Confessions of a Starship Politician

Coming This Summer To A Screen Near You!

2012-02-03T07:56:00.002-05:00

CCP Soundwave has gone public (in a podcast; Jester has a good summary of the contents, some of which is quoted below) with broad details of what CCP is working on for the Summer 2012 release, which means I'm free to make some observations.

"The summer patch is going to focus on 'fundamentals' and 'old systems that are hampering us.'"

This is a natural progression from Crucible. With Crucible, there was no time for long-term planning, so they concentrated on point-fixes. With the luxury of time, they're thinking longer term.

"The war-dec system is going to be redone, particularly as it applies to Empire war-decs."

This is part of a significant redesign and rewrite of Crimewatch, the code that handles all the agression timers, Concord and Police response, and so on. I was very pleased to hear in December that CCP is tackling some of their oldest legacy code -- it bodes well for a stab at iterating on POS's, which Soundwave touches on at one point. Yes, the Dead Horse may rise from the grave!

One thing I do hope that comes out of this rewrite is more emphasis on making it easier for people who want to fight to find fights, while at the same time making it harder for people to abuse war-decs to grief players who simply have no interest in PvP. I made this point at the summit, and quite frankly, I thought that some of the mechanics suggested at the summit would be invitations to organized extortion.

"Faction Warfare is going to receive a massive rework."

This is the big one, and I couldn't be happier. This is exactly the kind of iteration that CSM has been pushing for, and FW is the perfect place to start, because (as I have pointed out several times) CCP can try something innovative here -- who knows, perhaps an capture mechanic based on actually occupying and using the space -- and apply the lessons learned to fixing other problem areas in the game, such as nullsec sov.

CSM does not yet know what CCP has planned for FW 2.0, but it will likely be something that gets a lot of attention during the final months of CSM6.

"CCP is going to build in more tools for alliances to 'make money off their members.' Then they're going to get rid of the massive 'own this moon and you're set forever' system."

Both excellent ideas. I am a big proponent of "you get sov by using space", as opposed to "you get sov in order to use space", and these are both steps in the right direction.

"They're going to look for ways to foster animosity between null-sec alliances, hopefully breaking the NAP-fest in null. Instead of trying to foster conflict through resources, they're going to try to foster conflict through social means."

I look forward to Soundwave clarifying exactly what "social means" he means, but again, this seems like a step in the right direction.

"Soundwave mentions that he'd like POSs in EVE to be more like 'houses in Skyrim': a place that you live and that's yours and set up how you like and that every EVE player should want one of."

In other words, ~~Dead Horse~~ Dead Icelandic Pony. I'd very much like this to be the centerpiece of the Winter 2012 Expansion, if possible coupled with a rewrite of Industrial mechanics. I'm a big fan of industrial systems where you just say what you want done, and the system figures out how to do it -- PI mechanics is a first step in that direction, although you still have to manually hook up the wires.

All in all, these tidbits are great news. As long as players and the CSM keeps the pressure on, I think we're going to see interesting stuff on SiSi in the coming months.

Jester's Schmeck

2012-01-21T11:31:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, Jester posted an amusing article on his blog poking fun at the style of the CSM minutes, in which we generally don't identify individual CSMs opinions. This is mostly because the recordings we work off are not very good (I've already bitched about this), and it's often hard to tell who's talking, and also because it would take a huge amount of time to transcribe the minutes at that level of detail.

I had previously stated on FHC that if anyone wanted to know where I specifically stood, they should feel free to ask. So Jester, clever fellow that he is, posted a laundry list of questions. Several other CSMs have posted their answers, so I guess it's my turn.

Now, as most people are aware, I tend to concentrate on higher-level issues (ie: pushing for more dev/community interaction, more resources for the UI, addressing fundamental game-mechanic issues, etc.), so you can assume that any of Jester's questions I don't answer are those I don't have a particular opinion on, or I think are just irrelevant.

Pilots -- most particularly super-carrier pilots -- should be given a "partial respec" of their skill-points (page 12).

I am in favor of this, as long as it is limited in both the amount of SP that can be respec'd, and the frequency at which it is available is rare. This is, I know, not a popular opinion. My reasons for thinking it is acceptable is that it will be a useful tool both for conversion of noobs into long-term customers (undoing early mistakes, trying a new career path), and encouraging reactivations. I view it as a similar issue to remaps.

As a general principle, I think the "it was hard for me, so it should be hard for you" argument is bogus, unless there is a really good reason for something to be difficult. In the UI discussion, for example, I was the CSM who was in favor of better, easier to use situational awareness tools, and strongly disagreed with another CSM, who felt that the current system (numeric values for angular velocity, for example) was better because it provided an edge for skilled players.

Super-carriers should be able to dock in stations (pages 13 and 17);

Only if those stations can be blown up with the SC's inside them. :)

Drones should just give ISK bounties instead of dropping alloys (page 16).

Does not seem unreasonable, though I am sure many will disagree. This decision will be largely driven by the Research and Economics people at CCP.

Alliances should be able to tax member ratting income (page 16).

I am generally in favor of activity-based income rather than passive income for Corps and Alliances.

Wars in EVE are driven by hatred and grudges rather than resources (page 16).

Well, part of the problem is, if you don't have resources now, you don't have the resources, under the current sov system, to go to war to get the resources. Catch-22.

Fleets of Rifters should be able to tackle and hold down a Titan (page 17).

I am tempted to agree with this just because the mental image is so much fun. But it would have to be a big fleet.

There both should and should not be a new class of capital ship specialized in tackling (page 17).(1)

No new cap ships. Too many other things to fix.

There should never be new super-capital ships added to EVE (page 17).

I would never say never, but I don't see a need anytime in the next several years.

Outposts should be destructible (pages 17 and 18).

Yes.

NPC station services should be destructible (page 18).

Probably.

Station service hit-points are at the right level (page 19); and, they should not be a viable target for small gangs looking to force sov-holders to defend their territories (page 19).

I think shooting at structures is boring, and using it as a basis for a sov system is ridiculous. IMHO, you should gain sov in a system by holding it and using it, and you should take sov from someone by getting in their face, blowing them up, stopping them from using their space, and using its resources.

In other words, sov is not something you use to control space; sov is something you get from controlling space.

Note that such a system, if properly designed, would greatly reduce the ability of existing alliances to control large amounts of space.

Faction Warfare stuff (page 20).

I think CCP ought to be going to the FW folks and discussing improvements to FW. And then doing something interesting and innovative.

Rewards in low-sec, particularly Faction Warfare rewards, are not high enough (pages 20 and 25).

Low-sec is a difficult design problem, because it is sandwiched between high- and null-sec. If you set the rewards too high, the null-sec folks will move in to farm it; if you set them too low, the high-sec folks won't touch it. And because high-sec people tend to be very risk-adverse (they hate losses more than they love gains, which is very human), there may not be a sweet-spot.

There should be some sort of wormhole stabilizer to make invading w-space easier (page 20).(3)

Dumb.

Sleepers should attack POSs and/or pod people (page 20).(3)

Maybe. But it would have to be balanced by some improvements to WH space, like the ability to have clones in WH systems.

Electronic Attack Frigates should be able to "impact" super-capital ships immune to e-war (page 21).(4)

This was spitballing to find a good role for EAFs, which are currently almost completely unused according to CCP. It seems like an interesting possibility.

Sov-holders should be able to build a module in their own space that hurts other people's sov space (page 24).

That particular session of the minutes was all spitballing about possible future ideas. My major comment about all this stuff was that I wouldn't want resources diverted to such ideas when there are so many pressing global issues. I mean, most people think the current sov system sucks, so why spend time polishing the turd?

Null-sec is about hate and cruelty (page 25).

Some people like to think so. I personally think everyone has a different reason for being there. Or not.

The contraband system should be removed (page 25).

It's just annoying, and it would reduce the load on Crimewatch.

Buying a PvP ship should be an investment that brings in ISK (page 25).

The major concern here is that the % of the ship's value you get out of a kill varies widely, and perhaps it should vary a little less. But I don't view it as an earthshatteringly important issue.

The person who destroys your ship should get 10-20% of your insurance pay-out for that ship (page 26), including if they gank you in high-sec (also page 26).(3)

I am indifferent to the first part, but I was the CSM who raised the issue that gankers shouldn't get rewarded.

Despite the fact CCP has a large number of assets for the NeX store, they should not be released at this time (page 30).

It would be a waste of resources. If they agree that NeX and Aurum are a failure, they should re-engineer the system (using ISK, PLEX, and perhaps micro-PLEX) and release the new stuff then.

Players should be able to train more than one pilot per account by paying for this privelige with PLEXes (page 30).

Yes.

Players don't care about their corporation logos (page 30); and, they care about their alliance logos much more (page 30).

Probably the case for most, but largely irrelevant, since if CCP permits people to put alliance logo nose art on their ships, they'll be able to put corp logos on as well.

The unique attraction of EVE is "you can grief people" and "it's not a game for wusses" (page 32).

Absolutely. For example, it allows smarty-pants bloggers to try and grief hard-working CSMs, except for the fact that we're not wusses, so it never works.

:P

The Cold Equations of the CSM Election

2012-01-20T08:15:00.000-05:00

The announcement in the Winter Summit Minutes of changes to the structure of the CSM and the election process presents some interesting dilemmas for candidates who do not have the backing of Nullsec power-blocs.

For the upcoming CSM7 elections, the changes are:

* No differentiation between "main" and "alternate" CSMs.

* There are still 14 CSM delegates, but only the top 7 available CSMs go to Iceland for summits (down from 9 currently).

* In order to get on the ballot, a candidate must get a nomination thread "liked" some number of times (as yet undetermined). CCP hopes this will reduce the number of candidates.

In terms of having a say in Iceland, these changes are a huge buff to the Nullsec powers-that-be, since they can easily obtain the necessary number of votes to get into the top 7 without any active campaigning. I would not be surprised if 5 or even 6 of the top 7 slots in CSM7 go to power-bloc anointed candidates.

The key to their strategy will be to exploit their ability to focus votes on their preferred candidates, while at the same time doing everything possible to diffuse the voting power of non-bloc voters and try to get them to waste votes on candidates that have no reasonable chance of a top 7 finish.

Before we go any further, let's address CCP's attempt to reduce the number of candidates. IMHO, it's pointless, because it is trivial to game. No evil conspiracy required, people will do it for the LOLs.

With that out of the way, let's look at the numbers.

In the last election, getting the #7 spot required 2240 votes, and getting on the CSM itself required 921.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a 20% jump in voting in the CSM7 elections; that boosts those numbers to (roundly) 2700 and 1100 respectively.

Quite frankly, I think the threshold for getting into the top 7 is going to be higher, perhaps 2900 or even 3000. This is because the nullsec power blocs will focus their voting in order to try and guarantee they get at least 5 out of the 7 slots.

Whether they can do that (or better), or whether non-bloc candidates can manage to grab 3 of the top 7, depends entirely on how successful they are in splitting (or suppressing) the non-bloc vote.

To give you some numbers, in the last election, 33635 votes were cast for successful candidates, and 14528 were cast for candidates that did not get elected -- that's 30%. The vast majority of those wasted votes went to independent, non-bloc candidates.

This is a cruel waste of voting power, but it highlights the fundamental dilemma that potential non-bloc CSM7 candidates must face.

