BB74 — Fanfest Nerdboner

The Most Important Reveal at Fanfest Was……

So when this Blog Banter goes live Fanfest will be over. Hungover geeks from around the world will be departing Reykjavik after a five-day binge of important internet spaceships and partying. Whether you were there in person, watched the streams or read the dev blogs on your mobile hidden under your work desk there was probably something in there that gave you a “nerd-boner”. What for you personally was the most important thing to come out of Fanfest 2016?

CCP Ghost

CCP Ghost introduced himself to us through his fascination with the workings of the human brain, in particular his own. This fascination has led him on a curious career path, which you can learn more about through his presentation. He has been recruited by CCP to help keep new players onboard. In his own words, he studied the mechanics and community of EVE and realised, “Holy Shit!” This was an amazing opportunity which he decided he couldn’t turn away.

[OOC] Fanfest 2016 Calendars

Here are a bunch of calendars for you to subscribe to. Copy the URL then subscribe using your calendar application. They aren't clickable because clicking them doesn't achieve much.

Art Track: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/1rabl908tr9cai8l0h6lddt1lg%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Community Track: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/9hfro3daqfpq635cjkr9fkbpks%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

(Third Party) Developer Track: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/080i7hr7jdbi8casvn0te7og04%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Development Track: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/mqb5ghn14q1fudor3ni56egjd4%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Engagement Track: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/qqv78o6po09fstlpv9n2d8kul8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Official Track: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/1qfhkspvc0oag5mfkpmj1f1uls%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Player Track: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/20is2ncnjfv274orv9r7khimcg%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Special Events: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/hq9juqptg0stlh4k8q3p8eosuc%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

VR Track: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/jf045n1mhm0kbl0mubpdpv1820%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Biomass

What is the difference between a mortuary and a cloning facility?
Gotcha! It’s a trick question. In that last couple of decades, the process of cloning has had to be optimised significantly in order to serve the richest, most prolific and most demanding customers - Capsuleers.

BB#60 Metrics

Jakob Anedalle of Jakob’s Eve Checklist blog asks:

With Phoebe about to land, CSM Minutes now out, and more of CCP Seagull’s vision from Eve Vegas it appears CCP has a bold roadmap, is making big changes, and is willing to take a hit in the short term to see it through. What do you see as the measurable signs that will tell us that they’ve succeeded? What outcome will we see as players? Is it concurrent player count or something else?

My take on this is simple: if we're having more fun, the expansion was a success. If there are more folks in nullsec having honest-to-goodness fights, blowing up capitals and super capitals, if there are more people from hisec poking their heads into lowsec, nullsec and w-space, if there are more people deciding that losing ships isn't the end of the world, then it will be a success.

Encouraging people to venture into danger is as much about controlling the negative PR (the toxic atmosphere of starter corps where people are told horror stories of perma-red gate camps on every lowsec entrance, PL hot drops on frigates doing exploration, and other such nonsense) as it is about providing something interesting to do.

Which means that it's really down to the players to encourage other players to join them in lowsec.

What are you doing to make this expansion a success?

Me? I'm heading out to lowsec for exploration and hauling.

Blog Banter #58 — Money

"SHOW ME THE MONEY!" - Jerry Maguire The SOMERBlink fiasco from last summer and then again this summer (link: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=367505), resulting in the service's ultimate shutdown has opened the floor to the discussion or monetization of services once again. Do you think CCP was right in its reaction? Was SOMERBlink justified in trying to monetize its service via plex sales kickbacks? Was it true RMT or grey area RMT? More generally, where is the line to be drawn when a service attempts to monetize in order to offset costs and/or make a profit? Is asking for donations in Real Life cash too far (I realize CCP considers it unacceptable right now)? Selling non-EVE trademarked goods acceptable? Asking for money to pay for efforts in setting up EVE meetups? Should these all be scrutinized? And should you want to dig deeper, should players be allowed to reverse redeem plex for cash? Does this already not exist in programs like Plex for fanfest packages or video cards? Is it right?

The film Jerry Maguire starred Tom Cruise, famous for being a crazy person who plays shallow, selfish characters in movies.

Catching up on the Forums

CCP Mining Operation

CCP held a mining operation for rookie pilots. The folks from Snigwaffe paid a visit and performed a fail-gank to help relieve the boredom. TheMrFunday posted some pictures of the event via Reddit.

Genolution 'Auroral' AU-79 Reminder

Just a reminder to folks: if you unplug the Genolution 'Auroral' AU-79 implant, you lose it forever.

Does EVE Need New Players?

The perennial complaint about hisec wardec corps not picking on people their own size resurfaces for the entertainment of us all!

