The last three months straddled the holiday period in Iceland and many parts of the world. As a result, the CSM had fewer meetings than our previous pace, so I felt it would be better to do three full months of notes, rather than one or two with fewer meetings, as we had been doing up to now.
As part of our continuing effort in transparency, here’s a brief synopsis of the meetings that were held.
The duration noted for the meeting is exact for those that were recorded, approximate for those that weren’t.
NOTE: Maria Taylor is precluded from attending most meetings because of time zone issues.
As with all of our review posts, this information was reviewed by the whole CSM and cleared by CCP for release.
Meeting 27 – November 5 – CSM Week 20 – Team Talos
Duration: 1 hour, 20 minutes
The CSM met with Team Talos. All CSM members were present except Brisc Rubal (election week) and Merkelchen.
The primary point of the meeting was to discuss a number of proposed ideas for future Talos releases, including the fleet formations as well as other ideas that have not yet been released. This was primarily a chance for Talos to discuss with the CSM the various proposals, talk about potential upsides and downsides, and likely use cases. The CSM had a number of questions and concerns about the various things presented, and provided their feedback.
Special Meeting – November 10 – CSM Presentation Faction Warfare/Lowsec
Duration: 1 hour, 22 minutes
This was the first time the CSM provided a formal presentation to CCP on a topic that members wanted to put before the company in a formal way. Phantomite, Gobbins and Torvald attended on behalf of the CSM and led the presentation. CCP Burger, CCP Goodfella, CCP Muppet Hunter and other CCP leadership were present.
Torvald made public his portion of the presentation, which you can review here: CSM FW Presentation - Google Slides
Meeting 28 – November 12 – CSM Week 21 – Weekly Meeting
Duration: ~1 hour
This was the regular weekly meeting of the CSM. This meeting was primarily housekeeping, with the CSM meeting with CCP Dopamine alone. All CSM members were present except for Merkelchen, Maria Taylor and Mike Azariah. The CSM expressed concern about the fact that there would be no summits this year, and that this was sub-optimal, since much of the work done in past CSMs was done at the summits. There was discussion of a potential CSM/CCP stream on the CCP Twitch feed, similar to the CSM panels that have been done at Fanfest/EVE Vegas in the past. Brisc asked that, because we aren’t getting a CSM summit, can we at least get the Red Dot toggle. There was also a discussion of the rest of Quadrant 4, as well as CSM priorities for the coming year.
Meeting 29 – November 19 – CSM Week 22 – Team Ecosystem
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes
The CSM met with the Ecosystem team at the CSM’s request to get an update on the status of scarcity and the economy, to highlight the issue with certain system belt respawning rates and concurrent ADM problems, and to get a better of idea of what was coming up in the future in terms of the game’s overall economic outlook. All CSM members except Maria Taylor and Kenneth Feld were present. The CSM provided frank feedback about many players growing unhappiness with scarcity and made clear that players were expecting “carrots” after a year of “sticks.” CCP confirmed that there was an issue with belts spawning and that they were working to address it, with the expectation that it would be resolved in the December release. A larger discussion of ADMs in general and using them as a proxy for activity within a system was had between the CSM and Team Ecosystem. The team also provided their priority list of things they wanted to see addressed in order, which include both announced and unannounced changes, so we can’t be more specific here. The CSM also brought up a number of other concerns, including income generation in general, EDENCOMM ship and skillbook sourcing, the DBS/ESS changes and how best to get information out to the players on these changes.
Meeting 30 – November 26 – CSM Week 24 – NPE Team
Duration: 57 minutes
The CSM met with the team working on the New Player Experience, who wanted to lay out their long-term plan for the NPE and get CSM feedback. The CSM, except for Gobbins, Kenneth Feld, Merkelchen, and Maria Taylor were present. CCP asked about potential concerns with the existing NPE, and the CSM highlighted a number of issues, including the wide array of things that you can do in the game that can present too many choices for new players to absorb, as well as the ever-present PvE vs. PvP discussion, the desire of new players to immediately begin making money, and then how to find friends, fleets and future corporations. The Team discussed a variety of issues with the CSM, including what newer players find the most fun in EVE, lists of potential sightseeing and important non-lore locations that could have monuments or information added, as well as other things like UI changes and other “look and feel” changes that could increase new player engagement. The CSM also, as we always do, noted that most of us are veteran players so we may not be the best people to ask for feedback from in regards to the NPE.
