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CSM9 - Day 147

Tuesday, September 30th will be the next release. This one is known as Oceanus. Here is a list of the associated Dev Blogs. They are also extending downtime on September 29th and the 30th.

Please keep giving me this lovely POS and team feedback. I appreciate what I have. I’m composing it into a condensed list, but more is better.

This news post went out back in May asking for comms and/or comms + footage. They’d like everything including mining ops. If you have a bit of fraps and the urge to record yourself do so and submit it.

I had some argument over the cyno displacement zone around starbases change where I was told I was wrong to approve of the edited version. Basically, I didn’t like the magical extra 25k of safety range that it gave. I disliked it becoming a mechanism that needed an overheated point or T3s on field to nab something playing shield games. I do not support things becoming a game of ‘even more people’ to do things. I was asked if I thought a frigate should be able to tackle a carrier. I absolutely think that a carrier should be able to be tackled by a frigate. I also think said carrier should have some means of support to deal with said tackling frigate if it is going to be floating around outside of the shields.

The module rebalancing thread is up. I'd suggest giving it a read and giving feedback. CCP Fozzie outlines how this is being approached. On one side I agree that the huge collection of meta modules that exist only for their mineral value is meh. Yet, most games have lots of 'trash' items in them. The goal of making modules all useful or interesting options is a good one. I've been listening to and reading arguments that worry about homogenization and a general blandness in the future for modules. It will be an over-arcing point to watch as these changes start to enter the game.

A Disturbance in the Force

CCP Veritas has created Dojos. These are arena fighting system on Duality. It was a project he put together in his last days.  I am not a fan of Arenas and I admit that I fear their implementation. This, however, is a prototype. An item that has been created and where the players are given access to it to use and poke about outside of Tranquility. It is not on Sisi. And yes it is a very contentious item ranging from, “How could you let this happen?” to “Finally, it took long enough for something to happen.”.

The concerns are about instanced fights and structured fights. As I understand it the ‘dojo’ is destroyable and the fight can be interrupted. The fight itself is somewhere out in space and not in an invulnerable instance of its own. The Dojo can be damaged and the fight interrupted and the process of the fights interrupted. That is different from third partying on the fight itself and that is the area that I struggle the most with. I am not comfortable with it.

What swayed my opinion the most and stopped me from standing up and denouncing this as true and pure evil, is the fact that structured fights do exist in Eve. That groups have created casual PvP. RvB is an example of this. There are currently various competitive leagues that have sprung up who could use an item such as this, outside of Tranquility, to create content for those who wish for this type of content. There are people who simply want to fight other people who want to fight them. Can we fling the idea of an unlimited sandbox and then reject tools to build in the sand?

There are positives. There are negatives. I am someone who has never had a dollop of interest in structured Player vs Player combat. I enjoy the unstructured unpredictability of living in the game world of Eve. I’m not every Eve player. So, I’ve sat down with people who do like this and talked to them. I need to understand what they enjoy and the potential that they see. This will take some thought.

Language 

French localization is coming. That is good. At the same time CCP is removing their supported language channels.

“With most of these languages having no official support from CCP, this means that investigating and answering tickets of this nature from these channels is sometimes not possible due to a significant language barrier. This is contrary to our policy of moderating and enforcing our terms of service (in particular the sections on player conduct) in persistent CCP hosted channels within the EVE client.”

The reason is clear and frankly, it makes sense. They cannot moderate their own channels and these channels are the ones that CCP lists as places for players to go. The problem is that the current chat channel UI does not have the ability to search for channels. Players can create new channels and advertise these channels on various language forums but that is not the same as having a searchable channel in the channel listing window.

We need a  channel searching and/or list functions or something so that the global population of the game is properly reflected.

The CSM9 Summer Summit Minutes

CCP Leeloo announced the timetable that we have planned for the minutes. It involves them being released by the end of October. It also involves the CSM getting them written in about two weeks. This seemed reasonable to me. Technically, with fourteen members and twenty four sessions we each only need to do less than two. But, life never works that smoothly and I found myself excited about writing the minutes.

What are the minutes? They are an account of the meetings that we had in something between a transcript and a more technical meeting minute. The ones I write contain the conversation. What CCP said. What the CSM said. Who asked what. My goal is to let you see what each CSM member said and did.

With this being my work week that includes a weekend I decided to dive into the Minutes and make sure I had my fair share on the table in case the rest were finished over the weekend. On Wednesday I completed three sessions and submitted them for other CSM members to look over in case they felt that I had missed something or to wait for CCP to start the NDA check. I got two more done on Thursday. I picked up my sixth session, which is the longest session. It was originally two sessions back to back which merged into one larger. At two hours long I’ve been working on it in the evenings and should finish it Monday. I’ve been working on it in chunks over my work weekend. I'll see what is left on Monday and keep going. After listening to myself for hours I'm a bit horrified to hear that I quite often have a self conscious laugh.

I’ll say that a hour long session is taking me about 2-3 hours to write. I’ve picked sessions with a lot of discussion and that takes a bit longer to make sure everyone is credited with what they said in the correct order and typing out all of the names. We were reasonably good at not talking over each other but sometimes it is hard to hear what is being said. It has left the uncanny situation where what we type in Skype we can now hear in the author's voice.

Right now we have 16 of the 20 some sessions finished or owned by someone who is writing them up. I’m quite pleased.

