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Bittersteel the Bastard WarRavens League of Infamy 137	Posted - 2013.08.13 17:10:00 - [61] - Quote Thanks for sharing this info with the community!
Kevall Longstride DUST University Ivy League 452	Posted - 2013.08.14 22:11:00 - [62] - Quote I await the next report with some anticipation after the statement you guys threw out. Thinking you'll have been busy.
Heinrich Jagerblitzen D3LTA FORC3 Inver Brass 688	Posted - 2013.08.14 22:14:00 - [63] - Quote It'll be out today.
DeeJay One Guardian Solutions DARKSTAR ARMY 81	Posted - 2013.08.17 09:36:00 - [64] - Quote Heinrich Jagerblitzen wrote: It'll be out today. The new SoonGäó ;)
Heinrich Jagerblitzen D3LTA FORC3 Inver Brass 688	Posted - 2013.08.17 13:40:00 - [65] - Quote August 16, 2013 As many of you have noticed, earlier this week the CPM published a letter titled "State of Affairs: Communication & Trust" in our Council's Chamber on the Dust514 forums. If you haven't taken a moment to read through, I highly recommend you pause and do so, as it is the focus on this latest Activity Report. Those of you that have been actively playing Dust 514 since the beta period or following its development closely won't find most of the content in our public statement to be particularly new or surprising. Many of you are familiar with the ups and downs the game has gone through from build to build, as well as the scattershot communication methods CCP has employed in an attempt to engage the public. The reason for a "State of Affairs" at this point in time is simple GÇô The CPM was originally founded with a specific mission in mind, and the public deserves a reporting on how that mission is proceeding. Of course, when CCP Dolan first announced the formation of the CPM in his dev blog, none of us on the council had any idea the challenges that we would be faced with when Uprising 1.0 launched on 5/14, bringing the game out of beta and into the media spotlight. For CCP, the subsequent restructuring of the development teams that focused their resources back on to polishing core game play took its toll as well. Understandably, priority was given over the more seemingly-mundane chores of establishing the CPM with a charter, a term limit, a voting procedure, and most importantly GÇô a structured and mutually beneficial relationship with the development teams. Without further rehashing Monday's CPM statement too much, the reality here is that over several months now we have drifted away from our primary mission. That is, the formation of a structured, efficient working relationship with the dev teams, and the charter that will guide future elected CPM members as they assist CCP in rolling out new fixes and features they can be confident the community will love. While CCP's current hyper-focus on core game play is crucial GÇô the lack of attention given to the creation of such internal structure has allowed many ongoing communication issues to persist, resulting in much of the very same player frustration we've seen since the beginning of the beta period. Before publishing our "State of Affairs", we had repeatedly raised these communication issues internally, asked for any good news we could share about solutions being put in place, and repeatedly come up empty handed. This ultimately defined the tone and content of our public statement GÇô at the end of the day no news is still news. Since the posting on Monday, two significant developments have taken place that are worth noting. The first is that CCP Commander Wang quickly and generously reached out to the CPM with a host of badly-needed information about CCP Shanghai's internal design process, which if nothing else will assist in our ongoing pursuit of a structured, efficient means of contributing regularly. The second is that we finally managed to secure our first meeting with the management committee that is solely focused on discussing the going communication issues as well as the status of the CPM as an institution. What is becoming clear now in the meantime is that there are enough dissimilarities between the Dust 514 release schedule and that of EVE Online that some improvisation on our part will be needed in order to arrive at a process that the Shanghai studio finds useful and is willing to commit to. And no matter that both studios carry the CCP logo and the same commitment to "practice transparency" (one of the company's four core values, believe it or not) GÇô it is also becoming increasingly clear that many individuals in Shanghai are completely unfamiliar with working with a group like the CSM/CPM.
Heinrich Jagerblitzen D3LTA FORC3 Inver Brass 688	Posted - 2013.08.17 13:41:00 - [66] - Quote The detectable levels of apprehension about allowing a player group inside the development process pose a considerable challenge especially for myself in particular. Over the last year I've grown accustomed to working with designers, producers, and executives who have welcomed CSM feedback not only about the features in the pipeline, but also the larger road map for EVE Online, including the actual development process itself. The CSM as an institution has survived innumerable struggles and conflicts with CCP during many ugly periods during its evolution, finally arriving in a place with few boundaries and few limitations on what it can observe, comment on, and accomplish. CSM7 was the first CSM to function as an actual stakeholder inside the company, participating not only in the regular sprint review meetings, but also the release planning for the Odyssey expansion. In other words, after years of hard work, the CSM is no longer simply being told what is coming in an expansion and given room to comment, they now have the opportunity to influence what will be created for an expansion. The results of this fearlessness speak for themselves. Our meeting Monday will begin to reveal whether CCP Shanghai will learn from the CSM success story and pursuit the tremendous value that transparency with the CPM will bring GÇô or whether they will stubbornly prefer to start from scratch and go through all of the growing pains the CSM fought through year after year to get to the level of productivity and efficiency they demonstrate today. There is a lot of work to be done to polish Dust 514 and little time left before the community's razor-thin attention span is strained by enormous competition from other games this holiday season. Every incentive exists for CCP to quickly open up to the CPM about what they're planning, what they're working on, and to listen to feedback that can prevent a lot of community dissatisfaction with the dev's hard work this second time around. While I will certainly continue to keep you all posted as to our progress this coming week GÇô my sincerest hope is that the next time you hear news it will be from someone helping to manage the CCP Shanghai studio that values our contribution is willing to publicly commit to swiftly putting some of these good practices in place. CPM self-reporting only goes so far GÇô and you, the paying customer, have every right to ask those in charge what kind of a voice you'll have in Dust 514's future moving forward.
