Charting a Course
My
last update concluded with the CPM preparing for our pending meeting
with CCP to discuss the contents of our public statement and to
pursue concrete resolution to the structural and communication issues
it raised. For this effort to be a success, the first order of
business was ensuring we were going to be heard by the right people.
Thankfully, CCP delivered and we were not only able
to sit down with CCP Praetorian (as requested), but also with Jón
Hörðdal – CCP's COO and also Managing Director for CCP Asia.
Community team members CCP Cmdr Wang and CCP Dolan were also in
attendance. The CPM walked away from the meeting feeling fairly
positive about what we'd heard, though plenty of follow-up work still
remains.
The big takeaway from the meeting that the community should be aware
of is that it is becoming quite clear that the type of back-and-forth
dialog we crave, the model set by EVE's developers, is going to be
extremely difficult if not impossible to replicate due to the
difference in release cycle between the two games. EVE is on a
twice-yearly expansion model, with indefinite, infrequent point
releases in between. Dust, on the other hand, is currently on a
monthly release schedule as part of a specific development arc aimed
at addressing the outstanding core issues that comprised the bulk of
the criticism leveled during the game's launch. The other main
objective of this current arc is to increase player retention through
a close examination of the new player experience.
EVE Online's development pace affords its developers plenty of time
to spitball ideas with the public months in advance through dozens of
stickied inquiry threads, a standard of communication that most of
us, the CPM included, have attempted to hold CCP Shanghai accountable
to as well. The bad news is that we're beginning to realize that
this just isn't feasible – each patch involves a roughly a week of
planning, a week of hammering out design details, a week of coding,
and a week of QA. I am ball-parking tremendously here, as individual
projects often have work that needs several months of ramp from art,
coding infrastructure, or any number of other support platforms in
place, and I think what we're really seeing here is probably closer
to a 6-week cycle, with some overlap in that while testing is being
done on one release, the next is beginning to be planned out. Exact
timing aside, I share this to illustrate how rapid the studio is
having to move to achieve the monthly ship dates which, to CCP's
credit, they've pretty much nailed since 1.2.
When discussing this situation during our meeting, I was most
impressed with the reassurance we received from Jón Hörðdal –
who, without any prompting from us – clearly articulated his own
understanding that the rapid release schedule makes the CPM an even
more critical part of the feedback process, since meaningful
communication windows are so short. We than began to go over the
more defined role that the CPM will be playing in the development
process moving forward. This role, both our purpose and practices –
will be outlined in an official Charter to be posted publicly by CCP
in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future.
Essentially though, the CPM are going to have to act as feedback
ninjas – being prepared to give rapid feedback when presented with
possible feature lists for each point release, as well as elsewhere
during development when the designers need input on specific
features. The message heard loud and clear was "less
communication of higher quality". In other words, while long
conversations in Skype or on the forums may feel most satisfying to
those of us in the community, they aren't going to be nearly as
useful to CCP as a 30 minute scheduled meeting using a written agenda
posted in advance.
I never got the feeling that the management present didn't value
player feedback at a high level, however – on par with that of the
CSM. Again, I was impressed by Jón Hörðdal's interest in
inserting the CPM into the release cycle at the very beginning,
during pre-planning, when the features are selected. This of course
gives the CPM a chance to sanity check and warn if we see excessive
attention being given to a feature players won't care about, or
likewise if we see the lack of attention given to an issue that's
much more critical. In other words, the CPM's first Charter will
contain provision for a system that is a rough analog of the CSM's
stakeholder role. Its safe to say that both the CPM and CCP were
very much on the same page about what we're here to do, and what we
should have access to, the only barrier left is working out the
practical details and to publish the Charter.
What this means for you, the community – is fairly significant.
More than ever, you're going to need to put some trust in us to say
the right thing to CCP during those fewer, and more critical, moments
of interaction. In other words, if you've got concerns, suggestions,
ideas, requests – you're far better off taking the time to talk to
one of us on Skype, or IRC, or to send us a mail, than you would be
sitting around posting angrily on the forums that the devs aren't
telling you everything about what they're working on.
The CPM is going to have to act as both conduit and sponge, soaking
up the information we need to squeeze out during critical windows in
the monthly cycle. And for many of you – this may be terrifying!
Because we're terrible at the game, we've never driven vehicles, worn
a scout suit, or played other shooters. We're carebears, noobs, EVE
fanboys, and we have no business talking about balance. Whatever
silly thing you believe, my point is that if you're worried about
what we're going to tell CCP, come talk to us and get to know us and
tell us what's on your mind. It's important to understand here that
CCP isn't stonewalling efforts to engage the community – they're
saying very specifically that the CPM is the most efficient tool they
can leverage right now given the speed of the current development
process.
The first "Summit"
Shortly on the heels of our meeting with members of the Dust514
management team, the CPM participated in the CSM8 summer summit in Reykjavik, albeit mostly as remote observers. This was
understandable, it was a CSM summit after all and most of the
sessions were about EVE-related issues and upcoming feature work.
There were certainly several moments throughout the summit, as well
as two dedicated sessions with Team True Grit, where the CPM was able
to ferry input via Skype to the CSM members in the room to discuss on
our behalf, which worked well enough.
The week leading up to and including the summit was another time for
the CPM and CSM to once again engage in heavy dialog over the future
of the link between the two games, and present as unified a message
to CCP as possible about player concerns and desires. Both entities
have a healthy working relationship, and there were no real major
points of contention regarding which direction things need to head,
or the degree to which the games should be integrated.
