Mynxee has set up a crowdsourcing project using the IdeaScale platform. For those of you not familiar with the concept, wikipedia defines crowdsourcing as:

“…the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.”

As a tool for brainstorming its pretty good. It allows a whole range of ideas to be collected from a large number of people and then refined, normally the same group that orignates the ideas, into something useful.

The goal with ‘Making Low Sec Matter’ is to get a wide range of input from as many players as possible as to ideas for various facets of EVE’s low security space and refine them into a proposal that CCP can actually use (as opposed to incoherent “FIX TEH LAAAAG!” ranting) when they get around to looking at low-sec.

We all know that low-sec needs some love, lets see what we can come up with.

M out

…Is a Failure to Communicate.

You may have noticed that the Dev Blog Breakdown has been missing from these pages for the last couple of weeks, this is due to busyness with other things and the release of the CSM Summit minutes was foremost amongst these. Yesterday, however, we got a Dev Blog from the new Senior Producer at CCP, CCP Zulu. He was the guy interviewed by CrunchGear earlier in the week which prompted this post.

Read on for my take on this…

At first glance this Dev Blog looks like CCP trying to communicate better hopw their resources are being used over the next 18 months, the 18 months where we have been told that we will not be getting the polish and fixes to the core of EVE that was asked for by the players through the CSM. The threadnaught has been growing ever since, and its full of well reasoned and intelligent posts from the playerbase, and a noticable lack of trolling. Thats how seriously the players of EVE are taking it.

CCP Zulu himself is notably absent from the thread, with CCP Explorer taking up the slack and answering players concerns as best they can, its somehow not good enough though. Lets look a the Dev Blog first:

We find out first that CCP T0rfifrans has moved on from being Senior producer, where he was responsible for the best of EVE’s recent expansions; Apocrypha, and was behind alot of the initial ground work for previous unreleased iterations of Incarna (Ambulation and WiS). T-rfifrans has moved up to Creative Director becoming, I would assume, another exec responsible for the overall vision and direction that EVE is heading in. CCP Zulu (formerly Zulupark) has stepped in to his shoes and I would say he’s got pretty big shoes to fill.

He says in the first paragraph that we’ll be hearing alot more from him in the future, and then goes on to say that the purpose of this Dev Blog is it clarify a few things in the minutes which he says have generated “…rumours and half-facts that seem to have taken on a life of their own.” This is picked up on in the forums by various players and members of the CSM and refuted quite soundly. Though he never states explicitly what these rumour and half-facts are, communications error number 1, and it leads many to believe that even though he states that he has read the many discussions springing from the release of the minutes, he has not in fact done so.

I find it hard to believe as well really as I’ve been reading and writing about the minutes and the backlash being felt by CCP over them since they were released almost constantly and I’m not caught up yet. Zulu is no doubt a busy man and I doubt he has the time I have to pore over forum posts and blogs, unemployed as I am. This is communications error number 2; stating you have done something when it is obvious that you have neither had the time to do it, nor providing evidence that you have.

The blog then goes on to detail the various projects that are being worked on at CCP (those related to EVE at least, no mention is made of WoD but then why would there be?) and the numbers break down as follows:

• Incanra
  • 9 Teams, approx 70 developers
  • 7 on loan from other projects
    Speculation is that they are from WoD as the engine is rumoured to be the same, I don’t think they’ll be from Dust as that licenses the Unreal engine and is being worked on in Shanghai and Newcastle.
• Dust/EVE Link
  • 1 Team, approx 7 developers
  • This includes/is the iteration team promised for PI in the minutes, which is understandable as PI will be the link between the two titles.
• In Space Features
  • 3 teams, approx 22 developers
  • The 3 teams are listed as a mission design team, a feature team and an art/effects team. The ‘unannounced feature’ from the winter expansion discussion at the summit is hinted at and it is stated the the features team is working on this, the art/effects team is apparently working on leveraging the ‘new’ (released November 2007, 2.5 years ago) Trinity 2.0 engine to improve the way textures and models are handled (see the recent Scorpion revamp). What is not made clear is whether the missions team is working on, are they collaborating with the features team on the new PvE content or are they doing something else related to missions.
• EVE Gate
  • 1 team of 10 web designers and developers
  • This team is not realted to any in game issues and does not have the skills necessary to work on gameplay. Its a pure web design/development team.
• The Others
  • 4 Teams, approx 15 developers
  • These are the ‘automation team’ working on the thin clients/bots which will be used to test and eventually resolve fleet fight lag. I like how Zulu describes it as “Fleet Fight in a Can”. There is also a team working on tools for the Customer Service department (GMs) and the metrics associated with that along with a core infrastructure team which deals with patch deployment mechanisms among other things. The last of these 4 teams is one dedicated to performance monitoring and improvements (more on that later)
  • It should be noted that none of these teams look to be associated with actual game content and seem to be very much behind the scenes working on the actual software and hardware the keeps EVE ticking over.

