Hopefully work will settle down soon so I can spend a bit more time on CSM issues

Yes many of them complained about various things such as ship balancing, Player Owned Stations (POS), various bugs, some exploits, Lag, more Lag, even more Lag and so on.


But overall they kept on playing and the subscriber count kept on growing. Players accepted the issues because the core game was fun and the real time skill training kept them subscribed (we’ll ignore ghost training for the moment ). CCP kept adding updates and fixes and the players supported Eve by continuing to subscribe as well as bringing in fresh blood (or at the least encouraging new players to join corps and thus have more fun). Players supported Eve and CCP themselves.


So when CCP asked players to vote for Eve Online: Tyrannis in the best online game category of the European Games Awards they probably didn’t expect quite the reaction in the thread. Yes there is a fair bit of trolling going on in that thread right now, but something has fundamentally changed in the last month. Since the release of the CSM minutes and the devblog CCP released in response many players have been more willing to openly criticize CCP. There has always been a vocal minority on forums and in recent years players have become bitter vets, however now people who haven’t really been active on the forums are posting messages questioning CCP’s direction.


What is going wrong?
CCP have been very honest with their development priorities and allocations. This openness is to be applauded however it highlighted what some players had feared, the actual number of developers working on the “flying in space” feature of Eve Online is low compared to the total number of Devs working on Eve Online as a whole. Now those numbers lack some important context. We don’t know how many devs were working on “flying in space” for dominion, the only numbers we have for comparison are Apocrypha which apparently had 300 Devs working on it, pulled in from other projects.

So player rage is mostly concentrated on the apparent lack of progress on Eve’s flying in space feature and the “borrowed” Devs from other projects returning to them after the release of Apocrypha. In addition there are many players such as myself who feel slightly let down by the inclusion of Incarna Devs in the count of people working on Eve Online.


CCP class Incarna as part of Eve Online. I don’t – yet…
The crux of the matter for me is that Incarna is vapourware, it doesn’t exist anywhere outside of CCP and we still don’t have any clue how it links into the Eve universe other than taking place inside the stations we dock our ships into. Will I as a “flying in space” player be forced to session change into another game to go and speak to my mission agent or to place things on the market? I hope not…

So far there has been no word of what you’ll be able to do other than the vague promises of “opening a bar”, outfits, “player housing” and various minigames. There have been some videos at Fanfests showing some of this stuff, but in general CCP remain tight lipped over the actual gameplay part of Incarna. One thing we have been told is that there isn’t any concord in stations and that there won’t be any combat. You could argue that currently there isn’t any combat whilst docked so no combat when walking in stations is the same.


But do CCP really think a significant number of new players will subscribe to Eve once Incarna is released? What will those players do when they are “forced” to undock to change stations? How can Eve, which has thousands of stations, attract enough people out of their ships to avoid stations looking like ghost towns devoid of other players? Doesn’t the whole thing sound like a terrible clone of Second Life?

I can certainly understand why the players of “flying in space” feel they are being short changed by the expansion development schedule which basically consists of Incarna and minor “flying in space” fixes where time allows. Do CCP see this yet? Is it purely a vocal minority or is there a significant disconnect building in the relationship with the players?


Hilmar’s presentation at CGDC had better be full of epic win because on current form players haven’t run out of rage but some have run out of patience. Only CCP have the numbers on how many accounts have been cancelled in the last month, and I’m sure it isn’t a hugely significant number in the grand scheme of things. But if long term Eve supporters are now openly saying no more then somebody at CCP had better take notice and do something quickly.

The result
We have a very frank and honest document from CCP which basically states that as far as big fixes (such as lowsec, FW or Corp roles) there isn’t going to be any resource available for around 18 months. Worse still it seems that the most supported issue in the history of the CSM (I suspect this is the case anyway ) has only resulted in straight out refusal of CCP upper management to believe the customer concerns about quality.

I’m not interested in Dust and I don’t even have a console capable of playing it. I’m not convinced that Incarna will bring anything of value to internet spaceships, I just want to play Eve

The player reaction has been mostly positive of the CSM (with a few exceptions) and pretty damning of CCP. Some of the (bitter) vets have already given up on CCP having a change of heart, but I remain (stupidly?) optimistic that continual pressure will lead to a change of focus at least within the Eve team schedules.

