CSM meeting minutes 2.009
Contents
Council of Stellar Management
Meeting Minutes
Sunday 16th March 2009
Present
Ankhesentepemkah, Bunyip, Darius JOHNSON, Issler Dainze, LaVista Vista, Omber Zombie (late), Pattern Clarc, Tusko Hopkins, Vuk Lau, Meissa Anunthiel, Extreme, Sophie Dagneau
Apologies
Absent
Special Meeting Regarding Apocrypha Discussion Issue Passed in Previous Meeting – Items raised to be voted on as to whether they should be discussed with CCP
Capital Ships Collision Mechanics
Vuk raised the issue as Oz was absent. Issler and Pattern asked for a clarification of why it happened. Darius explained that after CCP changed the collision calculation, capitals’ mass meant that if they hit each other they bumped a huge distance.
Issler thought it needed to be fixed ASAP.
Pattern noted that he thought CCP rushed the expansion and that CCP need to assure the players it won’t happen again.
Bunyip added that it was rushed due to the retail box, but agreed it shouldn’t have happened.
Tusko pointed out that launch date was a business decision and there is no point in raising that as an issue.
Darius noted that the meeting was going off topic and that opinions about testing were irrelevant.
Pattern vehemently disagreed.
Darius politely asked Pattern to get over it.
Vote: 8-0 pass
Epic Mission Arcs
Ankhe introduced the issue.
Bunyip thought that while CCP had a lot of new things to include in this patch, he understood that CCP were testing the water with only one Epic mission, however he agrees that the system needs to be looked at.
Issler agreed that a single start point seemed broken, and only one Epic Arc seemed broken too, which is boring, but that was the nature of missions. Issler also noted that box art and words seemed to promise a lot of things that aren’t actually in the game, including being an ‘artist’.
Pattern noted that he didn’t think we should be voting on anything, just prioritizing them and this all could have been done via email. He was happy Ankhe explained the issue and is happy to bump it up the priority.
Vuk pointed out that email is not a great communication system currently and people disagree with various points.
Darius asked if it was possible to stay on a single topic.
Vuk wanted to know if it was true that only 2 empires were covered with the mission arc.
Ankhe said only Caldari and Minmatar to any great extent, the rest minor inclusions.
Bunyip thought it looked like they took the diploma mission and extended it 10 fold.
Ankhe wanted to discuss what the CSM position on Epic Missions were, in her opinion they were ‘crap’ and needed 6months of work.
Darius asked why that wasn’t figured out before this meeting.
Oz arrived
Chaos ensued for a little while.
After a brief discussion about what exactly the point of this discussion was about was had.
Ankhe wanted the CSM to have a position of ‘Epic Missions Suck’
Oz noted he didn’t think they sucked.
Vuk reclaimed chair status.
Issler wanted to hear what Oz thought of the topic.
Pattern asked if CSM could agree with the position that the current Epic Mission Arc was not good enough.
Oz agreed that the Epic Mission released was not good enough, but thought that CCP already knew this and it was a test run of the Epic Mission creation system, not an end product. Comparing this single mission to a complete Epic Mission Editing system was stupid and a waste of time.
Vuk thought that even if this was just a test of the Epic Mission system, problems should still be taken to CCP.
Vuk called for a vote.
Oz asked for a clarification of what exactly the CSM was voting on: The Epic Mission Arc, or the Epic Mission System.
Both was the answer
Vote: 9-0 pass (with reservations from oz, lavista and darius)
Sleeper AI
Ankhe introduced the topic.
Issler thought it looked like a balance issue and wasn’t sure there was much value of raising it as a topic as CCP would be monitoring and tweaking it.
Darius thought that sleepers were acting as intended. If a setup wasn’t working, use a different one, players don’t have a right to kill everything in game solo or in a preferred setup.
Ankhe noted it’s hard to do if gallente.
