Seen the CSM minutes PDF? Feel like me "WTF! HOW MANY PAGES?????"
Faction War
Generally OK.
Low-Sec still an issue.
Contacting idea - “Give me 10 blaster thoraxes fit this way". Nice!
"after the farming nerf, enrollment was down 10-15% (mostly farmers leaving), but has been creeping up again, except for Caldari which has some demoralization issues."
"Fozzie added that they were looking at having upgrades to intel but it was dropped due to time constraints."
Some of the ideas Soundwave is toying with:
* Turning High-sec Faction Navy responsibilities over to the players.
* Providing paths for players to progress from High-sec to Low-sec.
* Methods where faction success lead to High-sec effects.
* Connecting features together instead of making them standalone islands as they often currently are (this is a more global goal).
Soundwave stated that he would like to provide opportunities for action; he gave the example of removing Customs NPCs, but giving FW members the ability to scan for contraband and trigger flags if they were discovered. He would like to see 4 or 5 such activities available to FW players. He later noted that this kind of player enforcement activity didn't have to be FW-only.
Bounty Hunting
Bounty button on the forums in the to-do list! ROFL!
"the number of active characters with bounties has quadrupled (doubled when including all characters) and there is now 8 trillion ISK in the bounty system one week after deployment, an increase by a factor of 80."
Some roleplayers object to having the "Wanted" banner on them after someone puts a bounty on them.
Lot of little features cut due to time constraints.
Some discussion on kill rights and kill right shredding using noob ships
Intel tools and private bounty contracts. All future discussion stuffz.
Bounties on structures?
Mercenaries, Wars and Crimewatch
"some tweaks currently under testing: AI behavior against player drones, and the safety setting persistence. Also under development is a Dueling mechanic, which would replace can-flipping: players would be able to challenge another to a duel, which would create a Limited Engagement between the two players;"
“Tags4Secs”, which would possibly be part of a May release. This feature would allow players to hunt rats in low-sec belts and exchange the looted tags for a security status gain.- These tags would ONLY drop in low-sec belts, and would be a new tag type on a special new NPC.
Percieved low-sec gate-camping after crimewatch - wasn’t cause for concern at this time.
Wardecs - upon surrender, the two entities involved would not be able to declare war on each other again for a two week period.
..reducing the warm-up time before allies could be involved in a war to 12 hours, to make this a more valuable option for those that need to defend a POS
Convo on unwanted wars where big corps bully small, or PvP corps grief carebear corps - Soundwave - "you should not be able to play EVE in your own little world and not be affected by other players."
UI
"one of the tasks they are currently working on is a ‘Style Guide’, a tool to ensure the UI is consistent across the client"
About a page on UI and colour-blindness
"less than 22% of players use the Captains Quarters over the Hangar view in stations, and that almost 12% of players have the “Ships And Items” docked into the Station Services panel."
Arrow then showed the CSM a ‘navigation’ info panel, listing the celestial items normally shown on the right-click menu.
Drone UI and if there was any progress on the “Drones as modules” concept art shown at FanFest. Arrow mentioned that it is fairly complex as there are different drones with different purposes, but Two step asked for just a way to be able to attack/recall them with a button.
Live Events
Live events team was 2 people in the spring. Now 9!
A big part of what the team wants to accomplish is to ensure a consistent and continuing theme with various events taking place. Seleene surmised that part of the overall theme is “murdering players” which was universally agreed upon.
....things like escort missions for high profile NPCs (played by devs and attacked by other devs) and massive resource gathering or relief efforts on behalf of a particular NPC faction. To date, over 1.5 million cubic meters of trade goods have been traded over to event actors.
CCP - but if we are role playing as the Serpentis, fuck yeah, we’re going to shoot everything we can!
On live events affecting hi-sec carebears - “Anyone that autopilots their officer fit Raven across high-sec deserves everything they get”.
"....it was silly that you can spend all day murdering NPCs in Delve and still be able to dock in a Blood Raider NPC station"
CREST
CREST allows CCP to expose nearly any functionality to 3rd parties, and which functionality to expose is mostly a game design decision.
