Official CSM 7 Thread Linkage & Endorsements

VOTING IS OPEN! CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR SELEENE FOR CSM 7

This is the link to my thread on the EVE Online forums; here you will find details on my entire campaign platform:

EVE Online ITERATIONS: Re-elect Seleene to CSM 7 

Have a read and hopefully you should have most of your questions answered as to why I'm doing this one more time. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an eve mail!

I started playing EVE in Beta 6, back in early 2003. I have had at least one active EVE account from the week the servers went live until today. In that time, I've played EVE at every conceivable level. My most well-known role is as CEO of Body Count Inc. and founder and leader of the old and infamous Mercenary Coalition alliance.

From November 2006 until February 2010, I worked at CCP as a game designer as CCP Abathur. Some of you may remember me as the guy behind wormholes.

When it comes to how I would like to see CCP use their resources in the near future, the top three things I would like to see happen are:

1.) Fix / finish null sec sov

2.) Improve Factional Warfare and life in low-sec

3.) A full blown industrial expansion (see my blogs on this): Fighting for Industry & EVE's Industrial Revolution

My reasons for that order are that I very much want to see CCP iterate on and complete the first two systems that have been lingering in apathy for years now. More importantly, I don't want CCP touching #3 until they can literally put a full expansion's worth of resources into it. It is not an easy task as everything in EVE springs from the way we mine, build and trade. I don't want them rushing it!

I want to see everyone happily blowing each other up and then I would like to see an industry expansion that allows us to invent / build new and fun ways to keep the violence going strong.

TALKING ABOUT EVE

Sometimes it is better to hear someone than just read their words. Hear me talk about EVE here:

EVE News 24 - This is a short and broad interview about EVE and my thoughts in general.

Voices of the Void Podcast - A two hour interview with myself, Two Step and Trebor. Very informative and entertaining.

ENDORSEMENTS

I've picked up a few comments / endorsements along the way so far and will update them as time goes on.  These are some of the ones that lept out at me due to the names involved:

Two Step, CSM 6 Delegate:

"Seleene was a great rep on CSM 6, and I expect he will do the same on CSM 7. Seleene has *always* been willing to raise issues even if those would hurt whatever alliance he is currently in. This includes advocating for nerfs to supercaps while he flies one himself and his alliance (PL) is widely known as the largest users of supers. He has done a fantastic job representing *everyone* who plays this game. Thanks to all of you who voted him on CSM 6, it would have been a much worse CSM without him."

Mynxee, CSM 5 Chair:

"He brings a unique perspective to the CSM due to the combination of being a long-term player with wide experience in the game, a former CCP dev, and now a seasoned CSM member. He's not shy about calling bullshit on anyone and doesn't sugar coat it when he does. Besides that, no one can write a more impassioned, convincing, and humorous wall of text about CSM issues than he can. A vote for Seleene will be a vote for a broad-based perspective and passion for the game."

Meissa Anunthiel, CSM 2,3,4,5 & 6 Delegate:

"I've had the pleasure of working with Seleene on improving the game throughout the years since CSM 2, when he was known as CCP Abathur. As an example of his willingness to put effort into it, he once had a brainstorming session with us for 6 hours... by text... on a Sunday!

Seleene is a veteran player and obviously knowledgeable about the game in general, and when it comes to medium to large scale PvP and 0.0 in particular. Unlike many delegates over the years, he actually bothered to contribute, participate and make the voice of the people who voted for him (or didn't) heard. Shouldn't he already have it, he'd have earned my respect for that alone. I hope I have the chance to work with him again."

Trebor Daehdoow, CSM 5 & 6 Delegate:

"Mark (Seleene) was one of the most effective members of CSM6; he doesn't give a shit about getting credit for stuff getting done, he just cares that stuff gets done, and that CCP deploys their resources efficiently to provide improvements for the whole community.

I don't think you'll find a single member of the CSM -- or CCP dev -- whose opinion you respect that will have anything less than unreserved praise for how much *effort* he put in. A vote for Seleene will not be wasted."

