EVE Information Portal

How about "ZERO", no Russian judge required, since if we knew at least which game they were intended for -- EVE, DUST, VALKYRIE or "somebody's current braingasm that might never see the light of day", we'd at least have an idea of which part of the EVE multiverse is going to get us excited next.

Or not.

Since we have no information, then the following WAG is as good as it gets: "Hello Kitty In Space".

Let the fapping begin.

Hmmm. Well, I didn't suggest revealing any more/less info than has been revealed in summits past, Ralph, but I don't necessarily agree with this comment either. Sorry.

The timing of the minutes, I disagreed with simply because its impractical to get a quality control review after product completion.

But if you really want to get more specific: in 2012, the CSM were invited to become official CCP stakeholders and the reason given was so they would be able to contribute feedback during the development process.

"The planning process is always in flux; if you nail things down too early, you miss things. In one of our Skype conferences, I made a point of saying we were evaluating things, not that we had a plan. I think CSM should come into the process during the evaluation stage, before we have a plan."
-- CCP Ripley, CSM Winter Summit Minutes 2012, p. 22

And as the CSM are OUR player representatives, having the minutes nda'ed until after the expansion is released is removing a significant part of our - the players - ability to respond to proposed ideas and contribute feedback - via our democratically-elected CSM representatives, during the development process. If there are people out there who think players can have more influence on the development process by waiting until after an expansion is released to comment, then I'm just going to have to respectfully agree to disagree with those folks. lol

YK

Just in case there was any confusion, making this happen is actually the biggest success of CSM8, they know virtually every project long before any work begins and provide tremendous input to pre-design and design review. The day to day of the CSM is serving as a sort of focus group for us too bounce stuff off.

An interesting point I just noticed:
They have those players in the company, as employees.
We know that a lot of CCPers play Eve and also that they have to be extremly careful not getting outed. So they will play relatively solo and unorganized.
They may be solo PvPers, mission runners or members of some mining corp (that doesnt require voice and doesn't mind them being very private about RL). From what I gathered a lot are big carebears.

Just as a thought :)

So if I am Dolan's alt, you'll agree with me? Oh, the temptation.



I do too. The question is, what are they important for? How do you assess quality by reading heavily edited text in advance about "upcoming feature X," without having the feature available to do any assessment? When the features are publicly available, you can read the whole discussion and they can name the feature explicitly, and then you have the information necessary to assess quality.

But I'll meet you halfway: What if the minutes came out around the time that the next expansion was uploaded to the test server? That would be ideal, wouldn't it?

No, I'd still disagree with you Dersen, but if you were Dolan's alt, advocating removal of power from the hands of the players to CCP would make more sense. (And I'm battling the flu atm, all looped up on Nyquil and hot toddys, so I apologize in advance for any slights - perceived or otherwise. They're unintentional. I type rather quickly and when I get excited, I type what I'm thinking, as I think it, without much thought about grammar or syntax.)

To your second point, no, I don't believe I will meet you halfway. Sorry 'bout that. I just don't think the CSM minutes need to be attached to the expansion release in any way. While obviously related, they are separate items and it is in the players' best interest to get the minutes released as quickly as possible. So I don't agree that attributing some arbitrary or unnecessary deadline that could affect the timing of their release makes all that much sense.

If the summit minutes only discussed "heavily edited text ... about upcoming feature x," then I'd probably be more open to flexibility. But they don't. The minutes contain vast amounts of information that isn't nda'ed. They're usually 70 - 100 pages long. That's a lot of information and it isn't all redacted or difficult to comprehend. It is the players' only and best insight into the development process vicariously through our csm. CCP can state that this is not the function of the minutes but policy changes will not alter their substance.

A single quote from a dev could spark a conversation that might lead to an entire threadnaught and subsequent design change.

A great example was in the winter 2012 summit minutes where entire sections were devoted to the "future of EVE." Wasn't that important info, easily comprehended, that didn't need to wait for a point release? Why should players be required to wait to learn about the 'future of EVE' until their rebalanced intys hit TQ?

From my pov, the minutes reference the summit - not the expansion features - even if that's a great deal of the subject matter or why a lot of people read them. Keep the upcoming features nda'ed just like they have been, but there's no reason to delay the release of the minutes by months just to prevent specuation about upcoming features.

imo

YK

Yes, exactly. So, do you want threadnaughts about OH NOES HTEY R NERFING TEH SEPRENTIS because of a single quote from a dev, or would you rather have more informed threadnaughts based on the ability of people to look at the evolution and intent of a feature, then go on SiSi and see how well it actually works out? Alternately, they can be released just before the dev threads start going up in Features & Ideas.

The former is a useless waste of time. The latter is useful and constructive, and impossible to do without there being enough concrete information available to the players to provide good feedback.

If by "a single quote from a dev," you mean something more big-picture and not related to the subsequent release, I agree that that isn't time-sensitive... which means that it places no constraint on when the minutes are released. I suppose you could release that batch of minutes first, then the next-expansion-related content, etc. The minutes don't have to all come out at once. I'd be fine with that. But I absolutely do not see the point in releasing the parts of the minutes related to an upcoming expansion before the features in the expansion are publicly available at a high enough level of detail to be critically analyzed.

What any one person believes is a not at issue, sure. What we collectively believe is a good use of time, or a waste of time, is in fact a principal issue: otherwise, nobody would care that the minutes took months to come out, right? And the only way to get a sense of the collective belief is for a significant number of individual users to speak up.

I have no particular interest in changing your mind. I am curious to know what the point is of getting your hands on information that there is no good use for. The "OMG they're nerfing Serpentis!" thread was a complete waste of time, in which some players got angry and disaffected over nothing. How is that in any way productive?

Productive matters, because this is not a democracy, or even a democratic republic. If the outcome of the earliest possible release of the minutes is a great deal of noise and anger over nothing, then CCP will delay the minutes, because it's not in anyone's interest here for the playerbase to be angry over nothing. This is a situation where no information is actually better than a few crumbs of information; but both are significantly worse than having enough information to make a sound judgment.

only one question.... WHAT IS PROJECT 3 ?!?!?!?!?

Or project 2 for that matter

Clearly I do not agree. An "informed analysis," much like a value of "worth," would also be relative. How do you propose we determine the threshold of "informed?" By jury trial? Take a poll? Let CCP decide? We're talking about CSM summit minutes here and I'm simply advocating for those minutes to be timely and accurate. You seem to think that releasing them after an expansion constitutes timeliness and that less redacted text constitutes increased worth. It seems to me that you just want them to read like a novel instead of the minutes of meetings which largely discuss unreleased features and upcoming expansions. Which is what they are. But as I'm opposed to both repeating myself and animal abuse, I will not continue beating this dead horse. I have no intention of hijacking this feedback thread. I've stated my opinion and I stand by it.

YK