Rubicon 1.2 Issues

The Rubicon 1.2 issues thread has reports of the following:

• unable to log on (a fix is suggested)
• (fixed in Rubicon 1.2.1 ) courier contracts, asset window, and distribution missions were reporting bizarre distances and lowsec warnings due to a change in CCP's route-finding code
• some people are having problems with shortcut keys for flying in space commands such as orbit, approach, etc
• some asteroid belts have moved around due to a correction of map data, so a bookmark to asteroid belt 4 might actually take you to asteroid belt 2: it's the belt that has moved, not your bookmark
• waypoint display is adding extra symbols for systems that are waypoints in a longer route
• missile smoke trails are still missing

The Mythical Social Wall

This is a response to Ripard Teg's "Prepare for Staging"

I suspect the "social wall" is an imaginary construct created by an economist to explain psychology which he doesn't understand.

As a casual gamer (sure, I'm logged in to EVE for several hours a day some days, but I'm rarely at the keyboard for three hours nonstop) I play in fits and spurts. This is anathema to forming lasting social connections: the best WoW guilds and EVE groups I've been part of had a core of social people with a retinue of coconspirators who would provide the necessary "social inertia" to keep the group running when the core were temporarily away.

My main examples of "overcoming the social wall" are casual and hardcore raiding guilds from World of Warcraft: you'd start conversations with people in the area that you were questing, people you were running PUGs with, or met through other means. Then you'd find that you have a similar interest and playtime, so you'd start looking for them the next time you played. Eventually you'd end up recruiting them for your guild.

CSM 8 Summer 2013 Minutes: Language Support and the CSM

This is a modified version of the transcript supplied in the CSM-authored minutes.

Session 21: Language Support and the CSM

CSM present: Mangala Solaris, Sala Cameron (via Lync)
CPM present: Hans Jagerblitzen, Nova Knife (via Lync)
CCP present: CCP Leeloo (Russian), CCP Azalea (Japanese), CCP Phantom (German), CCP Vesna Prishla (Russian)

Note: This session is presented in modified transcript format as an experiment. We welcome your feedback.

[Scene: a comfortable meeting hall in a Jovian station. Panoramic views along one side show the station undock and the near face of the planet the station is anchored to. The planet is a post-garden temperate world, it looks very sick]

Leeloo: Why we are here: Language Support & the CSM.
Leeloo: How many CSM can speak other languages?
Trebor: I speak Japanese, very very badly.
Ali Aras: Sala Cameron & Chitsa Jason speak other languages.
Leeloo: How many of you participate in the localised community forums?

