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Showing posts from March, 2015

Fanfest 2015 - New Player Experience Round Table

A bit late considering but finally I'm chewing my way through my last round table. This is my last one that I can comprehend what I wrote. Or nearly so. Next time, bigger note pad. Q: Other MMOs introduce the UI early into the game. Eve does not really do that. A: We are trying to load less information. If we try to walk you through the UI first you will face a lot of not relevant information. We've discussed a similar overview or removing it at first. Also, the selected items window is not used at first. We want to slim it down in those first few minutes to not overload people. Tool tips are an example of where we are tying to go. Q: Opportunities are only for half of the players starting. Can we get it somehow? A: It is something that has to be for new accounts only to keep the testing results valid. Q: Are you contacting previous trials to try again? A: Team Homegrown is a team focused on player retention and that is one of the things they are working on. Comment:

Nuances of Self

When not arguing with Tal, I'm reading his blog. During the Fanfest week he wrote a post titled, "Who is your main?" I raised my hand and said, "Oh me me! Sugar is but there is so much more just like you wrote!" Only I was in Iceland and no one heard me and I didn't really have the time to respond to it. Tal did dive deeper into the subject of who and what a main is and he used himself for a test case. I decided to dot he same because I like breaking things down into their parts. I've mentioned the blogs name before. Low Sec Lifestyle. I picked it because I was living in low sec and I really, really liked just living in low sec. This was before I could hunt or kill anything. I was a pest buzzing along behind experienced players like an excited puppy. I knew nothing but fear and awe for the most part. I picked the blog name to reflect what I was doing. Living in low sec. I've said before that I didn't come to Eve to be a PvPer. I came to be a

Cold Hard Cash?

I'll have to beg forgiveness for chewing on this topic. I'm probably asking questions out of order. Yesterday I dove into the center of a very complex question. At the end of it, I wound up with a lot of side questions to ask. As I sit here, stocking my market before I go to wheeze and gurgle my congested head upon my pillow, I cannot help but think of profit. Why do a run a market? I don't run a market for the reason most people assume, which is making ISK. I do make ISK with the market but I've never considered it my personal ISK. The market is a project that has become part of my life. It's one of those things i randomly attempted that accidentally set me up to learn about parts of Eve I didn't know existed. But, I run it to help out other people because that's something I enjoy int he game. I play a weird game where I do most of my things alone but with the focus on helping those around me. I've never considered myself an altruist. Sometimes I gi

Oh Great Industrialists of Spreadsheets and Blueprints, Educate Me

There are many things about Eve that puzzle me. It is a game that is created with the goal of players working together. There are circles within circles. We can break down what is and what is not working together but directly or indirectly we do. I often wonder what made the next decision of forcing everyone who worked together to share. Was it the goal of a single shard where loss mattered? Was it an attempt are realism in the early structure? After all, if I take a contract from someone and my friend comes to help me the original contractor is not going to give both of us the reward that they agreed to give me just because I brought a friend. It lead to a question. It was the type of question that crops up in a broader conversation and derails thought. The question was simple enough and I discovered I had no answer for that wish I wanted to ponder.  Can Eve, in its current state, actually support a system where most groups create, build, and defend for themselves alone? Does E

CSMX - Post #02

Scylla was released on Tuesday . The patch notes are here. Also the Luxury Yacht won at Fanfest is redeemable until July. It comes as a blueprint. People really seem to enjoy them. I think they are mind mindbogglingly hideous. They are fast, tanky, and nullified. But ugly. So ugly. The sessions and panels from Fanfest have been released under a Fanfest 2015 section of CCP's YouTube page. This includes ones that were not on the live stream.  I will be spending my next few days off playing catch up on everything I didn't see because I was nose deep in round tables the entire time. CCP Yitterbium created the wall of dev blogs for structures. Please add your thoughts to them even fi you don't read what other's have left. A lot of the complaints that we heard post structure announcement we have already started to tackle. I did ask someone in Iceland to stop getting pissed off at his own imagination. Corbexx and I are looking to start with a wormhole structure soundboard

