CSM X – Summit One 2015 / 09 / 17 Session : Ship Balancing CSM ATTENDEES: * Sion Kumitomo * Sugar Kyle * Sort Dragon * Endie * Corbexx * Steve Ronuken * Mike Azariah * Jayne Fillion * Cagali Cagali * Gorski Car REMOTE ATTENDEES: * Manfred Sideous * Thoric Frosthammer * Chance Ravinne CCP ATTENDEES: * CCP Leeloo * CCP Falcon * CCP Larrikin * CCP Terminus * CCP Fozzie * CCP Rise Mike Azariah noted that the proposed Battlecruiser changes had been well received by players so far, but that he was concerned that Strategic Cruisers were more popular than Command Ships for links. CCP Fozzie commented that this was primarily a problem with links. Jayne Fillion raised the issue of FCs being headshotted, and asked for CCP’s opinion. CCP answered that this was an issue they were interested in tackling. Some discussion followed, with ideas such as dedicated high hp ships and special ships for FCing while cloaked were brought up. CCP expressed that such concepts would have to be implemented very carefully to avoid creating a new more powerful form of scout, tackle or cyno ship. Gorski Car asked if CCP had thought about changing lock speed and scan resolution on Battleships. CCP Rise discussed that they had been looking at it, most recently considering changes for the Aegis release (which had included the Tempest dps buff). These kinds of changes are still on the table. Sort Dragon asked what ship balance changes were planned between the Battlecruisers in Vanguard and the capitals in the expansion. CCP responded that a sizable amount of balance work was planned for the December release. The details of these changes will be revealed over the course of the next few months. Corbexx raised discussion of interdiction nullifying bonuses, expressing his opinion that carte blanche immunity to anything is something he opposes. CCP responded that they are not planning on removing nullification from the game completely, and that the ability to warp or not warp is inherently binary and doesn’t lend itself to “x% reduction in bubble effectiveness”. Sion Kumitomo and Corbexx expressed displeasure with the ability of artillery claws to avoid bubbles. Sugar Kyle expressed that she liked nullification because she hates bubbles and that bubbles themselves should be looked at by CCP. The room discussed making anchored bubbled single use deployables with built-in decay. This is something that CCP has looked at in the past and CCP expressed interest in investigating this further. Sort asked what the vision behind nullified interceptors was from CCP. CCP responded that Interceptors are intended to specialize in getting from point A to point B, whether that be for scouting, tackling or light combat ability. Sion then switched the topic to remote reps, asking if reps could be toned down to encourage more bloody brutal fights. CCP asked for the CSM’s opinion on whether such a change would promote more bloody fights or make people more averse to engaging in fear of losing their whole fleets. Sion expressed his opinion that if both sides were able to get kills more easily, people would gain more motivation from fights. Gorski Car asked what CCP thought of adding charges and reload to remote reps (like ancillary boosters). CCP said they had considered it, but that it required some more thought. Sion expressed that such a change might just skew the balance of fleet fights further towards fleets with giant numbers of logistics ships, as those fleets could afford to let groups of their ships alternate between repairing and reloading. Jayne Fillion suggested changes to the cycle times of large (and potentially medium) remote reps. The discussion then moved back to warfare links. CCP expressed that they believed there were a lot of problems with links, and that those problems need to be addressed. The two leading options CCP is considering are to make links a timed AOE buff with a specific range (like a smartbomb that gives 30 seconds of buff to fleetmates rather than damage) or change links into direct 1 to 1 buff beams such as those suggested by community member Suitonia (https://suitonia.wordpress.com/). Cagali Cagali discussed how links help provide his fleets a psychological boost that helps them feel like they can compete with older players. CCP Fozzie mentioned that this feeling was one of CCP’s original explanation for links back when they were first introduced. They were described at the time as a way for older players to “give back” to the newbies, using their skillpoints to make their friends more powerful. Ideally whatever form links take after the rebalance, some of this feeling can be preserved. Jayne then brought up the ability to overheat while cloaked. CCP responded that they have no design issues with that suggestion, but that they weren’t sure how hard it would be technically off the top of their heads. CSM X – Summit One 2015 / 09 / 17 Session : Factional Warfare & PvE CSM ATTENDEES: * Sion Kumitomo * Sugar Kyle * Sort Dragon * Endie * Corbexx * Steve Ronuken * Mike Azariah * Jayne Fillion * Cagali Cagali * Gorski Car REMOTE ATTENDEES: * Manfred Sideous * Thoric Frosthammer * Chance Ravinne CCP ATTENDEES: * CCP Leeloo * CCP Falcon * CCP Affinity * CCP Paradox * CCP TomB * CCP Scarpia * CCP RedDawn * CCP Frellicus Affinity - Introductions all around. Affinity - Okay so firstly, we're aware that FW and PVE are two different things, but in the same respect we're working on adding content to FW, so we decided to have one session that we can talk about everything in. Affinity - Firstly, we're looking to