The Problem With the CSM TL;DR Version

After reading the absurd, opportunistic, new player unfriendly stuff in the latest CSM minutes I started writing a massive wall of text picking apart the CSM and trying to explain it. In the end I just gave up the wall of text and am just going to publish the summary.

TL;DR:

Treating the CSM as a focus group for EVE players is as valid as treating the US Senate as a focus group for Americans.

The Mitani and the CSM Realize They Have Been Played

First off, an apology for this negative anti-CCP article. Since monoclegate I have tried to avoid using this blog to bitch about negative things... but I just can't stop (sort of like I can't stop playing EVE).

I wrote a while back during the follow up to monoclegate that I felt that the Mitanni had done a marvelous job as CCPs public relations manager. The outcome of the summit, especially the video interview, brilliantly defused what for CCP was a potentially company ending catastrophe.

Now The Mitanni, and the rest of the CSM, realize that they were played. The issue... the minutes from that very summit. It appears that CCP and the CSM are at odds as to the contents of the minutes. Whatever 'accord' between the CSM and CCP appears to have broken down.

This is very discouraging. I had quit EVE over the issue of the door and the crap that was Incarna (yes I know I am back.... but that is another story). Every EVE player is hoping for one thing.. for CCP to realize just how good the game they have accidentally produced is, and how great they could make it if they just gave it a chance. Instead all we hear from CCP is how great some new game-breaking features like the NEX store are, how cool their console game is going to be because it interacts with the EVE players, and then a bunch of broken promises about EVE development.

I don't blame the CSM for trying to work with CCP. Many of them campaigned on taking a cooperative approach with CCP to prevent the breakdown that occurred with CSM 5. But now they realize that CSM 6 has been played. CCP used them for PR and now feels that they can be ignored since they have binding NDAs that prevent them from saying anything that CCP does not want them to say.

Edit: And the Mitanni has now declared war... The mittani declares war. On one hand you have CCP armed with the threat of banning a character and an NDA .... on the other hand you have a retired lawyer with a massive ego and who has a powerful influence over 7000 (goonswarm) accounts and entrenched himself into the gaming media (columnist at ten ton hammer).

In the spirit of the protest here are links to gaming magazine websites that are covering this (basically they all are)..

http://www.next-gen.biz/news/ccp-accused-running-eve-online-ground
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-05-eve-csm-chairman-breaks-the-peace – This site scooped the story, and caused all this.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/09/05/eve-online-stellar-council-head-hits-out-at-ccp PCgamer
http://gamers.5starhot.info/news-eve-csm-chair-mittani-breaks-the-peace GamerZone.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/09/06/eves-csm-fight-back-and-some-thoughtsRock Paper Shotgun- This one is particularly good. Get it everywhere.
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/eve-online/1192611p1.html
http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/news/eve-online-csm-chairman-takes-aim-at-ccp

Edit2: And another bang on commentary from former CCP Game Designer and current CSM representative Seleen

So that was the result from the Reykjavik. No to non-vanity microtransactions :). Also, no to removing the 'Door' and returning to the old station screen :(.

I am not sure why it took two days of negotiations, and another day of futzing around, to say all of this. I assume most of that time was Mittens giving free, and obviously much needed, advice about how to handle PR in the future.

Will EVE players come back?
Some will, others won't. My guess is about a 10% loss of subscribers by the end of the summer. Far less then if they had continued on their previous communication strategy.

What did EVE Players Get from all this
CCP should be now scared out of their minds of the players. If it weren't for the CSM doing all of their PR for them, they would be finished at this point. Considering their precarious financial state, A major drop in revenue would kill them dead.

Aside from that EVE players did not get very much not much. No replacement anytime soon for the hanger. No commitment to work on the long neglected backlog. No commitment to pull resources from vaporware to work on EVE. No changes to NeX store prices. All we really got was a reaffirmation of what they had said before the 'Fearless' scandal and the CEO letter.

Who benefited the most from this
The Mittani, and to a much lesser extent, the CSM. He saved their buts... big time. However I am not sure that the CSM, even led by the politically savvy Mittani, can bail them out through many more incompetent actions.

What about Toterra??
As long as we don't have the old station environment, or at least a new one that works on my computer, I can't actually play. I would love to, and I have tried (heck I am on tonight), but it just doesn't work very well. Expect a thorough review of Perpetuum soon, the good (obvious EVE copy) and the not so good (no spaceships).

Concerning the CSM Election

With the CSM election well underway it has now come time for me to select my two votes. Going into the election the following candidates showed the most promise IMHO.

Seleen  : Past and present CEO of the MC and former game designer for CCP
Roc Weiler : Long time blogger and developer of Capsuleer.
Trebor Daehdoow : Long time CSM member, Developer of video games in the 80s, Developer of the Prioritized Crowdsourcing system.
The Mitanni  : Spymaster, CEO of the Goons, Ten-Ton-Hammer blogger, part-time CCP spokesperson.

