The Dec Summit Minutes and "The CSM"

So the CSM December Summit minutes are out now. There is a dev blog on them, an associated comments thread and discussions are popping up everywhere about, "What does all this mean?!"

A few weeks ago I published what I could in a Summit report that broke 10,000 views earlier this week. Now that the minutes are out I can elaborate on specific points more clearly. In fact, I need to do this because of the way the minutes are written up. To avoid 'drama', CCP has always insisted that when writing the minutes that no individual candidates names be mentioned.  Obviously this causes an issue when you are reading them and you see stuff like, "The CSM said..."  I don't like this.

While it is true that the members of CSM 6 agree more often than not on most of the big issues, we are not all clones, nor are we puppets of Mittens either. Anyone that knows much about my own history in EVE, or half a dozen other CSM members, should realize that we are all very strong willed people.  I realize that there is a perception out there that there is no air between all of us. That is an unfortunate side-effect of the strategy that the whole CSM adopted in order to foster better relations with CCP and get certain issues resolved.  We recognized that, in the past, a fractured and disjointed CSM was at a severe disadvantage when dealing with CCP so we made the decision early on to try to keep our internal disagreements away from the negotiating table.

With that said, it falls to each CSM member individually to outline how we differentiate ourselves from the rest of the Council.  Some choose to not even bother and just coast along; I am not one of those. I do not blog as much as I probably should but I do try to make my blogs as interesting and informative as possible when I do write them so, once again, I will try to keep your interest and hope that you walk away from this blog more informed than you were before.

What "The CSM" thinks

Hey, Trebor and Elise, what issue should we troll Mittens with this week?!

I would be remiss if I did not give a nod to Jester's Trek for being one of the better EVE blogs out there at the moment. I don't always agree with everything he writes, but he writes a lot and I tend to agree with him more often than not. Yesterday he released a new blog entitled 'Things the CSM thinks' which pretty much pushes my ARRRGH RAAAGE button when it comes to the issue I mentioned earlier regarding the anonymity of individual CSM members in the official minutes. The blog post does, however, offer an opportunity to directly address some key perceptions about the December minutes and clarify my stance on some of the issues.

Supercaps

One obvious place to start is on page 13 where the minutes talk about 'Supercapital Rebalancing'.

• The CSM noted that Crucible had not adjusted the tracking of Titan guns, which allow Titans to destroy subcapital ships with relative impunity when in a large group. The CSM mentioned allowing Electronic Attack Ships to impact ewar-immune vessels as a possible fix.

This is a big one with me. I have no issues with continued iteration and balancing of XL turrets (which are also used by Dreads), but I take issue with this blanket assertion that somehow Titans can blap blap blap away while still being invulnerable EHP monsters.  I'm sorry, but using idiots who don't understand how tracking works as an example for argument is not a very strong baseline. A lot of the killmails linked that show Titans blapping a frigate completely ignore any actual circumstance of what happened.

I want to re-itterate again that CCP traditionally does not balance XXX ships in a blob; they balance the ship, the modules and everything else individually. Unless there is a fundamental shift in the way ship balance is done, you're not going to see CCP suddenly try to start theory-crafting their balancing for, "What if there are over XX of this ship type in fleet?" It has always been like this. If 20 battleships are shooting at a frigate, odds are that the frigate will get popped by even a couple glancing blows.  Titans are very good at tracking things like massive sig, tackled / webbed / MWD'ing ships but very bad at doing anything else.

In order for a Titan, a single titan, to track and hit a moving sub-capital target (if you aren't moving, fuck you, you should die anyway), you have to completely change your fitting. Even then, heavy supercap alliances like Pandemic Legion still deploy specialized support fleets of Lokis and Huggins and Lachesis to lock down the sub-capitals the titans are shooting. Quite often, these same expensive support fleets get raped badly. While sub-caps cannot realistically totalhelldeath an SC fleet, that doesn't mean they are completely ineffective either. Also, when people start using suicide Dread fleets (you can still insure Dreads) they will be racking up the super kills. Even the perceived supercap lovers like me still want #death2allsupercaps.

• The CSM suggested that supercarriers be allowed to dock in outposts which have an appropriate upgrade. The CSM noted it that it did not wish Titans to ever be able to dock, but that supercarriers were now less powerful and more common and should thus be treated more as regular ships rather than special snowflakes.

The just plain stupid comments I've seen on this one boggle the mind. It seems that no one is actually reading what is said and are just focused on ZOMG SUPERCARRIER DOCKING GAMES IN LO-SEC.  No, that's not what it says.

Allowing supercarriers to dock, in player-built null-sec outposts, is something that dates back to the original Dominion release design. Proliferation of the class and many other issues made this something worth thinking about at least. The concept is very simple - allow players to invest in a very expensive upgrade (or set of upgrades) that allow them to dock their supercarriers. Some may view this as allowing SC pilots a walk on Easy Street. Up until recently I was adamantly opposed to SC's being allowed to dock.  However, add in the additional potential of allowing player built outposts to be wrecked or completely destroyed and that evens things out in my opinion.

Finally, one additional tweak that wasn't mentioned in the minutes - slap a five minute minimum re-dock timer on the ship class. Bring these three options into the game together, and I have no issue with supercarriers docking.