<silence>

Mike Azariah: [to Sala Cameron] do you do localised forums?
Sala Cameron: [shakes head sagely] I do not use the german forums.
Leeloo: If you do have a language ability, we would like to see more of the CSM take time to communicate on the localised forums with non-english speakers.
Vesna Prishlahantom: A lot of folks on the official Russian forums would love to speak to Korvin for example.
Korvin: I don't use that forum much, people tend to use eve.ru or evemail me directly.
Leeloo: You can use that forum though, initiate threads and so on
Korvin: I would not want to do that, I would prefer people to use the mediums they like. As right now EVEO is not a user-friendly forum.
Ripard Teg: [nods his agreement, and leans forward eagerly to contribute] I agree! The forums are not particularly user-friendly, and some of the misfeatures of the current forum software are really quite painful to deal with!
Trebor: What you should ask is "how many of the English speakers are forum users?"
Ripard Teg: I use the official forums through need not choice, there are better resources out there.
Leeloo: What in your opinion do you think is wrong with the localised forums? Why do people not participate? Is it due to the localised languages lacking a large audience or the forum software?
Korvin: The organisation, software - rep system, linking pictures, navigation are all issues on EVEO.
Trebor: Notification system never works correctly.
Ripard Teg: Its esoteric, little flag in the corner, works when it wants.
Korvin: Unofficial forums are open to all, EVEO use is locked behind a sub, so people tend to use unofficial forums when they have questions when they are not subscribed.
Leeloo: Do you think it is the rules of the forums being too strict, which causes people to stay away?
Mynnna: Rules overall are fine. Notes that he has seen some valid arguments that the rules too strict on SOME of the forums, ie stricter rules killed COAD but mostly they are good enough.
Leeloo: What can you say about the localised sections? Do not have many of them so they have more stricter rules that apply to all. What could CCP change?
Korvin: The main reasons to use EVEO localised forums are the official translations of CCP News that are posted there, or to address CCP about issues users may have or indeed just to shout at localised community representatives hoping they bring any issues to CCP themselves.
Korvin: This is not what forums should be, they should be used by players to communicate with each other, and they are not suitable for this right now.
Phantom: The German, Japanese & Russian playerbase is around 25% of total subs right now. This is a decent amount of players. From using the localised forums I know for example that the German players are interested in industry, science and all that stuff. A lot of interesting ideas are posted on the localised forums, I think it would be beneficial to CSM & CCP to listen to those ideas.
Phantom: On the localised forums, the community representatives read these good ideas, chase feedback and bring that to the developers and say "hey this is feedback on x or y idea". Or they read a question on the English sections, that is similar to a question asked on the localised forums, the community reps can then take any answer from the English sections, and link/post it to the localised forums. However this does not work in the reverse that well. Players who use the localised forums have questions/feedback but it becomes difficult to get to the developer to give answers on the localised areas due to the language barrier.
Phantom: it would be good to get the CSM to step in & say "okay, we have discussed x or y, this is known and so on".
Leeloo: Do you read a lot of localised forums?
Korvin: I check them from time to time just to see if new things are there he may have missed elsewhere, but only because I am on the CSM.
Leeloo: So you have some kind of summary in your head you can give to developers, discuss then return to players with feedback?
Korvin: Sure
Mike Azariah: I note that Phantom said those 3 localised communities make up 25% of the subs. Do they make up 25% of the forum activity?
[Indistinct murmur from the crowd of observers]: no
Mike Azariah: Thats what I was afraid of. The localised forums are not dead, but withering on the vine.
Phantom: On the German forum, there are maybe 20-25 posters that contribute the most. Very limited interaction there.
Leeloo: Same for the russian forums.
Phantom: There are some good ideas there, so it’s not all bad.
Mike Azariah: During the election, did the localised community team get a metric during the election about who voted?
Mike Azariah: [Jovially (get it)] "I know the Russians voted" [indicates Korvin]
[general laughter from those gathered]
Mike Azariah: What was the election turnout in the other communities? Was there a Japanese candidate?
Azalea: There was not. I translated all the candidate information and posted to the Japanese forums.
[general murmur of pleased appreciation from the room]
Trebor: One of the reasons I supported a move to the new election system is it becomes much much easier for foreign language candidates to have a chance of getting on CSM especially a Japanese candidate.
Trebor: It is a good thing in the long term if these communities are represented on the CSM.
Trebor: I would appreciate it if Azalea would work with his community to encourage a really good Japanese candidate to run, the CSM can help with this and help raise their visibility, however this is a chicken and egg issue.
Mynnna: I’m sure Trebor is trying to rig the election AGAIN
[laughter]
Trebor: The reason you have few international CSM coming on, is that most CSM are English speakers, or Russians who are Evil.
Korvin: What?
Trebor: Case in point [indicates Vesna Prishla]
Leeloo: Another potential problem is that - like with ISD - community staff on this team need to be bilingual, to communicate with the team and with other people.
Korvin: [to Vesna Prishla] How often did you check the Russian forums during CSM 6?
Vesna Prishla: [trying hard to recall some facts] I remember posting on there during & after the election as well as also organizing things on it.
Trebor: I suggest that the CSM could help the localised community team with items like the crowdsourcing CSM recently undertook, pass this to them to get it translated so their communities can more easily contribute.
James Arget: CSM is going to do another soon that is UI related. Asking for pictures not words, so if the team can just translate news posts, CSM does not need a translated answer at all. It would be great to get them involved here and is possible to push that out to all language groups.
James Arget: … I tried to translate my campaign site, and had to pay my corp mates to help, using online translators but that just resulted in a bad job.
Phantom: This brings up an interesting thing regarding the CSM elections, if no one is really present & taking care of things on the localised forums, then a candidate has a chance to say "I AM YOUR GUY" and potentially walk away with a solid block of votes.
Trebor: Dolan wont tell me how many Japanese votes I got.
Phantom: If you have enough Germans behind you then its a strong point.
Ripard Teg: It all comes down to someone who mobilises that vote, however the CSM is mostly English speaking as the players are mostly English speaking, yet still had trouble mobilising more than 20% of the playerbase. if you mobilise 20% of the Japanese or German vote, you would get only a couple of hundred?
Phantom: A bit more.
Ripard Teg: Early in my campaign I stated, "I needed 5k to get into the ballpark", so the CSM presence in the localised areas has to grow with those communities.
Phantom: On a slightly unrelated note, would CSM like to step into the communities and say we will reserve a spot for these groups on future CSMs?
Ripard Teg: Thats what STV was supposed to do, if Germans are 1/14th of the community, and they get 1/14th of the vote then they could get a seat
Phantom: Does CSM read or get feedback from other sources & forums?
Ripard Teg: Yes
Mike Azariah: Yes
Trebor: I get evemails from foreign language groups - in English obviously
Ripard Teg: I know a large German alliance endorsed me.
Mike Azariah: I had a conversation with a Russian voter & had to use google translate for 15 exchanges and *then* I had to figure out what the translations meant!
Korvin: Crowd sourcing had a lot of Russian proposals
Ripard Teg: You want to know how I got the German edorsement? An alliance leader invited me on teamspeak, and acted as translator!
James Arget: I would like to speak to localised groups more, but without official aid this is hard - as apparently Russian wormholers hate him, so he cannot use unofficial resources!
Phantom: If CSM was draw up a short introduction or news items for the localised communities the language team can post them.
Trebor: If you want to gather/solicit questions from your communities and then pass them to CSM to answer. These can then be returned to you and then the team can translate & post the answers.
Ripard Teg: The team should translate the news articles about the CSM townhalls and appear on these to translate questions received too.
Trebor: CSM could even do localised townhalls, although the timing would have to be worked on especially for the Japanese community.
Ripard Teg: For each of the localised communities, as I said the key figure is 1/14th in order to get a CSM se—
Ali Aras: [Interjects] 1/14th of active voters.
Ripard Teg: Lets start with active players. Certainly the Russians represent 1/14th of active players, do the Germans or Japanese represent this number?
Phantom: Yes, the Germans & Russians are about the same proportion of active players.
Ripard Teg: Theoretically then should a German candidate should have been elected
Ali Aras: Someone who was campaigning as a member of the German community (Sala Cameron) was saying on the lync call - in type - that he thought about campaigning on localised forums however did not given the points raised earlier about the activity levels on eve-o and user environment on eveger for example
Trebor: In previous CSM's Meissa very heavily campaigned on the localised forums and got a lot of German & French support, he was THEIR guy.
Ripard Teg: Says it sounds like localised communities get the representation on the CSM they have in the community. Future tactics should be to expand the localised communities.
Ripard Teg: The Japanese community will get a CSM rep when it hits that [indistinct]
Trebor: I think the Japanese community will get a CSM member before that, especially under the new election system, as this system is all about awareness and broad support. Any potential candidate will not get on purely through being Japanese.
Ripard Teg: Mentions that yes, it is a base, but you then need to expand through alliances with others as many of the current CSM did.
Phantom: Regarding the CSM townhalls, the localised forums have weekly summaries translated to all three languages, and the townhalls have been mentioned there. The localised townhalls suggested earlier may very well be worth an experiment.
Mike Azariah: Would people actually turn up?
Korvin: I am most certainly ready to try this experiment, starting with a Russian community townhall.
Dolan: Sorry folks, we have to end it here. Lets get a thread on the forums.
[the CSM returns to their quarters where they are transferred back to other clones scattered through non-Jovian space]

