Blog Banter #50 - Changes

Being the bitter vet that I am I decided to take the challenge and write my corps and coalitions viewpoint on the new expansion that is coming out in just a few more weeks, Rubicon. Why write about this? Here is what made me do today's post:

Blog Banter #50 - Changes
Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 50th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

* * * * *

With the Rubicon expansion being announced and the SOMER Blink scandals (or non-scandals depending on your point of view) that have erupted on the community at the same time, it truly feels like an age of EVE has passed and a new one is dawning.

But which direction is it going? This blog banter can be about several different topics:
 

OK, I'll take the second option. I am Eve's new EP!

1. Where do you think EVE is going? Is it a good or bad vision ahead?
2. If you were EVE's new Executive Producer, where would you take the game?
3. What comes (or should come) after Rubicon in terms of the mechanics and ship balancing we've seen? (CSM8 not allowed to answer this one!)
4. Is there anything in EVE's ten year past that should be resurrected? Or buried and forgotten?
5. What is the future of the community? What should or should not change?

To answer question #1 I have to say that Eve is going in a good direction but they are doing it the wrong way. They have wandered off the path and don't know how to get back on it. How can I say this? Let me explain it to you! Go get something to drink and or a snack. Yea, this is going to be a long post. For those with short attention spans your going to hate it.

I want there to be proper immersion. CCP has left that aspect to the players and the players SUCK at creating the vision that CCP wants for the game. You can't have it both ways. To have a properly immersive game it has to be created that way. CCP has to have a clear vision on this and they have to stick to that game plan. The moment they veer off of that path the immersion breaks. This means involving SOMERblink, this meand involving all the gambling sites and this even means them listening to the CSM.

I want lore and let me be more specific, I want my lore NOT to be changed. I purchased all of the Eve books, read all of the Eve stories and all of the Eve created stories when they were created. Over the years CCP has stopped producing them and they fired their book creator. CCP is not very good at keeping their lore are they?! How can you have a good deep Eve story and immersion when you keep breaking it?

I want exploration through PvE. I do NOT want exploration through the means of PvP. I do not care how many times the PvP folks will say that this is a PvP game. I have been playing it now for OVER A DECADE and PvP is NOT my reason for playing this game. Stop trying to cram it down my throat at every opportunity you can. This includes YOU Jester and the rest of CSM that this applies to also!

I do NOT want Dust. Dust is NOT the future of Eve. Get it the hell out of here and sell it to some other company that cares. It is and will never be Eve online and it is NOT what I pay for. When I went to Fanfest this year I was highly dissapointed that 50% of it was about Dust. I did not go to the top of the world for Dust, I went for Eve online. Give me what I pay for.

To answer question #2 if I were Eve Online's Executive Producer I would be doing things more with croudsourcing and customer feedback then just listening to the CSM and a few loud mouths on the forums. I think Rixx Javix covered this pretty good in his post so I +1 what he said.

To add what Rixx did not cover I think that every time you log on you can have the option to answer a poll or questionaire. This would give the feedback that people like CCP Seagull are looking for without having to get it off the forums. We all know that 80% or more of the people that play Eve online don't read the forums. So why would you go there to get what your paying customer base is asking for or playing for? Mine the data you have with the methods available. This is something that CCP fails miserably on.

Hell, I could spend all day answering question #3 since it will take a lot of room to give it justice. I will shorten that into 3 main things.

First you need to improve on the Jove story and how the Sleepers work into that story. Good lore here, lots of information. CCP has let the story fail.

Second you also have to work on the other technologies out there that have not been explained fully from the lore yet. Those being the Takmahl, Talocan Technology and Yan Jung Technologies.

I would move along on the Sansha's arc. CCP had a good thing going there and crippled it horribly killing off the new community that was forming at that time. They need to get that back to where it was going, in a good direction with lots of player involvement. Right now it is stalled and not gaining any new players.

To answer question #4 I can easily give you a list of features that are what made me want to sign up for Eve Online that have been removed. Here is a good list for you to work off of.

1) Ghost Training - major good feature that was senselessly removed.
2) Motherships - Spent a lot of time training to get into one only to have it nerfed.
3) etc
4) etc
5) etc you all can add more in the comments if you like. Those are my biggest 2 complaints.

Things I also want to see removed from Eve online are what it has become. What do I mean? Well here are some other names for what it has become lately:

1. Goonswarm Online
2. Killboards online
3. Make Tears online
4. Bullies Online
5. Politics Online

Eve is being turned into any one or all of those things listed above. Each one of those could and might turn into it's own blog at some point. Time will tell. Talk to any new player that eventually rage quits and this is one of the reasons why. Eve is becomming a very hateful game that does not encourage anything that is resembeling "good" lately.

Most of all I want to feel like I did when I was in this photo while at fanfest. Click on it to see the note I added. I am in the picture and thanks to Freebooted for having the photo! Eve has taken a turn for the worse. I THINK (and I hope) that Rubicon will take it in the right direction. Time will tell.

For more Blog Banter's on this subject, please visit this here link.

Rubicon: The Bitter Vet view...

