Today, up and down to lunch with my husband before I abandoned him to do more Eve stuff.
Mark726 started off with a fantastic presentation about Eve's Lore. He has written a major lore guide that players follow. I'm using it for my fiction contest entries. His presentation is very interesting and he is a good speaker with a lot of passion about what he is doing. The Gentleman from NASA was spectacular and if you enjoy a good science program watch him.
Off I went to the Community Round Table with CCP Guard, CCP Saberwing and CCP Gargant. They really wanted to talk about the community. However, players will wander off topic and have to be dragged back on topic. It was funny at the start even if it was busy at the end. Guard started off with a bit of a chat about:
How they want to work on giving Fansites more support. They want to give Fan projects more support. They have been doing traditional support for years now but they want to open that up to things that do not fall under traditional fansites but still provide content such as the streams.
They are still working on an official system to structure things under so that people don't go wild in one spot and nothing in another. Also they don't want to reach a point where they don't want to give players thing. The most current thought is a type of pyramid system with big events like Eve Vegas receiving large amounts of resources due to its size and its stability. They want to recognize people and make resources available to them as well as recognize what they are adding to the community. Things like how much work goes into the project, how many users does the site have/bring, and such things.
Once they have the outline together they will bring it before the CSM for discussion and ideas. After that they will bring it to the community for feedback.
They want more organization in how they do things. They want more live vents. They want to continue the rookie training session.
(Back from my show. Penn and Teller were quote good)
They like the casual entertainment method of PvP tournament that they used this time around. They don't want every event to have a five hour serious business find your team type of tournament like they have at Fanfest. They are playing with this but like how it went.
They feel that the new certificate program will help new players and mixed with the new player sessions they are running help people get a deeper grip, sooner, into Eve. They like the idea of newbie help places. Grabbing and profiling Brave Newbies so early was just something that evolved and they liked how it went.
Gargant wants to break the mold on how you have fun. He liked how Brave Newbies said, "We're going to have fun our way" outside of Eve's habit of telling people how to have Fun. Having fun your way is something they want to impress on the new players. Also they get true new player feedback on things.
They want to look at employing varied ways to bring information to people. Pod casts. Videos. Etc.
They want a gauge of what people want to see with the Dust communications when it comes to videos and podcasts and community round ups.
They will try to up the cadence of production in development videos. Also they want to feature more of the teams who do things behind the scenes and not just the ones on the expansion cycle. (My handwriting was terrible there).
Saberwing is trying to tie in the CPM more with Dust's development. He wants to push more social media interaction.
From Agony Unleashed - More in game tools for corps to promote and manage in game events. There are people who don't know the resources are there and not that many ways to reach them.
Per Guard, CCP Seagull has talked about the true social network of the game and the technical social network of the game. This discussion broke down into how we have our social groups and then things like our corps and alliances and how you want to interact and give interactive abilities to the various people in your Eve life.
Player suggestion - An expansion of the corp advert system
Player suggestion - A button or menu that 'shows corp events' on the show info for the corp.
Guard - Maybe a way to subscribe to things. He likes to subscribe to things. They keep talking about a website for out of game events. Its a resource thing.
Players point out that in game resources are better at this point. Many people don't want to leave the game to find stuff and they should be able to find it in game. Guard notes that its hard to advertise and that people don't pick up on the info. He said that many people were surprised that they were getting a battleship after all the promotion that they did for Eve Vegas.
Discussion about a better system that allows for player recommendations or something. Of course one worries about abuse.
Suggestion - Diplomacy button - Auto Channel creation for a corp. People can show info on the corp and click on the corps public chat channel and be in it. No more guessing and figuring it out.
Eve Gate does not auto link. It is annoying. This brought up by Agony. How the in game mail and the out of game mail don't sync. Also that when you make a link in an Eve mail in game you have to remove the http:// which is dumb. Better Eve Gate functionality in general. We want to use this thing but its terrible.
On functionality - How the forums have to be logged into even when you are logged into the game and using the in game browser.
Guard asks: Do we like the in game browser?
General answer is yes. Explained that we, as players, have built a lot of out of game tools that use the in game browser to improve our functionality. A lot of people use it to improve their intel gathering.
