Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

CSM8 Status Report: Week twenty-eight

So here we are the day of Rubicon!  Former CSM member Two step was kind enough to extend CSM8 some good wishes even though we had only very little to do with it:

Pretty impressive #csm8, you are the first CSM to have the patch come out before the minutes from the summit about the patch #tweetfleet

Thanks, Two step. Very kind of you.

More seriously, after Freelancer117 much more productively asked directly where the minutes were, CCP Dolan was kind enough to fall on his sword, though also make it clear that the community team has been very very busy, not only with the issues I brought up last week but with CPM/DUST 514 issues as well that I'd forgotten. But he also had this to add which I thought was kind of interesting...

Additionally, the minutes system is one of the oldest CSM systems, and just like I did with the stakeholder process and elections, it is next on my list of things to revamp. The minutes, as they have existed, are responsible for burning out more CSM's than any other activity, because they are a monotonous and lengthy task. I feel that we can try and find a way to preserve what I see as the key value of the minutes (letting the community see how they are being represented by the individual CSM's on various topics) without repeatedly forcing the CSM to create full transcripts of NDA'd meeting only for me to then edit down to fit the confines of what information we will release.

I think that in the past, people have viewed the minutes as some sort of delivery mechanism for hints about upcoming expansion/features. I pretty firmly disagree with that notion. The minutes are a system for review of the CSM, not preview of what CCP is doing.

...and...

Right now the minutes are a rather time consuming process for both CCP and the CSM, and I am a huge fan of efficiency. If I can streamline the process to retain all the things that are great about the minutes, and perhaps even find new great things, while cutting out a lot of the negatives and the fluff, then I will be a happy man.

I'll probably be discussing this endeavor as we near the winter summit, as the community in general (as the reader) is also involved in the process and I'm interested to hear your feedback. This was just me talking about for the first time.

Now needless to say while I somewhat agree with this -- in particular, it's definitely not our job to steal CCP's thunder about when they want to announce features. But that said, as a blogger and a CSM follower, I've always been mostly interested in the minutes sessions that dealt with the bigger picture: CCP organization, long-term future plans, EVE's economy, player communications strategies, issues surrounding the new player experience and expanding EVE's player base. And I assure you those sections of the minutes remain intact and of value through Rubicon's release and beyond.

In addition, as Trebor Daehdoow pointed out at our Town Hall meeting on Saturday, there's plenty of value to be had from getting a view of where Rubicon development was in August. This is particularly true for game design watchers, potential future CSM members, and those just plain interested in EVE Online development. And there's one advantage to the minutes not being out yet: a lot of stuff that was under NDA when we started this journey certainly isn't now!

So I do understand Dolan's point, and do look forward to hearing his ideas on this front. But I do also think there is a place for fairly comprehensive notes about what goes on at the summit beyond "CCP shared some ideas with us and we gave feedback."  If you're interested in this topic, please feel free to read the rest of Dolan's posts in the thread and respond. He wrote quite a bit! As for when they will be out:

I'm hoping to have them all out during next week. In the meantime, hopefully nothing catches fire and forces me to put on my fire fighter costume (which is quite fetching, I might add).

I'll keep my fingers crossed for everything except a viewing of the fire fighter costume.

Anyway, onward. As I mentioned already, we held our third Town Hall of the term on Saturday. Thank you one more time to everyone who attended! The recording is now up, courtesy of EVE Radio. My current plan is for the next Town Hall to happen the first or second weekend in January, which will probably correspond to right before the Winter Summit. As we approach that date, I'll announce it using the same process I have been. I feel like we've got a pretty good feel for how to run these things now. 90 minutes felt like the right length, and half pre-submitted questions and half live questions also felt like the right process. I'd also like to find a way to get live voice questions mixed into the process, quite frankly so that those who attend who might want to run for CSM themselves can more publicly put themselves in front of voters. We're also starting to talk a little bit about a video Town Hall if we can work out the process for it.

As you might expect, the CSM internal forums were busy this week with various final dev-blogs detailing the last few features in Odyssey that haven't received them, such as the warp speed changes and the ship and module rebalancing. Giving feedback on these dev-blogs is an important part of the CSM process intended to identify areas of player confusion and prevent another "$1000 pants" situation. ;-) Still, with everything going so smoothly and CCP-to-player communication about Rubicon at a high water mark thanks to the two official sessions held by CCP on this topic, this is a pretty easy process this time around with very little drama.

No meetings this week, and I suspect the devs will be busy with bug reports going into next week. Skype is also remarkably quiet right now. This is the same pattern we saw with Odyssey and I see no reason why it shouldn't repeat itself here. In the meantime, CCP Fozzie has started a thread talking about the future of player anchorables. There will definitely be more of these and if you have ideas about some possibilities, you should join the conversation or upvote the proposals that you like. The CSM has done some chatting about digging through this thread looking for common themes so if there's one that you'd like to see, join the conversation!

That's all for now! I'm looking forward to a smooth deployment of Rubicon in just a few hours!
Source: CSM8 Status Report: Week twenty-eight