At its heart EVE is a game made by the people that play it. The content may be created and provided by CCP but the true appeal of EVE is not in the game itself, but in the people that play it.

In EVE relationships matter, they are important. From the level of the individual up to the level of the big alliances and corporations and their diplomatic shenanigans. I’m willing to be that more people stay playing EVE because of the people they play with than the actual content provided by CCP.

This is why long term players are important in EVE. The longer you play the deeper the relationships you build, these relationships stand as an example of what it means to play EVE. You get to know the pilots you fly with/against, you know who to talk to for advice on certain game mechanics, you get to know who you can trust to go in with you on an investment.

Now, a discussion I had on twitter with @rulesaremyenemy and @fivechairs prompted this post. Rules put forward that EVE’s population is still growing. That may well be but player turnover can be quite high and still show growth, all growth indicates is an increase in CCP’s bank account. High player turnover is bad for EVE because it means a lot of players not hanging around to build the relationships essential to the games success. This leads to players not seeing that its worth building those relationships (because they don’t see the advantage of them) and then the whole thing falls apart. This leads to an EVE where there are no interpersonal relationships between the players, and the churn replaces the population completely in quite a short period of time, then EVE dies.

EVE dies because the new players have nothing to aspire to. They don’t see anyone else flying the big ships because no-one has been around long enough to train for them. They don’t see the characters who have made a name for themselves over a period of years and are respected or reviled by their friends and enemies repectively.

In a game which is based largely on your character’s reputation, which takes time to build, short termers have no opportunity to become as famous or notorious as some of the game’s well known figures (Sir Molle, The Mittani, Darius Johnson, Chribba, and Mynxee, to name but a few.

There are not only ephemeral reasons for why the long term player is someone CCP should be looking to cultivate, there are fairly solid business and gameplay reasons as well:

Long term players attract new players, and players attracted and ‘mentored’ by long term players are more likely to stay and become long term players themselves. This builds a guaranteed income stream for CCP, and gives them free word of mouth marketing to boot. Long term players also generally have more than one account.

Long term players keep the game’s economy running, they fly and manufacture the capital ships which take a long time to train for and need alot of resources to build.

Without long term players building relationships and social networks things like the BoB takedown, Guiding Hand Social Club heist and the recent U’K dissolution could not happen, and New Eden would be a much less interesting place to play.

Without long term players we wouldn’t have institutions such as EVE Uni, the CSM and a (currently sem-stalled) PvP/political/espionage game in 0.0.

EVE needs its long term players, and it needs to increase their numbers, in order to remain EVE. The public quitting of long term subscribers in the Zulu and ‘Vote for Me’ threadnaughts (who’s bright idea was that?) may hide a considerable number of long termers who simply quit in silent disgust, without announcing it to the world (though we can’t be certain, and CCP are hardly going to publish those numbers).

With the upcoming release of a variety of SF MMOs (SWTOR being the biggest) people will move elsewhere for their spacships and lasers fix. SWTOR may even be enough to tempt alot of older EVE players away as most of us got our start in science fiction from that franchise. There have been many tempting games which have lured us away over the years, but we have always returned to EVE. This time it could be different.

Speaking for myself as a fairly long term player, my main is from January 2004, I’m increasingly finding myself dissillusioned and losing faith in CCP. I’m thinking of cutting my losses and moving to another game. DDO and EQ2 have gone free to play, LOTRO is soon to follow, and World of Tanks looks promising. None of them are EVE though and I would like to see EVE continue to be the best SF MMO out there, the question is does CCP want the same thing?

If the answer is yes then they need to keep their long term players happy, they need to give them reasons to stay. If they don’t the churn will get worse and EVE will lose the thing that makes it great; a community that has developed and emerged over 7 years as being the driving force behind much of the game’s evolution and development. A community that has won awards (which should be a credit to the community, not to CCP). We are what make EVE what it is, we are what make EVE successful.

At the moment we feel ignored and marginalised. CCP value new blood over loyal customers, but that new blood will not stay if the general impression they get from us long termers is that EVE is broken and the massive fleet fights that it is marketed on are not possible. New players may be brought by word of mouth, but they can also be driven away.

CCP have a resource available to them that they are misusing. The marketing power of a loyal and passionate customer base is not to be sneezed at, and what’s more its free. CCP need to remember that.

M out

Will this talk put the recent dramas over Zulu’s blog and the CSM summit minutes in perspective, or will it merely serve to demonstrate that CCP really are out of touch with EVE players? We’ll just have to wait and find out. I really hope there’ll be a video available of it.

M out

Mynxee has set up a crowdsourcing project using the IdeaScale platform. For those of you not familiar with the concept, wikipedia defines crowdsourcing as:

“…the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.”

As a tool for brainstorming its pretty good. It allows a whole range of ideas to be collected from a large number of people and then refined, normally the same group that orignates the ideas, into something useful.

The goal with ‘Making Low Sec Matter’ is to get a wide range of input from as many players as possible as to ideas for various facets of EVE’s low security space and refine them into a proposal that CCP can actually use (as opposed to incoherent “FIX TEH LAAAAG!” ranting) when they get around to looking at low-sec.

We all know that low-sec needs some love, lets see what we can come up with.

M out

So we come to the final part in my series of posts about Planetary Interaction, the new feature that was added to EVE in the Tyrannis expansion.

In the previous 3 parts I covered what PI actually was and what could be done with it, some general guidelines to follow before and during the setup of your PI network, and I detailed what I was actually doing with my 5 planet (soon to be 6) setup. In this final part I will take a look at where PI might be going, some of the issues that I came across which I think need addressed in future iterations, and some of the benefits that PI brings to those players who don’t make use of it.

CCP’s Vision for PI (as I understand it)

The purpose of PI is twofold, primarily it exists to give the future ground-pounders of Dust 514 something to fight over and something for us pod-pilots to pay for them to fight over. Its secondary purpose is to replace certain NPC seeded goods on the market, removing their fixed prices and making for a more dynamic and player driven market for goods such as Nanite Repair Paste, POS fuel, Starbase components, and items used in Tech 2 manufacturing.

As a first step, the version of PI released with Tyrannis is a very bare bones and basic feature which CCP have said they will iterate on over the coming expansions and in the run up to Dust. As such its missing a few things which would make sense in a ‘real-world’ planetary manufacturing system. There is also the trailer, which led us as players to belive that we would have some form of power over the populations of the planets we administer. Whether this and other theorized features of PI will make it into the final iteration is yet to be seen, and is another area where greater communication from CCP would be welcomed.

When first introduced to the playerbase at Fanfest in 2009, PI looked very much to be about population manipulation, pollution and environmental effects and of course manufacturing. Planets were broken up into regions, which would be controlled by individual players. Environmental and political effects from these regions would affect the neghbouring regions. So if one player produced alot of pollution in their region, which was focussed on heavy industry, this spread to neighbouring regions and affected the population there as well as its productivity. These were given as the reasons for Dustbunnies having to go down and prod buttock.

The picture we were given of PI at fanfest has evolved somewhat, gone are the delineated regions amd population and environmental management (so far) and in their place we have pins and networks. I can see the logic in this, keep it as simple as possible to begin with and introduce players to the complexities of planetary management in little steps. Also having strictly delineated regions makes no sense when almost every pilot in new eden will at some point want to have a poke at PI, what happens when there are no regions left?