So by my calculations that’s 114 developers working directly on EVE related stuff (discounting the EVE Gate team) if you discount the behind the scenes developers and computer scienctists, network/software engineers and others that seem to make up ‘The Others’ that leaves 99 developers working directly on in-game features 70% of these are working on Incarna.

Out of 500+ employees (this includes everyone, including those that sweep the floors and make the tea) about a quarter of those are working directly on EVE development (including EVE gate, the Cowboy team, and the behind the scenes boys). The mistaken perception in the treadnought that goes with this Dev Blog is that those who are working on Incarna are not working on EVE but are working on a different game. This is a misconception, Incarna will be part of EVE, its just not the part of EVE that the apparently overwhelming majority of EVE players want worked on.

And CCP are still hiring. They’re looking for more people to work on EVE (and other projects), more people equals more resources and more man-hours spent working on their flagship product.

The Dev Blog then talks a little about prioritization, or claims to at least. Zulu starts out with an attempt to address the concerns voiced by many that until 2012 there will be no bug-fixes or iteration , in favour of developing new features like Incarna and the as yet unannounced new PvE content. He claims that the winter 2011 expansion will “…focus more than ever before on iterating and polishing up all the features that EVE has expanded to in the then eight years.” This completely contradicts the statement in the ‘Commit to Excellence’ meeting minutes from the summit: “CCP stated that once Incarna and Planetary Interaction/Dust 514 are fully implemented, focus will
probably shift far more towards improvement of existing features. ”

So which is it? Is CCP going to focus on polishing and iteration of existing features or not? This is either an attempt at damage control by CCP or there has been a failure to communicate within CCP itself. As things stand this issue, which is the one that has drawn the most player ire from my perspective, needs to be clarified. The planned iteration need to be detailed and listed, and new features need to be announced and revealed well ahead of the winter expansion. The we can truly judge the truth of the situation for ourselves.This is communication error number 3.

The next paragraph is also contentious:

“That does not mean that we won‘t make any improvements until then!  We haven‘t started planning the Spring 2011 or Winter 2011 expansions yet (not to that level of granularity) but we do realize the urgency of revisiting certain key game features. Rest assured, the CSM will play a large role in identifying those.”

As far as I can see, the CSM has already identified the more pressing issues that require attention from CCP, and unless CCP haven’t been listening up till now they already know which issues are in need of work.

Zulu then goes on the defensive, saying that CCP is always fixing bugs. This is all well an good, and most likely true, but the point being made by the CSM is not that there are bugs that need fixing from a technical standpoint. The point being made by the CSM and the rest of the playerbase is that there are fundamental flaws in the gameplay experience of the end user.

These may not necessarily be bugs, the code is working well and is defect free in alot of the cases put forward, but are aspects of game design that are not working as part of a playable game experience. There are technical issues; these are bugs, places where the code is not working as intended. And there are gameplay issues; places where the code is working fine but is not providing a gameplay experience where the term ‘excellence’ can be applied.

For example: Lag is a technical issue, there is something in the software and hardware that is not working as intended. This has gameplay implications sure, but at its heart it is a technical issue. Then there are rockets. this is a pure gameplay issue, the code for rockets is working fine, but as an element of gameplay, rockets simply do not work. Those are just two examples, I’m almost certain that there are many more bugs and that CCP is working to fix them almost constantly, but the bugs are not the issue. This is communication error number 4.

The last section of the Dev Blog is where the communications disconnect is brought out into the open for all to see, and to be fair to Zulu he seems to recognize this:

“When two parties have such vastly different perceptions of the same event, something is wrong and needs to be fixed.”

I do think that any ideas to improve communications between the CSM and CCP need to be explored as a matter of urgency however, and leaving it till the autumn may well be too late.

Onwards to the threadnaught.

I’m not going to dissect the threadnaught that this Dev Blog has produced in that much detail as it is huge (currently 27 pages and still growing) and I’ve not caught up with it in its entirety yet (I’m on page 18) but I will say this. It is probably the most reasonable Dev Blog thread I’ve seen. Players are responding to the blog rationally (for the most part) and with well thought out discussion. I can only hopw that CCP are reading it very closely and paying attention to the constructive criticism being put forwards by the players in it.