And today, I made a rule

I am a bit wound up at the moment. I'm angry. I'm disapointed. Since Fanfest there has been a miasma of negativity that I cannot escape. I would guess that some is from the fact that major changes are coming in Eve and everyone copes with change in different ways. But really, Fanfest is just the icing on the cake of long term issues and today I've had my fill. People in Eve treat each other badly. Not everyone. Never everyone. But to often discussions turn into no more then two entrenched fighters brawling over a nonexistent win. Nether side will back down. Many players are aggressive, competitive, and ready to wage battle for what they believe in. I do it myself here. I fight sometimes for things just because someone needs to champion them. But sadly, for the first time today I had to lay down rules in my chat room. I had to ask people to calm the fuck down when they argue because they are chasing other people away. And that makes me unhappy. I'm a firm believer in

The Only, ONLY

I'm almost done with the round tables. Almost. I've been reading a lot of discussions this evening and I wonder... what if I were to learn back in my chair and stretch out from a few hours worth of typing. Then, I leaned over to you and said, "Blogging. Blogging is the only way to play Eve. Writing about everything you do. Pondering the market in text. Taking that perfect screen shot to tell your story. Blogging is what drives a person to better themselves in Eve, to have a narrative in Eve. Nothing beats putting your fingers to a mechanical keyboard (because they are the best) and typing away at a furious rate as you recount the day or ponder thoughts. That's the heart and soul of playing Eve. That is why it all works." I'd expect you to wonder what the hell was wrong with me after making faces and shaking your head frantically. A few might nod in agreement but I think people would go, "What?" It is such an outrageous statement. Who would believe

Fanfest 2015 - PvE Round Table

I missed the lore panel. It was in Rens and Dodixie which are the tiny, tiny, tiny, meeting rooms that I hate in Harpa. I'm sad that I missed it because cool things about world changes were discussed. Sigh. Q: Give the new AI to  NPC haulers more drops so that they are worth killing and more interesting. A: This is a general 'yes'. We are working on that. The start is the seekers and drifters. Potentials on the current PvE roadmap Convoys NPC vs NPC battles in space FW split into 4 factions with demilitarized zones in between Convoys that travel between those areas as part of the FW mission system Q: These PvE changes sounds exciting but what about wormhole space? A: In this last year we have released exploration sites. We want to look at sleeper convoys in wormhole space. We'd like more variation.  (Note: In the WH session there was a discussion about changing capital escalations) Q" If NPCs kill you they should loot your wreck. Plus, they co

Fanfest 2015 - UI Round Table

As with the others I skipped the session for the round table. This one had a table full of developers to discuss the UI. I also had scheduled a meeting with CCP Arrow and a player with some visual impairment problems afterwards. That is why I missed the Lore panel. The questions started with a continuation from the panel. Request: When a scout selects enemy spotted the FC can see their grid Request: If we had a toggle button to truncate the overview to see the ship types group by player selected sorting.  Or if the UI allowed us to sort by ship type instead of group like cruisers and/or then gave us grouping abilities. We cannot sort T1 logistics ships for example. (This was followed by a discussion) Q: Monochromatic icons drive me crazy. Can we have the old icons back? A: No. We have discussed the reasoning of icon processing. By sorting them by color you recognize the color and not the icon and you will run out of color. We also want a clear separation between icons and the

Absorbtion of Technical Language

Looking at my notebook I still have a little bit to go before I fully surface from writing round table reviews from Fanfest and think of something else. I think I can get the last two major ones done today. My speed and mental agility have been in the toilet. This cold is a slow, exhausting type that leaves me rather lethargic. I often find myself just staring at the screen. One thing that amused me was writing the ship and module session, yesterday was my comfort in Eve's technical language. Years ago, in a blog post I don't remember because I'm terrible at labeling them, I commented on Diz writing out a detailed description of a ship fit all in abbreviations. It amused me to no end that a mash of letters made sense to other Eve players and how there was a technical language to learn about Eve. That technical language is one of the hurdles new players have to climb. Unlike many hurdles, I do not think that it is a harmful one. It is one that you absorb and at some poin