Mobile Tractor Unit

The pre-sales support engineer (that's the title his business card gave him) bumped into me while I was handing over a salvaging contract. “Mara,” he chimed (oblivious to the fact that I call myself Rinn), “I've got just the thing to help your salvaging work!”

I corrected him about my name (it's a long story, my name is Rinn, I'm from Mara) and started listening as best I could. There was time, and he was buying.

Some surprises aren't nice

The steady hum of the tractor beams and buzz of the salvagers was lulling her into a soporific state. Out here, one could easily fall into comfortable meditation. The beautiful nebulas reminded her of life in the caravan with her parents. Mara was remembering the attack, the walls exploding as the boarding parties bypassed the airlocks and just punched straight through the ship's hull. The slaver hounds, drool hanging from their gaping, razor-toothed maws. The growling.

Cliffs Notes: Background material for discussion of Odyssey Hacking

Hacking Minigame

Officially, the design influence was games like Rogue and Munchkin. During FanFest a few of us had a brief conversation on Twitter about the hacking game: during that conversation a couple of different games were mentioned, being Deus Ex and the old Amiga game Paradroids.
What follows are my "Cliffs Notes" on these four games: Deus Ex hacking, Paradroids hacking, Munchkin and Rogue.

Odyssey Exploration Hacking Is Broken By Design

Here's the official feedback thread for exploration hacking. This is a rare case where the players are actually better at game design than the CCP devs.

On The Forums Today

Here are some galnet postings I stumbled across today.

Features and Ideas Discussion

Discussion about changing lasers to allow a capsuleer to bias towards EM or Thermal damage. The basic idea is that all crystals currently focus on EM damage which most armour is more resistant to, while other weapon systems are able to select for explosive or thermal damage, which typically isn't as highly resisted in shields or armour as other damage types.

Some people need help learning how to manage new players in PvP corporations.

There is still more to be done with revamping EVE's PVE. A long time ago I was keen to have all missions tuned to be flyable with PVP style fittings, and to have NPCs behave a little smarter. We now have the Level One AI, it would be nice to have NPCs flying more player-like ships rather than wimpy things that can only beat you by throwing superior numbers and spamming DPS. CCP still need to follow up on providing more storyline missions so that people flying Distribution missions can get a Distribution storyline instead of Shipyard Theft or Materials for War Preparation.

There is (another) thread discussing the removal of attributes.

Tora Bushido would like alliance-level player notes. That is, alliance-wide versions of the "notes" tab on a character's info window.