The thread contains some misconceptions on the player’s part, the difference between bugs and gameplay flaws for example, and a lot of guesswork about how easy some things will be to fix. ‘Low Hanging Fruit’ gets bandied about wuite a bit and the balance issues with rockets and other things gets a lot of attention whcih detracts from the most important point.

That point being the perceived disconnection between CCP and its customers and the lack of communication from CCP in the face of deeply felt player grievances and unhappiness. Zulu’s blog went some way to ameliorate this and the responses from Explorer and Soundwave in the thread itself were valuable and important addendums to that post. The post itself though did not go far enough, and made a few basic errors in communication which highlighted the problem quite starkly.

As many players have said in the thread, the blog itself was welcome. It gave us insight into how CCP’s resources are being allocated for the next few months but it did not go far enough with the details and did not address the specific issues brought forward by the CSM. More detail would be greatly appreciated, nothing sensetive mind, but more about the planning and execution of releases, more about the issues that are being dealt with. “We’re working on it.” simply won’t cut it anymore as that has been the line from CCP for a long time and the perception on the player’s part is that nothing has been happening.

What we as players need, and CCP need to do, in no particular order of priority as they’re all equally important IMO is provide the following:

• More details about Incarna. At the moment it simply looks like Second Life in Space with the focus being on simply wandering around in stations and not really doing very much of consequence. What gameplay will be made available through this new facet of EVE. What tools will it give us as players access to that we previously didn’t have? Details are sparse and player cynicism is rampant, more information about what Incarna will be would go a long way to satisfying us. And no, simply saying “Its going to be awesome!” will not do.
• More information about the backlog and details of what is being worked on from it right now and who is working on it. A regular Dev Blog from the leaders of each team or even one with a short section from the leaders of each team would do this job. Again less use of the word ‘awesome’ would be appreciated.
• Revamped patch notes. Backlog items, CSM promoted issues and  bugs should be clearly marked as such.
• Any balance changes which require extensive playtesting and possibly tweaking should be published and let loose on SiSi. A new forum section should be provided for presentation of the player’s experiences of each of these issues a thread made for each one. This thread should be very strictly moderated (no “FIX LAAAAG” trolling or even very slightly off topic posts).

Sorry about the essay, but this is an important issue. CCP needs to re-evaluate how it communicates with its customers as a matter of urgency. They don’t necessarily need to change the plan, simply communicate to us better what the plan actually entails.

Update: Zulu responds on Page 30 of the threadnaught!

Update 2: Hellmar responds on Page 32 of the threadnaught!

M out

So the minutes are out, and they’re pretty much what everyone expected…

TL;DR:

CSM: “The players do not want new shiny things they would like you to fix some of the core gameplay problems first.”
CCP: “Yes we know about all these things you are telling us, but we’re not going to touch them for another 18 months. Ooh, look at these new shiny things.”

This has raised some ire in the forums, as was to be expected no matter what the results of the summit were, and there are even established bloggers who have had enough. Add to this the current furore about Ankh’s dismissal from the CSM and we have a situation which seems to vindicate the position of a large number of CSM naysayers.

Their claim that the CSM is nothing more than a publicity exercise and can exert no real influence over the direction that EVE is going now has the minutes which they will use to support their claims, and while I remain a staunch supporter of the process and its goals, I can kind of see their point.

The minutes are worth reading in their entirety, and its worth reading between the lines as well. As the Summit progressed the frustration being felt by the CSM with CCP’s apparent intransigence and unwillingness to implement many of the suggestions brought forward by them becomes more and more evident. With later discussions devolving into a reiteration of the “Commit to Excellence” argument.

The only committments on CCP’s part were not related to doing anything to the game itself, and had more to do with producing Dev Blogs (listed below) and procedural stuff for the CSM itself. A few of these related to publicising the issues that the CSM has brought forward and are currently in the backlog and more transparency with regards to their prioritization.

This is all well and good, and will certainly improve the amount of information that the playerbase has with regards to the CSM’s activities. However they are all, still, in the realms of generating publicity for the CSM and CCP, which without concrete examples of fixes being implemented in game (fixes which the player notices, not fixes which shave milliseconds of a certain backend process in the client), simply runs the risk of playing further into the “CSM is a PR stunt” crowd.

CCP needs to prove that they care, they need to recognize that some of the issues that the playerbase has are genuine and need fixing. The CSM doesn’t have to prove anything, the minutes speak for themselves. The CSM have acted in good faith (recent events not-withstanding), taking the player’s concerns and opinions to CCP and being quite forceful in their presentation. CCP, it would seem, have not acted in good faith, dismissing and ignoring the concerns of their customers in favour of the big ideas of their executive.

