Jade Constantine
Jericho Fraction
The Star Fraction
2728
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Posted - 2012.08.03 16:05:00 -
[1] - Quote
I liked both Seleene and Soundwave's quotes on the problem with conflict drivers "Currently things are like a bunch of fat people fighting over how gets to eat first at the GÇÿall you can eatGÇÖ buffet, no one will starve, it is just the question of who is first in the line." and "it sounded like if everyone lived in complete misery in EVE, it would be a better game?" But I didn't see much evidence of CCP/CCP being prepared to look at making the misery necessary to get conflict moving again.
I generally liked the Starbase discussion, and especially the jump drive concept. Mobile bases for small raiding entities is something the game has needed for a very very long time.
I liked the CSM approach to UI / Unified inventory discussion. They did a good job of representing player concerns there.
Nullsec discussions were a bit depressing, mainly because it appears there is no will (resources) or imagination to actually do anything about the stasis and boring endgame.
Crimewatch stuff (for heavens sake just make it happen already.)
Wardec discussion was universally terrible - mainly due to lack of experience / bias on the part of CSM reps (though CCP side of things was generally pretty boring with a lack of ideas and vision for the wardec system)
Seems the paid allied deal was Two Steps while Karde/Hans wanted limited ally slots. In this respect seems that earlier reports of the CSM completely disagreeing with Soundwave's "solution" were false. Though it does appear that the "unlimited / paid" allies delivered by Inferno 1.1 melds the most unpopular aspects of both sides! Ah well, handled all this stuff previously in numerous other threads - best thing to be said about this section in the minutes is I know who I definitely won't be voting for in the next CSM elections.
On Faction Warfare - Soundwave wanting one size fits all plexes was poor, good to see it was argued against. In general though the discussion was decent, Hans did a fair job. Elise was terrible (as expected though, and should really stick to nullsec blobfest only feedback). Good stuff later on the FW UI improvements.
I had to laugh at Soundwave's comment about the FW feature only being live for a week so morale issues had to wait for more data after the knee-jerk agreement to nerf the heck out of wardec allies after the same period mind.
Surprisingly Two Step said something I agreed with on the bonus LP for pvp kills for the losing faction though. I to think that would be a good idea.
With regard to Soundwave's "dreamy idea" of non-aligned players being able to remove FW systems I have to say: please leave it alone. After the fiasco of the wardec function in Inferno 1.0 / 1.1 - I don't think Soundwave should have anything to do with the design on FW - leave it to Ytterbium.
Art discussion was okay - Kelduum was a dog for suggesting Aurum payment for corp logos on ships though.
Ship balance discussion was decent. On the whole I continue to be impressed by CCP Ytterbium.
Rest of it pretty reasonable.
***
Most disappointing aspect of the minutes for me is the way they show there seems to be relatively little actually on the table for the winter 2012 release with some very important things seeming to retreat into the misty distance of some time next year. These including the extremely vital issues of technetium, 0.0 stasis and even potentially crimewatch and lowsec boosting. I got the impression that core eve development still doesn't have that much manpower devoted to it and while CCP is doing a much better job of marketing the few assets they have on Eve this year there is still an unspoken impression of massive development priority elsewhere on non-core-eve projects.
Winter 2013 for ring mining seems ridiculously far in the future for such an important issue.
On the whole though.
Two Step and Trebor worked hard and while I don't have a great deal of time for some of Two Step's positions he is at least engaged. I thought everyone was pretty horrible on the wardec discussion so its difficult to single anyone out there - perhaps the blame does need to rest on Soundwave because he did seem to join two bad solutions together to make a super bad solution, but he certainly wasn't helped by short-sighted and selfish CSM feedback on the issue.
Hans tried pretty hard on FW issues (which almost makes up for my criticism of him on wardecs).
Seleene actually did a decent job as chair I think.
Still I can't shake the nagging feeling that whats in the pipeline for winter is not actually that much or particularly exciting. Seleene said it best in the opening section about waiting for the "money shot". I didn't really see it.
Perhaps the starbase feature will be absolutely incredible and change a whole lot of gameplay at various levels of eve and make it all worth while. Perhaps. But after seeing "war" trumpeted as the centerpiece for Inferno only to be represented by increased dec fees and a nerfed ally system I'm a bit doubtful.
Still, it was good to see all this detail end of the day, and it will definitely help people to make a more informed choice of who to vote for in the next CSM elections. So that's a positive. Shame really we can't elect who from CCP we'd like to make chief designer at the same time /joking.
The True Knowledge is that nothing matters that does not matter to you, might does make right and power makes freedomInferno Wardecs - Shoot Goons for FREE $300,000 dollars :(-á |