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EVE Online Development Strategy (CSM Public)

First post First post
Author
Chirality Tisteloin
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#141 - 2012-11-19 21:15:17 UTC  |  Edited by: Chirality Tisteloin
Very interesting Document! Thanks for the work!
From what I can tell by having lived through just 3 months of sov-war and nullsec logistics all these points are super-valid.

What I find intriguing though, is that you did not mention Dust514 in the Document.

Right, it is about EVE.
However, I have the impression that for CCP the Dust/EVE integration will be THE major boundary condition and benchmark for the coming years. Even when you want to remind CCP of the spaceship-specific topics this can not be neglected. Talking about the future without making a statement on Dust and how you envision the two games should work together and how Dust will interface with all your ideas runs the risk of falling short of any design process CCP is running.

I guess the CSM is aware of this and has more insights in CCPs positions and there might be special reasons why Dust was/had to be excluded from the present discussion. Nevertheless, in the spirit of transparency, I would like to urge the CSM to openly express their opinion on those matters.

Fly smart! Chira.

See you at my blog: http://spindensity.wordpress.com/

CataCourier
Gordon Industries
#142 - 2012-11-19 21:16:32 UTC
Cash Miner wrote:
not trying to restart old arguments but it is a tactic that needs to be addressed


I'm pretty sure there are a thousand issues more important than this that need to be addressed. Bumping really only affects miners who haven't paid their tax and supers caught making bad decisions.
Jack Miton
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#143 - 2012-11-19 21:33:29 UTC
Very nicely put together document, +1.

Chitsa Jason wrote:
It is weird that WIS is not mentioned at all.

that's cos the CSM are covering the important issues in EVE.

There is no Bob.

Stuck In Here With Me:  http://sihwm.blogspot.com.au/

Down the Pipe:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/CloakyScout

Alekseyev Karrde
Noir.
Shadow Cartel
#144 - 2012-11-19 22:42:56 UTC
Peter Tjordenskiold wrote:
Cite:

Quote:
Rather than replace a Technetium
bottleneck with a new bottleneck, care should be taken to balance mineral requirements
to avoid built-in bottlenecks while maintaining high-end moons as valuable sources of
income. EVE’s widely touted player-driven market will be empowered to determine which
moons have the highest relative value, while providing more PVP conflict drivers.


Rather than to think in terms of moongoo, a player driven economy would include the total financing of entities by players. Moongoo has disadvantages. It causes powerblocks and less pvp because moongoo pays the reimbursement and the loser doen't become the economy to win wars. A player financed alliance or corp is only depending on the player base not on bottlenecks like today. Ift woul be more than like a big social group. Only whenan alliance is able to activate their pilots, they should be able to win a war.

So I propose a different approach:


  1. encourage alliances to activate pilots for the economical challenges of the alliance . A war should be only possible when an alliance or coalition has the backbones of PVP and industry.
  2. give the alliances and corp more tools to be social (access rights starbases and production slots, wallet)



I dont disagree with those points but I'd be interested in you expanding on the idea of large scale player financing. It sounds interesting, feel free to mail me about it or post here.

Alek the Kidnapper, Hero of the CSM

Zarak1 Kenpach1
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#145 - 2012-11-19 22:43:55 UTC  |  Edited by: Zarak1 Kenpach1
Well done at bringing this to the forefront of debate in EvE ,CSM7!

@ Poetic Stanziel, You have one of the more popular blogs out there regarding EvE at the moment. It is shameful that you would focus in so tightly on politics involving NDA's and not the content of the message they have delivered. Truly, think about what you are writing here before you post anymore drivel on semantics. It just looks like you are trying to make the current CSM reps look bad so you can run at a later date or endorse someone more to your liking. I doubt anyone else could have put together such a well written, concise message to CCP and if you think you could of done so, I challenge you to do just that. I highly doubt you will though because you strike me as someone who criticizes without ever moving to action themselves. You are welcome to prove me wrong though.