• The CSM noted that due to the reduced session change timer, it was now possible to jump a capital ship with a travel fit in and out of a system before the invulnerability timer ends, making caps fit in this way completely untouchable in bubble-free lowsec.
• The CSM and CCP discussed of the idea of a capital jumpdrive ‘spool up’ timer as a possible fix this type of rapid travel. The CSM supported the idea of having a spool-up timer of approximately 60 seconds as a hedge against alliance power projection, preventing capital fleets from crossing from one side of the galaxy to the other in mere minutes.

Hell yes. I'm all for a 60 second 'jump drive spool-up'. It should not be another useless 'time vampire' for players, but it should add an extra element of danger and, yes, even a bit of pain when it comes to force projection. It's just a little too easy right now when I can light 8 cynos and cross the entire New Eden cluster in less than four or five minutes.

• The CSM advocated adding a supercapital-tackling point on Supercarriers, given the fragility of Heavy Interdictors in a supercap fight and the need to see supercapitals dying in combat more often.

Let supercaps tackle supercaps? How is this wrong? This 'idea' is not a new one but the CSM aggressively pushed it when CCP started talking about adding new classes of ships to do the exact same thing. We don't need an entire new ship class (especially not a new capital ship) just to tackle supers. Let supers fit like a Hictor point and blap each other to vapor. #death2allsupercaps

Back to Jester's list

• Fleets of Rifters should be able to tackle and hold down a Titan (page 17).

 No. Because of No. To emphasize:

Meow?

THIS is not going to hold down a Titan. No.  Just stop the madness.

• Electronic Attack Frigates should be able to "impact" super-capital ships immune to e-war (page 21).

Sure, why not? Boosh.

• There should never be new super-capital ships added to EVE (page 17).

Just because you don't like getting blapped by specially fit and supported Titans should not mean that you close your mind off to the potential for other giant ships that could do interesting things. Hospital ships, stargate construction, form Voltron? "Never" is a bad word to use here.

• Outposts should be destructible (pages 17 and 18).

I've been very clear on my support for this for a very, very, very, very long time. Burn. It. Down.

• Pilots - most particularly super-carrier pilots - should be given a "partial respec" of their skill-points

I don't like re-specs at all. That being said I did, at the urging of several people that contacted me, bring up the fact that there are a lot of ~mad~ supercarrier pilots out there who now have literally millions of skill points in drones trained which they can do nothing with. Yes, yes, whaaaaaaaaa, etc...  However, I'm one of these people. Seleene has been in a Nyx since late 2006 and, once you make that leap, about the only thing left to actually train was the drone skills. I maxed those out years ago. I think it's kind of dumb that I can no longer use those skills that I trained specifically for the ship I was flying / trapped in. However, I'd still prefer the docking solution I mentioned earlier before opening the Pandora's Box of respecs.

• Drones should just give ISK bounties instead of dropping alloys (page 16).

Yep, change this. Even the Drone Region Overlord, xxxDeathxxx, agreed. I'm not going to disagree.

• Alliances should be able to tax member ratting income (page 16).

Gimme the casssssssssh!!!

Hell, I used to dream of taxing renters to use the stargates I held sov over! Freeway tax! Of course there should be an optional in-game system for doing this! It was originally going to be part of the Treaty System that got cancelled. I'm all for options like this. More options = more game play.

• There are multiple alliances which live in NPC stations, amass super-capitals, and hold high-value moons (page 18).

Yeah, I'm in one of them. Someone should go take those undefended moons. Start with the ones with the NESW corp tag.

• NPC station services should be destructible (page 18); and,
• when destroyed, should not be repairable but should regenerate over time (page 18).

 A lot of people are upset about these bits and understandably so because it would impact an entire segment of players and play-styles. These two points in particular were brought up as possibilities due to the concern that, "The CSM is concerned by the use of NPC stations in large-scale alliance warfare." That much I do agree with, even as someone that has used them many times.

My stance is that I acknowledge the issue that we have these massive NPC entities in null-sec and absolutely no way to interact with them. I do find it quite absurd that I can kill hundreds of thousands of Angel Cartel crew members, then dock right up in one of their stations like nothing happened. Yes, it's an RP-ish issue, but it's something that every null-sec pilot has joked about for years.

Instead of just a blanket mechanic similar to the structure grinding that exists now, I would love to find a way to make an alliance with the Mordus mercenaries or see pirate corps as official 'partners' to the Guristas. Such relationships could have a direct affect on everything from station services to refine taxes and would force large alliances to make choices with regard to thier NPC neighbors or offer opportunities to smaller entities. There are all sorts of possibilities there.

•  Sleepers should attack POSs and/or pod people (page 20).

HELLS YES. I want Sleepers to get mad and start cleaning up the organic things cluttering up their space! I want Sleepers to come back through the wormholes and start killing people in lo-sec and null-sec. Sleepers used to be feared; now they are all domesticated and shit. Wormhole iteration is a GO!

• Drakes should lose their shield resistance bonus and their kinetic missile damage bonus (page 21); and,
• be given a rate of fire bonus and missile velocity bonus instead (page 21).

I hate Drakes. A lot.

Yeah... ummm, sure. Fuck the Drake tbh.