Things went off a bit and Guard dragged the conversation back to the Community and what it can do.
They'd like a fansite hub website. They are working to improve this and when its solidified they'd like something that maybe lets people know what CCP does for fansites.
They hate the current Fansite listing page. They are going to do work on it. Adding things like "like" buttons but they don't want this gamed. Better categories. Maybe tags for easier searches. They feel like the out of game tools that we consider special like Eve Mon and Pfya should be listed and accessible here.
From players - The issue of a Fansite Website is that it is still out of game. In general people seem to have a hard time learning that there are tools. Once they do they are great but that step is hard to take.
(I had an idea but I wasn't able to break into the conversation. I figured we just needed a neo-com button that created a window with the links. Something we can remove easily but new players can explore).
The corp ad tool who uses it, asked Hong. Someone (from Agony?) goes "its a good way to get a spy!" (I admit to some eye rolling at this point. Sigh. Eve.)
The most recent iteration of the tutorials no longer guide you to the recruitment chat or suggest you join a player corporation. This is bad.
Can they sit on legal for the SSO site needs?
In game browser defaults to Eve Gate. Why not a list of useful places instead?
I popped in and suggested my Eve to Dust link for Planetary Conquest Information Sharing initiative.
Live Event Plannings - How they deal with the number of people that go. They are trying to figure out how to advertise as not to get so many people that the event goes poorly. They are thinking more simultaneous events. More time zones. More, more more, in general.
Complaints about the Mac freeze bug.
Tag Dev Blogs for easier searchability.
That was pretty much it and off to the UI Round Table.
CCP Arrow is very nice. To nice. I wound up using a command bellow to grab some guys attention. I hate being forceful outside of work but sometimes it has to happen.
CCP Arrow wants to push defining the identity of the UI at the Round Table. Unlike other devs he came in with a goal. He wanted to discuss what the UI was. How it was represented. How it functions in the lore. Customization.
Player Suggestion - Tool Tip like things. What do all of these things do? Eve punishes mistakes and it makes people click shy. Industry is an example of complex and confusing for just being complex and confusing. All the clicking drives everyone crazy.
Best Industry job is entered with 7 clicks and 4 windows.
Best T2 reaction is 12 clicks and 5 windows.
How Evelopedia is not updated and it is an educational tool that is neglected.
The tool tips are good and more for more things would help.
Something akin to the contract system of copying contracts to copy research jobs.
More master lists for efficiency.
Maybe thing that is more natural to putting things together. The Indy guys (who had taken over the discussion) started to argue at this point over what would be a good way of showing or integrate or creating industry jobs.
Why doesn't Eve have 3rd party add on tools? This response was about it being hard to support and maintain a continuous 'Eve' look and feel to Eve outside of Eve such as screen shots. They want to maintain Eve's identity with its UI.
The session started arguing again.
Maybe efficiency is a better word, said CCP Arrow. Eve is a sci-fi game and people expect it to have a sci-fi smartness to its interface. He went into how the original builders approved of high density information for things. Now we are approaching it from the other side of usability and effective and efficient things and they don't want to give us something new and leave us feeling as if we have lost functionality.
The radial menu is good said CCP Arrow. He went on to add that a right click revamp might have some similar usability.
How the UI is just a front for the games stuff. It is changeable they just want to change it properly to let us interface better. I think this went to the presentation a bit and I didn't see that.
Request - Being able to scale more things in the UI. Such as the HUD. Making the e-war Icons over the HUD larger if you want them larger. Can we assign sounds to affects?
Can the Eve UI become detached multi-windows? Maybe? The new Twitch interface with Direct X 11 is allowing them to create a shadow client for twitch that hides information. It may be a first step to that.
The station services pannel is to damn big. Also we'd like to shrink the fleet info windows more, and market, wallet, people and places to whatever damn size we want.
Discussion on how browsers have smart scaling and its something to look into.
Suggestion - A speed for the tracking camera that we can decide how fast/slow we want it to move?
After this I rolled out to the next part and that is the last of my Eve Vegas 2013 notes.
Mark726 started off with a fantastic presentation about Eve's Lore. He has written a major lore guide that players follow. I'm using it for my fiction contest entries. His presentation is very interesting and he is a good speaker with a lot of passion about what he is doing. The Gentleman from NASA was spectacular and if you enjoy a good science program watch him.