No feedback on IRC-style chat highlighting since CCP Sisyphus responded at the end of February. I did raise the idea of having alliance, corp and player-created chat channels available as an IRC service during the Web round table with CCP Alice at FanFest 2013. We also raised the idea of mail available as an IMAP service (and potentially as an SSMTP service) and calendars available as a WebDAV iCal service. No doubt CCP will decide to follow the NIH route to awesomeness though :(

The Escort Carrier proposal is still bumping around in the darkness of F&I. The ability to fly 10 drones would allow an escort carrier pilot to "assist" two rookies with firepower and reppers during PVE, and I believe would fill the hole between Logistics cruisers and Carriers.

People still don't like space camouflage.

That foolish notion of separating all empire space with lowsec borders is still bumbling around.

Someone thinks the Mining Foreman Mindlink is too expensive.

The idea of scaling damage as fleet size increases has reared its head again.

It would be nice to have an agent finder for locator agents. Locator agent locator maybe?

CCP needs to sort out their thinking on the issue of logging in to change skills. I am convinced that what will encourage players to stick around in the game longer is remote chat: if there is someone to talk to you are less likely to log out. If there is someone in game chatting to you you are more likely to log in to start with. Exposing the skill queue to the web (or mobile applications) can come after remote chat, but it must be delivered. Yes, I wrote an essay in response to that thread.

There is a suggestion that the undocking animation should involve the ship leaving the pad and slowly moving down the tunnel.

Aquila Sagitta would like audible prompts to warn of fleet broadcasts.

The idea of hacking abandoned POSes raises its head again.

Allow players to build, probe down and destroy star gates.

No word from CCP yet on the topic of off grid boosting.

As for the rest of the threads in Features & Ideas discussion today? The forum continues to demonstrate that many players make really bad game designers.

Account Consolidation: Mara's Way

CCP has announced that they will allow players to pay a PLEX to allow training a second character on the same account for 30 days. I'd like to go further than this, with the ability to consolidate accounts and pay for specific services as they are needed.

FanFest 2013: World of Darkness

Note: We were asked to not record video of this presentation because CCP do not want people commenting on stuff presented through an in-house video being used as an art target for the World of Darkness art department. This is part of CCP learning to do thing "expectation management" thing. I have no experience with any of the franchise so I don't know the background to what is happening. I'm just reporting what I remember thinking I saw.

Interpretation

We are in a dark alley. It is raining. Sparse fat drops splash into rippling puddles on the ground. A woman is feigning interest in her mobile phone while observing a man leaning against a wall under a street light, cigarette smoke highlighting the dun cone of light. The woman approaches the man and makes a romantic advance, which the man accepts willingly as he pulls her towards him. She snaps his neck and sucks his blood.

In the distance there are ghostly figures running over rain-drenched rooftops, leaping over alleyways and climbing walls. The woman considers them for a moment, then strides down this alley towards a brightly lit café. Inside the cafe we see innocents pursuing their mundane mortal lives, resorting to alcohol and romance to drive away the boredom of stable civilisation. The woman wanders through the cafe to the balcony on the other side, watching the ghostly figures in the distance while maintaining a nonchalant attitude. She leans against the glass balustrade.

The figures in the distance split up, one is proceeding alone to a nearby rooftop. The woman waits for an opportune moment then dives across the alley way, clinging to the parapet of the building next door. As she raises herself onto the roof the woman fades into the shadows, becoming a ghostly figure herself. The woman darts through the rooftop machinery, emerging into an open area where a man in a trenchcoat appears to be waiting for something.

As the man starts casting some kind of spell, the woman loses her shadowy cover and runs at him, landing a sidekick which launches the man off the building. The assault over in moments, the woman dives after him, landing next to the man's broken corpse. The woman slices open the man's throat and starts to feed.

Ghostly figures materialise around the woman, solidifying into a man and another woman who do not appear happy to see this woman here.

Commentary

The video we were shown is an internal "goal setting" exercise: this is a video depicting a few moments of what the art team wants World of Darkness to look like when we are actually playing it. Thus there are no dramatic scene changes, cuts, or camera changes. This is all third-person perspective like you would experience in World of Warcraft or EVE Online's Captains Shoebox. The level of detail is the same as or better than Captains Shoebox, and all very convincingly real.

It is now some time after watching the footage, so my memory is fading (or falsely enhancing the imagery) so I'm not certain of the details such as reflections, ripples, smokey atmosphere in stark downlights, but the footage we were shown was perfectly suited to setting the mood of the piece. I may be more impressionable and gullible than you.

FanFest 2013: Design Principles

CCP Soundwave provided us with a selection of 6 from the claimed 9 principles that govern EVE Online (and presumably DUST 514) game design.