One thing I do hope is implemented in future iterations of PI is some sort of mechanism for planetside trade and co-operation between players, as it stands at the moment two players can have a network on the same planet, but still need to export their goods to orbit to trade them to each other. Some sort of planetside trade mechanism is essential in my opinion in order for corporations and alliances to develop the necessary economies of scale which aid in driving the market.

Whatever the future of PI holds, I for one look forward to it.

Some issues.

As with any new feature, there are going to be teething issues here are a few that I’ve personally come across and a few that I haven’t coem across but that I can see being problematic if they’re not addressed.

The UI

The UI for PI is a bit of a mess really. Its entirely divorced from the rest of the EVE UI and not really integrated well at all. Lets have a list:

• If you’re in Planet View the ‘tab’ key does not function as it normally does and collapse all the windows.
• The 3D models of installations obscure the pins of nearby installations.
• Its a click-fest of epic proportions. With 5 planets and an average of 12 extractors on each restarting the extractors once they’ve finished takes 120 double clicks. not including hitting submit. Thats an awful lot of clicking when a ‘restart extractors with last settings’ button would be so much more convenient (and less RSI inducing)
• Ctrl-click to start creating a link is a good thing about the UI, but the second ctrl-click should complete the link rather than start a new one. Its more intuitive and if you’re creating links quickly, more convenient.
• The installation control window doesn’t behave like any other window in the game. You can’t stack it with other windows and if you move it to a point on the screen which is behind another window (like the chat window or scanner or something) you then have to move the window covering it before being able to access it again. Couple this with the ‘tab’ key not functioning as expected and it gets quite infuriating.
• The installation control window is also ignorant of where on the screen it is. In its smallest configuration, if you move it so the bottom of the window lines up with the bottom of the screen and then click one of the buttons, causing the window’s size to change, the window extends from the bottom. This leaves the newly opened portion off the bottom of the screen necessitating moving the window again to gain access to it. It would be far more convenient if, like other windows in the game, the top of the window was moved up in this scenario.
• “Are you sure?” syndrome. Having to confirm absolutely everything is in some ways understandable, but when prototyping a PI network (laying it all out before hitting the submit button) being asked if you are sure you want to do that when removing a PIN or link can be quite irritating. (Just as it was in Vista when it first came out)

These are just the things about the Planet View UI that are slightly irritating, PI’s integration with the usual EVE UI is far from perfect either:

• The Science and Industry window’s minimum size is too big, I understand that this is because it has to fit the manufacturing and research interface into it as well, but making it adjustable when on the PI tab would be a good move.
• Still on the Science and Industry window, why aren’t more details regarding what you have on your planets available in this window? It would be nice to be able to see if your extractors have finished and how much storage space you have left in a nice table. Each planet could have a collapsable list like the Assets window with details of cycles and time to depletion for extractors and contents and space left for storage, and whether any factories have enough resources and how long they’ve got left to run on their cycles.
• Not being able to access the customs office interface from a station is not logical. Surely a stations communications gear is up to the task? You can chat with other people halfway across the galaxy, but can’t put a call into a customs office in the same system unless you’re in space?
• Assets in Customs Offices, don’t show up in the Assets window. This makes keeping track of them tricky and if implemented would allow you to warp to the correct customs office directly from the Assets window just as you can with a station.

So there are my own observations of what is wrong with the UI. I’m sure that there are more which others will have noticed.

Under the Hood.

Theres only one ‘backstage’ element of PI that I have found issues with and not having studied and recorded the numbers in great depth I’m not likely to find any glaring ones (though Letrange has an interesting one that has cropped up in his PI setup and he’s gone to some lengths to track it down and details it in a number of posts on his blog). When setting up routes for stuff (technical term ) and there are multiple possible routes available, the routing algorithm always selects the shortest route between the originating PIN and the destination PIN. It would be alot more useful if the route could be plotted over the least congested route, rather than the shortest.

I’ve found myself having to redo entire link networks so as to ensure that the shortest route is also the least congested which was not only a waste of time, but ISK as well.

What’s Missing?

The following are not bugs, or interface annoyances, but things which I believe are the next logical progression of the PI feature. Things which are missing from PI at the moment but which should logically be there as part of any industrial logistics network.

• Trade Hub
  A PIN which, when built, automatically connects to any other players trade hubs on the planet allowing players on the same planet to trade in resources without having to export them to orbit and either haule them to a station or jettison them in space. On Earth, we have had such an ability for millenia and we haven’t got anywhere near the level of technology that they are supposed to have in New Eden.
• Corporate Network Management
  Possibly requiring another skill and/or a role, and allowing members of a corporation/alliance to basically hand over control of their planetary networks to their corporation to be administered by the holder of the role/skill. How many networks that player can be responsible for would be determined by the skill and it should also allow networks beloning to the same corporation on a planet to be connected (possibly a subsidiary function of the Trade Hub.) Another option is for the Corporate Network Administrator to have to build the networks from scratch, with the skill determining the number of PCCs that they can drop on a single planet. There are many other kink which should be considered with this concept though, for instance; should the assets exported from a planet be stored in the Customs Office but only available to the CNA or should the Corp Customs office behave like a Corp Hangar? Allowing corporations to develope larger networks on planets would lead to economies of scale which will then feed into the market and keep the wheels of industry turning.
• Contracting from Customs Offices.
  This is pretty logical I think. The benefits of being able to set up a courier contract from a customs office, or even an item exchange would facilitate player co-operation between planets, just as the trade hub does on a single planet. If someone in the same system as you needs something you are producing, them being able to set up a ‘goods wanted’ contract at the CO of the planet where they need it would encourage the development of trade networks that aren’t reliant on stations or the market and would leave the risks and costs of transportation in the hands of the supplier. Conversely; a “goods available” contract at a CO would leave the risks and costs of transportation in the hands of the buyer.
• Logistics Hub.
  A PIN which manages all the storage facilities on a planet. Goods are routed to and from the Logistics Hub and stored wherever there is space. It should allow you some flexibility in which storage to use however as you don’t really want your LP filled up with an intermediary product when you want to export something else.

And then there are the gorrilas under the sofa that were implied in the trailer and suggested at fanfest; Population Control and Environmental Effects. Whether or not these are in the pipeline is yet to be seen, but it would be a shame if they weren’t.

Managing the populations of your planets opens up a whole slew of possibilities, from producing your own slaves, janitors and exotic dancers, to ships crews (blue sky). It also opens up the game to all sorts of nefarious subterfuges and sabotages. Someone’s extractors sitting on the same hotspot as yours, send in an agent provocateur to stir up the populace or poison the water supply and cut their production and get a boost to yours. This is EVE after all, business is meant to be cut-throat and the little people on the planets are like ants to us pod-pilots.

Pleasant Surprises

There have been one or two pleasant surprises which have become apparent as I’ve been playing with PI. These are apparent features of PI that are not immediately obvious at first glance or in any of the guides that I’ve come across.