It is simply this: unless you can honestly say that you have 1000 votes locked up and in the bag, running for CSM just increases the voting power of the organized blocs. You need to have a constituency behind you already.

If you don't have those votes in the bag, then your best bet is to find a candidate with similar views who has a better shot at being elected to the 14, and do everything in your power to get out the vote.

The days of being an "issue" candidate (as I was during the CSM5 election) are over -- except perhaps during the nomination phase.

It's a cold equation, to be sure. But it's very cold in space.

Jesus is dead

2011-12-11T04:27:00.001-05:00

Of all the things said at last weeks CSM summit in Iceland, perhaps the most striking was a comment, offered almost offhand, by Hilmar in the final session:

"The era of the Jesus feature is over"

A Jesus feature, it emerged, is something that turns "4 loaves of bread into 50,000 new subscribers". It's the home run, the called shot into deep left field, the awesome idea that will solve all of CCP's problems, carved in a stone tablet made of virgin Eyjafjallajökull lava and delivered from on high down to the adoring fish-factory devs.

Supertitans! Tech-IV! Jovians! Jovians in Tech-IV Supertitans! And they're naked, and want your precious NEX store clothes and monocles!

You get the idea.

Instead, forced by circumstance to play small ball ("The whale shit has hit the propeller, and we have no time to make a grand plan"), CCP spent the fall hitting a bunch of singles.

The result was Crucible, and it was good. Because Crucible delivered what most of the players have been wanting for years -- improvement to the current game.

Going to Iceland, a big concern the CSM had was whether CCP was going to double-down and deliver a Crucible II, or whether the table in the Trinity conference room would be groaning under the weight of a new stone tablet. After all, the forces of Awesome had had several months to think about what comes next.

And lo, in the conference room there was a stone tablet, made not of heavy stone but of the most delicate foamed Icelandic lava, floating in an opened barrel of Christmas Beer. And engraved upon its surface, in EVE's new font, were the words:

"Thou shalt fix more stuff."

And as we quaffed our (slightly gritty) Christmas Beer, unto the CSM came a Senior Producer and his Wise Men, explaining how CCP was reorganizing so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Thence came a parade of devs, bearing gifts of even more game fixes.

And it was pretty damn good, as you will see when the Minutes come out.

Yes, Jesus is dead. But on the third day, he rose again. Will Awesome rise again, on the third expansion?

We'll know in :18months:

Ex-Sex

2011-12-01T17:25:00.001-05:00

I was chatting with an in-game buddy the other day, and asked him what he thought of the new Crucible expansion.

He replied: "It's like great ex-sex. It makes you feel good, but one good night doesn't mean you're going to get back together. But a few more like it might change your mind."

And in his own (admittedly somewhat perverted) way, I think he encapsulated what a lot of long-time players are thinking.

Crucible was great ex-sex. It reminded us of what the relationship between CCP and the players used to be, and what it could be again. But, having been burned, before the bittervets are going to open their vulnerable hearts and once again declare undying love for CCP, they're going to want more like it.

When CCP decided in late August to scrap their planning for the winter expansion and refocus on EVE, they didn't have time to come up with something "big". So they concentrated on lots of little things, fixing old stuff, and making small improvements here and there. Because each individual item was small, they were able to implement a lot of them -- that's why the Crucible patch notes were the longest in recent memory.

But now CCP is starting to plan for the first half of 2012, and with a longer planning horizon, the "old" CCP would be tempted to do something more ambitious for the June expansion.

I strongly believe this would be a serious mistake. It would be a signal that CCP is not serious about their change in direction, that Crucible was just a bump in the road.

Rather, what I (and others on the CSM) will continue to recommend at the Summit next week is that CCP should continue doing what they started with Crucible; continue revising and improving older features of the game. However, given that they now have a longer planning horizon, they should consider going after a mix of both "little things" and bigger targets.

Some examples of bigger targets might be a package of little tweaks aimed at revitalizing factional warfare, and a similar package aimed at addressing some of the current issues with nullsec sov warfare.

On a bigger scale, there is the much-beloved Dead Horse POS proposal -- and improvements to Industry that would be associated with that. Whether something of this scale is possible for the next expansion will become more clear in the coming weeks. I'd love to see it, but to be honest, if I had to choose between that and lots of little things, I'd have to go for the little things every time.

Bottom line: if CCP wants to get back together with their ex-players, they need to deliver more great ex-sex.

The 20%, the 79%, and the 1%

2011-10-20T10:52:00.000-04:00

By now everyone will have heard the news that CCP is slashing their staff by about 20%.

First of all, I want to express my condolences to the 20%, many of whom are going through the roughest time in their professional careers. Some of them I knew personally, and they will be missed.

Second, I want to express my sympathies towards the 79%, the remaining staff who, in the coming months, either implicitly or explicitly, are going to be pressured to work longer and harder to help CCP recover from the consequences of disastrous strategic decisions that they had little or no voice in.

And finally, I have a few questions for the 1%, the top staff at CCP who made those decisions.

* Have you really accepted that this is your fault, or do you still cling to the illusion that this is the fault of "pesky" players who just don't understand your awesome vision, and who should feel honored to be permitted to pay you to implement it?

* Are you really sincere about this change of direction by CCP, or do you consider the refocusing on EVE just a temporary bump in the road?

* Have any of you accepted responsibility, either by resigning, accepting demotion, or taking a pay cut?

I wonder what the chances are that any of the above questions can be answered by a "yes"?

20%...? 79%...? or 1%...?

I know, I know, but I can only do it once

2011-10-05T19:31:00.001-04:00

The twin devblogs released by CCP Hellmar and CCP Zulu mark the start of what I hope will be a very welcome and overdue change in direction for CCP. From my vantage point as a CSM, I am cautiously optimistic, though there are many battles yet to be fought.

But a word of caution that I hope will not be drowned out by the chorus of attaboys and +1's from the EVE community...

Begun, the Feature War Has

2011-09-22T16:24:00.000-04:00

CCP's announcement that EVE development will be refocused, is, of course, reason for celebration.

But don't get cocky, bittervet. This is not victory, it's just the opening shot in the war -- the Feature War.

The real battle in the Feature War will be fought over how the ammo -- the newly available development resources made available by this "refocusing" -- will be used.

Right now in a sinister conference room, arguments are being made that it should be spent on :awesome: flashiness and exploding planets.

Meanwhile, a plucky band of rebel developers champions a radical proposition -- that development should be refocused on fixing existing problems in the game. Stuff like POS's, the user interface, mining and manufacturing, Sov, and a host of other annoyances that plague the current community.

The Feature War is raging now... the decisions will be made soon... and your voice in this thread provides ammo to one side or the other.

Make your voice heard. This threadnaught can be the ultimate power in the EVE universe. I suggest you use it.

Victory? Victory you say? Master Bittervet, not victory. The shroud of the :awesome: side has fallen. Begun the Feature War has.

PS to Zulu: This is not the blog we're looking for.

Behind the Power Curve and into the Coffin Corner

2011-09-08T10:45:00.001-04:00

In aviation, being behind the power curve or in the coffin corner are bad things. When you're behind the power curve, even applying full power won't make the airplane gain altitude, and when you're in the coffin corner, even a tiny course correction can send the plane into a catastrophic spin.

The current CSM -- as well as the previous CSM, which I also served on, and many engaged players in the community -- have become increasingly concerned about the future of Flying-in-Space component of EVE. As CCP continues to devote lots of time and effort to their new projects -- World of Darkness, DUST, and Incarna (aka "Walking in Stations") -- the core game, the game that their players signed up to play, and their only real source of income, has been increasingly neglected and starved for development resources.

Getting CCP to put more resources into FiS has been a core issue for CSM for a long time, but it seemed like an impossible task. CCP upper management appeared to be focused on an agressive expansion strategy, leveraging their experience with EVE to help develop their new games. Indeed, a lot of the development effort on EVE outside of the visible FiS work has been devoted to projects that help them with their other games.

For example, World of Darkness is an avatar game, and Incarna is avatars in EVE. So a lot of the work done on Incarna is synergistic with World of Darkness. Similarly, the "Carbon" platform development work CCP has spent a lot of time on makes it easier to share code between the various games.

Up to a point, this is (from a long-term perspective) a good thing. The problem is that if you push this too hard, and put too much of your resources into it, you risk starving the cash cow. And, of course, there's the risk that unforeseen problems will conspire against you.

This may well be what has happened. If Jester's infamous PCU chart is a good proxy for EVE subscription trends, then Incarna is probably failing to meet expectations, and that is very worrying.

As I see it, CCP is at a crossroads. They can either double-down on their current strategy, put all their resources into their new projects, accept the huge risk that EVE subscription numbers will stall and plummet to the ground, and hope they can get their new games on the market quickly enough to keep the company flying.

Or they can refocus their available resources back on EVE FiS -- light the afterburners, if you will -- revitalize their cash cow (accepting that this will delay World of Darkness), and then use that as a basis for expansion. Obviously, this is the choice EVE players would prefer.

CCP is not yet behind the power curve, and they're not yet in the coffin corner. They can still make a big course correction.

Let's hope the Pilot-in-Command is Fearless.

Minutes of the Scandal of the Minutes

2011-09-04T06:40:00.000-04:00

Over the past month or so, players have been asking -- more and more pointedly -- what's going on with the minutes of the Emergency summit.

Here's the story so far -- the minutes of the minutes, if you will.

After the Emergency summit concluded, a CCP staff member made a summary transcription based on recordings of the session. CSM quickly took these and did a basic editing pass, making sure they had all the important facts right and that CSM opinions -- and the manner in which they were expressed -- were properly recorded.

Based on prior experience, I did not expect any significant problems with the minutes; at most, a few minor things might get NDA'd or made less specific.

However, after a considerable delay, what we got back from CCP was quite disturbing. The minutes had been significantly rewritten by a senior CCP employee (who will remain nameless because we are not sure if this was done on this person's own initiative or on orders from higher-up. It was not, I am happy to say, either of the CSM's advocates inside CCP, Xhagen and Diagoras, who were on vacation at the time). What has been euphemistically referred to in public as issues of "tone" was in fact a major rewrite which grossly softened the severity of CSM's concerns and criticism of CCP.

Furthermore, we were told that CCP's position was that the minutes were a "joint report", as opposed to what minutes have traditionally been -- a report by the CSM to the community about the meeting.

The CSM was unanimously outraged. CCP was attempting to put their words in our mouths; in effect, turning us into unpaid spokesclones for the CCP PR and Marketing departments.

We informed CCP that this was totally unacceptable, and that if they had problems with our draft, they should specify them individually and we would attempt to address them. We were quite happy to make sure that their concerns, opinions and explanations were properly represented, just as we have always done in previous minutes.

This request was repeatedly ignored; instead, CCP kept offering minor revisions of their draft that did nothing to address our concerns.

When he returned from vacation, CCP Xhagen attempted to break the impasse with another draft that addressed some CSM concerns. I carefully compared it with our original draft, made the needed changes to ensure that the CSM's voice was unadulterated, left CCP's replies untouched (after all, I would not want to be accused of putting words in their mouths!) and submitted it to both CCP and CSM for comment.

It has been over a week, and we haven't gotten an answer yet as to what issues, if any, CCP has with our draft.