1. No game should be more complex than it absolutely needs to be to meet its goals.
2. A good feature can be based on positive or negative player interaction.
3. Other players will always be more interesting, for longer, than designed experiences.
4. Every system should affect, and be affected by, the wider world of the game.
5. Here are the tools, do something cool with them.
6. The social experience is more important than practical system balance; the interaction between winners and losers is more interesting than mechanical equality.
7. Interactions should be about reaching and touching, more than reading numbers.
8. Things in the world need to make sense.
9. Players are not entitled to success. There should be an achievement mountain, with players able to find their level and strive to be better.

These are design principles that I can very strongly agree with. I have posted them here so I can refer to them when I come up with my next bizarre idea for tweaking the EVE universe.

Update: a longer article about these principles over here:

FanFest 2013: PVE In EVE Round Table

I attended the PVE Round Table hosted by CCP Affinity and CCP Bettik. My recollection of the topics discussed is roughly as follows.

Throughout these notes it is important to know that CCP Bettik's philosophy is that EVE is a living universe, and the traffic of mission runners and haulers are part of the life of this universe. I thoroughly agree with his opinion. IMHO, where any other MMO might have NPCs doing stuff (kodo wandering the plains of Mulgore, for example), EVE should strive to fill that role with players doing stuff (miners in belts, explorers in space, etc).

Missions

CCP Affinity made the scandalous statement that perhaps the "Damsel in Distress" mission has seen enough air time and should be canned. I vehemently disagreed!

One of the audience asked about being able to accept and complete all non-handin missions remotely.
IMHO, Damsel in Distress deserves a sequel, depicting the life of said Damsel after she realises that running back to her drug dealing casino-running boyfriend is a bad idea. Maybe she starts her own drug ring and becomes an agent for the Serpentis.

As far as remote completion and handin of missions, I disagree. Although we do have FTL communications and funds transfer the idea of having mission runners never set foot in station except to pick up or drop off items removes too much content for tourists and gankers. In addition allowing remote acceptance and completion of missions will boost mission-runner incomes far too much. Without the extra travel time you can shave 2-3 minutes off every mission, in some cases (esp. Cargo Delivery) this will double the mission runner's income, before any clever tactics are applied to maximise ISK/hr.

Mining

The discussion about mining mainly centred around the desire to remove the current mechanic of respawning asteroids once per day. There was no mention of my awesome ideas suggested in "Mining is Boring". I'll forgive them for now and simply ensure that Ripard Teg and his soon-to-be-CSM-minions get the right message.

CCP Bettik suggested that in keeping with his desire for a living, organic universe it might be worth compressing many of the existing belts into one or two: thus rather than a half-dozen miners doing their own thing you would have a half-dozen miners in the one belt giving the feeling that stuff is happening.

I dislike CCP Bettik's idea of condensing asteroid belts into mega-belts. Currently there is a rule of thumb: if there are more people than belts, move on. One pilot is able to clear out a belt in a manner of hours. If all the miners had to share a belt there might be more "social" interaction in the form of "get your grubby mitts off my rock", but there would also be easier ganks to be had (because all the miners are in one spot), less relaxing and chilling out available due to the requirement to pay attention for the purpose of negotiating rights with other miners, before you even consider the attention that will be required for avoiding the now-more-prolific gankers.

Moving all mining to bigger asteroid belts also removes content for explorers, as opposed to moving mining to grav sites.

Exploration

The discussion of exploration mainly revolved around hacking: the idea proposed by CCP Affinity was that only one player at a time would be able to hack a crate, but once hacked anyone could loot it. This further led to discussion about whether looting crates hacked by other players should trigger suspect and/or limited engagement status.

CCP Affinity expressed an interest for introducing a Guild Wars 2 style questing system to EVE: for example you wander around and see a "shiny thing" which you investigate which then leads to a mission, perhaps with an agent contacting you for follow-on missions. There was a leak about the new discovery system involving a system-wide "ping" which would highlight probable signatures in your view of space, enticing you to stop and smell the roses even if you are just flying through a particular system.

My opinion about hacking is that all pilots in range of the crate should be able to hack it (just like all miners in range of an asteroid can start mining): the one with the better skills gets to unlock the crate first. Then everyone gets to dogpile on each other until someone is left with an intact ship and the remains of whatever was looted.

The new discovery system sounds awesome.

Feedback

If I missed something, please remind me. During FanFest 2013 I will be most easily contactable via Twitter on @Mara_Rinn.

Fixing Nullsec

Ideas on the fly: What I would do to fix Nullsec

Of course when I say “fix” I might mean “spay” or “neuter”.

Ideas on the Fly

This is an idea on the fly. Please feel free to leave comments here, through EVE mail or Twitter.

Background

Nullsec is, in my mind, the place for awesome large-fleet PvP with consequences. It is supposed to be about world-shaping at the players' hands. It is supposed to be about building empires and tearing them down. There should be drivers in place to encourage neighbours to fight each other. Where do you find the most natural PvP in EVE? PvP free of the fear of the blob? The place you can go to pick fights with some certainty that the people you pick a fight with are going to be committed to the fight, and you won't be surprised with massive supercapital fleets dropping on top of your battleship fleet? That place is Unknown space or w-space. What makes w-space different to nullsec? In short it is the difficulty of access and the inability to move large fleets through cynosural travel.

