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[Summit] Summer Summit Daily Updates

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Ripard Teg
Jerkasaurus Wrecks Inc.
Sedition.
#1 - 2013-08-29 08:16:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Ripard Teg
Summer Summit Day One

Wednesday in Iceland dawned the most pleasant so far, with the sun trying now and again to peek through the clouds and the temperature getting up to 54F/11C. Much of CSM8 met in the basement of the hotel for a quite good breakfast provided by our hotel. There was some amusement from "the old guys" (Trebor Daehdoow, Mike Azariah, myself) that we were up and ready to go before the younger members of CSM8 present (everyone else). Matter of fact, with a few exceptions here and there, CSM8 declared their readiness to undock in reverse order of age... if you're curious about who is really committed to this summit thing. I kid, I kid. ;-)

The walk to CCP HQ was quick and pleasant and we claimed our spaces around the table of the Trinity conference room. Conference rooms at CCP are named after EVE expansions, complete with the date of release etched into the glass wall to one side of the door. Trinity comes equipped with a really impressive video conference suite that both provides a panorama view of the proceedings -- other CSM members will no doubt post the picture and if they don't, I will tomorrow -- as well as a focused view of whomever is talking. The latter happens through some magic of the camera focusing on whomever is talking the loudest for a consistent period of time. This gave a few members of CSM8 and some members of the CPM attending remotely a pretty good view of the proceedings when combined with screen-sharing.

To briefly cover the seven sessions that happened on day one...

Session One: Basic Introductions and Design Theory. This session mostly focused on CCP's internal "org chart" as well as an overview of how the game is developed. This is something that I went into CSM8 stating that I was going to take seriously -- CSM9 is going to have a lot to thank us for on this front -- and I was really satisfied with what I saw and heard. In particular, there was a long discussion of how CCP can be more transparent about sharing information with players and who really makes the operational decisions about game development that affect players (and therefore, how the CSM and players can influence those decisions).

Session Two: Stakeholder review. Probably the quietest session of the day, we looked at the past and present of the CSM stakeholder process. Trebor was the expert here for obvious reasons and made a good case for the fact that the process is working better than ever. Most of the discussion was about internal matters relating to CCP-CSM communications, with the CSM making a case for the various ways we can help CCP if more teams engage with us.

Session Three: Security. One of my favorite sessions of the day. The new security guy, CCP Stillman, showed us a really deep presentation on various aspects of MMO security that he's planning to present at an upcoming security conference. It really dug into the meat of the challenges this team faces. I think everyone on CSM8 came away confident that this important aspect of the game is in very good hands. In particular, Noizy Gamer will be pleased to know that virtually all of his list was covered.

Session Four: EVE Economy. This session was widely regarded by CSM8 as one of the best of the day, with CCP DrEyjoG and his assistant CCP Recurve sharing with us a lot of hard data on the EVE economy including Gross User Product, PLEX prices, and deep economic indicators. Several CSM members including myself made strong cases for the return of either the QEN or some other insight for EVE players into how the economy is going and I think we made a really strong case for which there was (somewhat grudging) agreement from the CCP side. This session also featured our first "in-class homework assignment" of the summit.

Session Five: Art. This was one of the most fun sessions of the day, with the art team wowing us with a lot of pretty pictures of what they have planned for winter. In a few cases -- to my amusement -- they got the job of spoiling some minor aspects of session seven when they showed us art for features that we hadn't yet been told were coming. I got to beg (successfully, I think) for an art feature that many players asked me for. The session was dominated by a review of some mock-ups of how EVE players interact with their game. This is sure to be followed up in the UI session on Friday. The CSM did have one miss here which we're going to rectify today (more about that tomorrow).

Session Six: State of Balance. This was a lively, informal session with all three members of the ship balance team (CCP Ytterbium, CCP Rise, CCP Fozzie) chatted with us about their future plans for ship balance and asked for our feedback about what order things should be done in and some particular ideas they have on this front. A lot of the time was spent chatting about the next couple of ship classes that are going to be rebalanced as well as the fact that future ship balancing is going to be much more challenging than what has been done up to this point.