All four of these candidates I believe would make excellent CSM representatives, but who to vote for.

Considering Seleen, as a past developer for CCP he has already had a real chance to make changes to the game. I know that he is frustrated that CCP in the end implemented 25% of his vision, and I share many of his criticims of the current system. I feel that when it comes to improvements to the EVE Sov system, there is no better cadidate. The thing is I don't really care about Sov. As a result I feel that my vote should go elsewhere.

The Mitanni is another very active member in the EVE community. He has made many contributions to the game and certainly has played a major part in it's history. Having said that I feel that he seems to suffer from two distinct personalities. One one hand he gives presentation for CCP at conferences, works with the current CSM, presents to EVE Uni, and other constructive activities. On the other hand he sometimes embodies the worst aspects of the Goons. His mudslinging this election is just one example of that. I feel having him on the CSM will cause much more drama than the value of any contributions he would make. This is unfortunate.


As a result for this election I am endorsing Roc Weiler and Trebor Daehdow.

Roc's postings on his blog on the various planks of his platform are well thought out. Just the sort of thinking that is needed for a CSM candidate. I don't always agree with his stance, but I feel that he will work with the other CSM candidates to develop the issues.

Trebor also has a great reputation as a hardworking member of the CSM. Considering the hundreds of hours that he, and many of the other current members, have put into making CSM 5 such a success, I feel that his absence would hurt the council. I also loved Wizardry many years ago.

But most important of all, I encourage everyone to vote. Casting no vote is a vote against the entire CSM which I feel is a shame.

Shameless plug ... Proposal in the assembly hall

I have put the first point from my 5 Things to improve the new player experience in the Assembly hall for the CSM to look at. Go and have a look at [Proposal] Every Race Needs a 'Rifter' and also a 'Thrasher'

I would appreciate it if people went and gave it a thumbs up (or thumbs down).

Cheers!

Thank-you CSM/CCP/EVE Players for Delaying Incursion Until it is Ready.

I can only assume that it is thanks to the huge amount of lobbying from the CSM and EVE players that CCP has actually decided to go down the sane course of delaying the next expansion until it is ready. We all know that EVE promises two free expansions per year, but I think that we can all agree that we would prefer a complete and functional expansion over the crap that we got with Dominion and Tyrannis. Those two expansions were clearly rushed out the door to meet this arbitrary deadline that frankly, nobody cares about. Instead, for the upcoming Incursion expansion, they are going to release the easy stuff on time in November, but they are going to give the big, hard, possibly game-breaking stuff another layer or two of polish first and releasing them in complete form this January.

Bravo to CCP for seeing the light.
Bravo to the CSM for pressing so very hard.
Bravo to the player base for supporting the CSM.

See the fitting on a ship in your hanger without boarding - Now you can :)

After my and others moaning and complaining that you can't see what is fit on a ship that you are not in, CCP has, in one of the recent patches, given us that ability. Here is how to do it.

Right click on any ship in your hanger and select 'View Contents' like so:

You should now see the contents of the ship with information about what is fit.

Thanks CSM, this has made Toterra happy!

Whoooaaa CCP.... don't tread on me

Interesting bombshell(to say the least) hinden in an interview in Eurogamer ... EVE: CCP Gives A Damn. Basically EVE players will soon be able to trade PLEXes for a Neural re-map. By itself this is not all that significant, but it does go against what they have been saying (linky). It is only a short road from there to more microtransactions (plex for sp seems to be the obvious direction that they will go in).

Personally I think this is really crap and here is why. Eve is already a very expensive game. $15*12 = $180 a year. That makes playing Eve cost as much as purchasing 3-4 other video games. Now they want even more money from players if they want to get ahead. It would be one thing if EVE was a PVE game like WOW or LOTRO, but in EVE we are not playing the computer so much as other people. Loosing a ship just because they have more money than you is not fun and is total crap. For example lots of people are playing starcraft II. If Blizzard had a special thing where you could spend another $100 and get +10% hp to all your soldiers, or some other special advantage, it would completely break the game. No thanks.

I understand that EVE currently has PLEXes which do give players with RL cash an advantage already. However the stated goal of the PLEXes was to stymie the illegitimate RMT traders, not to act as a cash cow for CCP. In other words the purpose was reduce the effect of RL money in the game, not increase it. This proposed feature would do the exact opposite.

So go out there and support your local CSM rep who are totally (as I understand) pissed about this and make posts on the CCP forums saying your opinions.