Interesting name for an Eve expansion. Has absolutely nothing to do with the current Eve lore that I can figure out but one that they went with regardless. I wonder if the CSM gave the green light for that also :-P Anyways, I figures I would give you my corps view on the 20th free expansion of Eve online. These are the current top 6 things

1. Control Hi-Sec Customs Offices
   This is just going to be a HUGE ISK sink that Dr. EOG has been looking for. How do I know this? Well the good Dr and I spoke about 2 things while I was at fanfest. One was PLEX, which is a whole different story and PoCo's which I am covering now.
   
   Here is a quick spreadsheet for you and no I am not in favor of this. This is just making NULL sec mechanics on Sovereignty control through a new mechanic. MORE forced Pew Pew and needless griefing.
   
   Thanks CCP Soundwaffle.
   
   

   Empire Sovereignty Listing	# of planets
   Amarr Empire
   Aridia	80
   The Bleak Lands	35
   Devoid	52
   Domain	192
   Genesis	103
   Kador	85
   Kor-Azor	61
   Tash-Murkon	103
   Ammatar Mandate
   Derelik	118
   Caldari State
   The Citadel	86
   The Forge	93
   Lonetrek	98
   Black Rise	49
   Gallente Federation
   Essence	67
   Everyshore	54
   Placid	71
   Sinq Laison	109
   Solitude	43
   Verge Vendor	44
   Khanid Kingdom
   Khanid	84
   Minmatar Republic
   Heimatar	83
   Metropolis	159
   Molden Heath	38
   Total Empire Planets (includes high sec and low sec planets)	1907

   
   
   Estimated value is $190,700,000,000 which I based off the 100 million ISK figure I came up with for the Gantry and upgrades. Is is exact? No. Will it do for this illustration? Yes.
2. Deploy Mobile Structures
   To early to tell on these. To me this seems like the new version of player controlled modular POS's that were spoken of before with several of the mods. I think I am right on this and God only knows why they are putting this "spin" on them. Either way I think they are a good idea in theory but we will see how it shakes out in game.
   
   
3. Sisters of EVE Faction Ships
   All I can say about this is JOYGASM!
   
   
4. Ship Re-balancing
   More of the "Same old, same old" ship tierside. I am one of the few I believe that thinks that this was NEEDLESS work. Eve was fine for the first decade with everything the way it was. There was lore to support the ships they way they were and I was fine with that. Changing things for the sake of changing them is pointless.
   
   
5. Guerilla-style Warfare Support
   Some of the ship speed changes and additions are things that SHOULD of been in the game from day one. This should have been added to a POINT release much earlier then this and not in a major release.
   
   
6. Interbus Ship Identification System
   This is how the certificate system SHOULD of been introduced to us. This is a very good step in the right direction for new players. Who ever got this into the game finally is a DEV that CCP should thank over and over again. THESE are the kind of changes that give the new player experience the life that it needs.
   
   Now for us bitter vets I don't see it really doing a damn thing but then again it is not all about me now is it?
   

How to tell when the CSM is overstepping their bounds...

Hello fellow Eve online Lurkers...

Here is a topic that really gets me on my soapbox and wants to fire up my ranting to whole new levels. Let me quote the latest one from Jesters Trek that has inspired today's blog.

• So I quietly watched the F&I thread about the links and mind-links and waited for it to explode into a threadnaught, which didn't really happen.  CCP Fozzie dev-blogged about it, still no threadnaught.  Here's a little secret: the CSM's influence is cut by about half to two-thirds when there's no player revolution behind it.  I nudged forward the industrial rebalancing because I helped create, guide, and shape player reactions to the first pass of those rebalances.  But if there was going to be a revolution on this topic, I wasn't gonna be the one leading it.

 Are you kidding me?!? This is the latest in about a dozen blogs from Jester about how he has help "CREATE, GUIDE and SHAPE PLAYER REACTIONS to what he thinks his vision of Eve should be. Not the majority of Eve players but his alone.

This was even more obvious when he was talking to us about how all of the Reasonable Things was being viewed by CCP and left out all of the industrial information. That information was later taken up by Unforgiven Storm as he championed what Jester intentionally left out.

Now this is a topic that has been covered since CSM1. So you have 8 different groups of people that has lists of what the players want to see fixed in game. Why is it that year after year, CSM after CSM that there are items on these lists that are just not taken to CCP for them to address?

You can find current information for this year found here:]

 Eve Online: CSM Guest Blog “Reasonable Things” Crowdsourcing

and past information here:
August 2010 Prioritization Crowdsourcing (CSM)

You can go back further and further if your so inclined :-)

I believe that I am starting to regret voting for Jester and some of the other CSM members. Jester was my first choice and that is turning out to be a mistake. I did NOT vote for Unforgiven Storm and I am now thinking I should of. Eve is a very hard game both inside and out. It is both why I play it and also why it is giving me a huge headache like right now

Things ROCK MELTER is not happy with:

1. CSM8
2. Odyssey expansion (all point repelases)
3. Ship Tierside
4. Loss of Lore
5. Removal of Beta features
6. Lack of Beta promises
7. Current CCP Devs taking credit for past Devs ideas and works.