Where does this leave the CSM?
We continue to hold meetings and will be publishing our minutes of these, but all this is of limited use if CCP don’t have spare dev time or outright refuse to allocate any to player raised and championed issues. There have been calls for a mass resignation of the CSM, but I feel that is the wrong thing to do at this time. My reasoning is that such a frank statement of CCP’s 18 month plan for Eve would never have been released without CSM having called them to account for excellence and quality. If CCP want to disband the CSM then that is their call and they can deal with the fallout, we shouldn’t make their lives easier by packing it in right now.

I may feel differently after the December summit but I’m hoping that before then with a united eve blogosphere that we can get people within CCP to listen.

Tea

Lets lower the level of paranoia a bit and instead look at the published facts (from Eve-o and various blog posts).

Disclaimer, I have very little additional information about the NDA breach and what I do know I can’t share..

What has been made known by CCP and a few CSM reps who have risked their own position to correct some of the wilder speculation is that.

1. There was an NDA breach by Ankhesentapemkah
2. It wasn’t related to the CSM5 summit or any subsequent blog posts
3. It relates to confidential data that CCP do not wish to discuss
4. Other CSM reps disagreed with CCP during the summit to a similar if not harsher degree and some made forum posts and blogs about it without being removed.
5. CCP think the damage done by not disclosing more information is better than letting the full details be known.

 
 
In detail
 

1. CCP state a breach of NDA occurred and that Ank has been removed from the CSM. Ank (through a massively article) disputes that any breach occurred.

 

2. Sok and DV post on various forums that the breach didn’t relate to the CSM5 summit, though having thought better of it have (in at least DV’s case) edited that information out again. Other CSMs posted some limited details on blogs and forums which has not resulted in further NDA issues.

 

3. The type of breach and the data it relates to are such that CCP are refusing to give any details. This is a different situation to Larkgate when more detail was provided to state insider trading of market commodities, though leaving the actual item types out of the details.

 

4. Eva was certainly not the only CSM rep to strongly disagree with CCP during the summit. The minutes will hopefully be out this week (though with today’s events I expect a further delay ). The idea that CCP would go to the trouble of removing one member of the CSM on a fake NDA breach to shut them up is laughable.

 

5. Confirming a breach occurred but neglecting to give any details of what type of breach and when it occured is, IMO, likely to cause more wild speculation but that is the route CCP have decided. CSM5 have been in contact with CCP over this but unless CCP issue a statement nothing can be discussed.

No matter whatn the damage has been done. It is yet another blow to the CSM process just as it was regaining credibility after the CSM3 scandal last year. Eva will likely not be allowed to run for CSM again (assuming her appeal fails) and her take care party will be viewed with suspicion in future.

 
I read a company motto once which said “The good we do reflects on you”.
Sadly the reverse is also true…

Tea

Because I was over early (to hang out with the AT8 crew) I got to talk to a number of people about Lowsec and PVP in general. I pitched a few ideas to Kil2, Verone and a couple of pirates from The United and The Gurista Associates (IIRC) and they all had valid comments and ideas of their own too. In fact in the last few days I have spent most evenings talking about Eve till around 4am! The constant daylight makes staying up all night far too easy

I will blog properly about AT8 at some point and will try to blog a bit about the summit in general. Also keep an eye on my twitter.

Tea

For the raw logs I will be removing the dates from the timestamps on each line as suggested by Bel’Shamharoth (search and replace FTW). In its place I will add the date of the meeting at the top of the file.

Longer term I will be able to cut and paste the discussion for an issue into the CSM Database (with links back to the minutes for reference). This should make it easier to see what is going with a proposal without having to read the whole meeting as well as giving me more things to search on for later features.

Once the summit is done and RL calms back down again things should return to CSM4 style schedules

Thanks for the feedback

What format should I provide the CSM5 minutes in?

The main requirement from the CSM Secretary is to make meeting minutes available. Other than raw chat logs (minus any NDA information) there isn’t really any guidance on what additional formats (if any) should be provided.

For CSM4 I chose to release the raw logs (as a txt file and on the wiki), a TL : DR summary for the forums and this blog and finally a fairly verbose summary document which was almost line for line from the raw logs edited for readability with minor restructuring of interleaving/off topic discussions.