Convo on the possibility rouge apps could do something destructive/steal all your ISK.
CCP expects that the initial version should be deployed in February.
1) CREST itself is liked by the CSM
2) The big problems are with authorization and policies
I really feel, personally, the new style minutes contain too much information. We players don't need to know who's joke got a few laughs and the size of the minutes is counter-productive. Here is Drack's highlights of that ridiculously long document. Obviously this is the bits I feel is important and does not reflect the true minutes But if your sensible and cannot be bothered to wade through a couple of hours worth of minutes.....
WARNING - Thursday is the Friday here. I've been down the pub for 8 hours and just got home and trying to post this. If there are drunk mistakes, na na na na na!
Eve, The Next 10 Years.
History, blah, blah, blah. At Fanfest they will outline their CCP's plans for 3, 5 and 10 years. CCP Seagull new Executive Producer. Separate game development from product development. Wow this convo really swings one way to the next. I'll just drop a few choice quotes here.
Unifex: We need to sit down and ask ourselves, what do we want EVE to be? What is that mad, crazy stuff that you would love to put in? Is it joystick flight? Is it first-person mode, looking out your cockpit window? Is it Ring Mining? What actually are those things, and do they make sense for what our game actually is? Because we could put ponies in. We could put avatars in. We could put in first pers…
Alek: Back up. We COULD get ponies?
Retribution has been arguably our most successful expansion from a numbers perspective.
Discussing Apocrypha specifically, Unifex pointed out that its success wasn't that there were 2,500 new wormholes, it’s that there was new space, containing new NPC's, that provided new resources, that built new interesting things that created new agencies of destruction. It required exploration. There was a sense of awe and wonder, and cut across a broad section of what EVE is. It wasn't just things like modular POS's, it wasn't just something like Sovereignty, it wasn't just a revamp of mining or whatever. It was about tying those types of things together into something that was more aspirational. Unifex admitted that the biggest mistake CCP made with Apocrypha was to not keep doing that for another 18 months.
Unifex: It's all doable. Take planetary flight, for example. That will be available when Dust launches, because you'll be able to cruise around in dropships over planets.
Two step asked if CCP already had a theme for summer expansion, since they had already loosely begun to talk about elements such as null-sec improvements and POS improvements. Seagull explained that there would be a theme for summer, but that it would be a smaller theme and not Jesus-level quite yet.
The CSM is as a Stakeholder
CCP still appear to charge ahead with ideas, show a late version to the CSM and when they come back with player feedback it's "Oh its too late to change it!".
General discussions on how CSM-CCP dialog with regard to features and planning can be improved.
CSM Whitepaper and Elections
Community site being revamped, may be new voting system for next election.
White paper out of date (Drack - So its a yellowing paper? I'll get my coat!)
Posible criteria to kick CSM members who are doing bugger all?
So much talk about kicking inactive CSM's, do we REALLY need to read all this?
Null Sec - Part 1
CSM'rs gave their 5 null sec development goals/issues-
"...null-sec is currently too predictable and well-known."
"....should be based on the ability to use the space as opposed to blowing up structures and alarm clocking."
Soundwave - "Small gangs and resources are more important than the sov system, for example."
Got onto POS conversation and we see things appearing like "With conversation now completely deteriorating" and "The atmosphere was notably tense at the point.". Sounds exciting doesn't it! Who'd have thought talk about POS' could do that!
"Unifex continued by stating that they cannot, and will not, do sov in a standalone release"
"After some unconstructive POS-related banter" these dudes are really passionate about their POS' o.O
Basically the CSM gave a lot of issues and thoughts for Soundwave to think about/
Null Sec - Part 2
Part one "led to three overarching topics: resources, infrastructure, and alliances"
"Trebor explained that there should be a means for people to move into underutilized space and use it better without being stomped. Elise interjected that an alternative would be to have fallow space be comparatively easier to take."
Coalition management may be helped by CREST (Standings etc)
Allaince taxes on market orders?
Lots of discusion about why live here, why undock in 0.0? Making systems home, structures, yadda-yadda-yadda.