• An Infrastructure Hub upgrade should be produced to further reduce POS fuel costs for sov-holders (page 24).

This falls under the whole thing of ITERATION OF THE SOV SYSTEM. More upgrades of all kinds, kthx?

• Sov-holders should be able to build a module in their own space that hurts other people's sov space (page 24).

Yeah... those 'modules' are called ships and we already have them. Thumbs down to Dr. Evil Moon Lasers or similar things This just reeks of maximum grief for minimal effort. The whole 'sec status vampire' thing would need to have a lot more detail to it before I'd support it.

• The person who destroys your ship should get 10-20% of your insurance pay-out for that ship (page 26), including if they gank you in high-sec (also page 26).

This won't motivate me to kill your any more or less. This idea is just weird.

• Despite the fact CCP has a large number of assets for the NeX store, they should not be released at this time (page 30).

This is a bit mis-leading. For one thing, I want CCP to abolish Aurum completely and implement a new system that breaks down a PLEX into smaller bits. I also don't want more NeX stuff until CCP un-fucks their idiotic pricing scheme. Once the items are finished and CCP has an actual plan beyond, "Here's some more overpriced pixels buy this shit now!", I'll be more open to seeing the NeX stocked up properly.

• Players should be able to train more than one pilot per account by paying for this privilege with PLEXes (page 30).

I'd never do it (I'd just get another account) but if ~people~ want to, why not? This is one of those things that if CCP can do it with minimal effort, I'd raise no real objection to it. The only real advantage I could see is where you have an account with multiple characters with tens of millions of skill points and you could find some benefit there maybe...?

• Players don't care about their corporation logos (page 30);

Put me down in the BULLSHIT category for this one. I love my corp logo. I have specially made metallic winged skulls that BDCI members have been wearing to FanFest since 2006.

• they care about their alliance logos much more (page 30)

Traditionally, this is true. In a perfect world, I'd have my corp logo on one part of my ship / Incarna uniform, and the alliance logo on another.  SPACESHIP FASHION!!!

• The unique attraction of EVE is "you can grief people" and "it's not a game for wusses" (page 32).

These two points are both true IMO. However, I'd add that the unique thing that keeps me involved in EVE is the single shard nature of the game and the community which knows no borders. Several of my alliance / corp mates are currently playing SWTOR and even those of us in the same guild / server aren't required to interact with each other much.  In EVE, you rise or fall because of the men and women next to you.

Closing

There are 44 pages of minutes to read through. I've just grabbed the points off of one dude's blog to address some of the more 'obvious' issues. I have started a thread on the EVE forums and am continuing to answer questions there.  I am sure there will be many. :)

CSM 6 December Summit Report

Real life CSMs may or may not resemble the above.

I'm going to preface this blog by stating up front that this summit was the most productive and potentially exciting of any that I've ever attended, either as a dev or a player.  I'll explain those distinctions further along but I want to get started on this.

So... I almost didn't attend this summit. Primarily, the date got changed and I had to flex some travel plans in order to make the trip.  Secondly, after eight years of playing EVE, over three of them working in Game Design at CCP, I thought I had seen it all... then the events of the past spring took place. The consistent, stumbling idiocy of CCP's Incarna roll-out, not to mention everything from Tyranis onward had me ready to throw in the towel. In retrospect, CSM6's first summit was a Unicorn and Rainbows affair. Then there was the fiasco of the meeting minutes release after the Incarna Emergency Summit, where nearly two months was spent 'editing for tone'.  It all only served to reinforce that something was very wrong. Add it all up and I wasn't the only one thinking, "If it's going to be more of the same, what's the point?" I summed all of this up in my Reality Check blog back in September.

Then all hell broke loose and CCP turned the company upside down, shook really hard, and reset thier course. The events leading up to the Crucible release included a remarkable turn around in day to day communications with CCP. The CSM forums came alive and the shared Skype channel with CCP was no longer just about who had a Diablo 3 beta key. CCP'ers were finally doing what they'd always wanted to do and the difference showed in every facet of the CSM's interaction with them.  More on this later on.

I also have to mention a long Skype chat I had with my old friend CCP Diagoras (Lord of the North John Turbefield) that got me fully on board again with CCP's new direction. I hear the term 'bitter vet' tossed around quite a lot; folks, few of you have anything on guys that have been playing since the game went retail and have also had the joy / frustration of said game being your job as well. The events of the past 18 months (heh) were quite the roller coaster ride. I watched features I worked on as a dev go untouched and plans for iteration of the same go stagnant for too long, which was primarily why I decided to run for CSM. A lot of people asked me why I was running for CSM when I had already worked at the company.  You know who didn't ask me?  The people still working at the company. :)

Let's just be honest and admit up front that Crucible is the 'low hanging fruit'. The current expansion is full of everything that should have already been taking place over the last 2+ years. It's great stuff and I take nothing away from the hard work to get it all done but it's also the 'easy' stuff in the sense that it really wasn't that hard to find things to do / fix / iterate. The hard part starts after Crucible. It's still up to us as players and the CSM to help keep CCP ummm... 'focused'.

I tried to take pictures here and there but had to be careful not to catch any ~NDA~ graphs or naked butts so people could see a bit more of what the experience is like.