Oz had four points: 1. Drones are a weapon system and if fighting a drone boat, you disable their drones, it’s working as intended. 2. Sleepers are super NPC’s, not simple NPC’s you can AFK kill like level 4 missions, working as intended. 3. Adapt or Die, working as intended. 4. The same as point 3.
Vuk agreed with Darius and Oz.
Pattern noted that CCP said they needed to tweak the frequency that Sleepers targeted drones, but drones could also be used to exploit the AI and a cheating AI is an issue. It is considered a low priority by him.
Tusko questioned if the issue was more to do with why a favored setup can’t be used rather than choosing a ship for it’s task. He is happy that they are not easy to defeat and if ‘cheating’ is necessary to keep it that way, so be it.
Bunyip noted that from what he has read they put a lot of balancing effort into drones and it is unlikely they will change that. He has not heard any complaints about it.
LavVista agreed with Darius and Oz.
Meissa noted that drones didn’t work, smaller ones survive but don’t deal damage, Heavy/Sentry drones just get killed instantly. Drnes are a weapon system, not ammo, there needs to be some rebalancing.
Pattern pointed out you can use light drones as a defensive system.
Vuk called the vote; Ankhe disagreed with the need to vote as the topic should just be added.
A discussion was had on what needed to be voted on.
Vote 2-6 fail (ankhe and pattern voted yes, no vote from Tusko)
Probing
Meissa introduced the issue.
Lavista agreed with most of the issues; however he thought the granularity and dead covert ops are working as intended.
Issler was torn on the topic, while her first experience with probes were bad and a lot of negative posts on the forums say so, a lot of her corp members love the new system. There is room for serious improvement though.
Bunyip hadn’t really heard anything bad about probing, but had a list of things that could be improved:
- disable probes automatically from scan results
- Give option to disable some results you may have already scanned
- Fix probe movement for fine tuning
- Create a shortcut key bind for bookmark this
- wireframe probe widget manipulator should be an option which is OFF by default
- need a new indicator when probes conflict readings
Meissa asked for a clarification of numbers 4 and 6
Bookmarking a scanned result needs to have a easier way to get it rather than fly there, bookmark, get out of dodge. Something achievable from the solar system map and the small red ring showing a scanned area doesn't give much detail. It needs to be 3D instead of 2D, and show the conflicting readings if possible.
Meissa thought point 4 was an alternative to the Dead Covert Ops part.
Oz agreed with Lavista and also added that the difficulty in finding the radar/magneto sites was proved to only be hard for non-covert ops ships which he thought was intended. He also thinks remote bookmarking would remove any risk from exploration.
Issler wanted to know what everyone thought about Triangulation.
Pattern noted it was quadrangulation.
Meissa pointed out it’s not triangulation, it’s all about angles as pattern said.
Pattern thought the concept was fine, just a few issues with the time taken to scan things down in cluttered systems, mostly balance issues.
Meissa didn’t agree with the risk to covert ops, they should not instantly die when probing down a site. They are fragile and not meant for combat.
Oz pointed out that covert ops gives you the fastest and easiest way to find sites, not the only way. You can use other ships to find sites which may take longer and require higher skill levels.
Bunyip thought that maybe covert ops could be the only ships capable of remote bookmarking.
Meissa thought that Oz’s assertions were false for radar/magno sites.
Oz disagreed and gave a setup that would find them.
Meissa asked if Oz was suggesting that people should use a more resilient ship that is not actually designed for the job.
Vuk pointed out that if a covert ops is too fragile then maybe a non-fragile ship was designed for the job.
Pattern reiterated that it was probably best that CSM get CCP’s views on this.
Meissa agreed to edit the topic to include Bunyip’s suggestions and alter the Granularity section.
Oz objected to remote bookmarking ever existing.
Vuk and Issler agreed.
Vote: 8-0 pass (with Oz, vuk and Lavista against remote bookmarking, no vote from pattern)
Tech 3
Pattern introduced the issue.
