EVE General Discussion

I probably write all that for the birds, but who knows, maybe it works c:

I think his base sentiment is a good one on principle and I'd like to expand on it a little.

Let's start at the players for a change, not the developers.

Let us compare Tranquility player counter with Singularity:
TQ: 31470 (100%)
SI: 156 ( ~0.5%)

I know, not every character belongs to a different player, but they are much likely to be unique on Sisi. A report from a few years ago claims that accounts per player average at about 2. Let's make things drastic and say it's 3 per player, which hopefully also evens out the people who are using multiple accounts on sisi. That brings our sisi player counter to 1.5% of the TQ players.

I'm perfectly sure that not everybody is actually testing the new features and some just test some fits or fiddle with PI test setups or do other unrelated stuff. I'd say only half are actually participating in testing the new patch. That's 75.
Now let's ask ourselves, how many of those are actual paying customers, and how many of those are CCP devs? I don't know. But the more important question is, how many of them are providing feedback too? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure that once I look into the sisi forum, I'll be seeing the same faces over and over again. Another thing is, how frequently are those people on sisi? And how frequently is a player logging into TQ? I don't know. We might as well be back down at our 0.5% That would be 1 in 200 players who is interested in what is going on with the game's future.

So the number of actual testers is terribly low. Just from a cold statistics point of view, it might as well be safely neglected. But hey, let's think for once that CCP figures those few people are really important in what they do. I know, that might be hard for a few to stomach, but let's just go there. Let's think that these people are listened to.

Who are these people? How many of them cover how many aspects of the game? I'd be inclined to think that there is a bias towards one certain playstyle, neglecting other aspects of the game which leads to more issues. This is reflected by how the post-patch feedback rolls in and is handled, which makes the devs go "Oh, we didn't think of that" and "We didn't receive that kind of feedback on sisi, sorry."

Let's face it. The vast majority of players is NOT interested to PAY for a game and then additionally spent hours NOT playing that game because they need to test upcoming features from the devs. A game developer that provides paid content in exchange for your fun should better be on top of their own game to provide high quality entertainment, right?

What are we getting for helping out with our feedback?
NOTHING.
It is milking of player time and effort, letting them slave away for free. We get nothing in return. Skillpoints for masstests don't count. Skills should be set to whatever level at will to provide proper testing.

Let us look at the developer side of things now:
If we would get anything that is tangible for our high quality feedback, and if the test server would be properly COMMUNICATED to the players and not stumbled across by accident or something, then Sisi would get a lot more traffic and thus opinions, a broader ranged spectrum of ingame occupations, brains and playstyles.

I understand that the developers can not cater to every whim of every paying customer, and I don't WANT that. They should pick the high quality voices instead which fit the game's future best. Not every voice is equal. But when I look at the CSM, I feel like I'm not sure if this high-quality feedback standard would be of any worth.
That is not to bash the CSM, don't get me wrong. I have no idea what they are doing, really. I don't know how many bad things they prevented to happen and how many bad things they let slip through. But I doubt they have real influence either. And the question is again, how many of them are in which position to actually have a high quality feedback voice? I don't know. Only because they're player elected doesn't mean they're always and automatically the best in what they do. That is not an insult, that is common sense c: I have no hard feelings against the CSM.

But it gets worse.
We don't get a proper roadmap. We don't see the plans of CCP. We only see what they are going to do, and then it is being rolled out to sisi. At that point, it's already WAY too late. At that point, a decision has already been made that something is going to happen. We have no influence on design decisions.

And THAT is the biggest problem I see. The developers think that something has to roll out, so they do it, because it's on schedule. No amount of protest can stop it, rare exceptions noted.

I'd like to see a list of which things would fall under which department, and a list of said departments / development teams so we can directly contact them. Or do that through the CSM.
If we could shape the roadmap with our player feedback so the devs would get a hint in which DIRECTION certain parts should focus... then we wouldn't sit here and ask ourselves "was the UI team not busy enough so they had to change X and Y which wasn't remotely needed, while Z is still way behind with fixes?"

Yes, sometimes it is legacy code. The question is when it has to go and why. What is connected to it. Better reasons and explanations and behind-the-scenes will nurture better feedback.

But please;
Start thinking about making a roadmap that is NOT SET IN STONE, so the feedback can AFFECT it, so you don't WASTE precious development hours in producing third-priority stuff.
And IF you do something... PLEASE do it properly, not half-hearted.

You are asking for more chaos that you can imagine, because No One will try to game a system like that to strictly benefit themselves and their play style.

If you do believe the player base wouldn't game it you are the most naïve player on the cluster.

I get along with the devs!

<3 Devs

BECAUSE SCREAMING IS FUN!

Fozzie should be forced to fly in the daily Imperium sov-defense fleets until its fixed.

Whilst I disagree partially with the "no influence" side, as there have been a few cases and CCP is somewhat working to fix that (re; Focus Groups), I do agree with the fact that when its deemed ready for SiSi, very little changes with the end product when it is launched and then suddenly, from left field, there are issues.

The most recent one is the New Camera debacle. Whilst an announcement may have been made (its late, i cba looking it up) most of the player base was taken by surprise when their camera was utterly different, which to some caused a physical issue. You (CCP) have allievated the issues somewhat, and have thankfully, left the old camera in for the next month or so, but there are still major issues with it. However, this is not the place for my.. ramblings.. so I'll cease that point.

We, as players, need at least more than a cursory "its coming in expansion X", then being informed (or not in some cases) that things are happening on SiSi a week before release date. Even if its just a "Expansion Y is 25% towards going on SiSi" update on the Updates schedule page, at least then we have an idea.

We're losing?