RPS: CCP And The Wrath Of The Playerbase

Over at Rock Paper Shotgun (RPS) there is a great article CCP And The Wrath Of The Playerbase. RPS interviews CCP Zulu, the Senior Producer for EVE Online. It is a fascinating read. It clearly indicates that CCP Zulu is one of those clever marketing types with a silver tongue. I particularly like the following exchange...

RPS: Why can’t you commit any resources to the “core issues” raised for eighteen months?

Gylfason: This misunderstanding of 18 months comes up a lot and I’d like to correct it. We have for the past few years been very focused on adding new features to EVE Online. We added Factional Warfare, Wormhole exploration, Loyalty Points stores, Planetary Interaction and tech 3 ships to name a few. During this era of expanding the gameplay we shifted our focus somewhat away from iterating and refactoring on older game systems and features. What we’ve been doing for the past few months is move that focus back. Over the next months we will be increasing our focus on iteration up to the point where, 18 months or so from now, we are only doing work on existing gameplay.–both in terms of polish and general refactoring for scalability purposes. The EVE Development team counts around 140 people (closer to 200 when you count in developers contributing to deliver Incarna and our core technology group) now and the choice between iteration and new feature development isn’t a binary one, it’s more of a gradient scale and we’ve already started moving the needle on that towards iteration.

In other words this misunderstanding about 18 months is silly, blah blah new features blah blah farmville in space blah blah, and in 18 to 36 months we will be working on the core issues.

Great, I feel better already. :)

Now if you actually want to feel better go and read the exceptional devblog fixing lag: module lag - why not all bugfixes are a good idea. I will summarize it for you. The CSM described what has happening while under lag conditions. The developers managed to reproduce it. The developers quantified that it was a big issue. The developers identified the lines of code that were the problem. Although the bug is hard to solve the developers are working like mad to fix it, and not just give it a patch, but fixing the underlying cause of the bug.

There, now I do feel much better now.

Note to CCP: we are not idiots, don't give us marketingspeak from those MBA type ... give us details from the geek programmers instead.

Blog Banter #19: War has come to EVE

Welcome to the nineteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This months topic comes to us from @evepress, who he asks: The CSM: CCP's Meta Game? The CSM, an EVE players voice to CCP. Right? In the grand scheme of things yes, the players bring up issues and the CSM presents them to CCP. But in its current iteration the CSM was supposed to be given small authority to assign CCP assets to projects that the CSM thought needed work on. As it has come out, this was not the case. So fellow bloggers, is the CSM worth it, has the CSM improved the game in any way, or is it just a well thought out scam by CCP to give us players a false sense of input in the game? What's your take?

Wow, my first installment into the blog banter and it is about a topic was trying my best not to talk about much ... the CSM.

Personally I think that the CSM is really a victim of it's own success. For the first few CSMs nobody really took it seriously. It was correctly assumed that the CSM was just a PR move from CCP to be used in marketing and to defuse some of the T20 scandal. CCP spun the CSM as an innovative and unique concept where players have input into the development process. It made for great marketing and drew additional players to EVE while helping to retain old ones.

The first two expansions out in the CSM era were quite good and well received. The Quantum Rise and Apocrypha were both excellent expansions that fixed issues and added great new content. However then came Dominion with its fleet fight crippling lag and finally Tyrannis with its near total lack of interesting features. Players became unhappy and the CSM was purpose built for them to vent their frustrations.

The meeting minutes from the last CSM summit reveal a disaster. Basically the CSM asked CCP to fix problems that exist in the game. CCP responded by saying that they were going to concentrate instead on developing new features.

In response to the summit there was a dev-blog from CCP-Zulu outlining the current development priorities of CCP and the resources dedicated to them. Like the CSM summit this was mostly a song and dance about how great the new features we are working on are going to be and that there are no resources to spend on fixing old features. That the development team at CCP thought that the post would lower tensions is an indication of just how out of touch they are with the player base.

War has come to EVE. But it is not war between players, but war between CCP and the players.

Who will win?

These are the two options:
1. If the players loose then players stop paying CCP $180 per year and CCP looses. :(
2. If the players win then CCP keeps getting $180 per year per account so CCP wins. :)

Should be an easy choice for CCP but the IT industry is littered with the corpses of companies who chose option one. let's hope that CCP does not make the same mistake.

See other participants:

1. Growing Pains | CrazyKinux's Musing
2. CSM: Hoax or Serious Business? « Lost in New Eden
3. CSM-Power to the people or puppets of CCP « A whole lot of Yarrrr!!!
4. Gaming the CSM | A Mule in EvE
5. A Taste Of Democracy | StarFleet Comms
6. CSM: Player Power or Paper Tiger? | I Am Keith Neilson
7. Governance Thrash Redux? « The Ralpha Dogs
8. CCP Doesn’t Care: Blog Banter 19 « OMG! You're a Chick?!
9. The Cataclysmic Variable: It's Crunch Time!
10. The 19th EVE Blog Banter is upon us… and about the CSM and CCP | Victoria Aut Mors
11. CSM: Lame Duck from the beginning?
12. Blog Banter #19 <<>
13. Be careful what you say, Roc « Roc’s Ramblings
14. Exchange Fraking Phone Numbers « Scrap Metal & Faction Ammo
15. Blog Banter #19: Assumptions
16. More to come...

