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Your ideal roadmap

To try to be a bit more interesting then blogging yet another daily list of summit meetings, how about a question?

In the producer session, as we try to figure out how to fix and improve our communication with teams and how we figure out who should be gone to for features and changes, we discussed the road map.

We discussed what 'our' ideal roadmap would be. This breaks down into the individual roadmaps for each member of the CSM. After all, we are individiuals and we have different dreams for Eve. We have different goals and features that we want to move forward or go back to.

How close are we to what CCP is looking at and planning? We discussed their safety mesures to weigh the value of features. What will this feature do for Eve? It is not enough to have an ideal road map of things you want. Those things have to have value and that value needs to be enough to dedicate the time to the feature.

Do you have an ideal roadmap? A path for Eve to head in the next year or two once we move past Citadel?

Comments

  1. I know what I want is an acceleration of all the groundwork PVE coding being done so they can start pushing out actual content.

    Investment back into WiS would be nice, but that's right off the reservation.

    How about this...

    Finish up module tiericide.
    Finish up the PVE code rework.
    Ship some new PVE.
    Take another smaller more incremental stab at Industry.
    Whatever it is they wanted to do with a new clone system.

    Oh, and since we're coming up on Seagull's "Glorious 5 Year Plan".. haha... New Space.

    You'll notice nothing specifically for Null & Wormhole in there. That's not because I don't want things for Null on a roadmap level. It's that... I've no idea how citadel, capital, and finally finishing off Foziesov are going to go down.. so road mapping that seems premature. There will be work done on them I'm sure, but it'll be months before I start to form anything I could quantify into a roadmap of wants in those areas. So for now. Low and High will all the current stuff settles.

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  2. I would like to set up shanty towns in Sov. They pose no existential threat to the Sov but would be hard to be cleared out by the Sov holders - maybe wormholes too. Space Vermin if you like. It might actually make all this space useful beyond a place to just plant a flag

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  3. I think, what Halycon already wrote and perhaps a look at the mechanics of mining of minerals.

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  4. Scrap the new camera, everything else will work out just fine....just so long as they get rid of that camera.

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  5. Things that pop into my head that aren't really a road map as much as things of recent note:

    -Keep the old camera around until the new one is rock solid. The new one mostly works, but I've had it freak out on me enough that I had to turn it off. There is no need to be in a hurry to ditch the old one unless there is some burden which comes with the legacy code.

    -Dump the entosis link module and let us just shoot command nodes. We like to blow stuff up. Use the same mechanic for citadels so there is a cap on the amount of DPS to keep a blob from being able to blitz through.

    -Work on some more interesting PvE content. I know, that is tough, because no matter what CCP introduces players will just optimize to beat it and then it will simply become another ISK faucet.

    -Having just watched my daughter, 14 and better at video games than I am, try to get into EVE, I would have to suggest that the NPE still needs some work. It went from a narrow path that didn't really prepare you for the game to a wide path that an actual new player can get totally lost and frustrated with.

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    1. Both the camera and NPE were discussed today.

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    2. I think it would be good to have some sort of mentoring system. Players could register as mentors and take new players under their wing.

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    3. "It went from a narrow path that didn't really prepare you for the game to a wide path that an actual new player can get totally lost and frustrated with." +1 very nice quote.

      Mentoring sounds good, too: find a way to reward older players for directly assisting newbros.

      Like, being fleeted and on the same grid while Opportunities are completed. Both in the pair should benefit, so it doesn't just make the older player richer, in a new, formal, reward-driven system.

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    4. "Fixed an issue which could break the camera when looking at something and warping away." (Today's patch notes)

      Well, you certainly got that fixed quick. (heh!) That was the exact scenario that made me turn off the new camera. I am always looking at something when I should be paying attention elsewhere.

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  6. Excellent question. Being more of an adapt to than a design for Eve player (especially the longer I play), I lack a detailed road map list. That said I have a few big picture thoughts:

    1) Continue to shift more and more of the Eve universe from NPC control to player control. Every time I’ve seen such shifts in the past (POCO’s for instance) I’ve come away feeling, whether I partook or not, “That’s just super cool!” Mind you, I’m not saying CCP should adopt a long term goal of switching *everything* to player control. NPC’s remain crucial. Rather, instead of being central, I’d prefer to see them as one among many.

    2) Work hard to support viable, enjoyable solo PvP. Asocial neckbeards such as myself want to get their pew on too.