Your guys have any insight for me?

So I'm cautiously optimistic...

I did not post anything in June...

I did not post anything in July...

I thought of making todays rant titled "Cautiously optimistic vs giddily optimistic" but I am going to stick with cautiously optimistic. Why? Because every other blogger out there lately says the same thing when they do not want to take a stand on something and speak their mind. So I am cautiously optimistic.... so lets set the tone for today's Eve online rant.

I'm an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals. As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups though.

Steve Jobs

I thought that I would at least put out there that I am watching and trying to figure out a lot of Eve things since Eve Odyssey was released. I have at least a half dozen blogs in "draft" form that I wanted to publish but they are very different from what my peers are posting. So much so that it made me NOT want to post them until I could figure out if we were playing the same game anymore. Then Poetic Stanziel pretty much summed up what my thoughts were today over at this post. I will post it here for those that are to lazy.

The CSM, after skipping it for a year, is back to their crowdsourcing initiative. Unlike previous years, where the CSM just went ahead and asked people to vote on development ideas and then those ideas being ignored for a few years, this year CCP has actually asked the CSM to go out and determine what people want CCP to work on. A list of reasonable things. Basically they're little things, but with a tad more scope. The CSM has whittled a list of 1300+ suggestions down to 99 suggestions.
(One of the problems with this list, is that there are quite a few items that repeat previously listed items. Changing characters. Logi on killmails. Ship velocity vectors. Fitting increases. Alliance fittings. Clone timers. To name a few, all appear at least twice. I'm not sure why repeats weren't culled from the final list.)
With CCP asking for the list, and the CSM having a reasonable idea of what sorts of things CCP will look at seriously, there's a good chance a large number of these items will make it on to the winter expansion development slate.
We're supposed to choose between one and ninety-nine of the suggestions (the CSM suggests choosing around ten items), arrange them in an order that is important to us, and then submit them to the CSM.
You can read the entire list, as well as links on how to vote and where to vote at the "Reasonable Things" Evelopedia page.

I find #49 the most amazing in the list:

Get rid of the CSM. If they're not actually thinking and promoting issues they have no value left. CCP already pays game designers.

Keywords: csm, useless
Notes: Selected by 4 CSMs: James Arget, mynnna, Sort Dragon and Trebor Daehdoow

This was selected by 4 of the CSM members. 3 of the 4 that I voted for on THIS CSM and I couldn't agree more!

I went to fanfest this year. A lot of people did. All the hype and all the expectation about what was going on that led up to this years fanfest has NOT happened so far. Not even close. A lot of the bloggers out there have not only been  way off on what they THOUGHT Odyssey was going to bring but they are putting themselves out there as "cautiously optimistic" so they do not look bad on what they DO say. Anyone have enough of this sunshine being pumped up our backsides yet?

Now I love reading everything that Poetic Stanziel blogs about. I would say that 50% of the time I agree with him and the other 50% I would pod him if I could. Either way he writes it as he sees it and you have to respect him for that. I think I am going to do a lot more talking with him in the future if he is up to it since I missed him while at fanfest.

For those that were thinking this post is TL:DR here it is for you.

1. NOT happy with how the CSM is telling CCP what we want.
2. NOT happy with this list of 99 items that they say are important, hell, they didn't even fix the list that they posted for duplicate items.
3. NOT happy with CCP handling things lately with a bunch of "little things" and I can see this coming to a head real soon.
4. NOT happy with Odyssey as an expansion. I have passed the 50/50 mark. I am not at 49% approval rating and falling. I might go into a blog on that later but that is not why you guys come here.

Am I excited about the future of Eve Online? What what I have seen in the latest expansion I am only "cautiously optimistic". If you want more details tell me below in the comments.

Eve Fanfest and what it is all about.

 

For the record, I went to Eve Fanfest 2013. He is a picture of myself with CCP KarKur

Do people really go to Fanfest? Yes! Thousands!

 36 degrees - 2C - and very happy people!

 We got their early too!

Queuing lines for Jita?

Lots of Eve fans!

Quafe - the REAL thing!

 CCP Dolan

CSM 7

 CSM 8

 Iceland is a very cool place to visit!

 The Hilton Wormhole

 Reykjavik City

 Reykjavik City

 Reykjavik City

Reykjavik City

Reykjavik City

 Reykjavik City

Reykjavik Hot Dogs RULE!

 This is where the new UI is from.

ROCK MELTER with CCP Xhagen

ROCK MELTER questioning Dr Eyjólfur G

NEED MORE QUAFE

 ROCK MELTER with Trebor Daehdoow

These are just a few of the pictures that I took during Fanfest while I was there. I hope they give you a different perspective of what Fanfest is all about. To me it is is about more then just Internet Spaceships :-)

Eve online - The tale of 2 sandboxes (Part 1 of 2)

Today’s rant is mostly observation on what I have been watching over the last 10 years in Eve online and what I learned first hand at this year’s Fanfest. I think that the trend I am looking at is nothing short of an evolution of MMO game playing.  