Issler noted that she had been trying to build a business model around tech 3 and it seemed near impossible as there were too many variables and the ships had questionable value.
Meissa pointed out that aside from radar/magneto components, the time needed to obtain salvage and gas was minimal and as such, the final price for ships shouldn’t be very expensive in the end. Ship value is hard to determine at this point because no-one was flying them.
Oz asked what exactly the point of this discussion was – what did Pattern want to talk to CCP about specifically.
Pattern answered that he had suggestions on how to fix them which he’d be releasing later in the week, however he wished to know CCP’s views and raising the priority of it.
Oz clarified that the reason he asked was because the first two points of the issue were that the concept was dumb and not balanced, which is fine as an opinion, but not a real question. Oz thought the point of this discussion with CCP was to ask them about specific issues not general overall concepts.
Pattern responded that he is alerting them to a problem and voicing the concerns of the public to them directly as that is part of his role as a CSM.
Meissa pointed out that you could test these ships on Singularity, that they weren’t bad but not necessarily worth the time and isk. Meissa also failed to understand why being better than tech 2 was a bad thing.
A general discussion as then had about what was available for testing.
Issler wanted to know if asking CCP to seed tech 3 on Singularity was what was being aimed at.
Meissa thought it was premature to put tech 3 issues to CCP when no one has any idea of what they are discussing.
Issler repeated her question.
Lavista pointed out that they are seeded.
Pattern said they were not available on the market like everything else. He also noted that this issue was more than asking for tech 3 to be seeded for testing, it was also about how a whole new feature was added and the playerbase were unhappy about its performance and lack of testing.
Oz asked how the player base could be unhappy with the performance of something that hadn’t been tested or used in game yet.
Pattern posted 2 forum thread links.
Ankhe said she noticed missing subsystems but she also thought that tech 3 was unbalanced.
Issler requested the issue to be defined more clearly; if it was ‘discuss tech 3’ then she would agree to it.
A brief discussion about the missing 2 subsystems ensued.
Vote was called
Vote: 4-5 fail (yes votes were pattern, ankhe, issler, bunyip)
Sleeper Loot
LaVista introduced the issue
Oz wasn’t sure it really was an issue with the sleepers, but wanted to ask CCP why it was introduced for them rather than standard NPC’s.
Ankhe thought that as tech 3 looks like it is going bad, they may need this isk to make going to wormhole space worthwhile.
Issler had no problem with this issue.
Vote: 7-2 pass (ankhe and sophie said no)
Unfinished Expansions
Ankhe introduced this issue.
Omber just wanted Ankhe to be clear that she wanted CCP to change from their successful business model of expansions to bugfixing. If that was the case, he had no problem with them fixing old issues, but asking CCP to halt expansion was absurd.
Vuk agreed that Eve should continue moving forward, but CCP should consider not having such an aggressive schedule.
Ankhe pointed out that other successful companies have both a live team and an expansion team which work on their respective contents. She didn’t mind CCP working on expansions but didn’t want them to release unfinished content. Ultima Online was an example given of a continuous expansion at the expense of bugfixing.
Issler thought that CCP knew unfinished expansions were bad, but there was a hard stop on this one due to the retail box. Issler was unsure of what to tell CCP other than ‘don’t suck’ which is useless. If CCP don’t want to concentrate on missing things, they should go back and remove all the misleading content.
Ankhe noted she listed things that needed an overhaul and when she said allocate development time that didn’t mean scrap expansions altogether.
Oz pointed out that Ankhe’s exact words in the issue were that CCP should “postpone further expansions until old content is fixed and/or completed” and that meant she was asking for no further expansions.
Ankhe noted that postpone didn’t mean that CCP shouldn’t do it at all.
Tusko suggested that it be rephrased as finding a more natural balance between bugfixing and expansions.
Ankhe agreed to the change.
A discussion about the development pipeline ensued.
Vote: 9-0 pass