As has been seen, players are going to start voting with their wallets, this is also counter-productive. I can understand how disheartening it is, I’m disheartened myself, but quitting a game you love is not going to fix anything and ultimately undermines both the CSM’s ability to speak on behalf of the players and CCP’s ability to devote resources to the game.

Anyway, enough of the ranting and on to the minutes themselves, I’ve picked out a few choice titbits which I found interesting but the whole document is really worth reading in its entirety, along with analysis from other bloggers and commentators in the forums.

The most telling quotes come during the ‘Committment to Excellence’ discussion, which was based on the most supported Assembly hall thread in the CSM’s history, and reveal a fundamental disconnection between the executives at CCP and both the actual frontline developers and the playerbase. The grunts who do all the work building this marvellous world in which we live are on our side, the problem is that they don’t make the decisions.

In response to the presentation given Nathan Richardson (CCP Oveur) responded with the following:

“Speaking on behalf of CCP, Nathan disagreed strongly with the claim that CCP isn’t committed to excellence.  He pointed out that CCP probably spends a bigger part of its income on development than most other large, established game companies. He stated that this is a clear sign of this commitment.”

As has been pointed out in the forum thread, evidence of input is not evidence of output and is normally the last resort of a bureaucrat trying to justify his job. Its all very well saying that you spend alot on development, but if we as players are not seeing definable results on our end (which are not the same as the total line in an accountant’s ledger) then we’re going to wonder whether investing our money in your product is worth it.

Theres quite a bit of discussion of this point in the forum thread, well worth a read.

The other quote I think is worth mentioning from that discussion is this one:

“CCP stated that once Incarna and Planetary Interaction/Dust 514 are fully implemented, focus will probably shift far more towards improvement of existing features.”

The emphasis is mine, note that probably is not a definite committment. What I fear is that once Incarna an Dust are out (the next 18 months by all accounts) in the wild another new shiny will come along and suck up all the resources so that nothing will ever get fixed. What CCP needs to do is make a committment to go back and polish after Incarna and Dust land. Don’t give us vauge platitudes with indefinite timeframes, probably and maybe don’t cut it. Make a promise, and then keep it. This will go a long way to addressing the loss of faith that many in the payerbase are feeling after reading those mintues.

It may also be productive to find out where the communications bottleneck/disconnection is between the executive and the rest of those involved or is it simply a blinkered focus on the bottom line?

Other interesting items were the revelation that we would begin to see Incarna rolling out at the end of the year (again, with the caveat ‘probably’) with the introduction of the new avatar creator. There was also mention of a new feature (sigh) in the winter expansion which the CSM took issue with, the lack of resources being put into reworking the mission system (revealed in another discussion at the summit) would suggest that this may be a new PvE feature, but only time will tell.

Dev Blogs we should expect:

• History of NPC goods/Tyrannis Hoarding issue.
• PI Depletion Mechanics.
• PI demographics by high, low and null security.
• Incarna “State of the Situation”.
• Unhappy Customer Project (done).
• EVE Wiki page regarding ban policy.
• Low Sec Demographics and Statistics.
• Network Scaling Issues
• Excellence

So far we’ve seen one of those (about the Unhappy Customer Project, in a kind of round about way), and one about the fixes that were brought in via the mass testing (which was basically the same statistics that were thrown at the CSM during the lag discussion). Personally I’d like to see CCP follow up on all of these as soon as possible. If they don’t it merely adds more grist to the mill of the CSM’s naysayers. I can imagine it now: “The CSM can’t even get CCP to put out Dev Blogs, what a waste of time they are.”

So those were the minutes fo the first of CSM5′s Summits with CCP. As I said at the top of the post, they were pretty much what I expected. All we can do from here in is keep up the pressure and support our representatives as they continue to speak truth to power. The CSM is our voice at CCP, lets get behind them and turn the volume all the way up to 11.

As I’ve said before there is no point in losing faith in the CSM, doing so undermines its influence and means that we have even less of a voice. So spread the word, tell your friends, corpmates, enemies, prospective ransom targets, anyone. The more people get behind the CSM the more pressure they can exert on our behalf and maybe, just maybe, the decision makers at CCP will have no choice but to listen and act.

M out.