Let me explain why and yes this is going to be a long post!

• PvP players. You know who you are. You’re the bastards that try to, and occasionally go catch myself and my corporation members when we are playing poorly :-)
• PvP players. Usually work in teams. In high sec we normally see gangs of 2 to 3 pilots doing successful ganks on the afk miners every day. Sometimes it is larger groups up to 7 players but it gets hard to tell if it is actually 7 players or someone that is ISBoxing it. (1) 
• PvP players. Usually just want to log on, get in a group of like mined people and blow stuff up. The higher the value the better it is for them. The easier it is to blow up makes it even better!
• PvP players. They have changed in what they want to shoot. Will explain in another blog (2)

So now that we have loosely defined how a random but current group of PvP folks operate lets now take a look at the other half.

• PvE players – usually work solo but do it socially. In my corp we talk about eve in both alliance and corporation chat. We sometimes will be mining in the same fields at the same time but we are not really doing it “together” so to speak. There is no dedicated “Veldspar asteroid – POINT!” when your mining this way. We will usually have an Orca (Rorqual) boosting us all through the system and everyone is happy.
• PvE players – when they run missions usually have their main running the mission and their alt cleaning up after them. You might find 2 people actually playing together when they are newer to Eve but as their skills develop this tends to migrate over to a single player play style.
• PvE players – that are in industry will have one alt that is good at trading while another alt is doing the hauling while still a 3^rd or 4^th or 5^th alt is working another region doing the same thing. This is more a single player way of doing this because we have all been taught to play Eve this way. There will be a blog about this as well in the near future. (3)
• PvE players are the players that are playing the game for a reason other than to blow things up. They play longer per day, have long term goals and are for the most part the backbone of Eve’s economy. Without them doing all the above work there would be no PvP.
• PvE players – in some cases are the PvP players that have to do the PvE things so they can afford to do the PvP things that they like.

The above statements would not be accurate without some kind of graph or slide right?

50% play solo
25% play in a group
the other 25% do both.

So what can we draw from the above?

Well the first thing I see is that PvP takes money out of the economy and PvE puts it back in.

What are you talking about? How do you know this?

Time for another slide!

Here is just one item from the beginning of Beta till now. I have this data at home but it was also very nice to see Dr. Eyjólfur G also show the same data :-)

What does this show other then the obvious? It shows you the increase of Tritanium in both price and in volume. As larger ships are introduced to the game, there is a need for more Tritanium. Since there were not enough miners in the game to meed that need the price goes up. Simple economics.

You can see this trend again and again from item to item in Eve. This blog is not about that. I am just trying to justify what I said above with cold hard proof. That is one of the nice things about going to fanfest. You get to see and hear a lot of things that do not make it into Dev Blogs and you also get to spend the time talking with the Devs and ask them direct questions. It is well worth your time if you are that hard core of a player :-)

The next thing I see is that this was not how Eve started. It shows me that it is indeed a sandbox.

ok, ok! Why did I tell you all of this?

Because, Eve HAS changed. It has evolved and while it has evolved its player base has also changed. Players now use Kill boards to rank how well they are playing the game. It is not about the ownership of space or controlling the regions of the game any more. It is about who's kill board is the best. Who has destroyed the most and that is the bottom line.

When you can take a few million ISK in destroyers and add a few hundred million in miner kills to your kill board you view yourself as a winner. That is how the PvP people track their progress. They developed the tools to make sure that they could show how good they are at the game.

Just for clarification, I DO NOT SEE YOU AS A WINNER but I know some of you view yourselves that way. I don't mean any malice in that statement, just stating a fact is all.





I will add more to this theme in later blogs. This one is reaching the "wall of text" that most people try to avoid so I will let you add your comments below. The PvP people have their kill boards as their sandbox. What do the PvE people have? I will write about the PvE Sandbox soon™...

(1)      ISBoxer is software that lets you control all of your accounts with one interface. Interesting software. http://isboxer.com/multiboxing-eve-online

(2)      PvP players are looking for all the low hanging fruit.

(3)      How Eve teaches us to play solo.

New features coming out in Odyssey

Hello everyone,

Today's rant is not one directed at any one person, it is a rant direct at a LOT of people. I made this video at fanfest that goes over a few of the new features that will be coming out in Odyssey. The Dev you hear talking is CCP Soundwave. This video is just over 11 minutes and gives you a little sneak peak in what to expect in the next expansion. This video was on the HD stream for those that purchased it.

Now if you read one of my past rants you will have read why I think that the changes to Ice mining are a GOOD THING. The new scanning system along with the Ice belts respawning every 4 hours after depletion is a GOOD thing for us hard working miners and a bad thing for bots :-)

Now for those folks out there that are saying that CCP has never done this before your wrong. I will take you back to 2006...

I generally don't announce roleplayed news on the forums, but there are times when attention needs to be drawn to them. Some ice fields in high security, high traffic systems will deplete themselves over the coming days, as they were not intended to be in these areas. There are other fields that will suffer the same fate in the near future.