Kevall Longstride DUST University Ivy League 458	Posted - 2013.08.17 15:40:00 - [67] - Quote Thanks once again Hans for the report as usual. Lets hope Mondays meeting is productive and positive. If the NDA doesn't allow too much detail, just tweet me a smiley face to Dennie's twitter. :)
zzZaXxx The Exemplars Top Men. 187	Posted - 2013.08.17 17:25:00 - [68] - Quote I don't want to dwell on CCP's epic fails but adding extreme cultural differences into an already complex effort to create their first FPS and link it with EVE was a big mistake. Like I said before, I lived in China for five years and I love China and Chinese people. They are awesome. However the cultural patterns there in regards to customer relations, transparency, and authority are almost diametrically opposed to the culture of feedback and collaboration that has emerged over time in the EVE community between devs and the CSM and community. It's not going to be easy for them to buy into it. But they need to. I hope CCP will make a strong effort ASAP to translate its corporate culture which has worked so well for the EVE team to Shanghai. Time is of the essence.
Casius Hakoke Molon Labe. League of Infamy 248	Posted - 2013.08.17 18:29:00 - [69] - Quote Great report. I will eagerly await any news on Monday. Thank you for keeping us informed on what is going on.
Heinrich Jagerblitzen D3LTA FORC3 Inver Brass 696	Posted - 2013.08.18 04:30:00 - [70] - Quote zzZaXxx wrote: I don't want to dwell on CCP's epic fails but adding extreme cultural differences into an already complex effort to create their first FPS and link it with EVE was a big mistake. Like I said before, I lived in China for five years and I love China and Chinese people. They are awesome. However the cultural patterns there in regards to customer relations, transparency, and authority are almost diametrically opposed to the culture of feedback and collaboration that has emerged over time in the EVE community between devs and the CSM and community. It's not going to be easy for them to buy into it. But they need to. I hope CCP will make a strong effort ASAP to translate its corporate culture which has worked so well for the EVE team to Shanghai. Time is of the essence. I've said this plenty of places but I'll repeat again - this has little to do with cultural differences, its an extremely common misconception here. Most of the staff working in the Shanghai office aren't even Chinese. There's a few artists and programmers that are, but none of the management in charge are at all, many came from either Iceland or DICE or were hired from elsewhere and sent there. CCP Commander Wang is literally the only Asian person we've ever worked with - and I don't even know for sure that he's from China originally.

Shadow of War88 0uter.Heaven EoN. 30	Posted - 2013.08.18 06:14:00 - [71] - Quote y shanghai? come to murica! quit outsourcing CCP
DeeJay One Guardian Solutions DARKSTAR ARMY 85	Posted - 2013.08.18 12:07:00 - [72] - Quote Shadow of War88 wrote: y shanghai? come to murica! quit outsourcing CCP Bad troll is bad ;) Coming to the USA would be outsourcing. Also IIRC CCP has a studio in Atlanta.
SponkSponkSponk The Southern Legion 221	Posted - 2013.08.19 00:34:00 - [73] - Quote Casius Hakoke wrote: Great report. I will eagerly await any news on Monday. Thank you for keeping us informed on what is going on.
Heinrich Jagerblitzen D3LTA FORC3 Inver Brass 703	Posted - 2013.08.19 17:48:00 - [74] - Quote Meeting was productive, everyone. Not in the sense of everything being on paper and ready to execute - but there was a lot of clearing the air between the CPM and management and I think everyone walked away on the same page about what we're all here to do and what needs to be done. The reality is that the current pace of releases is going to require an dev interaction structure that's much more focused and time-sensitive, but every bit as high-level from the CPM as the input that the CSM offers to EVE developers. I'll elaborate in another Activity Report to be posted within the next few days, and on the CCP side, work has begun on a charter that will establish our new process as well as give the CPM a concrete, public mission statement so everyone understands how you can help us help CCP. We also had plenty of opportunity to explain in detail our concerns about the direct interaction between CCP and the public, too. We emphasized once again that there's nothing to be gained about sitting on good news while the player community continues to remain upset on the forums and assume that their feedback has been ignored. There needs to be several cycles of discussion taking place - not just information about the imminent patches, but advanced discussion about work to be done in the next release as well. And to their credit, this criticism was listened to and welcomed to our satisfaction. As soon as I've worked out what I'm able to share in greater detail as things evolve this week, I'll share the rest of the story. Thank you for your patience. o7
Dante Kretschmer D3LTA ACADEMY Inver Brass 76	Posted - 2013.08.24 00:29:00 - [75] - Quote Can't believe anyone would do what you are doing for us for free and consuming so much time as it does. Thanks for your efforts and thanks for keeping us updated in this thread and in your blog.