Other commentary on the minutes:

• EVE Forums Discussion
• Scrapheap Challenge
• Life in Low Sec (Mynxee, CSM Chair)
• Confessions of a Noob Starship Politician (Trebor Daehdoow, CSM Delegate) (and this one too)
• The Elitist
• Faction Warfare Military Career Center
• Max Torps Starfleet Comms
• Mike Azariah
• Let me know If I’ve missed anyone here or in the comments

What are the implications, speculations and tinfoil hattery that is being bandied about? Read on…

At the time of writing The Discussion Thread is at 8 pages and climbing, Finnagain and Delilah Wild are at it again and the overwhelming consensus seems to be that this has undermined any confidence that the forum’s dwellers had in the CSM (if they had any to begin with).

Not only are these events damaging to the reputation of the CSM, they are also damaging to CCP’s reputation. Speculation is rife about the reason for Ankh’s dismissal and conspiracy theories abound. This is only going to get worse and do more damage the longer CCP leave it before making some sort of statement.

The question of the truth of the matter is up in the air at the moment because of a statement that Ankh made to Massively:

“All I can say at the moment is that out of respect for the CSM, the players of EVE, as well as the good people at CCP, I cannot give any details besides my personal conviction that CCP’s statement is not in relation to any of my recent publications, and that I do not share CCP’s conclusion that there has in fact been an NDA breach. I am currently engaged in following up this situation with CCP.”

If CCP don’t get a statement out before Ankh does, then the only option left open to them will be damage control, which is never a good situation to be in.

There is aslo speculation on the forums that this has nothing to do with anything dealt with by the current CSM, but again with no hard facts, speculation is all it is. If however this is to do with some past infraction why on earth was she allowed to stand in the first place. CCP have right of approval on every candidate for the CSM, who submit themselves to a background check (for RMT and other shady shenanigans I would assume) prior to actually being entered into the elections. If Ankh’s indiscretion was from her stint on a prior CSM, (late 2008 to early 2009, CSM 2) then why has it taken this long for them to find her out?

The gains that have been made by the CSM as an institution over the last few years, including stakeholder status and a record turnout in the last election, might well be for nought as corporate entities like CCP tend to clam up and restrict outside access more than normal when something of this nature occurs. Its all about trust, if the published news item is true, then Ankh broke CCPs trust in her and, by association, the CSM itself. If it is not true, then what are CCP’s motives for ousting Ankh?

I am well aware that the CSM is not really a democracy, the delegates are elected by a minority, and are subject to approval by CCP, but its purpose is to bring openness and transparency to the design processes going on at CCP, and ostensibly to convey the desires and opinions of the playerbase to the developers. These events do not serve either of those purposes and in fact may even set any progress towards these goals back a great deal.

CCP’s recalcitrance over why one of our elected representatives has been dumped, destroys the ‘openness and transparency’ from the palyers point of view. Whilst, if the allegations are true about Ankh, those same objectives are destroyed from CCP’s point of view. They aren’t going to be willing to be open with the CSM if the CSM is going to go and blab their secrets all over the place, especially secrets that they have agreed to keep by signing a legally binding contract.

This breakdown of trust does not serve the second objective well either. If we cannot trust our elected representatives to deal honestly with CCP, how can we trust them to deal honestly with us and represent our views instead of their own agendas? I’m not saying that the actions of one individual should reflect badly on the rest of the CSM but in the court of public opinion that is how this is going to play. The loudest voices will be the ones that use this to say that the CSM is worthless and just a way for a few CCP favourites to get a free trip to Iceland, and we all know that in the mob rule that calls itself democracy, the loudest voices are going to be the ones that get heard.

Personally I will be keeping my faith in the CSM, and CCPs willingness to engage with it, I saw evidence of that with my own eyes after all. Whatever the actual reality of this situation turns out to be I still beleive the CSM to be a valuable and worthwhile process that will only get stronger as support for it grows within the playerbase. The players and CCP should not withdraw from it just because of one bad (or two, thinking about Larkonis-gate last year) eggs.

Links to a variety of other reactions to this and to the original news story can be found here.

M out

Thnx To EVE Illectrocuted for the headline, much better than ‘Teh Ankhy-Panky’ which is what was floating around twitter at the time of writing.

Controversial CSM delegate, Eva ‘Ankhesentapemkah’ Jobse has been removed from the Council of Stellar Management for apparently breaking the non-disclosure agreement.

More information is available in the following places:

• CCP News article
• EVE-O Forum thread
• Take Care Website
• Massively Article
• Ecliptic Rift
• Helicity Boson
• Faction Warfare Military Career Center
• Scram Web
• Declarations of War
• Demigoddess with a Conscience
• EVE Illectrocuted
• A Merry Life and a Short One
• Friends of EVE
• TeaDaze
• The Hydrostatic Capsule

I missed the boat on this partially because it broke just before dinner and a 4 yr old’s bed time. I’ll be having a read of what everyone’s saying and will post my thoughts in dues course. It doesn’t look good though.

