A Scientist's Life in Eve

OK, the next response to my questions is from Prometheus Exenthal:

If elected to the CSM, if you could do 1 thing to improve gameplay for players like me, what would you want to do?
I’d like to make PVE more involved & dynamic. When missions are the same all the time, that results in boredom after repeated executions. I’d rather PVE be a bit easier, but more dynamic to balance it out. I’d also like to see mining become a primary income source for larger alliances. Static faucets like moon minerals do little to help people who want to mine, so I think more value needs to be put into the Hulk pilots of EVE.

I really liked this response.  Players are very creative in adapting to situations, a recent example is the “farming” of Incursions with the formation of channels etc, and then the reaction of the “early” ending of hi-sec incursions.  It missions were more dynamic, then players would have to work more to adapt, and I think that would be fun.  I also think that mining could do with some love – many of the bots seem to be broken now, so it would be interesting to see attention on mining focus on developing it rather than trying to stop the botting.

What is the one thing in Eve that you think needs the most attention, and what one thing would you want to change to improve it?
Now, the easy way out of this question would be to cite FW/LowSec/Bounty/War issues, but the fact of the matter is that CCP is already working on a new CrimeWatch system (as told in the minutes) which will allow for many changes and new features that weren’t possible before.

With that said, I’m going to say that legacy ship design & blob warfare need addressing. Many of the original ships in EVE are comepletely useless due to many of the changes over the years. I revamping of older models (ie: low tier T1 ships) would be the easiet solution. Blob warfare is another thing, but sadly I don’t have a specific solution for it as it encompasses numerous aspects.

I think we’d all like to see ships rebalanced and redeployed.  The arrival of the new Tier 3 battlecruisers has resulted in (from my perspective of sales and production) a drop in HAC use, e.g. Zealots (use an Oracle instead!).  The Noctis nerfed Salvagers Destroyers until the recent changes.  Let’s see more work here, perhaps even an upgrade for the Orca to make it more of a hi-sec Rorqual maybe?

Following the “summer of rage” and Incarna, when and how would you advocate CCP developing Walking in Stations, or would you prefer no further development at all?
Personally, I want WIS. My advice to CCP would be to continue development at a lower intensity and only release when they have a completed product with actual content. I would absolutely love to socialize with other avatars, but it needs to be a completed and well thought out system before we even hear about it.

100% supported.

Next up is Two step:

If elected to the CSM, if you could do 1 thing to improve gameplay for players like me, what would you want to do?
I also do some production, and I think one fix that CCP could make that would make a lot of people very happy is to improve the production UI. Even something as simple as choosing the location of a blueprint as the production location by default (saving several clicks per job) would be huge.

Oh please let this happen.  Production is just so many clicks it’s tedious.  As an industrialist, I spend so much of my game time clicking to set jobs running that I can sometimes run out of time to acually undock and do other things I might enjoy.

What is the one thing in Eve that you think needs the most attention, and what one thing would you want to change to improve it?
POS mechanics. POSes are used by people in all areas of space, and they are terrible. I would love to see a rewrite along the lines of the “Dead Horse” proposal, to have modular POSes that would hopefully allow people to duck and have real private ship and item storage.

POS reworking could almost be its own expansion.  Linking in with the first question, why is it I cannot let my Corp use production and research facitilies at a Corp POS without allowing them the ability to cancel all of the production jobs.  POS could be so much more than it is.

Following the “summer of rage” and Incarna, when and how would you advocate CCP developing Walking in Stations, or would you prefer no further development at all?
I agree with the path that CCP set out in their recent dev blog on Incarna. They need to first come up with some actual *gameplay* in WiS, then they should roll it out to the players. I’m not sure exactly what gameplay it should be, but that isn’t the job of the CSM.

I agree in part with this – the first part.  However as a representative of the player base, I’d hope that they (the CSM) would perhaps offer suggestions / crowd source to help CCP.

Third for today is Blackberry Bold:

Rather than answer questions separately, he sort of merged it into a statement, which I’ve reproduced below.

“The answers for question one and two would be the same. Remove the current antiquated CSM and replace it with a more modern direct Democratic system. CCP would be able to go directly to the players to get their input and so would reduce the incidences of “poor communication” that happened last year.

Originally a Democratic form of governing was logistically undoable, because of distance, poor communication, etc., so as a second choice the representational form of government was the only option. Because of modern technology the intermediary of a representative is no longer needed and, as all unnecessary filters to communication, should be removed.

As for your last question I personally have no current interest whatever in walking in stations but I do see, and agree with, CCP’s vision for the future. I think it is a natural evolution of the game and they should continue to keep working on it. However, it is important that these efforts not interfere with the current benefits of the game and the best way to prevent that from happening is via direct communication with the players.”

Unfortunately I think this is more of a political “sound bite” rather than an answer.  It can be frustrating when you watch a politician who has been asked a straight-forward question seeming answer a completely different question and not really touch on the actual question asked.  Maybe I’m being a bit harsh here, but that’s how I felt when reading Blackberry’s response.

That aside, his stated aim sort of answers why he then didn’t answer my questions, but I actually fully support the idea of a body such as the CSM and think that it does offer the opportunity (if structured and handled correctly) to promote better communications between CCP and players, and to add a layer of accountability.  If I petition something and get a poor response then the accountability is more difficult to trace, however if the CSM are fobbed off, the impact is more public.

I couldn’t and wouldn’t support any candidate who advocated the removal of the CSM or structure very similar to it.