The bottom line for me is that in order for CSM to be effective (and useful to CCP!), it must be an independent voice that can express player concerns and communicate CCP's responses back to the community. How ironic that, after seeing just how well that can work back in June, some people in CCP want to muzzle the CSM.

Potter Stuart and the Purchase of Insurance

2011-07-02T16:47:00.001-04:00

The Joint Statement from the Peace Talks is out, and now it is up to each of you to judge whether it satisfies you or not, and whether any of the participants are worthy of praise or blame.

Before I go any further, I want to state, up front, that based on many hours of face-to-face discussions with Arnar (CCP Zulu), Stoffer (CCP Soundwave), other CCP employees, and a final meeting with CCP CEO Hilmar, it is my belief that:

* CCP has kept to the understanding hammered out during CSM5, that virtual goods would be limited to vanity items.

* CCP has no plans (and never has) to implement Pay-2-Win (P2W) microtransactions, be it "gold ammo" or anything similar.

* Arnar, as Senior Producer of EVE, is on record as saying he opposes the introduction of game-breaking stuff like P2W into EVE.

So, given that, why can't CCP just say NEVER when it comes to P2W? My impression is that there are two reasons:

1) The Problem of Demarcation

What exactly is P2W? It turns out to be a much harder than it appears at first glance. CSM had an extensive discussion of this with CCP, both in summit meetings and informally. Nobody could come up with a definition that covered all the possible cases and that would not allow P2W to sneak in the back door.

As US Supreme Court Justice Potte Stewart famously observed about pornography, he couldn't define it, but "I know it when I see it."

The truth is, we already have P2W in EVE. It's called PLEX. Right now, if you have enough money, you can buy PLEX, convert to ISK, and buy yourself as many supercaps as you want, and the pilots toons to fly them.

So the solution isn't as simple as saying "No P2W". It's the much more complicated problem of drawing boundaries on a map where reasonable people can disagree on the nature of the terrain at any given point.

Here's an example: currently, players are given one free neural remap every year, which lets them adjust their character statistics.

Imagine for a moment that instead of making this a free remap, CCP had decided that it should have a cost. Consider the following three options:

A) You can remap once per year at a cost of 400 million ISK.

B) You can remap once per year at a cost of a PLEX.

C) You can remap once per year at a cost of 3500 AURUM.

If you surveyed groups of players about the acceptability of these options (set aside the inevitable bitching that "it should be free" for a moment), I believe that A would be acceptable to the most players, and C to the fewest, and the difference in acceptability would be significant.

Why? Because ISK represents player effort, while AURUM is tainted by its association with monocles.

Yet in reality, all these options are roughly equivalent. If you have 400 million ISK, you can buy a PLEX. If you have a PLEX, you can convert it to 3500 AURUM. And if you have 3500 AURUM, you can buy some clothes and sell them in the market for ISK.

So, even if CCP said "We will NEVER introduce P2W", it is entirely likely that they might propose something that they think is not P2W, but a large portion of the community thinks is P2W. And in those grey areas, future shitstorms lurk.

2) The Problem of Flexibility

Nobody knows what the future of the MMO industry will be. Even the smartest people at CCP admit that they cannot see more than :18months: into the future. So if CCP says "NEVER", they may be faced with a situation a couple of years down the road where they believe they are forced by changes in the market environment to introduce something that many players consider P2W, resulting in accusations of a betrayal of trust.

I pointed out to both Arnar and Hilmar that retaining this future flexibility comes at the cost of not satisfying some of the present community; some players may not return unless they hear NEVER, and the protests may get worse.

Thus, saying "NEVER" is like buying insurance against a business risk, with the premium paid in the future in terms of lost flexibility. The closer you get to "NEVER", the better the insurance, but the greater the cost.

How much insurance CCP was willing to buy was, of course, up to them.

Going Forward

One thing that has become very obvious is that to avoid future shitstorms, CCP is going to have to consult the CSM both more often, and at an earlier stage, in particular when it comes to anything that has even a whiff of being P2W. I can tell you that this was already starting to happen before the current crisis, so despite the communications failures that made things worse (in particular, the Noble Exchange rollout fiasco), I am guardedly optimistic.

As for me, I'm still refining my own definition of porno... er, P2W. Perhaps you can help me with that. But that's a task for tomorrow, right now I need to catch up on about a week's lost sleep.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray to Scotty my ship to keep.
And if I die before I wake,
No, my stuff you cannot take.

The Peace Talks - Day One

2011-06-30T14:31:00.001-04:00

The first day of the great Incarna Peace Talks is over. I will not attempt to go into incredibly great detail in this posting; I just want to give a broad overview and offer some impressions. To be honest, I'm exhausted and only have a few minutes before dinner.

I want to start by saying that everyone at CCP, and in particular CCP Zulu, was very open and frank about their opinions, and provided any information CSM requested. This was very useful.

In the morning, we discussed issues regarding the rollout of Incarna and the Captain's Quarters. Just about everything people have been bitching about and then some was discussed in detail -- melting video cards, multiboxing, lighting, the death of ship spinning, just to name a few.

CCP started this meeting by saying something incredibly smart. It gave me hope that the entire summit would be a success, but you will have to wait to find out what it was. Suffer, bitches.

Then, after lunch, we spent over 3 hours discussing the Noble Exchange rollout and virtual goods pricing. This was a very passionate session, to say the least.

CSM got a complete rundown on the overall CCP vanity goods strategy, and it became obvious how a series of mistakes and communications breakdowns -- both internal at CCP, to CSM, and in their messaging to you (and lack thereof) -- resulted in the NEX rollout debacle.

There should be a devblog coming out in the very near future that explains CCP's strategy, puts things into context, and hopefully starts healing this self-inflicted wound. Anyone can shoot themselves in the foot, or the ass, but in this case CCP managed to do both with one shot, which takes real skill.

The day ended with some work-in-progress demos of the other CQs and an establishment. Some nice work, and the Gallente CQ is the best CQ IMHO.

Tomorrow, we will tackle the big question: Does CCP have plans to release game-affecting virtual goods (aka "gold ammo")?

Suggestion of the day: adding a "Just Say NO to Virtual Goods" t-shirt to the Noble Exchange, priced higher than a monocle. Is CCP fearless enough to do it?

The Six Stages of CSMing

2011-06-27T20:23:00.000-04:00

Given the drama of recent days, and the work yet to be done in the days to follow, it is not surprising that many players have asked me what it's like to be on CSM.

To help explain this, I have created a CSM logo...

This illustrates six of the emotions you will experience if you get elected to the CSM.

Now this is all in good fun, of course, but there is a serious point that I'd like to make. A lot of us get really upset when we see CCP do something that seems really, really dumb. But as a CSM, you get to meet and interact with CCP people on an extended basis, and none of them are stupid. So why do smart people seem to do dumb things?

To answer this, I turn to the great philosopher Donald Rumsfeld, who famously said:

"There are known-knowns; there are things we know we know.

We also know there are known-unknowns;

that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.

But there are also unknown-unknowns,

the ones we don't know we don't know."

Smart people are very good at handling known-knowns and known-unknowns, but they have significant problems with unknown-unknowns. They are very good at convincing themselves that there are no unknown unknowns -- after all, they're smart, so if there were any, they'd have figured them out.

When CCP is dealing with a problem that only concerns known-knowns, they do a pretty good job. And more and more frequently, when they know there are known-unknowns, they ask for CSM input, because the fact that we have a different perspective from them (and thus might know a known-unknown) is a known-known.

But when they run into an unknown-unknown, that's when it all goes to hell. Because in that case, why bother asking for an outside opinion?

If there is one lesson I hope CCP learns from recent events, it is this:

"You are in the greatest danger of making a mistake when you are absolutely sure you are correct. Doubt and uncertainty are your friends."

For in EVE, there are always unknown-unknowns. It's by design...

CCP's Defining Question

2011-06-25T11:22:00.000-04:00

The defining question that is behind the riots that are going on both on the forums and in the game is a simple one:

"Will CCP introduce game-affecting virtual goods, aka Gold Ammo"?

We thought we knew the answer to this question, based on CSM's meetings with CCP in October and December, and CCP Zulu's November devblog:

"The scope will be (and there‘s no design has been done around this, we‘re just talking strategy now) that anything that doesn‘t affect gameplay directly can be, potentially, sold for PLEX or other means."

And yet now, we are barraged with evidence that this is no longer the case: the Ishukone Scorpion trial balloon, the leaks of CCP's internal magazine, "Fearless", and Hilmar's Global Email, and perhaps most damningly, the fact that CCP Zulu's most recent devblog totally avoided this key issue, despite feedback from the CSM that it had to be addressed. This last devblog was particularly worrying to me, because it didn't "sound" like Zulu at all, it sounded like someone was holding a gun to his head and making him recite a message.

All of this points to the fact that golden ammo is no longer off-limits, and EVE players are rightfully concerned. For gold ammo, while appropriate for a casual game with a pump-and-dump subscriber strategy, strikes at the core of the deep social cohesion that makes EVE so special -- we don't play EVE because of its game mechanics and UI, we play EVE despite these things. We play EVE because it's the only game out there that fosters such deep, long-term social connections, and we play for years, not months.

This is EVE's secret sauce, and the players are up in arms because CCP appears to be not only pissing in it, but pointlessly pissing in it.

So forget about the botched NEX store pricing -- that can be fixed.

And forget about eventually being forced to keep the Captain's Quarters -- that's a long-term issue that can be addressed.

The defining question that CCP must ask itself is a simple one: "Are you willing to bet your company on gold ammo?"

And whatever the answer is, they need to communicate it to us quickly, unambiguously, and dramatically.

Black Friday

2011-06-24T18:11:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning to find the forums even more afire with rage about Incarna, the "Fearless" newsletter, and the Virtual Goods store. I could tell in a few minutes that I wasn't going to get anything else done today.

"I can't work today, dear," I told my wife, "EVE is on fire."

"Piss on EVE, then", she replied.

"I would, if I thought it would help."

So, I've spent most of the last 12 hours answering player questions, trying to give CCP good feedback on the issues, trying to get them to see how bad things have gotten. My fellow CSMs were doing the same.

Late in the day, we were presented with a draft devblog, and asked to comment on it. With the exception of the removal of a rather unfortunate analogy, that draft was essentially identical to what was just published.

None of CSM's concerns -- the ones the players were asking about -- were addressed; in particular:

* Will non-vanity virtual goods be introduced?

* Will CCP change their virtual goods pricing strategy?

* Will the CQ remain optional, or will it eventually be forced on the players?

To say that CSM is disappointed by the contents of this devblog would be an understatement. Incredulous is more like it.

Based on the devblog, and my impressions from the conversations I have had in recent days, it is my opinion that CCP has decided upon a strategy with respect to virtual goods and Incarna, and that they are going to fearlessly implement it regardless of feedback from CSM or the players.

Our words, and yours, appear worthless. Only our actions may have weight.

Incarna - Show Me The Metrics!

2011-06-22T16:01:00.000-04:00

Well, Incarna has arrived, and all is not well in New Eden. Apart from the usual patch issues, some of them infuriating (my current favorite: the preferences folder location on the Mac was changed without notice and hard-coded, so running multiple clients is messed up -- and this was not fixed despite being reported weeks ago!), we have all the :rage: about Incarna and the new Noble Exchange.