• Anyone can store anything in a Customs Office, regardless of whether they have installations on the planets surface or not. This basically gives you 10k m3 free in space storage. Handy for ninjas and pirates especially. However the lack of items at COs showing up in the Assets window means that if you do use them for dumping loot while GCC’d you’d better make note of where they are or you’ll never find them again, and the lack of being able to contract stuff from COs means that you’ll have to come back and pick them up yourself.
• Piracy opportunities are pretty good after PI landed they spiked quite significantly in the period just after the planets actually opened up as people didn’t realise that you only need to be in space when you’re picking stuff up and you don’te even have to be in orbit to drop a PCC. I caught my first solo ransom sitting in orbit the day after the planets opened, completely absorbed in playing with their PINSs. Lo-sec planet pokers are alot more savvy now, but COs can still be camped and have no sentry guns (neither do hi-sec ones as far as I’m aware). A fast locking tackler is reccommended though as any lo-sec planeteer worth their salt will be using a blockade runner.
• You can see who else has networks on your planet, and their PINs. This is quite useful for gathering intel for trade or piracy as you can see who is producing what and therefore who will be the most profitable target. To see who else has PINs on a planet you are scanning (or any planet for that matter, it doesn’t have to be one that you’re using aswell). Scan for something and slide the min/max slider all the way to the bottom until the planet is all white. This will allow you to better see the PCCs on the planet, they’ll be faint so you have to have sharp eyes. when you find one, click on it an the network associated with it will be revealed. Right-click and you’ll be able to get the owner’s name.

Conclusions

First of all, PI is far from finished. That much is obvious. But we can be assured that it will be getting further development (its a sore point with a lot of people  in the threadnaught for Zulu’s recent Dev Blog). PI is required to be in a more developed state than it is now for the link to Dust 514 so we can rest easy in knowing that it will not be abandoned in its current state.

What it will be like when our installations are finally open to assault by Dustbunnies, who can tell? Will the market have developed enough that its worth our while spending money on other Dustbunnies to defend them? who knows. What I do know is that PI is part of a bigger picture. CCP are attempting something no-one has done before and linking an online console FPS to an existing PC MMO and letting each affect the other. Whether this synergy will pay off is yet to be seen, but if it does…oh boy.

M out.

Welcome to the nineteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This months topic comes to us from @evepress, and he asks:

The CSM: CCP’s Meta Game? – The CSM, an eve players voice to CCP. Right? In the grand scheme of things yes, the players bring up issues and the CSM presents them to CCP. But in its current iteration the CSM was supposed to be given small authority to assign CCP assets to projects that the CSM thought needed work on. As it has not come out this was not the case. So fellow bloggers, is the CSM worth it, has the CSM improved the game in any way, or is it just a well thought out scam by CCP to give us players a false sense of input in the game? What’s your take?

Oh boy, I’ve written so much about the CSM over the last month I pretty sure you all know where I stand. I was asked to contribute an article to E-ON about it (its in the latest issue), I ran a survey, I was lucky enough to be invited to a few of the meetings at the Summit, and much like everyone else I was disappointed with a lot of the response from CCP which was published in the Summit Minutes. That being said, I fully support the CSM project and believe it is a valuable, if not essential, part of the EVE development process. And here’s why:

First of all a point of clarification, based on what we know from various sources (including those Summit Minutes), being a stakeholder does not give the CSM any more weight in the prioritization of development than any other stakeholder. Ultimately all the stakeholders have to bow to the decisions of the executive. They get a say, and input into the decision making process, but only on an equal footing with everyone else. They have no more authority to influence the direction of EVE than someone who works in the Reykjavik office. They may even have less influence simply because they are not there in person 5 days a week.

So, the CSM have no direct authority to assign CCP resources to specific tasks, they merely have an equal voice in advising the decision makers as to where those resources should be assigned.

The problem here is that this has not been communicated effectively, and has been mixed up in management jargon. All it means, in plain English, is that previous to CSM 5 CCP did not even have to listen to the CSM. That they did so was a courtesy, nothing more. Now, having been granted ‘stakeholder’ status, CCP are only obligated to listen to what the CSM says. They are still under no obligation to actually do anything that the CSM advises them to do. Just as it is with any of the other ‘stakeholder’ groups at CCP.

The CSM becoming a stakeholder has revealed that the executive has no obligation to actually do anything any of their stakeholders advise, even those  within the company itself. The only real obligation they have is to their shareholders. Any obligation to their customers is not really an obligation at all, its completely optional and if CCP feel that they can get more customers elsewhere then they’re not obligated to keep their current one’s on side. It may not be all that clever, or even advisable, to alienate an existing loyal customer base but that decision is ultimately up to them.

CCP is not a monolithic entity, this seems to have been highlighted by the last CSM summit. The minutes and blog posts of delegates gave us more insight into how things work at CCP than we seem to realise. A communications disconnect was revealed within CCP, between the frontline developers, designers and programmers, and the executive.

It used to be that the executive and the developers were the same people. Hilmar, Nathan, and Reynir built EVE as part of a small team of less than 100 people. Working passionately to make the game we know and love today. As EVE and CCP has grown however, they have stepped back from the day to day grunt work of developing the game and have taken a more visionary and executive role. This is perfectly normal in a company which has grown so quickly in such a short space of time, in fact its perfectly normal once any company reaches and exceeds a certain size.

It would seem from the Summit minutes that the CCP executive needs to reconnect with their product and their customers as more than numbers on a graph and the CSM is an essential component of that, as are all our blogs and forums.

Is the CSM worth it? For what it cost us? Yes. For what we as players get from it? Absolutely. For what it costs CCP and what they get from it? I would say yes to both of those as well. The CSM gives us the players a conduit through which to reach directly into the heart of CCP and make our views known. It allows us to tell CCP pretty much directly whether they’re achieving the ‘excellence of experience’ that they are inferring from their various numbers and metrics. The  CSM is not a one way street though, and CCP needs to realise this before they can extract the full value from it.

To CCP the CSM is valuable as a marketing tool, that’s a given, but at the moment they’re doing it wrong; as the furore over the latest Summit (And CCP Zulu’s subsequent Dev Blog) amply demonstrates. There is so much potential for good PR to come from the CSM project that CCP are being foolish in squandering it. There is much more mileage to be gotten from listening to the CSM and paying close attention to its advice in terms of really good PR than there is just from having it there. It certainly does seem at the moment that the CSM is merely there as a distraction and publicity exercise. So yes, the CSM is a marketing tool, but it is more use as such if it is actually listened to and its advice acted upon.

To CCP the value of the CSM lies not only in its potential as a marketing tool but in that it allows a group who are basically ‘third parties’ in to see what they’re doing. External eyes can spot things that internal ones simply don’t see because they’re used to it. An external opinion is always valuable as it can show up the flaws in an internally conceived plan or vision. An outsider to any organisation can also ‘think outside the box’ with greater ease than someone who is more constrained by the limitations within the organization. An external view can be a source of innovation, inspiration and advice unfettered by organizational restrictions.  The CSM is valuable to CCP in more ways than they know, they just need to find that out.

Is the CSM a scam? No. I don’t think so. If it were a scam then the CSM would be flown to Iceland, all expenses paid,  given a free holiday going round all the tourist attractions and being wined and dined by CCP then flown home again. As it is, and I have first hand experience of this, when in Iceland the CSM delegates work incredibly hard on our behalf, discussing the various issues we have with EVE with CCP, and among themselves. Its not a holiday, its 4 days spent sitting in a stuffy meeting room for 9-10 hours a day and arguing their cases to CCP.

So the CSM is a good thing. It may not look like it at the moment, but with the support of the players and a little flexibility from CCP it could be the force that can make EVE the game that we all want it to be, CCP and players alike.