Krutoj, CSM 6 Delegate:

"Having Mark on CSM6 have definitively help push a lot of key fixes through and having his experience as well as other 0.0 members helped open up a better outlook on the issues we have worked on with CCP. Mark is one of the few CSM members I can be proud to have worked with on CSM6."

Shadoo, EVE Alliance Commentator and Pandemic Legion Grand Admiral:

"Love him, or hate him -- you have to admit the man has been there, done that and knows not only the game mechanics, but also can appriciate the difficulties in balancing corporate pressures and tight game release schedules. I think that gives him a unique position to speak as a peer, not only a customer, when it comes to important game wide issues."

 Noisrevbus, Excellent forum poster:

"Knowing he understands the complexity of a given situation and is willing to open up to it, makes Seleene a clear pick for me this round. A candidate who is willing and able to take the discussion is better than anyone who simply agree or disagree. I prefer lasting tangible results over simply being thrown a bone, and i prefer being challenged over patted. Thus, i know voting for Seleene mean i can feel somewhat safely represented through that ideal, not quality as professionalism but as in depth understanding of the game. Showing commitment beyond that is only flattering - and I'll do my best to continue to hound everyone when it comes to priorities." 

Raivi, EVE Alliance Commentator, Hero of the Legion and Sexy Man Beast:

"Seleene obviously worked really hard for CSM 6 and his experience as a prominent dev is very valuable. I'm convinced that CSM 7 won't be at it's full potential without him on it."

There are a lot of folks still finding out, "Oh, it's election season again?"  Yep, it sure is. It's been a very frustrating, but ultimately rewarding term.  I feel like I spent the first 2/3 of the last year beating my head against a brick wall and then finally CCP changed course and started to listen and do shit right.  I was still on the fence about running again until the December summit.  Seeing some old friends at CCP and seeing the change of atmosphere in person was a much needed confidence boost.

It comes down to this - I'd like at least one full term where everything works the way it is supposed to in terms of communication and feedback.  CSM 6 felt like we ended up with myself and the rest of the CSM being firefighters and nuclear clean-up specialists for much of the term. If I can be a part of CSM 7 and help keep CCP on the right course then I'll feel like I've done the job I initially ran for last year to the fullest.

Unlike a lot of others, I do not have 2k or more voters as a starting point in my back pocket. I'm going to need every vote and voice I can get this time around.  Hopefully folks will know that I've done the best job I could and vote with their minds and not what they are told to do by their alliance / bloc. Thank you to those that have already sent me an encouraging email or posted in my campaign thread in support. It makes doing this much more worth while. :)

DUST 514 & Buzzwords

Why, hello, Master Chief!

At some point this year, supposedly in the spring, CCP will be releasing Dust 514. There was a recent article published at Ten Ton Hammer interviewing CCP’s new marketing director, David Reid, along with CEO Hilmar Petursson.  The article has such gems as these:

David Reid:

“With DUST 514 shipping this year, with bringing in the tens of millions of people that play shooters on PSN into the New Eden universe, EVE could be the biggest game in the world at the end of 2012. To end the year on that upswing, it just blows my mind the opportunities we have here to keep building on this awesome universe.”

"I don’t think anyone has to worry about our commitment to making World of Darkness a transformative experience.  Despite what you hear from us about DUST and EVE, there are more people working on World of Darkness here at CCP than there are working on triple A titles at other companies I’ve worked at for the stage of development it’s at.”

Uh huh…. Okay, well, considering that we don’t have so much as a launch date for DUST 514 and CCP has yet to speak about how it will interact with EVE Online in even the most basic terms it is very difficult for me to get excited about the game.  As things stand right now, DUST 514 is nothing more than a couple slickly produced trailers. I also want to be very clear on this next point: Despite our requests for more information, not even the CSM has been able to garner a single detail about what could be the “biggest game in the world at the end of 2012.”