add daily incentives to EVE called a Tribute System. We've thought about a few things and initially we were looking at adding it as a mission reward. However, this would leave out the wormhole players and other groups, so we wanted a solution that captured all areas of space and one where people could be rewarded for doing the content they already do, in the place they already live. The solution we've come to at the minute is to reward on dungeon completion; which is triggered in all PvE except COSMOS and landmarks. This is of course all up in the air right now. we're still working on it. Mike - Does hacking a site come into this too? Affinity - Yep, it does! Jayne - So like what you guys are doing with DUST? Affinity - Yep! We want to get people out into space, but make these incentives so that people don't have to leave where they're living to do them, just get involved with their local content to qualify for them. We're also looking to tier it from one through five, and group all content depending on the difficulty and rewards you get into one of those tiers for the daily payout. These rewards will be cumulative so if you do a level one piece of content, you'll get the reward, then later in the day a level 4, you'll get the rest of the reward up to level 4 for completing that one too. Jayne - What kind of rewards are we talking about? Affinity - ISK rewards. Jayne - Do you know how much ISK this will be injecting into the economy? Affinity - This is still early in design phases so we'll talk to our data team when we want to work this out. Mike - What about LP instead so that you don't affect the market? Affinity - We don't want to crash the LP market though. I don't think some of the FW players would be happy with this. We've thought about a lot of different things such as aurum, LP, ISK, and we're investigating them all. Sugar - The LP market is pretty volatile and will be even more so with upcoming changes. Mission running and FW LP conflict with each other, and we have a lot of people who just want the LP store revamped in general. Affinity - I think it's bad for new players too because if we give them all this LP, then they need ISK, which they don't have, to spend it. It complicates things for them. Scarpia - ISK has the most benefits because it's the thing that people want the most and the thing that's used most widely, especially new players. Mike - What about varying things a little, people like randomization, maybe now and again you could get a little more as a random. Affinity - We're also looking at integrating this with the opportunities system, so that we can give out rewards that way too. Jayne - New players might not know how to cash out LP, the entire time I was a mission runner, I had no idea that LP was a thing, I only found out later. Maybe if you give a little ISK and LP, that allows new players to be introduced to the LP market and allows them to get used to using it. Affinity - The reason I'd like to start with ISK is so that we can see how popular it is, if people use it, then we can branch out and try other things. We need to make sure that it's something people will use first. Sion - ISK is a great way to start, it keeps things simple. Affinity - The other thing we have on our backlog is the Drifter Incursions, we're still working on them since we took them offline, and we hope to have them up and running again soon. Affinity - As well as that we have some factional warfare stuff that we want to work on too. CCP RedDawn is working on balancing the factional warfare missions as I know Sugar brought this up last year, and they're pretty broken. Right now CCP RedDawn calls them "Winmatar" missions, so we need to look at them. Sugar - Pretty much! Steve - We saw some stats in the Data session, and yes, then FW LP numbers have huge gaps. Affinity - We'd also like to split factional warfare into a 4 way war in order to increase the scope of PvP and PvE content for FW players. We think that a four way war will give more PvP opportunities and reduce the grey areas for new players who might be attacked by "allied" milita in terms of allied awoxing. Mike - Will there be a storyline lead up to this? Affinity - Yep, we're working on that. We're also looking to introduce NPC patrols into factional warfare. So right now there's PVP opportunities, then there's the missions and plexes, but we want to have NPCs patrolling not just in FW space but in all space. So if you interact with them, you'll be able to get an ISK reward, but you'll also be told "you could have also earned this if you were in the militia, come fight for us." Affinity - We also want the convoys to fight against eachother, so if they come across eachother they'll engage. Jayne - Can NPCs currently jump gates, or not? Affinity - No, not at present, but we're working on it. Paradox - We're actually working on making them remember things too, so that they'll re-engage or follow, that kind of thing. Sugar - Using FW for this as a test best is a good idea, then you can expand it further so that NPCs interact more and chase people and stuff. CCP RedDawn - The drifters do that to a certain degree, we're working on it. Affinity - We've also been exploring allowing individuals to enlist in FW without their corp being in it. Basically by allowing corporations to "affiliate" themselves with a faction/militia, then all members of that corp would be free to join factional if they wanted to do so, or stay neutral. Gorski - What if they were in an alliance? Affinity - The alliance would then pick the