However – one could certainly argue that its easy for us to get
along and discuss "Link" issues with mutual interest,
because there still isn't much to talk about. The fact of the
matter is that while Team True Grit will continue to make many
not-insignificant changes to Faction Warfare and Planetary Conquest
mechanics in the months ahead, CCP clearly communicated at the summit
that the focus right now is making quality, standalone games that
compete on their own merits. The resources for Dust514 will continue
to be focused on improving the core game for the duration of the road
map, and the feature teams working on EVE Online have a full workload
this winter of their own.
This leaves Team True Grit with a backlog of amazing ideas for ways
to integrate the two games, that mostly require EVE feature teams to
be allocated onto those projects in support – allocation that is
looking highly unlikely for winter. This is where the CSM and CPM
were in lockstep – mutually frustrated that there is a clear
deficit between vision and production manpower where the "Link"
is concerned. Articulating the proper balance of working on Dust
514's core game play vs working on the "Link" has proven to
be the biggest challenge here, and where the perspectives of each
council begin to diverge somewhat. For the CSM, which by and large
does not play Dust 514 regularly, I think CCP's message of "focus
on the core" is much easier to grasp and accept at face value.
For those of us on the CPM, who have a greater understanding of the
pace at which the game is being polished, its a little more
complicated. None of us on the CPM want CCP to abandon their current
efforts to improve aiming, balance, performance, or accessibility –
but we also recognize that none of these development focal points
leverage the primary element separating Dust 514 from a host of other
shooters.
The dedicated Team True Grit sessions themselves were mostly an
opportunity for the team to share with the CSM their upcoming face
lifts to both Faction Warfare and Planetary Conquest, material that
the CPM had mostly seen before in our own internal forums. Each of
these efforts should do a nice job of making participation in these
activities more accessible, enjoyable, and rewarding – though it
remains to be seen how much depth they'll potentially add to the
"game between the games".
Back on the grind
The weeks since the summit have been a bit slow otherwise, with
communication between the CPM and CCP mostly consisting of Skype
activity surrounding the deployment of 1.4. The initial matchmaking
bugs were of course a sucker punch to community morale, and also
acted as a petri dish for the infectious doomsday rhetoric that
bubbles to the surface every patch day. However, the response was
particularly rapid this time around, with fixes for matchmaking,
shotgun performance, and map functionality squashed within days of
being reported. Wolfman and Nullarbor were once again heroes for
the extra hours they put in working with both the CPM and the
community to pull this off.
You also might have noticed some rotations in activity levels
amongst CPM members, as RL obligations pull us our separate
directions. Nova Knife and myself have been back to work and putting
some long hours in the last couple of weeks, as you can see by my
infrequent postings lately. Laurent Cazaderon, on the other hand, is
back from vacation abroad and once again engaging both CCP and the
community in full force.
I've got a few more notes regarding
progress on 1.5 and feedback we're preparing for 1.6 and 1.7 that
have come out of this week's Skype chatter with CCP, but it's also
fresh enough to remain a moving target so I'll hang onto those for
the time being and use them as a down payment on my next report. In
the meantime – there's one other recent beast that I'm going to
tackle in a separate blog post this weekend – the highly
controversial aim assist. There's really enough to discuss about this
feature alone and its context that I've decided to give it the proper
treatment it deserves. Keep an eye on this space.
o7
CCP and the CPM seem to have it under control.
ReplyDeletehttp://eve-offline.net/
Good to see that CCP Shanghai is willing to listen to players. For the longest time, it seemed like that was not the case.
ReplyDeletewith changes to FW you certainly mean the dust side, right? What i simply don't understand is why they don't listen to feedback and experiment a little bit, picking some of those low-effort low hanging fruits. Like disabling NPC orbitals for FW matches for a month and see what happens. Or exposing all FW matches via API for a month and see what happens (eve players can suddenly see where they can bombard and also see where the enemy can bombard). OBs are just a proof of concept ATM. Its just a waste of initial effort and marketing to keep it as is without using the opportunity for testing the new ground even if they don't have the resources for big changes ATM.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to the aim assist post. Since the aim assist got adjusted on Thursday, I'm finding that my play experience feels a lot more fair at mid- and long range, even though the TTK can be absurdly low in CQC. Sponk make a suggestion that aim assist cut off at the edge of optimal range instead of optimal+50%, which I certainly agree with.
ReplyDeleteReally looking forward to your post on the Aim Assist - I've advocated to leave it as it is but I've considered that I may need a sanity check on this.
ReplyDeleteThat's good news, CPM. Imo that was the best possible and most realistic response CCP could have given us. Eagerly awaiting that Charter so we can shift this whole thing up a gear.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me the hardest part will be the feedback channel from the playerbase to the CPM - that's a lot for a handful of peeps to digest and a heavy workload.
Maybe we should talk about information channels and timing - we want to avoid losing good feedback to scheduling and communication problems. Deadlines, schedules, focus topics, etc.
Vrain Matari
Very good blog. Im disappointed that, as you so succintly put it, Ccp is insistent on focusing limited resources on the core and not putting some effort into the link, which would set Dust apart from other shooters and bring in new players and revenue. Ccp and Dust is trapped in a viscious circle at the moment, unable to expand where necessary to grow the playerbase. The game is so close to being great, just have some vision Ccp.
ReplyDeleteSup
ReplyDelete