Never one to pass up an opportunity to discuss much of anything, the guys at Massively who run This Week in MMO singled out this article and spent some time discussing it:

This Week in MMO: CCP has gone crazy edition

Start around 7:45. Without more solid info, this is how pretty much everyone I talk to thinks about Dust 514. In roughly ten minutes, these guys break down the entire potential mess that exists concerning this game. There is too much ~buzz word~ nonsense with zero solid info given to players / CSM or anyone. Once again, it's hard to be excited about something that is still basically a trailer. What is worrisome about this is that it indicates to me that CCP’s new CMO is either completely oblivious to CCP’s recent history of ‘overstatement’ or that he honestly believes what he is saying.

As for World of Darkness, I agree with the guys in the video – there’s not sixty people working on that game, at least not sixty full time developers. CCP North America is a ghost town compared to six months ago.

Now, I get that a CMO’s job is to hype his company, but I would suggest that someone pull him aside and give him a formal education on the battered wife of a community that he’s dealing with. We are tired of this kind of thing and have been begging for even one scrap of solid gameplay information for over a year now. We have no more today than we did a year ago.

Update: Here is a bit more info, but it still basically amounts to more bread crumbs: Interview With Executive Producer - CCP Jian 

You can bet that as I run for re-election to CSM 7 that I will be banging the drum on this issue quite loudly.

Q&A Part II - Low Sec

Marc Scaurus has begun a quest to get as many CSM 7 candidates as possible to answer a survey he sent out that focuses on answering questions about lowsec.  I took some time yesterday to respond and here are my answers.  As always, if there's something specific you want me to address, head over to my big Q&A Thread on the official forums:

What single part of the game do you feel requires the most work in terms of iteration by CCP?

I want to see the null-sec sov system finished. I spent the better part of my last year at CCP working to have Dominion start to break the mold and open the doors by providing more conflict divers and eliminating much of the grind-y bullshit. Obviously ~management~ deemed us game designers crazy and systematically road-blocked and nuked Dominion down to exactly what it was not intended to be, and there it has sat for two long years.

The term ‘bitter vet’ is tossed around a lot, but imagine it from the side of someone that actually worked on it and then saw months of effort wrecked in a matter of weeks due to mismanagement, misunderstanding and just plain short-sightedness. This was the same idiocy that gave us invulnerable starbases in Sov 4 and AoE Doomsday Titan weapons.

It is a cause of near daily frustration and I never waste an opportunity to preach about it to the other CSM members or the player base at large. It’s a big part of what drove me to run for CSM 6 and has me running for CSM 7. FINALLY CCP is working toward un-fucking all of this and I want to make damn sure I’m in a position to help keep them focused.

Do you feel that lowsec is ‘broken’? If not, explain why. If so, explain what you want to see done to fix it.

Lowsec is only ‘broken’ in that it has a lot of untapped potential. I think that a big part of the problem is how little interaction is possible with the NPC factions in EVE and that leads directly to boredom and stagnation. If it were possible to become directly involved with a lowsec faction’s politics or desires (this obviously ties into FW a bit), I think it would open a lot of doors. I dislike how completely DEVOID of actual game play the NPC elements of EVE are. I know some people prefer them to remain in the background and just ignore all the capsuleers buzzing about their space, but I think that’s silly.

I would like to see improved interaction with all NPC entities. If such a feature can be pushed for as part of a null-sec or lowsec overhaul, that’s the angle we should be pushing for. I don’t like how things are now where you have no options for real interaction at all. I haven’t liked them since 2005 when, during a Mordu’s Legion event, some dipshit Mordus Admiral smacktalked me in local. I still want to burn his station to the ground and take his stuff.

 Do you have any plans to push CCP, if elected, to iterate on lowsec in general?

Absolutely. I think this is a no-brainer and a win-win opportunity to develop game mechanics that could be of benefit to all styles of players.

 In your opinion, where should lowsec rank in terms of priority for iteration by CCP?

Lowsec should be right under null-sec, but only because null-sec is considered by many to be ‘broken’ whereas lowsec is just undeveloped.  I believe, however, than any major iteration of either system will affect the other in some way so it’s doubtful that we will see JUST a null-sec iteration that has no effect on lowsec and vice versa.

Lowsec is home to around 8% of the playerbase. What, in your opinion, are the main factors that make it more attractive to its current residents than other areas of space?

