Author: Morphisat

Blog Banter #19 – CCP and the CSM

Welcome to the nineteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This months topic comes to us from @evepress, and he asks: The CSM: CCP’s Meta Game? – The CSM, an eve players voice to CCP. Right? In the grand scheme of things yes, the players bring up issues and the CSM presents them to CCP. But in its current iteration the CSM was supposed to be given small authority to assign CCP assets to projects that the CSM thought needed work on. As it has now come out this is not the case. So fellow bloggers, is the CSM worth it, has the CSM improved the game in any way, or is it just a well thought out scam by CCP to give us players a false sense of input in the game? What’s your take?

This BlogBanter comes at a delicate time, when the shit has hit the proverbial fan after the minutes of the latest CSM – CCP meeting had been released. If I have to answer this question at the moment, then I would say, No at the moment the CSM isn’t really worth it if no development time can be assigned to any issues. Of course it’s useful to keep the conversation going, but if it’s just talk and no action it’s pretty much useless. CCP does send out press releases about the CSM (at least I see the same type of articles on various press sites) so it’s still being used as a PR tool. Reading the latest ‘18months’ devblog and the responses by various CCP employees, I get the impression that at the moment CCP doesn’t really know what to do with the CSM and CCP_Zulu even seems annoyed by them.

athens1

Overall though I think the CSM has been useful, if not only for the skill queue and various other accomplishments. It’s a really nice idea to have some people represent the players who bring forward concerns by the players. It’s then up to CCP to decide what will be addressed and what will not. Of course we do understand they can not do everything that’s being proposed, but at least some issues would be nice. I assume that was the original idea behind it…

See other participants:

  1. Growing Pains | CrazyKinux’s Musing
  2. CSM: Hoax or Serious Business? « Lost in New Eden
  3. CSM-Power to the people or puppets of CCP « A whole lot of Yarrrr!!!
  4. Gaming the CSM | A Mule in EvE
  5. A Taste Of Democracy | StarFleet Comms
  6. CSM: Player Power or Paper Tiger? | I Am Keith Neilson
  7. Governance Thrash Redux? « The Ralpha Dogs
  8. CCP Doesn’t Care: Blog Banter 19 « OMG! You’re a Chick?!
  9. The Cataclysmic Variable: It’s Crunch Time!
  10. The 19th EVE Blog Banter is upon us… and about the CSM and CCP | Victoria Aut Mors
  11. CSM: Lame Duck from the beginning?
  12. Blog Banter #19 << Dense Veldspar
  13. Be careful what you say, Roc « Roc’s Ramblings
  14. Exchange Fraking Phone Numbers « Scrap Metal & Faction Ammo
  15. Blog Banter #19: Assumptions
  16. EVE Blog Banter #19 | EVE on Real Life
  17. A Reality Check | A “CareBears” Journey
  18. Quit your bitching | Fly Reckless – EVE Online
  19. War has come to EVE | Scram Web
  20. CCP and the CSM | Morphisat’s Blog
  21. More to come…

Eve and the road ahead

A dev blog was posted today by Ccp Zulu about what teams are working on what currently at CCP. It’s nice that they are sharing this information now, probably as a response to the release of the minutes of the CSM 5 meeting, which caused quite some turmoil.

We already knew that Incarna is the main focus for Eve at the moment, but 9 teams, 70 developers ? That sounds like it’s a bit much. And we still don’t know what we’ll be able to do in Incarna. Just walking around a bit and play station games or will there be more ?

Also 10 for evegate is a large number. It doesn’t look all that complicated to me. Then again my job is making business applications, which are mainly front ends for database manipulation, so maybe I am wrong and it’s a lot more complicated than it looks.

Anyway, this all results in this:

In the 2011 winter expansion we‘ll certainly focus more than ever before on iterating and polishing up all the features that EVE has expanded to in the then eight years. What those specific systems are, I don‘t know as we haven‘t started the planning phase for that yet.

It’s kinda tough to accept when it’s actually ‘written in stone’ like this. Basically development for Eve the Space Game has been halted for 18 months or so. And that’s just sad :(.

CSM 5 Disapproval

There is a very interesting article over at massively.com that sums up the current CSM situation very well. You can also read about it on Mynxee’s blog and Keith Nelson’s amongst others.

Basically what it boils down to, is that CCP is allocating it’s resources to Dust and Incarna and Eve itself is on the backburner. This comes as no surprise as the last few expansions have been rather thin and fundamental fixes are rare these days. They are focusing on getting in new players with Incarna (walking in stations in case you didn’t know) instead of holding on to the current ones.

I don’t care too much for walking in stations, especially not when it will be released in a half hearted manner, like most of these new features. And I doubt it will really enhance our gameplay in any way. Sure it’ll be fun for ten minutes and corp meetings might be enjoyable, but it will appear to the average eve player as fluff I am afraid.

And they have been working on it for quite some time and dedicated a lot of graphic artists and coders to the project. Think of all the other stuff they could have done ! Maybe a more balanced approach would have been better. Dust and Incarna better be a success. Or perhaps once they’re out CCP can focus on spaceships again, which has so far been their strong suite !

The Primae

Here it is, in all it’s glory. Visiting a Customs Office near of a Lava planet.

primae2

It’s a wonderful detailed model. The part just under the ‘cockpit’ moves around. It would make a nice dedicated salvager or exploration ship !

As it is now, with 100 m3 cargohold, 1000 m3 for planetary commodities (which fills up fast when you use p1 parts) and 1600 m3 for command centers, it’s not all that useful. Maybe for new players who don’t have hauler/industrial ship skills yet. A simple badger will be better than this one, but you won’t look as industrial as this ship does !

