Jita Park Speakers Corner

This is how you do it Poetic. If you want to know the CSM's position on something and cant find it somewhere, you just ask. You dont start threads soap-boxing about how nothing is being talked about and we're hiding behind NDA and the fake moon landing was done by Goonswarm etc etc etc. *Especially* when these things HAVE been discussed and you either didn't like the format or cant be bothered to go look. Transparency does not mean "anticipate and cater to Poetic Stanziel's personal whims before he knows he has them."

I'm glad Issler Dainze was able to help you better interact with other people. Just as I stick your nose in it when you do bad things, I'll reward your good behaviour (much like a puppy, or other small dog). Next time you want to know something, just ask nicely (you can even EVE Mail me, i will let you ;p ).

Bounties: This feature's come a long way since it was first shown to us. I was honestly leery about them making it such a high priority but I actually think it's turned out rather nice and most players that talk about it seem excited for it. I'm mostly engaged now making sure post-Crimewatch killrights properly support the bounty hunting profession since I think most players will interact with Bounty Hunting in empire and low sec. We've been having meetings with Team Super Friends on it, so they definitely know my/our concerns (whether they do something about it is always the challenge)

Crimewatch: Love it. The new lowsec aggression/engagement rules will no doubt be something to keep track of to see if any unintended consequences are happening (players break things) but I like the direction.

FW Changes: Not really my area of expertise but I have a positive feeling about the changes. Fixing the LP faucet was key, the changes to system upgrades look cool, and changes to complex/capture mechanics seem sensible.Hans has been working very closely with the FW team on this. Only thing I think is missing is some path for losing factions to get themselves out of a rut but it's not an easy problem to solve.

Ship Rebalancing: Absolutely amazing, can't wait for more. I'm reserving judgement on the T3/Command Ship changes till I see what Fozzie lays out as far as their on-field combat capability. I love that they will be valuable on field fighters but the changes to link numbers are a big shift to the gang-link meta which a lot of small gang warfare groups are very reliant on for the tanking ability to fight larger groups of players and must be done carefully.

UI Updates: I didn't like the initial circular targeting UI; like many I found it extremely confusing. However the new circular targeting bracket looks sleek and I consider it an improvement over our current UI which will be very new-player friendly.

I approach every day like it's a challenge.

Poetic has that affect on people.


*You* may not have noticed...

Yes, that's worked so well for me:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2069634#post2069634

Apparently I was too polite and insufficiently histrionic.

I guess I really should have worked on being offensive enough to get one of those classic Aleks informative responses with a heavy dose of condescension, but not too far as to get the one liner condescendingly dismissive reply. (By the way those two categories make up for a shocking percentage of your posts. Perhaps that could do with a change?)

Don't get me wrong, I think you are one of the best CSMs we have. In spite my initial reservations and frequent differences of opinion I've been pretty happy you were elected. Just have to point out that your forums communication could use improvement and you wagging your finger at other people about polite respectful and/or effective communication comes off as pretty funny.

It's supposed to ;)

As to the post you linked, just didnt see it. Part of the reason it seems I do nothing but troll is because Im not really into reading the EVE forums heavily, and usually the things people link me as highlights are ridiculous.

Your questions were good though, and I'm happy to answer them if you dont mind the delay!

Missile Rebalance: Yeah the HML one was harsh but I've seen the numbers and it's medicine we have to swallow. HML were out of line with every other long range weapon system. Now they should still be competitive (esp with the damage nerf being scaled back slightly) but not blowing everything else out of the water. The rest of the missile changes are fantastic, removing the penalties from T2 ammo and making HAM+Light Missiles more competitive. Some ships are in the lurch (the Nighthawk in partic) but their turn at the balance process is coming soon so they wont stay in the cold for long.

War Decs: Are terrible right now but I've been working pretty extensively with Team Super Friends this past month-month + 1/2 to try to make sure as many positive changes make it is as can be. The system still wont be perfect even after everything that will be patched. But it will be improved enough to be usable. Exciting and consequential? Probably not hitting that mark at this stage but at least Wars will "work." Not 100% happy with the nerf to mutual wars but it's the exploit fix they're going with for now. I also think CCP is not being strong enough on dec dodging with this round of iterations.