Industry and mining covered the last bit and the issue that huge amounts of Veldspar needed importing from Jita. This led to discussions on "Infinate Veldspar roids" or "Super veldspar" in null.
"Trebor explained that there should be a means for people to move into underutilized space and use it better without being stomped. Elise interjected that an alternative would be to have fallow space be comparatively easier to take."
Coalition management may be helped by CREST (Standings etc)
Allaince taxes on market orders?
Lots of discusion about why live here, why undock in 0.0? Making systems home, structures, yadda-yadda-yadda.
Industry and mining covered the last bit and the issue that huge amounts of Veldspar needed importing from Jita. This led to discussions on "Infinate Veldspar roids" or "Super veldspar" in null.
Ship Balancing
"2013 would see work on the Battlecruisers, Battleships, adjusting skill requirements for T1, and then after all of that is accomplished, they would move on to T2."
"T2 ships in line would include Command Ships, Black Ops, and EAFs"
"Fozzie also hinted at a change to armor ships, but added that due to the crowded pipeline it was still a very fresh, high-level idea that he couldn’t make any promises about."
Coversations about T1-T2-T3. General but usable-Specialist-Between the Two.
Off-grid boosting is here to stay for the time being simply because CCP cannot fix the mechanics. They are trying.
"minor BO (Black Ops) change was imminent" - "increase jump range to Titan levels, decrease fuel consumption by 25%, and increase fuel capacity by 25%. Both Ytterbium and Fozzie agreed that these were not the final changes to BO," anbd "two lines – a combat-oriented BO and a bridging/covert oriented one."
"supercap rebalancing was not on the immediate horizon and that there was no concrete vision for changes to them."
"2013 would see work on the Battlecruisers, Battleships, adjusting skill requirements for T1, and then after all of that is accomplished, they would move on to T2."
"T2 ships in line would include Command Ships, Black Ops, and EAFs"
"Fozzie also hinted at a change to armor ships, but added that due to the crowded pipeline it was still a very fresh, high-level idea that he couldn’t make any promises about."
Coversations about T1-T2-T3. General but usable-Specialist-Between the Two.
Off-grid boosting is here to stay for the time being simply because CCP cannot fix the mechanics. They are trying.
"minor BO (Black Ops) change was imminent" - "increase jump range to Titan levels, decrease fuel consumption by 25%, and increase fuel capacity by 25%. Both Ytterbium and Fozzie agreed that these were not the final changes to BO," anbd "two lines – a combat-oriented BO and a bridging/covert oriented one."
"supercap rebalancing was not on the immediate horizon and that there was no concrete vision for changes to them."
Faction War
Generally OK.
Low-Sec still an issue.
Contacting idea - “Give me 10 blaster thoraxes fit this way". Nice!
"after the farming nerf, enrollment was down 10-15% (mostly farmers leaving), but has been creeping up again, except for Caldari which has some demoralization issues."
"Fozzie added that they were looking at having upgrades to intel but it was dropped due to time constraints."
Some of the ideas Soundwave is toying with:
* Turning High-sec Faction Navy responsibilities over to the players.
* Providing paths for players to progress from High-sec to Low-sec.
* Methods where faction success lead to High-sec effects.
* Connecting features together instead of making them standalone islands as they often currently are (this is a more global goal).
Soundwave stated that he would like to provide opportunities for action; he gave the example of removing Customs NPCs, but giving FW members the ability to scan for contraband and trigger flags if they were discovered. He would like to see 4 or 5 such activities available to FW players. He later noted that this kind of player enforcement activity didn't have to be FW-only.
Bounty Hunting
Bounty button on the forums in the to-do list! ROFL!
"the number of active characters with bounties has quadrupled (doubled when including all characters) and there is now 8 trillion ISK in the bounty system one week after deployment, an increase by a factor of 80."
Some roleplayers object to having the "Wanted" banner on them after someone puts a bounty on them.
Lot of little features cut due to time constraints.
Some discussion on kill rights and kill right shredding using noob ships
Intel tools and private bounty contracts. All future discussion stuffz.