While I believe that in the long run, Incarna will be a positive addition to EVE, it's gotten off to a very rocky start. The Captain's Quarters are a resource hog, the character quality doesn't even come close to what you see in the character portraits, and it doesn't add any gameplay. The net result is that a lot of people have been turning it off -- in particular, people running multiple clients (which I would be doing if it wasn't for the fact that I use the Mac client!). And note: the ability to disable the CQ is temporary -- as soon as performance is deemed adequate, it is likely that usage will be enforced.

One positive change that hasn't been getting a lot of attention: the NPE is significantly improved. I'm pleased about this since the CSM (and me in particular) have been pointing out that improving noob retention is a huge win. CSM got a big report on these improvements at the summit, and this will be detailed in the upcoming minutes (current status: 3rd draft, probably out by end of month).

The other big controversy is :monocle-gate: -- the insanely high prices for the few items introduced in the new Noble Exchange MT store. While I'm pleased that CCP has made clothing being worn indestructible (I argued at the summit that this would increase uptake, since it's a pain to constantly have to take off your monocle when undocking, lest you be podded and lose it), CCP seems to think that this makes these items more valuable than their real-life counterparts. Umm, no. I certainly think you can charge more for an indestructible vanity item than for one that can be blown up, but $70 for a monocle?

Needless to say, CSM was not consulted on the issue of monocle pricing.

Looking at the business consequences of Incarna, it will be interesting to see if CCP is fearless enough to go looking at metrics that might disconfirm their impression that Incarna is as wonderful as two blondes on a waterbed (I do not want to even speculate on the Aurum price of such a micro-transaction).

Two that I think will be very interesting are:

* What percentage of people who have logged in and experienced the CQ have turned it off?

* Has the introduction of the Noble Exchange increased sales of Game Time Cards, both on an overall basis, and in terms of GTCs bought per active character? Because if it hasn't, then it doesn't matter how many monocles you're selling, it's just moving the money from one pocket to another.

CSM has asked CCP to gather these metrics and tell us what they are. Whether or not they do so is, of course, a very compelling metric in its own right.

CSM Summit - Day 3 : "Girls play EVE?"

2011-05-20T22:22:00.000-04:00

Nullsec Industrialization & Risk/Reward by Security Status

This became a combined session that started with a brainstorming session, then evolved into a broad discussion of many nullsec related issues.

Newbie Retention / NPE

CSM was briefed by CCP Flying Scotsman the performance of the old NPE and the steps they are taking to make the new Incarna NPE a better creator of hopelessly addicted degenerate EVE players. NPE improvement will be an ongoing process, and CCP has some interesting plans for future improvement.

Aesthetics / Ship Art

CSM was briefed on the way the art department works, and gained a greater appreciation of the amount of effort needed to create new art or revise old art (such as ship models, which are being upgraded to a new system that is much more flexible than the one used on most current ships). We got feedback on the time and effort needed to implement some improvements that many players of EVE would like to see, which will help us prioritize our requests.

EVE Economics

Dr. Eyjólfur provided the CSM with some XXX NDA economic graph porn, including information about the effects of a recent and somewhat controversial change to the game, details on PLEX usage, insight into subscriber trends, and the number of people who play EVE and claim to be women in real life.

Chat with Hilmar

Chats with Hilmar are always interesting; he gave us his perspective on the CSM and how he would like it to evolve, and CSM reported on the results of the summit so far, emphasized the importance of recent CCP initiatives like Team Gridlock, and made some suggestions for the future.

Ship Balance Iteration

CCP wants to allocate resources to continuous ship balancing. Much of this session revolved around discussions of the best ways to manage this process and prioritizing the ships in the most need of love (or hate, as the case may be). As to who the lucky winners and unlucky victims are, you will have to wait for the minutes.

Quote of the Day: "EVE is like Golf" -- Hilmar.

CSM Summit - Day 2 : "Dreaming about Quality Assurance"

2011-05-20T11:50:00.001-04:00

EVE UI

The UI team discussed both the performance and capability improvements of Carbon UI -- coming soon to a server near you™. We also had an extensive discussion of a particular UI feature and how it could be improved both in terms of player utility and reduced server load.

Customer Support

We had an extensive discussion on reimbursement policies, and also tools that would help make reimbursement decisions easier to make.

The War on Bots

CCP Sreegs and his band of merry men have been quite busy making life hell for botters. His presentation included copious amounts of chart porn, which hopefully will appear in a devblog in the near future.

The War on Lag

Team Gridlock presented their latest results, and demoed a new tool that is making it easier for them to identify optimization opportunities. We also discussed Time Dilation in some detail. Expect a devblog on this as well.

EVE QA

QA gave an overview of the QA processes to get the new members of the CSM up to speed. Also discussed: ways to improve participation in mass tests and make bug reporting less painful.

POS Misery

We had a broad discussion not only of possible near-term "papercuts" tweaks to reduce the pain of POS's, but also CCP's longer term plans. Deceased Equines, and whether they should be beaten, were discussed.

Feature Abandonment

A broad discussion of the resource contention issues that relate to this vexing issue -- and what CSM can do -- segued into discussions of wormhole space, Incarna, POS's, ship balancing, and several other items. At the end of this session, CCP Zinfandel popped in to show the CSM some of the upcoming Incarna vanity clothing items, which looked really, really sweet.

Quote of the Day: "There are very few people who dream of a career in QA" -- CCP Heimdall

CSM Summit - Day 1: "Let them eat Cake"

2011-05-19T10:32:00.001-04:00

This will be a very high-level summary of the day's meetings; the meat will come in both the minutes and devblogs.

CSM: Introduction

After the ritual deflowering of the CSM noobs, this session was devoted to discussion of CSM's relationship with CCP, and possible improvements in CSM processes.

BFF: Thousand Little Things

This meeting started off with a discussion of CCP development processes, then moved on to ways CSM can help with prioritization of the papercuts themselves.

EVE: Flying in Space & EVE: Future

Much of what was discussed here was NDA, but ranged over a broad number of topics. There will be much more in the minutes once we work out what things CCP is comfortable talking about. However, the tone was quite positive and the meetings were productive.

EVE/DUST Link

This session will almost certainly be 100% NDA.

EVE Marketing

CCP Zinfandel, reacting to the positive reaction to providing the CSM with free drinks the night before, upped the ante by providing us with cake. The discussions involved marketing approaches for summer 2011, some interesting new proposals, and some details on the implementation of vanity microtransactions.

Quote of the Day: "I get satisfaction every time I pull it out" -- CCP Zinfandel, discussing a very personal microtransaction.

CSM Summit - Day 0: "Quest for Bacon"

2011-05-18T09:27:00.000-04:00

After arriving at Keflavik after 5 hours of sleepless agony in a thrice-damned IcelandAir Slab-o-Lava seat, we cab into RVK. We are deposited at the Hotel Fron, which has good rooms and wifi, but a limited free breakfast.

This becomes a serious problem when CSM Chairman Mittens arrives on the scene, declaring himself possessed of a hunger that only copious amounts of bacon can assuage.

Unfortunately, there is no bacon to be had. Mittens growls at the waiter that "I find your lack of bacon... disturbing", then swears he will wreak vengeance upon CCP for having the temerity to lodge him in a bacon-challenged hotel. We agree to nap until lunchtime, then reconvene.

After your humble correspondent deals with a minor logistical matter -- he forgot to pack his jacket, a significant problem in Iceland, which is currently quite bright but a wee bit nippy -- the CSM ventures out in a quest for both bacon and free wifi, ending up at Cafe Paris. Enough bacon is procured to deal with Mittens' immediate cured-ham needs, but it is clear that only having a bacon sub at Nonni's will prevent carnage the next day.

After more discussion of CSM strategy, we repair back to the hotel for a pre-dinner nap, then head out to Nonni's where Mittens, desperate to inhale bacon, grabs the wrong sub. His screams of anguish echo down the street.

We then repair to a cosy bar, where CCP Zinfandel buys multiple rounds of drinks for the CSM. By midnight, we have all agreed to support the implementation of microtransactions for just about everything in the game, including PLEX for docking, PLEX for jumping, and PLEX for PLEX.

The CSM summit has begun.

Democracy is Futile!

2011-03-17T10:46:00.000-04:00

A few posts back, I mentioned that CCP had asked the CSM for election banner ideas. Well, here's another one of mine that they decided to run with...

Obligatory Vote-For-Trebor Link

I demonstrate my new “Gas Mining” technique... :)

2011-03-15T16:57:00.000-04:00

Obligatory Vote-For-Trebor Link

I'm apparently much more distinguished than I thought...

2011-03-14T18:12:00.000-04:00

Obligatory Vote-For-Trebor Link

Those horrible rumors about Seleene and Trebor are absolutely false...

2011-03-13T15:42:00.001-04:00

Despite what you might think when you see this poster,

we're not an old married couple.

We're just good friends. Honest!

That said, Seleene, put some damn clothes on!

After all, "it's very cold in space..."

Obligatory Vote-for-Trebor Link

Less Obligatory Vote-for-Seleene Link

Surfing the Sea of The Mittani's Mud

2011-03-10T09:13:00.002-05:00

Over the past few days, I've been the target of a big smear campaign by The Mittani and his goons.

It's the usual bullshit. Quote mining out of context, character assassination, ad hominem attacks, the big lie -- all the classic techniques. They even started a campaign to have my wikipedia page deleted (currently failing horribly) and twice vandalized the page.

The Mittani is running on a platform that only he and his friends can make the CSM effective, so it's vitally important to discredit anyone who can put the lie to his fundamental argument. The truth is that CSM 5 has been extraordinarily effective, and I was one of the biggest reasons why.

CSM Chair Mynxee says my performance "should serve as the Gold Standard for CSM delegate performance." Even Vuk Lau, whom I had numerous disagreements with on CSM 5, agrees that I was "[the] most dedicated delegate of CSM 5 and CSM 6 will be blessed with him on board." And so do a great many players, judging from their supportive mails, PM's and forum posts.

And that is exactly why The Mittani and his buddies are running for CSM. He's realized that it is actually very, very effective at influencing CCP, and he wants to try to use it as a vehicle to advance his own petty in-game interests, at the expense of the vast majority of the players of EVE.

You would think that nobody would trust the word of EVE's most famous spymaster and disinformation artist, but as any student of history will tell you, if you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it. And The Mittani has lots of weak-minded parrots at his beck and call.

But you can put a stop to this. You can teach The Mittani a lesson in civility.

I've spent 2-3 hours a day working to build the CSM over the last 10 months. Now I'm asking you to spend a few minutes of your time to make sure all that work doesn't go to waste.

Please send the following evemail to all your corpies, alliance mates, and friends. Spread the word! Blog, Post, Tweet and Facebook. Go Viral!

The choice you make right now, at this very moment, could decide whether CSM 6 continues to build on the hard work of CSM 5, or becomes the forum for The Mittani's attempt to twist EVE to his own advantage.

If you make the right decision, then this YouTube clip should give you an idea of what you'll do to The Mittani's plans.

My most appreciative thanks, in advance,

Trebor

PS: If you want to drop everything and vote for me right now, just click here.

Hi,

I just wanted to drop you a note to let you know about something really disturbing that's going on in the CSM elections.