This will have an impact on the ability of smaller corporations and more advanced, new players to generate ISK, but this will also have a (hopefully) major impact on some of the RMT strip mining operations in high-sec space.

Due to caching, some of these depleted ice fields will continue to appear in the client right-click menu. This will be patched out in the near future, but it can also be resolved by clearing your cache. Be warned, clearing your cache can have other effects on your client, such as removing all sorting of bookmarks and other personal settings.

kieron
Community Manager,
EVE Online

So you can see that was step one way back in the day...

I have also said several times in previous blogs that my corp GetCo have been Ice miners since Eve brought Ice to us as something we could interact with. We view these changes as a GOOD thing and so should you.  Ice mining is a way to obtain necessary and useful things from our Eve sandbox. Without mining, POS life and capital ship battles as we know it would not be possible. Too many of the things we must have come from the Ice belts. Isotopes and Liquid Ozone are particularly high on the list. The list goes on....

Who's this CSM member?

He said that he would be watching CCP closely while he is a CSM member. What he did not do was look behind him! We will be watching you too! :-)

I am glad that you made it to CSM8 and I look forward to the energy that you bring to your blogs taken directly to CCP's front door. Good luck to you sir and may you make Eve a better place for all of us!

...and if you screw this up I am gonna be the first to blog about it :-)

As Chicken little would say: “The ICE is falling, the ice is falling”

Actually, as Chicken little SHOULD say: “The Sky is falling, the sky is falling”

For those that do not understand here is a link to the reference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sky_is_Falling

To help the reader along that is not in GetCo and not in our current alliance I will let you know that GetCo offers everyone an "Ice Purchasing Scheme" for their benefit. We pay our members Jita Market prices without having to take all of their products to Jita to sell them. Saves them a lot of time and money in all of the logistics involved with it.

That being said, GetCo was also at this years fanfest. GetCo also spent a lot of time talking with many CCP developers, some of the CSM 7 & 8 members in great depth about the new Ice Mining changes.

Why did/do we do this?

Because we knew that everyone would go into “panic mode” on wide “market speculations". We wanted to make sure that we fully understood what this means to you, how much ISK you can make, and what the REAL bottom lines are. So, in no particular order I will address the things that we see in GetCo as being the GOOD benefits of these changes.

1)    Ice Mining will be twice as fast. This means that you will be able to mine more in the same amount of time then you were before. Bottom line with this? You make more ISK per hour. In the simplest terms. YOU MAKE MORE ISK PER HOUR! THIS IS A GOOD THING!

2)    The belt respawns after being depleted. SO WHAT!!! Ore belts already do this. The difference with the Ore belts is that once they are depleted they do not respawn till after downtime. The ice belts will do it after four hours. THIS IS ALSO A GOOD THING!

3)    The changes they did to the ice mining system by moving it from the static belt to the new scanner system is that it will make it more difficult for ice botters to mine their ice. The changes that they will do will make it easier for CCP to track and then ban them. THIS IS ALSO A GOOD THING!

4)    Ice prices will go up right now and then as everyone figures this out they will go back down to where they were before all this panic started. There is no need to panic and if you want to cash in on all the crazy speculation then be all means be our guest. We will not be taking part in all the shenanigans.

So for those that were TL:DR

GetCo will most likely start the operations again for all of you on July 5th. That is when we believe that the markets and the silly speculators will have finished with their silly willy ways.
…and before you say “but how can you be sure of all of this”?

GetCo has been mining ICE since ICE was introduced into Eve online. It is what we do. Between what we know and when we spoke to CCP Developer Dr. Eyjólfur G. (EVE's chief economist) he confirmed it. You can see ROCK MELTER asking him (and the CSM members) questions to that and other questions on the recorded fanfest streams.

Missile changes REV 3

ok, time for a different direction for a rant today. This is a topic that my corp GetCo and I will have once every quarter it seems. We always start talking about it and by the end of it we are all somewhat mad at how things have progresses on this topic. If I get positive feedback on this rant it will become a regular feature.

So what made me decide to write about it today? Well I was over at Poetic Stanziel reading the latest blog and nodding as I was reading it. Usually do when I am reading over there. You should follow them if your into that internet spaceship reading and stuff. Anyways, here is the snippet that really caught my attention.

It has annoyed me to no end that CCP has refused to release the voting numbers on a day-by-day basis, as they did last year. I'm not sure what the fuck CCP's problem is with releasing information like this, but every year they get more secretive and stingy with information they used to be free with.

Remember when they used to release their quarterly reports? And then they stopped? Remember when they used to tell us subscriber numbers, and now when they tell us, it includes China. Now it's the voting numbers that are sekrit importunt numbers, and all we get are coy and frustrating remarks from CSM reps who have seen the numbers (and hint that they're promising.) I would be surprised if CCP gave us the percentage of voters to subscribers this year, because that does tell us subscription numbers.

And CCP Dolan is downright frustrating as well. For a dude that is managing the CSM project, a player-represented project, he should be more available to players via Twitter and the forums. If the dude is being given a community representative job, then he should make himself available to the community to answer questions. He did a fucking great interview with Xander, don't get me wrong, and he seems like a nice guy, but beyond that he's been the invisible man.