See the fitting on a ship in your hanger without boarding - almost

Looking through the minutes of the last CSM summit (a very controversial one) I came across this rather nice tidbit:

View ship fittings in hanger without boarding ship. If you have several ships of the same type in your hanger but with different setups it isn't possible to see which is which without boarding them. A potential solution is to name the ships differently, however Eve has a habit of resetting ships names on session changes. CCP’s response: This is currently possible to do with ships in hangars in other locations (Asset window, Right Click ship, View Content). Adding the option for current hangar will be investigated and implemented when time allows. Session discussion: CSM asked why no one knows about this functionality; CCP acknowledged that it should have been better documented – however the information has been available in the patch notes since Dominion was deployed (http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?patchlogID=194).
-CSM CCP Meetings 23-25-06-2010 (page 27)

This is a really useful feature that no-one seems to have heard about before. In the past if you several ships of the same type with different fits (say one shield and one armour Hurricane) and you wanted a particular fit, you would have to board each ship one at a time to check the fittings. Since boarding a ship activated a session timer this could be rather time-consuming, especially if trying to rush out for a response fleet. Now you should be able to right-click on a ship (either in you hanger or in your inventory) and choose show info. The last tab in the show info window will be labeled modules and will show what is actually fit on the ship.

That is the theory at least. In practice unfortunately the idea is bugged.

Here is how it works. (slightly differently then described by CCP in their response) While in your hanger you can choose show info from the right-click menu as below...

And this should give you a list of modules under the modules tab as shown below. In the example below I am on-board the Merlin and am looking at the fitted modules on my Ibis. I now know what is fit without boarding it. Yeah!..



If I now look at the Merlin while on-bard the Merlin I get to see what is on it as well...


So far so good. Sometimes it doesn't work so well. When I am on board the Ibis and select the Merlin, this is what I get :( ...

Back to the drawing-board CCP.

BREAKING NEWS - Ankhesentapemkah booted from CSM for NDA violations

In the history of the Council of Stellar Management (CSM) there have been few delegates more controversial than Ankhesentapemkah. She had created the Take Care party that had been quite influential in the CMS for the past few seasons and now she was a member. She ran on a PvE/anti-PvP platform and had some 'interesting' ideas for how eve should work. Today CCP has released a statement 'member removed from csm' removing her begin in breach of the NDA.

Personally I am not surprised. Ank' seemed to be walking a very fine line working for one company developing games while serving on an official player council of another one. Although the specific violations leading to her removal have not been disclosed the possibilities are endless. One thing I do know is that she claimed her past experience on the CSM as employment for CCP on her resume, something that is misleading if not actually false. Since claiming to be an employee of CCP is a bannable offense in Eve, I am sure that the CSM also had such restrictions that she was clearly in violation of.

It is also possible that she was removed for using information to gain an in-game advantage like the Larkongate scandal. If true then this is the least serious reason for her removal. However Larkonis has said on Scrapheap...

I will say this. When I commited my little infraction the CCP dudes were obviously upset and pissed but they were pretty chill and willing to work it all out with me (ie, not threatening legal action, not forcing me to reimburse them for flights, letting me issue a statement, allowing me to graciously fall on my sword etc). One thing that came out during my interview without coffee was 'At least you weren't selling data or information to our competitors'. Given that Ankh works for a game development company and this all appears quite hush hush...
-Larkonis Trassler

This implies that something much more damming may have happened. If it turns out that she had done something revealing secrets to another game development company then it is much more serious. If true then that is it for the CSM ever having access to any real information about future developments. It also means that she will have a huge DO NOT HIRE ME mark on her resume. She may also be sued by CCP.

Anyways sucks to be her, sucks for the CSM, sucks for Eve in general that such a twit was elected, and hopefully this is just a minor incident and not a CSM destroying one.

And for you you who voted for her... just vote for teadaze next time, he actually cares about the CSM for more then a reason to pad his resume and get free trips to Iceland.

And also to see why she was so bad... here is the vote on improving the overload interface so that it would be easier to click on overload and not turn off a module instead. How anyone who has ever used overheating could be against this is for you to figure out.

Edit: Thanks to the Ecliptic Rift Blog for catching the following on Massively:

When reached for comment, Eva had the following to say: "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." Eva plans to keep her followers updated on her situation via her CSM blog as the situation develops.