Now the raw and TL : DR don’t take very long at all to produce, but the edited summary can be fairly time consuming and I’ve had some feedback that most people read the TL : DR then if interested drill down into the raw logs. Considering the amount of time these edited versions take I’m wondering if I should produce a very very brief summary of each discussion instead. This would probably take less time but would enough people then miss the more verbose summary?

I’m looking for comments from the community because ultimately it is you guys and gals who need to have this information available. Please let me know

Eve Wiki Link Summary and raw logs
Downloads Raw Log | PDF Summary | CSM5 Attendance PDF

TL:DR

Present: CCP Xhagen, CCP Diagoras, CCP Hammer, Mynxee, Ankhesentapemkah, Dierdra Vaal, Korvin, Vuk Lau, TeaDaze, Trebor Daehdoow, ElvenLord (alt), Alekseyev Karrde (CSM4), Mrs Trzzbk (CSM4), Z0D (CSM4)

Apologies: Meissa Anunthiel

Absent: Sokratesz, mazzilliu (alt), T’Amber (alt), Helen Highwater (alt), ALPHA12125 (alt)

Results
This was a handover meeting so no issues were discussed.

Mynxee confirmed she would accept the position of chairwoman.

Dierdra Vaal elected as vice chairman
Ankhesentapemkah: Vuk Lau
Mynxee: Dierdra Vaal
Trebor Daehdoow: Dierdra Vaal
TeaDaze: Dierdra Vaal
Dierdra Vaal: Dierdra Vaal
Korvin: Dierdra Vaal

TeaDaze voted as secretary
Vuk Lau: No preferance
Mynxee: TeaDaze
TeaDaze: TeaDaze
Trebor Daehdoow: TeaDaze
Korvin: TeaDaze
ElvenLord: TeaDaze
Dierdra Vaal: TeaDaze
Ankhesentapemkah: Ankhesentapemkah

Trebor Daehdoow voted as vice secretary
Dierdra Vaal: Ankhesentapemkah
Trebor Daehdoow: Trebor Daehdoow
TeaDaze: Trebor Daehdoow
Vuk Lau: Ankhesentapemkah
Mynxee: Trebor Daehdoow
Ankhesentapemkah: Ankhesentapemkah
Korvin: Trebor Daehdoow

Other Business

Second meeting already scheduled for Sunday 6th June at 18:00 eve time.

Meeting closed at 17:06

I’m very pleased to see Mynxee taking on the Chairperson position in a council that is once again lacking in large alliance domination. All the “Alliance powerblocks will take over the CSM” doom-mongers can take a break for 10months till the CSM6 elections

Dierdra Vaal is also in along with a few faces from CSM4. I am rather surprised to see ElvenLord the current chairman so far down the list and that sadly Helen Highwater and T’Amber are once again limited to the alternate role.

I’ll be updating the CSM Database once eve-gate comes up.

TL:DR
I’m in

It can be seen a teasing to make people wait a week for the results of an online election, especially after basically announcing that they have the results.

So far CCP have released the following information

• 39,433 votes were cast, compared to 21,787 for CSM4
• Of these votes, 754 voters abstained and 38,679 were for candidates
• The turnout for the election was 12.67%

The increased turnout is likely to be a combination of Eve login prompts, external media coverage (Massively and Eve-Tribune), Eve blogs (Such as I am Keith Neilson who interviewed many of the candidates) and general increased campaigning from candidates. Sadly there was a fair bit of negative campaigning and misinformation/scaremongering going on too, I guess this is also par for the course.

The most contentious results are the vote counts of the final 9 delegates and 5 alternates. Many people think CCP should have released the names by now too but currently only CCP know who achieved each result and they are remaining tight lipped till the 26th…

Delegates (votes only):

1. 4116 (Chair)
2. 3360
3. 2521
4. 2196
5. 1649
6. 1553
7. 1519
8. 1463
9. 1260

Alternates (votes only):

10. 1180
11. 1173
12. 1172
13. 1104
14. 1006

Comparing CSM4 to CSM5, the cutoff point to get into the top 9 is up from 744 to 1260 and the cutoff to being an alternate is up from 557 to 1006. I predict a few upsets based on this increased vote requirement.

We’ll just have to wait another couple of days to find out. Until then these figures, comments and some graphs can be found on the official initial announcement thread