Summer Summit – Day 2

  • Roadmap review with EP
  • Player acquisition strategies and data
  • Little things session
  • Nullsec general session
  • Customer Support Team
  • Purpose of the Council
  • Individuality vs uniformity

Take a look at the list of topics there. Take a wild guess of which letters you might be seeing in the minutes.

That isn’t the order the meetings happened in, but as they didn’t really affect each other, I’ll just take them in that order. (Yes, I’m lazy.)

Roadmap review

The contents of the review are going to be NDA. We saw the roadmap, for the months ahead, and talked it over with CCP Seagull. It was the development roadmap, rather than a marketing or vision roadmap, so we’re talking about features, marked with a likelihood of them fitting into some releases or not. Didn’t go into much detail on each thing. Mostly talking about the philosophy behind the releases and cadence. Watch for devblogs and keep an eye on http://updates.eveonline.com/

No spoilers for you, I’m afraid. But it was a productive session, with back and forth on things which we felt needed to be discussed. (Not specific features. That’s not what the session was about) Vague, I know. but that’s NDA stuff for you. Sorry.

Player acquisition strategies.

How EVE can sink its hooks into fresh grist for the mill. Yet more NDA stuff. I’m beginning to hate those letters. I understand and appreciate why they’re used in these cases, but it makes for hard typing. We met the team, and talked about New player things. This isn’t about the NPE, it’s about how to get at the players in the first place. (If you have any novel ideas, that aren’t ‘super bowl advert!’ drop us a line. We’ll pass them along)

Little Things:

Whee! This session isn’t NDAed! Downside (as I’m not going to list everything here): Lots and lots of ‘little’ things were brought up with the team. And some were promptly shot down as not actually little things. Picture a weed, which when you pull it up, you just keep reeling in the root, as the tree behind you is dragged beneath the surface. Some things which seem small to the layman, are the beginning of the trip down the rabbit hole. However, some things were added to the list. Remember, the proper place to post them is in Karkur’s thread on the forums. Putting them on Reddit gets them immediately seen, but they drop off fairly quickly, which means they can be lost. Little things tend to be done in between other tasks, when a developer has time, and needs a mental break, or is waiting on someone else.

Nullsec:

This was a session that we called for, in addition to the specific Sov ones we had yesterday. Nothing game mechanicy was talked about, but there was some frank discussion with the team. (I don’t want to go into details on this, until the minutes are out (and tbh, after that, it’s not that important)) I did feel it cleared the air between us.

Customer Support Team:

We talked with the GMs 🙂 Nice people. Saw some nice stats, saw what and how they were planning on doing things, along with how things have changed since we last talked to them. Things like their zendesk implementation, and how they’re sticking articles into it, to help people help themselves, rather than have to wait on a GM (who would just give them the same information.) With any luck, the minutes for this will be pretty detailed. And maybe a graph or two. (Finding out how to apply unallocated skillpoints was popular recently)

Purpose of the Council

This was a long one, over running the alloted time, and eating a bit into the following session (Individuality vs uniformity)

I wrote a chunk for this, but decided I want to make sure that I wasn’t misrepresenting people first (I’ve had a few pints. hence the delay in getting this to you) Once I’ve got that, I’ll probably post as a supplementary post.

Individuality vs uniformity

EVE is a cold dark place. But does that mean that everything has to be grim and gritty. That as the core of this one. We touched on a number of things with the team we talked with. Including great things like the Love Squad guide to character portraits and a brief mention of how, in the grim and gritty world of blade runner, there’s still some very bright color. Now, with the release of the Raata sunset, and the Valklear glory skins that’s made its way in a bit. But we still want to see some more variety. Sugar spoke a lot on this, and was eloquent.

 

And that’s the end of Day 2. Hopefully the minutes will be out tomorrow.

 

As per the minutes released today, you should be seeing a bunch of stuff talked about at Vegas, which will clear up a great deal of the NDA from yesterday. A lot of that is just stuff which isn’t  quite ready to see the light of day. Like things being trialed to make sure they work in a way which is balanced, and won’t melt TQ. Some people see “we’re looking at”, and read “you will get”. That’s to be avoided.