M out

Other Banterers:

1. Growing Pains | CrazyKinux’s Musing
2. CSM: Hoax or Serious Business? « Lost in New Eden
3. CSM-Power to the people or puppets of CCP « A whole lot of Yarrrr!!!
4. Gaming the CSM | A Mule in EvE
5. A Taste Of Democracy | StarFleet Comms
6. CSM: Player Power or Paper Tiger? | I Am Keith Neilson
7. Governance Thrash Redux? « The Ralpha Dogs
8. CCP Doesn’t Care: Blog Banter 19 « OMG! You’re a Chick?!
9. The Cataclysmic Variable: It’s Crunch Time!
10. The 19th EVE Blog Banter is upon us… and about the CSM and CCP | Victoria Aut Mors
11. Your Call Is Very Important To Us, Please Stay On the Line.| A Merry Life and a Short One
12. 19th EVE Online Blog Banter: CSM and CCP | The House Theodoulos
13. When worlds collide… | The Hydrostatic Capsule
14. Blog Banter #19 | Dense Veldspar
15. Blog Banter #19 – Be Careful What You Say Roc | Roc’s Ramblings
16. CSM: Lame Duck from the Beginning? | Confessions of a Closet Carebear
17. Blog Banter #19: Want Cheese With That Whine? | EVEOGANDA
18. Blog Banter 19 – McSpaceships?… You Want Drones With That? | Blastrad Tales
19. Governance Thrash Redux? | The Ralpha Dogs
    
20. More to come…

…Is a Failure to Communicate.

You may have noticed that the Dev Blog Breakdown has been missing from these pages for the last couple of weeks, this is due to busyness with other things and the release of the CSM Summit minutes was foremost amongst these. Yesterday, however, we got a Dev Blog from the new Senior Producer at CCP, CCP Zulu. He was the guy interviewed by CrunchGear earlier in the week which prompted this post.

Read on for my take on this…

At first glance this Dev Blog looks like CCP trying to communicate better hopw their resources are being used over the next 18 months, the 18 months where we have been told that we will not be getting the polish and fixes to the core of EVE that was asked for by the players through the CSM. The threadnaught has been growing ever since, and its full of well reasoned and intelligent posts from the playerbase, and a noticable lack of trolling. Thats how seriously the players of EVE are taking it.

CCP Zulu himself is notably absent from the thread, with CCP Explorer taking up the slack and answering players concerns as best they can, its somehow not good enough though. Lets look a the Dev Blog first:

We find out first that CCP T0rfifrans has moved on from being Senior producer, where he was responsible for the best of EVE’s recent expansions; Apocrypha, and was behind alot of the initial ground work for previous unreleased iterations of Incarna (Ambulation and WiS). T-rfifrans has moved up to Creative Director becoming, I would assume, another exec responsible for the overall vision and direction that EVE is heading in. CCP Zulu (formerly Zulupark) has stepped in to his shoes and I would say he’s got pretty big shoes to fill.

He says in the first paragraph that we’ll be hearing alot more from him in the future, and then goes on to say that the purpose of this Dev Blog is it clarify a few things in the minutes which he says have generated “…rumours and half-facts that seem to have taken on a life of their own.” This is picked up on in the forums by various players and members of the CSM and refuted quite soundly. Though he never states explicitly what these rumour and half-facts are, communications error number 1, and it leads many to believe that even though he states that he has read the many discussions springing from the release of the minutes, he has not in fact done so.

I find it hard to believe as well really as I’ve been reading and writing about the minutes and the backlash being felt by CCP over them since they were released almost constantly and I’m not caught up yet. Zulu is no doubt a busy man and I doubt he has the time I have to pore over forum posts and blogs, unemployed as I am. This is communications error number 2; stating you have done something when it is obvious that you have neither had the time to do it, nor providing evidence that you have.

The blog then goes on to detail the various projects that are being worked on at CCP (those related to EVE at least, no mention is made of WoD but then why would there be?) and the numbers break down as follows:

• Incanra
  • 9 Teams, approx 70 developers
  • 7 on loan from other projects
    Speculation is that they are from WoD as the engine is rumoured to be the same, I don’t think they’ll be from Dust as that licenses the Unreal engine and is being worked on in Shanghai and Newcastle.
• Dust/EVE Link
  • 1 Team, approx 7 developers
  • This includes/is the iteration team promised for PI in the minutes, which is understandable as PI will be the link between the two titles.
• In Space Features
  • 3 teams, approx 22 developers
  • The 3 teams are listed as a mission design team, a feature team and an art/effects team. The ‘unannounced feature’ from the winter expansion discussion at the summit is hinted at and it is stated the the features team is working on this, the art/effects team is apparently working on leveraging the ‘new’ (released November 2007, 2.5 years ago) Trinity 2.0 engine to improve the way textures and models are handled (see the recent Scorpion revamp). What is not made clear is whether the missions team is working on, are they collaborating with the features team on the new PvE content or are they doing something else related to missions.
• EVE Gate
  • 1 team of 10 web designers and developers
  • This team is not realted to any in game issues and does not have the skills necessary to work on gameplay. Its a pure web design/development team.
• The Others
  • 4 Teams, approx 15 developers
  • These are the ‘automation team’ working on the thin clients/bots which will be used to test and eventually resolve fleet fight lag. I like how Zulu describes it as “Fleet Fight in a Can”. There is also a team working on tools for the Customer Service department (GMs) and the metrics associated with that along with a core infrastructure team which deals with patch deployment mechanisms among other things. The last of these 4 teams is one dedicated to performance monitoring and improvements (more on that later)
  • It should be noted that none of these teams look to be associated with actual game content and seem to be very much behind the scenes working on the actual software and hardware the keeps EVE ticking over.

So by my calculations that’s 114 developers working directly on EVE related stuff (discounting the EVE Gate team) if you discount the behind the scenes developers and computer scienctists, network/software engineers and others that seem to make up ‘The Others’ that leaves 99 developers working directly on in-game features 70% of these are working on Incarna.

Out of 500+ employees (this includes everyone, including those that sweep the floors and make the tea) about a quarter of those are working directly on EVE development (including EVE gate, the Cowboy team, and the behind the scenes boys). The mistaken perception in the treadnought that goes with this Dev Blog is that those who are working on Incarna are not working on EVE but are working on a different game. This is a misconception, Incarna will be part of EVE, its just not the part of EVE that the apparently overwhelming majority of EVE players want worked on.

And CCP are still hiring. They’re looking for more people to work on EVE (and other projects), more people equals more resources and more man-hours spent working on their flagship product.

The Dev Blog then talks a little about prioritization, or claims to at least. Zulu starts out with an attempt to address the concerns voiced by many that until 2012 there will be no bug-fixes or iteration , in favour of developing new features like Incarna and the as yet unannounced new PvE content. He claims that the winter 2011 expansion will “…focus more than ever before on iterating and polishing up all the features that EVE has expanded to in the then eight years.” This completely contradicts the statement in the ‘Commit to Excellence’ meeting minutes from the summit: “CCP stated that once Incarna and Planetary Interaction/Dust 514 are fully implemented, focus will
probably shift far more towards improvement of existing features. ”

So which is it? Is CCP going to focus on polishing and iteration of existing features or not? This is either an attempt at damage control by CCP or there has been a failure to communicate within CCP itself. As things stand this issue, which is the one that has drawn the most player ire from my perspective, needs to be clarified. The planned iteration need to be detailed and listed, and new features need to be announced and revealed well ahead of the winter expansion. The we can truly judge the truth of the situation for ourselves.This is communication error number 3.

