planetville, Sansha Zombies and A Crappy Room To Sit Alone In.

To be honest, the only thing that makes me believe we’ll ever see anything good happen in SPACE is that Soundwave and Greyscale are doing it but that doesn’t mean they will be allowed to follow through on any of it because who knows what butterfly CCP will want to chase next to the detriment of their core product. As I said on last night's special EVE Radio broadcast:

"CCP needs to find the 'romance' of EVE again. CCP needs to fall in love with the game beyond the money it makes for them to work on other projects."

Take the bad away, CCP!!

Time for Revolution

Just imagine what EVE would look like today if the resources of the past two years that have been wasted on all this other stuff would have gone into FiS? Instead of focusing on what made 300,000+ people want to play the game and building THE definitive spaceship MMO for all time CCP decided to branch out in too many directions at once. Instead of proper iteration on the features players really care about, we got new ones completely out of the blue.

Make no mistake about it - without the enthusiasm and drama created by the players of EVE, CCP would never have been as successful as it has become. They laid the groundwork but it was the players actions within the game that made the it interesting to the media and other potential subscribers. Today, those people that helped build EVE to where it is (many of whom are on this CSM) struggle for reasons to even log in. The leaders of EVE are doing the same thing again for the 4th or 5th time and the soldiers following them are desperate for something new that catches their interest. I’ve been playing for eight years now; when I talk to players that are barely two years in and they say they feel like they’ve done it all... something is WRONG with EVE!

The romance of the game is gone. There are no heroes or villains anymore. The old rivalries have faded. The people that used to drive the narrative of EVE are bored and all of the old fires that used to keep things moving have died to embers. Players look around at the space they hold in null sec and wonder why it matters. There is no mystery or wonder left.

My Advice to CCP

There needs to be nothing less than a revolution in how the management of CCP sees EVE Online. I think that the management of EVE has just plain forgotten what 'EVE' is. They have become so distracted by all of the other projects that they are trying to work on (DUST / WoD) that they no longer remember that EVE Online is a game about Spaceships. The Flying in Space part of EVE is the core of CCP's business and they have starved it of resources for too long. Without proper FiS development in EVE, all of CCP's plans for Dust and World of Darkness will not come to fruition.

CCP needs to change course or else the flat-line of player subscriptions and logging in is going to turn into a cliff. Whatever projections they may have had about what Incarna and Tyrannis was supposed to do for their subscriber base is obviously not happening.

EVE Online is still the sole product that CCP produces that supports any other endeavors they pursue. It is their bread and butter. Without an EVE that keeps players excited, CCP are never going to see DUST come to fruition much less see World of Darkness completed. Unfortunately, their core, flagship product is dying right now.  It is dying not just because of a lack of game mechanics or this thing or that thing being 'broken' but because the thought processes that are driving the creative direction of the game are broken.

EVE's managers used to actually play their game.  They used to understand that what got them the good press was the stuff they didn't have to pay for! I'm talking about the players making videos of their exploits and writing stories about what happened. The greatest stories of EVE are not about going into your room and changing into a new pair of sunglasses; they were about taking down alliances with nothing more than a forum post. They are about epic battles and heists; about trickery and all the other human drama that occurs in game. If EVE cannot provide the proper setting for these things to occur, everyone will stop listening because there is nothing good to hear, to do, or to be.

Newsworthy drama resulting from players doing crazy stuff with spaceships sells subscriptions. Drama caused by dumb clothing prices in your (badly presented) micro-transaction store and reported with a sneer by the gaming media and elsewhere does not.

We can continue to talk about game mechanics and everything that needs to get fixed, and those things do need to happen, but in order for the game to get back to what it once was there needs to be a shift in how CCP views this product. They need to see it as something more than just a money maker.  Otherwise we are going to lose the game that so many of us fell in love with a long time ago and so desperately want to fall in love with again.

It is possible to make all our dreams come true: a return to glory for EVE, an increase in revenues for CCP. It just requires CCP's management to turn their heads and put resources into the things that will make those dreams a reality.

CSM Emergency Summit - The Aftermath

Dramatization - CSM 6 has no girls. Well, maybe White Tree.

As I mentioned previously, while I was unable to physically attend the emergency summit, I was on Skype for most of the sessions (got up at 4am one morning, ugh) and then watched the video recordings of the whole affair once they were available.  First, let me start with the 'joint statement' that was released:

Official Blog Linkage - Accord Reached at CCP's Special Summit

First off, I just want to say that the amount of back and forth in crafting these statements was pretty intense but they were published very quickly. It's a stark contrast to the two months (and counting) that has passed trying to get the official minutes of the summit published. I'll touch on that later. Right now I want to point out that, at least in terms of the CSM statement, it wasn't something that all of us agreed 100% on.  I'm going to touch on a few points in the CSM part of the joint statement so that there's no confusion about my stance on these issues.

Fuck this. Where is the pirate eye patch?!

The Noble Exchange Rollout Debacle - This continues to amaze me, in that it's still an absolute joke. The initial rollout of very few items combined with the ludicrous pricing killed any interest or enthusiasm I might have had for this feature. I've said it many times - I was prepared to spend years and lots of $$$$ dressing up my space dolls because I'd assumed there would be some sense behind the pricing of the items. There still is not.

I blogged about this previously.