Alliance Tournament 8 – Finals

“Soccer is a game for 22 people that run around, play the ball, and one referee who makes a slew of mistakes, and in the end Germany always wins.”

– Gary Lineker

If we translate this to Eve’s Alliance Tournement you could say, that after three weekends, in the end Pandemic Legion always wins :). This time with a very nice minmatar setup. Using high DPS sleipnirs and taking control over the arena using a Huggin and thrasher hulls for a bit of extra dps and dampeners I assume ?

The final itself was over quickly. The three rook, three myrm setup of Hydra wasn’t good enough to give PL even a bit of sweat. PL’s semi final was a lot better though. The three remaining Dark Side  Proteuses gave PL a pretty hard time (relatively speaking).

A nice first hand account of the Rote Kapelle match is over at the Eve Opportunist blog.

@mandrill did a nice job of writing up reports on the matches. You can find them on his blog.

Blog Banter #18 – Jack of all trades

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux AT gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

For his latest "Blog Banter" Ck asks:
On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who’ve been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has you gaming style evolved through the years or months since you’ve started playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance – say manufacturing. Let’s hear your story!

Ever since I started playing I’ve been a bit of a jack of all trades. Of course this gets easier as you get older and you get a wide range of skills. With over 60 mil of skill points in the bag, I can mine, scan and shoot guns and missiles with the best of ‘ em now !

Basically my Eve career has two parts or maybe three if you count the no man’s land in between. Also I’ve been on a break a few times. Lately I have been playing quite a bit again lately, somehow the eve bug always comes back.

buzzard

The first part was (after the noob part and being in Eve Uni for a while) with Rakeriku. You can still read about it as I have blogged almost from the beginning. My posts got better over the years, though it’s still fun to read ‘Saving up for a caracal’, some of the earlier posts can be a bit embarrassing.  The corp is now dormant, but we had loads of fun. In the days before the hulk we had 12hr mining ops clearing 2 belts (you can now do that solo with an alt and an orca in a couple of hours), and building our own battlecruisers (feroxes and the like, this was before the drake!) and gasp even a freighter.

I am still in touch with some people from that time, who still play. The corp bled dry after a couple of months in 0.0 space, Wicked Creek. That was also a nice experience, ratting and mining ark.

hulk001

After spending a bit of time solo I joined Hidden Agenda, early last year. To be honest I still play a lot solo. Mining from time to time, inventing, exploring, missions and of course now PI, I don’t have any trouble keeping busy. I do attend the corporation events, and chat in the corp channel.

So what about PVP ? Well besides the odd war I have been in, I have spent quite some time on my alt in Factional Warfare on the Minmatar side. He is residing planet side at the moment (a retired General), but it certainly was an experience I wouldn’t have want to have missed. Especially when FW started, flying around in fleets of over 80 pilots was so much fun and the thrill of shooting Amarr was great.

That’s it in a nutshell !
Participants:

  1. CrazyKinux’s Musing: The Heroes with a Thousand Faces
  2. StarFleet Comms: Life. Evolved.
  3. A Carebear’s Journeu: This Carebear Thinks He Is Developing Teeth
  4. The Elitist: Our ventures in EVE
  5. A Mule in EVE: From a guppy predator
  6. Travels of the Ronin: Evolution and Adaptation
  7. The Ralpha Dogs: The Past Through Tomorrow
  8. Where the frack is my ship: A journey, not a destination
  9. I am Keith Neilson: 7 Year Itch?
  10. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah: Evolution Me
  11. EVE Opportunist: A long history of a short time
  12. Roc’s Ramblings: Things Change
  13. Guns Ablaze: Onwards and Upwards
  14. EVE On Real Life: Haven’t you grown up yet?
  15. The Fang: The path of the ninja
  16. EVEOGANDA: Whoops Apocalypse!
  17. EVE SOB: Learning to swim
  18. The Life of a Dead Jester: My Time with EVE
  19. Personal Files, Ciarente Roth: Personal Diary 18.6.112
  20. Learning to Fly: Change is Good
  21. Depths Unknown: Falling With Style
  22. Morphisat’s Blog: Jack of all trades
  23. More as they get published…

Hidden Omber Field

Yes I know it’s one of the worst ores to mine at the moment, but a bit of extra isogen never hurt anyone :). It took a while to find this large hidden field of omber, I kept hitting 99.9% on the scan, until I moved the probes just a little but more up. I guess scanning is 3d and my mind wasn’t for a moment.

Mining Omber

Besides I was watching AT8 so you might as well use your time in game as well, sitting in an orca, instead of spinning your ship in station. And I got a nice screenshot out of it.

Alliance Tournament VIII – Day 3 and 4

And another weekend filled with Eve Alliance Tournament goodness flew by ! Sunday had the better matches although most were quite enjoyable. We also got a few that were almost too painful to watch, teams bringing a totally wrong setup and getting obliterated in a few minutes, but that’s all in the game.

I really liked the Ushra’Khan match, that proved that a Raven can be useful in PVP as well. There were some more close ones. Move over to the I am Keith Nelson blog for full reports on the matches of the past weekend. He did an excellent job describing them.

Update: Ah, how could I not mention the first fight after the break, Rote Kapelle vs. Triple A. It’s also on youtube and a nice blogpost on Eve Opportunist.

Planetary Interaction Spreadsheet

By now if you’re interested in PI you probably got some planets up and running an wondering what to do with your toxic metals and bacteria ! Well there is a nice spreadsheet over at google docs that really helps.

http://tinyurl.com/34uyx6o

It’s pretty popular, while I type this 46 people are looking at it :). Also the Ivy-League wiki helps a lot at http://www.eve-ivy.com/wiki/.

Thanks to the nice people who have taken the effort to put these together !