#csm8

[warp-to-sun]

The Politics of Drone Assist

A stopped clock is right twice a day, and if something is broken, it will eventually be addressed. Especially if a single team can address it in less than two weeks of dev time.

The announcement of the drone assist nerf has been met with cheers by many (and a few resubs!) but it's also been a point of politics: Goon smug versus N3PL frustration. That frustration takes the form of the old meme, "Goons can't beat things, so they get them nerfed."

Thing is, that meme just plain is not true.

If a thing is a problem, it's going to get fixed. If people have been complaining about it, they can take credit for that, but it's not the case that complaints lead directly to game changes. They can raise issues, but you don't just have to complain, you have to be right.

What does right look like? Well, let's take a look at the drone assist change versus the (shelved) changes to Margin Trading.

In both cases, there's a clear statement of why something is bad. Drone assist is bad because it allows a pilot to get kills through no effort of their own, and Margin Trading scams are bad because they're undetectable until you attempt to sell something to the dodgy buy order. This statement is the point of complaints-- you want to make CCP aware that there is a problem.

With the problem identified, there are a few questions to be answered before it's clearly a fixable balance issue. The first is, "are there non-problematic use cases?" The answer to this is almost always "yes"; this is EVE, and many mechanics do in fact serve some purpose. For drones, this is incursions, small-scale assist to circumvent ewar, and assisting light/medium drones for support work. For Margin Trading, this is the original intent of the design. In either case, while "just remove it" is an option, it's an option that'll remove something worth having in the game, and therefore not one that can be taken likely.

Having discovered that there is a non-problematic use and that that use is worth preserving, one has to look and see if it's possible to fix the problem and leave the good parts behind. For drone assist, this was a "yes"-- the problem was in large-scale fleetwork, and the fix allows most smaller-scale use cases to persist. It hurts incursions some, and that's notable, and the forum thread is full of refinements to try to make that not happen as bad anymore.

For Margin Trading, the answer to this question was "no". After a lot of back and forth, CCP Rise couldn't find a design that would work better to inform newbies but not hurt legitimate market uses, and as a result, that redesign got shelved. Margin Trading is still a problem. Margin Trading scams still hurt newbies (traditionally the "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" of EVE Online, and often the intended beneficiaries of balance), and it still primarily benefits scammers (traditionally the "oh those psychopathic scumbags" of EVE Online, and often the ones negatively affected by loophole closures). 

It's really, really not political, and attempts to make it political make balancing harder to accomplish. CCP ignoring drone assist just because Goons were howling about it is exactly as dumb as fixing it because of all the noise. 

If, reading this post, you go "but what about x?!??!?" where x is some mechanic that is problematic and can be fixed with low effort without adversely affecting a legitimate use, congratulations! You've probably identified something in the balancing hopper. To be completely sure, make a constructive post about it on the forums. Drum up some support from other sides of the game-- something which is a problem for more than one group is more likely to be fixed. Contact your CSM representatives with a link to the forum thread you posted.

I bet you see it fixed. I bet you see it fixed in the same amount of time or faster as it would be fixed as if you went out and yelled a lot about it on the forums-- but feel free to do that too if you want! You could even find two such issues and A/B test them. Go hog wild. Just stop spouting logical fallacies on twitter.

[warp-to-sun]

Walk Softly, And Carry A Good Post

So hey, drone assist is getting nerfed. How bout that.

This has been one of those controversial subjects for quite some time. Back in 2011, Ripard Teg noted on his blog the rise of slowcat carriers. I myself groused about it when I was flying with Providence, as we had to try to find a way to deal with the inevitable drone-assisting carrier-blob. CSMs were mentioning it as early as June. Following battleship changes, with the Fountain war and the Halloween war after it, it’s taken center stage as nullsec fleet doctrines have converted over almost entirely to drone assist fleets.

While most of the playerbase has been howling about it, either for or against, the CSM has been talking. Various of us have mentioned it-- Ripard included it in an update a while back, and I made no secret that I was working against it.