affiliation and all the corps would be part of it. Steve - What about standings? Affinity - We're looking at maybe letting people move militias without a standing penalty, but there would be some restriction so as not to allow people to militia hop. Sugar - That's good because right now there's an issue where if a single player gets out of line and shoots the wrong person either accidentally or on purpose, the whole corporation gets kicked from the militia, this is good for a lot of people. Affinity - Yeah, we talked about this at fanfest, and I'd really just like to decouple standings from being in FW completely. Sort - That's good because there's a lot of people in nullsec who'd like to do FW with their alts, but can't because they don't have the standings, and they're missing out. Affinity - I was just thinking about during alliance downtime, people being able to go have fun shooting each other and the npc patrols. Sugar - That solves one half of the standings problem, but there's also the standings gain. Affinity - A lot of the feedback we got from players is that they'd like an overhaul of the full system, but we don't feel that is beneficial at present when a lot of feedback we're hearing is "we don't have enough to do in FW", "there's not enough PvP targets", "there's no reliable PvE" so we want to fix that side of things first, then perhaps the system issues go away, we'll see. Gorski - Is there any incentives in the works for the losing side of FW to keep fighting because right now there's nothing. Affinity - It's not on our roadmap right now, but I do agree with you. Gorski - What about 4 way war, there'll be a lot of dead areas between factional warfare areas, is this something that will be looked at? Affinity - We may need to look at the zones, yes. There's a lot of technical stuff to look at first though, before we get to that. This is still in the early stages. Sugar - With the 4 way war coming in, are you still looking at suspects going into plexes. Affinity - With the suspect flagging, to me it's more important to lower the entry bar for new players to FW, so it'd be nice to keep them a little protected until they find their feet. Gorski - How long is the suspect timer going to be? Affinity - We don't know yet, we'll see. Probably shorter than the crimewatch one. It's just to put people on equal footing when they enter the plex, we're not worried about when they come back out. Gorski - Are you going to restrict T3 destroyers from small plexes? CCP RedDawn - Yes, we've just started working on that change today. We're also going to introduce some fast webbing frigates into the missions to reduce the stealth bomber issues, and tweak a few things. Sugar - The other problem is Novice complexes, which are supposed to be the easiest ones. They're now the "Garmur" complexes and people don't stand a chance against them. Sugar - Faction police are also kinda laughable, and you can basically farm players and ignore them. With the four way war this will be even more prevalent, Can they be buffed so they're an actual threat? Affinity - We're going to see how the patrols go first, before we consider making any changes. Cagali - Have you guys considered tackling the problem of AFK frigates in plexes and warpcore stabbed ships orbiting beacons, etc? Affinity - The changes with patrols will hopefully help with this. Cagali - One idea that's gathering traction is that combat ships shouldn't be allowed to fit warpcore stabs, certainly one theory that could work and people are pretty bitter about it. Falcon - You guys should have been around when there were no drawbacks at all for fitting warpcore stabs. CSM X – Summit One 2015 / 09 / 17 Session : EVE Producers CSM ATTENDEES: * Sion Kumitomo * Sugar Kyle * Sort Dragon * Endie * Corbexx * Steve Ronuken * Mike Azariah * Jayne Fillion * Cagali Cagali * Gorski Car REMOTE ATTENDEES: * Manfred Sideous * Thoric Frosthammer * Chance Ravinne CCP ATTENDEES: * CCP Leeloo * CCP Falcon * CCP Chimichanga * CCP MrHappy * CCP BasementBen * CCP Dren * CCP Mimic * CCP Explorer GIVEN THAT THIS SESSION DISCUSSED COMPANY STRUCTURE, LINES OF REPORTING AND OTHER POTENTIALLY SENSITIVE SUBJECTS, THIS SESSION WON’T BE MADE PUBLIC. HOWEVER, A LIST OF POINTS COVERED IS BELOW. * Introduction to the people managers and producers at CCP. * Introduction to the old structure of the company. * Information on how the structure has changed, and what support is provided to teams. * Communication lines between the CSM and producers on the EVE team. * Community interfacing with development and how feedback is delivered and processed CSM X – Summit One 2015 / 09 / 17 Session : Team Security CSM ATTENDEES: * Sion Kumitomo * Sugar Kyle * Sort Dragon * Endie * Corbexx * Steve Ronuken * Mike Azariah * Jayne Fillion * Cagali Cagali * Gorski Car REMOTE ATTENDEES: * Manfred Sideous * Thoric Frosthammer * Chance Ravinne CCP ATTENDEES: * CCP Leeloo * CCP Falcon * CCP Arkanon * CCP Bugartist * CCP Peligro * CCP Grimmi CCP Bugartist - Introductions all around! CCP Random - We have a few metrics for you, just some information for reference. We're just up for questions from you guys! Calgali - Has there been a change in your abilities to detect bad stuff that's happening? Peligro - We only get better as we go along. We've actually gotten really efficient at catching botters for instance, and they've more moved on to fraud for example. Corbexx - When you say fraud what do you mean? Peligro - All kinds. Credit card fraud, whether that be from us or third parties, that kind of thing. Gorski - Are you guys having trouble with people sending ISK to third party sites like EVE Bet or EVE Poker or whatever in order to RMT? Grimmi - There's always something going on, we constantly get reports and we're always checking on these guys. Sugar - Sort has commented a few times on the amount of ISK that gets moved around by major alliances and whether there's a way to get flagged or something so you don't get auto banned for moving huge amounts of money? Sort - This was also brought up by someone else. As an alliance leader we play with a lot of ISK, and we're playing with fire. Is there anything we can do to avoid being temp banned for investigation or whatever else might happen when we're moving huge amounts of ISK? Peligro - If the money is clean then you should have no issue. If you're knowingly or unknowlingly receiving dirty money, then we'll be in touch. If people are moving dirty money in game then it doesn't look like a legitimate alliance leader moving money, so hopefully if the ISK is all clean then you shouldn't have a problem. Grimmi - You're not going to get banned for moving ISK unless it's dirty ISK, so you should be fine. Sugar - Quite often people have concerns around gambling or whatever. What's the best way to contact you? What do you guys prefer? Peligro - I love the new ticket system, all the tickets that are supposed to go to us get here just fine. If you send stuff to the security email address then we'll absolutely look at it but it might not be as fast. The ticket system is the best way to reach us. Endie - Given that RMT best practice is that the information around it never touches the game, do you worry that the only guys you catch are the small fry guys and that the real corrosive elements of the game slip through the net. Peligro - Sure, I don't think that we'll completely clean it up, but we can keep it under control and keep it to a minimum. Arkanon - I mean, we knew about one guy for years, we keep watching, and all it took was for him to slip up, just once, and we got him. Peligro - There's people involved, and people always make mistakes. There are also some people who don't know that they've broken the rules, and if they contact us and say "hey, I bought some ISK, I'm sorry, I didn't know it was against the rules" then I'd like it to be known that if they do that, they probably won't get permabanned. They might instead get a thanks and not get their wallet set to -20 billion ISK. Sion - Is that a public policy somewhere that can be seen? Peligro - That's not a public policy, but we can make it public for sure. Falcon - We can do that, and make sure that it's messaged the right way so that people are confident to talk to team security. Corbexx - The thing is, as soon as you do that, every RMTer who's selling ISK will be worried that every sale is going to an informant that's going to reveal who they are to you. Peligro - Turning their customers against them. Endie - And increasing their costs to do business. Peligro - Well, they don't want to sell small amounts of ISK any more because they think they might be getting stung, or someone might be looking to snitch. Mike - The only worry there is that some people who just want to but ISK once might use it as a get out of jail free card where they feel they can just buy ISK then come to you and say "I'm sorry, i didn't know I'd broken the rules" Corbexx - Well, they still get the ISK removed. Sion - And it's not really a negative because they can backtrack where the ISK has come from regardless. Sort - With PLEX becoming worth more and more are you finding that the amount of dirty ISK moving through the economy is less and less? Peligro - It's a bit of a double edged sword. Less bots, more fraud. Corbexx - Have you seen a noticeable drop in bot activity. Peligro - Yeah, but it has a lot of factors including the new sov system. I'm not sure what effect all the game changes have had on the renter market, but it's a lot more expensive to bot now. Cagali - Do you guys actively look for information from RMTers that you've caught to get more information on how they're working. Peligro - Yeah, we do. We have to be careful thought because these groups try to take out their competition, buying ISK from eachother and reporting eachother, trying to get eachother banned, that kind of stuff. Grimmi - We also get them gloating about how smart they are and how much money they made before they got caught. Sion - Last time we were here you guys were right in the middle of a lot of DDoS stuff, is that still ongoing? Random - DDoS attacks always ongoing because and normal in the industry these days. We mitigate attacks, as best as we can in cooperation with our partners. Sort - Where do you guys stand if you have evidence of players DDoSing other player's services like teamspeak and stuff? Peligro - It's not possible for us to take action on this. It's out of game. Sort - What if they boast about it in game. Random - If we don't host it, we can't get involved. If the authorities ask us for information we'll cooperate, but it's up to players to make sure their own services are protected. Jayne - Changing gear a little, what kind of restrictions are in place for developers and ISD to be able to play the game? Arkanon - Everyone can play the game, there's very few restrictions on what devs can do as their player characters. Jayne - I'm more talking about them playing as a Dev or ISD, like with blue text. Arkanon - Well, Devs accounts have roles to access stuff that players don't on tranquility, so it's not