M out

As someone who was there, but not part of the process it interesting to get a participant’s view of the proceedings and interactions between the CSM and CCP. It would be nice to have a CCP perspective on this, but I doubt we’re going to get that, beyond a dev blog of “Yes the CSM were here and the discussions were productive and useful.” This is all well and good from a PR perspective but as with any democratic process it can only really work if both parties involved are as open as possible about what they got from it and what was achived.

Currently we only get the meeting minutes and public opinions of the CSM (and neutral observers) about how the discussions went. We don’t really know CCP’s opinion of the proceedings. “Understanding is a three edged sword: Your side, my side, and the truth.” to pull an appropriate quote from Babylon 5 , and it would seem we’re only getting one side of that, without the other there’s no way to get to the truth.

Ankh also has a post up with her opinion of proceedings

M out

After a nice lunch at CCP with the CSM and a couple of Devs, the meetings got down to brass tacks.I had the opportunity to sit in on three discussions on Friday afternoon before having to come away, I honestly wish I could have spared the time to sit in on more. I would include more photos but they would just look exactly the same as theose I took on Thursday. I have included a pic of a sunset at the end of the post though, it was very pretty.

The first was more of an impromptu presentation on network theory and how it applies to EVE from CCP Warlock. Very interesting stuff about distributed computing, network topologies, information carrying limits, and how these complex mathematical subjects apply to something like EVE. It is touted around that EVE runs on a single server, this is technically untrue, though from the client side it may look like being the case.

EVE actually runs on a networked cluster of 200 servers, and if you want to include the clients in that calculation you could feasibly say that EVE runs on over 60,000 computers. This is a complex thing to manage and while how to manage it is something CCP are constantly evaluating and thinking about. This presentation demonstrated that there is some pretty high level thinking going on at CCP about the basic building blocks of what they are doing. CCP Warlock has a masters and doctorate from MIT, and evidently thinks a lot about how the network of machines that makes up TQ communicates and works at the fundamental mathematical level. The CSM asked for a dev blog from CCP warlock at some point in the future and was told that this was a definite possibility.

The next discussion was with the UI team. As we all are undoubtedly aware EVE’s UI is in need of work, be it in the form of little tweaks here and there which make it more intuitive, or a wholesale overhaul of the entire UI. A theme started to make itself known in this meeting which was also apparent in the meetings I was privy to yesterday, though not as close to the surface. The UI team agreed that there were many things that they would like to do to the UI, but that due to resource constraints  they were unable to dedicate time to them.

The CSM put forward ideas regarding a modular UI which only presents the information directly relevant to the player’s current activity as one way, the removal of modal windows (that you need to action before doing being able to do anything else) was also put forward as a small fix, but there was little in the way of commitment one way or the other to making these changes from CCP.

The next meeting was ostensibly about the corporation management system and the application of grantable roles and titles which did not need director status within the corporation. During this meeting the underlying tensions between the CSM and CCP made themselves felt and it became a more general discussion of the path that CCP is taking with the game.

Basically the CSM’s point was that CCP was wrong to be devoting their entire development resources towards big new features whilst leaving issues that have been brought up by them time and again in the backlog. It was admitted by those representatives of CCP in the meeting that there were loads of things that the CSM had raised that they knew needed fixed, but that because new features were being given priority they had no development time left to devote to them.

I got the feeling, and indeed it was explicitly stated by the meeting moderator, that this frustration was something that had been expressed in previous meetings. With the CSM raising the issues that the players had brought to them, CCP agreeing that these are valid issues but not really being able to say yes or no to fixing them.

Various members of the CSM made the point that player retention should be the primary goal of CCP with regards to EVE Online, over and above gaining new players.  Flaws in the core of EVE, the portions of EVE that all players must use in order to access the various facets of gameplay that they prefer (Factional Warfare, Mining, PvP, etc), could potentially prevent said players from playing the game the way they wanted to, thus leading them to leave the game. This point was conceded and CCP Xhagen made the point that as a company CCP was moving from a strategy which relied on gaining new players to one which was focussed on retention , but that such a transition would take time.

Basically what it boiled down to was that if CCP wanted the CSM process to gain momentum among the playerbase they would have to give way on a few minor fixes, so that players had demonstrable proof that the process was worth participating in. As was evident from the survey I performed, a great many players hold the view that the CSM is a waste of time as CCP don’t listen.

