Month: July 2008

Disclaimer: This is just my thoughts. I write this as an conceptual idea for how the council should work, which is largely based on feedback I get from people as well.

This topic comes from the discussion there was in another post(Link here), about streamlining the process of raising “smaller” issues, which requires little debate.

Recently, we have seen a lot of discussion about balancing certain ships. It’s pretty obvious that it was going to be the case, but I think that the “issue”, as I see it, needs to be discussed.

So what is the issue? It’s what CSM it turning out to be. Right now, the community is concerned with ship balancing, which is quite fine. It just shows that people ARE concerned about the game. But there is a downside to it, as well: Whiners and people who wants their ship to be “FoTM”. And is this already the case? I tend to think so. Let me tell you a history:

I was recently sitting down on IRC and ingame, gathering feedback for an issue that was raised about ship X. The issue being raised was that the ship was underpowered and needed a fix. I ask these people(Approx. 10 different persons), whom I consider to be reliable sources, and ask them about their thoughts on the proposed ideas. And the response I get from large majority “Don’t listen to those whiners, the ship is fine”. Mind you, these are people who actually flies the ship. And knowing the community, I think it’s obvious that if there was an issue, they would have said so. So I went onto sisi, and tested the ship myself. The conclusion, in my mind, was that the ship was quite OK as it is.

This is just an example of how some issues, especially in regards to ship balancing, is a matter of personal taste and how you fly. They made some good points, but we are seeing an increased amount of EFT warriors, which doesn’t account for piloting skills of the individual.

So for the council to actually act on ship balancing issues, is a totally slippery slope. But if that is what is the concern of the community, surely that is fine?

I actually tend to disagree. If the council ends up just bringing forward ship balancing issues, we will forget what the council is supposed to: Set a vision for the game. That is what CCP expects us to do. If we waste all our time with ship balancing, which I’m sure CCP is already doing plentiful, we will become narrow-minded.

I think it’s much more important to discuss how we can make 0.0 sov. mechanics more interesting by adding more layers or how for missions to become more interesting. But if we focus on specific ships to get buffs, the collective creativeness in the community, will go lost. It’s, in my eyes, much more important to talk about “larger” mechanics, which affects a lot of people, than the ships itself. In my eyes, it’s much more important that missions are fun(For instance), than the fact that ship x should be able to do x and y.

While I’m setting a bad picture for ship balancing, that is not to stay it shouldn’t happen at all. Again, it’s important that IF there is an issue with ships, CCP should get informed. But I’m not entirely sure if the council is the best way, at least not in it’s current form. We need to focus on what is important.

But how do we fix this? The ideal way would be for a hands-off approach from the council, in regards to ship issues. But I think this will eventually be counter-productive, as well.

We need to stream-line the feedback channels for ship issues. An idea could be for the council to give CCP a document, a bit like the patch-notes we get, with the suggested changes to ships. But it’s obvious that some ideas, are not going to be good. So together with the attribute ideas, a “target effect” should be included. This means that if the idea that is being put forward sux, CCP can propose an alternative solution, that will fix the issue.

What do you think? Am I on the right track, for how the council should operate? I would like to hear what you think.

Hey guys. Better later than never.

About a month ago the CSM arrived at Iceland in order to bring on the community’s issues to CCP. It took a while for the minutes to be posted, but they are finally here.

Many hours were spent in a small meeting-room filled with senior CCP people, press and spectators from CCP walking around the cage(But they were informed not to feed the animals, I hear) and a considerable amount of issues were discussed.

The issues were very diverse, everything from shares to black ops battleships. A few carebear tears were shed from a CCP employees eyes(You know whom you are!), but in most of the cases CCP and CSM came to a reasonable agreement. Though a lot of promises weren’t made, we got an idea of what CCP wanted to do.

Sadly, not everything suggested by CSM was possible. In a number(Large number too!), the software department simply had to tell us that this change was not possible due to how the game works. Oh well, that is a shame, but at least we tried.

On the last day before the crew went home, the last day of meetings, a priority list was made over all the issues. The prioritization was based on CCP’s feedback on how easy it was to do, how many people it would affect and how long time it would take. It was by no means easy, but eventually we came to a list which could be agreed on by a majority of the council.

So it’s now possible to go ahead and read the minutes right here. These are not the complete transcripts of what happened though. So I created a thread which talked about all the industry issues, right here!

I need some feedback on contracts and stockmarket. Please help me out by posting your ideas!

But the council is now getting back in our normal schedule of having weekly meetings. This means we need YOUR feedback on issues. If you have an issue you want CSM to bring up, maybe you agree with some of the other issues? Head over the the forums and look for the assembly hall and post to your hearths content.

In a months time we will be chatting to CCP about this next batch of issues. So get yours in today!

I will see you all on the forum!