just colored text. Colored text also paints a target on your back. Peligro - You don't want people playing with roles like that on Tranquility. Falcon - You also don't want to come up against someone playing EVE with 520 million skillpoints, that's a bit OP. Jayne - What about just going into different systems, talking with people in local. I've heard that IA has to be informed for all of this? Arkanon - Yep, we don't want to restrict people from speaking with players but at the same time we have to keep an eye on what's going on. Corbexx - What about people playing as their player characters? What kind of restrictions are there? Arkanon - Well, we ask that people keep their identities as secret as possible. People are of course allowed to play with their friends, and people they trust, but every developer player character on tranquility is very closely monitored and audited. If your identity does become public however, then we like people to contact us so that we can fix the situation, because historically it's just turned int oa problem for both the dev and the people they're playing with. Corbexx - What's the policy on gambling. Arkanon - No gambling. We don't do it. Soin - What kind of checks and policies do you have to ensure that all employees follow the rules? Arkanon - We have a daily report that logs all developer and developer player activity on all our servers, I usually look over this with my morning coffee and if anything stands out, I contact the person involved and ask what's up. Falcon - There's an example of that where the Eye of Arkanon is always watching, where I logged in my dev character to take a look at the CONCORD frigates with CCP Leeloo when we were deciding on color scheme for the Council Diplomatic Shuttle. I spawned a couple of them into my hangar in our home system up in Polaris to take a look at their paint schemes, and then just logged out and forgot about them. The next morning Arkanon contacted me and was like "Why are their CONCORD ships in your hangar" and I was like "Shit, sorry, I forgot to get rid of them!" and it was all cool, he just needed to know what the deal was. It's good to have checks like this in place. Leeloo - It's the other way around too, where if I'm ever going to do anything on any of our severs, I generally poke Arkanon and I'm like "I'm about to do this, just wanted to let you know so there's no confusion, is that ok?" Falcon - Yep, we do that with live events too. Cagali - Talking about Gambling. This whole alliance tournament collusion thing. These guys probably made a shitload of ISK betting on eachother. Do you have policies to reimburse that or anything that protects people from that. Peligro - We don't have any rules for that, because it's basically players scamming players, but actual collusion in the Alliance Tournament is a whole different thing. Corbexx - Do you actively watch the gambling sites out there for RMT Peligro - Yeah, we watch all of them... you can't NOT watch them, because the amount of transactions and the sheer amount of ISK floating around is staggering, so it's hard not to do so. Sort - Do you guys get a lot of false positives when you're getting reports, or in the true style of EVE players do you get people reporting eachother just to get eachother banned? Arkanon - We actually get more reports about botting and ISboxing than anything else. Lots of people assume that because there's a group of characters together with similar names that people are breaking the rules, that's not the case all the time. Peligro - These days if people see ten characters he might get reported as one guy, but that's not the case. Multiboxing is not against the rules, it's perfectly okay. It's mainly the terms now that I have to clarify in tickets, because there are some people that genuinely believe that you're not allowed to play more than one client at this point. Falcon - Of the back of this session, would it be a good idea for Team Security to work on a blog maybe, relating to what's good, what's bad, what the rules are on certain things, and how it's best to contact them? Perhaps even team up with Customer Support and look at putting a few articles on the Help Center to show how people can get in touch and what to include when they're contacting security? Sort - I think that it'd be good for sure to have this kind of blog so that people could see the leniency and the fact that people can come to you for help. Sion - I like having clear policies personally, and it's clear that you guys operate internally on a set of super clear policies, but I don't see the value in listing all the edge cases and over complicating things. Arkanon - We'll need to talk to the GMs about this, before we go talking about policies. CSM X – Summit One 2015 / 09 / 17 Session : Whitepaper Review CSM ATTENDEES: * Sion Kumitomo * Sugar Kyle * Sort Dragon * Endie * Corbexx * Steve Ronuken * Mike Azariah * Jayne Fillion * Cagali Cagali * Gorski Car REMOTE ATTENDEES: * Manfred Sideous CCP ATTENDEES: * CCP Leeloo * CCP Falcon Sion – Can we pull the whitepaper up on the screen so that we can look at it while we talk? Leeloo – So this is the same document I shared with you earlier, I’m kind of comfortable with it now, and I’ve sat down with Falcon so he can review it. Leeloo – There’s still some stuff in there that you guys saw as controversial so we want to make sure that you guys are happy with it and see your concerns so we can work on it further. Corbexx – It feels very much like the old one with more fluff, there’s a lot of stuff taken