    3) Work had to support viable, enjoyable group PvE. Gregarious carebears such as myself want to productively hang with their space friends.

    4) Keep Eve overwhelmingly big. Few things please me more than Eve’s immense conglomeration of niches and cross purposes, all threatening to boil over into chaos at any moment. One could carve out an appealing game identity in a chaotic universe like that.

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  7. A few thoughts based on what I read so far;

    1- Sov: slow things down so indexes dont move so quickly. Give us the option to actually deploy somewhere for more than a couple of days without making our lives miserables. With the introduction of citadels, there will be alot of high value items to keep without having to add indexes as the lead conflict trigger. Citadels espcially XL's will fill that role just fine.

    2- Revisit cap jump range to maybe increase it a bit? Say from 5 to 6 and see where that takes us? In the same line of thought in regards to deployement above.

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    1. We have discussed both of these very things today. I expect we will go back into it tomorrow in some sessions.

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  8. Sugar -- Interesting question, and as a communication strategy I'd challenge CCP to start with the biggest, broadest ideas and then work down. Sometimes I think we break the game up into too many component pieces and then debate the merits of a particular change only within the confines of that one system.

    But that one system isn't isolated. EVE is a terrarium (closed loop system) and we're all breathing each other's air. What I do in PVE ultimately ripples into what you do in PVP ripples into what Goons do in Null.

    So I rambled about how this process should work; I'd challenge CCP to communicate a Grand Unified Vision and then work out how all the subsystems interact with that Vision.

    http://evedogsbreath.blogspot.com/2016/02/building-roadmaps.html

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  9. Fix the war dec mechanic. Fix drifter incursions. Make faction standings meaningful again. Update all of the PVE content. Fix POS's. Fix corp management UI....

    Seriously, Sugar, CCP needs to fix their game before trying to create more broken content. Imagine how much time the developers would have to develop new content if they actually delivered content that wasn't broken from the beginning.

    Also, they need to read their forums a little more carefully because all of these suggestions are in there. I know they think that they're engaging the player base by asking for feedback, but they're really just adding to the perception that they aren't listening or responding to their customers.

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  10. Massive message incoming.

    First: actively engage players to know what, why, when, how, with who, they play EVE. Don't wait for them to talk: Engage them! Send them messages, open chat swith them. Pick them based on their ingame behavior, nationality, age, gender... well, skip gender... but for fucks's sake, LEARN WHAT THE HORSE THINKS STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH!!! Expecting him to parse 3 pages full of strangers and "vote his CSM candidate" or be ignored by CCP is beyond silly; it's evil.

    Second. PvE. Does it look like something acceptable, provided that even PvPrs do PvE and pure PvErs are where most money comes from? How does PvE compare to EVE's selling points?

    Third. More PvE. Why players don't have any control on it? Why NPCs are irrelevant? This is a sandbox. Add NPCs and PvE to the toolbox. Let the players find out what can be built with them.

    Fourth. Complexity. What's going to be EVE's 1,000th ship class? Does it make sense to just keep adding ship classes, forever and ever, burdening new players with hundreds of names and stats they must ignore or learn, and tell which can be ignored and which must be learned? Same goes for mechanics, with new mechanics being to new ship classes what the Plague is to smallpox, in terms of new player mortality. If you think learning ships is hard, try to learn mechanics that will cost your ship in PvP. And they keep growing and growing and changing and changing.

    What keeps he veterans entertained, makes the game harder to learn for new players. Which leads to...

    Fifth. New players. Not just new accounts, new alts, but actually people who never thought that they would play EVE and suddenly find a reason why. What can do EVE so new types of players play it? Avatars, maybe? Walking and playing in stations, maybe? At least that would be a blank sheet to build on.

    Sixth. Sandbox. A sandbox is a sandbox, everywhere. Giving equal chance to play in a specific way to reach a goal is not the same as giving an equal chance to reach your goals playing in your way. Too many roads in the sandbox just don't lead anywhere.

    So, what would be my ideal roadmap?

    Engage players. Learn what do they like and why, based not on passively waiting for feedback but actively talking to players who otherwise may think that their opinion is irrelevant -but their money isn't!

    Then, no matter what happens with the new PvP being added to the game with Citadels and strutures and new space, focus on PvE. Hand control of it to players, let players interact to NPCs and affect other players. That would add depth to highsec gameplay so players weren't blocked from chasing their goals unless they PvP and go to nullsec and become someone's dependable cog.