So at least you know what got me on today's path :-p

1. CCP being more secretive with the numbers is something that the CSM should address and get us a solid answer on.
2. Quarterly reports are something that my corp would have light meetings on. What to plan for the next quarter, what we all see as the trends. It needs to be back more often.
3. CSM being cryptic is something that we need to get them to stop doing NOW.
4. I bet your right. We will only get the percentage of voters and not the actual numbers.
5. CCP Dolan as the community representative makes as much sense to me as CCP Unifex leaving to go to the mobile decision. I just don't think either one of those decisions were very well thought out.So those are my thoughts on what they wrote. What about our thoughts over here at GetCo? Well I'm glad you asked!

Since everyone seems to be happy about the new cruise missile changes I just wanted to let you know something. GetCo isn't happy! Why you might ask my young eve player? Because this is going back to what they game used to be like in 2005! Behold the "COLD WAR" edition!

That is when they first seriously nerved the Raven. They promised way back then that they would be tweaking it later. This is 8 years later! Damn CCP! This is where they did their first serious nerfs to the missile system. Here is how they put it:

Missile Warfare: Faster flight times, target-velocity to payload-ratio-damage-output factoring, introduction of new skills to specialize in missile usage proficiency

This totally took the Caldari battleships out of the PvP arena and you have never seen a Raven in PvP since. They continue to use today's ideas and mechanics on the Future's missile designs. I am telling you CCP has no idea how missiles work in real life or in Eve. That was Rev 1.

Their second attempt and tackling this problem and nerfing it ever more was obvious to us when they tried to pass it off as a fix - buff.  [Winter] Missile Rebalance 2.0 2012.09.18 Google doc with numbers for the affected missiles. This also was a very poor attempt at fixing the root problem. To the best of my eve notes, docs, pdfs and everything I have created over the years this is still not even close to where the game used to be EVEN after including the new cruise missile changes in Rev 3. I know this for a fact since I use to run the old school plexes in Pure Blind in a Raven when I ran the NEC Alliance. 

ROCK MELTER, you done and gone hit your head on dem rocks your a melting one to many times. I have not read ANY dev blog on any cruise missile changes.

What the hell am I talking about? WHAT THE HELL AM I RANTING ABOUT?!?!?

It is not in a dev blog. It is in the official forums. You will have to be logged in but you can read all about the changes here. Go ahead! I'll wait, need to refresh my drink anyways...

Yes, NOT in a Dev Blog. How nice. How quaint. We have already discussed in the past how less then 20% of the people that play eve read the forums. So lets post some game information that people might find useful where 80% of the people don't know it exists. Brilliant!

You know, CCP wants us to write about the last 10 years of the game. I don't think they understand what they are asking here. Today's post is just one of at LEAST a hundred that I can talk about on how CCP keeps micro managing the game, breaking it and then taking in this case 8 years to try to address the problem. Do they really know what they just asked me to do? I seriously doubt it, but now that the genie is out there will be more blogs like today's. I can't wait to see how this pans out with the CSM or even if it gets mentioned.

<As ROCK MELTER walks away shaking his head he can be heard mumbling something about wanting his Mission Raven back>

Executive Producer for the second decade of EVE Online

OK, time for a prediction!

In today's Dev blog we hear about CCP Unifex leaving the position of Executive Producer and heading to the mobile division. This does not sound like a promotion to me but what the hell do I know? I'm a miner! So on with the facts that I do know.

The following are CCP Unifex CSM Winter Summit notes starting on page 3. Happy James315? I am quoting things just like you are now. Not to bad for the care bear miner you want to kill right?

"It wasn't until Exodus that Unifex personally felt “we really had a game” but that it was still a game that appealed to hardcore players who could look past the flaws to enjoy the experience. In fact, the hardcore will always look past flaws. Despite that, “we're a different company these days”, one that Unifex describes as finally in a place where they can build to a vision, essentially building the game “the way it should be, not the way circumstances forced it to be”. Pulling this off has required some shifts in focus and procedure, Unifex explained, adding that they're taking the time to write a new roadmap for helping them build EVE through the next decade."

"There are some things that I hope never change in EVE – It is a dark game; it is a game of consequences; it is a game of tough choices and social interaction. It is a game of pain; it is a game of joy; it is a game of extreme emotions. I would never change EVE from that. But that doesn't mean that it has to have a spreadsheet UI, it doesn’t mean that EVE has to be what it's been the last 10 years. There are certain things that we need to maintain what EVE needs to be, and if we were to all sit down I think we would find ourselves in violent agreement about what they are."

"If we don't have a goal, if we don't have something that is aspirational, there are competitors out there that are going to challenge us. There are players who will say, ‘you know what? You're no longer shooting for the stars’. One of the things that has become clear to me throughout Crucible, Inferno, and Retribution, is that it’s not the way we have done our best expansions."

Now we will switch over the the transcription of the PAX video where he was ranting from the heart and off script. What is the PAX Video you talk about?

