The CSM7 Winter Summit minutes...

This is going to be a long rant post about my thoughts and observations of the CSM7 Winter Summit minutes. I printed them out, made comments all through the document and waited to see what other Eve players had to comment about it. Now that they have had their time in the limelight it is time to give this bitter vet's view...

Eve Online - The Next Decade

I am going to make a bulleted lists of the things that I found of interest in this section. Then comment on them afterwards.

• CCP Unifex states the following and it is not taken out of context.
  
  • 1. "the hardcore will always look past the flaws"
  • 2. "it is a game of social interaction"
  • 3. "there are competitors out there that are going to challenge us"

• CCP Seagull states the following and it is not taken out of context.
• 4. "looking at each player group being served"
• 5. "Instigators & Enablers"
• 6. "What is this Lurker? They constitute a lot of our accounts"

All of the current CSM7 members commented on their thoughts on what was said by these 2 developers in this section of the minutes. For the most part I agree with them. Mostly. Now onward to ROCK's ranks about this...

First, I disagree with the statement 1. Are you kidding me?! There are features that were the selling point of this game brought up over a decade ago that are still not in the game! Want a list?

1. Interbus - Where is it? It was supposed to be in the game during BETA and has yet to be instituted. Interbus was going to be the NPC freight mover in the game. You buy something in game and they would ship it to where ever you wanted it to go. For a fee of course.
2. Ghost training - IT WAS A FEATURE! They advertised the game with this FEATURE that they took out in pursuit of more MONEY!
3. Bounty hunting - Yes, it WAS a skill book! There were many other skill books that were removed from the game in the early days. Thoughts of the bounty system were way back in BETA and failed all the way to recently. The skill increased the bounties you received. 
4. Another skill book was DED Connections which also disappeared about that time period.
5. The Black market skill book has been unavailable since they changed the start to 800k skill points. I had that skill trained on a couple of my first accounts.

Now on to statement 2. Eve is a game of "social interaction". Yes it is, but it is ALSO a sandbox.

Most of my corporation "GetCo's" members are SINGLE players. They log onto Eve and do lots of things by themselves. There can be ten of us online for 4 hours on a Saturday or Sunday at the same time and other then saying hello and goodby to people as then come and go there is hardly any corp chat. Yes, we use voice coms a lot to talk to each other but we are not interacting WITH each other in game. Now don't get me wrong, we also mine together, A LOT! but lest say for arguments sake that it is a 50/50 split. I log onto Eve to unwind and relax. If I do it solo I am fine with that. I do not need others to make this game enjoyable for myself.

Statement 3 is a good one. There is the new Planetside that people are looking into but I have already subscribed to Star Citizen. Why you might ask? It will be another space MMO and of course I will be in the BETA in that and work from there on it. A lot of the features that were in the game I played before Eve (Earth & Beyond) have made it into Eve. So I expect to see some of Eve in Star Citizen and if Star Citizen takes off expect some of what makes that game special come into Eve.

Statement 4 is also a interesting statement. "looking at each player group being served". With CCP also stating that new releases were going to be in a different format it will be curious how they intend to pull this off. They have never been good at this in the past. Lets see if Seagull can pull it off. My ISK is on the simple fact of "not in a million years". When you have players that form groups that make the largest alliance in the game on the CSM, there is NOT going to be a CCP and CSM agreement on this. Stay tuned for lots of finger pointing with CSM8.

Ah, statement 5. The "Instigators & Enablers" idea. Now THIS is something that sparked my interest. As the CEO of my corp and a past alliance leader of the NEC I found this to be VERY interesting. Since I am both a "Instigator & Enabler" for everything I do in Eve online I spend a lot of time OUTSIDE of the game planning things for everyone to do. Then I had these things off to my directors OUTSIDE of the game via real world emails and then log into game to do my own things. So the "social" aspect for me in game does not exist since I spend a majority of my time OUTSIDE the game setting it up for others.

Now is also a good time to add the answer that was one of Crossing Zebras questions for the CSM candidates. Can I give the 20 or more hours a week to the CSM if elected to do the job to the best of my ability? You bet I can! I have spoken over this with my family and they fully support me on this. I am going to Fanfest this year to start getting the feel for everything, take lots of notes and start to do all the networking that will be required to be a very good CSM member.

Next, statement 6. "What is this Lurker? They constitute a lot of our accounts". This is something that the current CSM could not answer at all. They didn't even try! CCP Seagull did not even go into detail on what she thought this was. Well folks, I'll let you in on the big secret that no one wants to talk about. No one wants you to know about it either. Who are the lurkers?!?

The "bitter vets" like myself ARE the LURKERS!

So for the record you have:

1. Instigators
   "are players who have plans, who want to do things, to make an impact on the universe. They are the ones will go and organize people, or inspire people, to go do things. There's always someone starting it. There's always someone that says, ‘I'm going to have THAT’."
   
   
2. Enablers
   "are the people who make the logistics for these large-scale things actually work. They are people who run mad spreadsheets to organize production lines for war efforts, they are people who manage roles and membership of big corporations and alliances, they build tools to do different tasks. And we kind of have a history of treating these people like…shit. We put these people through a lot of painful, unnecessary work."
   
   
3. Lurkers
   "*stands up* Hello....my name *clears throat* is ROCK MELTER... And uhh *shuffles feet* I am a lurker..."
   
   Any rate, I really don't know why I use to lurk in the shadows . I guess I just feel I didn't really have any conversation to contribute to the whole Eve community. I usually cruise the forums and blogs once or twice a day. I agree with a lot of you that there's been a bunch of mean/whining posts, but overall the forums are a really good resource. I've made some good meta gaming decisions based on the information provided here. Though I have started blogging, very slowly, recently. I guess there's something to contribute after all.
   
   Want a clue how to spot lurkers? Go to your alliance forums or corporations forums. NOT the Official Eve Forums. Why you ask? Because on most Corp or Alliance forums it shows you the members that are viewing the forums. Take a look at that list. There may be one or two that are actuall posters on the forums. The others? They could be members for 10 years and never made a post. They read the forums every day, are always online but never get involved. There is one clue on how to spot your lurkers.
   
   Want more in depth insight about Lurkers Seagull? I am at your disposal.
   
   
4. Players
   "are the people that are none of the 3 above" For lack of an accurate number on this and I know CCP is working on this right now, I would say is 90% of the total number of players.
   

 So what are you?