CCP have released the Summit Minutes of CSM 14. Weighing in at around 70 pages, it details most of the 20+ Sessions that pertained between 2-5 September in Iceland. This opinionated bullet-pointed summary details some of the key points of the minutes, even though you might want to consider reading it in its entirety, or listening to the reading on TIS.
Eve Online: Vision And Future
- Monthly Average Users is higher than Daily Average Users. The criterion is for 10 minutes of activity to register. CCP claims that this points to issues in new player retention. INN adds that this might be due to skill-plans and extraction skill farms.
- One of the main concerns is for returning players to be able to find the launcher.
- The four main points for CCP in their vision are “Stop the bleeding”, “Fix the stupid”, “Excite and teach”, “Incentivice return”.
- CCP considers corporations and social groups to exist mostly out of the game, as a response to a concern brought that corporations are not mentioned in the New Player Experience.
- No other clear vision is articulated.
- CCP Mannbjörn is present in this meeting.
Blackout
- Drifter attacks were launched badly, CCP admits. In general, CCP believe more NPC attacks should happen.
- Data about the blackout is just being received, but either way is too muddy to comment on because there were many simultaneous events happening.
- There is no data on what CCP consider a healthy amount of people in null-sec, but there is no data on this, CCP has just started collecting data.
Ship Balance and Chaos Era
- CCP have been surprised by the Chaos Era, but “the design department is getting on top of this as soon as possible”.
- The Chaos Era has had KPIs, but the number of changes implemented makes it unclear whether those KPIs have been achieved.
- Timezone tanking is considered a content killer.
- The CSM consider offensive structure spam to be more problematic than defensive structure spam.
- The CSM and CCP discuss removing logistics ships in parts of nullsec, but not really.
Wormholes
- Wormholers’ CSM considers nullsec PVE to be among the safest activities in the game.
- Wormhole PvE is estimated to bring in between 1.2 bn ISK/hr and 2 bn ISK/hr.
- Most fights currently happening in wormhole space are consensual.
API Session
- ESI goals are: Balance towards being a content catalyst, accessibility for non-programmers, reducing management overhead.
- ESI issues to be avoided are: Never lie, avoid undermining core game-play.
Eve Economy
- No meaningful discussion about the economy occurs.
- As an aside, CCP revealed that they classify players as high-sec, null-sec, or wormhole players based on where they spend most of their activity, by which we learned that Aryth, Merkelchen and Innominate are mainly highsec players, while alleged nullsec FC Vily is, in fact, a wormholer, btw. Olmeca Gold is a main nullsec player.
Triglavian Invasion and Live Events
- Various points were addressed, none of which were of significant note.
Player Experience Improvements For Newbies
- CCP are considering work on improving the overview.
- YouTube videos are worked on.
- Players who join a corp and have a support network around them are more likely to remain in the game.
Ship Index
- Ship Indexes are meant to be an easy way for new players to identify ship strengths and weaknesses.
- An index should feature statistics similar to the control bars in the EVE Alliance Tournament.
- The index is meant to be data to balance ships internally, but should be exposed to players.
- CSM Aryth considers why they do not pull kill reports to determine what ships are used for. CCP hope to start using this data-driven approach.
Play-style Diversity in Eve
- A valid play-style is considered to be such if it: Has a play, has a counter-play, does not make players leave the game, is relatively rewarding.
- CSM argue that there is no public visions, which makes it difficult to make plans. CCP do not respond.
- CSM Innominate argues that the way blackout has fixed the Monthly Economic Report is “like going to chemotherapy to deal with a sinus infection”.
- The CSM argue repeatedly that the bigger issue in EVE is that there is no hope, no road map, and no sign of a plan.
CCP Hellmar AMA
- Confusing graphs that make no sense and want to move new players from anxiety to apathy, and veteran players from bored apathy towards bored anxiety.
- CCP Hellmar dodges a question about his opinion on the blackout, in spite of earlier enthusiastic support for the blackout.
- CCP Hellmar claims that the vision is an idea of “procedureal generated resources” that would “cause conflict and shakeup in the game”.
- CCP Hellmar dives into a metaphor of rain dancing, in which he gets basic anthropology wrong.
(It really is that bad)
Team Security
- Team security does not understand whether smart-bombing battleships, supercarriers and titans are bottable, despite killing alleged botting supers and titans during the GM Week “whack-a-bot” event.
- CCP wish to push 2FA to as many people as possible.
- Team Security asks about how ESI can be abused by botters.
Player Experience
- CCP Falcon and CCP Ender are concerned that the CSM reports that CCP members are worried to play the game for breaking CCP rules.
- CSM Aryth suggests that players should have the option to disable skill extraction on their characters.
Community Support
- CCP are not sure whether they will ever bring back the Alliance Tournament, as it is a passion project, but individual members of CCP would really like to see it return.
Art of Eve Online
- CCP shows some art, lost in the text-based nature of those minutes.
VFX Feedback
- The CSM asks CCP to create low-shader quality versions of Titan and CovOps bridges, as they cannot be seen on “potato mode”.
Audio Feedback
- Allegedly people play EVE with sound.
Shareable Bookmarks
- CCP solicits feedback on the new bookmark system, where bookmarks are a shared resource with an ACL system.
Marketing Team
- Some discussion about Marketing endeavors.
- Login campaigns are under discussion with regard to frequency (either more, or less frequent).
Character Creator
- The plan is for all new players to start in the same system.
- Empire selection is considered an area to be simplified.
Eve Portal
- CSM wish for PI, Industry and Market to be included into the EVE Portal App.
- One of the few positive sessions
Overall, the minutes seem fairly bleak and point towards an uncertain future for EVE Online. The feedback from CSM so far seems to be unusually subdued, even by ardent proponents outside of blocs. There will be more detailed opinion pieces coming over the next few days, addressing some further specifics.