The Mittani is so scared that Trebor Daehdoow is going to get re-elected that he's unleashed a massive troll and smear campaign against him. It's classic goon bullshit.

See: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1472157&page=1#4

But as Trebor points out in "Trebor's Complete Guide to Mud", he is not the real target of this campaign. The real victims are a bunch of good candidates who deserve to be on the CSM - guys like Seleene, Ripard Teg, Meissa Anunthiel, Jonathon Silence, and Roc Weiler.

See: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1479234

Please do me the favor of checking out the threads, and consider voting for Trebor Daehdoow, or one of the guys listed above. And pass this message on to your friends.

The Mittani claims that he, and only he, can make the CSM effective. But the truth is, the CSM is very effective, and that's the reason The Mittani is running. Don't buy the lie!

Thanks a lot!

You can vote for Trebor by clicking this link: http://www.eveonline.com/council/voting/Vote.asp?c=358

The Polls are Open! Vote Early, and Often!

2011-03-09T09:37:00.001-05:00

The polls are open in the CSM election, so please take the time to vote. While obviously I'd like you to vote for me, the most important thing is that you express your opinion. Remember, if you don't vote, don't bitch. Here's a nice easy-to-click voting button you can use:

(note: you may be asked to log in when you get to eveonline.com;

after that you'll go to my voting page)

On a side note, the CSM is not all hard work. CCP Diagoras foolishly asked the CSM to come up with slogans for CSM-related election banners. Here is one of mine that just started running.

The HOPE poster, it is not...

2011-03-05T08:14:00.000-05:00

Several people who apparently think I should be re-elected have been exercising their rights to free speech in poster form. Enjoy! Perhaps I should offer a prize for the best poster?

This is from famous shadowy Secret Master of EVE, Virtuozzo, a man renowned for never using one word where five will do just fine. The reference to "Team Awesome" is perhaps a bit rude, Virt...

Don's contribution will perhaps appeal to the more algorithmically-inclined voter...

Campaign Page (with free lottery!) • EVE-O Campaign Thread

Billions in Bribes for Ballots

2011-02-25T17:40:00.001-05:00

One of the cute things I decided to do with my CSM6 campaign is get a little viral mojo going with a lottery. The top prize is 6B ISK, but there are two twists: first, the actual top prize depends on how many votes I get (1M ISK per vote), and second, you can win sub-prizes by being the player that recruits the actual winner -- multiple levels deep.

Obviously, my evil plan is to get people to fly all over the game promoting my candidacy in local, pestering their corpies to vote for me, sticking links in their forum signatures, mention it in blog posts, and so on.

Will it work? That's up to you -- you can find details on the Billions for Ballots Lottery here. Attempts to "honestly" cheat to gain a better chance of winning the lottery are encouraged (this is EVE, after all!)

My thanks to Mynxee for donating 4B ISK to the prize fund. The endorsement she gave me was great, but money speaks louder than words!

Let the trolling begin!

2011-02-22T11:34:00.000-05:00

Since several other significant candidates have kicked off their re-election campaigns in Jita Park Speaker's Corner, I've joined in by creating my official re-election thread there. I look forward to a robust discussion of the issues that affect the lives of all citizens of New Eden, so don't be afraid to ask hard questions.

And don't forget to visit my official manifesto page and sign up for the free lottery!

Glutton for Punishment

2011-02-09T07:20:00.000-05:00

Having apparently not yet plumbed the depths of my own masochism, I find myself unable to resist the compulsion to run for re-election to the CSM. You can find complete details on my campaign platform on my official campaign page.

I won't spoil all of the goodies in this post, but my diabolical re-election strategy involves both massive bribery and bunny-slippers. To find out more, you'll have to click the link.

I hope you will all honor me with your votes, and permit me to continue serving the EVE community as a CSM delegate.

December Summit Quick Report

2010-12-20T06:57:00.001-05:00

Here are my quick observations of the summit meetings; we are currently hard at work editing up the minutes and hope to have them out by then end of the year.

To toughen us up, CCP put us in a hotel twice as far away from their offices; this wasn't a big issue until the day when we had to walk there and back in sub-freezing weather with the added bonus of a 50 mph+ wind; several of the lighter CSMs were in danger of being blown into the ocean.

Carbonation and Core - a useful session that shed some more light on what this team of devs do; well received devblogs will no doubt continue to emanate from this group.

Incarna - After having done a lot of framework development work, CCP is now finally able to turn to the task of implementing this aspect of their Ultimate Sci-Fi Simulator. But what this means is that any player who expects something epic this summer will likely be disappointed.

With respect to this initial release, my personal opinion is that they should ensure that the initial entry area is polished until it glows, as opposed to a more extensive release. After all, this will be the first time that all the new framework stuff is truly battle-tested, so some caution might be warranted.

CSM was united in insisting that no current gameplay be shifted into Incarna (to force interaction with Incarna, for example), and that players should have the option of entering Incarna when docking in a manner that is functionally equivalent to the current docking hangar display (such as, for example, looking out a window at your ship, or being on a balcony looking up at it). Furthermore, it was considered essential that there be no performance hit when doing a fast dock/ship change/undock as compared to the present day.

CCP seemed to be very receptive to these suggestions.

CCP's tentative plans for some additional gameplay that spans both Incarna and in-space EVE could be quite interesting IMHO, but it is too soon to make a solid judgement on them.

We further urged CCP to communicate to the players as much information about Incarna and their roadmap as soon as possible. However, one concern I have is that as this roadmap develops, ideas will be adopted just because they are "awesome". I am of the view that :awesome: is not a reason for doing something; it is the emergent result of hard work and careful thought.

As urged by the CSM in October, microtransactions will only be used for vanity items. Some of the vanity goods that were discussed will most likely be well-received.

The discussions on the EVE economy and RMT were quite detailed and also spawned additional discussions over food and drink. I look forward to seeing what develops from these.

Forums - the Next Generation look very nice, and have some features that I personally like a lot. I plan to lobby for additional features that will be of use to everyone but can also be adapted to assist CSM functions (ie: having cake and eating it too)

We had an unannounced, and productive session with Hilmar. However, one thing he said -- that CCP likes to throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks -- gave me some pause. That kind of approach is fine for a small company where the costs of failure are low. However, with over 600 employees, throwing stuff against the wall is not enough; you have to check and make sure that what is sticking to it isn't crap.

With respect to the new NEOCON feature, it seems very nice, and bears close inspection.

I was particularly impressed, once again, with the UI team, who came to our session incredibly well prepared. No doubt Bara and Katrin will in the near future not be the only members of the team to belong to the Order of the Spork, and they can expect some serious :csmlove: in the minutes.

The 3-hour nullsec meeting with Arnar and Matt (Greyscale) was a really intense and productive one.

I'm not going to spill much about that meeting, except to say that the minutes of it will be extremely interesting, and that I now have a metric for a productive CSM meeting -- it's one where we try and convince the devs to do things that will render them unemployable, and they try and convince us to agree to things that will render us unelectable. I heard things in that meeting that I didn't expect to hear. Epic stuff, trust me.

The meeting with QA was also quite enlightening; Mynxee managed to skype in from a Starbucks, and was represented at the table by a small red pod-shaped sugar-substitute dispenser that acted as a non-maskable interrupt.

In the CSM issues meeting we played a really interesting development resources allocation game that will feed back into resource planning. I have some quibbles about the game-design of this game-design game, but it might have some broader applications if they ITERATE on it.

We finished the summit with the Fanfest meeting; we advised them that the players are coming for face-time with the rock-stars (devs) and not the roadies (us). Some interesting new possibilities for fanfest activities were discussed.

In small ceremonies, CCP PrismX and CCP Fallout were inducted into the Order of the Spork, PrismX for doing the hard work on removing learning skills, and Fallout for general long-term awesomeness. I hope they use their Sporkholder status for good and not evil.

I must however end on a disquieting note: at dinner on Wednesday, CCP Explorer and I found ourselves actually agreeing on some issues. This was extremely disturbing to both of us at the time, but I can report that by the next day, the improbability field collapsed to 1:1 and normality resumed.

The Department of Difficult and Embarrassing Questions

2010-12-09T17:51:00.000-05:00

In just a few days, the CSM will be off to Iceland once again to do battle for Truth, Justice, and (in my case) the Gallentean Way. So it occurred to us that it might be useful to ask the players what questions they'd like us to ask CCP.

To that end, we have posted on EVE-O and Scrapheap Challenge the current meeting schedule, and you are invited to give us insights, lists of hard questions to ask, and so on. Enjoy!

The Great Learning Skills Massacre

2010-11-26T14:50:00.000-05:00

As practically everyone has heard by now, CCP has decided to remove learning skills. While my personal opinion is that this is good for the health of the game (in particular, by making the game much more noob-friendly), there are certain aspects to the way CCP is doing things that have some players upset.

Most of the complaints are coming from players who have trained advanced learning skills to V. Under the new system, those players will train at a slightly lower peak rate, and despite the fact that they will be getting millions of skill points to reallocate now into skills that affect their gameplay, they feel this is a nerf.

Additionally, and perhaps more crucially, they feel that everyone who didn't bite the bullet, take the long-term view, and train the advanced skills is getting a huge buff, while they are getting nerfed, or at best, treated neutrally. While I can understand this feeling, I think it is a bit overblown -- after all, they have had the benefit of faster training up until this point. So the nerf, such as it is, is that they will no longer have a long-term training edge.

One thing to keep in mind is that while CCP has implemented most of the CSM's Remove Learning Skills proposal, they left out two small but important elements -- allowing attribute remaps to be slightly more extreme (which brings the max training rate to within a few SP/hr of the previous max rate), and providing an extra remap (which lets thoughtful players maximize the benefits of the change as soon as possible). The stated reason for this is that CCP did not think they could get a bigger package of changes through QA in time to meet the release deadline -- and to be honest, I have no reason to believe they are being disingenuous about that (quite the opposite, in fact).

However, those two changes would have soothed some hurt feelings, and it is important to note that they could be implemented at a later time, independent from the currently planned changes. I for one hope that CCP will recognize this and commit to doing this if possible.

With respect to how to maximize the benefit you can get from the death of learning skills, it should be obvious that if you can train learning skills at a high SP/hour rate, you should do so from now until they are removed. You will then get those skillpoints back, and can apply them to skills that would train at a lower rate. As one poster on SHC remarked, "Half the game is training Clarity V".

I would also recommend that you consider saving some of the skillpoints for a rainy day -- they will come in very handy when you want to train for a flavor-of-the-month ship, or when CCP introduces new skills into the game.

Prioritization Season

2010-11-20T20:14:00.000-05:00

I must apologize for the lack of posts recently, but at least I have the excuse that I have been busy on CSM-related activities. By now everyone should have read the devblog on the October meetings, and now that that is done, CSM is looking forward to two important events -- the December Summit, and the Winter Planning Meetings.

At the Summit, we will be discussing a variety of topics, with many of the usual suspects getting their own meetings. But arguably just as important are the planning meetings.

CCP uses the planning meetings to decide what gets onto the schedule for the next 6-month development cycle, and CSM competes for time and attention with all the other stakeholders. While CSM members are not present at the planning meetings, we are represented at them by CCP Xhagen, and in order for him to do that job well, we need to provide him with some marching orders in terms of what we believe needs the most attention.

