Monday, I woke up to forum access. That means I woke up and read a thread linked in Skype and then reminded myself not to sleepy post. I say weird, often bitchy things when that happens. I’m proud of my restraint. I also had a personal agenda to get the MD/DC/VA meet completed and signed off on so that people could make their plans to attend.
The industry delay from Kronos to the next phase in mid July was announced. We had discussed that at the end of the previous week and everyone was on board with the delay. There are a lot of people who say they have no trust in CCP due to broken features that are never fixed. While a delay would not make people happy because people want things, the delay is exactly what was needed to do what people wanted done. This is the incorporation of feedback and suggestions along with time to test the changes.
It is only week two so there is a lot of learning who to go to for things still and learning what people can and cannot do. Kronos is winding down which means most of the discussion is focused around things for Kronos and things about Kronos. Once the next expansion comes up we will see how that develops with suggestions, questions, and answers. I’m hoping that there will be a lot of feedback from the playerbase about industry that we can use to come up with a polished project for the next release.
CCP Leeloo has put in true work and set up meetings with all of the times over the next two weeks. This covers a lot of Q&A ground and helps us know who to take things too and what everyone does. It looks like I will be able to make half of them. The hard copy of the NDA is also in the mail. I didn't need to sign in blood if anyone was wondering.
This is all learning for we new members. As we are brought into the process I try to stick in ideas as I can. Sometimes we talk about the possible future. Sometimes it is about the presents. There are things that are easy to agree on cohesively such as the delay to industry. There are other things where various members disagree because we come from different areas of the game. It is amusing to watch Funky and I echo each other all over the place or team up to express our low sec oriented views for things. I find myself looking at topics not just as it would do for me or low sec but also what I or low sec would do to it.
There is still a lot of feedback from the election process and the voting results. There is no squishing of opinions or thoughts going on. When we talk to CCP we talk to CCP as a bunch of individuals in the same conversation. There isn’t some process where the null sec members get to control the discussion and the non-null sec members have to sit out. In fact, I feel a bit of a confrontational type but I’m attempting to dive head first into every topic from whatever angle I do have on the topic. Sometimes that is as small gangs, sometimes as markets, sometimes as industry, sometimes as just a regular player.
This week was full of discussion and feedback over various things that are now out on the Features & Ideas forums. Things often start as discussions, move to forum posts, and then get set up for public discussion. We’ve been encouraging people to post on the forums. It creates references instead of just being, “well someone said to me,” we can point that stuff out. Greyscale wrote his epic post about how to give good feedback to catch his attention.
This week some changes came out that some people liked and some people hated. I’ll try giving a hand at what I thought about them When ideas or changes come up it is not CCP asking us what would we like to do with things. CCP Fozzie has clear ideas as to the direction that he wants to go. From there we give feed back and reasons for or against or sometimes just what we would do with something. We try to think about if we would or would not use it, how we would or would not break it, and such things. Sometimes he agrees, sometimes he does not. Again, we do not approach this as a committee. There are fourteen people with fourteen different opinions. Things get tweaked. Then they go to the forums and they get tweaked again.
People, leave your feedback. I’d suggest CCP Greyscale’s feedback guide as well. But it gets listened to. I’m going to keep saying that over and over again. Please tell what you do or do not like and what reasons you do or do not like them. Explain how and why they are or are not good for you.
Wormhole Connections
I like this. I know some people dislike the fact that there will be more signatures to sort. Sorting out the wormhole signatures is not super hard to do. Corbexx is planning to write something about this to help address some of the problem and make sure that people are informed. I love the idea of more straight connections.
Tool Tips
Yes, these are being looked at with all of the feedback that has come in. TiDi tooltips. Whoops.
DST - Deep Space Transports
Yay! Yay moar room! Yay overheat! They still align like pigs and because of spool up the MJD may not save them from gatecamps. They will still have the MWD/Cloak trick. Also, guns and tank may prove interesting for some. The increase in cargo capacity makes scouting them in very much a thing for people trying to move a reasonable amount of items around, some hulls, some fuel, etc. While they may not bust through a gatecamp the chances of living through a suddenly fleet situation increases. Also, I may get one just for looting the field after a capital fight. In general, I like them. I’d love more base agility and less wallowing pig. The new skill dependent bonus makes training them to V worthwhile. I also wanted drones for the Gallente one :P
Blockade Runners
Everyone gets two high slots and the ability to hold 10k m3 fully expanded (this means a packaged cruiser) with a warp speed boost per level trained. I don’t think anyone was surprised by them. The warp speed per level makes training to level V have some value now. Yes, there is some homogenization. However, leaving them unhomogenized made some of them ‘not worth it’ compared to others leaving people with no racial path.
