Monday, April 7, 2014

CSM Winter Summit Minutes - TL;DR?

The 40-page CSM Winter Summit minutes are out. I read the whole thing, you should too! If you don't have time then here is my TL;DR notes:-


Tournaments

Concern about 'level-playing-field" with some teams having high SP characters and limitless ISK vs teams with lower SP and limited ISK. Leads to - "tier 1 teams" and "teams that get their butts kicked by tier 1 teams.". This lead to discussions about possible 'divisions' for leagues and tournaments.

Fozzie was presented with a "T2 Developer" shirt by Ripard given all the work he does for the CSM and SCL.

Tournament tools were discussed but these are too powerful to fall into the hands of players.

Conversations about player run tournaments and where they should be hosted. High/low sec deadspace areas. Separate 'Tournament server'. Singularity?


Localised Clients

72% of Russians use the Russian Client.

Yeah, not a lot there.



Ship Skins and a New In-Game Store

New in-game shop to be a higher level (located in character selection screen?), less like an Excel Spreadsheet and all Aurum would be pooled for that account allowing purchases to be 'given' to a specific character.

Shop to be Virtual Goods Service like in DUST.

Possible new services such as changing gender, race and bloodline.

"As well as standard categories like "clothes", "ship skins", and "character services", there would also be sections like "new items", "popular items", and promotional items on sale. Trebor suggested “Pod Pilots that killed you recently also bought” as a category, which was met with lots of laughter and some agreement."

Skinning - CSM asked - Preview item on your own avatar not a silver model. Clothing should have colour options, choose the style and then pick the colour, old portrait Gallente Headress and Matari facemask should come back.

Potential proper character Bazaar (in-game?).

Potential to remove PLEX from the game to drop to two currancies. ISK and AUR. Game time can be bought for AUR in the new store.

Corp AUR wallet?

Ship skins initially a test to see about pricing and player usage.

CSM would like to see skin as a 'slot' on the fitting screen.

Capital ships would be an option if skins are popular.


Team Superfriends

ESS feedback had changed from massively negative to a bit negative from some.

Discussions on disrupting enemy corp missions and high-sec missioning possibly effecting manufacturing.

Notes on PITA standings grinding.

Generally scouts and alts mean that there is no risk for many with the ESS.

Big issue that "PvE ships are very finely tuned for tackling specific NPCs (PvE is too safe and predictable), while PvP requires a very different ship fitting."


"SoniClover said that he thinks CCP can make PvE more like PvP when it comes to fitting, and add some unpredictability and make it less safe. One of the things the team is looking into is how they can make NPC ships more like player ships."

"...dynamic LP store costs. Costs would increase and decrease with popularity."

Secondary objectives in missions?

Strength of rats tied to faction war control levels?

Discussions over 0.0 safety. Deep 0.0 (-1.0) can be very safe due to alliance protection and intel where as a "safer" -0.1 adjacent to hi-sec is usually a lot more dangerous. Risk vs reward.


Team Game of Drones.

This is about the Summer Expansion. NDA!



Null Sec

Lots of options how Sov could go.

Power projection is an issue. It is too easy to move large fleets across the cluster.

Various problems with current Sov discussed and ideas bounced around.

"...wars of material attrition hardly exist, and CCP should focus some of their efforts on making those work".

"[CCP] Delegate Zero asked a high level question about mechanics that alter the geography of EVE and the ability for players to potentially alter that geography." - A nod to players being able to destroy and build stargates?


"Fozzie and Bettik asked what would happen if all mineral compression was eliminated tomorrow, along with titan bridging freighters, forcing 0.0 groups to mine and build in their own space."


Multi-Session Topic

NDA'd feature.

"Implementation on a full replacement for starbases has not started, but there is design work ongoing."

"The system the mobile depot is based on is designed for lots of different types of structures, so it is a reasonably safe bet that new starbases will be based on it."

Discussions about personal ship maintenance arrays, alliance bookmarks and alliance fittings. Code is an issue on all these things.


Wormholes

Blackhole systems are useless. Also Pulsar and Wolf Rayets need work.

Mining buff for blackhole systems?

Delaying signature of incoming wormhole?

How about C7's with no moons and your ship is always logged in there.


Small Stuff
Logi on killmails still being looked at.