This is where you come in. Just like we did in August for the previous cycle, CSM is soliciting feedback from players as to what items in our list of passed issues are most important to you. With over 200 items to choose from, we've got a better selection than you'll find at the famous buffet of the Golden Trough. So head on over to the November 2010 Prioritization thread and let us know what issues are most important to you.

Voting ends at DownTime on Thursday the 25th.

Lagnarök

2010-10-12T10:27:00.000-04:00

The second day of the CSM summit kicked off with a 2.5 hour meeting on CCP's lag-fighting efforts. CCP Veritas keynoted an extensive presentation on not only what CCP is doing, but the procedures they have put into place to improve the efficiency of their efforts.

I will not go into great detail here, because I don't want to steal their thunder -- there was enough for several devblogs, which CSM encouraged CCP to produce, of course. However, I will hit some of the highlights so you have some idea of what to expect.

In the short term, CCP is working hard on issues like Session Changes, Module Cycling, performance improvements on heavily loaded nodes (such as Jita), and general performance improvements that provide more headroom (which means a server node can handle more people). These changes have both direct and indirect effects on fleet fight performance, often in ways you might not expect.

In the longer term, CCP wants to ensure that heavily loaded nodes exhibit graceful and predictable performance degradation (as opposed to suddenly falling off a cliff and dying horribly), increase performance limits, and transition to running systems on multiple cores.

None of this is really new, but what made a particular impression on me is the obvious seriousness of the effort being made to address lag; it was serious before, but now it is deadly-serious. The lag-fighters are no longer just an ad-hoc task force, but a full dedicated team.

With respect to the oft-expressed opinion of the player-base that Dominion caused a huge increase in lag, CCP Veritas presented a very interesting analysis of what actually happened that I think everyone will find fascinating when it appears (hint, hint) in devblog form. Was there more lag? Yes. Did it happen for the reasons most people think? Nope. Ah, EVE, "Unexpected Consequences Online" -- gotta love this game.

Ragnarök in Reykjavik

2010-10-12T05:06:00.000-04:00

After a truly epic journey involving an absolutely excruciating flight on IcelandAir, whose seats should be outlawed under the Geneva Convention as instruments of torture, your humble correspondent, jet-lagged, sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated, and under-medicated, girded his loins, and, in the brave company of the rest of the CSM (doughty forum-warriors all), descended upon CCP HQ for the first day of our special bonus summit, armed only with his trusty Gallente Navy Tritanium Assault Spork, the Official Weapon of the CSM™.

Three times did we clash with the fearsome Jötunn of Iceland in furious meeting. When the sun set, blood red on the horizon, many were the powerpoints that lay broken and bleeding on the floor of the conference cave. One day, the bards will sing of the many brave deeds of your elected representatives, but that day will only come after expiration of the fearsome NDA's, which even the bravest heroes dare not challenge, lest they be cast into the outer darkness.

Each CSM, in turn, stood at the vanguard, hurling sharp comments at our opponents, and yeah, let it be known that no trolls were to be found on either side of the battle. The fight was fair, the combatants cheerful, and the most skillful blows were rewarded with the applause of all involved.

But what, you ask, was learned this day? What plans do the Jötunn have for the future of EVE? To find out these things, the CSM captured and interrogated King Hilmar himself. We will provide more details later, but in summary:

* Production of shiny new things will be reduced, so that more polish can be manufactured and applied to that which already exists.

* The Jötunn will apply dark knowledge they have wrested from the Camarilla to make possible even more titanic battles in New Eden, and have developed ways to administer additional cures for the mysterious malady known as "Lag" more quickly.

* Player (and CSM) complaints have moved the stony hearts of the Jötunn, and they will endeavor to be more responsive to our desires in the future.

The burning question of the day was, of course, that of microtransactions, which, despite several hours of trying, I cannot cast into faux Norse mythological allusion; therefore the last part of this report will have to be delivered straight. The CSM expressed in no uncertain terms the player reaction to the introduction of PLEX for Remaps, and listened to CCP's rationale for introducing them.

CCP stated that PLEX for Remaps was not the first step of either changing EVE to be a microtransaction-based game, or making additional microtransactions effectively required for competitive gameplay. They viewed it as a very small experiment to expand the utility of PLEX and honestly did not think that it would be considered a significant gameplay change, or be widely used except as a repair mechanism.

The CSM explained why the players believe this was a mistake, and made several suggestions about possible solutions. CCP seemed to take these suggestions seriously, but no commitments were made. However, we will be having a second meeting tomorrow with Count Eyjo, Chancellor of the Exchequer, that will touch upon this issue, and we may be able to report further progress at that time. In addition, King Hilmar asked the CSM to prepare a detailed report upon this subject, which he promised to consider most carefully.

At this point, we released the King from the bonds we had placed upon him, in part because he was being quite reasonable (for a Jötunn, anyway), but mostly because we were getting hungry and he promised to buy us lunch.

Bára Gunnarsdóttir and the Menus of Doom

2010-10-01T15:45:00.000-04:00

Something interesting has just gone live on SiSi, the EVE Online Test Server.

Over the past few weeks, CCP karkur has been implementing a cunning little hack to restructure the EVE contextual menus, making the groupings more coherent, and reordering the groups in a (hopefully) better way. This is a skunk-works project that the CSM ("Your tax ISK at work") has been helping out on, by generating some rough menu categorizations, and providing feedback as to possible ways to handle some of the issues that arise.

However, at this point, CCP karkur needs your help. If you have the time, please log on to SiSi (instructions here), check out the new menu layouts, and give her feedback in this Test Server thread. The current layouts are just a first draft, and your feedback can really help improve them.

There are more details in the forum thread, so please read it before jumping on SiSi!

Ask not what you can do for CSM, Ask what CSM can do for you.

2010-09-17T11:08:00.000-04:00

Well, it has taken a while to pull together, but today marks the publication of the first CSM5 devblog. In it you'll find quite a few tidbits of information, such as what items in the CSM backlog are in the process of being implemented in the Winter expansion, and the news that CCP has invited CSM back to Iceland in October for a special summit aimed at working out the best way for CSM to use its fabled "stakeholder" powers.

To be honest, at this point I don't know exactly what to expect next month -- will our fat asses be kissed, or spanked? But this meeting is a very interesting development, and the request for it originated with CCP, not CSM. We weren't kidding in the devblog when we said that CCP has done more communicating with CSM5 than with all the previous CSMs combined.

This is a very encouraging thing, to be honest. It doesn't mean that CCP will be delivering puppies and kittens to the players as fast as we'd all like, but it appears to represent a significant change in CCP's relationship to the players, a reversion towards the way things were in the early days (or so I'm told -- being a Mac weenie, I only started playing in late 2007).

The trick, of course, will be to get in place procedures that reinforce this new open attitude, and make it obvious to CCP that this new direction is a win for them.

PS: subscribe to the CSM-NEWS mailing list in-game for occasional updates from CSM about such things as mass-testing.

The Dog Days of August

2010-08-09T19:30:00.000-04:00

The summer can be a bit of a slow time in EVE, but for the CSM, the first week of August has seen a flurry of activity.

In about a week, CCP will hold its Release Planning Meeting, in which it will be decided what the devs will work on for the Winter expansion. As stakeholders, CSM is supposed to have some input into this process, and will be represented at the meeting by CCP Diagoras.

So the CSM had to decide what items in our backlog we wanted to push, and I volunteered to take the lead on this.

The method I chose was to crowdsource a priority list of all the backlog items, getting interested EVE players to vote on what was most important to them. You can read about the methodology and see the results here.

To do this I had to whip up some vote counting software, but this was not a difficult task -- we old programmers don't write code anymore, we just remember it and type it in again.

Once we had the raw list from the players, the CSM got together and divided the items into Small, Medium and Large items, trimmed the list of things we know CCP has already rejected (alas, the wiki lists I used for the original list were a little out of date), then winnowed the list to the best items, bumping up the position of items that multiple CSMs felt were particularly important.

Over the next week, we hope to get feedback from CCP about our list of items, and if possible iterate them into more easily implemented proposals. And then, we hope, CCP may see the light and devote significant resources to implementing the items that the players have once again demonstrated are important to them.

My thanks to the almost 300 people who helped the CSM create our list.

Cross-circuiting to "B"

2010-07-28T17:16:00.004-04:00

Anyone who follows EVE is by now aware of CCP Zulu's Iterative development and what's happening in 2011 devblog, and the controversial threadnaught it spawned (1742 posts at the time of writing).

In the devblog, Zulu revealed how many people were working on EVE, and what they were working on. Unfortunately for him, EVE players are spreadsheet-whores, and after a few taps on their pocket-calculators, they realized that after all the people who were being dedicated to Incarna, the DUST linkup, EVE-Gate, Planetary Interaction, and Infrastructure (including the LagBusters) there was almost nobody left who could work on making changes to EVE that the players have asked for -- such as the 168 items in the current CSM backlog.

Now, the CSM is supposed to be a Stakeholder, and Stakeholders are supposed to be able to compete to get resources for backlog items they think are important. However, if there are few resources to be competed for, that doesn't really amount to much, does it?

Needless to say, the eruption of what I will diplomatically refer to as "concern about the future of EVE" was somewhat energetic, even by the volcanic standards Icelanders are inured to. CCP responses in the thread consisted of very limited, technical answers to questions, which predictably did nothing to stem the tide of player discontent.

Faced with a tsunami of extremely coherent rage, CCP Hellmar posted a note that basically said "we are listening and working very hard," to which the player response was "no you aren't, and no you aren't".

Oh my oh my, what is a mild-mannered CSM like your humble correspondent to do? If the dev-blog is taken at face value, then not many of the CSM's backlog items are going to get implemented in the near term, and possibly not for 18 months, or even longer.

Well, since the hordes of players telling them they were wrong clearly wasn't having any effect, I decided to take a different tack. I posted a two-part open letter to CCP Hellmar making a business case for why devoting resources to the concerns of existing players was smart business -- it was in effect an insurance policy against the possibility of delays and other business disruptions.

A couple of days later, I tried another tack. CCP Explorer had been making some very technical answers to questions about CCP's development process (which, of course, was totally avoiding the point of the whole thread). So I asked him, in what I freely admit was a somewhat teasing manner, for advice on how CSM could compete for the apparently limited developer resources available.

All in good fun, of course, and I hope I made a positive contribution to the discussion. But until I hear otherwise, I have to proceed on the assumption that the CSM won't be able to get significant attention to its issues.

So, how can CSM be effective given the circumstances we find ourselves in? Well, obviously we'll keep on lobbying CCP for more resources to be devoted to player concerns. But it has also occurred to me that if CSM can't get big things done, maybe we can slip some small things into the cracks here and there.

One of the most overlooked, but most promising things in the Summit minutes is the fact that CCP now has 3 people devoted to maintaining and improving the client UI, and improvements to the UI will be noticed by everyone. So I've started up a User Interface - Big Wins, Fan Favorites and Low Hanging Fruit proposal, with an associated forum thread to collect and crowdsource UI improvement suggestions.

My hope is that we'll be able to give the CCP UI team a prioritized list of UI improvements, big and small, that they can pick from and implement when they have some extra time.

Come and help us try to make some lemonade.