Pre-Summit Shenanigans

"Yes, I am taking a picture of this. Go get your kid off the runway."

Folks like myself flying in from North America got on our planes early (0600 for me) for our connecting flights either through Boston International or JFK in New York. For me this meant getting up around 0400, catching a couple flights to JFK and then having a nearly 8 hour layover there. This was pretty shit because in order to get to the terminal where Iceland Air flies out of, I had to pass back out of security and there was fuck all to eat. Basically JFK is a horrible airport, second only to London, Heathrow as places I'd rather avoid at all costs.

For whatever reason, only two of us were flying out of JFK but I never spotted the other guy, some dude named xxDeathxx. A 5.5 hour flight landed everyone within 10 minutes of each other around 0640 in Keflavik. I quickly spotted all the other CSM duders that came from Boston and Mittens wasted no time in being the first to ask me the hilariously odd question, "So, have you seen Mr. Death?" This would turn into quite the story that we followed as the day went on.

An hour or so later we were in Reykjavik and, having most of Tuesday to adjust to jet lag and chill, we all grabbed some food and a few hours sleep.  The plan was to meet up with the Euro CSM'ers who were landing in the afternoon and head over to Islenski Barinn, which is pretty much the CCP bar. A few of the devs, including Diagoras, Sreegs and Punkturis, came in early which started the first of many evenings that went long past midnight.

Ketchup in a yellow bottle. Really, Iceland??

Early on we got an update on what was happening with Mr. Death. He'd been unable to make his flight out of JFK the night before and was working on trying to make the next one. I don't claim to understand everything that went on here but apparently there was some kind of screw up with him needing a VISA to get on the plane to Iceland. CCP went into overdrive and Diagoras spent most of his Tuesday trying to expedite matters by, "...getting a Russian national living in the United States a Danish VISA so he can come to Iceland."  By all accounts, considering all of this was taking place in a time frame of less than 18 hours, there was no way Death was going to make it.  "He's gonna have to bribe or threaten someone.  No one is even going to be awake. This situation is too complicated. Welp."

As the evening wore on (we're all still at the bar), Diagoras got a call from CCP asking, "Should we just cancel the flight / hotel?" Not wanting to be subject to the wrath of an angry Russian should a miracle occur, he said, "Let's give it another hour or so."  Thirty minutes later, Diagoras' phone rang - it was Death saying that he had taken care of everything and was getting on the plane. Tinfoil on whose legs were broken and which Danish consulate worker had some extra spending money for Christmas took up the next half hour of partially sober discussion.

DAY ONE

Breakfast took place around 0800 at a place right across from the hotel we were staying called The Laundromat. The food was pretty good but what was most important was that it had lots and lots of bacon. This made everyone, especially Mittens, very happy and ready to have some serious spaceship talks.

CCP's 'Expansion Wall' in the reception area. Sorry so fuzzy. :(

The meetings with the CSM take place on the fourth floor of CCP HQ in a large room called 'Trinity'. All of the main conference rooms in the office are named after a past EVE expansion. CCP now has these cool plaques in all of the conference rooms and a wall of them all in the reception area. Each one has listed the number of subscribers at release of the expansion and the number of employees. It's pretty sobering to see that during the first few expansions, CCP didn't even have 60 people working for them. I was hired shortly after the release of Revelations, EVE's eight expansion, and I was employee 117.  Three years later when I left, CCP was over 600 people.  Kinda nuts, huh?

In Tranquility with Prom, Xhagen, xxDeathxx & Elise

Meeting with Senior Producer of EVE & Hilmar

This meeting focused a lot on what's been going on internally at CCP since the 20% layoffs a couple months ago. Without going into specifics, we saw how CCP is being re-organized and who is going to be in charge of what. There are a couple details I'm literally jumping up and down to talk about but they will have to wait until CCP makes them public in the near future. It all looks good on paper (and at least there is actually something on paper now) so we'll see how it all pans out. There should be a video blog about some of this after the holidays.

Future of the CSM

CCP Xhagen and the CSM spent a good ninety minutes discussing everything from how the current CSM compares to previous ones to the actual nomination / election process.  We can't talk about this. There will be a dev blog or three about it. Welp.

EVE Veterans / Loyalty Program

Most online games have some sort of initiative to reward long time players for forking over their money every month for long periods of time. This discussion was not only about what kind of 'rewards' might be offered but also how to continue increasing information flow to players so they don't rage quit over things like the Retribution still only having one mid-slot. CCP is also looking at ways to simplify how players with multiple accounts can access their information. We also saw some pretty cool stats about numbers of subscribers over different periods of time which really need to go into a dev blog soon.

The Economy & The PLEX

While these two sessions certianly had enough specific information to stand on thier own, CCP Dr. EyjoG was present for both and I'm combining the write up as I remember there being a lot of crossover. Also, as usual, most of it was heavily ~NDA'd~ so I can't go into as much detail as I would like to until the minutes are released.

All of this kicked off with, what else, lots of numbers. Most of what went on in these sessions covered things like the consumer price index and the general health of the EVE economy.  One early point that stood out to me was that EVE currently has four 'markets' - the normal market, the contract / auction system, the loyalty point store and the NEX / aurum. There was some discussion about how to make this more efficient but nothing is written in stone yet.

