Bam-zine

The CSM – in hindsight and for the future

The Council of Stellar Management is a process that is constantly being revised. It has to be because as a process it serves two constantly evolving entities – you, the player and EVE. Revision can however hardly be done without information and transparency. 

We want each CSM to be better than the last one, a measurement not necessarily a quantitative integer but also a qualitative measure. That is why we wish to convey the following message from the third CSM, addressed to the fourth CSM and you:

–

A retrospective of the third Council of Stellar Management

May 2009, almost a year after the first council was elected. The third Council of Stellar Management was a mix of new council members and pilots with previous CSM experience. Now, our term is over and a new council has been elected. In this devblog we look back at our term, the future of the CSM and a few personal impressions.

Looking back

The third CSM has been an eventful one. We’ve had our ups (most active CSM to date), downs (delayed minutes) and a scandal (Larkonisgate). Through our meetings, both internal and with CCP, we have managed to put 90 issues to CCP, which are so far the most issues put forth in a single term. The majority of these issues have been accepted by CCP, and a surprising number of issues – nineteen, in fact – have already been implemented in the Dominion expansion! Council activity was not just reflected in the number of issues, but also in the fact that our six month term had only very few unexplained absences from meetings. The vast majority of meetings the council members showed up in full and on time.

A major issue that was discussed with CCP was the infamous “industrial expansion”, Quantum Rise. At the time, a number of industrial features were scrapped in favor of technical upgrades. While this has resulted in a faster, smoother Eve for all of us, the expansion left the industrialists feeling like they got stood up on prom night all over again. After discussing this with CCP at length, it was decided that the council would submit a list of industry issues to CCP which would be included in future expansions. It is not a dedicated industry expansion, but CCP committed to getting industry issues done!

Additionally, the CSM engaged in several brainstorming sessions with CCP. This is a relative new concept for the council, as the first two councils focused primarily on submitting issues in their communication with CCP. Brainstorming sessions will become more frequent, as both the council and the developers felt that the sessions were a useful tool. It allowed the developers to gain insight in the desires the players have for a certain aspect of the game, and it allows the council members – and through them you, the players – to weigh in on the overall game design.

So, after all the victories and success, what could have gone better in the last term? Obviously we cannot escape mentioning Larkonisgate here. Larkonis Trassler was a council member who unfortunately decided to use knowledge gained during our visit with CCP to buy specific items, essentially committing insider trading. This was very quickly discovered by CCP, the items seized and Larkonis resigned from the council. This allowed Issler Dainze, the first alternate, to take Larkonis’ seat. And while this is a very regrettable incident, it also matured the CSM process and the swift repercussions showed that corruption will not be tolerated.

The other thing that could have been better was the publication of meeting minutes. While minutes were released quickly at the start of the term, this was unfortunately less the case later on. Internal miscommunication about the status of minutes, combined with unforeseen personal events caused several minutes to be unreasonably late. As chairman I take ultimate responsibility for the success and failings of this council, and I am forced to acknowledge I should have been more on the ball and should have stepped in as soon as a small delay occurred.

Looking ahead

With the third CSM I feel that we have cemented the procedures that were pioneered and laid out by the first two councils. This should hopefully make things quite smooth for CSM4. As the fourth council only has one member with previous CSM experience, council members of the third CSM (and indeed first and second as well) will remain available for advice on procedural matters. We wish the fourth CSM the best of luck as they take over from us, and ask that they are careful with the EVE universe; it has all our stuff in it.

As mentioned before, CCP will be brainstorming more with the council members. Additionally, we hope that they heed John Zastrow’s call “Please use us!” and communicate with the CSM outside the three official meetings, as the CSM has proven to be a useful sounding board. We also hope CCP will be more consistent in actually publishing the supposedly monthly Q&A’s. While we have developed the CSM concept quite far already there is still a lot of room for improvement – for both parties.

The last thing we look at is you, the players. As the results roll in from the fourth election, we see that over 6,000 votes less were cast in this election than in the previous one, and the minimum number of votes that was needed to get on the council was reduced from around 1000 to just over 700. It is true the previous winter election (CSM2) also had fewer votes than the summer election before that one (CSM1), so we cannot say for certain that voter interest is waning. However, it is the goal of the CSM and CCP to involve more players, and these numbers definitely do not indicate growth. CCP can improve this by developing a better voting website and campaigning platform, and finding ways to create more clarity for pilots who are not familiar with any of the candidates. But as players, we should also encourage each other to vote and participate. This system of representation only works as far as we put effort into it; we get the representation we deserve.