Off I went to the Community Round Table with CCP Guard, CCP Saberwing and CCP Gargant. They really wanted to talk about the community. However, players will wander off topic and have to be dragged back on topic. It was funny at the start even if it was busy at the end. Guard started off with a bit of a chat about:
How they want to work on giving Fansites more support. They want to give Fan projects more support. They have been doing traditional support for years now but they want to open that up to things that do not fall under traditional fansites but still provide content such as the streams.
They are still working on an official system to structure things under so that people don't go wild in one spot and nothing in another. Also they don't want to reach a point where they don't want to give players thing. The most current thought is a type of pyramid system with big events like Eve Vegas receiving large amounts of resources due to its size and its stability. They want to recognize people and make resources available to them as well as recognize what they are adding to the community. Things like how much work goes into the project, how many users does the site have/bring, and such things.
Once they have the outline together they will bring it before the CSM for discussion and ideas. After that they will bring it to the community for feedback.
They want more organization in how they do things. They want more live vents. They want to continue the rookie training session.
(Back from my show. Penn and Teller were quote good)
They like the casual entertainment method of PvP tournament that they used this time around. They don't want every event to have a five hour serious business find your team type of tournament like they have at Fanfest. They are playing with this but like how it went.
They feel that the new certificate program will help new players and mixed with the new player sessions they are running help people get a deeper grip, sooner, into Eve. They like the idea of newbie help places. Grabbing and profiling Brave Newbies so early was just something that evolved and they liked how it went.
Gargant wants to break the mold on how you have fun. He liked how Brave Newbies said, "We're going to have fun our way" outside of Eve's habit of telling people how to have Fun. Having fun your way is something they want to impress on the new players. Also they get true new player feedback on things.
They want to look at employing varied ways to bring information to people. Pod casts. Videos. Etc.
They want a gauge of what people want to see with the Dust communications when it comes to videos and podcasts and community round ups.
They will try to up the cadence of production in development videos. Also they want to feature more of the teams who do things behind the scenes and not just the ones on the expansion cycle. (My handwriting was terrible there).
Saberwing is trying to tie in the CPM more with Dust's development. He wants to push more social media interaction.
From Agony Unleashed - More in game tools for corps to promote and manage in game events. There are people who don't know the resources are there and not that many ways to reach them.
Per Guard, CCP Seagull has talked about the true social network of the game and the technical social network of the game. This discussion broke down into how we have our social groups and then things like our corps and alliances and how you want to interact and give interactive abilities to the various people in your Eve life.
Player suggestion - An expansion of the corp advert system
Player suggestion - A button or menu that 'shows corp events' on the show info for the corp.
Guard - Maybe a way to subscribe to things. He likes to subscribe to things. They keep talking about a website for out of game events. Its a resource thing.
Players point out that in game resources are better at this point. Many people don't want to leave the game to find stuff and they should be able to find it in game. Guard notes that its hard to advertise and that people don't pick up on the info. He said that many people were surprised that they were getting a battleship after all the promotion that they did for Eve Vegas.
Discussion about a better system that allows for player recommendations or something. Of course one worries about abuse.
Suggestion - Diplomacy button - Auto Channel creation for a corp. People can show info on the corp and click on the corps public chat channel and be in it. No more guessing and figuring it out.
Eve Gate does not auto link. It is annoying. This brought up by Agony. How the in game mail and the out of game mail don't sync. Also that when you make a link in an Eve mail in game you have to remove the http:// which is dumb. Better Eve Gate functionality in general. We want to use this thing but its terrible.
On functionality - How the forums have to be logged into even when you are logged into the game and using the in game browser.
Guard asks: Do we like the in game browser?
General answer is yes. Explained that we, as players, have built a lot of out of game tools that use the in game browser to improve our functionality. A lot of people use it to improve their intel gathering.
Things went off a bit and Guard dragged the conversation back to the Community and what it can do.
They'd like a fansite hub website. They are working to improve this and when its solidified they'd like something that maybe lets people know what CCP does for fansites.