Incursions got a lot of attention, with respect to how players have quickly figured out how to min / max everything to do with them. Obviously there needs to be some tweaks made but this is one of those good problems to have because it shows how many people are actually using the feature. Personally, I'd like to see the AI evolve even further and have Nightmares camping the Jita 4-4 undock. While CCP is at it, Sleepers should start attacking POS's in WH space.

The PLEX related stuff was super serious and, after some initial points and info from CCP, turned into a massive Q&A session. I can't go into much detail on all this except to say that I walked away a bit less confused and ragey than I went into it.  There will be a more thorough write up about it all in the minutes and over the next several months in dev blogs.  One amusing thing which was noted late in the day was that several of the pie charts used in the presentations all added up to 110%.

We started around 1330 and wrapped up at nearly 1700. After over three hours of this, Prom's eyes were pretty glazed over and he was all, "Chart all the things!!!"

Security

CCP Sreegs is still very Darius Johnson in his presentation skills, which is always good for several laughs.  We got a good overview of what he's been up to and asked the usual questions about botting and people doing bad things, but there's not a lot I can really talk about here until the official minutes are released. Bummer. :(

Day Two

Corporate buzzwords are serious business at CCP.

This day was also the day of a CCP Global Staff Meeting which meant that we were evicted from the fourth floor and conducted our business in the second floor Exodous conference room. It was actually even bigger than Trinity but lacked the over the harbor view and windows of any kind. Despite the lack of natural light, we were mostly sober and awake for what would prove to be an 'energetic' day of discussion. There were six actual sessions scheduled for Day Two, and while the names of the sessions helped to steer general conversation, there was quite a lot of overlap (again). Remember that my summaries are just highlights and do not reflect the complete depth of these sessions, which you'll see more of when the minutes are released.

One of the cool things about these sessions was we had CCP Soundwave with us for the entire day, who is now running the three main design teams aimed at space iteration and development. CCP Greyscale, whose hands are in pretty much everything design related, was also present for a couple hours and an assortment of Team BFF All Stars were in and out of the room all day. Good times.

November Wrap-up

We got an overview of everything Crucible-related and a chance to push for more of this or that. The tentative schedule of future point release patches and what the CSM would like to include in them was also discussed.

Nullsec - Stations, Sov, Resources

There was quite a bit discussed here but the #1 request the CSM made is that we want to blow up stations. Destructible Outposts are going to be absolutely key to any kind of sov revamp. In the past, for Dominion, the idea was to have wreckable stations that you would be able to repair. Progress on several fronts has apparently made it possible to completely destroy player built outposts.  'Possibly' does not mean with 100% certainty that it will happen, but it's looking more likely than ever before. Obviously the mechanics of what to do with people's stuff need to be worked out but I feel like CCP is now on-board with the fact that big explosions are good things.  I'm very curious to see where all of this leads.

Another big topic in this session was how NPC stations in 0.0 affect null sec warfare. Looking at ways to put more control in the hands of the players is something else CCP Soundwave and his team will be looking at this next year.

The old 'Farms & Fields' topic came up again,  along with moon goo re-balancing and other sov / null sec-related incomes. There is a lot to do here but for the first time in years CCP seems to have the resources and the mindset to actually tackle and resolve many of the old issues that continue to plague us all.

Factional Warfare & Wormholes

This was all about one feature that could have been amazing and a feature that is already amazing but could use more love. Both are front and center in terms of things that CCP wants to iterate on in the coming year.  FW will most likely start with a series of minor tweaks before introducing some new elements that breathe new life into the feature.  The Wormholes discussion focused a lot on what it's like to live there and how the economic opportunity scales with other EVE 'lifestyles'.


Game Balance

CCP Tallest (the man is just a shade under seven feet) is Team BFF's primary ship balancer dude and we got to speak with him about... hell, pretty much everything. He asked what all was still fucked in the game and took a lot of notes. This is similar to what happened at the first summit back in May, only this time Tallest has an expansion under his belt and a better feel for how to prioritize things and get stuff done. This talk wasn't just limited to us throwing out ship names, but actually discussing each ship class and some of the specific ships themselves.

Another issue the CSM brought up was something close to my own heart - for characters that have been in supercaps for the past few years (Seleene has been in a Nyx since late 2006), pretty much everyone has maxed their drone skills. With the complete removal of the ability to use drones in supers, this renders several million skill points worth of training completely obsolete. A few different ideas on this were discussed and it kind of branched off into, "Ummm, no, supercaps are not 'fixed' just because you changed a few numbers and removed drones. Let's iterate some more, okay?"

Oh yeah, on supercaps - Yo, CCP, let supercaps fit a supercap point (hic scram) so we can #death2allsupercaps even more better good, okay? Sheesh!

Future High-level Discussion

This was actually broken down into two sub-categories: War and Fixing broken systems.  Seeing as how they are pretty much the same topic (i.e. sov war is Still. Fucking. Broken.), this was one three-ish hour long bitch / brainstorming session.  The positive aspect of this session was made clear when it became increasingly obvious that the people working on the future of EVE are not following any 'Stone Tablets' being handed down from the mountain.