Well Jester was on the ball on this one and here is a quote from his blog that gives credit where credit is due.

"So, sirunidan was on-the-ball enough to take pictures of the display screen at PAX East during CCP Unifex's presentation on what we can expect from Odyssey.  Here's the first six pages.  Here's the second six.

Now that you have caught up on the past news I want to center on a few things that BUST CCP Unifex on what he said in the CSM Minutes.

If you go to the 2 minute mark in the video he says:

"eve is not supposed to be a about a place of equilibrium it about people fighting other things"

and at the 5:30 mark he says:

"we don't want to be where we are right now, we want to make a step change".

Then there is another PAX East video you can watch that has some good info at the 5 minute mark. CCP Unifex says:

"How do we change the resource balance across the world? ...we want to cause ripples..."

So there is more proof if people were looking for it. More proof is always better :-)

Final quote, an oldie but a goodie.

Posted - 2011.03.27 20:37:00 - [2]
Edited by: Cyaxares II on 27/03/2011 20:47:01

as an update to my previous post:

In July 2008 CCP had to publish an overview of its finances as part of a bond offering.

    Quote:Major Shareholders

    At the date of this Prospectus there were 97 shareholders in CCP. The ten largest shareholders owned a total
    of 97.9% of the CompanyFs issued share capital.

    NP ehf 33.99
    Teno Investments S.-.R.L 17.21
    Reynir Har=arson 11.37
    Arion safnreikningur 5.60
    Matthfas Gu=mundsson 3.72
    Hilmar Veigar PTtursson 2.82
    Novator ehf 2.56
    Frosti Sigurj=nsson 2.44
    Fri=rik +rn Haraldsson 2.42
    Gu=mundur Kristinsson ehf 2.39
    Ten largest 84.52
    Other 87 shareholders 15.48


NP ehf & Novator ehf belong to Mr. Bjorgolfsson who is broke and has agreed to forward any dividends/proceeds from his CCP shares to a consortium of banks which he owes money.

A little more up-to-date information on CCP shareholders is found here: http://www.dv.is/frettir/2010/10/16/eve-online-malar-gull-fyrir-ccp/ (Google Translate)

The fact that CCP did not issue a dividend does of course imply a strong desire to grow (and puts some pressure on CCP to make sure share value does indeed grow appropriately).

So what does this tell you ROCK MELTER?

Here are my thoughts along with my prediction.

First, CCP Seagull is being fully supported by CCP's shareholders on her current tasks as head of product development. Since the summer of rage CCP has learned that if they screw ip it can cost them dearly. This is why they had the layoffs, this is why we have had cut backs in the game and this is something that CCP wants to avoid at all costs.

Second, CCP Can not be subjective. He says in the Retribution was not a good expansion but in the videos he does. He is just like CCP Soundwave in that regard and can never stay on script. There are more but I digress.

Third, he has not done a good job as Executive Producer. From what I understand about corporate life at CCP this is a normal thing for them. You do a job one year, you move to another job the next year, life goes on, have another beer. I do not see it like that. Mobile division? Even with Crest API coming out this is still a demotion.

Fourth, he mentions a little here and a little there that there are going to be changes. Specifically that the next 10 years will be different.

Prediction:

Alliance will run from the bottom up model The days of the GSW State of the Goonion message are going to be limited at first and eventually in a perfect world destroyed.

Moon mining REV2. It worked for POS's right? There are several theories on how this will work. Final implementation will be seen in Odyssey.

Local destabilized in Null to work the same way as the current wormhole mechanic

Finally new corporation UI that will allow all of us Enablers and Instigators that CCP Seagull loves to help CCP make this game that much more of a hook for those that have not played it yet.

I have said it before and I will say it again. I am a LURKER! I am also an enabler and instigator. That is the one group that she needs to understand better :-)

Finally SOME honesty from James 315

Time for another rant. This weekend is proving to be a good one for them. Fasten your seat belt because this one comes from James315. You can read the 3 page post over at TMC but you will most likely get bored with the same old same old from him. It was the end of page 3 that caught my attention.

It's true that emergent gameplay is created by the few, not the many. And there will always be more carebears than risk creators, because as easy as critics say piñata-bursting is, it's far easier to PvE. However, EVE does not exist primarily for the purpose of allowing people to mine and run missions in highsec. In my humble opinion, PvE is merely a facilitator for the more interesting and unique aspects of the game. This is still the case if carebears flock to the game and push PvP'ers into the minority. As the PvE-only population grows, that opinion be increasingly elitist and politically incorrect, but not less true.
James 315
MinerBumping.com

So lets cover this point by point:

1. It's true that emergent gameplay is created by the few, not the many.This is 100% true James. What you have always failed to realize is that you are not in the emergent game play division. You sir are 100% griefer
2. There will always be more carebears than risk creatorsThis is also 100% true James! There have always been more care bears in Eve and there always will be. They are the #1 subscription base in Eve Online and where CCP makes their money.
   
3. PvE is merely a facilitator for the more interesting and unique aspects of the game.Again, your 100% right! PvE weather it is mining, mission running, exploration or industry is what makes up the bulk of what people do in Eve Online. Very interesting indeed!
   