Fanfest 2015 - Ship and Module Round Table #1

I made it to the first Ship and Module Round Table but not the second. This came right after the sov session which I did not get to. I have a stack of sessions that I need to watch/listen to over the next week to fully catch up on Fanfest. As always this is short hand and highly condensed. Q: For Miners - What do they have as a risk/reward matrix with the new sov changes vs the risk/reward for high sec miners? High sec mining is risk free. A: As discussed in the null presentation they are increasing mining output in null. They are changing ores and changing anoms so that it should make a significant difference. Be careful saying that mining in high sec in a hulk is safe. From the ship balancing we have been doing we have given procurers and skiffs serious defensive abilities. Q: Have you considered an ore faction mindlink? A: That came up in the session earlier an I like it (Fozzie). Q: Rorqual bonuses should focus on teamwork. A: The entire concept of the Rorqual is showing i

Fanfest 2015 - Wormhole Round Table #1

I only made it to the first wormhole round table, not the second due to schedule conflicts. Some of this was 'see the keynote'. My handwriting eludes me sometimes. It actually gets better as I go through the week and get used to writing again. Some of this stuff is amazingly bad scrawl. Request: A way to change clones in a wormhole A: Keynote Q: Mass Rigs: Can we have more sizes of them? (My handwriting eludes me this time. I do know that the topic was about more types of mass rigs on ships) A: We have to be careful about these. Lower mass is a very hard to balance thing. We have no concrete plans to add more rigs along these lines. Discussion: This was about the worries of allowing ships into wormholes they are not meant to be in because their mass has decreased to the point that they can slip in. Q: How about wormholes that allow certain ships then? A: Interesting thought. Note: This entire segment was a bit hard to keep track of and hear because people had a hard t

Recuperation

I made cinnamon rolls this morning and I have started to plant my seedlings. Home from my flight yesterday evening I've picked up a cold of some sort that started laying me low on Saturday night into Sunday. I didn't fully realize I was sick until Monday and I didn't start taking anything until Monday night when I couldn't warm up. So, I'm going to take it easy over the next two days until I go back to work. Expect more transcriptions from round tables to pop up over the next day or two. That is my main goal as well as getting my industrial machine back up and working and my store restocked and my Eve life resorted. And writing some stuff. I have a stack of eve-mails to respond to about all sorts of different topics. It should be an interesting time in the near future.

The Exciting Path of the Introvert

You can almost taste the excitement of Fanfest if you hang around any of the social media of the members. Packing, flights, landings, arrivals, dinner, drinks, and city roaming are saturated with excitement and glee. The sights, the smells, the sounds, and the interactions of a small city on a small island, nestled in the cold depths of the Atlantic hum with excitement. It is vibrant enough to feel. Textured enough to touch. It is enough to call to the most introverted soul. It is a sweet, fantasy. Fanfest is a lot of fun but that fun has to be taken by the individual. I've never been shy about my struggles with socialization. They dominate my life in very real, complex ways and times like Fanfest I can almost imagine that I will step off the plane in Iceland and become another person for a week. My own pocket sized video based fantasy will begin. And then it comes crashing down. Only it will not. Lacking a romantic soul, I know that the energy that I am watching from afar

Fanfest 2015 - Master Account and Web Design Round Table

This is one of the many sessions that I wanted to go to that discussed things that people want that are happening. This was on the first day so they had to tell people to wait for the keynote. During the keynote the two factor authentication was announced for instance to the delight of those who have been waiting for it. Now to start on the interpenetration of my mangled handwriting. The web team had a small slide show to give some information to the players. They have twenty domains that they manage. Dust, Eve Online, and CCP games are covered under this. They are also moving into phase two of their website redo. The Master Account Program is going to be implemented where they can support multiple user accounts under one main account. What is on the roadmap? Overhaul of the Eve Universe header Update the ship viewer (they are completely aware of caldariprimeponyclub ) Update internal tools for the GM/ISD What they want to do New Eve mail Standardize the item database

Fanfest 2015: CCP Karkur's Little Things

I was a bit late to this session but not by much. CCP Karkur went through a brief overview of the little things initiative and what changes they have been doing with them. I'll start with a note that CCP Karkur made. The CCPlease threads bug her. She is highly active on reddit, twitter, and her forum thread which is currently ' CCP karkur you are our only hope ' on the forums. She emphasized her thread. She loves to read threads where players are discussing and working on the details of a need or problem. The CCPlease threads tend to be just a straight request that don't bring the same amount of valuable player to player discussion. This was mostly request and some discussion around the request. It is all condensed down into my short hand. Fleet window changes are not little things. The changes may seem little but interacting with them to make it happen is often big. The request for characters to go to the log off screen has been mapped out and it is an estimate