- Valentijn Geirnaert (Dierdra Vaal), Chairman, on behalf of the third Council of Stellar Management

Personal impressions

Allison Nixon (mazzilliu):

My experience as a member of the CSM has been a blast. In the beginning, I entered the position with little idea of what the job actually entailed, but as I learned what to do, I was able to come up with some CSM issues that I think can be used to improve EVE. During my term, I raised some issues that received popular support- but my main focus was on account security. I submitted numerous and detailed issues on the subject, and most of my time researching CSM-related things was spent on account security. I believe the devs are in agreement with me that this is an important thing, and as time goes on and these issues get implemented, players will be able to arm themselves with tools to prevent account hijackers from emptying their hangars and corp hangars. I will be running again for CSM5, and if I win I will continue following up on the work I have started in the CSM3.

Michele Boland (Issler Dainze):

I am very excited to have been part of the CSM process. While in the CSM it became clear to me that CCP really took the CSM seriously. I felt we were listened to and were definitely setting the groundwork to see some exciting changes in EVE down the road.

The CSM2 also involved in reviewing CCP’s actions during the POS production scandal and it was clear the CSM performs a real service to the players of EVE in making sure that when issues like these occur that CCP deals with them in a manner that best serves the EVE community. We were able to review CCP’s findings and actions. The broad range of players in the CSM2 were able to review the situation from both in game effects and in some cases the “technical” aspects of the code defect that allowed the exploit. We would have definitely made it clear to the players if CCP had not been above board in their actions.

Finally, I want to say that the fears that one class of player or several major alliances would dominate the CSM. This definitely has not been the case. The CSM has had a great range of players and viewpoints. Even in the cases when the CSM members had a strong viewpoint they seemed to be able to remain open to the ideas and viewpoints of the other types of players.

I want to thank CCP for the great opportunity to meet and work with such a great set of players. Maybe I’ll run again down the road. And I also want to thank everyone that has supported the CSM process. Especially the folks that have taken the time to run for a seat. It’s a lot of work to run and you open yourself up to a lot of criticism. I can tell you in the end it can be worth it. The CSM does make EVE a better place!

John Zastrow (Zastrow):

I am frankly, disappointed in the CSM. I think the idea of a focus group of players is great, and many games and MMORPGs have done similar things in the past. Some other MMOs I remember would have players elected to be their in-game profession’s “champion” and talk to devs about their issues, and that was very effective at getting player concerns communicated. The CSM is an idea with huge potential to be exploited, I just don’t think it’s been done with EVE yet. Our contact with CCP is hilariously limited. The only time we ever had real back-and-forth talks with devs was at the summit. That’s it. A single weekend for feedback. The CSM are among the most dedicated of players. We all worked and strove to make this game a better place but I feel we were and are woefully underutilized. I have no idea why this is. I do know that there are some devs who are very receptive to the CSM’s thoughts, yet others gave me the impression they think we’re batshit insane, and others still who act like a father humoring his child, patiently smiling as we talk without actually listening to us.

I know what the CSM is and what it isn’t. We’re not devs. We’re not here to make decisions about the future of the game. But We SHOULD be the dev’s focus group. I envision the Devs having their internal brainstorming sessions then afterwards coming to us: “Ok CSMs, what would the player base think of x” .. but that’s not what happens. The CSM works independently. We talk to players, we argue amongst ourselves, and just a couple times in our six-month term are we graced with the attention of a dev to hear our collected thoughts. This system is just not effective. With a weekly or biweekly meeting with CCP we could tell Nozh that the players hate his capship changes but like Abathur’s, or we could tell Chronotis how awful his Dominion devblog reads before he dumps it into the laps of a confused and angry player base. We should be half approaching CCP with player concerns, and half CCP coming to *US* for feedback. I enjoyed being a CSM, obviously, as I ran for a second term. I made good friends, I had a great time in Iceland, but I will not let these good experiences distract me from the reality: the CSM is nowhere near as effective as it could be and SHOULD be.

–

The CSM is built on the ideas of honesty and truthfulness – it might sound a bit corny (to be honest) but it is the truth. Like the retrospective above indicates we have gotten more things right than we did wrong. With the 4th CSM we will march onwards because we can gain so much more than we can lose. 

- CCP Xhagen

Chronicles Returning 2010

Our ever-popular Chronicles, which examine the various aspects of life in New Eden, will take a short sabbatical and return January 11, 2010. In the meantime, please feel free to re-visit the universe’s best short stories by checking our our EVE Chronicles archives.