Kill Rights Giving Suspect Flags: I am a huge opponent of this and I think it's bad all around. Since there's no downside to activating the killright and it can be free+public, essentially someone with a killright would have a permanent suspect flag as everyone activates it for the hell of it. It creates a situation where you force someone to go out side the system and claim the killright with an alt (major reason the current bounty system isnt credible) or simply not play for a month Additionally, opening up everyone to kill. If the killright costs money and is being cashed in so you can try to claim a bounty on that player, the bounty hunter is out of luck because he or she will have to split the money with all the randoms that also take pot shots at the guy. Undercutting their profit is not the way to support the bounty hunting profession, which is a main feature of Retribution and will almost certainly start up in empire/shallow lowsec initially. I'm continuing to emphasize this to the Bounty/Crimewatch teams in hopes they take a more constructive approach to transferable killrights.

Bounty Restrictions/Expiration: Bounties wont just be public. And as far as getting the bounty back on disbanded corps + quitting players, i think that's both necessary for player confidence in the feature and a sensible mechanic. Having the leader of the bounty board not even playing the game anymore (thus both unclaimable and irrelevant) is how the current system works and no one's excited by that.

You consider yourself a comedian? I'll have to remember that when reading your posts, may help me understand your viewpoint better.



Yes, why would we expect a CSM to at least read the CSM forums, how unreasonable of us. Assembly Hall has been disavowed, I understand that. But it would be great if you guys didn't disown Jita Park as well. Better late than never though.



Still don't get why the Missiles where considered so out of line. Never considered them so. I hope you are right that they will stay competitive. Do like the balance otherwise. Still think torpedoes could use more range. Have to admit I've lost track where this is after all the iterations and changing so many different variables.



I think nearly everyone agreed from about day one that mutual permawars where not going to work long term. Still not clear on the mechanics that got into the quick fix. (Instadrop? Cooling off period?)

Still prefer the idea of considering the checking of the mutual to be a counter wardec. If the original aggressor withdraws it makes sense to consider the original defender still at war, but now need to pay fees to maintain since it is no longer mutual. May be too complex to get into next release, even though it has the advantage of using largely existing mechanisms.

Are you happy with the ally scaling costs? I still don't like it. I'd prefer the ally pay based on how many wars he's allied in.

I worry about anti dec dodging measures btw. I think a player should be able to dodge the dec by dropping corp (although probably not in space), they should not be able to just rejoin however. That was a good mechanic to introduce. Players dropping corp means the corp is weaker and war is closer to won by the attacker. Trapping people in corp will lead to people not logging in, if they really don't want to play that.

Continued (because I've reached max number of quotes)...

It is a tricky balance.

NDA is crucial to getting the CSM access to designs and plans earlier in the process. I don't think it was intended to gag them later on (at least I hope not).

I do think that the CSM should be more proactive about commenting on and discussing things as they become public. Not sure if CCP needs to work harder at clearing them to do so or not.

You are right that we'd be screwed if it wasn't for CCP Devs being more accessible and interacting with the community. I think the CSM agrees as well. I don't see that as a failing of the CSM though. It would be unrealistic to channel all feedback through this small group. CSM knows it and has been encouraging direct communication. That's been a great thing for EVE.

CSM is more of a focused consulting group, and in that sense I think a functional one, mostly. Plenty of room for improvement, but still glad its there.

Can agree with your frustrations with faction warfare. I've been watching that pretty closely. I don't agree that all those issues can be blamed on the CSM. In fact I seem to recall CSM objecting to quite a bit of the FW designs and being overruled, and we actually do know at least some of what was communicated to CCP on these issues because it was heavily discussed.

Anyway, its an imperfect world, room for improvement. I think you are taking a bit of cynical view on it, but can certainly understand why.