out that we didn’t like, which is good. It’s been cleaned up. Leeloo – Yeah, it was very wordy previously, I’ve tried to cut it down and make it clearer so that people can’t game it. That’s the main point that I’ve tried to fix. Leeloo – It’s also split into different sections for different people who want different pieces of information from it. Leeloo – The biggest change now is that this is a living document that we can change as the CSM evolves on a year by year basis, so that we can change it easily and make sure it stays up to date. Corbexx – With all the stuff we’ve talked about regarding focus groups and such, how much is this going to change? Falcon – It depends on how the testing with the focus groups goes, I suppose. Leeloo – Not for this whitepaper, we want to get the seat changes for permanent attendees and stuff in there to raise it to four, and a few other things for CSM 11, but other than that we’ll leave it until we’re comfortable. Steve – This should also be guidelines too, for how you do stuff, not something that’s super strict. Leeloo – Yep. No strict rules in there, it’s up to you whatever platform you use to talk to players. Sion – There’s a section in there that I used to like from the old whitepaper about rules and rights. Where is that? Falcon – Rules and rights is up there in section two, I think it’s still all there. Sion – Some of it is still there, but there was a section about the CSM and players having legislative power over their own game, and that set of rights. Falcon – We can put it in there for sure. If there are sections that you feel very strongly about regarding definition of the CSM or the agency you guys have then let us know and we’ll put it in there. Cagali – I think you should spell out in the whitepaper too that on confluence you need to be known by your real name the same as developers, and just make it super clear so that people know what they’re coming into. Steve – It would be a good idea also to let people know that their CSM tag applies to all characters on their account, so that it’s super clear there too. Falcon – As Gorski has found out. Gorski – lel. Leeloo – We’ll explain about tags and stuff, but that’s something that we’ll need to fix for sure, because it’s unintentional. Mike – There are a couple of sentences I’d like to snip from the whitepaper if we can? Leeloo – Sure, there were a few sentences in there that had stuff in like “you must contact CCP Pr for this, for that or whatever” and we removed the. Falcon – Let’s be super clear that the whitepaper in my eyes and Leeloo’s eyes is not a document that should restrict you guys. It’s a document that should empower you guy and give you the agency to do what you need to do as a CSM member, and to be able to talk about it, so long as there’s no sensitive information involved. Leeloo – So we’ve changed that around. Before it was a case of “You must come to CCP when you want to talk to third parties” now it’s a case of “we’re here for support and guidance, and clarification if you need it.” Falcon – We want to be sure that this is not a document that restricts you guys, and lets you do what you need to do. Sion – It’s also good to have in there that while there’s this freedom of interaction, and you’re free to interact however you want, the whitepaper does not protect you from the consequences of those interactions, you will have to face those consequences. Steve – We’re also still covered by the EULA. Endie – With the changes to release stuff, how do we deal with inactivity on the CSM given that there’s stuff in the whitepaper about certain numbers of release cycles. Leeloo – The release cycles will still be in there, just big features will be lumped together, so it still stands, really. Sort – We should also include the ability for an inactive member to resign from the CSM rather than kicking them off. Falcon – Sure, but we also have the issue where if someone is approached about it, they suddenly pep up, do a few weeks of work then vanish into obscurity again, rinse and repeat. You’ve wasted another six weeks. Sort – Well what about asking people to state whether they’re active or not. Leeloo – Like putting a strike system into the whitepaper, no. Sort – No, like there could be “he’s inactive, there’s nothing I can do to contact him, I’ve tried, he needs to be removed.” Falcon – Why don’t we do this the easy way and give you guys agency? We have little to no say in the matter. If the community feels that a member of the CSM is inactive, they can come to the CSM, and you guys can collectively make the decision to come to us, and tell us that you feel the guy is an empty chair around the table, and ask for their removal with justification to back up the request. Sort – So like a vote? Steve – No, even just one person could bring it up. Falcon – Yep, then we get around a table, we discuss it, we decide on a best course of action, and go ahead with it. Mike – There’s also the timezone stuff for instance myself and cagali never see eachother. Sion – People can also see who is active, who’s running focus groups, etc and they can come to the CSM with concerns. Corbexx – It’s usually been super obvious who’s active and who’s not to be fair. Falcon – Yep, and more often than not if you guys come to us with concerns about an inactive, we’ll more than likely have already noticed inactivity ourselves. Sion – I was gone for an extended time, a few weeks last year, and I just contacted you guys and let you know and it was handled really well. There should be no problem doing