Content Buckshot: Imprecise Accuracy

Dominion has been a busy time for CCP as a whole, and the Content Team is no exception. Fresh off the release of Apocrypha 1.5, we tackled numerous tasks at once. Our primary contribution for Dominion, the pirate arcs, has already been detailed by CCP Jasonitas. The other major task for this release was in support of the awesome NPE team’s new tutorial arcs. But that’s not all we’ve done for Dominion. This release sees several small tweaks and changes that don’t warrant individual devblogs, but as a whole are important enough that we didn’t want to leave these buried in patch notes. Now we present to you Dominion: Content Team Devblog 2: Buckshot Edition!

I Can’t Quit You Baby

Imagine a world where you couldn’t earn awesome things. You’ve destroyed fleets, razed stations, and rescued the Damsel over 473 times. Now at last, you’re on your Epic Arc, you’re taking out the enemy construction yards with the plasma-neutron-accelerometer bomb, and when you finally turn in the mission you’re told you can’ t have more than a standard level 4 payout. Hooray.

When Apocrypha was first being developed, the flagship Epic Arc – “Blood-Stained Stars” – was conceived as a new player-friendly experience. To that end the system was designed to not allow the player to accidently quit or decline out of the arc. It worked well for “Blood-Stained Stars,” but as we proceeded to author higher-level content this behavior became less desirable.

With the new pirate arcs, we’ve brought back the ability to quit. Simply put, if you quit from or decline missions in these arcs, then you’re out of the arc. There’s no running that mission again in an exploitable loop. The three-month timer still kicks in, so if you quit out of the arc you can try again in three months’ time. While this makes these arcs more risky, it also allows us to be freer with rewards. Previous arcs will continue to behave as they always have.

Going to California

Another feature in Dominion is our new batch of Gallente Storyline missions. There are two main mission types, “Mining Base Camp” and “Troop Buildup,” each with variants based on difficulty and particular target. Each mission stems from the past year’s Faction Warfare resultsHeth’s resultant sale of key Gallente systems to the Caldari megacorps, and the Federation’s reaction.

We’re excited about these missions. We coordinated closely with CCP TonyG, CCP Ginger, and the rest of the EVE Storyline Board for specific PvE content. Also, these missions send players to specific solar systems rather than simply sending them some random number of jumps from the agent’s location. This allows us to draw out themes for specific locales in the EVE universe.  There are also obvious potential impacts on player traffic that we are eager to watch.

Why only Gallente? This feature wasn’t planned in the beginning. The Fates were kind enough to open a window for us. But we only had enough time for one faction, not all. Between some or none, we opted for none. If you guys respond well to these missions, we’ll definitely produce more. So why Gallente? We were keen to play with the storyhooks in-game that have been dangling around the ingame news for months now. Expect more integrations of news and fiction with in-game content in the future.

Bring It on Home

Although these first pirate arcs are Content’s primary feature for Dominion, we also made a point of revisiting epic arc content done over the past year.

The first step was tweaking the rewards for the Apocrypha 1.5 arcs. It became very clear, very quickly, that our item rewards were problematic. Many of our new items were designed too conservatively. A few were too valuable relative to the others. So for Dominion, we put together some new stats for the item rewards that were lacking punch.

Note: These new properties will be applied to the item IDs already in game. Anyone who has kept their rewards from a previous Empire arc will find their item(s) automagically updated, as follows:

That’s the Way

Our next step was a change to the Epic Arc system’s “Agent Interaction” missions. Previously, after the player selected a choice for the next mission, the agent would then offer that same mission to be accepted again. Not only was that weird on a conceptual level, but it introduced a few hiccups in the system, most notably a duplication of Initial Gift items. So we changed it.

Now, when you make your selection in the Agent Interaction, you are placed directly into your chosen mission without having to accept it a second time. No more redundant mission offers! Extant texts were modified to ensure no important information was lost with this change.

Your Time is Gonna Come

Now it’s high time to deliver one feature we’d been aiming for since Apocrypha: faction standing rewards. This feature was supposed to go out with Apocrypha 1.0, but other technical limitations prevented us from including it; previous mission systems that rewarded a player with faction standings were hardcoded based on the mission system type. COSMOS, Event, and Storyline agents were the only ones who could give out standings.  (Moreover, it was impossible for them not to.)

