|
|
| Author |
Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 5 post(s) |
|
CCP Dolan
C C P
C C P Alliance
69
   |
Posted - 2013.10.29 00:33:00 -
[1] - Quote
Just over 6 months ago, CCP formed the first iteration of the Council of Planetary Management (CPM) for DUST 514. The CPM was a selected, diverse group of high level, knowledgeable players aimed to represent DUST 514 players to the development team. You can read more about their original purpose here, but IGÇÖd like to take some time to talk about their growth, current and past integration into the DUST development process, and opportunities to improve their effectiveness for both players and CCP.
The CPM was inspired by EVE OnlineGÇÖs Council of Stellar Management (CSM), a democratically elected player counsel that acts as a representative body for the player-base. The CSM serves a year-long term and, along with regular digital meetings with EVE development teams, meets directly with CCP development teams several times at intensive, in-person summits. You can read more about the CSM here.
Among the primary functions of the CSM, now in its 8th seated counsel, has been to act as a GÇ£focus groupGÇ¥ for the EVE development teams by getting early access to information and providing feedback on upcoming features in order to help shape the ongoing development of the game. The CPM was formed in the similar hope that they would provide a representative voice for players and be equally as helpful in the development of DUST 514. However, changes in key personnel within the DUST 514 development team has made it difficult to continuously engage the CPM in open dialogue regarding the development of DUST 514, and this lack of dialogue sometimes resulted in dropped balls, or topics being lost in the accelerated pace of development. However, we think that by understanding the difficulties and mistakes of the past, we can turn the CPM into the effective council that both CCP and the CPM have always hoped it would be.
From the beginning, CCP Xhagen and I, CCP Dolan, were the primary points of contact for all CSM and CPM matters. However, with CCP Xhagen transitioning into his role as a producer for EVE Online, I have realized that I need to enlist additional help so that we can turn the CPM into the success it deserves to be. The recent arrival and support of CCP Rouge (Executive Producer) has been immensely helpful in involving the CPM deeply in to the development process in our Shanghai office. The CPM has already held several meetings with him over the last couple of weeks and will continue to do so in the coming future. Additionally, CCP SaberWing (DUST 514 Community Manager) will be working with the CPM to organize and oversee the CPMGÇÖs direct connection with all of the relevant DUST 514 Development teams. With this new team in place, we anticipate a more active and fluid level of communication between CCP and the CPM.
Similarly, the monthly release schedule necessitated by DUST 514GÇÖs rapid development has provided its own set of unique challenges and opportunities. It has required a reassessment of our communication pathways, as we have found that the structure derived from our relationship with the CSM simply isnGÇÖt applicable. To address this issue, CCP will now focus on talking to the CPM when setting goals and designs for features far in advance of them actually being worked on. This will allow their feedback to be concentrated on the finer details once development has begun.
While there have been difficulties over the past 6 months, the CPM has demonstrated a continued commitment to working with CCP, and I must commend them for their dedicated time and effort. Their institution is invaluable in a game as new and rapidly growing as DUST 514, especially given the single shared universe it inhabits with EVE Online. CCP is fully committed to strengthening their relationship with the CPM and growing DUST 514 through the help of their collective expertise.
--CCP Dolan, on behalf of the DUST development team |
|
|
CCP Logibro
C C P
C C P Alliance
3253
|
Posted - 2013.11.05 17:33:00 -
[2] - Quote
I'm going to start off with a quick statement: The CPM has been nothing short of absolutely stellar. The times we have been able to use them as the resource that they were supposed to be has resulted in amazing feedback and progress. To everyone that believes that they have been doing very little, I would beg to differ and I would believe it completely disingenuous to call them useless. They have made themselves available at nearly any time we ask, ready to give instant feedback on any and everything. Yes it's behind closed doors at the moment, but that's the NDA - it's a double edged sword.
While the NDA prevents the CPM from telling the wider community a large number of things, what it does do is allow us to run raw ideas and sanity check crazy proposals without fear of the larger community taking it the wrong way. A number of truly ridiculous ideas have made it to the cutting room floor with the help of the CPM, and some excellent ideas have been proposed by them, been expanded by the development teams and actually borne fruit. There is absolutely no way that many of the details that we have shared with them so early would be disseminated among the wider public, as the ideas are too raw and unrefined to be ready for mass feedback. Doing so would result is a vast sea of half-built responses that would inundate the development teams, drowning out the well planned responses in a swarm of half-baked ideas due to a lack of a solid base for people to give feedback on.