No dictor bubbles, less of a chance to get blapped by 800 Maelstroms or 100 supercaps, etc…  You don’t have to deal with full scale sov mechanics and ‘piracy’ is actually something you can still do semi-successfully.  Lowsec also allows you to play out the ‘lone wolf in a sandbox’ metaphor if you so desire, whereas null-sec pretty much requires that you be blue with SOMEONE.

What are your thoughts regarding Faction Warfare, particularly the idea that FW is the key to revitalizing lowsec?

Any proper iteration on FW is going to require a fundamental re-work of how players interact with NPC factions. This is one of the reasons I am banging on this particular drum so hard – it’s not all about NPC stations in 0.0, it’s also something that could heavily affect and improve how FW works. I want to see FW become a fully supported and much more dynamic feature.

Would you support using Faction Warfare as a test bed for future Nullsec Sovereignty Mechanics?

I think that FW and null-sec sov could, and probably should, have some commonalities with regard to capture mechanics but I don’t really see any ‘testing’ going on in a practical way.  The ‘test bed’ metaphor is being overused IMO and has turned into one of those ZOMG SCARY WORD type of things. It implies that CCP is going to use FW as some sort of lab rat and I don’t see it happening like that. The systems will likely evolve in parallel anyway simply to make the most efficient use of CCP’s resources.

What is your thinking regarding piracy in lowsec – is it good, bad, or ugly? Would you like to preserve it in the face of upcoming tweaks and possible expansion to Faction Warfare, or would you like to see lowsec go in a different direction?

I’d love to see piracy expanded and supported fully.  It should become something more than just the random killing of people that jump through gates or ‘ransom & release’. I would like to see corps like VETO able to fulfill their wildest dreams. Empires and NPC factions at war (declared or otherwise) should be handing out the equivalent of ‘Letters of Marque’ and rewarding pilots for their service. There are dozens of ways like this that you could promote exciting game play if the incentives existed.

What are your thoughts on the notion that increased protection for PVE players in lowsec will result in a better lowsec?

Mother of God, no!  When you make that jump and you get the little pop up that says, “Hey, it’s dangerous here!” then you’ve been properly ‘protected’. Everything beyond that is at your own risk.

What are your thoughts regarding the introduction of a PVE activity or item (minerals, manufacturing certain items, etc) that would be lowsec-exclusive?

Fine by me. Finite puddles of moon goo, ultra dense minerals to mine, random sightings of the Dread Pirate Robert!! The reward should match the risk.

What is your opinion on the Jack Dant proposal (link below) and the general belief in some sectors that improvements to lowsec should focus on entry-level, casual PVP?

Jack Dant LINKAGE
I love the basic concepts. I’ve been in contact with Jack and already forwarded this to the CCP dudes whose current work this might be relevant and pointed them at Jack’s thread. I also linked it up on the CSM forums and pointed the others at it as well. Thus far it’s gotten a pretty positive response. This is one of those ~ideas~ that makes a fire that’s already burning even hotter. I can’t really say much more than it’s been properly passed on and will not be stillborn on the forums. Hopefully some good will come of it.

If elected to CSM7 and subsequently informed by CCP that lowsec was the ‘hot topic’ for iteration in the coming year, what input and advice would you have for them?

Lowsec should be dangerous, but it should be fun. It should offer opportunities for new players to get their feet wet or null sec veterans to take a break from blob wars. There should be opportunities available that if you never want to go back to high-sec or move to null-sec, you don’t have to feel like you are compromising your game play in any way.  Most of all it should be UNIQUE and not just a stepping stone to another type of game play.

What lengths are you willing to go to in order to make pirates flashy red on overview by default again?

I will talk to my best bro CCP Punkturis and type in ALL CAPS to try to get this done. I am pretty sure that she will agree all evil people have a right to flash red!!

Q&A Part I

This means 'Questions & Answers'

In addition to the big Q&A thread that I've been keeping up with on the official forums, I've been bouncing around to other places as well.  I've ended up answering some questions that touch on several things that I've been wanting to blog about anyway.  So, here they are and I'm going to keep doing this as the campaign for CSM 7 heats up.