@ The folks concerned with compression, please don't make this a thread completely about that one detail. Lets stay focused on the broader message here. since that above all else is critical in the coming years of EvE's development.
Marlona Sky
State War Academy
Caldari State
#146 - 2012-11-19 22:45:18 UTC
Forlorn Wongraven wrote:
Marlona Sky wrote:
stuff

Your whole rebalance idea would only change the amount of supercap kills per month to zero. If you nerf things too much people will only use it as POS decoration, not fielding it in combat.

I don't see an issue with a super that turns into a pos decoration because they were unable to have a support fleet with it.
Alekseyev Karrde
Noir.
Shadow Cartel
#147 - 2012-11-19 22:51:03 UTC  |  Edited by: Alekseyev Karrde
ma perke wrote:
eve has a big problem because still cant reach 55k player levels from 2 years ago. The main reason is that everything is focused on big alliances and less and less players interaction.

in the past it was possible to get 100kils on a single roam! (not blob fight!), now you make 4 hours roam and you cant meet people to kill.

few suggestions:
- create more interaction. for instance on completing an anomally you get next annomaly in different system - this will increase traffic i.e. interaction. of course should be ballanced with increased bounties.
- decrease station services EHP, so that it be possible for a small gang to kill it in reasonable time(no more than 10min for 15-20man gang)
- increase number of WH connecting null sec to null sec. this is the main was to get small gang pvp now since big alliances space is empty.
- create an everybody visible list with all reinforced structures in game so that fight could be joined by everyone interested
- make undock radius very small for all outposts, like it is now for caldary research outpost. give aggression to people who undock and rep services/ships.

MORE INTERACTION !!!

Love these ideas. I particularly share a desire for more 0.0 static WH (or just random 0.0 connections). I ran through all of the Wolf Rayet and Pulsar C4's and while there are a ridiculous number, the amount with 0.0 statics was surprisingly low. Groups like Verge of Collapse have illustrated the interesting fight opportunities 0.0 WH can create.

As for your FC idea, it's kinda hard for the computer to tell who's FC'ing a fleet. Sometimes the person in the Fleet Command position isnt the FC, it's just someone with the skills or a booster alt. I think rewards for FC's should come from the fleets and organizations they're leading. What i think CCP could do, however, is provide more tool to make managing a fleet, sharing information, and making sense of that information easier and faster. I know Elise Randolph has been talking about that kind of stuff and I'm with him on that.

Alek the Kidnapper, Hero of the CSM

Alekseyev Karrde
Noir.
Shadow Cartel
#148 - 2012-11-19 22:57:54 UTC
Unforgiven Storm wrote:
I left this in another forum post, I will leave it here also (I consider myself a bittervet)...

my wish list to keep me subscribed in order of preference:

Small little things:

- Give us the possibility to change chars in the same account without the need to login again
- Allow us to create Industry and invention jobs that required less clicking and that allows us to make bulk actions
- PI extractors stop, start or restart of 1 planet in one mouse click in the command center
- POS module online queue
- Big nice red Jump/bridge buttons in the overview for Capitals (and subcaps near JBs) instead of menus
- Give shield pilots a equivalent to a slave set
- Give armor pilots a equivalent to a crystal set

Priority 1 fixes needed in this game:

- Give us a new and improved POS (POS revamp)
- Improve SOV system and reduce structure griding
- Finish ships tiercide (including Capitals); Fix black ops and electronic attack ships; fix leviathan and chimera;
- separated local intel from chat system
- Give us a new overview, local intel and chats UI
- Fix null-sec industry
- Fix moon mining (for example, make it work like PI)
- Give us a new industry and invention UI with less cluter, user friendly, futuristic look and that cuts with the tipical excel windows look that we have nowadays; and above all that required less clicking please!
- Improve invention and manufacturing mechanics
- Fix the T2 BPO problem (for example, by removing the research copy ML -4 and give it 0 by default... just an idea)
- Give alliances the proper tools to tax corps, mining and moon mining, get rent money from (blue) POS in their space

New long expected features:

- Give us new integrated accounts system where I can see all my accounts / characters, only login once and lunch multiple clients (one for account of course) from it.
- Allow the possibility (only for POSes) to reserve several slots and associate them to a queue and then the possibility to schedule up to 100 jobs in that queue independent of my max jobs skills and let the pos alocate them automatically having in account my max jobs skills and slot availability.
- Allow us to fly customized painted ships
- Give alliances, corps and players tools to make military , trade, ratting, mining, moon mining agreements (a.k.a treaties)
- Give us more t3 ships
- Give give us more end-of-game contents for vets like achievements, more skills, more caps like carriers T2

Nice to have:

- Find a proper role for titans and supers in the battle field
- Give us all the remaining ships (including caps) with the shader v3 skins
- Replace the ugliest ships in this game with new hulls
- Give us more t1 ships, clearly there are still areas that need more ships (for example, like Electronic warfare/logi destroyers or a new t2 command destroyer; or Electronic warfare battleships for other races other than the caldari, etc)
- Continue fixing and improve more and more visual effects
- Give us more station models for 0.0 (for example, just allow us to deploy all the station models that exist in empire is the easier way)
- Make mining fun (I can dream right?)

good gravy that's a nice wish list.

Alek the Kidnapper, Hero of the CSM

Alekseyev Karrde
Noir.
Shadow Cartel
#149 - 2012-11-19 23:03:36 UTC
Kirith Kodachi wrote:
While I like a lot of what was said in this document, I am a little disappointed that nothing was said in regards to supercap proliferation and dominance contributing to the stagnancy of null sec.

Overall, B+.

Moving away from structure grinds and (eventually) getting the ship balancing team done with subcaps and onto caps/supers will help with this. On the production/death specifics, there's a lot of controversy about it, as evidenced with the fight over mineral compression in this thread.

My personal feeling is that while their production rate has been reduced, super capitals were intended to be rare and any month where triple digits of supers are being produced is a bad month. I think they need to be harder to build (or have disrupting their building be easier), i think they need a battlefield role that differentiates them from carriers/dreads but is never the less so compelling that you WANT to use your super fleet, and I think that super fleet needs to have more threats to it while they're deployed. Obviously a lot of these goals are competing, but somewhere in the balance between them is the sweetspot where supers will be useful and the death/production numbers so close that during particularly violent months we might see the global number drop (which it hasnt for like 3 years)

Alek the Kidnapper, Hero of the CSM

Alekseyev Karrde
Noir.
Shadow Cartel
#150 - 2012-11-19 23:26:43 UTC
Noisrevbus wrote:
Comments

1. The Disclaimer
Almost every document that involve CCP communication come with the disclaimer that CCP do not commit to implement ideas presented by the community. That is understandable, as a company they can not and should not simply do as told. The issue is that they don't communicate. When the community ask for communication or commitment from CCP, what we want them to commit to is the discussion. We want them to explain and motivate their decisions. We want them to enter into argument with us and stand for the position they take on important matters.

Giving us the decision and motivating their own decisions are two different things. We don't expect the former.

The CSM should strongly remind CCP of this. Do not let the former be a caveat for the latter.

We want CCP to talk to us (through CSM or elsewhere), explain why, motivate the choices they make, accept criticism and respond to it - we don't want them to simply do as told (by a majority or otherwise). Progression through conflict.


2. Farms & Fields - IS - EVE
It's down right frightening reading that "a revamp of 0.0 is low on the list at the moment". That would equate to saying that EVE is low on the list for EVE-development. Issues that relate to the Farms & Fields initiative deal with the interaction and progression of the game. To me, it's a development strategy that both ensure piecing a fractured game together again and lowering total workload by focusing on content that affect everyone, rather than reaching out to a fractured community one by one. That is why F&F is important and why a "Nullsec revamp" is so important beyond what the word Nullsec entail. It affects everyone, it's there to create content for everyone in all regions of the game. The CSM must be able to clobber that message by thick skulls.

If you look at the list of items in the document, several other passages pertain to F&F in some way: The POS-revamp have F&F concerns (aka. scalability concerns, because that is what F&F is; Farms and Fields each represent one scale or scaling, meant to illustrate how content in the game should have the full spectrum to include- or appeal to all players). It should be independent of where you are or how you choose to play, so it can be used everywhere by everyone. The small scale objectives item is part of the same discussion, in a way, so is Ring Mining. It's a question of scaling and progressing mining from Empire and out, driving complexity and reward from one scale to another. That's how it should appeal to Empire as much as it should anyone in Sovnull. The very notion of "X does not pertain to me since i am a Y-player" should signal that something is wrong, within a reasonable span.