The next paragraph is also contentious:

“That does not mean that we won‘t make any improvements until then!  We haven‘t started planning the Spring 2011 or Winter 2011 expansions yet (not to that level of granularity) but we do realize the urgency of revisiting certain key game features. Rest assured, the CSM will play a large role in identifying those.”

As far as I can see, the CSM has already identified the more pressing issues that require attention from CCP, and unless CCP haven’t been listening up till now they already know which issues are in need of work.

Zulu then goes on the defensive, saying that CCP is always fixing bugs. This is all well an good, and most likely true, but the point being made by the CSM is not that there are bugs that need fixing from a technical standpoint. The point being made by the CSM and the rest of the playerbase is that there are fundamental flaws in the gameplay experience of the end user.

These may not necessarily be bugs, the code is working well and is defect free in alot of the cases put forward, but are aspects of game design that are not working as part of a playable game experience. There are technical issues; these are bugs, places where the code is not working as intended. And there are gameplay issues; places where the code is working fine but is not providing a gameplay experience where the term ‘excellence’ can be applied.

For example: Lag is a technical issue, there is something in the software and hardware that is not working as intended. This has gameplay implications sure, but at its heart it is a technical issue. Then there are rockets. this is a pure gameplay issue, the code for rockets is working fine, but as an element of gameplay, rockets simply do not work. Those are just two examples, I’m almost certain that there are many more bugs and that CCP is working to fix them almost constantly, but the bugs are not the issue. This is communication error number 4.

The last section of the Dev Blog is where the communications disconnect is brought out into the open for all to see, and to be fair to Zulu he seems to recognize this:

“When two parties have such vastly different perceptions of the same event, something is wrong and needs to be fixed.”

I do think that any ideas to improve communications between the CSM and CCP need to be explored as a matter of urgency however, and leaving it till the autumn may well be too late.

Onwards to the threadnaught.

I’m not going to dissect the threadnaught that this Dev Blog has produced in that much detail as it is huge (currently 27 pages and still growing) and I’ve not caught up with it in its entirety yet (I’m on page 18) but I will say this. It is probably the most reasonable Dev Blog thread I’ve seen. Players are responding to the blog rationally (for the most part) and with well thought out discussion. I can only hopw that CCP are reading it very closely and paying attention to the constructive criticism being put forwards by the players in it.

The thread contains some misconceptions on the player’s part, the difference between bugs and gameplay flaws for example, and a lot of guesswork about how easy some things will be to fix. ‘Low Hanging Fruit’ gets bandied about wuite a bit and the balance issues with rockets and other things gets a lot of attention whcih detracts from the most important point.

That point being the perceived disconnection between CCP and its customers and the lack of communication from CCP in the face of deeply felt player grievances and unhappiness. Zulu’s blog went some way to ameliorate this and the responses from Explorer and Soundwave in the thread itself were valuable and important addendums to that post. The post itself though did not go far enough, and made a few basic errors in communication which highlighted the problem quite starkly.

As many players have said in the thread, the blog itself was welcome. It gave us insight into how CCP’s resources are being allocated for the next few months but it did not go far enough with the details and did not address the specific issues brought forward by the CSM. More detail would be greatly appreciated, nothing sensetive mind, but more about the planning and execution of releases, more about the issues that are being dealt with. “We’re working on it.” simply won’t cut it anymore as that has been the line from CCP for a long time and the perception on the player’s part is that nothing has been happening.

What we as players need, and CCP need to do, in no particular order of priority as they’re all equally important IMO is provide the following:

• More details about Incarna. At the moment it simply looks like Second Life in Space with the focus being on simply wandering around in stations and not really doing very much of consequence. What gameplay will be made available through this new facet of EVE. What tools will it give us as players access to that we previously didn’t have? Details are sparse and player cynicism is rampant, more information about what Incarna will be would go a long way to satisfying us. And no, simply saying “Its going to be awesome!” will not do.
• More information about the backlog and details of what is being worked on from it right now and who is working on it. A regular Dev Blog from the leaders of each team or even one with a short section from the leaders of each team would do this job. Again less use of the word ‘awesome’ would be appreciated.
• Revamped patch notes. Backlog items, CSM promoted issues and  bugs should be clearly marked as such.
• Any balance changes which require extensive playtesting and possibly tweaking should be published and let loose on SiSi. A new forum section should be provided for presentation of the player’s experiences of each of these issues a thread made for each one. This thread should be very strictly moderated (no “FIX LAAAAG” trolling or even very slightly off topic posts).

Sorry about the essay, but this is an important issue. CCP needs to re-evaluate how it communicates with its customers as a matter of urgency. They don’t necessarily need to change the plan, simply communicate to us better what the plan actually entails.

Update: Zulu responds on Page 30 of the threadnaught!

Update 2: Hellmar responds on Page 32 of the threadnaught!

M out

Overall this looks like simply a peice of marketing fluff, there are no new insights and no new information. It seems, from first reading, to be an attempt to introduce EVE to people who may not have encountered it before. Which is all well and good, a growing subscriber base is good for EVE (read on before hurf-blurfing all over that). New people should be encouraged to play EVE. But…

Arnar’s first quoted statement:

“We provide the tools and the players provide the content. That means we provide the game’s mechanics, and we invite players to take part in that. They usually find new and exciting ways to do so.”

So CCP provide tools do they? Tools which let players make content? When was the last time you saw any player made content in game. The player created stuff is mainly in the meta-game, which a new player is not going to encounter straight off the bat. Also with games like APB and less recently Second Life, there is a picture in people’s heads of what ‘Player Created Content’ is, and EVE offers nothing like it.

This is misleading. If there were tools in game which allowed us, as players to create our own Epic Arcs (as was rumoured to be happening before Apocrypha came out) then, yes, you could market the game as having ‘Player Made Content’. I would be better to describe what the players have created as being a ‘Rich Meta-game Experience’.

So thats strike one. As soon as a new player gets in game and finds out that they can’t paint their spaceships then thats the first point against CCP right there. EVE can no longer be marketed as a game with ‘Player Created Content’, simply because, in the eyes of the gaming public, it doesn’t offer anything of the sort.

The article goes on for a bit about the fluff surrounding creating a character, which is nowhere near as important as it is in other MMOs. Too much emphasis is given to this, it doesn’t matter what race you are in EVE as we all know, everyone can train every skill, there are no restrictions. Its better that a new player understands this from the outset and is aware that their initial choice of race and bloodline is a purely cosmetic one.

The characterization of each race is off kilter as well. I’m guessing that the warlike race is the Minmatar and the spiritual race the Amarr. Do those descriptions fit? Yes, up to a point. The Minmatar would be better described as tribal, and the Amarr as Theocratic. They’re both warlike, just like every other race in EVE.

The writer describes himself as as explorer in EVE (for the few days that he’s played it that is) but obviously has no understanding of how exploration works. The way he describes it, he’s simply running missions.

“…being an explorer entails traveling around the universe and discovering different anomalies, then reporting them to an Agent at a space station. Then you get paid. The further you progress, the further you’ll have to go to find new, uncharted territory. No worries, though: there’s more than 5,000 solar systems in the game to keep you busy. More are added all the time.”