Freighters and Jump Freighters
Joy was not my first reaction when I saw the JF cargo nerf. I use all of my current cargo all of the time. I was expecting 15% or so, not about 30% in the nerf. I want to tank and hyperspatial rig my jump freighter and to do so I will lose a lot of room and have to double the amount of jumps I do to move the same volume. it stings a lot. I’m highly dependent on this ship and the change directly increases a lot of my work. I don't want to cargo rig it. This is a nerf that hurts.
Freighters I was a bit more neutral on due to the current state of ganking. If they are worth enough as they wallow through HS they will be ganked. Carry more tank less. Tank more carry less. The gank will always be focused around the cargo value. I fully believe most people will immediately slap on cargo expanders and make their freighters easier to gank for more volume. At no point were we going to get our cake (freighters and jump freighters are they currently are) and eat it too (rigs on top of their current stats). The ability to customize them also immobilizes them in their rigged state. Why not slots? Modules are incredibly powerful and balancing them to have module fits is another complete nightmare and render base freighters into some caricature of themselves.
What about capital rigs? Right now I expect the prices to nose dive as people catch up to them. We had the same reaction when capital rigs were introduced and the prices dove into the ground after the expansion. Now there will be a steady market for them. Freighters are obtainable by the many, many people of high sec and they will need rigs for them. I don’t think this market should be judged by its current state.
There is still a lot of discussion in this subject. Please contribute to it. If you yell at me, please yell constructively so that I can use it productively.
MMJD - Medium Microwarp Drives
I wasn’t in love with this outside of Deep Space Transports. I see a future of attack battlecruisers fleets sniping and bouncing away. At least no one will ask if they are viable. There is the cool down and the spool up. I proposed less range than the LMJD (large mirco jump drive) around 75k. I thought that it was a smaller ship so it had a smaller drive. I also thought that one could make tactical lines instead of everyone being together. I thought about on grid pouncing on logistics. I thought that it would be less room to chase them down and tackle them considering scrams are going to become a vital member of fleet comps. I’m a long point type of girl and I’ve never enjoyed chasing things down only not to reach them in time.
On the topic of good feedback, Kaeda pointed out the impact to kiters with this. I didn’t think of this particular aspect. I’m a bit embarrassed to have missed it but such is learning. This is also one of the most frustrating parts of the NDA. How to get around it to gather feedback during the early part of the discussion without tripping over the NDA part. I feel that I should have worked harder to figure out a non NDA violating approach to this topic. I’ll improve.
I think they have an interesting future but I don't think they are where they need to be right now. This is another area where productive feedback as to the negatives is the best way to approach this. As with the freighters, if you yell at me, please do it in such a way as to give me something to work with. I'm not saying to love it. I'm not suggesting not to be unhappy. I'm just asking you to hate it constructively.
CSM Outreach
We had a MD/VA/DC meet last night! It went super well. According to Jamwara I am “logical to a fault”. We had 14 people, Mord popped in for a few hours. There was lots of talking. We had one non-playing spouse so I kept stopping the conversation to do interpretations. At one point when trying to describe what BNI’s CEO was describing BNI as to her I said something along the lines of:
My Eve Uni chat should be on June 1st. It’s just “Hi, I’m Sugar, talk to me.” I don’t have a time yet and suggestions are welcome. If I need to do two of them I will (if Eve Uni is willing) to cover time zones. I know I hate when I miss things because of time zones so I’m more than happy to do two to try to maximize coverage. I need feedback on this. It is a big part of my attempt to correct the comments I keep hearing is that people feel the CSM is inaccessible. It is also why I went to Eve Uni. They are a neutral group and their mumble is open and not exclusive to anyone.
I’ve been trying to reach out to people in game. I’m in chat rooms, I’ve written mails, I’ve been trying to have meetings. I’ve wound up on coms to listen to random people who don’t want to type/eve-mail/forum and collect their ideas. If you want a meeting or a chat or something tell me, please!
We also put up a contact us post on the forums.
And I think that's this week.
The industry delay from Kronos to the next phase in mid July was announced. We had discussed that at the end of the previous week and everyone was on board with the delay. There are a lot of people who say they have no trust in CCP due to broken features that are never fixed. While a delay would not make people happy because people want things, the delay is exactly what was needed to do what people wanted done. This is the incorporation of feedback and suggestions along with time to test the changes.