This worked fine for the respective systems, but it caused problems when we wanted to do something that gave us more authoring control, as in the Epic Arc system. Unfortunately, sometimes part of being Agile^TM includes being able to let go of features when such a problem arises, and standing rewards were always a “Should” feature giving way before “Musts.”

But no longer! Now, completing an Epic Arc can reward you with large standings boosts with the relevant faction, depending on the ending reached. This includes the new pirate speed boat arcs, the Apocrypha 1.5 empire arcs, and Apocrypha’s “Blood-Stained Stars.”

Communication Breakdown

Dominion gave us a chance to add a number of small tweaks to mission feedback. A little bit of information goes a long way. These features are automatic and work with existing content formats.

Have you ever flown halfway across a region in your sluggish battleship only to find that the acceleration gate won’t let anything in that’s bigger than a cruiser? No more, thanks to our handy ship restrictions message! Now if you are offered a mission that has a site with gate restrictions, a message will display in the mission offer to alert you of that fact. To find the restrictions, simply click the link and a list of allowed ship types will be displayed.

There are two types of ship restrictions: “normal” and “special.” Normal ship restrictions reject only capital ships and are used by default in the majority of mission sites having gates. Special ship restrictions may contain any other combination of allowed ship types. To highlight the difference, the “special ship restrictions” message will show up in red, while the “normal” message will display in the normal white.

What of “Accept Remotely” and “Complete Remotely”? These were introduced in Apocrypha, but not in a form that could be applied to existing missions. The result was that players had to guess if their mission could be completed remotely or not, effectively making the feature moot. We’ve addressed this with two changes.

First, in the agent dialogue itself, the “Accept” and “Complete” buttons are switched out with “Accept Remotely” and “Complete Remotely” where applicable. Second, the mission’s entry on your Journal’s “Missions” tab displays a balloon icon when one of these features is active. Simply hovering over the icon will display a tooltip that lists which options are available.

We’re Gonna Groove

That’s it for our part of Dominion. Our commitment to iteration remains strong. We also keep a constant eye on the future. Even now we’re working on our backlog of missions for use in future releases. There are a lot of exciting things happening in the world of EVE. We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to be a part of so much. And we hope you guys have fun using our efforts to shoot each other in the face.

-CCP Big Dumb Object

POD Splatter End of the Year Giveaway

POD Splatter is celebrating the upcoming new year by giving away killboard hosting packages and PLEX to 15 lucky winners. Signups are as simple as visiting their contest page using the new in-game browser. Visit the POD Splatter Web site for more information on the giveaway, which ends January 1, 2010.

API Disabled For The Weekend

Due to issues with the API system we will be taking it offline for the weekend. Service is expected to resume on Monday, December 21, 2009.

The Scanning Guide Tutorial Video

Scan-curious? Wondering what to do with the Prototype Iris Probe Launcher affixed to your new holiday gift? Feeling like you’ve always wanted to explore the hidden riches of New Eden, from wormholes to archaeology sites, but never could quite reach 100% signal strength? Look no further than the new EVE Online Scanning Guide Tutorial Video.

CCP Chat at XFire Today

Join our very own CCP Soundwave and CCP Guard for a live chat with the XFire team today, December 17, 2009 at 20:00 GMT/UTC. The XFire client is required, and you must add “Chatteox” to your friend’s list to tune in.

More information about the live text chat and the EVE “til EVE contest can be found on the XFire Web site.

Christmas Comes Early at EVE Radio

EVE Radio is hosting a holiday giveaway celebration with their Christmas Comes Early 2009 event. Already in full swing, EVE Radio is giving away vast amounts of ISK and EVE store goodies. Christmas Comes Early ends December 20, 2009 with a grand prize drawing of 20 billion ISK and an EVE Caldari Raven battleship model. Check out Mr. Blades announcement thread for more information. Good luck, and happy holidays!

Christmas Comes Early at EVE Radio

EVE Radio is hosting a holiday giveaway celebration with their Christmas Comes Early 2009 event. Already in full swing, EVE Radio is giving away vast amounts of ISK and EVE store goodies. Christmas Comes Early ends December 20, 2009 with a grand prize drawing of 20 billion ISK and an EVE Caldari Raven battleship model. Check out Mr. Blades announcement thread for more information. Good luck, and happy holidays!

Fleet Fight Planned? Let CCP Know!

Is your large corporation or alliance planning a huge fleet fight in the near future and you’re a CEO or director? Let CCP know by filling out this fleet fight notification form 24 hours before your battle is set to begin. More information about fleet fight notifications can be found in this thread.