You can probably see the errors there straight off, without me having to explain them to you. I’m going to anyway:

1. Exploration in EVE does not require you to ever have any contact with an agent in a space station, mission running does.
2. You explore wherever you want to, you do not have to ‘go’ anywhere, though it can get a little boring if you don’t. Whats the point of exploring if you’re not going anywhere?
3. The last time any solar systems were added to EVE was back in Apocrypha when Wormholes were introduced. None have been added since.

No mention of probes or scanning, no mention of the different sites you have to scan for. Personally, I think he’s just doing missions and has confused that with exploration. The main problem I have with this section is the statement that more solar systems are added all the time, they’re not, that is patently untrue and again misleading. As soon as a new player joins the game and finds this out thats another strike against CCP.

Now we come to the next quote from Arnar:

“Well, that may be one of the areas where we need to improve, we may not be doing a good enough job of hinting to people where they could go next. We absolutely don’t want to lead players into specific routes or specific locations. That would be against the open world, sandbox feel. But that may be one of the problems Eve faces, figuring out how to guide players to new content without specifically pushing them in one direction or another.”

One of the areas that needs improvement, no mention made of all the things that the CSM and the rest of the playerbase have been clamouring at them to fix for years. But of course there wouldn’t be, they’re trying to sell this game to the wide-eyed newbie instead of trying to hang on to us bitter vets. There are plenty of areas for CCP to be improving the game, the fabled NPE is not one of them, or at least it should not be at the top of their priority list.

CCP has an amazing community in their game, and they don’t seem to realise what a resource this could be for them. There are tools, blogs, guides, and more tools that a new player would find incredibly useful, but CCP don’t promote these apart from allowing them to be advertised and posted about on the forums, which many new players don’t even read. They make such a big thing about their game’s community (it won an award from TenTonHammer earlier this year) but don’t really do anything to promote it beyond a few select sites.

The article then goes on to talk about something which is not particularly relevant, but goes some way to revealing the whole endeavour’s true purpose. CCP are trying to capitalize on the recent RealID furore that engulfed Blizzard and tempt disgruntled WoW players into EVE. Even if they do come over for a look, they’re not going to stay long. They don’t want EVE, they want another game like WoW (Aion is that way folks, have fun). EVE is about as far from WoW as you can get in the MMO genre, as is mentioned previously in the same article, there is no hand holding, no ‘go here, do this, get this shiny thing’ and no PvE only servers.

The harsh and gritty world of EVE could not be further from the soft and fluffy world of WoW. In EVE you can be attacked by another player anywhere, and at any time, its the way the world is. An awful lot of WoW players don’t understand this, and don’t want to escape into a world which is just as unforgiving of mistakes and ignorance as the real one. AS soon as they see this they’re off, either back to WoW or one of its clones.

So going for disgruntled WoW players is of next to no use to CCP, very few of them will stay and even less of them will encourage their friends to play.

And thats about it for that article. As a marketing effort it may encourage people to give EVE a try, but is so misleading that many will leave after discovering that most of what is said in it is inaccurate or downright false. Is it damage control? They may also be relying on the bloggers at CrunchGear not being all that up on the current controversies and will not ask difficult questions as the probably would at somewhere more gamer oriented like Massively, MMORPG.com, TenTonHammer, Kotaku, Joystiq, and the rest. CruchGear is a safer option as they can feed them marketing speil and not get called on it.

After the furore over the CSM summit minutes, CCP may be looking for a way to bolster their subscriber numbers as they predict that alot of us bitter vets will simply give up and go somewhere else to play. There is alot of competition on the horizon for the sci-fi oriented gamer to have a look at.

Games like Jumpgate Evolution and Black Prophecy will compete almost directly with EVE in that they’re mainly space based where you as a character identify more with your ship than with an avatar. They also offer something EVE does not, which I know will appeal to a great many of the friends I’ve had try a trial; twitch controls. Then of course we’ve got the grand-daddy of all modern sci-fi, a franchise that basically wrote the script about 30 years ago and has been a yardstick ever since. Of course I’m talking about Star Wars: The Old Republic. EVE subscriptions are going to take a huge hit when this game drops and CCP would be fools not to realise it.

If Bioware have put as much into polishing this game as they did KOTOR, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age, then SW:TOR is going to be a very slick game. EVE is beginning to look a little frayed around the edges in comparison Whilst still graphically impressive, EVE’s age is beginning to show in its backend. Lag, buggy and unfinished features, balance issues and a clucky and unintuitive UI will make it look like the poor man’s SW:TOR.

A dark horse in this equation is a little known Eastern European game called Perpetuum. The only way I can think of to describe it is EVE with stompy robots. The economy is there and player driven, the open sandbox world is there. the variety of unrestricted options is there, the crafting and industry are there. Its looking very interesting and I will be watching its developement with great interest.

So over the next 18 months or so, competition in the sci-fi MMO sphere is going to be feirce, and if EVE doesn’t measure up to the newcomers then we can probably wave goodbye to New Eden. This is why their attitude during the CSM summit was so incomprehensible. I can see how their execs are looking at the bottom line and buying the whole “New players make us more money than working to keep old ones” line. But the point is that keeping a hold of new players is a lot harder than keeping longer term players happy and willing to keep forking over their subs, especially as alot of the things that you can do to keep old players will make it easier to keep the newer ones.

Sorry for the rant, I had a short comment set up for posting on CrunchGear but their comment system either isn’t working or they’ve disabled them. I started a short post on this blog and got a bit carried away.

M out

This is the third part in my rough guide to PI. Part 1 covered the basics and general principles, whilst part 2 covered general guidelines for the planning, construction and operation of your own PI networks. In this part I will go into some detail regarding my own operations and the practical aspects of my operations.

Now, I’ve been running my PI network sort of semi-casually and haven’t gone into as much detail with the figures as some have. I decided to try my hand at making the components for Nanite Repair Paste and not worry too much about whether it would be a profitable enterprise or not. My main character’s corporation, being pirates, has a use for NRP and the goal is to find out if I can provide them with a reliable supply. Not having my own manufacturing facilities I’ll be asking around the corp to see if anyone has an alt with a POS nearby that can be used in the final manufacturing phase.

The Planning

As mentioned in the previous post in this series, planning is something that should be done with care and attention to detail, even moreso if you are hoping to run a profitable enterprise. I haven’t really been worrying too much about costs as I’m not really looking to turn a profit, but these should be noted if you are aiming to make money.

Using the 5 extraction planets and one manufacturing base model, I selected planets in the systems around my home base (getting three right on my doorstep, one at 1 jump away and one at 2 jumps) which would enable me to switch out manufacturing to other avenues if I wanted to change at a later date.

To manufacture NRP you require three PI products which are broken down into their components and their source planets  in the following list:

• Nanites (P2, Barren)
  • Bacteria (P1, Oceanic)
  • Reactive Metals (P1, Lava)
• Data Chips (P3, Barren)
  • Microfiber Shielding (P2, Barren)
    • Industrial Fibers (P1, Temperate)
    • Silicon (P1, Lava)
  • Supertensile Plastics (P2)
    • Biomass (P1, Oceanic)
    • Oxygen (P1, Gas)
• Gel-matrix Biopaste (P3)
  • Superconductors (P2, Barren)
    • Plasmoids (P1, Plasma)
    • Water (P1, Oceanic)
  • Biocells (P2, Barren)
    • Precious Metals (P1, Plasma)
    • Biofuels (P1, Temperate)
  • Oxides (P2, Gas)
    • Oxidizing Compound (P1, Gas)
    • Oxygen (P1, Gas)

I presented a flowchart of my planned layout in the previous post, but I will do so again here (click to embiggen).