Meeting 31 – December 3 – CSM Week 24 – Cloaking Meeting
Duration: 1 hour, 19 minutes
The CSM met with CCP Rattati for an in-depth discussion of cloaking and potential changes to address some player issues with cloaking, as well as continued discussion of ecosystem issues with him, in his role as Ecosystem team lead. CCP made it clear that this was a high-level, nothing-imminent discussion of potential changes to cloaking. At the same time, they confirmed they were exploring this issue and would be continuing to discuss cloaking with the CSM over the coming months. CCP assured the CSM that they recognized there were many different use cases for cloaking, and they were well aware that this was a controversial issue for the community for a variety of reasons.
After the discussion on cloaking, there was further discussion on the state of the economy. A number of CSM members highlighted their concerns with the current state of the economy, scarcity and player dissatisfaction with the continued nerfs to income generation. CCP acknowledged the concerns but reiterated their view that the changes were necessary and in the best long-term health of the game.
Meeting 32 – December 11 – CSM Week 25 – Chat Meeting
Duration: 45 minutes
The CSM met with CCP Chimichanga and CCP Muppet Hunter at the CSM’s request to discuss the continuing issues with the chat servers, to get a better understanding of what the issues were and what CCP was doing to resolve player concerns. Most of the CSM was present, except for Maria Taylor, Mike Azariah and Torvald. CCP walked through the history of the changes to the chat servers and what CCP had been doing to fix issues. The CSM stressed that players were fed up with the issues with the chat server and wanted more detailed information both about what was wrong and how and when they could expect them to be resolved. The CSM also brought up potential additions to the chat servers, including things like emojis (this resulted in mass groaning), that have been requested. The CSM also took the opportunity to discuss a variety of other ideas with CCP Muppet Hunter for his consideration when looking at future quadrant development.
This was the last CSM meeting until January 14th.
Meeting 33 – January 14 – CSM Week 30 – Weekly Meeting
Duration: 55 minutes
This week the CSM met for their weekly meeting with the Community Team. This was the first meeting since December 11th, and the first meeting since the record-breaking fights in M2-XFE. Most CSM members, except Vily, Maria Taylor and Merkelchen were present. Because this was the first meeting after a long break, there were a variety of topics the CSM wanted to address and put on the list for potential meetings with the various teams. These issues included Pochven and issues surrounding the current state of the new region and concerns with content and future iteration, the issues surrounding server performance during the second M2-XFE fight, a request for comment on the CSM’s FW/Lowsec presentation, MASS OUTRAGE over the fact that Echoes got Citadel skins before EVE proper has, and requests for meetings. The requests for meetings included requests for Team Talos, the leadership team including CCP Hellmar, the Ecosystem team, and a Roadmap meeting for Quadrants 1 and 2.
Meeting 34 – January 21 – CSM Week 31 – Team Ecosystem + Team NPE and Leadership
Duration: 1 hour, 2 minutes
The CSM met with a large group of CCP luminaries, including CCP Rattati, CCP Goodfella, and more than a dozen others on the Community, Ecosystem and NPE teams to discuss a new proposal being worked on for the first quadrant. All CSM members except Maria Taylor, Vily, Gobbins and Kenneth Feld were present. This is a feature that has not yet been announced, so we can’t go into too many details until it is released. The CSM made a number of suggestions, including messaging around the proposal.
Meeting 35 – January 28 – CSM Week 32 – Team Ecosystem
Duration: 1 hour, 18 minutes
The CSM, except for Vily, Merklechen and Maria Taylor, met with CCP to discuss additional changes to the economy being worked on by Team Ecosystem. This is another change that is still in being developed and has not yet been announced, and thus we can’t go into detail.
Slack Conversations
Slack was relatively quiet during the holiday season, although there were a number of conversations in real time with CCP about issues that were occurring during the break, including the fights in M2-XFE, the teaser from CCP during one of their streams about potential changes to AFK cloaking and the Ecosystem dev post/update in late December. Slack was also used for CSM members to raise issues presented from the players – especially pressing bug reports – to the various teams working on those issues.
As always, if there are any specific questions about the info I’ve provided, I or any of the other CSM members here will be happy to answer them, within the NDA and COC.