But still, behind the NDA, we were talking, and talking quite passionately-- we’re not a body that lacks for strong opinions and beliefs. The goal, as always, has been to achieve a CSM consensus or near-consensus about the system, then use that to inform and shape our discussions with CCP.

After enough discussion, we had one, and we started posting internally about assist. We were able to get a discussion going, because we were willing to listen and to post things that were well-considered, even when they were also strong. Because the CSM was relatively diverse, we were able to represent the real breadth of areas where drone assist was a problem and a lot of the utility use-cases this fix preserves. The ability to have a real conversation outside of but informed by the political winds of the game is one of the better tools CSM has for getting things done. By the end of the summit, we were satisfied.

That’s what we do-- get stuff done, talk about stuff, figure stuff out, despite whatever political weather is going on outside. To do anything else would be irresponsible.

[warp-to-sun]

The ESS: Updates and more reflection

The ESS thread was updated by CCP SoniClover today.

The updated version looks a lot better. An LP bonus has been added, starting at 150 lp per 1mil bounties and going up to 200 at max reward. This means it's now unquestionably worth it for a ratter to deploy. Using an LP payout of 900 isk/lp (obtained using present values assuming you cash out in implants), you risk 15% of your bounty in exchange for 13% as LP, 5% as isk stored in the bounty pool (a total of +18% instantly, meaning it's now an increase to your income over present-day TQ without waiting or hoping on luck), and potentially +28% (10% as isk, 18% as LP). 

This means that, by deploying an ESS, you can now instantly increase your income in nullsec above present TQ values, provided you can extract the bounties from the pool. The LP bonuses now provide a welcome reason to deploy one ESS over another, as the canny ratter can respond to economic trends.

Extracting the bounties is now reasonably balanced: it takes 20 seconds to share out bounties, or 180 seconds to steal them. It points you when accessing it. There's no more weird can thing. This means that if you're ratting, you need good intel to clean up before the roaming gang gets into system. If the roaming gang goes to empty it, you have enough time to reship and blob them out instead of cowboying one by one into the ESS area.

If you rat with friends or a sufficient intel network, then, the ESS is good for you. If you have an insufficient intel network, you'll probably be better eating the 5% nerf.

There's been some concern about whether this is good for roaming gangs. I think it is-- the roaming gangs get an opportunity to steal from ratters who now have a reason to use the device, ratters now have an easy conflict point to defend. It's a better implementation of the farms and fields idea than it was initially. For all those saying it'll either be docking up or getting blobbed-- maybe, but some of my best fights in a small gang have started with someone going "aw fuck those stupid fucks in cruisers, let's undock and blob their asses out" and then they find out that those stupid fucks in cruisers are better PvPers than them, and get dunked. Or don't, and I learn something about kiting or keeping range or disengaging in time.

Those saying that roamers won't deploy the ESS onto their targets are right-- it's not that much HP to kill, although if a system has bounty in it, deploying an ESS will let you get that out (is there a way to tell?). But the ESS as now posted is worth deploying as a ratter, meaning the roamers can access it or fight about it or something. It's a way to increase your reward for doing things out in space.

There were some concerns about bluefucking with this: after all, if you're the only person in system, you don't have to hit "share all"-- no-one will know. I think these are mostly ameliorated by the announce-in-local, the LP bonus, and existing structures for dealing with corp thieves. If John Awoxer warps in and then the bounties are emptied, report them to your leadership the same as you would any other such incident. If you don't trust your fellow corpmates, warp to the structure and Share All before you dock up for the night. With the 13% LP bonus, even if this means you never upgrade the structure, you'll still earn more money than present-day TQ ratting.