(continued)

aka Jester, who apparently was once Deemed Worthy To Wield The Banhammer to good effect.
Ripard Teg
Jerkasaurus Wrecks Inc.
Sedition.
#2 - 2013-08-29 08:17:41 UTC
(continued from above)

Session Seven: The future. This is going to be a heavily NDA'ed session, but was another of my favorites of the day. The great news here is that there is a specific, coherent road map for the next three years that hangs together logically and should provide a lot of really great stuff for players over the next few years. It actually made me kind of envious of CSMs 9 and 10... It launched from CCP Seagull's two presentations at Fanfest and she presented most of this session as well.

Things kept moving well throughout the day. CCP Dolan is to be commended for keeping the sessions on track and on schedule. I can tell you from experience that this is a lot harder than it looks. Lunch was a Mexican buffet provided for all of CCP in the employee cafeteria -- I was stunned to see fresh cilantro so far from California! Dinner was pizza delivered to the same place. At both points, CSM members had the opportunity to introduce themselves to and chat with any CCP dev who seemed inclined, and most of us wore CSM-logoed shirts brought from the U.S. by Trebor to help identify us.

After hours for day one was a bit more subdued, mostly because there was a scheduled marketing department dinner last night. That meant there weren't that many CCP'ers available. Those that were met us at Nora's for a couple of hours where the chatter was once again mostly very relaxed and casual. The main gathering broke up a little after 11pm.

All in all, day one was fun, productive, interesting, and -- I think, anyway -- provided a lot of value for both CCP and the CSM. I'm really pleased that CSM8 is showing value for the dollars that CCP has invested in our "free trip to Iceland". On to day two!

---snip---

Original here:
http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2013/08/summer-summit-day-one.html

There's also "day zero" and "day minus one":
http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2013/08/summer-summit-day-zero.html
http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2013/08/summer-summit-day-minus-one-for-second.html

aka Jester, who apparently was once Deemed Worthy To Wield The Banhammer to good effect.
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai
#3 - 2013-08-29 19:43:57 UTC
Ripard Teg wrote:
(...) I was stunned to see fresh cilantro so far from California!(...)


...and so close to the places where cilantro comes from, you mean? LolP

Roses are red / Violets are blue / I am an Alpha / And so it's you
Orakkus
ImperiaI Federation
Goonswarm Federation
#4 - 2013-08-29 21:11:11 UTC
You can always tell a native Californian.. they think they invented everything. :P

He's not just famous, he's "IN" famous. - Ned Nederlander
Ripard Teg
Jerkasaurus Wrecks Inc.
Sedition.
#5 - 2013-08-30 08:03:47 UTC
Nah, Californians don't invent everything. Just everything good. Blink

aka Jester, who apparently was once Deemed Worthy To Wield The Banhammer to good effect.
Ripard Teg
Jerkasaurus Wrecks Inc.
Sedition.
#6 - 2013-08-30 08:04:48 UTC
Summer Summit Day Two

Welcome to the hardest day of the summit! The schedule was really weighted hard to this day with a lot of the toughest expectations on CSM8 packed into this Thursday. Primarily, day two was about meeting individually with members of each of EVE's four "feature teams" as well as the fifth team working on the EVE-DUST link. Throughout the day, Trinity was often quite full of people. Instead of a person or two presenting a specific topic, the bulk of each team appeared and anyone we needed to talk to was available to clarify points and answer questions.

On the very positive end, this gave us the opportunity to do quite deep dives into winter expansion features that we wanted to dig into a little more or that team members wanted our opinion on. On the challenging side, it made day two mentally exhausting. I've learned there is a bit of a running joke in CCP: which CCP dev can talk enthusiastically about spaceships continuously for the longest time? CSM8's abilities on this front were tested. It made for a really long, involved day...

Session Eight: Team Five-O. This is the team that CSM8 is the stake-holder for so happily most of us were quite familiar both with the features this team is working on and with the people on the team themselves so we could jump right in. Obviously I can't yet speak about what those specific features are but they are working on four major projects, two of which were discussed much more in-depth for an hour each during sessions nine and ten. I think players are going to be very happy with what this team is working on. One in particular will cost me a bottle of brandy for the CCP dev implementing it, but it will be worth it: it's something I (and lots of players in my constituency) have wanted in the game for a long time. I myself have been begging for it since April 26 or so... can't wait!