Bounties on structures?
Mercenaries, Wars and Crimewatch
"some tweaks currently under testing: AI behavior against player drones, and the safety setting persistence. Also under development is a Dueling mechanic, which would replace can-flipping: players would be able to challenge another to a duel, which would create a Limited Engagement between the two players;"
“Tags4Secs”, which would possibly be part of a May release. This feature would allow players to hunt rats in low-sec belts and exchange the looted tags for a security status gain.- These tags would ONLY drop in low-sec belts, and would be a new tag type on a special new NPC.
Percieved low-sec gate-camping after crimewatch - wasn’t cause for concern at this time.
Wardecs - upon surrender, the two entities involved would not be able to declare war on each other again for a two week period.
..reducing the warm-up time before allies could be involved in a war to 12 hours, to make this a more valuable option for those that need to defend a POS
Convo on unwanted wars where big corps bully small, or PvP corps grief carebear corps - Soundwave - "you should not be able to play EVE in your own little world and not be affected by other players."
UI
"one of the tasks they are currently working on is a ‘Style Guide’, a tool to ensure the UI is consistent across the client"
About a page on UI and colour-blindness
"less than 22% of players use the Captains Quarters over the Hangar view in stations, and that almost 12% of players have the “Ships And Items” docked into the Station Services panel."
Arrow then showed the CSM a ‘navigation’ info panel, listing the celestial items normally shown on the right-click menu.
Drone UI and if there was any progress on the “Drones as modules” concept art shown at FanFest. Arrow mentioned that it is fairly complex as there are different drones with different purposes, but Two step asked for just a way to be able to attack/recall them with a button.
Live Events
Live events team was 2 people in the spring. Now 9!
A big part of what the team wants to accomplish is to ensure a consistent and continuing theme with various events taking place. Seleene surmised that part of the overall theme is “murdering players” which was universally agreed upon.
....things like escort missions for high profile NPCs (played by devs and attacked by other devs) and massive resource gathering or relief efforts on behalf of a particular NPC faction. To date, over 1.5 million cubic meters of trade goods have been traded over to event actors.
CCP - but if we are role playing as the Serpentis, fuck yeah, we’re going to shoot everything we can!
On live events affecting hi-sec carebears - “Anyone that autopilots their officer fit Raven across high-sec deserves everything they get”.
"....it was silly that you can spend all day murdering NPCs in Delve and still be able to dock in a Blood Raider NPC station"
CREST
CREST allows CCP to expose nearly any functionality to 3rd parties, and which functionality to expose is mostly a game design decision.
Convo on the possibility rouge apps could do something destructive/steal all your ISK.
CCP expects that the initial version should be deployed in February.
1) CREST itself is liked by the CSM
2) The big problems are with authorization and policies
Out of Client
...new version of the community.eveonline.com site.
Considering adding-
*A web based ship fitting tool. This would initially let you just build ship fits, but might be extended to allow players to save and load fittings from corp/personal fittings in game.
*The character creator.
*“Wallet stuff”. The CSM asked what this meant, and Alice explained that it was more about contracts, being able to accept or issue contracts on the web.
*The market.
Skill changing from outside the Client? CCP actually caving in on this???
Player Experience
Sisyphus explained that for summer they will be prototyping a new radial menu system to replace the existing in-space version using mouse gestures, and eventually the right-click menus.
Team Pony Express then showed a mock-up of an improved tracking camera, which showed a zoomed view of the targeted ship, which would then show weapons hitting/missing, shield boosting and so on.
Alek pointed out that he likes the disorientation produced when being podded, and Trebor suggested that the cinematic shown when being podded showed a close-up of the effects of a human being exposed to a vacuum.
Sharq then said they want to add animations for docking and undocking, for example the ship turning toward the corridor when undocking before their screen fades to black, setting the mood better. Elise agreed that as long as it doesn't take any longer than the existing undock process, that would be nice. Sharq also mentioned that the Art team were excited about adding runway lights and other things when docking.
Sisyphus mentioned he is considering making improvements to the Science and Industry UI.