What do I mean by that?  Well, up until recently, the Game Designers of EVE did not set the course of the game, nor were their opinions solicited for major feature work decisions.  For years, a group of what I'll call 'middle management' would go off site for a few days and through some ritualistic process end up with what the next expansion should be about.  The actual Designers would then be handed these ideas to turn into reality.  This process, known as being given Stone Tablets from the mountain top, has now been more or less banished and the results are as plain as the Crucible expansion.

While CCP obviously has a few big feature ideas on the back burner, they aren't talking about them much yet. Instead, the emphasis is on continuing the good work done over the past few months and integrating that into a larger plan.  In other words - one step at a time, make all the pieces fit, avoid ~awesome~. This is good because maybe some of the cool stuff that was supposed to be in Dominion might actually get into the game next year.

Day Three

Web Cell

Yay! (Actual opening slide)

CCP Alice started our day with a look at all of EVE Offline's potential coolness. (EVE Offline is the game that quite a few people with 120m+ skill points play).  A lot of ground was covered here, from how the EVE website and forums will evolve to looking at how to make EVE more accessible to players always on the move. We got a look at the future of 'Spacebook' and some concepts that aim to better explain EVE to people that just happen across the website.

CCP Alice and assorted other denizens...

The most interesting development for me was the change in mindset regarding 'EVE Offline'.  For many leaders in EVE, a lot of their time is spent doing things that do not actually involve logging in and shooting stuff yet still requires them to interact with the game client at times.  There has always seemed to be an unwritten law that if you wanted to interact with EVE in any way, you would have to actually log into the client.  That concept is finally evolving to where things like a tablet / smartphone client or app that allow you to manipulate your market orders or log into corp / alliance chat is under serious consideration.  Obviously, such things aren't going to happen overnight, but they are finally being discussed as possibilities and that makes me very happy.

I'm short-changing everything that happened in this session but when the minutes are released you'll have a better idea of some of the details. All in all, I think everyone on the CSM was pleasantly surprised at how cool this session turned out to be.


Convenience Microtransactions

Yes, 'Aurum' is an actual store in Reykjavik.

Stab. Stab. Stab.

Okay, I'm just going to say again that I'm not opposed to CCP making money for fluff in the game. I actually think that if implemented properly they could do some very cool things with it.  Doing it improperly (Incarna) cost CCP more than just some subscriptions - it's made the entire player base even more skeptical of the entire concept. Still, there are a number of cosmetic, non-gameplay affecting things, that could be done through the MT route such as ship paint jobs (flames on my Rifter!) or corp uniforms for Incarna.

Of course, the next sanity check for anything MT related is that CCP needs to, quite literally, get their head out of their ass about the prices. When a t-shirt made of pixels costs more than a real t-shirt in the RL online store You. Are. Doing. It. Wrong. CCP has said that before they dive back into the world of micro-transaction, they will work closely with the CSM so there are no $1000 jeans.

To that end, one of the main points discussed in the the roll out of the NEX Store was the introduction of Aurum as yet another form of EVE currency. Many on the CSM would just like to see Aurum abolished completely and have the entire MT system use PLEX broken down into 'micro-PLEX'.  I'm one of them.  Apparently this is something that CCP can actually do (with some time and tweaking) but there's no promises. Regardless, I think Aurum is stupid and unnecessary. #death2aurum

New Player Experience

We all told (horror) stories about how we got started, how we keep new players from feeling overwhelmed, how to explain to noobs all of the various tools the game client doesn't provide that you actually need to own properly, etc...  Basically, this whole session was an hour of the CSM explaining to the CCPers how to get people to want to keep playing EVE.

Also, did you know that Goonswarm is a newbie training organization? It's true! Mittens took great pleasure in walking CCP through the Goon wiki and a recruitment drive thread on Something Awful. Funny and interesting stuff.


Art - Eye Candy

Monocle God is actually very happy in this pic.

Oh wow, the Art session! At the first CSM summit, I suggested that we have an hour with Art so that everyone on the CSM could better understand the processes they use. Stuff like, "Why can't you lazy guys just add a third turret to the Naglfar IT'S EASY!!" was addressed back in May. Art was happy to talk to us again but this time they wanted to show off and brought in a dedicated uber-box to show us some shineys!

First off, one of the things that CSM 6 bitched about early on was the horrible rookie ships that everyone starts with. This is your introduction to the game and you are forced to fly something that looks pretty ghetto. Well, that's being solved as we were shown the concept art and nearly complete renderings of all four new Rookie ship skins that will be going into EVE "soon".  The new Reaper, in particular, looked amazing and makes me wonder how scary the Rifter will look if / when they get around to tweaking it as well. So, yet another example of how the CSM has no power. :)

Next up were a series of demos showing effects in space. I can't really say much about this (NDA) other than it's obvious the Art duders have been watching a ton of Battlestar Galactica. If they can get some of this stuff in game... holy crap...

There were a couple other things that I can't even hint at which made jaws literally drop but will hopefully be public in the near future.  I suspect that some of this stuff is being held back for Fanfest and rightfully so.  Remember the feeling you got the first time you watched the 'Trinity' expansion trailer? Get ready for that feeling again.