Lastly, a note on CSM process with this. There was some anger about "where was the CSM on the ESS?!?" We did see it before it was posted to the public, and provided some feedback then, but I missed some of the points brought up later in the thread. Upon seeing them, I was able to pull them together in a megapost internally to CCP, which is a valuable kind of feedback-relaying. My previous post here covers the topics I discussed in that internal post. This provided a basis for a discussion, and the results of that discussion were a part of the updated version posted today.

That in my mind is the clearest synergy between CSM and community feedback: the CSM is able to catch (some) things pre-public post due to the NDA. After a public post, the community inevitably brings up something we missed or forgot or didn't see from our perspectives, at which point we can pull that out and relay it, boosting its signal from often-noisy threads. 

[warp-to-sun]

CSM at Work: The ESS.

Once again, I'm doing the thing where I (as a CSM and with the help of some other CSMs) try to take everyone else's posts and repost them in one all-together easy to read format in order to help CCP understand what issues people are actually getting at underneath the mad.

This time, it's for the ESS. Full disclosure here: I actually like the thing, in concept and somewhat in design. Risk your money for more payout later? That sounds good. An objective that you actually have to skirmish over? That sounds really good. A way to disrupt ratter income when they pos up for the 13855892398298234th goddamn time? Hells. Yes.

That said, the concerns on the devblog feedback thread are also pretty legit.

Here are the big ones I can see:

Because PvE ships are optimized for PvE, not PvP, the ESS will be incredibly hard to defend if attacked. PvE ships will fare poorly against gankers and thieves.

The bubble deploys instantly.

Ratters can just Share All whenever anyone gets near, so there'll never be anything to steal.

If ratters don't do this, they can scoop the ESS to cargohold and deploy it when the hostiles have moved on.

Perhaps the biggest: the risk/reward balance is off. The ESS asks you to give up an additional 15% ratting income, for a guaranteed 5% more. People aren't thinking about the extra 5% you can earn, because that's subject to extra risk, and 5% doesn't sound like a lot. You're risking 15.8% to gain a maximum of 10.5% extra. That's kind of crap odds-- it feels like you should be earning at least as much as you've wagered (the empires: the only honest isk doubler!)

The ESS can be used as an early warning system for acceleration gates. Because it can be scooped and placed wherever, a careful nullsec PvEer can place one on the warpin to their complex, and the ESS will dutifully notify everyone in local when a ganker shows up.

The ESS is nullsec-only, and does not affect highsec or lowsec.

And, of course, general bugs.

Am I missing anything? I'll say here, I'm pretty unsympathetic to the idea that nullsec ratting income should be untouchable, or at least "untouchable until ______". Nullsec right now is such a twisted mess that you can say that about any change, and the only thing worse than whatever change it is would be no change at all.

[warp-to-sun]

CSM8 Townhall Pre-Solicited Questions

Here they are, we'll be picking from and answering these on-air. Afterwards, I'll go through and try to answer the ones we don't get to. Most of those are going to end up being just :NDA:.

Update: Things we answered are in bold, and the podcast version is downloadable on eve-radio. For things we answered, listen your damn self. For things we didn't, I put small answers in the post.

Ransu Asanari: It costs more SP to train missiles to an equal weapon size compared to gunnery, but because it could be done without training the previous size fully, it allowed missile users to specialize faster. Now that this difference is being removed in Rubicon, can the CSM bring up a proposal on unifying Missile and Gunnery SP training times to address this imbalance?"

I didn't get to this one, although it's a little "can you make ccp". That said, you did ask *us*. This is something I'll look into and talk to Rise about. Frankly, I think missiles need a whole rebalance once we see how RHMLs and new RLMLs work out, and a skill change would fit there.

Frying Doom: Is Rubicon the patch with the least features we have ever gotten in EvE? Personally I cannot remember one with so little in it.

Answered.

None of the Above: how can we get those minutes faster?

Answered.

Freelancer117: 1) With so many leadership positions still open at http://www.ccpgames.com/en/jobs is CCP missing the right stuff to prevent future controversies like Somerset ?

This is very, very none of the CSMs business. HR is HR, yo.