The CSM is not, has never been, will never be, and was never intended to be a replacement for CCP communication and interaction with the players. The CSM also is not, has never been, will never be, and was never intended to be able to "veto" or order CCP around on anything, game development or otherwise. If anyone was or is under either of those impressions, I'm sorry but you need to pop that bubble and take a look at what the CSM actually is.

"The NDA has made the csm into a complete joke. "

I hear this one a lot, and it's frankly lol-worthy.

CCP is a company, with proprietary information namely being what they're currently developing. Without the NDA, the CSM would not be able to do much of anything. Having us sign the NDA gives CCP a measure of confidence that they can be honest with us, which is important for the CSM to be able to engage with them in a meaningful way. I get that many players do not come from a professional or legal background where NDAs are needed, but they are a fairly common place legal agreement in software development and many other areas. It's not there for political cover for the CSM, cause really why would CCP care. Without it, CSM would not be possible.

"We get minutes that are combed over by ccp and csm for months."

And they are rarely NDA altered in a significant way, and when they are (ie DUST stuff in the last one) it is clearly indicated (in that case with a big bold red disclaimer at the top). If you want a check on that compare the minutes from the last summit with the short version minutes CSM7 Chairman Seleene was putting on his blog just days after.

Not directly addressing that FW stuff, other than most of the CSM-endorsed changes (as opposed to the ones we were skeptical about) were pretty well received, as will the iterations for Retribution i expect. It's really Hans community/area of expertise though. Considering Hans busts his ass to do personal contact with the FW community and they largely support him and his efforts on their behalf I think you're off the mark.

What is being said to ccp from the csm? Of course, we have not the foggiest idea, due to the nda and csm members who know that they are politically better off not answering specific questions about what they propose publicly. They are better off just making soundbites on podcasts or in their blogs.

Well if you don't trust what we say the minutes (which are the most detailed and transparent in CSM history) and you don't trust the blogs (which includes Hans painstakingly curated list of CSM activities on public/private forums, blogs, podcasts etc. which was a player requested thing in the first place) and you don't trust the podcasts (of which mine is faithfully recorded and released every 2 weeks, in addition to multiple appearances by several CSMs on pretty much every active podcast; Are the podcast hosts now part of the conspiracy?) and you can't be bothered to just ask us like Poetic and None ofthe Above, yeah I guess it would be hard to know.

And as for not answering questions on what our opinions are that we give to CCP because of the NDA? I'd say given the above the burden is on you to name a time that's happened. #IDoubtIt

See None, he's the guy I troll. The above is why I troll him/them; they are non-serious and making them mad is way too much fun to pass up. If players do what you've been doing the last couple posts and you'll find the CSM (certainly me) hard to shut up and quite approachable.

PS: I'm glad you've noticed us pushing for CCP to keep up the direct communication. CSM isn't just around to tell CCP when they're doing something wrong. It's also there to let them know they're doing something right and to keep doing it more.

Yes well, Caerain is wound a little tight isn't he? He's got some valid points though.

I think you'll find there are actually quite a few people that don't like Hans' direction for FW, but that's probably like WarDecs there probably isn't a way to make everyone happy. His detractors do have some pretty valid points, but I don't overly blame Hans for the problems in FW, most of that has been CCP's making. Things like LP for defensive plexing have pros and cons. Still not sure how that is all going to play out.

Anyway, yes. Its good to have you respond here. Would be happy to see more communication initiated from the CSM here as well.

And by the way, what happened to those other guys?

Recently the CSM seems to be the Hans and Aleks show. With a surprising guest appearance from Issler. Two-Step I have seen in a few discussions. I seem to recall someone named Seleene around not too far back. Trebor seems to have sealed himself into a bunker after his ill-fated and flawed voting proposal. Elise I presume is busy as always playing and making things explode, hopefully providing feedback to CCP on rebalancing and such. And weren't there a few more of you?

There is no reason the devs can't speak with csm about upcoming changes on the same level they do with the players. Its not asking people what they think about dockblocking in faction war, or reducing the range of heavy missiles is some big proprietary secret. This is the stuff they should be checking with you on and the fact that you think this needs to be top secret is lol-worthy.