Art
Q1 2013 point releases - Art plans to deploy improvements to shaders, reflections, and glows. They will also do cleanup work in the client, removing old graphics code that is now obsolete.
Summer 2013 - V3 conversion will expand to more than just ships (drones, gates, stations, interiors, etc.), as well as a lot of work done to support planned new features. There will also be more ship redesigns, as well as the continuing tech work effort.
Eve Economy
Inflation (CPI excluding PLEX) fluctuated quite widely during 2012, from a monthly low of 4% deflation to a high of 8% inflation. However, taken as a whole, inflation was modest, and stayed within CCP's target range of +/- 1%.
PLEX intervention(s) made by the EVE Central Bank since the last CSM Summit. The major intervention was related to a PLEX price spike triggered by a large FW payout, and PLEX prices have remained stable since that time.
Dr.EyjoG also showed CSM information regarding FW LP stockpiles, which have smoothed out considerably since the changes in the LP payout patch. He also quickly scrolled through graphics indicating that FW PvP kills have increased since the patch.
In the past 2 years, the average active player's wallet has increased from 290M ISK to 620M ISK, and the total in these wallets exceeds 460T ISK.
Total ISK in the game totals about 600T, of which a little over 400T is held by active characters.
Eve Marketing
CCP should give a discount to people paying a year at a time, but there’s no discounts for anyone that has, say, 20 accounts. Ingo said that there are some ideas are in the works but nothing is currently promised. CCP is working on the “master account” concept and may tie some discounts in with that.
Seleene said a built-in “Fraps” would be amazing, and Two step added that a way to remove the UI would be helpful.
Kelduum said that allowing players access to “Jessica” (the tool used to create EVE trailers) would be appreciated, because it is so powerful.
Customer Loyalty
The goal of the program is, of course, increased revenue, and the plan is to achieve this through four main opportunities; loyalty rewards, marketing chances, player engagement and continuous excitement.
The program will have two pillars: fixed milestone awards and flexible token awards. The fixed awards will be provided to all accounts based on account age, whereas the tokens will be awarded (including retroactively) at regular intervals, and then can be used to purchase unique items in a manner similar to the current ingame Loyalty Point system.
Examples of fixed milestones might be special badges or clothing items (hats!), whereas the tokens might be used to purchase special ships or ship variants. While milestones will be locked to specific accounts, the tokens, and the items they can buy, will be tradable in-game items.
In-game: Portrait enhancement, fixed evolving medal system, billboard notifications, and a monument with character names. Out-of-game: Forum badges and website ticker. External: API and Newsletter. Real-Life perks: FanFest VIP access, EVE store items.
...new version of the community.eveonline.com site.
Considering adding-
*A web based ship fitting tool. This would initially let you just build ship fits, but might be extended to allow players to save and load fittings from corp/personal fittings in game.
*The character creator.
*“Wallet stuff”. The CSM asked what this meant, and Alice explained that it was more about contracts, being able to accept or issue contracts on the web.
*The market.
Skill changing from outside the Client? CCP actually caving in on this???
Player Experience
Sisyphus explained that for summer they will be prototyping a new radial menu system to replace the existing in-space version using mouse gestures, and eventually the right-click menus.
Team Pony Express then showed a mock-up of an improved tracking camera, which showed a zoomed view of the targeted ship, which would then show weapons hitting/missing, shield boosting and so on.
Alek pointed out that he likes the disorientation produced when being podded, and Trebor suggested that the cinematic shown when being podded showed a close-up of the effects of a human being exposed to a vacuum.
Sharq then said they want to add animations for docking and undocking, for example the ship turning toward the corridor when undocking before their screen fades to black, setting the mood better. Elise agreed that as long as it doesn't take any longer than the existing undock process, that would be nice. Sharq also mentioned that the Art team were excited about adding runway lights and other things when docking.
Sisyphus mentioned he is considering making improvements to the Science and Industry UI.
Art
Q1 2013 point releases - Art plans to deploy improvements to shaders, reflections, and glows. They will also do cleanup work in the client, removing old graphics code that is now obsolete.