This was V1 of the planned network and as you’ll see later in this post it has undergone some evolution since then. I’m currently still training for my 6th planet so I can plant a manufacturing base on a local Barren planet. Until that point I’m stockpiling the P1 resources at my home station and currently have enough to run my manufacturing planet for more than a month without having to extract anything else, depengin of course on how many plants I have making each of the required ingredients.

The Planets

The layout of each planet’s network will depend largely on how the resources you want to extract are distributed. As stated in the previous post the best method is to simply plonk the PCC down anywhere, as you can only do that from space, and then dock up to take some time over laying out your network. All my planets are currently running on Advanced PCCs except for the Temperate planet which is still awaiting an upgrade from the Improved PCC.

Temperate Planet

The Temperate Planet is the source for my Biofuels and Industrial Fibers, which are processed from Carbon Compounds and Autotorphs. Autotorphs can only be extracted on Temperate planets so I have to include one in my network.

I was lucky on my temperate planet in that I found reasonable sources for both materials pretty close to each other. The extractors are set up in chains of three which then go into a storage unit as a buffer. The general advice I’ve seen on the forums and elsewhere is to avoid using Storage Facilities wherever possible in order to save CPU and powergrid, The PCC and LP should have enough storage for anyone’s purposes but as you can see from the above image, I foolishly placed my LP a fair distanct from my extraction points which would have required me to set up long links betweeent the extractors and the LP. The amount of RM I’m pulling on a 24hr cycle would have meant that I’d need a separate link for each extractor chain due to congestion so an SF was the most economical solution.

Gas Planet

The Gas planet is a bit of a special case in that I can manufacture one of my P2 products (Oxides) at source as both the ingredients are available on this planet (Oxygen and Oxidizing Compound). I also need to export some of the oxygen for use in a later process (Supertensile Plastics). This has led to a slightly more complex network than any of my other extraction planets. The Gas planet is another of the planets that must be in my network as it is the only source for Reactive Gases.

Thankfully, once again the optimal extraction points were quite close together which ate least allowed me to minimize the length of any links. The way I’ve got this running at the moment is a chain of three and a chain of two extractors for each RM, going into a SF for each RM, these then run into factories for each of the required P1 products. Fairly simple so far, but this is where it gets more complicated.

One of the Oxygen factories pipes straight into the LP for export, while the other runs into a second SF, which is also fed by both the Oxidizing Compound factories. This SF then feeds both the P1 products to the Advanced factory which is manufacturing Oxides for export.

Looking at it now I can see areas where this network could be improved and made more efficient. As things stand I’ve got one of the OC factories standing idle quite a bit of the time as the Reactive Gases source is not that rich, I’m alos ending up with large surpluses of Oxidizing Compound which is taking up space in the secondary Storage Facility.

I’ll probably look at reworking this networ at some point soon in order to cut down on the surpluses and get more oxygen out the other end. I’m not too worried about the level of Oxides being produced at the moment, I won’t really get a handle on the efficiency at that level until I have my manufacturing base up and running.

Plasma Planet

I’m extracting Noble Metals and Suspended Plasma from my Plasma planet and exporting Precious Metals and Plasmoids. Neither of these resources are unique to Plasma planets but they are most abundant on this planet type.

Again, the RM sources I’m extracting from are reasonably close together, but I’ve added seperate buffers for each resource due to the positioning of the deposits. I also discovered soon after setting this network up that there was enough Suspended Plasma being extracted to run another factory, this factory isn’t running constantly but it is enough to prevent the Storage Facility from getting over full and causing a loss of resources.

Lava Planet

The Lava planet is another of the ‘must-haves’ as it is the only source of Felsic Magma which processes into Silicon. I’m also extracting Base Metals from this planet for processing into Reactive Metals.

As you can see from the above image, this is the only one of my planets where the PCC has been included in the network. Its not actually being used as anything but a routing point and is not providing any storage space. This was the first of my planets where the two closest resource deposits were still a fair distance away from each other, so the model fro the network was similar to the Plasma planet in that two chains of three extractors for each resource are routed into storage buffers which are then routed (through the PCC) to the respective factories. As the links are so long on this planet I don’t have enough CPU and Power to add another factory as I did on the Plasma planet but neither of the deposits I’m extracting from are anywhere near as rich so it isn’t really necessary.

Oceanic Planet

The Oceanic planet is the only one I’m extracting 3 different RMs from and so the amounts being exported are understandably smaller. From this planet I get Water, Biomass, and Bacteria; all of which could be obtained from other planet types but again their abundance on Oceanic planets is higher than anywhere else.

With extracting three RMs comes the issue of finding a decent location for your LP. I managed to find a spot where two of the RM depostis were close together and the third was quite a way off. I’ve also been restricted in the number of extractors I can place for each resource, simply because I’m extracting three of them. As you can see from the image above the two extraction groups closest to each other are routed into one SF and from there to the respective factories in the  upper group. The  further away extractor group gets its own SF and links to the two lower factories. The CPU and Power cost of the link, precludes me adding any other factories and has even resulted in restrictions of the number of short links I can have connecting my factories to the LP.

Barren Planet.

I don’t have my barren planet set up yet but I’ve got a rough plan (from the V1 flowchart above) of what is needed. I’ve got another 12 days of interplanetary Consolidation training to go and then I’ll be able to run my PI setup in its entirety. I’ll be sure an post an update once its up and running.

Some consideration will have to be given to how much storage I’ll need and how many factories I’ll have to have running.

Logistics

The basic logistics are pretty simple at the moment. I run my extractors on 23hr cycles and pick up the exports every couple of days and store them in my hangar at my home station. There’s not alot more I can do in this regard until I get my manufacturing planet running and I know for certain the consumption rates of the various inputs.

I have a very large buffer of materials in storage at the moment, which will allow me a little flexibility in the management of my output. In storage I currently have the following amounts of resources

• Plasmoids: 43700
• Water: 27480
• Biofuels: 35840
• Precious Metals: 33520
• Silicon: 36620
• Industrial Fibers: 30740
• Oxygen: 20720
• Biomass: 16200
• Reactive Metals: 40160
• Bacteria: 23020
• Microfiber shielding (left over from a previous PI experiment): 640
• Oxides: 2900

The limiting factor in the above is Biomass which is manufactured from Planktic Colonies on my Oceanic planet, and current stocks will allow me to run my manufacturing planet for 16 days or so without having to extract anything. This is not what I’m going to be doing of course as I will keep my extraction planets running in order to keep the stock coming in. Its good to know that I have a buffer in case of something unexpected happening.

So there you have it, this is my PI network as it stands right now. I’m logging in every day to double click 120 times in order to restart my extractors and flying my cloaky hauler around every few days to pick up exports. As I mentioned above I’m not looking to make money doing this and so haven’t gone into the numbers as much as some others (if you know of anyone fire me a link in the comments) and from what I’ve been reading the market has not yet stabilized enough to know whether PI can be profitable.

In the next, and final, part of this series I’ll be looking at the various good and bad points that I’ve found while exploring this new feature of EVE and looking at where it could be going.