From my perspective nullsec should be like w-space in some degree, but with the added risk of large fleets being moved into running fights with no limits, and the freedom of movement offered by star gates (stable wormholes which have been harnessed for the purpose of on-demand interstellar travel). The idea of massive fleet moving around via cynosural travel faster than sub-capital fleets can move using star gates just rubs the wrong way: it doesn't gel. Nullsec should also be the ultimate in player-driven content, to the point of world shaping. How much world-shaping is possible if players can't build and destroy the stuff that makes the world what it is?

So what is wrong with nullsec at the moment, and why does it need to be fixed?

First: reinforcement of a fight in progress through the use of cynosural fields is far too easy. A fight will escalate to capital ship fleets faster than it can be reinforced using sub-cap ships travelling through star gates. In short, the fight can be won simply by having more pilots online able to dog-pile a fight through a cyno bridge.

Second: far too much of the business of nullsec sovereignty involves static fights at very predictable times.

Third: for a game that purports to be a sandbox, nullsec has far too many rollercoaster rails in the form of fixed-in-stone stargates, inflexibility in player industry, and the inability to shape the world to suit player desires.

Rebalancing Cynosural Travel

Tweaking cynosural travel is necessary for two reasons: First, cyno travel is practically instantaneous; Second, cyno travel has far too great a range. These two factors combine to allow unreasonable "force projection" (at least it is unreasonable according to the forum trolls). Even without jump clones, it is possible to get ships from one side of New Eden to the other in tens of minutes (as opposed to requiring a day or two to redeploy). Thus any reinforcement timer, anywhere in nullsec, can potentially be greeted by the full force of all of nullsec's capital and supercapital fleets, regardless of where those fleets were stationed.
More about balancing cynosural travel in my article "Fixing Cynosural Travel".

Removing Sovereignty Structure Bashing

CCP has already started the process of building mechanics for claiming and challenging sovereignty that don't involve structure bashing and reinforcement timers. The occupation mechanics used for Faction Warfare have been developed with a mind to expanding the mechanics to nullsec player sovereignty.

So for the moment, I'm happy to leave it to CCP to know what they're up to here: implementing FW style offensive and defensive plexing, combined with “victory points” of some kind for blowing up other people in your space. Imagine if "treaties" of some kind could be implemented through alliance-issued charters for POSes: a renter will have to buy the treaties that the alliance members are selling.
I would like to see a removal of reinforcement timers as the underlying mechanic of sovereignty warfare. I recognise that reinforcement timers are a necessary mechanic for allowing pilots to defend critical infrastructure in this always-on game which we only participate in during our own play times. Sovereignty could be moved to an activity-dependent system rather than a structure-dependent system. But as I said, I'll wait to see what CCP is up to with Faction Warfare & "Sov Lite".

World Shaping (and Destruction)

How do we put the power of world shaping into the hands of players? Here's the core of my strategy: allow players to build and destroy stargates. On the way to that goal first, there are a few things that need to be sorted out.

First, the range of all cyno travel should be reduced. Black Ops ships are at the appropriate level: people constantly complain that their range is not enough, but black ops are still actively used. This indicates that Black Ops are balanced. After Black Ops, the next furthest range should be given to carriers and dreadnoughts. Finally, Titans (and their associated bridges) and Supercarriers should have the shortest range. See my article about cyno travel rebalancing for more thoughts about the mechanics of cyno travel.

Second, the process of building, upgrading and destroying (or subverting) star gates must be designed from the outset to allow the installation of star gates in systems where no star gates are available: the mechanism must not depend on getting ships into a star system which will not fit through any available wormholes or jump bridges.

Third, the local channel should be put under player control.

Finally, nullsec industry needs some serious love.

Remove Local

Local chat is provided to most systems through the fluidic router relay system. In nullsec, it is the sovereign of a system who installs the fluidic router relay and controls access to local chat. Note that ships jumping into system through a star gate will be registered (but not necessarily connected) to the fluidic router relay by the stargate itself (but a successful hack might prevent the stargate registering the new ship for a minute or two).

A fluidic router relay is of course hackable, so intruders can open it up to everyone or switch it off to everyone, delay the fluidic router registration process, or fake the deregistration of the hacking ship, up until the routine self audit system detects that something is wrong, alerts home base and resets the fluidic router to “last known good” configuration. Security conscious sovereigns might opt to install backups to certain features, such as a backup registration system which will be a structure (or structures) which ensure that all ships visible on grid are registered with the local fluidic router relay. Ships entering space through a wormhole may be able to delay registration with the local fluidic router relay, but only at the expense of losing all comms channels (which are accessed through the fluidic router relay).