this. Mike – Same here, it was smooth. CSM X – Summit One 2015 / 09 / 17 Session : Community & Localization CSM ATTENDEES: * Sion Kumitomo * Sugar Kyle * Sort Dragon * Endie * Corbexx * Steve Ronuken * Mike Azariah * Jayne Fillion * Cagali Cagali * Gorski Car REMOTE ATTENDEES: * Chance Ravinne CCP ATTENDEES: * CCP Leeloo * CCP Falcon * CCP Shadowcat * CCP Tara * CCP Phantom * CCP Guard Falcon – This session is just for us to talk about Community and Localization related stuff. Localization and Community have been drawn together in the last 6 months or so, and I now manage both the Community and Localization teams as one larger force that’s part of marketing, which lets us work super close together to give better localized community support. Falcon – For instance, CCP Tara is our French Linguistic Owner, but also works some of her time on French Community stuff. Same with CCP Shadowcat, she assists CCP Phantom with the German side of things, while CCP Leeloo alongside the CSM also works Russian Community and Lingustics too. Falcon – We’ll also be looking to hire another Russian speaker soon too to cover some of the load for the Russian side of things. Shadowcat – So yeah, I work as the Senior German Linguistic owner, and project manage all the tasks on localization, and as Falcon mentioned, we moved to community a few months back, so I also chip in with the German community and help CCP Phantom. Tara – I do the same with the French side of things, and assist with French podcasts, social media and all out French player gatherings. Shadowcat – We cover everything from client translations to dev blogs, news, everything that we need to translate for localized community. Mike – Does stuff like the Scope Videos get translated? Shadowcat – We put together subtitles for all the scope videos and the flight academy videos, and trailers, so yeah, we do everything for video that doesn’t have voice over. Cagali – Massive thanks to you guys for the French translations, we had a French corporation with us for a long time and none of them spoke English, so it was great to see that they got a localised client that they could use. Tara – Thanks very much, I’m glad they liked it! Falcon – So yeah, the floor is over to you guys if you have any questions for localization and community. Steve – One thing that’s been brought up by players is the possibility for Spanish localization. Obviously I know it’s not an easy process, but is there any possibility of expanding it to another language? Shadowcat – There was a bit of a coin toss between French and Spanish, and it came down to which of the two demographics that spoke the languages were most likely to also speak English. Shadowcat – it ended up where after research we found that French people were a lot less likely to speak English, or to want to speak English, so that was the choice we made. Steve – Certainly not complaining about the decision that was made, just wondering how it was made. Shadowcat – Localization is a very expensive process, and we can’t just decide to do a new language. Steve – Yeah, I guess you have to consider increasing staffing levels, everything. Falcon – Yep, we need translators, someone to manage them, then we also need to provide customer support in that language too, which means it impacts far more than just one department. It also puts more load on marketing to create materials in another language too, so there’s a lot of factors to consider. At this point, there was a break so that everyone could have ice cream! Falcon – So where were we? Jayne – Spanish localization was the last thing we talked about, but I think we covered it. Moving on, is there any plan to bring back community spotlights? Falcon – Sure. As you’ll know, the team downsized a little when staff were let go in 2014. One of the things that was cut with this, was community spotlights. We’re looking to kick them off again, we just need to find the man hours to do so. Falcon – We’re also looking to run developer spotlights and questions and answers sessions, as well as the focus groups. Falcon – We’re also looking to increase the frequency of the o7 show and are investigating the best format to do this, so in general players can expect more communications from us. Sion – So one of the things we’ve talked about a lot is community communications, and how you guys are involved as a team. I’m just wondering to what degree community has the agenda to set the tone and style of messaging that you talk to players with. Falcon – So, before I took on the role in 2013 as the guy who manages community for CCP, I honestly don’t know, but from my point of view as a community rep/developer back then it seemed like it was completely up to marketing. Falcon – With the community team’s move to marketing, the focus was then put very much on us just to go out and do it, and to engage and interact with players, that’s when you saw the o7 show kicking off, more spotlights and video stuff, then around a few features such as sov, our influence was kind of scaled back. Falcon – It’s been very mixed, there are some things that marketing do want to handle, which is understandable, and there’s some things that community handle, but again in the last couple of months, the focus has been put very much back on us, working with development, to get as much information out there as possible, within reason. Falcon – I have to admit that my boss is super relaxed about communication, and he generally leaves it to myself and the rest of the community team to set the tone and style of how