EVE General Discussion

It depends...

The CSM performs more than one function, or should...

The ability to influence what is being worked on. Let's say we think lowsec deserves some love. Part of our job as stakeholders is to influence CCP to include lowsec related changes in their release plan for an expansion. This part is in progress but already functions. Maybe not to the extent we'd like, but generally I'd say this works. I'd also agree that we shouldn't have the ability to dictate fully what is being worked on, for even though we try to be mindful of things we care less about, it's important to leave CCP some ability to come up with their own things and/or surprise us (incursions are an example of this).

The ability to influence how the things being worked on get implemented or changed. This function we already perform quite well. Devs come to us for feedback on things that are "ours" or not, or we give them preemptive feedback. I'd say we've had a say in the implementation details of the vast majority of things that have been modified these past years. Some we didn't get to give feedback on because they're trivial and that's fine, some we didn't get to give feedback on because we didn't even know they were being worked on. This latter one is being resolved this CSM I think, we're making progress on getting visibility on what people are working on. Overall this function is good.

The ability to influence how much the things being worked on get worked on. ie, resource allocation. This one fails very much so far. It's a question of politics here. If, for instance, someone wants 50% of the people in reykavik working on InCarna and 25% on the Eve/Dust link, that leaves only 25% of reykavik working on stuff we care about (flying in space, making stuff and blowing stuff up). So while we may get the details right for that 1/4th, the fact that it's only 1/4th is what we're very concerned about and what CSM 5 tried (and failed) to alter. This bit heavily depends on "the powers that be" and this is what we're working on solving right now. We tried before by using substantiated reasonable (imo) arguments but that failed. We'll see how successful CSM 6 is in that regard.

As far as your assumption that Hilmar is the one that matters, that is very partially true. Senior Producer, Executive Producer, Creative Director, Technical Director, CEO, etc. all play a significant part in deciding that kind of thing. Hilmar is a very important part of the puzzle, but not the only one. The good thing is that, in my experience, the man is not an idiot. The only question is how accurate is the information he bases his decisions on.

Sorry for the scepticism but, you had a summit in july where a lot of assurances were given by both CCP and CSM with regards communication, the return of functionality, a wider range of nex pricing and a commitment to do better.

The "minutes" of that emergency meeting are only released after months of wrangling and prove to be a most banal and uninformative press release rather than a detailed account of a meeting.

There has been no return of previous functionality, I still cant spin my ship, I still cant save more than 50 fits.

Nex pricing remains unchanged.

Yet from the triumphalist backslapping on this thread you would swear the CSM had actually achieved somthing tangible since July. Their own blogs prove that is not the case.

CSM is being used as a firebreak between CCP and its customers,

How the CSM or CCP can claim to be achieving anything when we are witnessing the largest decline in subsciptions and player numbers in eve memory?

"Pretty words" mean nothing, you achieved nothing in july so why should I accept your going to achieve anything with more meetings more blah blah blah?

LOL at the NDA.

There's several "sides" to ship spinning:

- Drag & drop to activate ship
- clicking on your ship to open cargo and whatnot
- actual ship spinning
- not loading the resource hog that is CQ
(I may forget a couple)

All legitimate requests. Right now you have the bad door, but at least you don't get the resource hog. The rest should come back.
The "old" ship spinning will not come back as it was (old rendering code and other constraints), but we'll get something equivalent. No time commitment has been provided.

My personal stance has been "I don't want you to get rid of the door until I get a suitable replacement to the old hangar", suitable being something that covers most of the previous performance, functionality and looks, in that order.

Anything of substance other than fixes gets released every 6 months.

This has to do with the understaffed and overworked QA department having lots of work to do everytime something like this gets changed, which kinda paralyzes the company for 3-4 days everytime this happens due to branches being merged, builds being made to be tested accross multiple platforms, packages being built, regression tests being tasked to outsourcing companies, etc. So they bundle those significant changes together rather than getting them out one piece at a time. So the soonest you may expect it is the winter expansion.

That fearless article was not released to the public, and the extra fits was talked about in fearless by soundwave as an example of things they COULD do, not something they would do or even should do. And that's something we adressed during the summit (my stance being "either it makes sense to have more and the servers can handle it and you _give_ us more, or it doesn't and you don't, but you don't make me pay for core services").

I however agree it's time for some red meat as you put it, but even if we obtain you that red meat, you won't get it before december for the most part. However we'll be able to ascertain the existence of that meat.

Glad to hear it. I honestly hope that CCP see it the same way.

I think we can all agree that went nowhere near far enough and we can see that now with the continuing unsub wave and discontent.



Yep, the minutes were terrible and it literally enraged me to hear the NeX strategy defended in the terms it was alongside praise of the Incarna CQ rollout. But the CSM have assured us that much of the shouting and hard words didn't really come across. Fair enough, lets hope they do this time.



I think the downgrading of the "emergency" to "special" summit category shows that CCP felt they could get away with doing nothing but some placating words and a funky video and maybe they'd gull the user base to resubbing and playing happily. This hasn't happened. Hence we're steaming towards the Winter of Discontent in New Eden.



To be quite blunt I'm unhappy that NeX still exists period. I think its hands down the worst thing that CCP has ever done to Eve and is the mutant child of 18 months of neglect.



Lets be realistic. At this point CSM has achieved nothing. Just like the player protests have currently achieved nothing. We are heading towards a decisive confrontation with an out of touch CCP management over resources for the core Eve experience. Until that fight begins and is won then nothing can be achieved really. This game is steering fearlessly towards an Iceburg and unless Hillmar can be convinced to alter course and fund the core game again in a serious fashion then any amount of re-arranging the deckchairs and furniture choices in a lounge is precisely irrelevant.

I think the CSM knows this and I think we know it.

But we should now be unified as comrades on the barricades preparing for the only fight that matters. Divisions and spite between CSM and players of all sides is now pointless.

We either get radically increased resources for Core Eve gameplay and a return to proper full content feature-rich expansions and genuine iteration on abandoned content or this game is going to sink with all hands.

The good people on the CSM are getting ready to fight. We need to get ready to fight too. There isn't going to be any prize for second place in this battle over resource priority.

Oh, so you're saying the CSM gets to take credit when in reality, it was the far more than you morons who have done nothing? You piggybacked off the hard work of Helicity, Spank, and others, including myself. You claim you did something "historic" and that you have helped make the game better.

Where's the proof?

The July meeting would have happened even if you didn't chime in, because we - the players - said we had enough. Not CSM. You may be players as well, but you are a very small portion of the community. Never, ever forget that.



Pretty words that make vague posts don't matter. Actions speak louder than words. And as far as I'm concerned, anything that happens at this point is because the playerbase has spoken, not the CSM.



No, we shouldn't. When your defense is, "We're CSM, listen to what we say", there is no reason for us to listen.

In closing, the CSM - or rather, what the CSM should have been - is a noble idea. However, they seem to pick sheep that are easy to cow into doing what they want. As far as I'm concerned - and many others are as well, if we are to take posts in this thread for what they appear to be - you all are nothing but unpaid spokespeople to keep subscriptions.

You seem to be under the impression that we (the CSM) are the ones decidign what is under NDA and what isn't. That isn't the case. We could tell you what happened after the Emergency Summit because CCP allowed us to. We can't tell you what was said this time because they didn't allow us to say what happened this time.

If you don't want to know that we met with CCP, don't read the thread. Most people would prefer to have as much information as possible, which is what we have done.

I was going to make a post, but Ciar sums up what I was thinking.