Session Nine: Project 1.
Session Ten: Project 2. These were in-depth discussions of two of the four areas where Team Five-O is concentrating their efforts. One will be a major center-piece of the winter expansion, one is set-up work for next year. I think players will be nearly universal in their approval of both, and the CSM was too... with one tiny little baby exception where we gently tried to nudge the devs off their chosen path. I believe and hope we provided a lot of valuable feedback on how to make these features better.

Session Eleven: Team Superfriends. This session was a bit challenging. I think Superfriends has drawn the most difficult and the most potentially contentious features for the winter expansion. I also think it's fair to say that the CSM expressed deep concerns about their approaches to two of them. On the positive end, I think we were very successful at expressing those concerns and further discussion of them will be moving to the CCP-CSM internal forums.

Session Twelve: Team Game of Drones. On the other hand, I think Game of Drones lucked into the "easiest" feature set for winter. The CSM was very enthusiastic about both the features and the direction this team is taking them. Even better, the team is well along on their implementation, so I and others on CSM8 made a case for them to make their plans public as soon as possible to draw mass player input. I dearly hope this happens so I can start writing about this team's work in detail soon because I think it's really important.

(continued)

aka Jester, who apparently was once Deemed Worthy To Wield The Banhammer to good effect.
Ripard Teg
Jerkasaurus Wrecks Inc.
Sedition.
#7 - 2013-08-30 08:05:17 UTC  |  Edited by: Ripard Teg
(continued from above)

Session Thirteen: Team Kuromaku. This is a new team, formed from a merger of two other feature teams and as a result is both currently the biggest feature team and the one with the most expectations for winter. CCP Seagull herself presented for this team, I think because she gently started with a sad announcement that a feature that I had considered a major cornerstone for the next couple of expansions is being pushed back due to its complexity. I think Seagull was arming up for a torch-and-pitchfork attack from CSM8 but I think we were really understanding. What this team wants to do in 2014 is completely awesome, but it's going to be damned tough.

I want to briefly expand on this topic and this is a good place to do it. I've been impressed over and over again by one aspect of having Seagull at the tiller. I think she's struck a perfect balance of wanting to do crazy cool stuff in EVE over the next three years but is also very realistic about what can be accomplished at each step in the process. In particular, the entire leadership team is aware of the pitfalls of Incarna and understands that at each step when you're doing crazy cool stuff, players have to be respected and cool stuff to do in space has to be delivered. It's really refreshing! Onward.

As a result, things segued smoothly into what this team can actually deliver for winter and I think this session was one in particular where the CSM provided a lot of insights and good feedback. In one case, four different teams including this one are working aspects of the same feature and because of this I had to give my suggestions for the feature four different times (to the point where during this session, another of the CSM said "Jester, give your WXYZ speech again" -- I'll explain what that means when I can talk about it).

Session Fourteen: Team True Grit.
Session Fifteen: EVE-DUST Link. These two sessions merged into one super-session on the EVE DUST link and we had a good portion of the Council of Planetary Management with us to help talk about it. It was also another session where I think it's fair to say that both the CSM and CPM are a bit concerned with the direction being taken. The good news is that team is ultra-realistic about the real-world failures of the current EVE DUST link. The bad news is I believe most of the CSM and CPM don't feel like they're being given the resources to attack the issues boldly enough.

A few more general notes about the day...

I mentioned yesterday that CSM8 had a minor miss during our session with the art team: we were so impressed with what we were shown that we completely forgot to make the case for optional high-definition textures that can be downloaded with the rest of the client. This was something that lots and lots of players have begged various CSM members to continue making the case for for those players that want it. The good news is that we had a follow-up session with the art team today and were able to deliver that message.

In addition, when meeting with all of the feature teams today, CSM8 gave a bit of a "sales pitch" for expanding the stakeholder relationship across additional CCP teams. We had 11 out of 14 CSM8 members available for much of Thursday and I think this did a lot to show the commitment of this CSM and the expanded number of potential active participants that can give feedback to team members. We also made the case for more CCP devs to join our Skype channels for times when they want instant feedback about issues they're considering. By the end of the day, Trebor Daehdoow, Mike Azariah, and Ali Aras were adept at delivering the pitch. ;-)

All in all, an exhausting but productive day! Most of the CSM adjourned to Nora's after hours where we were met by eight or so CCP devs. I'm pleased to report that a stout is back on the menu at Nora's -- perhaps they read this blog and got the tap running again to make me happy? Conversation again stuck to mostly very casual topics and it was a relaxing way to end the day. On to day three!