The reason small scale get multiple mention have to do with small scale objectives (the impact, or impression they have) sorely lacking, while large scale objectives do not lack - they just rest on unappealing mechanics. The important connection to development strategies here is that: Any change to one should include both, as with the POS revamp. You can't create specific "small gang content" and leave larger objectives to fester. The smaller scale content should provide alternatives alongside differently scaled content. There should be multiple ways to interact with a mechanic, multiple means to the same end so different groups can interact with each other.

Anyone who belive that F&F is "only for existing nullsec players" have completely misunderstood the point. It's just as much meant to be appealing for you to go live there and give you content there when you visit.

The problem with Sovnull now is that there is essentially just large-scale content for large-scale groups, which drive smaller-scale organisations away from that area and away from interacting with large groups. That situation is what feed many of the shallow issues the playerbase raise: "space bushido", "wormhole CSM candidates" and "empire only players" are all results of alienation, which stem from poor interactivity in mechanics and continued game-design. The development strategies employed: theme-parking, which is the direct opposite of a sandbox.

You can't say sandbox and do themepark.

Quoting 1 and 2 for effect.

As for 3, shiny new features appealing to new players is based on the idea of attracting new players with new stuff. If you've NEVER heard of EVE then i suppose it doesnt matter what a new feature is; the burden there is on CCP Marketing and existing players (word of mouth) not the development teams. BUT if you've already heard of EVE but never tried it or maybe tried it for a week, a new feature (or a radically redesigned old one) might spark your interest and get you to play. I think most people share that understanding of terms.

As for the %'s, we made the numbers up (seriously, how could we know with scientific accuracy what values different groups of players would assign there lol). I think it's clear to everyone there are different groups of players just like different groups of people. Marketing professionals have known this for ages, and have called these groups demographics. Just like IRL there are demographics in EVE too. That portion of the document is there to convince CCP that if you want to think about EVE demographics, the best way to do that is not to look at physical age as the grouping characteristic but rather their in game experience. Someone playing for a month *probably* has a very different set of interests, opinions, and goals than someone who's been in the game for 6 years.

Alek the Kidnapper, Hero of the CSM

Alekseyev Karrde
Noir.
Shadow Cartel
#151 - 2012-11-19 23:30:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Alekseyev Karrde
CataCourier wrote:
I greatly appreciate the work that the CSM has done on this, and sincerely hope that CCP listens and applies these ideas (or some of them) in their design process.

tl;dr: Fix 0.0 industry, buff supercaps/titans in a way that encourages more "super" destruction, give more reason for people to pvp and blow stuff up.



As a "0.0 miner/industrialist", changes to mineral distribution in 0.0 are greatly welcome. Industry as a whole in 0.0 is stale (as Corestwo described) and needs an improvement- both for existing industrialists like myself, and for prospective/newbies that are just starting to play eve.

Like it or not, there are a lot of players that are willing to subscribe for the sole purpose of shooting rocks and building stuff out of it. Even though Eve is a pvp-focused game, CCP (and the playerbase as a whole) would benefit by more industrial minded players subscribing- more production, more consumption, and many, many more tears. The problem is enticing those players to pick up Eve and stick with it. Building 0.0 industry and giving venues for industrial minded players to own and improve their operations would be a huge benefit. Additional system/POS/planet structures and upgrades would allow for growth of 0.0 industry and provide tons of pvp opportunities.