we’ll get information across, which is kind of nice. I think there’s a general consensus in marketing that the community team knows our players and how to approach them, be that the tone of dev blogs and when to have a little bit of trolly fun with people, so yeah it’s pretty relaxed. Gorski – Have you been thinking about the future of the alliance tournament, the collusion stuff and how you’re going to deal with it? Falcon – I’ve been thinking about that over the course of the last couple of days, yes. Gorski – Is it going to affect the future of the tournament? Falcon – Yeah, but not in a detrimental way. We’ll just have to look at the rules and see what we can do to make sure this kind of things is not part of the tournament. Falcon – The alliance tournament is super important to us, and will always have my full support for as long as I’m around. We just need to move with the times and make sure that the rules adapt to cover metagaming where appropriate while not being restrictive. Falcon – There needs to be a respect for the spirit of the tournament, and their still needs to be a respect for the efforts of the other teams. Mike – The rules are pretty clear about match fixing in terms of collusion. Falcon – Yep, its clear cut as far as I’m concerned, but we need to make sure that we investigate and act accordingly. This might take a few weeks, but we’ll get to the bottom of it. No reaction on gut instinct, only on evidence. Falcon – We need to make sure that the decisions that are made with the highest respect for people involved in the tournament both players, and devs who volunteer their time to hosting. At the same time we need to send a clear message that this will not be tolerated. Mike – Some people have said that this might be the death knell for the tournament. Falcon – Absolutely not. Over my dead body. We’ll investigate and make sure the right thing is done. Gorski – Will there be a statement about it? Falcon – Absolutely. We’ll tell people the verdict and the status with regards to prizes once the time is right. However, if we take any action against individuals or their game accounts, then that remains between us and the individual people involved. Sion – We’ve seen some not great feedback from the community regarding features and changes over the last few months. How involved in the development process is the community team, and how much do you know about what’s happening in development? Sion – Do you have developers coming to you regarding questions about features and how players might react, and if they have issues on Reddit for instance, how to handle them? Falcon – Yes, we’re very looped in. Of course, we have entirely unrestricted access to all of confluence, we get invited to sprint reviews, historically we’ve also been “stakeholders” on teams, but that’s now changed with the way CCP has changed, and we’re just generally very involved. Falcon – Myself and Leeloo are also invited every day to the daily production team standup, where all the producers of the EVE teams go over the roadmap and update eachother on what’s going on with progress on features and changes, so yeah, we’re very in the loop. Falcon – Dev also come to us very regularly for assistance with messaging, we look over and publish all those blogs, and personally, I work very closely with CCP Seagull on the wider community messaging strategy now, which is a more recent development, to make sure we keep players informed of what’s going on. Falcon – Overall, development are super cool to work with in this respect, and there’s a lot of cross collaboration. Falcon – It’s a case of that all over the company though, if I want to go talk to our Director of Customer Support, I just head down to his desk. If I want to talk to a developer, it’s the same, even if I want to go talk to Hilmar, I just head on up to his office and have a chat. CCP is super flat in that respect, and people tend to listen. Falcon – That’s the same across projects too. I can go talk to the DUST, Valkyrie and Gunjack team whenever I want to be able to find out what’s going on. It’s not a problem at all for communication. Jayne – Switching gears, I want to talk about the official channel listing, and what we can do to get some communities within the playerbase more exposure. If there’s nothing we can do by adding them to the official channels list, can we get a forum section for communities within the game, and channels within the game where we can discuss and list the options people have? Falcon – The ingame official channels list is a tough one, because if we make a channel a “system” channel and add it to the official list, we have a duty to moderate it, and it becomes more overhead for us, but we can use a forum section for sure. I’ll look into it. CSM X – Summit One 2015 / 09 / 17 Session : Summit Retrospective CSM ATTENDEES: * Sion Kumitomo * Sugar Kyle * Sort Dragon * Endie * Corbexx * Steve Ronuken * Mike Azariah * Jayne Fillion * Cagali Cagali * Gorski Car REMOTE ATTENDEES: * Chance Ravinne CCP ATTENDEES: * CCP Leeloo * CCP Falcon The notes for this session are abridged into topics that were covered: * We need a room with better air conditioning. Holy shit Exodus is bad. * We need to look at lifting the NDA on more sessions next year. * We will be looking at 72-96 hours for release of minutes next year because we want to make sure they’re reviewed and edited properly. * Having comfortable chairs for 4 days in a summit is the best. * Travel arrangements have been fantastic this summit. >> END OF MINUTES FOR DAY FOUR <<