They hate the current Fansite listing page. They are going to do work on it. Adding things like "like" buttons but they don't want this gamed. Better categories. Maybe tags for easier searches. They feel like the out of game tools that we consider special like Eve Mon and Pfya should be listed and accessible here.
From players - The issue of a Fansite Website is that it is still out of game. In general people seem to have a hard time learning that there are tools. Once they do they are great but that step is hard to take.
(I had an idea but I wasn't able to break into the conversation. I figured we just needed a neo-com button that created a window with the links. Something we can remove easily but new players can explore).
The corp ad tool who uses it, asked Hong. Someone (from Agony?) goes "its a good way to get a spy!" (I admit to some eye rolling at this point. Sigh. Eve.)
The most recent iteration of the tutorials no longer guide you to the recruitment chat or suggest you join a player corporation. This is bad.
Can they sit on legal for the SSO site needs?
In game browser defaults to Eve Gate. Why not a list of useful places instead?
I popped in and suggested my Eve to Dust link for Planetary Conquest Information Sharing initiative.
Live Event Plannings - How they deal with the number of people that go. They are trying to figure out how to advertise as not to get so many people that the event goes poorly. They are thinking more simultaneous events. More time zones. More, more more, in general.
Complaints about the Mac freeze bug.
Tag Dev Blogs for easier searchability.
That was pretty much it and off to the UI Round Table.
CCP Arrow is very nice. To nice. I wound up using a command bellow to grab some guys attention. I hate being forceful outside of work but sometimes it has to happen.
CCP Arrow wants to push defining the identity of the UI at the Round Table. Unlike other devs he came in with a goal. He wanted to discuss what the UI was. How it was represented. How it functions in the lore. Customization.
Player Suggestion - Tool Tip like things. What do all of these things do? Eve punishes mistakes and it makes people click shy. Industry is an example of complex and confusing for just being complex and confusing. All the clicking drives everyone crazy.
Best Industry job is entered with 7 clicks and 4 windows.
Best T2 reaction is 12 clicks and 5 windows.
How Evelopedia is not updated and it is an educational tool that is neglected.
The tool tips are good and more for more things would help.
Something akin to the contract system of copying contracts to copy research jobs.
More master lists for efficiency.
Maybe thing that is more natural to putting things together. The Indy guys (who had taken over the discussion) started to argue at this point over what would be a good way of showing or integrate or creating industry jobs.
Why doesn't Eve have 3rd party add on tools? This response was about it being hard to support and maintain a continuous 'Eve' look and feel to Eve outside of Eve such as screen shots. They want to maintain Eve's identity with its UI.
The session started arguing again.
Maybe efficiency is a better word, said CCP Arrow. Eve is a sci-fi game and people expect it to have a sci-fi smartness to its interface. He went into how the original builders approved of high density information for things. Now we are approaching it from the other side of usability and effective and efficient things and they don't want to give us something new and leave us feeling as if we have lost functionality.
The radial menu is good said CCP Arrow. He went on to add that a right click revamp might have some similar usability.
How the UI is just a front for the games stuff. It is changeable they just want to change it properly to let us interface better. I think this went to the presentation a bit and I didn't see that.
Request - Being able to scale more things in the UI. Such as the HUD. Making the e-war Icons over the HUD larger if you want them larger. Can we assign sounds to affects?
Can the Eve UI become detached multi-windows? Maybe? The new Twitch interface with Direct X 11 is allowing them to create a shadow client for twitch that hides information. It may be a first step to that.
The station services pannel is to damn big. Also we'd like to shrink the fleet info windows more, and market, wallet, people and places to whatever damn size we want.
Discussion on how browsers have smart scaling and its something to look into.
Suggestion - A speed for the tracking camera that we can decide how fast/slow we want it to move?
After this I rolled out to the next part and that is the last of my Eve Vegas 2013 notes.
The fact that the Evelopedia isn't updated to cover the ship rebalancing I think is terribly embarrassing. Maybe vets keep all that stuff in their head, but for anyone newish it's terrible. I now always go to the Eve Uni site for quick ship info like "Muninn - quick what is it bonused for nowadays, and how many turrets/missiles should I be seeing?"
ReplyDeleteI've said before that I'd update them for some token ISK or something, and I bet other community folks would do it for free. Otherwise they might as well give up and just redirect to Eve Uni.