Outreach

We may slip a Town Hall in before Eve Vegas. However, maybe we should wait till after the minutes are released. Or, maybe we should do both.

I need to get another Eve Uni session done. I had hoped to have one for last Wednesday but writing the Summit Minutes has become my all encompassing project.

Comments

  1. Can you please explain why the 25k zone made it safer, seems to me it makes things more dangerous since you have to cyno in further from the shields. Not really sure what actions you're talking about that involve shield games either? or any part of the 2nd ad 3rd sentence tbh.

    Also, any idea why they decided to stick with the seemingly unneeded change to jump bridges, since they can't be used for bumping?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The 25k range of safety belonged to the POS. Life is indeed harder for the cyno. It was how much harder it would be to attack. For the Titan on Titan bumping it is a fix. However it brings with it a new series of changes.

    No, I cannot fully explain the jump bridges. I do not know enough of how they currently work or are used to be the one to expand upon the reason behind changes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The arena question is really really interesting. PVPers seem to like deadspaces where you can hang around for people to warp in. People can dscan you and see what you are in and you can see what people warping in are in and both of you have to decide to take the fight for a fight to happen.

    Removal of such locations has been lamented as well as the FW NPC changes because they made the person waiting be in a disadvantage. So say they love the non-consensual nature of EVE PVP but in practice PVP only in situations where the fight are actually consensual.

    On one hand it is yet another example of player ingenuity and emergent gameplay where the game mechanics are manipulated to participants shared benefit. On the other hand it's series of odd hoops to jump through just make a fight happen.

    ReplyDelete
  4. My understanding is that the fight cannot be interrupted and takes place in a magical instance you cannot enter, although the Dojo can be destroyed.

    From the thread -

    "Fights need to be un-screw-with-able. We strongly feel that if what’s supposed to be a “fair” match given a set of predetermined rules is thrown off course by outside influence, it invalidates the whole premise...Outside of the actual matches, there should be ways to screw with the dojo itself"

    "Once matched up with another player in the dojo, you’re both whisked away directly from station to your ships, assembled from the items in the dojo, in a deadspace pocket placed randomly in space that’s guarded from people warping to it"

    It isn't slated for release on TQ but it has been designed for TQ. It would make more sense on a test server for the Dojo to be completely invulnerable to interference, not require the hauling of ships to the Dojo and not force you to replace ships after they are destroyed.

    I'm glad that you're also wary of this feature.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Unauthorized video from the Summer Summit:

    http://youtu.be/oee7DnWJSw0

    Members of CSM9 shown demo'ing the new Arena feature. No information about who the others in the background are. These people DO NOT look like their avatars.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "It isn't slated for release on TQ but it has been designed for TQ."
    From what I can tell it hasnt been designed at all. A programmer had time and interest in this and wrote it. No design team involved yet.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Modulicide is not what I was expecting.

    Also note, no forum thread... just a DEV Blog.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Was hoping modulicide would get rid of 6 names for the same module. Instead of caldari, DG, ammatar, khanid etc. just give us navy/faction module and if you insist just add in flavor text like 'Originally developed by .. and quickly adapted by ...' or 'named after the first faction to popularize it's use/integrate this module in their doctrine'

      Same as Gevlon mentioned. This is unneeded complexity.

      Delete
    2. Not all faction modules of a given type have the same attributes. So unless they're also going to be homogenized, that would do more harm than good.

      Delete
  8. I can understand skepticism of the dojos, but I can also understand the desire for them.This is the first tool we've been given that's neither a little plastic bucket nor a little plastic shovel. It brings a game into our game. It allows for the possibility of a quick 1v1 without docking games, eight logistics alts, or other silliness. It doesn't replace anything, it adds something. It's the beginning of a player-created tournament tool that doesn't require CCP's explicit support; it can be entirely player created. It could be used as a teaching tool as well.

    The design could stand to be tweaked, sure. And if it's deployed on TQ, there are any number of ways you can still mess with it if you want to. But Singularity hasn't killed Tranquility; I don't see how this would. It might mean that people have an alternative to the duel-with-me-and-the-much-more-powerful-ship-I'll-dock-up-and-switch-to-along-with-my-alt-logistics guys, but I don't see that as a bad thing.

    ReplyDelete
  9. "The goal of making modules all useful or interesting options is a good one"

    The goal is good, the implementation is crap. It is based on a false premise, the idea that nothing other than M4 gets used. This ignores the economic factor, which in a game with such a real and player driven economy is a very valid piece of the equation. Very often I will opt for a M3 or M2 variant in order to reduce the cost of a fitting that is likely to be lost in glorious battle. What is wrong with having modules of varying qualities in order to create choices based on price vs. performance?

    Removing choices and options is dumbing the game down, and that's exactly what this "rebalance" does.

    The module naming convention is just plain dumb. At this rate, I'm expecting to see some "Heaving" MWDs to go along with our "Ample" missile launchers.

    ReplyDelete
  10. If the dojo hangar is so huge as the devs claim so it can carry ships what can haul it? Couldn't we get into a situation where your bestower can't carry 5 ships but if you pack them into the dojo it can carry the dojo?

    Or will the dojo need to be deployed before it can be populated with ships?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Dojo as I understand it is deployed and then filled.

      Delete
  11. Any Update on the language chat channel removal? Like a in-game feature to find existing channels for a given unsupported language?

    ReplyDelete

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