The CPM is meant to be an advocacy council taking issues they see from the player base and raising them with us. They're also an amazing sanity check for our plans. While many of you can't see the impact they're making, trust me when I say that while we haven't always been giving them the support they deserve, they have been putting in mountains of work. But they do not dictate development. They act merely in an advisory capacity, and the final call will always remain in CCPGÇÖs hands. Infact, I have seen instances where CPM members have stated that their preferred play styles need to be nerfed for the good of the game.
The reaction that many of you are having right now is exactly the same reaction EVE players had when the CSM was first formed. Over many years they have had the ability to prove themselves as CCP has grown to include them as part of the development process. The CPM wonGÇÖt integrate overnight, but we do need to put more work into it. We can make it work, and we are committed to making it work.
CCP Logibro // EVE Universe Community Team // Distributor of Nanites // Patron Saint of Logistics
|
|
|
CCP Dolan
C C P
C C P Alliance
91
|
Posted - 2013.11.06 01:03:00 -
[3] - Quote
Greetings guys, I just wanted to pop in for two specific reasons. One is to say that I am quite pleased with the progress we have made following my original posting of this statement. I just finished filling out the CPM budget for next year and have made a lot of progress on getting elections into a place where I am happy with them. CCP Logibro and CCP SaberWing have been doing great work helping to get the CPM involved with our upcoming development (much to CCP Logibro's lack of sleep, buy him a beer if you see him). I am sure we will be seeing even more meetings coming out of them in the future.
Now for the less savory part of why I am here. So in this thread and in certain external mediums, some well respected members of the community (who actually have my personal contact information and could contact me at any time). Have been sharing some blatant misinformation about how the programs that I run and operate work on a fundamental basis. To help address some of these inaccuracies, I'll list a few bullet points:
- Making claims like "a majority of the community is calling for an end to this" is blatantly false, and I would like to see any sort of stats backing up this claim. I love to see when the majority of the community agree on anything, as it usually results in great changes, but you aren't going to find a consensus to support disbanding the CPM. I suspect that people are falling victim to confusing "the community" for "people who talk to me".
- Making claims that the CSM and CPM are marketing stunts and would be better replaced by a group of the "underprivileged or disabled", is frankly pretty insulting to a myriad of groups including myself, the CSM and CPM, the community members who support the elections, and the disabled. Honestly, if the CSM or CPM was some sort of marketing endeavor, you'd be hearing a lot more about them, but I really don't have the time to show them off to the general public as both the councils and myself are busy doing actual work to improve the games.
- Making claims that the CSM is in some way corrupt and that the CPM will follow suit is also blatantly false, and shows a severe lack of understanding of how the CSM and CPM operate. In the past, members who come in to only serve specific agendas quickly disappear in to the ether of irrelevance while constructive members actually get good things done. Pushing agendas isn't how the Councils work at all. Council members are not junior game designers, they are a sounding board for CCP ideas and provide feedback on our planned upcoming features and ideas. I understand that in the past CCP has made game decisions that have made some people upset, and CSM members have taken the opportunity to troll those upset people, but there is no part of being on the council that prevents you from trolling. If anyone feels that they have evidence of real corruption or information leaks on the CSM or CPM I would appreciate you mailing both myself and Internal Affairs so it can be properly dealt with.
- Making claims like "because things have not progressed as quickly as planned, the CPM project is a failure" is either just poor rhetoric or a lack of understanding of how game development and creative industries in general work. If CCP wrote off everything that did not progress as planned, as a failure then we would never have had a game and would have remained a group of 3 programmers in Iceland.
- Finally, while I have always been open to forming large focus groups to work on particular content (as was done by Hans Jagerblitzen during his CSM time to work on Incursions), I think many people underestimate the vital nature of an NDA to the whole council process. As Logibro detailed earlier, a certain amount of the things that the CSM and CPM hear are simply not fit for public consumption. Additionally, I think many people underestimate the time commitment required of council members. If someone thinks they can rapidly form large groups of knowledgeable players, have them all enter into a legal binding NDA, not have any of the info they receive leak, and do it with a 24 hour turnaround time from the request for info to them handing in their official feedback, then you should probably apply for my job because you are a miracle worker.