Much like all the other CCPers, the Art guys seemed almost giddy to have an audience they could share their excitement with.  They are working on stuff they want to (SPACESHIPS!) and you could tell they are loving it.


The U.I.

I googled 'bad EVE U.I.' and got this...

This was an extra session that got added into an empty slot on the last day... and it was good.  The only problem is that I can't really discuss many specifics because a lot of what we saw is likely going to be unveiled in dev blogs after the Christmas holidays. What I can say is that there is an extreme focus on efficiency and actually trying to make the interface more attractive. There's simple stuff like stacking multiples of the same kind of active mods (shield hardeners, etc...), glow effects and other widgets that reflect what CCP calls, 'an escape from weirdness'.

One other important thing of note is that there is particular care being paid to the needs of colorblind players. The UI team is taking extra steps to ensure any changes they make will be able to be optimized for the visually-challenged.

We saw a lot of promising mock-ups and while we will probably see some functional changes in the near future, I wouldn't expect to see anything like a full visual overhaul until next summer at the earliest (possibly even later).


The CSM & Hilmar

The room has a red tint for some reason (fire?)...

This was the meeting I'd most been looking forward to as I had a few very specific questions to ask and points to have considered. To Hilmar's credit, while he still has a tendency to be overly corporate in some of his responses, the distinct lack of buzzwords and grand ~ideas~ was a marked change from previous conversations. After the first half hour, he seemed to relax even more and was very blunt about his thoughts concerning the past few months leading up to Crucible. I'm sure the actual meeting minutes will be more detailed as to what was discussed so I'll just highlight a few things.

Among the things we asked about were, quite simply, "How did you miss what was going on? Were people not talking to you? Were you not listening?"

Hilmar was extremely blunt in stating, (I'm paraphrasing here), "It was a fundamental breakdown in the growth of our company... After doing the same things, people want to design new game play... the 'Jesus' features start... When you keep doing the impossible... when you keep doing things over and over that people tell you, 'Oh, no you can't do that! It's crazy', and you keep succeeding... you believe that you can do the impossible and no one can tell you any different.. You become married to your own opinion."

Hilmar said that he sees his role as providing a working environment where the company is structured so that people have known pathways to have thier opinions heard by people that can actually get shit done. This sort of bluntness permeated most of the meeting. He didn't seem to be trying to make excuses and wasn't shy about answering much of anything.

Another point that was raised with Hilmar and that I put particular emphasis on was working to make sure that CCPers feel comfortable actually playing the game. CCP Internal Affairs is still working with basically the same rules that were initially developed 4-5 years ago in response to the T20 scandal. This is a big point for me that I had unexpectedly reinforced on this trip. On Thursday night I was having a talk with someone that will remain nameless and was told he had run a report internally that showed PVP activity for CCP employees in July 2011. The number of devs that were involved on another player's kill mail was exactly eight.  Eight out of over six hundred. Granted, July was a pretty shit month for anyone playing EVE, but that's still a staggeringly low number.

The CSM, and myself in particular, were very adamant about the fact that while devs playing openly is probably never going to happen, there should be an evolution of their policies in this regard. CCP has the tools and oversight to properly monitor their people and almost everyone I speak to on this issue welcomes the idea of having a dev as their wing man in a fleet, even if they do not know about it.  EVE is a better game when the people working on it can enjoy it as much as a 'regular player'.

Of course, we also made sure Hilmar understood that the video dev blogs are the best thing the company has ever done as, "It's harder to rage at faces than words."

Most importantly, I heard this: "The main focus over the next year is fixing the project that is EVE."  In the same line, Hilmar stated that he's mostly concerned with making sure that the people working on EVE are happy, "... which means more Crucible work and fixing what is broken in the game." He indicated that there was a lot of 'retrospective' work done within the company that was very eye opening and shocking for him and he's now focused on making sure the kind of environment that existed for the past couple of years does not happen again.

Wrap Up

Iceland Air likes to name its planes after volcanoes.

No More 'Jesus' Features

There's been lots of speculation about what this means; it's basically Hilmar's way of saying that CCP is no longer looking for a silver bullet ~awesome~ solution to to EVE's subscriber curve. There's a solid commitment to finishing and fixing as opposed to the stone tablet mentality of the past.

A lot of people have mentioned Apocrypha and Crucible in the same breath as examples of great expansions. As I've said previously, what we're looking at right now with the amount of resources that have been refocused on EVE is the potential for an 'Apocrypha' every 3-4 months. That's not bullshit; it's actually possible due to the fact that there are literally five times the number of teams working on EVE today as there were three months ago. The actual content of what is to come is certainly going to be the subject of many CSM / CCP chats as well as continually improving forum communication between CCP and the overall community.

I saw a comment on Twitter a couple days ago that referred to Crucible as a 'tactical' expansion in preparation for the more 'strategic' stuff still to come. That's pretty accurate. As Mittens said, in the aftermath of the 'October War', everyone is gearing up for the inevitable 'Feature War'.

Iceland Air security gets to know Elise a little better.