Thus local as an intel tool is available to those who want it, but the fluidic router relay has to be installed and operational in order for Local to be available. Should this mechanism be extended to w-space too? Perhaps not: w-space is not just space-shifted but time-shifted too: how do you get a fluidic router connection to a place and time that you don't know? For the moment we have "magic" chat channels allowing pilots to communicate with each other in the absence of any communications infrastructure.

Now for Stargates

Stargates should be anchorable at certain points in a system which are determined by the intended target system. These points might require extensive surveys to be undertaken to determine gravitic contours. Subsequent to these gravitic contour surveys, the prospective stargate builders will need to identify locations of natural stable wormholes that can be utilised by the stargate infrastructure. Thus there are two distinct processes involved: a system survey which should take a coordinated group of players a week or so to perform, then the wormhole hunt which will essentially be a probe scan of the targeted area, similar to hunting down unstable wormholes.

The survey and wormhole identification needs to be performed in both systems simultaneously. The process of identifying the suitable wormhole will require teams in both systems to “knock and listen” at all the wormholes they find: there might be a dozen candidates, only one of which is connected to the target system. This “knock and listen” process will require structures to be deployed around candidate wormholes, activated, and maintained while the “knock and listen” survey is completed. When a suitable wormhole is found, a gantry can be erected over that hole. When both gantries are anchored and onlined, communication between the two gantries will be established.

Once a stargate gantry is in place in both systems, the star gates can be built. In the initial stages of modifying space, all stargates will have infinite capacity for transit, so choice of stargate will be aesthetic rather than strategic. Star gates will be upgradable, with upgrades (and downgrades) taking an appropriate amount of time during which the star gate is still usable. Later in the development of this process, different star gates will provide:

• Transit capacity
• Fuel consumption
• Hit points
• Hacking difficulty

The major decision point for stargates might be transit capacity. Each wormhole will have an innate transit capacity (for example, somewhere between 1kg/s and 100kg/s) which is then extended by the stargate hardware to levels such that a small gate on a long-distance wormhole link might handle one frigate per second, while a gate at a major staging hub might handle many battleships per second. There may be system upgrades, star gate modifications or faction stargates available which provide higher transit capacity, lower fuel consumption, or other benefits.

Some game design issues here will be the length of time that should be set aside for creating new star gates: for a rapid turn-over, perhaps the "knock and listen" survey could be done using modules fitted to ships, with the process of identifying linked wormholes intended to take in the order of an hour. For a longer turnover, perhaps a gantry would need to be erected, with certain fuel requirements to maintain the survey equipment for a week. What duration is appropriate?

Tollways and Access Rights

Star gates will also be configurable by the sovereign owner such that ships passing through the gate have to pay a toll, or may even have access restricted depending on standings. Gates will also be hackable, so that people of malicious intent might hack a gate to avoid paying tolls, or allow unauthorised ships through that gate, or even lock that stargate altogether so noone can use it.
Hacking a star gate will provide some change to that gates behaviour for a period of time (say, half an hour). At the end of that period of time the star gate's self auditing mechanism will come into play, at which point the hacking attempt will be reported.

Removal of Static Resources

Remove static moon goo. Moon goo should deplete, with that resource eventually repawning somewhere else. T2 moon harvesters should extract resources faster, and multiple harvesters should extract resources faster. There should be sufficient resources on a moon that reports a resource available to allow a T1 moon harvester to extract that resource for about 2 months. Harvesters should not openly report what they are harvesting, but it should be possible to hack into any item of a POS infrastructure to see what that structure is configured for, what it contains, or any other details that might be of interest.

Thus it should be possible to hide a highly valuable moon “in plain sight” as a CSAA POS, or perhaps even a jump staging POS. Spies will be even more valuable than before, as will black ops fleets sent out specifically to scout out enemy resources (or potentially valuable moons).
No longer will one be able to refer to a five year old moon survey and have confidence that certain POSes are harvesting particular resources.

Which brings us to nullsec industry.

Fixing Cynosural Travel

Tweaking cynosural travel is necessary for two reasons: First, cyno travel is practically instantaneous; Second, cyno travel has far too great a range. These two factors combine to allow unreasonable "force projection" (at least it is unreasonable according to the forum trolls). Even without jump clones, it is possible to get ships from one side of New Eden to the other in tens of minutes (as opposed to requiring a day or two to redeploy). Thus any reinforcement timer, anywhere in nullsec, can potentially be greeted by the full force of all of nullsec's capital and supercapital fleets, regardless of where those fleets were stationed.

DUST 514™ From a Capsuleer Perspective

Further to my review of the E3 2012 video, I have some questions about how Capsuleers will interact with Dust Bunnies. My main question is about maintenance of defences when the Capsuleer is offline.