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
10 Comments
Very nice, I'm glad you were allowed to sit in and give us a 3rd party perspective on the meetings and proceedings. I've always known that CSM has more “potential impact” than players often give them credit for (as deduced by your recent survey), and the recent stakeholder development makes that even more usable. It's all about how well the representatives take advantage of their opportunity, how well they convey the needs/wants of the players to CCP, and how much they listen and learn and brainstorm while they're there. I'm confident we have at least 7 competent CSM reps there right now, and again wish I could be there to contribute as well. Here's to next year!
Keep up the great work Mynxee!
You know it occured to me 2 ways that CCP could improve the mass testing on SISI:
1. Schedule the mass testing on the tranquility EVE Gate calendar just like the AT8 was scheduled into the calendar for all pilots, so you can more easily know when mass testing is taking place.
2. Have a pop-up announcement in tranquility – same as the downtime announcement popups – 2 hours, 1 hour before, and when testing is about to start, that way notifying every single player logged in on tranquility at the time that “hey, if you aren't really doing much atm then jumping on SISI for mass testing starting in XX minutes would be appreciated” kind of message.
I could see both of these things having the potential to massively increase the numbers at the mass tests, just my 2 cents anyway. Thanks for the great article, hope to see more of them while you are in ICELAND and can take advantage of as much access as CCP will give you.
Good to see the CSM was chosen on merit, not on good looks!
Just like to note that Trebor is also a longtime 0.0 resident, despite giving the air of being such a carebear. ^_^
here's a thought for how to get mass testing on sisi – give us an easy way to have the sisi client loaded on our pc's without affecting the regular client AND THEN keep sisi up during the normal eve downtime. I'll bet you a couple thousand guys would hop over to sisi every night to mess around once tranquility shut down.
Night, lol, if you live in and around Europe, then its morning
Last time I checked, Sisi was online when TQ shutdown, but I could be wrong. And regardless, whenever TQ was down for hours the other day, Sisi only saw 550-600 pilots online, not the thousands you'd expect. Sisi will never have thousands of pilots on it, people don't care enough to play a “fake game that doesn't do anything for you” (semi-quoted from facebook).
I would, however, love to see CCP implement a “swap to Sisi” mode, where the normal client can be given a string like “SISI_TEST_MODULE_”, which it appends to anything it needs to load. This way, you can have the normal “game.data” file as well as a “SISI_TEST_MODULE_game.data” file, which will let you hot swap from a single client. It would be an interesting addition to the client, and might be worth investigating…
Good piece Mandrill, thank you. CCP, this is a great initiative. I for one would like to see more independent reporting on CSM and other aspects of EvE and day-to-day life at CCP. Thumbs up, Mytzso
have to agree w/dazzlefire, make it as simple as possible to log on to sisi.i would in a moment.w/the current setup i'd rather not.
It shouldn't be too hard for them to come up with a program that would track the time a player spent on SiSi and then allowed the player to allocate the time accrued to a skill of their choosing. I'm sure this has been brought up before.
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