Django Quik Dust2Dust. Top Men. 1393	Posted - 2013.09.05 21:06:00 - [76] - Quote So, Hans, any update lately?
Heinrich Jagerblitzen D3LTA FORC3 Inver Brass 774	Posted - 2013.09.06 13:45:00 - [77] - Quote Wrapping one up. Should be posted soon.
Zyrus Amalomyn Militaires-Sans-Frontieres 259	Posted - 2013.09.09 08:41:00 - [78] - Quote Just wanted to hop in and say I hope you guys can kick the devs out of their stupor, especially about mouse aiming. Their refusal to put in proper mouse control has turned me off to playing. Keep up the good fight!
Kevall Longstride DUST University Ivy League 520	Posted - 2013.09.12 00:21:00 - [79] - Quote Heinrich Jagerblitzen wrote: Wrapping one up. Should be posted soon. Look forward to it.
zzZaXxx The Exemplars Top Men. 220	Posted - 2013.09.13 06:18:00 - [80] - Quote ...

Robert JD Niewiadomski NULLIMPEX INC 517	Posted - 2013.09.13 07:56:00 - [81] - Quote This thread's topic should be abbreviated imho... There is one word too many in it... Anybody care to guess which one?
SponkSponkSponk The Southern Legion The Umbra Combine 329	Posted - 2013.09.13 10:17:00 - [82] - Quote reports?
Absolute Idiom II SyNergy Gaming EoN. 706	Posted - 2013.09.13 15:24:00 - [83] - Quote Weekly
Robert JD Niewiadomski NULLIMPEX INC 527	Posted - 2013.09.13 17:11:00 - [84] - Quote Absolute Idiom II wrote: Weekly Correct
Heinrich Jagerblitzen D3LTA FORC3 Inver Brass 785	Posted - 2013.09.13 18:52:00 - [85] - Quote I could edit the thread title, but than you'd be less likely to remind me that I am bad and behind on a post. Without further ado: September 13, 2013 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 J+¦n H+¦r+¦dal GÇô 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 GÇô 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 J+¦n H+¦r+¦dal GÇô who, without any prompting from us GÇô 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 GÇô 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 GÇô 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 GÇô on par with that of the CSM. Again, I was impressed by J+¦n H+¦r+¦dal'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 GÇô 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 GÇô 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.
Heinrich Jagerblitzen D3LTA FORC3 Inver Brass 785	Posted - 2013.09.13 18:54:00 - [86] - Quote 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 GÇô 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 GÇô 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 GÇô 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 GÇô allocation that is looking highly unlikely for winter. This is where the CSM and CPM were in lockstep GÇô 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 GÇô but we also recognize that none of these development focal points leverage the primary element separating Dust 514 from a host of other shooters.
Heinrich Jagerblitzen D3LTA FORC3 Inver Brass 785	Posted - 2013.09.13 18:55:00 - [87] - Quote 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 GÇô 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 GÇô there's one other recent beast that I'm going to tackle in a separate blog post this weekend GÇô 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. Thanks again for taking the time to follow along, and I hope everyone's been enjoying 1.4. o7
Kevall Longstride DUST University Ivy League 523	Posted - 2013.09.13 19:21:00 - [88] - Quote As alway a good read Hans and I'm very interested in the charter when it gets published. To be honest I've been thinking that the faster monthly cycle that Dust follows in its development was going to make the role of the CPM very different to that of the CSM for the same reasons you mentioned. More detailed and reasoned feedback is going have to the order of the day from the community if they want their opinions heard sympathetically by CCP and the CPM. The pace of development is now so fast that sniping from the edges and hoping you'll land a decent hit is not feasible. Only well thought out feedback will help. The CPM and CCP don't have enough time to simply stop, turn around and say 'what was that you said?' To every bit of QQ'ing from the FOTM players.
Kevall Longstride DUST University Ivy League 523	Posted - 2013.09.14 08:37:00 - [89] - Quote Am I the only one that reads and comments on these reports now?! Lol Come on people. Can't claim the CPM don't engage with their constituents and then not show up when they do.
DeeJay One Guardian Solutions DARKSTAR ARMY 90	Posted - 2013.09.14 09:09:00 - [90] - Quote Sad to hear that the "Link" is a side job for CCP, which probably also means that the market and related stuff is also on the backlog with low priority



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