M out

With reference to the CSM Summit meetings, and the ensuing discussion in the comments on Max Torp’s blog, we (that is Max, Helicity, and I) have come to the conclusion that as eve bloggers we should present a somewhat united front to CCP and protest in some way. Now the ofrm this protest is going to take has not yet been decided (rough ideas at the moment

If you are interested in taking part, providing input, or simply showing your support please register your interest using the form below the jump. You will be contacted in due course via email.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Note: The email address you provide will only be used in relation to EVE blogging. We will not share your email address with anyone else and will not spam you endlessly with useless crap. This message is merely a registration of interest and carries with it no further obligation or responsibilities. A proper mailing list will be set up in future if the numbers of registrants warrant it. Your permission will be asked before you are added to any future mailing lists.

If you have any concerns or questions please email kween(at)keithneilson(dot)co(dot)uk.

M out

So the minutes are out, and they’re pretty much what everyone expected…

TL;DR:

CSM: “The players do not want new shiny things they would like you to fix some of the core gameplay problems first.”
CCP: “Yes we know about all these things you are telling us, but we’re not going to touch them for another 18 months. Ooh, look at these new shiny things.”

This has raised some ire in the forums, as was to be expected no matter what the results of the summit were, and there are even established bloggers who have had enough. Add to this the current furore about Ankh’s dismissal from the CSM and we have a situation which seems to vindicate the position of a large number of CSM naysayers.

Their claim that the CSM is nothing more than a publicity exercise and can exert no real influence over the direction that EVE is going now has the minutes which they will use to support their claims, and while I remain a staunch supporter of the process and its goals, I can kind of see their point.

The minutes are worth reading in their entirety, and its worth reading between the lines as well. As the Summit progressed the frustration being felt by the CSM with CCP’s apparent intransigence and unwillingness to implement many of the suggestions brought forward by them becomes more and more evident. With later discussions devolving into a reiteration of the “Commit to Excellence” argument.

The only committments on CCP’s part were not related to doing anything to the game itself, and had more to do with producing Dev Blogs (listed below) and procedural stuff for the CSM itself. A few of these related to publicising the issues that the CSM has brought forward and are currently in the backlog and more transparency with regards to their prioritization.

This is all well and good, and will certainly improve the amount of information that the playerbase has with regards to the CSM’s activities. However they are all, still, in the realms of generating publicity for the CSM and CCP, which without concrete examples of fixes being implemented in game (fixes which the player notices, not fixes which shave milliseconds of a certain backend process in the client), simply runs the risk of playing further into the “CSM is a PR stunt” crowd.

CCP needs to prove that they care, they need to recognize that some of the issues that the playerbase has are genuine and need fixing. The CSM doesn’t have to prove anything, the minutes speak for themselves. The CSM have acted in good faith (recent events not-withstanding), taking the player’s concerns and opinions to CCP and being quite forceful in their presentation. CCP, it would seem, have not acted in good faith, dismissing and ignoring the concerns of their customers in favour of the big ideas of their executive.

As has been seen, players are going to start voting with their wallets, this is also counter-productive. I can understand how disheartening it is, I’m disheartened myself, but quitting a game you love is not going to fix anything and ultimately undermines both the CSM’s ability to speak on behalf of the players and CCP’s ability to devote resources to the game.

Anyway, enough of the ranting and on to the minutes themselves, I’ve picked out a few choice titbits which I found interesting but the whole document is really worth reading in its entirety, along with analysis from other bloggers and commentators in the forums.

The most telling quotes come during the ‘Committment to Excellence’ discussion, which was based on the most supported Assembly hall thread in the CSM’s history, and reveal a fundamental disconnection between the executives at CCP and both the actual frontline developers and the playerbase. The grunts who do all the work building this marvellous world in which we live are on our side, the problem is that they don’t make the decisions.

In response to the presentation given Nathan Richardson (CCP Oveur) responded with the following:

“Speaking on behalf of CCP, Nathan disagreed strongly with the claim that CCP isn’t committed to excellence.  He pointed out that CCP probably spends a bigger part of its income on development than most other large, established game companies. He stated that this is a clear sign of this commitment.”

As has been pointed out in the forum thread, evidence of input is not evidence of output and is normally the last resort of a bureaucrat trying to justify his job. Its all very well saying that you spend alot on development, but if we as players are not seeing definable results on our end (which are not the same as the total line in an accountant’s ledger) then we’re going to wonder whether investing our money in your product is worth it.

Theres quite a bit of discussion of this point in the forum thread, well worth a read.

The other quote I think is worth mentioning from that discussion is this one:

“CCP stated that once Incarna and Planetary Interaction/Dust 514 are fully implemented, focus will probably shift far more towards improvement of existing features.”

The emphasis is mine, note that probably is not a definite committment. What I fear is that once Incarna an Dust are out (the next 18 months by all accounts) in the wild another new shiny will come along and suck up all the resources so that nothing will ever get fixed. What CCP needs to do is make a committment to go back and polish after Incarna and Dust land. Don’t give us vauge platitudes with indefinite timeframes, probably and maybe don’t cut it. Make a promise, and then keep it. This will go a long way to addressing the loss of faith that many in the payerbase are feeling after reading those mintues.

It may also be productive to find out where the communications bottleneck/disconnection is between the executive and the rest of those involved or is it simply a blinkered focus on the bottom line?

Other interesting items were the revelation that we would begin to see Incarna rolling out at the end of the year (again, with the caveat ‘probably’) with the introduction of the new avatar creator. There was also mention of a new feature (sigh) in the winter expansion which the CSM took issue with, the lack of resources being put into reworking the mission system (revealed in another discussion at the summit) would suggest that this may be a new PvE feature, but only time will tell.

Dev Blogs we should expect:

• History of NPC goods/Tyrannis Hoarding issue.
• PI Depletion Mechanics.
• PI demographics by high, low and null security.
• Incarna “State of the Situation”.
• Unhappy Customer Project (done).
• EVE Wiki page regarding ban policy.
• Low Sec Demographics and Statistics.
• Network Scaling Issues
• Excellence

So far we’ve seen one of those (about the Unhappy Customer Project, in a kind of round about way), and one about the fixes that were brought in via the mass testing (which was basically the same statistics that were thrown at the CSM during the lag discussion). Personally I’d like to see CCP follow up on all of these as soon as possible. If they don’t it merely adds more grist to the mill of the CSM’s naysayers. I can imagine it now: “The CSM can’t even get CCP to put out Dev Blogs, what a waste of time they are.”

So those were the minutes fo the first of CSM5′s Summits with CCP. As I said at the top of the post, they were pretty much what I expected. All we can do from here in is keep up the pressure and support our representatives as they continue to speak truth to power. The CSM is our voice at CCP, lets get behind them and turn the volume all the way up to 11.

As I’ve said before there is no point in losing faith in the CSM, doing so undermines its influence and means that we have even less of a voice. So spread the word, tell your friends, corpmates, enemies, prospective ransom targets, anyone. The more people get behind the CSM the more pressure they can exert on our behalf and maybe, just maybe, the decision makers at CCP will have no choice but to listen and act.

M out.

Other commentary on the minutes:

• EVE Forums Discussion
• Scrapheap Challenge
• Life in Low Sec (Mynxee, CSM Chair)
• Confessions of a Noob Starship Politician (Trebor Daehdoow, CSM Delegate) (and this one too)
• The Elitist
• Faction Warfare Military Career Center
• Max Torps Starfleet Comms
• Mike Azariah
• Let me know If I’ve missed anyone here or in the comments