It is only week two so there is a lot of learning who to go to for things still and learning what people can and cannot do. Kronos is winding down which means most of the discussion is focused around things for Kronos and things about Kronos. Once the next expansion comes up we will see how that develops with suggestions, questions, and answers. I’m hoping that there will be a lot of feedback from the playerbase about industry that we can use to come up with a polished project for the next release.
CCP Leeloo has put in true work and set up meetings with all of the times over the next two weeks. This covers a lot of Q&A ground and helps us know who to take things too and what everyone does. It looks like I will be able to make half of them. The hard copy of the NDA is also in the mail. I didn't need to sign in blood if anyone was wondering.
This is all learning for we new members. As we are brought into the process I try to stick in ideas as I can. Sometimes we talk about the possible future. Sometimes it is about the presents. There are things that are easy to agree on cohesively such as the delay to industry. There are other things where various members disagree because we come from different areas of the game. It is amusing to watch Funky and I echo each other all over the place or team up to express our low sec oriented views for things. I find myself looking at topics not just as it would do for me or low sec but also what I or low sec would do to it.
There is still a lot of feedback from the election process and the voting results. There is no squishing of opinions or thoughts going on. When we talk to CCP we talk to CCP as a bunch of individuals in the same conversation. There isn’t some process where the null sec members get to control the discussion and the non-null sec members have to sit out. In fact, I feel a bit of a confrontational type but I’m attempting to dive head first into every topic from whatever angle I do have on the topic. Sometimes that is as small gangs, sometimes as markets, sometimes as industry, sometimes as just a regular player.
This week was full of discussion and feedback over various things that are now out on the Features & Ideas forums. Things often start as discussions, move to forum posts, and then get set up for public discussion. We’ve been encouraging people to post on the forums. It creates references instead of just being, “well someone said to me,” we can point that stuff out. Greyscale wrote his epic post about how to give good feedback to catch his attention.
---This is the part where I set the post on fire ---
This week some changes came out that some people liked and some people hated. I’ll try giving a hand at what I thought about them When ideas or changes come up it is not CCP asking us what would we like to do with things. CCP Fozzie has clear ideas as to the direction that he wants to go. From there we give feed back and reasons for or against or sometimes just what we would do with something. We try to think about if we would or would not use it, how we would or would not break it, and such things. Sometimes he agrees, sometimes he does not. Again, we do not approach this as a committee. There are fourteen people with fourteen different opinions. Things get tweaked. Then they go to the forums and they get tweaked again.
People, leave your feedback. I’d suggest CCP Greyscale’s feedback guide as well. But it gets listened to. I’m going to keep saying that over and over again. Please tell what you do or do not like and what reasons you do or do not like them. Explain how and why they are or are not good for you.
Wormhole Connections
I like this. I know some people dislike the fact that there will be more signatures to sort. Sorting out the wormhole signatures is not super hard to do. Corbexx is planning to write something about this to help address some of the problem and make sure that people are informed. I love the idea of more straight connections.
Tool Tips
Yes, these are being looked at with all of the feedback that has come in. TiDi tooltips. Whoops.
DST - Deep Space Transports
Yay! Yay moar room! Yay overheat! They still align like pigs and because of spool up the MJD may not save them from gatecamps. They will still have the MWD/Cloak trick. Also, guns and tank may prove interesting for some. The increase in cargo capacity makes scouting them in very much a thing for people trying to move a reasonable amount of items around, some hulls, some fuel, etc. While they may not bust through a gatecamp the chances of living through a suddenly fleet situation increases. Also, I may get one just for looting the field after a capital fight. In general, I like them. I’d love more base agility and less wallowing pig. The new skill dependent bonus makes training them to V worthwhile. I also wanted drones for the Gallente one :P
Blockade Runners
Everyone gets two high slots and the ability to hold 10k m3 fully expanded (this means a packaged cruiser) with a warp speed boost per level trained. I don’t think anyone was surprised by them. The warp speed per level makes training to level V have some value now. Yes, there is some homogenization. However, leaving them unhomogenized made some of them ‘not worth it’ compared to others leaving people with no racial path.
Freighters and Jump Freighters
Joy was not my first reaction when I saw the JF cargo nerf. I use all of my current cargo all of the time. I was expecting 15% or so, not about 30% in the nerf. I want to tank and hyperspatial rig my jump freighter and to do so I will lose a lot of room and have to double the amount of jumps I do to move the same volume. it stings a lot. I’m highly dependent on this ship and the change directly increases a lot of my work. I don't want to cargo rig it. This is a nerf that hurts.