The CCP Metric System

2010-07-15T15:58:00.002-04:00

It's clear that CCP (like many of their customers!) loves numbers, and bases a lot of their decision-making on various "metrics" of performance. You can see this in several places in the minutes; here are my favorites:

Speaking on behalf of CCP, Nathan disagreed strongly with the claim that CCP isn’t committed to excellence. He pointed out that CCP probably spends a bigger part of its income on development than most other large, established game companies. He stated that this is a clear sign of this commitment.

Memory usage on the server per user has decreased in the last 12 months.

CPU Per User on the server has remained constant for the last 6 months except for a short period in late January where it went up just a bit.

Server log lines have been decreasing significantly since February, meaning fewer errors are being generated by the server

Only 0.3–0.5% of sessions end in a dirty shutdown (client crash).

But the most interesting example of all came not in the minutes, but just yesterday, in a comment by Nathan that was quickly reposted on Scrapheap Challenge:

That's funny, considering Apocrypha, the example for quality, created the most abysmal technical debt we've had.

What Nathan is saying here is that Apocrypha, an expansion the players loved, created a lot of issues behind the scenes at CCP that required them to do a lot of code cleanup afterwards.

This statement illustrates why Nathan was so upset by the CSM's complaints about lack of excellence. He apparently defines excellence as "excellence of the code providing the EVE experience". Players, on the other hand, define excellence as "excellence of the EVE experience".

Nathan is a very smart guy, and no doubt he has very good metrics on EVE code excellence. But experience excellence metrics are inherently fuzzy and hard to quantify, so when CSM presented some to him (including the huge Assembly Hall threadnaught), his response was to dismiss them as invalid or irrelevant.

And indeed, quantifying experience excellence is difficult, not the least because excellence is in the eye of the beholder, and there are over 100,000 different pairs of eyes playing EVE. I am reminded of US Supreme Court Justice Stewart's famous observation about porn: "I can't define porn but I know it when I see it."

Nevertheless, attention to experience excellence is very important, for the simple reason that CCP is not selling software. They are not selling a game. They are selling an experience, the experience of living in New Eden. EVE is not a commodity like potato chips (or World of Warcraft, for that matter); it is an emotional, immersive experience -- in fact, it is the only emotional, immersive MMO available today. EVE's crucial innovation can be summed up by the oft-repeated comment that "EVE is not a game; it's a job." You play World of Warcraft to escape; you live in EVE. The brilliance of EVE's original design can be summed up very simply: EVE is a job so good that people are willing to pay to work there.

This is why difficult to quantify metrics like experience excellence are so vitally important, because they encapsulate the very essence of the difference between EVE and other games; it's unique selling proposition.

Alas, history is replete with examples where decision-makers have learned the hard lesson that focusing on the "easy" metrics, ignoring the broader context, and dismissing contradictory information, was the road to ruin.

The whole point of the CSM is to give CCP a broader context, an extra dimension to their metrics. So when CCP staff go into a meeting with the CSM and their reaction is "how can these people be so clueless?", they ought to consider the possibility that they might also need to buy a vowel.

Or at least an umlaut or two.

Shuttle Diplomacy

2010-07-14T08:05:00.003-04:00

During the preparations for the Iceland summit, I took on the task of building a CSM presentation on lag.

I decided to approach the subject as a game-player. I expected that CCP would expect that CSM would come in with a bunch of half-baked lag-fix ideas (you know, like the ones I put in my election manifesto...), which they would then proceed to shoot down using their information advantage.

So I decided to try another approach. After consulting with the other CSMs, I built our presentation around several key points:

* Lag is one example of a class of problems for which game-design solutions are appropriate.

* Player expert focus groups can help CCP develop solutions that are both implementable (by them) and acceptable (to us).

* The CSM is in a unique position to mediate the interaction between player experts and CCP.

To my great regret, events conspired to brutally time-crunch the presentation; I was hoping to get 15-20 minutes, but CCP's presentation and the associated discussion ran long. In the end, I had only 5 minutes, which meant a rushed presentation and little discussion; CCP's response was basically "meh..."

But the next day, in the Low Sec session, CCP basically asked CSM to do what I wanted them to do for Lag:

CCP suggested that CSM work more with players to draft a well-supported vision for Low Sec, then submit a "foundation story" to CCP as a proposal that reflects that vision.

While what CCP asked for does not go to the level of detail I would want, it's a step along the right path -- as long as CCP is really serious about using, or at least strongly considering, the results.

IMHO, without a real commitment from CCP in this regard, it will be hard to convince the player experts to put in the time and hard work of coming up with a proposal.

Furthermore, for this process to actually work, CCP must provide a method for rapid iteration of player proposals, otherwise the players are just groping in the dark. This is where CSM, with our unique perspective -- we are players, but we are also under NDA -- can perform a vital role.

An example of this came in the 29 Issues session. Take a look at the Show damaged drones in drone bay item. Players want this functionality for several reasons, but one of the most important is that when fighting with drones, you want to be able to recall damaged drones and send out fresh ones -- but once drones are back in the drone bay, their state is unknown to the players.

In the space of 5 minutes, CCP and CSM iterated the proposal into something that could be implemented 100% on the client, with no added server or communications overhead, yet would allow players to launch undamaged drones in almost all circumstances (and, by the way, do the opposite -- launch the damaged drones for repair). It wasn't a perfect or elegant solution, but it provided extra function at very low cost.

Hmm... maybe (nudge nudge) someone should raise it as a proposal in the Assembly Hall (wink wink).

Now consider iteration between CCP and a player expert focus group. There is a trust problem; the players might say "you could do X", and CCP might come back and say "We can't do X", but not be willing to explain why. At which point, the players have no choice to take CCP at their word, and their ability to iterate is compromised; they're in the dark -- and darkness breeds mistrust.

But if CSM, with their magical NDA power, is in the middle as a trusted intermediary, shuttling ideas back and forth, then everything changes. Now CCP can tell CSM that "We can't do X because of NDA issues A, B and C", and CSM can tell the players "X has some problems, but your ideas Y and Z don't suffer from those problems; please explore them further."

Is CCP willing to make a real commitment to this kind of process? At the present time, probably not, for the simple reason that even if the focus groups are purely advisory, interacting with them will be perceived as a loss of control on their part.

But in a social sandbox game like EVE, as in life itself, control is ever an illusion -- even for the devs. Let's hope CCP has the vision to take a leap of faith.

The Reality Distortion Tank

2010-07-12T15:50:00.004-04:00

One of the biggest eye-openers for me at the Iceland Summit was the Commitment to Excellence session.

The Commit to Excellence thread is probably the most supported thread in EVE-O Assembly Hall history. CSM put together a sober and respectful presentation explaining the concerns and perceptions of the player base.

The response from CCP was, to put it charitably, a wee bit defensive. You could almost see the FX of their X-Large C5-L Emergency Shield Overload Boosters being overheated as the CSM tried to break the tanks of their reality distortion fields.

I think one paragraph from the minutes speaks volumes:

That may be so, but it misses the point. The size of CCP's development budget is irrelevant because most of it is being spent on things that the current EVE player base does not want and does not care about. What counts to the current players is how much is being spent to improve the quality of their game experience.

Note also this line:

It was mentioned by CCP that the data does not seem to support that polished quality sells better than new features. This led to a discussion on the balance of customer acquisition through new features versus customer retention through quality and polish.

Several people have told me that EVE's long-term retention rate is quite high, which is in line with my personal impression. To put it another way, long-time EVE players are crack-whores, hopelessly addicted to the game we love.

So clearly, the key to long-term success is to generate more crack-whores, an insight that should surprise absolutely nobody.

However, the above line seems to indicate that CCP views the crack-whore production process as looking like this:

New Expansion -> Marketing Blitz -> Pulse of Noobs -> Some % become addicted -> long-term customer (high lifetime customer value)

However, there is an alternate path that can be significantly more effective:

Polish the Game -> Less Noobs -> Larger % become addicted -> more long term customers (with higher lifetime customer value)

The reason the lifetime customer value is higher is because the game is better, which means that the noobs stay longer, and the bitter old vets don't give up in despair.

As some of you may know, I run a website that helps people with search engine promotion. One of my favorite sayings is, "It's not the number of hits you get, but the number of sales you make".

In the context of EVE, doubling the noob retention rate is as good as doubling the number of incoming noobs -- and a lot cheaper. So focusing resources on polishing the game, and in particular those parts of the game noobs inhabit, is a big win.

For a final example of the reality distortion field, consider the Lag Issues and Resolution Status meeting, in which we are told:

Lag will always be an issue however EVE, but EVE is now, from a technical standpoint, in a better state than it has ever been.

Now read the technical justifications for this statement, which appear immediately thereafter.

All of them are true.

And all of them are meaningless from the player perspective.

Players don't care that "memory usage on the server per user has decreased in the last 12 months". That is as relevant to them as "the brand of coffee in CCP Coffeemachine has been improved".

All that matters to them is the end result -- does the game play better now than it did a year ago? If it turns out that higher-quality coffee resulted in more of the CSM's backlog getting attended to, then, and only then, would the upgrade of CCP Coffemachine be relevant.

So that there is no confusion, this posting is not an argument for "no new expansions". It's an argument for balance, and for the recognition of the fact that addressing the concerns of the current players is a profitable business model.

I contend that CCP is in the business of farming gamers, and sustainable agriculture is a better long-term strategy than slash-and-burn.

Bandwidth is a bitch

2010-07-12T12:25:00.003-04:00

Now that the CSM summit minutes have been released, there is much to discuss. I predict an orgy of bloggery over the coming days, a vice in which I will happily indulge.

Consider the first two meetings, "CSM as Stakeholder" and "EVE Production". These illustrate the problems the CSM faces in having any real influence over CCP decisions regarding EVE.

If you look at how CCP development works, you quickly realize that it has a cognitive blind-spot. The problem is that after subtracting the resource demands for the big vision projects like DUST and Incarna, the marketing demands for big expansion features every 6 months, and the constant maintenance battle to keep the game itself running, there are few if any resources available for going back and fixing the mistakes of the past -- which is a big part of what CSM is supposed to be about.

Furthermore, in the great game of EVE Development, the noobs (that would be CSM) have an incredible disadvantage. We're not in Iceland on a day-to-day basis, and our voice is channeled through a representative.

So it's like playing EVE over a 110-baud modem via a proxy server on the Cassini space probe. We suffer from low bandwidth and huge ping-times. And you thought you have lag problems!

At present, the only way to compensate for that huge disadvantage is something that CCP is not willing to give -- dedicated developer resources for CSM. Given CSM's mission, this would be equivalent to explicitly giving renovations similar status to vision, marketing and maintenance.

Personally, however, I would suggest doing something more subtle, and with broader benefits for CCP. If I could wave my magic wand and make one change at the company, it would be this:

Implement the Google 80-20 rule.

Massive buff for dev morale - check.

Lots of resources for micro-improvements in EVE = happy players - check.

Big PR win - check.

Huge Human Resources win (eg: "Yeah, you have to move to Iceland, but on the other hand...") - check.

I wonder, does the company with the most innovative game in the history of MMOs have the vision to do this?

I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill myself

2010-07-11T07:01:00.005-04:00

One of the things that makes EVE such an interesting game is that the social stew is always at a constant boil. The latest spicy ingredient to be added to the mix is the expulsion of Ankhesentapemkah from the CSM for an alleged NDA violation.