As I see it the main problem that the CSM process has with regards to turnout is convincing the players that it is really worth their time to vote, the point was made by a few delegates that if there are small fixes that can be made which will greatly improve the user experience the value of these fixes in terms of player retention and faith in the CSM process would far outweigh the time needed to implement them.

As an observer I could see that the CSM had found a lot of the responses they had received from CCP over the three days frustrating. The point was also well made that communication between CCP and the CSM with regards to the status of issues raised was somewhat lacking.

After three days of meetings it was easier to see the frustration in the CSM with CCP’s intransigence, it was also easy to see that no amount of stamping of feet and repetition of arguments was going to achieve anything. The primary goal, as I have seen it, of this CSM Summit was to put across how much more important the little fixes and development of features introduced in the past was to the playerbase, over and above the introduction of new features.

After that meeting a timeout was called and everyone was allowed to relax and unwind for a few minutes before the next meeting began. I took the opportunity to thank the CSM for allowing me the opportunity to sit in and get a fly-on-the-wall view of how things were done at the summits and took my leave.

From my limited experience  of sitting in on a few meetings, it doesn’t look like there is likely to be any movement from CCP in the direction of fixing what many players perceive as being broken about EVE for some time. This is not to say that they aren’t aware of the issues, it just that the resources are not available at the moment to fixing them.

As a player being allowed to sit in on the few meetings I attended and the brief chats I’ve had with various delegates between meetings has been incredibly informative, giving me an insight into both the processes of the CSM and those internal to CCP which I feel very privileged to be privy to. As a reporter, I hope I’ve managed to get across how hard the CSM works on your behalf, and how passionate both they, and CCP, are about the game you play; a passion which can become quite heated on both sides on occasion.

Make no mistake, the impression that I got from CCP overall was that they value the CSM for their big picture view and their help in defining the landscape of EVE as a whole. Something I came away from the meetings with though was that in that landscape they knew about the sick trees and dying roses and wanted to fix them, didn’t need to be told to fix them, but that there were only so many gardeners to go around; and until the major landscaping work is done, there aren’t enough of them to do the weeding.

Once the day was done any furstrations were put aside over dinner at a wonderful Restuarant in Reykjavik where conversation flowed freely and ranged over a wide variety of subjects that were not EVE. A great way to wind down after three days of tension building meetings.

From the past couple of days I’ve seen evidence of the passion which both CCP and the CSM bring to EVE. Believe me when I say that both CCP, at the non-executive level at least, and the CSM want to make EVE the best MMO it can be. I would urge any players who have an interest in seeing this happen to participate in the CSM process. Vote in the elections, post in the CSM sections of the forums and make your voice heard. I can assure you that CCP are listening. They may not agree with you, but they are listening.

M out

Oh, almost forgot, heres the sunset I promised you:

I’m a very lucky pod pilot, read on to find out why…

CCP do listen to the CSM. Its official, I was there. Over the CSM Summit in Iceland this week I was invited by CCP to sit in on a few round tables and discussions, and given access to the CSM between times to chat with them. I was incredibly honoured to be asked, and I’m sure there are quite a few bloggers out there who are incredibly jealous right now.

I feel I should make clear that I was able to attend the summit because I am currently living in Reykjavik for reasons totally unrelated to EVE. CCP did not fly me anywhere so that I could cover the summit, I am not a dev, and it is only because CCP is the company that it is that I was given such an opportunity.  I hope this goes some way to assuage the fears of the tinfoil hat brigade.

It was interesting to see the CSM in action, and collaborating with the Devs who were present in the discussions I was privy to. It is obvious to me from watching these interactions that the teams of designers and programmers at CCP really do value the CSM’s input and feedback, though the CSM was always pushing them to make more use of them, external to the summits.

I got to see first hand the CSM’s involvement in the decision making process as a meeting was held up, just before TQ came back up after its extended downtime, sot hat they could be consulted with regards to what sort of compensation should be given to players for loss of playing time. A variety of options were put forward, but the one you got (a skillpoint pool to spend as you please) was approved by the CSM after a short discussion. Seeing this kind of consultation of the CSM, at a time of crisis and about something which is a pretty big deal really affirms my belief that CCP do make use of the CSM and value their opinions.

The first discussion I sat in on was regarding the lag monster and how it was being combated, the CSM putting forward the view that until the technical problems are overcome, solutions based on game design should be implemented. Trebor Daehdoow hit the nail of the problem right on the head with the line “Fleets will expand to fit the lag available.”  CCP are very aware that lag is a big problem and seem willing to look at a variety of solutions to deal with it, and details of some of the possible solutions in the pipeline were given to the CSM. Rest assured, CCP are working on it, and working on it hard.