Freighters I was a bit more neutral on due to the current state of ganking. If they are worth enough as they wallow through HS they will be ganked. Carry more tank less. Tank more carry less. The gank will always be focused around the cargo value. I fully believe most people will immediately slap on cargo expanders and make their freighters easier to gank for more volume. At no point were we going to get our cake (freighters and jump freighters are they currently are) and eat it too (rigs on top of their current stats). The ability to customize them also immobilizes them in their rigged state. Why not slots? Modules are incredibly powerful and balancing them to have module fits is another complete nightmare and render base freighters into some caricature of themselves.
What about capital rigs? Right now I expect the prices to nose dive as people catch up to them. We had the same reaction when capital rigs were introduced and the prices dove into the ground after the expansion. Now there will be a steady market for them. Freighters are obtainable by the many, many people of high sec and they will need rigs for them. I don’t think this market should be judged by its current state.
There is still a lot of discussion in this subject. Please contribute to it. If you yell at me, please yell constructively so that I can use it productively.
MMJD - Medium Microwarp Drives
I wasn’t in love with this outside of Deep Space Transports. I see a future of attack battlecruisers fleets sniping and bouncing away. At least no one will ask if they are viable. There is the cool down and the spool up. I proposed less range than the LMJD (large mirco jump drive) around 75k. I thought that it was a smaller ship so it had a smaller drive. I also thought that one could make tactical lines instead of everyone being together. I thought about on grid pouncing on logistics. I thought that it would be less room to chase them down and tackle them considering scrams are going to become a vital member of fleet comps. I’m a long point type of girl and I’ve never enjoyed chasing things down only not to reach them in time.
On the topic of good feedback, Kaeda pointed out the impact to kiters with this. I didn’t think of this particular aspect. I’m a bit embarrassed to have missed it but such is learning. This is also one of the most frustrating parts of the NDA. How to get around it to gather feedback during the early part of the discussion without tripping over the NDA part. I feel that I should have worked harder to figure out a non NDA violating approach to this topic. I’ll improve.
I think they have an interesting future but I don't think they are where they need to be right now. This is another area where productive feedback as to the negatives is the best way to approach this. As with the freighters, if you yell at me, please do it in such a way as to give me something to work with. I'm not saying to love it. I'm not suggesting not to be unhappy. I'm just asking you to hate it constructively.
--- End of the Fire ---
CSM Outreach
We had a MD/VA/DC meet last night! It went super well. According to Jamwara I am “logical to a fault”. We had 14 people, Mord popped in for a few hours. There was lots of talking. We had one non-playing spouse so I kept stopping the conversation to do interpretations. At one point when trying to describe what BNI’s CEO was describing BNI as to her I said something along the lines of:
“To try to explain this. Most players get adopted by an adult. That adult teaches them basics of the world like how to look both ways before crossing the street so that they are not hit by cars. BNI is like a group of first graders. But there are 500 of them. They just run into the road with no idea they should look left or right and the sheer mass of them stops any cars. A few are sacrificed but the bulk of them get across.”Towards the end it was amusing. Psianh was just drinking a full beer without knowledge of who it belonged to. Everyone was wonderful and I am pleased with the time. It gave people time to get there and head home. We will plan another one before the end of June.
My Eve Uni chat should be on June 1st. It’s just “Hi, I’m Sugar, talk to me.” I don’t have a time yet and suggestions are welcome. If I need to do two of them I will (if Eve Uni is willing) to cover time zones. I know I hate when I miss things because of time zones so I’m more than happy to do two to try to maximize coverage. I need feedback on this. It is a big part of my attempt to correct the comments I keep hearing is that people feel the CSM is inaccessible. It is also why I went to Eve Uni. They are a neutral group and their mumble is open and not exclusive to anyone.
I’ve been trying to reach out to people in game. I’m in chat rooms, I’ve written mails, I’ve been trying to have meetings. I’ve wound up on coms to listen to random people who don’t want to type/eve-mail/forum and collect their ideas. If you want a meeting or a chat or something tell me, please!
We also put up a contact us post on the forums.
And I think that's this week.
Heh, we have had some great tag team moments this past week. My suspicion going into this is that it's easy to stiff arm one person bringing up a concern, but a bit harder when you have 2 coming at the issue from the same angle, especially with our different styles of doing so.
ReplyDeleteI think that suspicion will prove to be fact before the term is over. Your back, I haz it.
This is good stuff.
ReplyDeleteAn informative report on what the CSM is actually doing and who's saying what... Go figure... This is much better than only hearing about things after they've already been decided and never getting any reference to what position individual reps took on issues.
Keep up the good work and I for one will read your reports rather than ignore them like I did with the useless reports from past CSM members.
If you can keep up this weekly CSM commentary, I think it would be greatly appreciated.