For someone in the games business, as Ankh is, such an allegation has significant career consequences. So it's no surprise that everyone involved is saying as little as possible; nobody wants to get hot-dropped by lawyers. Unfortunately, the lack of details has not stopped the conspiracy-crafters on the forums from spinning theories both sublime and ridiculous, and the "this just proves the CSM is worthless"-subcategory is annoyingly popular.

One frustrating aspect of being a CSM (and not just in this particular instance) is that the NDA often prevents you from posting a direct reply to a player question, and then your lack of specificity is interpreted in the worst possible way by one of the fine specimens of Homo Trollus that have found such verdant hunting grounds on the forums.

I'm not complaining about this too much, it's an occupational hazard of the job, but it's something to keep in mind.

Occasionally, however, you can have some fun with it. In one forum thread, the question arose:

BTW, is the NDA agreement you signed at CSM, under NDA too?

Which allowed me to indulge in a little whimsy:

As CSMs, we can neither confirm nor deny that the NDA is under NDA, nor can we confirm or deny that above confirmation or denial either confirms or denies any policy of the CSM or CCP.

Further, we neither confirm nor deny any rumors about what happened in Iceland, nor do we confirm or deny that we actually had any meetings in Iceland. In fact, we're unwilling to confirm that Iceland even EXISTS. And as for this internet thing you're using, it might just be a figment of your own demented imagination.

We do confirm that we do listen to what players want, however bizarre these desires might be. We regret doing this, however, since some of you are even stranger than we are!

In more serious news, the coming week should see the release of the much-awaited CSM Summit minutes, and I'll have a thing or two to say about them, you can be sure.

The Night of the Long Spoons

2010-07-03T07:08:00.000-04:00

The first CSM5 summit was 3 days of intense effort, 8-10 hours a day of meetings, followed by discussions until late in the evening. As a noob, while I definitely had points I wanted to make, a key goal was to get some sense of the landscape in which I was operating. The returning CSMs all have developed relationships with people at CCP, whereas I was coming in more or less blind.

Several other CSMs have already posted accounts of the meeting that I broadly agree with, so rather than re-invent the wheel, I will point you to Ankhesentapemkah (Eva) and Mynxee (Carole)'s reports. When the official minutes come out, I'll make some specific comments, but for now, I'll indulge in some color commentary.

One of the more amusing developments that occurred after the summit was the hysterical overreaction by forum trolls about a trivial incident that occurred during one of the final sessions. How trivial? Well, I was sitting right next to one of the people involved and I barely noticed it at the time.

For me, the significance of this incident was that it was a classic example of what happens when partial information and preconceived notions collide on the Internet. Before the summit, I was bombarded with people telling me what to expect from my fellow CSMs, and I was very interested to see how these opinions reflected the ground-truth.

And the answer, of course, is not much. Which leads me to coin Woodhead's Second Law:

"The more controversial your forum personality, the less likely it is to reflect your real personality."

The fact is, when you're dealing face to face, you're not talking to Mynxee, you're talking to Carole. Similarly, Sokratesz is not Tim, Ankhesentapemkah is not Eva, Dierdra Vaal is not Valentijn, Korvin is not Andrey, TeaDaze is not Jason, Meissa Anunthiel is not Stephan, I am not Trebor, and Vuk Lau is not Vuk Lau.

Okay, Vuk Lau is Vuk Lau, but that's because he's from the Balkans and is the exception that proves the rule.

Forum trolls, of course, are the extreme example of this law -- if they acted in real life the way they do online, they'd be getting the crap kicked out of them on an hourly basis.

What I found on the ground in Iceland was that while I disagreed (sometimes strongly) with some of the opinions held by other CSMs, I had no problems whatsoever in working with them on matters of common interest, and they all behaved like reasonable people -- or at least, like reasonable Internet Spaceship Nerds. No doubt I annoyed them more than they annoyed me.

Just something to keep in mind when you read a forum post and go "WTF?! He's insane!" We are, after all, playing a roleplaying game.

PS: Here are some pictures of the summit and Iceland, and high-speed videos of Gullfoss Waterfall and Strokkur Geyser.

PPS: Woodhead's First Law is "The further you are from your server, the more likely it is to crash."

In which, despite my best efforts, I have responsibility inflicted upon me...

2010-06-30T06:12:00.000-04:00

The story of how I became an Interstellar Politician begins almost 30 years ago, back in the Dark Ages, when Men were Real Men, Women were Real Women, and Computers were Real Slow.

At that time, I was busily engaged in designing and coding computer games, with some success. It was a heady time to be a computer game design nerd -- we were all convinced that we'd be the Rock Stars of the 80's, with all the perks associated with such exalted status, in particular the groupies. And we were right! There were groupies! Hundreds of them -- and all of them guys who looked just like us.

By 1992 I was pretty much out of the game business. I'd gone to Japan to build what probably would have been the first MMORPG (that's "Modestly Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game") and chase a girl. The project failed when the funding dried up (damn you, Japanese Economic Bubble!), but the girl... ah, the girl, she was everything I was looking for: brilliant, witty, equipped with a twisted sense of humor, and most important of all, she had absolutely atrocious taste in men.

So began my second career: bringing japanese anime and live-action films to America, raising two children, and desperately trying to ensure that my wife didn't realize how fail I was (so far, so good). And the funny thing was, during most of that time, I didn't play computer games at all.

Sure, the graphics were better. But by and large, the games were boring, derivative, evolutionary. They just weren't interesting.

Skip ahead a few years, my kids are teenagers, and they start playing WoW. I decide to play with them to make sure it's OK. It's slick and polished, but it's clear that its a theme-park ride. Within a few months, the only thing keeping me playing is there is a meta-game of building addons that appeals to my programmer side.

Meh. Nothing's changed.

Then over the winter holidays a couple of years ago, I hear about this space game called EVE-Online. I have a weakness for space games because at one time I was totally addicted to the first significant multiplayer space combat game, Empire -- so much so that it got me kicked out of Cornell for a year -- with one semester left to go (which turned out to be a blessing, since that's when Wizardry got written).

So I downloaded the client... and 2.5 years later I'm still playing.

Why? Because despite its many flaws, EVE is the most significant advance in computer gaming in the last decade. The combination of a single world model (no realms) and a dedication to a "sandbox" philosophy (as opposed to a theme-park design) means it is the most immersive and social game environment available today. You don't play EVE, you go to EVE to play.

That made it worth my time.

Fast-forward to a few months ago. One of the things that makes EVE unique is a player-elected Council of Stellar Management, or CSM. The players elect 9 of their peers to represent their concerns to CCP, the producers of EVE.

A lot of Eve players, in particular the bitter old vets, consider the CSM to be nothing but a PR exercise for CCP and a free trip to Iceland for the delegates, and quite frankly, they've had a point (about the lack of power; as for the value of the trips, to be honest, if first prize is a free trip to Iceland to sit in a Conference room for 30 hours arguing with Viking Computer Geeks, then second prize is two free trips to Iceland to sit in a Conference room for 30 hours arguing with Viking Computer Geeks).

But starting with the current council, CSM5, the CSM has stakeholder status within the company, which is a "chicken" role within CCPs "scrum methodology". This means it has the potential to do more than just beg the company to address player concerns.

As election season was approaching, I was becoming more and more concerned about the long-term future of the game. Here I had finally found a game that I considered worthy of my time, and I was wondering if it was still going to be around in 5 years. Fleet fights in EVE already can have more than 1000 players duking it out in a single engagement, resulting in the dreaded "lag". What would happen if EVE grows to have twice as many players? The UI was becoming more and more dated. How will it adapt to an environment where more and more people want to play games on iPad-style devices?

I decided to run for CSM without any expectation of actually getting elected, but because I wanted to use the election process to raise these and other issues without them simply getting lost in the noise of regular forum chatter, and maybe, if I was lucky, influence a few of the people who might actually have a chance of getting elected. Even though I campaigned pretty seriously, I was pretty light-hearted about it. My major campaign promise to the members of my own in-game Alliance was that, if elected, I would provide them with a massive supply of Exotic Dancers, and in the case of one particular person with "special needs", Livestock.

So you can imagine my shock when, the day after the election, I get an email that reads:

Subject: [Confidential] You have been elected to the fifth CSM

Hi,

Congratulations on being elected to the Council of Stellar Management...

The first thing I do is check the headers...

Received: from ymir.ccpgames.com (ymir.ccpgames.com [87.237.32.65])

by mx.google.com with ESMTP id x1si12662595wei.102.2010.05.20.06.36.37;

Thu, 20 May 2010 06:36:37 -0700 (PDT)

Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of CSM-admin@ccpgames.com designates 87.237.32.65 as permitted sender) client-ip=87.237.32.65;

Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of CSM-admin@ccpgames.com designates 87.237.32.65 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=CSM-admin@ccpgames.com

Received: from exchis.ccp.ad.local ([87.237.32.254]) by ymir.ccpgames.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675);

Thu, 20 May 2010 13:36:36 +0000

Received: from exchis.ccp.ad.local ([10.1.1.16]) by exchis.ccp.ad.local

([10.1.1.16]) with mapi; Thu, 20 May 2010 13:36:35 +0000

Wow, they actually look legit. However, I am still unconvinced. Until I actually see a public announcement (due the next week), I remain entirely dubious. This could just be a very elegant punk.

The week goes by. My corporation and alliance mates are constantly pumping me for details. Did you get in? Have they told you anything? I decide that my best play is to grumble and groan about how I haven't heard anything, so clearly I didn't get in, but maybe I got one of the alternate standby slots. As the week goes on, I get more and more depressed online. "Nah, guys, nothing. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted."

I am much consoled by my soon-to-be ex-friends.

While this is all going on, I start to construct elaborate conspiracy theories to explain just how in hell I got myself elected. These include:

Computer Error in Your Favor. Collect 1,463 votes. Go to Iceland. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Someone at CCP has decided to punk me. They will "discover" their error just before the official announcement.
The Goons (an alliance in the game famous for their "hijinks") have voted me in for the LOLs.
People actually thought my ideas were decent (I reject this one immediately as ludicrous).

The big day comes. The official announcement is made -- and I really am elected, or so it seems. I immediately revise my opinion; I am now sure that someone at CCP has decided to seriously punk me. They will now "discover" their error just before I get on the plane to Iceland. I receive several death-threats from my Alliance-mates for stringing them along, and one email demanding "where the hell are my 50,000,000 iskies worth of Livestock?" Strippers and sheep are dispatched on long interstellar journeys to provide a little comfort to lonely starship pilots.

Over the next few weeks, I spend 2-4 hours a day preparing for the first CSM meeting in Iceland. I have practically no time to actually play the game.

The big day arrives. I got to the airport. The tickets are real. I fly to Iceland.

I revise my opinon; I am now sure that this is an Epic Punk, and that the big reveal will be at the start of the first meeting. Everyone is in on it, including the other CSMs that I meet. I write "I knew it was a punk, you bastards" on a 3x5 card and put it in my pocket, just in case.

I enter the conference room. I sit down. The meeting starts. And the true enormity of what has happened hits me.

I have just committed to spending 20 hours a week for the next year doing a job for which the compensation is 3 trips to Iceland and the pleasure of having hundreds of thousands of people think I'm totally clueless.

And then I realize what really happened in the election.

Those Goon bastards have griefed me.