Jita Park Speakers Corner

CCP has now begun their planning process for the May expansion, and true to the promises made at the Summit by CCP Unifex, CCP Seagull and CCP Ripley, CSM has been given unprecedented access; for the first time, we are being consulted before any significant decisions have been made.

Because of the NDA nature of a lot of what is being discussed, this post will be short on specific details, but I do want to give the community an update on what's happened so far.

Last week, all the major feature teams at CCP made presentations about what features they could potentially work on for release in May; these ranged from big ideas to little things, and from things they'd just like to do to things they'd already done substantial work on. Some were standalone items, while others were dependent on other items (often items from other teams).

Then all the feature teams were given a task -- come up with a "theme" that combines features from all the teams into a package that forms a coherent expansion.

On Wednesday, about the time the Minutes were published, CSM received copies of all the presentations as well as a video recording.

This morning, we had a Skype conference with CCP Seagull. We presented our evaluation of the feature proposals, and received more information on how the planning process was to proceed.

We received a further task: to create our own themes, in order to help CCP Seagull understand what kind of themes the Community might like. While we obviously don't have the same information as CCP teams do (such as the complexity of some of the features and their interactions), she feels that this will be useful in helping evaluate CCP's theme proposals. We will be delivering these themes on Monday, 1/21.

Once all the themes are received, CSM will be provided with copies of all of them. By the end of the week, CCP Seagull will have created a shortlist of candidate themes, and CSM will be told which they are. We currently are scheduled to discuss the shortlist with her on Monday, 1/28.

CCP certainly seems to be executing on their promise to iterate on "CSM as a Stakeholder"... :)

Original blog post link: http://treborofthecsm.blogspot.com/2013/01/begun-planning-wars-have.html

Addendum: I've been asked to give my personal opinion about all of this. While it is early days yet, I am very pleased with the level of access CSM is getting, and all the meetings have been very productive. I look forward to seeing how things evolve, and I feel comfortable in saying that I and other people on CSM are looking forward to putting a lot of effort into trying to help make this new planning process work.

Update: 01/28/13 Variations on a Theme

On Friday, January 18th, we sent our sample themes to CCP Seagull. In return, on January 23rd, CSM got a package of the themes created by CCP teams, performed a quick analysis of them, and sent her our recommendations.

While I can't go into any specifics, I found the CCP themes to be very interesting reading, and they gave me more insight into how people at CCP are addressing the new planning system.

Today, Monday the 28th, we had a followup meeting with CCP Seagull. She gave us a broad overview of the overall theme that had been decided upon, which the CSM members present strongly endorsed. Over the next week, CCP will be determining what set of features best fits the theme and is practical given time and resource constraints.

CSM will receive a package of materials on Friday related to CCP's initial prioritization decisions and will provide our trademark :48hour: turnaround on them.

Based on what has happened so far, I am cautiously optimistic that the new planning process is going to do a good job of ensuring that CCP does a better job of delivering an expansion with good "bang-for-buck" when it comes to pleasing the community.

Original blog post link: http://treborofthecsm.blogspot.com/2013/01/variations-on-theme.html

Potential theme: Wagons, Ho!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0743292/

Based on CCP going full Rambo with the development concepts we supported in our Strategy Document?

Feeling pretty good.

CCP isn't obligated to take our advice of course, but i dont feel like I'm talking to a hole in the wall.

I agree with someone else that posted in the POS thread that EvE: Empire! would be a good theme. It would encompass both the actual Empires (FW, wardecs), null SOV, and personal empires (POS). It would be about having the tools to carve out your own empire in the vastness of space. That empire can be both in terms of land and influence (actual sov mechanics, industry, market).

Are you guys actually looking for feedback to present to them, or just going with your own ideas?

Straight from the horse's mouth, people: CSM does nothing.

A Goldrush theme is what I am thinking of right now.

It could give you a nice place to put in ring mining (we found out how to mine new minerals, come exploit those riches in 0.0), poses (building shanty towns and communities in deep 0.0 that are either in sov or npc 0.0, or just base your pirating corp out of these poses in lowsec/highsec), as well as giving a way to introduce smaller gang objective based pvp into the mix(this small gang of pirates living in our undefended space are trying to kill our miners and are stealing our moon goo/pi resources!).

This also leaves the possibilities wide open for exploration. Imagine the feeling of exploring a new resource system or new space. Not quite sure what will pop up on scan and not quite sure how to tackle new pve content.

It would tie in with bounty hunting, wars and crime watch as well by fleshing out the bounty hunter profession a little bit. It would also help Eve retain that lawless wild west feel that makes it such an awesome game. Kill or be killed, and all that jazz.

Ship balancing would also tie in nicely because Battle-cruisers, Battleships and Black ops are in the works, so they could be the strong arm of the law that is needed to repel attacks against small gangs of invaders. With pirate frigates and faction frigates not that far off there could be some cool new ways to attain them as well as ample cannon for RP'ers.

Though the debate is also open, it would give the option to create new regions on the map with special attributes(it was talked about somewhere in the minutes).

Entice new players with the dreams of striking it rich on the untapped resources of lawless space. Who would not start a new account or re-sub to try and experience that?

Hell, even dueling would work great with this expansion theme. 1v1 at SUNrise anyone?

BUMBASHER FOR CSM.


I like this idea, +1

Brainstorming here as well...

I like the theme along the lines of Watering Holes. Basically creating content for players to consume (PVE), and by extension for other players to then consume those players (Gank) and more players to consume the gankers (PvP)....

This could include things like...

1. Some mechanic similar to POSs for players to base out of that are not horrible like POSs or as limited as simply a container. (PVE)
2. Extending the Faction war type mechanics into null-sec in some way to create sites for small gangs to engage other small gangs. (PVE)
3. A way for small gangs to attack resources in larger empires on a small scale (raiding moon goo for example) (Gank/PvP)
4. Black ops changes (Gank/PvP)
5. An alert system or a mayday system to summon a response quickly if attacked (PvP)
6. Further balancing of ships (All)
7. Hi-sec wardec mechanics improvements including improvements to Mercinaries (Gank/PvP)
8. Extending the bounty system. (Gank/PvP)
9. Major improvements to NPC Null-sec income sources. (PvE)
10. Improvements and variety of missions. (PvE)
11. More pirate epic arc mission. (PvE)

And other ideas along the line. The idea being that PvE content be added in such a way that it can be attacked, and defended.

Edit: Since Watering Hole is not a name the title would be something like 'Jungle'.

EVE Online: Renaissance