Summer 2013 - V3 conversion will expand to more than just ships (drones, gates, stations, interiors, etc.), as well as a lot of work done to support planned new features. There will also be more ship redesigns, as well as the continuing tech work effort.
Eve Economy
Inflation (CPI excluding PLEX) fluctuated quite widely during 2012, from a monthly low of 4% deflation to a high of 8% inflation. However, taken as a whole, inflation was modest, and stayed within CCP's target range of +/- 1%.
PLEX intervention(s) made by the EVE Central Bank since the last CSM Summit. The major intervention was related to a PLEX price spike triggered by a large FW payout, and PLEX prices have remained stable since that time.
Dr.EyjoG also showed CSM information regarding FW LP stockpiles, which have smoothed out considerably since the changes in the LP payout patch. He also quickly scrolled through graphics indicating that FW PvP kills have increased since the patch.
In the past 2 years, the average active player's wallet has increased from 290M ISK to 620M ISK, and the total in these wallets exceeds 460T ISK.
Total ISK in the game totals about 600T, of which a little over 400T is held by active characters.
Eve Marketing
CCP should give a discount to people paying a year at a time, but there’s no discounts for anyone that has, say, 20 accounts. Ingo said that there are some ideas are in the works but nothing is currently promised. CCP is working on the “master account” concept and may tie some discounts in with that.
Seleene said a built-in “Fraps” would be amazing, and Two step added that a way to remove the UI would be helpful.
Kelduum said that allowing players access to “Jessica” (the tool used to create EVE trailers) would be appreciated, because it is so powerful.
Customer Loyalty
The goal of the program is, of course, increased revenue, and the plan is to achieve this through four main opportunities; loyalty rewards, marketing chances, player engagement and continuous excitement.
The program will have two pillars: fixed milestone awards and flexible token awards. The fixed awards will be provided to all accounts based on account age, whereas the tokens will be awarded (including retroactively) at regular intervals, and then can be used to purchase unique items in a manner similar to the current ingame Loyalty Point system.
Examples of fixed milestones might be special badges or clothing items (hats!), whereas the tokens might be used to purchase special ships or ship variants. While milestones will be locked to specific accounts, the tokens, and the items they can buy, will be tradable in-game items.
In-game: Portrait enhancement, fixed evolving medal system, billboard notifications, and a monument with character names. Out-of-game: Forum badges and website ticker. External: API and Newsletter. Real-Life perks: FanFest VIP access, EVE store items.
There were good reasons for the POS-parts to get somewhat tense...
ReplyDeleteWow, that was quite a read -- and just the summary!
ReplyDeleteThanks for putting this together. I probably wouldn't have read the minutes otherwise.
Post like yours are -exactly- why we won't be shortening the minutes any time soon. While you personally don't value the extra information, others certainly do - and threadnoughts over statements made demonstrate how important it is to hold people accountable for their words, something only possible by documenting the sessions in detail.
ReplyDeleteWith summaries like this popping up in a matter of days following a minutes release, there are lots of opportunities for casual players or CSM watchers to get the lowdown without having to delve into the whole document. And I THANK YOU for doing this, its a great service to the community. However, past CSM's have delivered shorter summaries without detail in the past, and players have consistently asked the CSM to step up and include more transparency.
The minutes are an -archive- ultimately. They are a resource, a data dump. They're not supposed to be concise and highly readable, they are supposed to contain as much raw material on record as possible.
Thanks again for your hard work, and for being a trooper regardless of these not being your favorite way of doing things! Means a lot to me that you took the time to read and share anyways.
I know what you're saying Hans and it must be a massive task for you guys to balance the "Readability" for casual people and detail for the "Tin hat" brigade.
DeleteHowever, even an Eve Geek like me who would read them if they were 200 pages long found these a struggle and I know many people will have just given up. Now that presents a problem in that one person who interprets something wrong and starts a rage post on the forums. Others haven't read the minutes and won't so join in on the OP's original post in a "Its on the internet so it must be right!" style.
May be a summary at the start of each section? Bullet point list of the highlights so people can find the details if they want to after spotting something that interests them?