Will CCP stay the course? Based on what we've seen recently I'd say, for at least the next year, yes. What will happen over the next year is anyone's guess but, aside from the 20% layoffs stuff, morale within the office is way up primarily because folks are getting a chance to work on the things they've been banging their heads against the wall about for years. I'd say we're looking at a solid 12 months of full throttle EVE EVE EVE before CCP takes their foot off the gas. That's fine with me for now because when the people working on the game are doing stuff that they WANT to do and actually have the resources and mandate to do it on a level that's never existed before, we'll probably see EVE evolve quite a lot in the next year.

I'm not all starry-eyed and rainbows about it all, but the immediate future looks good and we should all do everything we can to use this opportunity to help get the game where we want it to be.

December CSM Summit

The official CSM 6 logo.

The dates are now locked in: December 7th - December 9th.

We've had one "pre-Summit" meeting with CCP and a couple more on the horizon. While I expect this summit will be much different in tone to the others, things looks promising overall. There will be no Kool-Aid drinking on the CSM, but we've been encouraged by what we've seen recently. The tone of day to day chats with CCP is unrecognizable compared with just a couple months ago. The numerous written dev blogs and video blogs should keep coming right up until Crucible's release.

One thing we want to make sure of is that we get what information we can about the Summit into your hands as soon as possible. As the Summit gets closer, we will make sure to re-post links to blogs, twitter accounts, etc... so you can follow the non-NDA stuff in real time (more or less). We're also hoping to get a much quicker turn around this time on the official summit minutes, holidays permitting.

Feel free to suggest stuff for us to ask about / discuss and we'll post more in terms of official details / agenda as soon as we can.

Failheap Challenge Forum Thread

Jita Park (EVE-O) Forum Thread

Winter 2011 is Coming

T3 Supercaps?

About three minutes after Hilmar's Apology letter to the community was posted, CCP Zulu released a dev blog that gave everyone a look at what the immediate future of EVE looks like.

EVE Updating - Winter Expansion 2011

The blog has been met with mixed reactions because many people seem to think that we're getting short-changed by what looks to be nothing more than a lot of 'small stuff' with no major bling / content. On the plus side, Zulu improved his posting by at least 60%.  I want to clear this up so everyone has a better idea of where things are now and where they are going:

1.) If it's not been made clear by the numerous blogs and dev postings, CCP basically had to scrap their August release planning because, "What is this shit... I don't even... we are fucked..."

2.) As a result, they spent the last 3-4 weeks not only changing course but re-shuffling resources and prioritizing what they could do with the time and resources left before December.

3.) While all this was going on, CCP also had to unfuck their public relations which meant letting certain people speak up and telling others to shut up. In the end, Hilmar decided to just stomp on it all and attempt to right the ship from the top down. Granted, this should have been done months ago, but at least it's done now and in a way that leaves CCP no room at all for error.

4.) What we will get for Winter will be in preparation for much larger / bigger / shinier stuff come next year. While all of the 'fixes' and updates are going on in the trenches, the Art department and such can go ahead and start working on NEW STUFF that can be coded and mechanically integrated next year.

5.) The next CSM summit is going to focus on whatever 'new stuff' CCP decides to go with for Flying in Space (FiS) and they've said they intend to keep the CSM and the players in the loop as they move toward that.

Basically, winter is going to be all about fixes and updates with a few small new things. I don't know and don't particularly care if they even name it as an expansion but considering the long awaited balancing of hybrid weapons, this seems like a good suggestion:

Click on me for Epic Awesome.

Establishments NOT in Winter 2011

In addition to all of this, last night it was confirmed that after the new racial Captain's Quarters are released, there will be no further development for Incarna in the near future.

Dev Post LINKAGE

CCP Solomon wrote:

"Sadly, the Establishments feature will not be coming in the winter expansion. We hear you guys loud and clear and realize that there is still strong support for a multiplayer, avatar based experience in EVE (we also hear those that don’t want it). However, we think you’ll agree that it has to be a compelling experience and there was a feeling amongst our people that the direction we were taking with the Establishments feature was… well, not that fun. Additionally, we wanted to ensure that our rendering technology was finely tuned to a point that would ensure all of your characters continued to look great while performing well.

It’s humbling to see the support in this thread for a multiplayer Incarna experience and we are still committed to providing it, as and when it’s ready. We want to take the time to do it right and ensure you guys get something that is both fun and involving. There are no promises about when this will happen, just rest assured that while you are enjoying your space based updates this winter, there will continue to be movement on this."

My thoughts on this are simple - in order for Incarna to have any chance whatsoever, there needs to be solid, interesting game play. That doesn't exist, nor has the CSM seen anything on the horizon that looks to change that. Since there never appeared to be a solid idea about what 'establishments' would bring to EVE, CCP basically postponed a feature that didn't exist in the first place.

Incarna has the potential to be amazing but in terms of importance, for example when allocating resources, it pales, or should pale, in comparison to spaceships. Certainly now, and probably for a long time to come as well. In the end, you can take Incarna out of EVE, but you can't take spaceships out of EVE.

Final Thoughts

I am still not sure if certain people in the company 'get it' at all (actually they are probably mad about a lot of this) and won't attempt to de-rail this effort. This is why I'm going to continue to beat the ITERATIONS ITERATIONS drum often and loudly, no matter what ~words~ are released. Still, I think that CCP, with the help of the CSM and continuing to actually LISTEN to their community, has chosen a smart path for the immediate future.

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.