    And in the longer term, open avatars to a completely different way of playing. Maybe not even PvP in it (certainly not yet another meh-grade FPS like DUST). There's more than warriors and war in reality; and maybe some capsuleers would rather play filantropists than evil overlords. Maybe some capsuleers would love to rescue the victims of other capsuleers. Maybe, just maybe, EVE should let players cast a light of mercy and hope in the dark harsh dystopian universe. Not to be crushed, but because reality is far worse than EVE. And who needs to evade into a alternate reality that struggles to suck as much as the one where chidlren drown in the sea trying to escape being blown by bombs.

    There's enough cold dark grim dystopia in the world as to let EVE be just a parody of it. But now I am digressing...

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  11. Step 1 - Preserve hisec ice mining as a viable profession
    Step 2 - Rorquals in hisec
    Step 3 - [Cartoon drawing of Jinrai sitting on top of a deployed Rorqual in an icebelt, grinning like a lunatic while being orbited by a conga-line of Skiffs]

    I’m mostly joking, except that I remember a few years back (I think when the idea of caps using gates was first proposed) when one of the CCP devs did say they might consider allowing caps in hisec, subject to significant work to prevent them from unbalancing existing hisec PvE. With the incoming DPS caps on Citadels, the changes to Carrier operations and the capital rebalance in general, I’m wondering if we might be getting to a point where they could work. For that matter, in the context of players deploying 7-70bn ISK structures in hisec, is it still unreasonable to expect they might use multi-billion ISK capitals to attack or defend them?

    Disclaimer: I might be somewhat biased on this issue, since while I have little interest in leaving Higsec I have 2 Carriers and a Rorqual from times past gathering dust in Lowsec which I’d love to get some use out of.

    Oh, and Step 4 - Drilling platforms offering some sort of interesting gameplay rather than just "this is the Structure I reprocess my ore in". I don't have any idea what they should do, I just want something more interesting than over-sized Reprocessing Array.

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  12. scrap sovereignty. scrap the whole system. free up null sec. let people roam and build structures in null sec like they do in wormholes. entosis links were the dumbest idea ever created for eve and i am not a null sec resident. my best advice is to simply eve from anything that interrupts game play ie, like the unnecessary timers we had when undocking. anything that interferes with the players being able to fight each other and blow stuff up should be removed from the game. ive noticed all the large battles have shifted to low sec. no one wants to deal with fozzie sov. im not being negative. i love eve, i just understand that players want to blow stuff up, add to their killboard stats, have stuff to tell tales about. who the hell tells any tales about entosis links? they are completely inappropriate for the eve environment. sometimes i think ccp gets in the way too much and should get out of the way more. fozzie sov is an example. instead of trying to fix sov, get rid of it entirely and let the horde loose and they'll make up their own fun.

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    1. Without timer mechanics, 24/7 coverage would be required for any group to still have a POS or POCO or Outpost, the next day.

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    2. the timers are a good thing. so are the jump limitations. what im interested in seeing happen is the sov system scrapped. that means tcu, system upgrades, the concorde costs and all the other details involved. i asked myself 'is this stuff fun? does it add to the fun element? or is it a drag on time and boring as hell?' the answer was obvious right off. simplify.... im against system upgrades for the single reason it allows players to stay in one system and farm anomolies. if you stick with the pattern laid out for the rest of eve sigs spawn spontaneously and randomly. make players go exploring and finding the sigs and anoms like the rest of us. mix it up. care bearing is ok for hi sec areas..ie missions. even minerals should be random in systems, not 'guaranteed' with system upgrades. this is following the basic layout for the rest of eve making our universe balanced across the board. the timers on towers and structures are a good thing in that they give people time to line up for the fight. it is the time wasters i want to see out of the game. i am for balance across our universe. and ccp does a good job balancing things like ship and skill abilities. (for the most part) dropping the sov system opens up a lot of creative free time for the developers to add more content and expand or fix what exists already.

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  13. - Now that Company is rolling in money after the skill "trading" monetization feature intended for newbro's, that should mostly be invested in the New Player Experience.
    And get some proper voice overs for those squirrel text boxes.

    - Moon mineral depletion and relocation mechanics, those that start bitching about scanning, it's an eve profession deal with.