Freelancer117: 2) With new spaceship games coming out soon, like X-Rebirth, Limit Theory, Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen, will CCPgames do a PvE re-balance (including missions) to compete better against these new games? And will we see more and new storyline missions, the current 5 storyline missions are very good to play.

I signed an NDA.

Freelancer117: 3) With Eve Vegas 2013 I got the impression Dust514 will be released on other platforms soon, this true ?

The above question was "expectations management" NDA'd, meaning it's less a big deal if I slip, it just might lead to threadnaughts. This one is actually "the answer to this has business implications for CCP" NDA'd, so I'm really not going to tell you.

Freelancer117: 4) With Plex prices rising so high, is this a sign of a market bubble about to burst or out of control inflation, what does Dr Enyo think ?

We talked about this in the EVE Economy session. See if it makes it out of minutes hell.

Freelancer117: 5) ETA on CREST plz.

Dude, I signed an NDA.

Freelancer117: 6) what is CCP doing to combat TiDi and will we see anything worthwhile before the end of the year?

Answered

Ishtanchuk Fazmarai: Concerning PvE and specifically missions: what are the guidelines CCP is working on? Do they plan to add new original content, or just will overwrite the old one? That is, should we expect more content like "ghost sites" or more changes like "anti-drone AI"?

Thead Enco: Where are the minutes?

Answered

Istanchuk Fazmarai: Regarding population and demographics, and specifically how many unique users haves each security space:

a), has CCP Seagull implemented the human-counting methods they were talking with CSM 7? b), if those methods already exist, do they have useful data? c), if the data exist and are useful, will they be shared publicly? d), is the Hallelujah Plan a fruit of guiding game development according to those data?

Ok, I used my \rainbow{NDA} gif too early. Seriously.

Deka Ekato: What is the CSM position on the Somer issue, and why have you been so quiet on it? Are you going to do anything about it?

Answered

Ishtanchuk Fazmarai: I just came up with a question: what does the CSM think of CCP's habit of iterating features without asking the people actually/currently using them, so they end up serving somebody else's interests? Case in point: hisec PI vs POCOs

Highsec PI will continue to function exactly the same once highsec POCOs come out. The target of highsec POCOs was corps, not individual PI users, whose PI making will be largely unchanged. If people are fighting over your POCO, just find a different one.

Endovior: I'd ask a more answerable question like: "Overall, how optimistic (or pessimistic) are you about the continuing development of EVE?"

Answered.

Kinis Deren: Do CSM members (and CCP for that matter) consider the rise of PvE rental empires in sov null be beneficial to the level of PVP in sov null and do they see Rubicon having a measurable impact upon the level of PVP in null sec?

Answered.

Torijace: Has their been any talks between CSM and CCP about the economy of eve and the balance of isk sinks vers faucets

Answered [hint the answer was "read the minutes when out"]

Torijace: With the new changes like the high sec POCOs has their been any talk of player owned stations in high sec or low sec replacing some or all of high current stations.

Still NDA'd.

Torijace: On the thought of stations and eve as a brutal universe has CSM or CCP ever considered destructible player outposts

Answered, and I really oughta post about it too.

Torijace: What is CSMs thought on allowing alliances to tax similar and in addition to corporations?

I think the CSM is pretty unanimously in favor of it.

Torijace: Whats the most expensive thing a CSM member has sacrificed to BOB (for those wormholing CSMs)

Answered, although I wasn't going to take joke questions

Kirren D'marr: How will the CSM address or follow up on player complaints about the gate-jump animation? CCP said it was a problem, but some of them also said to HTFU, and our last communication after a good feedback thread was on June 26th, five months ago. Please help.

I will talk to the CCPers whose area this is, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

[warp-to-sun]

How It's Made: The CSM And The SMA Fix

The recently-announced SMA fix was heavily driven by the CSM, so I wrote a thing about how, precisely, the CSM gets things done. This is what people have been asking for: the no-NDA, no-bullshit look at what we do all day. I can finally post this, because it ended up in public. Of course, there are other things we do which don't-- rest assured the process is quite similar.