While I do not know exactly what CCP is making in terms of money off all this, I still believe that they would be raking in the cash right now if they would literally slash the current prices in half because several times more people would be buying stuff for multiple characters. For example, if the NeX had goggles or a silk scarf something priced at 300-500 AUR, every cyno alt in EVE would be wearing them. I'd call the high prices of NeX items "greedy" except that I honestly believe this pricing strategy is actually losing CCP money! That's not greed, it's just terrible marketing. To this day I have not purchased a single item from the NeX store.

Game-affecting Virtual Goods - While we don't see eye to eye on everything, this post by Vile Rat where he voices his discontent on this issue is something that I thoroughly agree with. While some may consider Vile to be just another Goon mouthpiece, he's very much his own man and I'm going to re-print his words here and give them my strongest support:

"The lack of a clear concise statement declaring that they will never go in this direction is alarming, let me explain why.

Right now there is a roll out of cosmetic microtransactions which by and large the CSM, myself included, had no real issues with. I personally had no issues with it because there was an understanding that this was the far extent of what would be done. Nowhere in these statements is a determination to never cross this line into pay for non cosmetic, just an immediate desire to not pursue this goal. I can not support any MT scheme that would pave the way for even the possibility of going beyond this. I would have been satisfied if they said "we will never do this", you will notice that this statement did not occur.

I respect the fact that CCP has no plans to go beyond cosmetic and I truly feel this sentiment is sincere, but without committing to it my confidence in the future of this MT scheme is in doubt and as such I cannot support it."

The Fearless "Greed is Good?" Leak - Wow, the spin on this was pretty incredible, almost to the point where I think many of the newer CCP'ers believe it.  This is what the CSM part of the statement said:

We accept CCP's position that Fearless is a deliberately controversial internal publication and does not represent the policy of CCP Management or of CCP Zulu, the Senior Producer of EVE Online, nor the direction of game design.

Guess what? I don't accept that at all, at least not completely.  Zulu is his own man and I'd never believe anything about him unless it quoted him directly or he authored it himself.  Insofar as the rest, as I said on EVE Radio, Fearless is supposed to be there to help employees digest what's going on in the company and the company mindset. It is not just an opinion piece and I never took it as such when I worked there. I always saw it's primarily purpose to be getting people to have their noses pointed in the same direction so that by the time a feature is going live there has been internal messaging that says what is coming is going to be awesome, so be ready for the awesome. Here are some cool pics too, ta da!

Just because some of the CCP folks that the CSM spoke with said they never read it / don't pay attention to it / think it's pointless does not change what it has been used for in the past.  While I do accept that the most inflammatory bits (with Soundwave sounding pro MT) were 'staged', it does not make the content any less true and I think CCP's efforts to downplay it just prove the point that it's not to be dismissed out of hand.

I'd be really curious to know if Fearless has been fearlessly cancelled for fear that another one would be fearlessly leaked.

CSM 6 uses this stamp a lot lately...

Status of the Minutes

A lot of folks have been asking lately, "Where are the official minutes for the Special Super Duper Emergency Summit?"  Well, here's some info for you all to chew on while we wait.

The first official review of the minutes from CCP's side landed in my inbox on the 25th of July.  The CSM as a whole did not like what we saw as the minutes had been edited "mostly in regards to tone".  In our opinion, it was a bit more than that.  Lots of emails went back and forth comparing & proposing changes.

The next pass kicked off on the 2nd of August. Once again, the CSM didn't like what we saw and the discussion intensified into a full fledged debate as to what the purpose of the minutes actually was and who 'owned' them. This went on through email and Skype until the 9th of August when communications fell off a cliff due to multiple key folks on CSM and at CCP being on vacation / travelling / having babies, etc...

The 23rd of August saw round three kick off and the cycle seems to be repeating itself once again. Today is the 31st of August and, at this moment, I could not honestly tell you when the minutes will be released or what final form they will take. That's not drama, it's just where the situation is at the moment.

So, what is the problem? It all seems to be about CCP wanting to represent 'factually' what happened versus the CSM wanting to do the same while still holding CCP to account for what caused the summit to take place to begin with. My feelings on it all are disappointing to say the least. If not for the haggling over 'tone' the minutes would have been out over a month ago.

While I know all of this is being done with the best intentions, this seeming debate about what the CSM can or cannot say or how we say it is getting old. What annoys me the most is that Mittens did the little video with Zulu and, aside from that and the 'official joint statement', there has been nothing else come of all this in two months. This continual editing back and forth and the adjustments for 'tone' just screams spin spin spin to anyone with even a passing interest in the process.

As I noted earlier, some of us are still very much at odds with several aspects of what took place and the longer this "review" goes on the less faith I have that the CSM is what Hilmar likes to say we are (a bullshit detector).  Between summer and trying to be patient I, and others, have held our tongue in the hope that the marketing speak would tone down. That rope is almost played out because I feel like we're being strung along indefinitely until CCP hopes we submit to whatever they want the minutes to say out of sheer resignation.  That is not going to happen.

It’s understandable that CCP is concerned about how the summit is factually represented to the public, but the CSM was elected by EVE players to represent EVE players and speak back to them as their elected peers. Non EVE players and the media didn’t elect us and don’t really concern us.  We’re looking to address the concerns of our constituents and show that we share their frustrations while at the same time working to resolve the same.

As someone said on the forums about this yesterday, "In 24 hours it will be September."  True enough.  I'll keep everyone updated as best I can as to where this situation is as it progresses.