Q: What your thoughts are on the current and/or future CSM's ability to effectively represent and champion sectors of the playerbase with they have little or no personal experience?

If the current dynamic of the CSM continues, which it should, then it just comes down to being able to listen / defer to other CSM members that know the subject matter better. CSM 6 was a lot more diverse than some might believe but we learned each others strengths and weaknesses early on. This was one of the main reasons that the whole 'alternate' title became pretty irrelevant this time around.

Q: Assuming the null-sec bloc continues to maintain it's voting stranglehold, how could these "minority interest" groups best make their case to the incumbents?

Get to know the front runners and make your voting choice accordingly based on substance. As for getting your views across, It's quite easy to get a hold of most of us. I tend to get a few eve mails a week on something CSM related. I can only speak for myself but I only ignore people that seem hell bent on self destructing their own arguments by frothing at the mouth. Anyone that bothers to contact me with a lucid question / request I try to follow up on. I try to reply / follow up as best I can and so do the others. Most importantly, don't let your opinion be influenced by labels or assumptions. This idea that CSM members ignore people or are untouchable is just wrong in most cases.

Q: How would you describe the performance of the CSM in this past year?

I'd give us a B+. Considering the absolute circus that some stretches of this term have been, I think we've done well. Where we could have done better is in doing a better job communicating in general with the player base. It's something that we've discussed and are determined to do better on in CSM 7. Hopefully CCP will not... ummm... 'distract' us so much and we'll also have more good news than bad to relay.

Q: Has it been effective behind closed doors? How would you describe the working relationship with CCP? Is there any resentment?

I think after Hilmar's 'apology' letter and the subsequent re-focus on EVE, things have improved greatly. It wasn't ever really 'bad' but the December summit was a night and day difference from the one held in May. As I said in my Summit Report blog, you could feel the energy in the air of people doing what they wanted to do and enjoying it. I don't think there is any resentment from CCP toward the CSM. In fact, most of what I've been exposed to is very much the opposite.

Q: Would you say that the existing CSM team is a "dream team" or could you strengthen the squad?

We have some very solid people on CSM 6, and I'm also including the 'alternates', not just the main nine members. I wouldn't call it a Dream Team simply because it's not. One thing I do like about the majority of CSM 6 members is that there is a very wide range of EVE depth and experience. Guys that have played the game for several years have at one time, believe it or not, experienced most of what many players bitch about. We've been greifers and the griefed, we've mined Omber and Kernite for hours on end, built things, blown up things, etc... 

Most importantly, most of the members of CSM6 have held some kind of leadership position in EVE at some point and understand the value of compromise and intelligent discussion. It's not all hand holding and gay sex, but there have been very few instances of rage or futility. We tend to keep talking and working toward common ground rather than throwing spoons at each other over the table.

Q: What would you say to those that believe the CSM are claiming credit for events and game improvements they have no right to claim?

I would say that while the CSM may not be responsible for every good thing that has happened, we're also not responsible for a lot of the stuff people blame us for either. I believe that the CSM does much more good than harm. I believe the CSM can, and HAS, made a difference. Those that think it's a futile effort... well, just look at me: I'm not looking for free trips to Iceland - I've had plenty of those. I don't like wasting my time on things which are obviously futile. I ran for the CSM because I know first hand just how much of an effect it can have on the development of EVE. Anyone that denies that is just trying to justify their own perceptions.

Q: Do you see any value in attempting to give the CSM process a better image amongst the players or are existing incumbents happy to work the system as is?

I think the process is ever-evolving and nothing can stay the same way forever. I would love for people to have a better understanding of what the CSM can and cannot do; I think a lot of people actually DO get it, you just don't hear much from them because they see no need to write walls of text about it. I'm all for anything that evolves the image of the CSM as a force for positive change.

Q: What would you foresee the goals and focus of CSM7 to be in the coming year?

Make sure that CCP keeps the iteration on broken and unfinished systems as the priority. Do not get distracted by ~awesome~. Doesn't sound like much,but I'm sure it will remain a near full-time job.

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