To quickly rattle off some ideas to coincide with the mining section:
-Upgraded refineries at POS that give benefits based on the industrial level of the system
-Additional system upgrades that allow the spawning of very rich ore sites that show up on overview as a celestial object
-Revamp/rebalance 0.0 ores in general (Spod & Gneiss and maybe Dark Ochre)
-Redesign Rorqual so they can actually be used in belts (by non-bads)
-Once NPC AI is revamped, perhaps a mixed mining/combat site, where there are valuable rewards for both industry and pve (IE: a combat fleet is required to persistently engage NPCs while the miners mine out the site- NPCs spawn based on volume of ore mined, etc). Perhaps this could also show up as a celestial object.
-"Permanent", destructible, planetary structures that mine planets for low end ores. This could benefit DUST too. (Permanent means that it can't be un-anchored to dodge impending destruction). These would require industry upgrades active in the system to continue producing minerals.

It seems like the original idea for 0.0 industry was to have an outlet for corps and alliances to have profitable mining ops with their own protection force- enabling them to gather resources while giving enemies a target to aim for. The problem with this in implementation is that there currently isn't enough reward or benefit for having any type of defending fleet or major mining operations, because it's simply more profitable to run hubs/sanctums than it is to support a mining fleet. On top of that, even if a huge mining fleet is assembled and protected, there aren't enough low ends in 0.0 to support real industry without importing the bulk of the minerals.

Aside from the mining/industry section, I am all for more pvp improvements and reasons to fight. There is nothing better for a miner than consistent pvp and destruction- even if that means that you occasionally lose hulks/orcas/rorquals. As Corestwo noted, production of supers/titans has diminished due to the plethora of nerfs against them. I'd also like to see a way for Supers/Titans to be used (and destroyed) more often.

That dual mining/PVE site is interesting indeed. Quoting whole post for effect.

EDIT: OK looks like im all caught up. There were a lot of good posts (and some bads) so if i didn't quote you dont take it personally, im probably spamming the thread already as it is haha

Alek the Kidnapper, Hero of the CSM

Poetic Stanziel
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#152 - 2012-11-19 23:42:34 UTC
Alekseyev Karrde wrote:
That dual mining/PVE site is interesting indeed. Quoting whole post for effect.

EDIT: OK looks like im all caught up. There were a lot of good posts (and some bads) so if i didn't quote you dont take it personally, im probably spamming the thread already as it is haha
No trolling. I'll leave that behind on the first few pages. Fun is over.

You're doing a good job of actually discussing the document. It originally looked like you'd all get defensive and simply defend the document and the ideas you all put forward, rather than discuss openly.

Credit where it is due. Good job here, Aleks.
DiaoMoney
DMoney Corp
Fraternity.
#153 - 2012-11-20 02:07:18 UTC
One issue I would like to add to the POSes:

While player-driven and freedom is the sell point of EVE, the designers should realize that making things vulnerable to attack is not the right way to generate player-driven events: people will simply try their best to avoid that feature .

The ship maintenance array is just a bad example.
I will compare it with the corporate hangar array, which is a good one (not perfect but at least much better).

Trust is granted rather than forced upon. When someone hangar-flip a corporation, he was exactly granted the right to access the specified hangar that he can possibly to flip, because the leadership trusted him.

To a ship maintenance array, however, you can only choose to make it "Unusable" or "Totally undefended". The other option that "Manage it by person in role" will just burnout people quickly.

People may argue that this is important to encourage players to build a station. But actually people still need an usable outpost, which functions between a station and a safe spot with just force field.

This is important to populate the null, for smaller forces that live in NPC space or can't afford to build massive stations.
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#154 - 2012-11-20 03:43:22 UTC
To make people actually use titans? Nerf OGB, done. Now you have to have your Avatar on-grid to get that juicy increase in cap recharge, your Ragnarok has to be on-grid to get that sig radius bonus, etc.

Then there could be new shinies: officer & deadspace warfare links, for example. More warfare links to do simple things like reduce sig resolution of the fleet's weapons (or explosion velocity for missiles). Every skill in a character's skill tree should have a parallel warfare link, allowing a fleet to boost character skills to 6 (because 11 would be ridiculous).

But this is ideas for shinies, not commentary on the CSM white paper.
corestwo
Goonfleet Investment Banking
#155 - 2012-11-20 03:52:07 UTC
Mara Rinn wrote:
To make people actually use titans? Nerf OGB, done. Now you have to have your Avatar on-grid to get that juicy increase in cap recharge, your Ragnarok has to be on-grid to get that sig radius bonus, etc.