Original here:
http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2013/08/summer-summit-day-two.html

aka Jester, who apparently was once Deemed Worthy To Wield The Banhammer to good effect.
Ripard Teg
Jerkasaurus Wrecks Inc.
Sedition.
#8 - 2013-08-31 16:05:05 UTC
Summer Summit Day Three

Welcome to day three! In terms of weather, this promised to be the nicest day of the summit, ironic considering that an impressive storm is gathering to hit the north side of the island this weekend. By afternoon, it was incredibly windy and hail kept falling noisily on the proceedings. But the morning walk was quite nice and we soon settled into our accustomed chairs for the day's work.

Day three was mostly about smaller teams, smaller projects, and side issues facing EVE Online development environment for the next six months. As a result, we were able to relax a bit more and the day lacked the frenetic pace of day two.

Session sixteen: Sales and marketing. The first session of the day was marred by all sorts of technical problems with the video conference hardware. As a result, we only got about 35 minutes to talk about this important topic. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the focus of this session was around the (undeniably awesome) EVE Collector's Edition that was announced and shown off at Fanfest. CSM8 was shown an "unboxing." The USB Rifter is in-cred-ible -- much larger than I was expecting(1) -- and between that and the golden pod might alone justify the cost. The CSM listened to the pitch around this product then made several suggestions on how to make the Collector's Edition even better. Unfortunately, there wasn't time for much more.

Session seventeen: Reasonable things review. This was a focused session with game designers from a number of teams looking over the top-rated items from the CSM's reasonable things initiative earlier this year. As they have on the Skype channel, CCP expressed enthusiasm for a number of proposals. Even more important, they provided good communication for why a number of the proposals are not as "reasonable" as they might appear. It's a good bet you'll see some of the list in future expansions...

Session eighteen: PvE. This session was a little bit disjointed because a number of CSM members have strong feelings on this topic, myself included. The CCP team also had no presentation ready to go. This was actually common throughout the three days and allowed discussions to range into lots of different areas where devs wanted feedback. This session was a great example of that. It resulted in a stream-of-consciousness discussion that ranged all over the place. At the end of the session, the devs involved made it clear that they found our feedback valuable and discussion on this topic continued into both lunch and (I believe) dinner. I joked that Mike Azariah gets to write the minutes of this one, and it'll probably be the hardest part of the minutes to write.

Session nineteen: Project 3. This one is another NDA'ed project likely to be announced very soon. In principle, the idea is very very cool. I'll have lots to say about it when it gets announced. Until then, the CSM were mostly asked for feedback on how the project should be announced, how it should be managed, and ways to prevent it being exploited by that most wily of gamer, the EVE player. In other news, by this time the issues with Trinity's video conferencing had been completely fixed.

Session twenty: User Interface. The UI has obviously been... ummm... less than one of EVE's strengths for quite some time. I would forgive you for just getting excited over the fact the name of this session wasn't NDA'ed. Representatives from both the UI team and teams connected to it brought us a quite good presentation for both a short- and medium-term plan to address this weakness of the game we love. This session drew feedback from virtually every CSM member and discussion was animated.

Session twenty-one: Language support and the CSM. Short version: this was a plea for the CSM to be more friendly to the languages where EVE has a localized client: German, Russian, and Japanese. We accepted the input, then the members of the CSM most affected by this topic provided advice on how CCP can improve in this area as well.

Session twenty-two: Launcher and web teams. This was a session requested by the CSM and was our chance to really dig into the meat of the integration of the launcher and a couple of other NDA'ed priorities for the winter expansion. CCP has a specific strategy for development of the launcher and this was also an opportunity to discuss it and for the CSM to provide feedback. We also had a couple of suggestions for the web team, one of which would be quite difficult to implement but would be a vast improvement to EVE's web presence.

Session twenty-three: Hilmar. This was a shorter session than the others, and mostly an opportunity for us to meet Hilmar. But we also took the opportunity -- using a trio of leading questions -- to hear Hilmar's vision for EVE's branding and identity across its three products for the next year. I think CSM8 came away quite satisfied with what we heard.

Session twenty-four: Valkyrie. Let's just say that when Valkyrie was announced, the CSM was quite insistent on doing everything we could to ensure our feedback was used to make this the best possible product of this type that could be produced. Clearly, the best way to do this was to do some heavy duty product testing. ;-) No, more seriously, we were interested in hearing if there was any way we could help with this, though one very lucky CSM8 member did get to try it out (no, it wasn't me).

