Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

CSM8 status report: Week eight

The good news: in my opinion, this was the busiest week so far for CSM8 so far.

The bad news: I can't really talk about why.

As I mentioned last week, CCP Seagull has her own ideas about how involved the CSM should be in the development process.  I was asked "OK, but is that good news or bad news?"  It's good news.  It's incredibly good news!  The trust she showed in us this week, I think, was really flattering.  We were shown a lot of NDA'ed information this week.  But it wasn't a freebie.  Seagull gave us the information attached to a homework assignment... a big one.  So the trust was flattering and the expectations she had for us equally so... but intimidating as well.  It's clear now that she intends to try to involve us in every aspect of the development of EVE.  That means those flattering exceptions are going to be set high.

So if you didn't hear a lot from the CSM this week... yeah... ummmm... busy.

All that said, I think the CSM did the players proud.  Seagull gave us a big homework assignment, and we delivered.  While I don't think there are any "bad" members of CSM8 -- it's really amazing how involved everyone is -- I really want to name names this week.  If you voted for any of the following CSM8 members, you should really be pleased with yourself, because these members were challenged and they stood up and met that challenge head-on:

• Ali Aras,
• Chitsa Jason,
• Korvin,
• Mangala Solaris,
• Mike Azariah,
• mynnna,
• Trebor Daehdoow; and,
• ummm... me.  ;-)

And of all of us, I think Trebor was the CSM MVP this week, though I took a big-time run at it myself.  Can I say what we did?  Nope.  Very very NDA.  Hopefully someday.  But anyone who thinks the CSM isn't pretty deeply involved in the way EVE is developed is wrong.  Based on the turn-over stuff we got from CSM7 and comparing to what they were asked to do during their term, the expectations are only going up.  Potential CSM9 candidates, take note.

Again, I don't want to take away from anyone not listed.  In particular, a few CSM8 members are very busy with that little war thing you might have heard about.  ;-)

The homework assignment sucked up a lot of time, but four other items have been big this week.

For me personally, it was T1 industrials.  As you know, I was pretty heavily involved in that discussion and I don't mind saying that I spent a good bit of time stirring the pot a little bit.  But I'm not taking credit for the second wave of changes to the haulers.  That goes to all of you that stayed involved in the relevant thread.  If you were among that crowd, thank you!  We made a noise big enough that it couldn't be ignored.  Did we get everything we wanted?  Nope, not this time.  But we got a lot, and hopefully more coming.  CCP Rise mentioned in a couple different posts that some big changes are going to be coming to industry and "building stuff", so hopefully we'll get another swing at it.

That probably isn't going to be the only issue aggravating players that we're going to jump into.  There's another one starting soon...

Number two: the summer summit is coming up!  I'm not sure if I can mention the date yet but I will mention that I'm going to set the second town hall to happen before the summit instead of after.  We'll then have a third town hall after the minutes are published.  So if you missed your first opportunity to ask us questions, you'll soon be getting another.  As we get closer to the date I have in mind for that town hall, I'll announce it here.

Also, we don't know who's going to the summit yet.

Third, we finally got an answer to the question: "is the NDA under NDA?"  The answer we got, unsurprisingly, was "Basically, yes."  Rhavas at Interstellar Pravateer got the public response, which means that he got a better response than I did, and was able to publish his.  (I was actually rather worried about whether I could publish CCP Dolan's answer, since technically stuff Dolan tells me is NDAed!)  So I'm going to throw you over to Rhavas's blog.  He's done a great job of summing up the response and the issues, a better job than I could have done.

Fourth and finally, CSM8 is launching our own player-directed communication effort very very soon.  It was supposed to be this week, I think, but that got delayed by the homework assignment.  But the timing is really good because CCP is slowly but surely settling into vacation season.  That will give us some time to focus on the players for a while.

Speaking of that, CSM members continue to be very active on pod-casts and player gatherings.  Ali's Space Hangouts continue every Saturday, and she was one of two new CSM members interviewed by Xander Phoena of Crossing Zebras (the other was progodlegend) this month.  The link should be up soon.

Coming up this week: another stake-holder meeting on Thursday, I believe!  Two months down, ten to go, and the hard work is still ahead of us!
Source: CSM8 status report: Week eight