ReplyDeleteThe DST were in *dire* need of help. I like what they have done with them, and I agree with you that they are the least problematic - and coolest - ship to get the medium MJD. (I share your concern... I would prefer a slight buff to BC than this).
ReplyDeleteOne thing some people have pointed out however is that the type of hangar they have given the ship will make it impossible to transport certain POS components with DST (not because of the size in M3, but rather because they are not "allowed" in this type of hangar). I think this is a limitation that probably wasn't intended for the DST... they need all the help they can get!
Interesting balance. Nerf high-sec production, but cut into low/null delivery as well, While I couldn't begin to crunch the numbers, in tandem these moves seem fair and appropriate.
ReplyDeleteInvest now in locally-grown, organic, fair-trade and gluten free rigs! The freighter you save may be your own.
EUNI has no issue helping you out with multiple times if that is what you want.
ReplyDeleteI'll be honest, Kaeda Maxwell's point about the impact on kiting doesn't impress. Kiting is already a low-risk, high-reward tactic compared to brawling in most respects, and the notion that a brawler can disengage nearly as easily as the kiter can if properly equipped should be one of the downsides of the tactic.
ReplyDeleteKiters tend to fight (heavily) outnumbered. That is *why* you kite. If I thought I could beat whomever I'm engaging in a strait up brawl then I wouldn't have any need to kite. Taking a small number of brawling ships into sovereign 0.0 however with the intent to engage other combat ships is tantamount to suicide.
DeleteThe locals have numbers on you, jump bridge networks, quick reships and repairs, superior intel etc etc. Your only option if you want to have any chance of leaving with your ship(s) again is generaly to kite and use guerilla hit and run tactics.
Generally nobody in EVE is interested in committing ship suicide.
I've been remiss in helping you get your chat set up on the E-UNI public Mumble channel. Sorry about that. Let me know what day and time you want to schedule it, and we'll set it up!
ReplyDeleteIt actually worked out! I learned today I need to push back by a week. I'll msg you tonight and I think I'll try out the two time slots for EU and US primetime on a Sat and maybe the AU guys can squeeze in if they want or maybe no one shows up :)
DeleteRig-wise; I think the freighters are winning out on this one. Honestly, I've never completely filled a freighter without passing the gank-me target, so I suspect a couple of rigs will do very nicely, without any effective reduction on the tank. So-- really, this comes out to a buff in my mind.
ReplyDeleteJFs, this is an unmitigated nerf-- but only, really, to their transit in highsec. It doesn't nerf their ability to jump cargo, and especially not in the case of sov null logistics. If you wanted to do that, cutting their jump range or increasing their fuel consumption further is the only way to make it more difficult to service deep null locations.
My favorite suggestion is something I'll propose on the forum shortly: jump spooling. When jumps are initiated, require that they spool for a time proportional to the jump distance; if the cyno is popped in the interim, the jump fails; if the ship is scrambled, pointed, or bubbled during the spool, then the jump fails.
"I didn't need to sign in blood if anyone was wondering."
ReplyDeleteIsn't revealing this little detail technically a violation of the NDA?
BNI approves of your analogy: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bravenewbies/comments/25z9fm/bni_a_massive_group_of_first_graders/
ReplyDeleteLovely meeting you last weekend and talking about markets and jump freighters and whatnot! Thanks for organizing.
Thank you for this post. To me the forums are far too negative and almost toxic to a new player. Every change that's posted gets hate, and every suggestion for improvement gets attacked by people who walked up the hill both ways when they started eve. But because of what you said I will try to participate more.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I think if CCP and the CSM are actually serious about getting player feedback, they need to completely change the forum of engagement with the player base. Why are there no in-game billboards or opinion polls? Why isn't there an idea exchange where people can upvote or downvote ideas and the comments are threaded so you can actually follow a conversation? Why do we use forums that are I!possible to use on mobile? All of these things are keeping out new/casual player feedback.
Maybe it's because I work in this field and I'm noticing it more but to be honest I think if the devs are going to take forum feedback seriously, they desperately need to revamp them and make them a more representative/constructive place for discussion, otherwise a certain vocal minority is going to skew the results.
Only commenting as anoym because I dont like using sign in's etc. (Forum name is Valterra Craven)
ReplyDeleteThat aside, I still much rather them just do this to freighters instead:
Leave them the hell alone, aka NO CHANGES.
Make a new ship (or 4) with these stats:
Half cargo, half HP across the board, half the build cost, and double the speed and align (or make it comparble to an orca)
Give it slots and rigs. Done. Everyone is happy.