    - Since CCP games is worried about other gaming companies now, listen to CCP Leeloo csm interview imho, just do what Chris Roberts has done in Star Citizen concerning The Issue Council.
    source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/issue-council

    - Where is the love for the Mercs, aka mercenary marketplace.
    source: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=467678&find=unread

    - Engagement team responsible for events such as Frostline is the way forward, and don't forgot to regularly update the Lore.

    - Now here is the main Roadmap after Stargates:
    Planetary Landing Zones for Capsuleers with Flora and Fona etc.
    And use this as a stepping stone towards more Ambulation !

    Regards, a Freelancer

    ps: what I see behind the new Stargates, the road the Earth
    source: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/moon_and_earth_lroearthrise_frame_0.jpg

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  14. PvE wise I think stated ideas like roaming pirate NPCs are great.

    With missions maybe rather than warp here blow stuff up, warp back. Maybe a little vit of variety, options within missions like steal the cargo you were supposed to recover, let the pirate go (who later does you a favour) and so on.

    Now mining... I don't do.

    However my thought is say minecraft or dwarf fortress it is actually fun trying to find rare ores and dig around.

    It isn't warp to a known belt, target an asteroid, shoot the asteroid, go to sleep.

    How about some sort of prospecting mining, where the more proactive you are in seeking out the ores the more you make ?

    Needing to do exploration or similar to find mining sites.

    Mining that is more interactive ? Maybe have the old way as auto mining where your lasers just shoot through anything getting mostly low grade ore in low quantity where if you are actively mining you get a higher yield.

    Artuc

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  15. Not so much of a roadmap here as an individual feature within one, but I'd like to see Scanner Probes in all their various forms (Core, Combat, SoE etc.) actually take measurable time to return to your ship when you hit Recall.

    It bugs me that it takes measurable seconds to throw them out there and send them off to scan something, but then when you hit Recall, they reappear instantaneously in the hold. Likewise the auto-return thing if you forget to recall them when you leave the system. It bugs me 'cos it breaks the immersion as I'm one of those RP types.

    As it is now, mishandling probes is consequence-free and it would be better gameplay if you actually did lose them, or better still had to make the decision whether or not to abandon them because it takes too long for them to return before that Tengu you've seen on D-scan arrives...

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  16. As long as the roadmap includes alliance bookmarks I'll be happy. For me the big picture is having more reasons to play with other people for more than just PvP and more ways to make working together easier. Citadels are going to help but reworking corp roles and permissions will go a long way too. Make it easy for people to form their own organizations because it is these player groups that drive the narratives that keeps eve a living world. As long as people are engaged and undocked I think the rest is details. Also, alliance bookmarks. I can't say that enough. :)

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  17. 1 year mark
    - Eve PvE
    - tower defense PI (completely rip off clash of clans or similar) to help point 2 below.
    - Assault Carriers (http://www.ninveah.com/2016/02/ccp-its-time-improve-drone-interface.html)
    whatever else is needed to setup point 3 below.



    2 year mark
    - NPE = ride shotgun with Concord in a single player campaign when you start the game.

    - Dust 2.0
    pvp = fighting in stations and on capitals (an EvE ship is created to insert boarding parties). entering your captain's quarters puts you into a first person game. Dust combat can disable modules on ships and citadels.

    pve = fighting in your PI base or against other people's PI base.

    -Valkyrie 2.0
    pvp/pve = flying a carrier's fighter in eve



    EvE would become a one stop shop for many gamers. I get how aggressive the timeline is. I also get that there are technical hurdles. Besides that, do you think this would increase the likelihood of someone subscribing? Staying subscribed?

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  18. I'm still waiting on tiericide to reach Black Ops and T3-cruisers.

    That would be a nice starting point for a road map.

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  19. In short:
    -Normal low sec not being worse than the FW one.
    -Non-income based improvements for highsec(not talking about redesigning missions) fixing wardecks if that even possible.
    -Increased use of for example low end moon mats

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  20. I just thought of another one: I think this is similar to what somebody's described above, but if DUST514 is dying a death, then rework the orbital bombardment code in EVE to allow attacks on PI colonies.

    No idea how feasible it is, or how you'd control the inevitable free-for-all in gameplay terms, but it's wrong that all PI is immune from threat when other player structures are fair game.

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    1. Too bad, but that idea is unworkable because CCP probably wants to re-use orbital bombardment code for Dust514's PC-successor.

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  21. This comment has been removed by the author.

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