Future CSM candidates, take note: this may be of interest to you.

[warp-to-sun]

Summer Summit Schedule

CSM 8 August Summit

Wednesday

9:00 - Introductions and Development Theory

10:00 - Review of Stakeholder Process

11:00 - Security Session

LUNCH

12:30 - Review

1:00 - Eve Economy

2:00 - PLEX Market

3:00 - Future Plans

4:00 - State of Balance

5:00 - Art

Thursday:

9:00 - Team 5-0

10:00 - Project 1

11:00 - Project 2

LUNCH

12:30 - Review

1:00 - Team Superfriends

2:00 - Team Game of Drones

3:00 -Team Kuromako

4:00 - Team True Grit

5:00 - DUST 514 Link

Friday

9:00 - Sales and Marketing

10:00 - Reasonable Things Review

11:00 - PvE

LUNCH

12:30 - Review

1:00 - Project 3

2:00 - UI

3:00 - Language Support and the CSM

4:00 - FLEX

5:00 - FLEX

Ha*ha* watch me post faster than Dolan (and then get fucked by tumblr formatting).

There it is, there's what I'll be talking about. The stuff I am most looking forward to is probably the intro, stakeholder review, security session, future plans, some of the "project N" stuff (yes, the CSM already knows what it is, no, you can't), and (oddly enough) the sales and marketing session. Everything else I'm sure will also be interesting, especially in person, but those are my favorites.

(wait upon reformatting I found the UI and PvE sessions, which should be cool too.)

[warp-to-sun]

You asked.

Here's the balls the CSM has or has had in the past, and how that's gone, in incredibly brief bullet-point format. If you read it, you may get a sneaking suspicion you've read it or heard it before-- that's because you have. This information has been in the deluge of posts and podcasts and other stuff that the CSM has been putting out, but here it is in shorter form.

* We got input on the scanning overlay. The CSM had several points of feedback and Fozzie acknowledged us as having influenced the iterations that went on after it hit sisi.

* We gave feedback on the probing system, with several of the CSM being as frustrated as the playerbase. We had some valuable discussions and acted as a feedback conduit.

* We gave feedback on ship rebalancing, and that feedback was listened to.

* We gave feedback on a host of littler things which were included in Odyssey.

* We looked at other Odyssey features, like Tags4Sec and mineral rebalancing, and basically just gave CCP a giant thumbs-up.

* We gave feedback on the industrial changes, echoing what a lot of players said. Again, Rise acknowledged this in his posts on the subject.

* We gave feedback on the hacking minigame, and I feel that that feedback influenced the iterations present before it was released as part of Odyssey.

* We were asked our opinion on the NOS change and expressed our overwhelming enthusiasm.

* We've been asked our opinion on a number of dev-generated ideas which are covered under NDA. We’re sometimes an idea sounding-board for devs. I have no idea if any of those ideas will ever make it in the game, but they do make for interesting conversation.

* We've bugged the everloving daylights out of CCP with regards to the SMA issue.

* We've worked on a larger and more awesome project that I wish I could tell you all about.

* We've asked questions about several other areas of concern. If you want to know what those areas of concern are, try looking up our campaign info. I haven't seen anyone neglect the platform they ran on once elected; unlike real life, the CSM elections are remarkably honest.

Throughout all of this CCP has been helpful and professional. I'm still waiting for the day when someone tells me to STFU and stop asking questions, but remarkably, it hasn't happened yet, no matter how many "but how does this work" or "what's going on here" things I've said. CSM 8 has been remarkably privileged to inherit a good working relationship from CSM 7, and we have maintained that and worked on strengthening it while also working for the players. As a last note, each of those vague, NDA-y points is actually several different threads or projects, but I'm trying to be careful here.