EVE General Discussion

Hi folks. It's been a pretty busy last couple of weeks but I finally managed to put together a worthy summary of CSM 6's December Summit. I tried to do more than just write a small blurb about each session. There's pics and a lot of general information about what went down. The CSM's session with Hilmar was particularly interesting this time around. As for the rest, while I couldn't go into specific details on some things, there are a few nuggets of info in all this that you should find interesting. The official minutes are being worked on and should hopefully be out shortly after the holidays.

CSM 6 December Summit Report

I could have written more but I wanted to get this thing out before Christmas. I hope you enjoy the write up. Feel free to ask questions and I'll keep an eye on this thread and try to reply as time allows.

How do you always get first post? HOW? Are you a wizard?

Rumor has it that I simply have no life, no job and a scripted refresh button

Can we get some more details please?
Like what you mentioned, biggest isues, what CCP Tallest answared?

If they could come up with something like that which worked well, I would wholeheartedly endorse it. I'm not beholden to a particular way of doing this at all.



Quite a few of the CSM were making the point that Aurum is a damaged name brand and it just needs to be killed with fire.



Don't worry too much on that account. Their first attempt was a massive failure that they seemed to have learned from. It was pretty apparent that work on that kind of thing has been shelved for the immediate future while they sort out the smartest, not the quickest, way to do it. Looking at the industry and the money that's in this sort of thing like League of Legends and such, I believe it's inevitable that an MMO like EVE wouldn't attempt to cash in somehow.

I've said pretty much all I can at this point. We walked through each ship class and said things about each one; what was good or bad, what needed to be looked at, etc... The important thing is that balancing ships is CCP Tallest's main job. We won't be waiting to see results from these discussions 6 months from now. We should be seeing continuous and evolving balancing on several things much more often.



Yes to all, really. Yes to questions you haven't asked as well. We made sure that Art understood when they start showing some of this stuff to have videos, not just words and pictures.

Yep, that's what it was. The bold. Been fixed now.

(on removing NeX clothing to the character designer / LP stores etc)



Well, how about we press for a discussion on the issue "how to unravel NeX/Aurum from Eve" and ask developers to become involved. I imagine you'd agree that the easiest way would be to simply move all the assets the character designer and scrub the NeX link and call it done - could we do that? How much effort would be involved in sorting these things to the faction LP stores? Without a dialogue with the appropriate developers / decision makers - its still all up in the air.



Yep, "poisoned brand" is much what it is. Some failures are so bad you do need to ditch the concept and genuinely start again.



What I worry about is that you personally (and I assume that represents a general feeling from the CSM) seem not to see a problem with "fluff content" (like ship skins and clothing) not being included by default in the game client and becoming an optional "vanity" category of future microtransaction. I think this is a terrible mistake and its opening the door to the notion of the "hybrid model" (subs+MT) and it cannot help but subdivide the Eve population between MT haves and have nots that will introduce additional pressure to (RL)"keep up with the joneses" quite at odds to the role of an MMO's tranditional relaxation and entertainment role.

Put bluntly, I believe people play MMO's to escape the bullshit economic pressures of their actual life. They login to a fictional universe and virtual gameworld and play with their spaceships bought with space currency and gain a release from the 50 hours a week dayjob, mortgage and car replayments. By engineering an intrusion of RL $ shadowing over the playfield of Eve Online you actually mess with the game's ability to suspend disbelief and help people relax. By reminding Eve players who are "failures in real life" (who can't afford $ 1000 dollar jeans) that they are also "failures in New Eden" because they can't afford $1000 dollar ship skins there either - you run the risk of making Eve "too real" and making it a turn off to people who actually want some fantasy and distance from the economic apocalypse we are living through in the last embers of 2011.

There are games out there that are specifically for rich socially innept twats in real life to prance around in cyber dresses that cost more than most people pay in subs for a year. (Perfect World International to name but one).

I don't think Eve should even flirt with that route.

i endorse this product and/or service !

nice blog !

Read the whole thing, pretty interesting stuff.

Up side: it's good to see CCP going back to excellence, FiS and nullsec stuff. Warms my heart to remind me why i love this game.

Down side: you all forgot about the WiS crowd (alone in a CQ? That's all?), hiseccers (you know, that people who stubbornly refuse to play your game your way) and don't even are aware that soloers do exist in your pretty MMO.

Crucible did nothing for any of the above and all we get is "moar Crucible" + "WiS/NEx wall of silence".

Not very engaging.