CSMX - Post #01

I am going to try to avoid weeks and days this time and stick to something I can keep track with and that is a bit more flexible when it comes to writing about the CSM side of things. With that, welcome to CSMX with your blogging host, Sugar Kyle. I'm sitting in Iceland still and it has been a very, very busy time. The CSMX elections were announced on Thursday at the Keynote. I've been asked how I feel about the line up. I'm fine with it. I'm happy to have familiar faces and working partners back. I just want everyone to work because there is a lot of work to do. Fanfest has released the changes to Structures, discussions about Sov, and some of the goals that we are headed to this Summer. I have more round table sessions to work out, the lore panel has left a miasma of fear and worry. Things are going to change in Eve Online and not just ship balancing and sovereignty structures. There have been hints of world sculpting, systems changing, and major disruptive e

Fanfest - The Groggy Moment

I have a sandwich from Hlollabatar which I like much better than the other sandwich place Nonis. This sandwich place war is weird to me. Eat what you like. I eat my stuff with out their 'sauce'. Fanfest is over. I expect I will do a write up of the last few days tomorrow. For now its two in the morning and I have a sandwich to eat and some tea to drink. I've been standing for six hours talking to people. The talking was pleasant and the standing was not noticed until I sat down. I've met people, had conversations, talked over things, and hopefully presented myself well to those who spoke to me and who voted forme. Fanfest has been informative. I need to sit down over the next week and catch up on the presentations I missed. I hit round tables all day and I have almost filled my little moleskin notebook with notes from the sessions. I got the low sec ones done but I attended one of the wormhole ones, team security, pve, one of the ship and module rebalancing, the NPE

Fanfest 2015 - Low Sec Crimewatch Round Table

This is the second session for low sec. It was focused on the non-FW stuff. A lot was said. I tried to grab it all. It is somewhat condensed. Q: How about adding more low sec between areas or just making each high sec area an island. To continue on that question expand some of the low sec pockets and the low to null boarder zones. A: This comes up regularly. Changing the distribution of sec also comes up. Creating more barrier zones between major hubs comes up . There is nothing planned. World shaping tools improved with Thera and its a possibility. The last time a lot of low sec was added was black rise for faction warfare. It would mean that a clever trader and a skilled trader in the way the game works would be a profitable trader. The economic impact would have to be carefully examined. Q: Boosters - A wish for booster mechanics to be properly understood. That production was understood. That use was understood. That boosters were revisited. A: Its a poorly built mechanic that

Fanfest 2015 - Low Sec Faction Warfare Round Table

This is a lot of short hand and question condensing. I'm sitting in a chair and writing as fast as I can. Q: Entosis link - Is this something that we can see in FW warfare plexes as a way to force people to fight for them instead of being in cloaky stabbed frigates. A: It is not ruled out. We want to see how it works in null sec before we do this. We may move towards using it for FW IHubs and how they are fought over. These ideas are borrowed from the capture point. No commitments. Q: Rebalance medium FW complexes to allow BC to enter A: We cannot bring back the glory days of BC fleets welping into each other with no logi. Rebalancing what is in complexes we can do. We've been looking at how T3D and recons are used since released. Maybe we can have new sizes. There are a lot of options. Q: How do T3D in small complexes look? A: No decisions have been made yet. We are watching and we'd like to have them all released in the game before we step back and do th

Fanfest 2015 - CSMX

CSMX is a pretty amazing title. Over the last few weeks I've had this little scenario play out in my head where if I got elected I'd write this whole trolling post about how awful I'd be. I decided that it'd be tacky and I'd not do it but I'd still talk about it anyway. It's late here, almost two in the morning and I need to get to bed but some words don't wait to be said. You all helped me make it to the CSM for a second term. Thank you. You also gave me a permanent seat and I am staggered by that. I really can't comprehend all that it means right now and I'll let it sit and ferment for a bit. Last year I said that my time on the CSM wasn't about me. It was about everyone else. I'm a conduit between the players and CCP. I feel that has been a successful and productive process for all of it and I see little reason to change what I have been doing in this last year. I do have some ideas to improve communication in some broader ways a