Whew, sorry for all that unpleasantness guys, I hope that I didn't spoil the mood. I just think that there are a lot of people out there who don't really understand how this whole thing works, yet still try to speak from some sort of position of authority on the matter, particularly among a group who might be less familiar with the CPM's predecessor. I have a lot of appreciation for the work that these guys do, and I also tend to get a little upset when people try to bend my words to support bad ideas. While I acknowledge that CPM project didn't do as well in it's first 6 months as I would have liked, I am not going to let people try and kick it while it is down.
(P.S.- It's a little late here, so I'll let you guys do my spell checking for me  ) |
|
|
CCP Logibro
C C P
C C P Alliance
3284
|
Posted - 2013.11.06 11:33:00 -
[4] - Quote
One thing I'll just point out is all the CPM members can be reached via their in game mail boxes. You can quite easily send a mail to all of them at once.
CCP Logibro // EVE Universe Community Team // Distributor of Nanites // Patron Saint of Logistics
|
|
|
CCP Logibro
C C P
C C P Alliance
3291
|
Posted - 2013.11.06 16:56:00 -
[5] - Quote
NanoCleric wrote:CCP Logibro wrote:One thing I'll just point out is all the CPM members can be reached via their in game mail boxes. You can quite easily send a mail to all of them at once. Agreed that it's nice to have that ability and while 'we' may be aware of that, what about those who are not checking forums and those who don't know who the CPM are or aren't even aware we have a CPM? The forum and e-mails can't be your be-all and end-all of customer engagement if you want broad feedback. I've already explained how even with our small segment of 2k of your playerbase, we could only get 200-300 of those on these forums and our own forums. If you truely want feedback from the masses, then there are technical means and ways which guarentee you engage 'all' players, not just those who seek it out. Believe me, i trust that your doing a lot at the moment, but i've already explained a means by which you can engage with more players. I also know you will have competant coders who would also agree it can be done. If you want the CPM to represent the community, give them the tools they need to engage 'everyone' via in-game feedback. Either a CCP staff member or CPM could update the content of a splash interface on the update screen, either requesting feedback on something in the form of radial selection, checkboxes or a short typed response. Which can then all be collated and discussed. You can also provide a petitioning system in the game so people can send other written comments back under different subcategories. This is not a *****, this is not a whinge, this is not a troll, it's positive critisim on the ways and means you are currently using with proposed viable solutions which can be considered and adapted to increase performance, feedback rate and opinions over a broader spectrum. Because the truth is that the CPM don't represent us all, they don't represent me, or anyone else who hasn't engaged with them.. At the moment people only have the option to contact them if they are aware of them, i'm aware of them and i opt not to seek them out as i have other things to do, whereas if i had a screen asking me for my opinion on something when i log on, sure i'll spend a few moments to type in my opinion or select an option. Also despite being aware of them, i may have opted not to contact them, but neither have any of them reached out to me in any media i regularaly check. So just realize how many others have not engaged with them too. This is logical, technically possible, feasible for increasing consumer contact and credible for helping to steer the game the way players would love to see it go.
There are two problems with this system that I can see from first glance. First is that if you put in people's faces then their prone to get very annoyed. Some people just want to hop on and play some games, and being badgered by a questionnaire is something they won't want. And if you don't essentially force it in front of their faces, then you don't get the widespread exposure that you're talking about as most people will never even notice it exists.
The second thing is that not everyone has experience with everything in the game, and thus their feedback isn't as useful on those particular issues. For example, if we're looking for feedback on HAVs then we would want to get specific feedback from those that pilot them and those that usually destroy them (Heavy frames with forge guns, anyone that runs swarm lauchers a lot), not average clone in an assault suit with a scrambler rifle. Yes, we'll want their feedback too (generally on their vulnerability to HAVs or lack thereof), but they're not going to be able to tell me that the handling for the Soma is wonky when going down hills making it prone to veering off course, or that forge guns need the charge reticule moved to the crosshair as having it on the ammo gauge make it harder to maintain awareness of your current charge state. We often go to the CPM for expert opinions on subjects, and either the CPM can supply it directly or they know exactly who to talk to get one.
And while not strictly a problem, making the system you're describing would take technical resources, which could be instead spent on actually developing the game further. I'm not sure many people would trade the remaining racial heavy suits or better tutorials for in-game surveys from us.
However I do think we could do a better job of publicising the CPM's existence so that people know that they do have an advocacy council they can get in contact with, and so that we get the widest possible voting base for when the CPM elections take place.
CCP Logibro // EVE Universe Community Team // Distributor of Nanites // Patron Saint of Logistics
|
|
|
|
| |
|