4. This is still the case if carebears flock to the game and push PvP'ers into the minority.Ahh, you got this one wrong though James. PvPer's have never been in the majority. You show me a successful null sec alliance and I will show you a group of people that either have a ton of their own alts working back in Empire to support their needs or a ton of renter corps that are doing the same High sec stuff they need. The PvE'ers have ALWAYS been the dominant force in Eve and now that CCP Seagull is tasked with getting eve subscriptions up you can guarantee what you said next is going to happen.
   
5. As the PvE-only population grows, that opinion be increasingly elitist and politically incorrect, but not less true. The PvE population has already been there since the beginning of the game James. I should know, I have been there with them. Watching all of your PvP'ers go around stomping your feet always making a ruckus. You complain on the official Eve forums. You complain on your own forums. You make taken to creating websites like yours and blogging to whomever will listen to get your message out there.
   
   The truth behind it James is that your are the minority. Your the 20% the reads the forums, blogs, writes for himself, your website and even TMC. You have never been the voice for people out there and you will never be.
   
   SAY IT ISN'T SO ROCK MELTER!!!!
   
   Not only is that the truth, I am and always have been in the 80% group of PvE'rs. We are the bread and butter of what makes CCP's game work. So much so that as you always like to quote "If you read the CSM Minutes"...blah blah blah you see that CCP is now seriously looking at ways of increasing those numbers. I mean lets get real here ok? After the Summer of Rage scared the hell of our CCP who could blame them right?

So in the end of this blog your improving James315! Your at a 60% approval rate with the ol' ROCK MELTER here. I wouldn't let you join my corp but there is still hope for you in the future :-)

How does Eve Traffic Control Work? Part 1

Durin­g peak travel times in Jita, there are about 5,000 pilots in the system every hour. This translates to approximately 100,000 ships jumping in and out of that system each day. How do these ships keep from colliding with each other? How does gate traffic move into and out of an system or across the region? These are questions GetCo has sought the answers to ever since Concord lost control of everything when their station was destroyed in Yulai.

The task of ensuring safe operations of commercial and private ships falls on concord controllers. They must coordinate the movements of thousands of ships, keep them at ­safe distances from each other, direct them during decloaking and landing from gates, direct them around bad nodes and ensure that traffic flows smoothly with minimal delays.

When you think about Concord traffic control, the image of men and women in the control room of an gate probably comes to mind. However, the Concord gate traffic control system is much more complex than that. In this article, we will examine air traffic control in the Yulai system in the region of Genesis. Since GetCo has an office in this station and we were there when they were attacked we decided to do a study on this to learn what Concord would not tell us. We'll follow a ship from departure to arrival, looking at the various controllers involved, what each one does, the equipment they use and how they are trained.

Empire High Security Space Traffic Control

­Concord High Sec space is divided into 22 zones (regions), and each zone is divided into many different systems. Also within each zone are portions of space, about 5000 miles (8046.72 km) in diameter, called TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach CONtrol) spaces. Within each TRACON space are a number of control towers just like the one in Yulai, each of which has its own space with a 50-mile (80-km) radius.

­The traffic control system, which is run by CONCORD, has been designed around these space divisions. The traffic control system divisions are:

• Space Traffic Control System Command Center (STCSCC) - The STCSCC oversees all traffic control. It also manages traffic control within centers where there are problems (solar storms, traffic overloads, Sansha Incursions).
• Space route traffic control centers (SRTCC) - There is one SRTCC for each center. Each SRTCC manages traffic within all sectors of its center except for TRACON space and local gate space.
• Terminal radar approach control - TRACON handles departing and approaching spacecraft within its space.
• Space traffic control tower (STCT) - An STCT is located at every spaceport that has regularly scheduled flights. Towers handle all docking, undocking, and ground traffic thanks to all of the DUST 514 mercs.
• Flight service station (FSS) - The FSS provides information (weather, route, terrain, flight plan) for private pilots flying into and out of small spaceports and rural areas. It assists pilots in emergencies and coordinates search-and-rescue operations for missing or overdue spacecraft.

The movement of spacecraft through the various space divisions is much like players moving through a "zone" defense that a basketball or football team might use. As an aircraft travels through a given space division, it is monitored by the one or more space traffic controllers responsible for that division. The controllers monitor this spacecraft and give instructions to the pilot. As the spacecraft leaves that space division and enters another, the space traffic controller passes it off to the controllers responsible for the new space division.

Some pilots, Mercs mostly, of small aircraft fly by vision only (visual flight rules, or VFR). These pilots are not required by the Concord to file flight plans and, except for FSS and local towers, are not serviced by the mainstream space traffic control system. Pilots of large commercial flights use instruments to fly (instrument flight rules, or IFR), so they can fly in all sorts of weather. They must file flight plans and are serviced by the mainstream air traffic control system. Your normal capsuleer does not have to deal with these problems so far.

We have explained what we have learned so far from the current system In the next post in this series we will discuss what we have learned and explain what they all means since the dawn of the Empyrean Age.