Then there could be new shinies: officer & deadspace warfare links, for example. More warfare links to do simple things like reduce sig resolution of the fleet's weapons (or explosion velocity for missiles). Every skill in a character's skill tree should have a parallel warfare link, allowing a fleet to boost character skills to 6 (because 11 would be ridiculous).

But this is ideas for shinies, not commentary on the CSM white paper.


This only ever encourages players to put one or two titans at risk at a time, or simply not deploy them at all in favor of weaker but much cheaper command ships. A meaningful battlefield role that doesn't relegate dreads to relative obsolescence and encourages people to deploy 'em if they've got 'em, hopefully to be destroyed, is much better.

In my opinion, of course.

This post was crafted by a member of the GoonSwarm Federation Economic Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.

fofofo

Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#156 - 2012-11-20 03:57:19 UTC
You are right. Why bother increasing the entire fleet's DPS by 5% when you could just keep throwing cheaper ships at the enemy until they suffocate on the wreckage?
Snow Axe
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#157 - 2012-11-20 03:59:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Snow Axe
Mara Rinn wrote:
You are right. Why bother increasing the entire fleet's DPS by 5% when you could just keep throwing cheaper ships at the enemy until they suffocate on the wreckage?


There, now you understand the key point of sov warfare!

Seriously though, that's basically it. The only time you'll see Titans on grid is if they're hotdropping, shooting structures, escalating a cap brawl, or in the case of the CFC, clicking jump instead of bridge.

"Look any reason why you need to talk like that? I have now reported you. I dont need to listen to your bad tone. If you cant have a grown up conversation then leave the thread["

rodyas
Tie Fighters Inc
#158 - 2012-11-20 05:20:51 UTC  |  Edited by: rodyas
I got caught up in the earlier discussion over the timing to nerf compression or if it would disappear magically.

I always thought one of the main reasons to nerf it was to nerf titan and super construction makeing them a lot harder to build. Bring this up since people want industry in null and want that first before compression nerf.

I am curios to see what level of industry players want in null really. (Like how much they want miners to mine and builders to go through.)

As in miners might be able to supply BS or below with a compression nerf, but would players want miners to support titans and supers easily in null.

With timing, you can nerf compression earlier and hurt supers being built. Or if you do want industry to support their production, then you have to wait longer for compression to be nerfed.

I might have missed though, the conversation of what players actually wanted to be built in null to support a war or so, or how big a war they wanted supported.

Signature removed for inappropriate language - CCP Eterne

Snow Axe
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#159 - 2012-11-20 05:33:43 UTC
The supercap stuff was already addressed by corestwo in this thread ( https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2198403#post2198403 is a link to the specific post). I'd selectively quote but it's all quite good to read. Also if you're one of those people smart enough not to balk at TM.com, http://themittani.com/features/supercap-proliferation-fixing-solved-problem addresses the point as well.

"Look any reason why you need to talk like that? I have now reported you. I dont need to listen to your bad tone. If you cant have a grown up conversation then leave the thread["

None ofthe Above
#160 - 2012-11-20 05:59:51 UTC
People who are upset about their issues not being talked about, don't understand the purpose of the document.

The CSM outlined a strategy and then picked a couple of example projects and wrote about how to apply the strategy in each case.

It was NOT work on these things because they are more important than everything else.

I direct you to this section:

Quote:
Examples for Consideration
The following examples, in alphabetical order, are included to provide concrete illustrations of a pillar-based approach in practice. These examples center on themes and concepts widely considered by existing subscribers as significantly broken and would likely need to be spread out over two expansions/12 months. Each area is a significant problem taking money out of CCP’s pocket through lost or missed subscriptions. They are not wish-lists, but rather illustrations of how new features and iteration can be weaved into powerful, themed expansions with broad demographic appeal.


Its all very fine to use it as a spring board for more conversation (and there has been some excellent examples of that in this thread) but please stop pulling your hair out. That never did me any good.

The only end-game content in EVE Online is the crap that makes you rage quit.