(continued)

aka Jester, who apparently was once Deemed Worthy To Wield The Banhammer to good effect.
Ripard Teg
Jerkasaurus Wrecks Inc.
Sedition.
#9 - 2013-08-31 16:06:38 UTC
(continued)

After the last session of the day, the CSM and a large cross-section of developers met at a local restaurant for dinner, with conversations ranging from the serious to the ultra-casual. Several CSM8 members -- including myself -- used the opportunity of a final get-together to plant the seeds of ideas in the heads of willing devs. But it certainly wasn't all work. Good food and socializing played an important part and CSM members and devs got the chance to learn about each other's hobbies and interests.

After that, a subset of the dinner participants adjourned to Nora's for continued chit-chat. About 11pm, we were called outside for a really glorious display of the aurora borealis -- reportedly one of the best ever seen in Reykjavik city limits. It was really something! After that, CSM members adjourned back to the hotel in roughly age order, oldest first. ;-) I myself called it a night about 1am.

All in all, day three was interesting, productive, and not quite as exhausting as the second day, with a lot of important ground covered! There will be one more wrap-up post where I look at the summit as a whole, along with some final random notes. But for now, time to prepare to head for home!

I want to express my thanks to all of the CCP developers, employees, and leadership that met with us! Your hospitality and openness made this summit a terrific experience. My thanks also to my fellow CSM delegates that attended both in person and over the video/audio link. We've got a lot of work ahead of us preparing and presenting the minutes of this marathon and I think we're all eager to continue our work.

---
Original here:
http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2013/08/summer-summit-day-three.html

aka Jester, who apparently was once Deemed Worthy To Wield The Banhammer to good effect.
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai
#10 - 2013-09-01 10:02:03 UTC
Will be waiting for the minutes in my pesimistic/realistic mood (after 5 years, it would be a striking surprise if CCP had anything for me in their plans) but meanhwile, just want to thank you for keeping us informed on what's been happening during the summit. I can only imagine how difficult is to write up those posts after a day of intensive work, and wonder why nobody is discussing them... Question

Roses are red / Violets are blue / I am an Alpha / And so it's you
Crasniya
The Aussienauts
#11 - 2013-09-05 17:49:06 UTC
I'm hoping that the CSM was pushing for Valkyrie to be a part of the Tranquility server, whether or not that's CCP's initial plan. CCP announcements didn't say anything so far in that regard.

Soraya Xel - Council of Planetary Management 1 - soraya@biomassed.net
Malcanis
Vanishing Point.
The Initiative.
#12 - 2013-09-06 04:40:59 UTC
There are some pretty big technical obstacles to linking a twitch game directly to eve's 1 tick per second engine

"Just remember later that I warned against any change to jump ranges or fatigue. You earned whats coming."

Grath Telkin, 11.10.2016
Mashie Saldana
V0LTA
WE FORM V0LTA
#13 - 2013-09-06 12:28:13 UTC
Nice read, any idea when the minutes will be out?

How to win EVE
Crasniya
The Aussienauts
#14 - 2013-09-06 14:23:38 UTC
Malcanis wrote:
There are some pretty big technical obstacles to linking a twitch game directly to eve's 1 tick per second engine


I'm not saying they should be necessarily in the same space environment. But that they should be part of the economy and social environment of New Eden.

Soraya Xel - Council of Planetary Management 1 - soraya@biomassed.net
Lykouleon
Noble Sentiments
Second Empire.
#15 - 2013-09-06 17:40:44 UTC
Excellent reads and a thank-you for doing them quickly. Now to twiddle my thumbs and wait for the minutes.

Lykouleon > CYNO ME CLOSER so I can hit them with my sword
Omega Tron
Edge Dancers
Pan-Intergalatic Business Community
#16 - 2013-09-06 18:53:06 UTC
Thank you for the feedback on the Sumit. I am looking forward to the minutes assuming that getting those published via the CCP reviews will seem to take forever.
Big smileBig smile

CCP's sand box is EVE Online.  The sand is owned by CCP.  We pay them a monthly fee to throw the sand at each other.  That is all that is here, so move along. Nothing more to be seen.