The technical people presenting the information from CCP to the CSM regarding server performance and other such technical things produced a lot of nice graphs showing how much server performance had improved, how the code was more efficient and how, relative to the number of lines of code making EVE tick, the number of defects had decreased. It was pointed out by Vuk Lau and Sokratesz that these figures were all well and good but unless they directly translated into a better user experience (which they claimed had not really happened) they didn’t really mean much.

The CSM hard at work.

CCP urged the CSM to take part in the regular mass testing on SiSi and to try and persuade as many other pilots to take part as well, I would go along with this as CCP have said that they find the mass testing exercises incredibly useful and valuable, and until they’ve finished work on the thin client it’s the only way they can get a true test of the nuts and bolts of New Eden. The thin client, as was mentioned during the Alliance Tournament Finals Show, will allow them to test the EVE software and hardware in-house with what amount to highly customizable and controllable bots with thousands of clients running on a few machines. Every player, in my opinion, should take part in mass testing on SiSi

The next discussion was about 0.0 and the various things that were percieved to be wrong with it. Its not a subject I know an awful lot about and it was interesting to hear what some residents had to say, as well as the Dev’s rationale behind how it was handled both prior to and after Dominion. 4 of the CSM are currently resident in 0.0, Korvin, Vuk Lau, TeaDaze and Sokratesz they all had different perspectives on 0.0 and all differed in how they played there.

It was recognised by both the Devs and the CSM that 0.0 is by no means the ‘end-game’ of EVE, if EVE can be said to even have such a thing (I don’t think it can). The feeling I got was that they felt that the marketing of EVE focussed too much on the big fleet battles and sovereignty aspects of 0.0 life and put across the impression that this was the whole point an purpose behind playing EVE, which it isn’t. As the new tagline of this site says: “Its not a game you play, it’s a life you live.” And as with any life, how you live it is completely up to you.

As the discussion moved on to the various aspects of 0.0 life and how to encourage more people out there I had to bow out as it was time to go home and get something to eat for me and the kids. All in all though an incredible interesting couple of hours, which only served to reinforce my opinion that the CSM is something very, very special and precious.

Players of EVE should feel extremely lucky that not only is their game made by a company which is willing to engage with the players in such a manner, but that there are talented and intelligent people willing to step up and be their representatives in the endeavour.

I’ll be joining the CSM for lunch tomorrow, and will try and squeeze in a chat with some, or maybe all, of them on the record.

M out

Anyway if you click here, you can read the report I have prepared on the results in glorious PDF format. (right-click > save-as if you want to download it for later perusal.)

However if you want more than a report I also have a .rar which includes not only that PDF, but the .docx of the report and the .xlsx spreadsheet containing the raw results and all the various stuff I did to them in the process of writing the report. Download it here (no need to right click this one)

I am now going to dunk my head in a bucket of ice to try and cool my overheating brain.

M out

Over the last few expansions, going back as far as Empyrean Age, CCP has seemed to prioritise adding new features and expanding the EVE universe over refinement and maintenance of already existing features. Dierdra Vaal has this thread in the Assembly Hall which does a great job of highlighting where this has had a detrimental impact on EVE.

To summarise:

• Factional Warfare, introduced in Empyrean Age, has had little in the way of refinement and development time since it was introduced and is in need of some maintenance and refinement.
• Dominon partially revamped the sovreignty system in 0.0 and was touted as being extendable and full potential for iteration and refinement, again little has been done in this regard.
• Tyrannis was released in a barely playable state. Issues which were pointed out by players in the run up to release (namely the flaw in the PI materials market which allowed existing items to be refined into tier 4 products, and the POS shooting blues issue) became apparent after the release and showed up Tyrannis as an unfinished and buggy expansion.

Other concerns which are highlighted is CCP’s gruelling release schedule, 6 months is not long enough to produce the much touted ‘Excellence’ which CCP prides itself on. To my eyes, this rigid adherence to a 6 month schedule is resulting in a lack of quality and unfinished features being left unfinished, seemingly forgotten by everyone but the players they were promised to.

The thread is building support for a complete rethink of CCPs release policy, urging them to consider excellence over speed.

A well known meme in software development is this: Fast, cheap, good: Pick two. It would seem CCP have picked the first two options. Go and show your support for this thread, and maybe CCP will listen when it is brought up at the summit later this month.