Destructible Outposts. Issue is game mechanics not coding with people potentially losing all their stuffz.


CREST mostly NDA'd


Vetrans

NDA Deeeeeeeeenied!


Science and Industry

Refining changes we already know about now.

NDA'd the rest


Early Concept Discussion

NDA'd


UI

Notifications were discussed, especially notification spam

6 month limit on notification storage.

Mail search too difficult to implement.

New icons for the Neocom.

1.1 UI improvements.


Marketing

Eve Store. Meh - All agreed.

"Pokethulhu explained briefly about CCP's relationship with Musterbrand but said that the company has started having the same concerns as the players. He took lots of notes and indicated these concerns would see some action."

Comic, TV show and Eve Source discussed but NDA'd.

CSM showed some stuffz - "The remainder of the session was spent in the important work of "oooh"ing and "aaahh"ing over it."


Community

EULA/TOS regarding impersonating someone else - "The CSM said that you should be allowed to make stupid decisions, and that people shouldn't be able to just run to the GMs when they make a mistake."


Scamming new players. How can we avoid this?

"....creating a scam info page similar to the one used by Craigslist. CCP agreed that this would be an excellent idea..."


CCP Forced Name Changing

Give players/corps 48 hours to come up with new name? - "CCP responded that in most cases characters or corporations that are reported are bad enough to be immediately renamed."


Live Events

"The CSM noted that the public perception of the latest event was that it wasn't run optimally. CCP agreed..."

"The CSM indicated that more frequent Live Events would be a good idea."


Third Party Support

Somer-gate and the Ishukone Watch Scorpions. Player rage, rewarding 3rd party sites etc etc

"Several CSM members were not entirely satisfied with this answer and the discussion continued for some time though no consensus was reached."


Future of Big Fites

TiDi bought CCP two years but in that time fleet fights have gone from 1500 to 3-4000. It is no longer working.

CCP Veritas - "In the beginning, someone decided to write a spaceship game in Stackless Python." Everyone laughed and replied: "This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea."

"Online performance and core limitations in the code. They also discussed the upcoming work on "Brain in a Box", stating that this would be the first big project for the reformed [Team Gridlock], and would significantly reduce the load caused by transitions like docking, being killed, or jumping."

Spreading out sov fights was discussed.

Force projection and 'blob warfare' need sorting but no ideas on how to accomplish this currently.


Team Space Glitter

Space Glitter has been formed to develop content tools within CCP.

Researching other companies content tools "with the end goal being the ability to create new NPCs “in less than five weeks."

"One of the goals in improving PvE is to add more variability to the experience."

"James asked for a sleeper dreadnought that would siege starbases in a wormhole. Korvin asked for an NPC noob that would follow you in a WH and ask in local “Can I salvage?” There was some other discussion about replacing or modifying some of the existing rats."


New Player Experience

"CCP and the CSM discussed the opportunities available and visible to new players that help new players to get a feeling for the ways to initially play the game."

Achievements for PvP?

"CCP is primarily interested in making new players aware of their options, rather than advising them what to do."

Lots of discussions about how to ease players into the game and get them into a corp.


Art

"..will be showing a series of ship redesigns, and the industrial redesign."

"Art wants to take the newly updated station models and add cues around the station and gates in the system that indicate activity in the system. For example: the addition of traffic lines or more indications of the increased traffic; pollution around the stations, with differences depending on what sort of activities are taking place in the area, possibly with station upgrades or additional instillations in the station area. A concept of the stargate with increased traffic was shown, and the CSM notably “ooooo’d”. An example of a high market activity system, with decals, and an enhanced station interior were all also positively received."

More work on wrecks including multiple wreck types for same capitals.

"They showed station wrecks, factional station variants, and a soccer field on the station to the CSM."

"...concept art for muzzle flashes from gun fires, updates to ship boosters, and proximity lighting differences."

"Amongst the assets shown were new cybernetic arm variations, stronger racial outfits and their color variants."

CSM asked about Male/female clothing being usable on any toon. Not possible - Because of Boobies! (OK they didn't say that but they implied it)


Alliance Logos on ships - Current alliance logos not suitable and everyone would need to be redone. Example some are too bright to look good in space etc.

Potential for corp logo tool to have more things added.

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