CCP Layoffs

CCP just laid off 20% of its task force. It's nothing the CSM can really say about it, so these are my personal thoughts...

We still don't have clear answers as to who got laid off, but the first I can see a sizeable part consists in "new" hires and WoD people.
The part that annoys me is that the people responsible are still going to be there to repeat their stupid mistakes.
It's fairly simple... Layoffs happen because cash is not available.
Cash is not available because subscription for Eve are not where they should be, and the growth does not provide indication enough that the prospect are overwhelmingly positive, so investors are not going to poney up cash if there's no good prospect.
The reason the subs are not where they should be is because of 2 failed InCarna expansions. We warned CCP it would happen, employees warned it would happen, and yet they went through with it.
Hilmar may have come forward to take the blame, and that's fine he's the CEO after all, but eventually one has to realize that Hilmar bases his decisions based on more than just himself. "People" had been pushing for that ridiculous plan. Yet they don't seem to have taken any blame for that.

In addition to which NeX could have been a success and a show for growth. Once again the release was botched, and the people responsible for the insane pricing structure are still around.

Bad decisions happen, especially when you try things out. A string of bad decisions in the face of contrary evidence however should result in sanctions.

Lay-offs, if they're unavoidable, are a good opportunity to get rid of the dead weight accumulated over the years. In every company there's people who are redundant, unproductive, and some who got there because of nepotism, sometimes all of the above. On this scale it's unavoidable that good people get eliminated who shouldn't be, but they can be a minority.

It seems that instead of axing the people responsible and the dead weight, CCP managed to botch its round of layoffs as well... Sad...

So once more, good luck and godspeed to the good people at CCP who got axed.

How I do it

Being on the CSM, I get a barrage of complaints about the game, and people who contact me usually expect me to do something about it.

I spend countless hours reading about issues and problems voiced by people who engage in all of the activities eve has to offer. Living at a POS in wormholes is much harder than it needs to be, supercapitals are broken, industry hasn't had improvements in ages and many of the POS modules are useless, bots ruin the game, mining is boring and not really profitable, lowsec has no purpose, hybrids are broken, Black Ops are worthless, ... I could go on and on all day.

Many of the past CSM delegates burn out after a term, or even during the term, in no small part because not only do we get to listen and repeat that things are broken day in and day out, we have to face the frustration of dealing with the internal politics of a company, something the average player doesn't have to deal with; that the realities of software development are hard; and that resource allocation is never what we think it should be; etc. In addition to the "Eve Online" drama, we have the CSM Drama and the CCP Drama... CSM Members get sometimes bashed when CCP blunders, but you don't get to see how many blunders we actually manage to prevent.

Former and current CSM members sometimes comment "I don't know how you manage to do it and not get submerged by all this". I never thought about it very much, I just keep trudging along through thick and thin. After some thought the answer is pretty easy however: As it is, Eve Online is a good game. It has a large community of players, they're engaged, they communicate, they create things within the game and out of the game. The game itself is ever evolving, people find new things to use and abuse, groups of people rise and fall, everyone in their little corner of the game has something fun and interesting they're doing. They may be trying to build a mining corporation in highsec or shooting sansha in the face for fun and money or making traps for one another to blow their hard-earned spaceships up, but everyone is doing something, has a plan or a goal or a vision...

Eve is something that provides fun for the 18 year old college student in search of PvP adrenaline to my 81 year old (it's true) corpmate who enjoys logging in 1 or 2 hours a day to gather minerals and doing missions while chatting with people. We focus so much on the negative aspect we often lose sight of all the things that make Eve the great game it is, even with its issues.

I haven't turned all stary-eyed and morphed into a fanboi all of a sudden, I'm usually extremely [constructively] critical, I've been characterized as "Pitbull" or Mr. "What the hell is wrong with you" Cop during CSM-CPP meetings, but when trying to fix the flaws, it is sometimes nice to remember why we want to fix those so badly in the first place... So I take a step back, look at the game as a whole, and then dive into problem fixing :rage: mode.

Each has their own thing, but if you're curious my friends in Rooks and Kings are invaluable in providing the kind of fun I keep playing the game for (when I'm not busy manufacturing stuff :p), the latest examples of which can be read about here and here.

Once more into the breach, my friends

Verily, the bards will tell the tale of those valiant knights who went on to storm the castle, forsooth! Or something.

We showed up fresh for the meetings. There was one item on the agenda and that was to solve the non-vanity microtransactions. We went on over the messages, the historical and recent posts, we went over the intentions behind the words, past and present, we tried to tackle the problem in broad terms, in precise examples, eventually settled on leaving the easy stuff aside and attacking the problem by the middle (the grey areas).

We discussed the merits of precise (as in contractual) statements as opposed to vaguer statements. We discussed the definition of words. It wasn't easy. But we understood our mutual stances and worked from there.

Then we worked on the statements that each (the CSM and CCP) would publish following this summit separately then compared notes. Upon doing so, a 2 hour discussion flared up on an agreement we had met yesterday where one of the party was not in agreement anymore. Except it turned out they were and what each meant was not what the other meant. All in all, we all finished and agreed on the respective statements and went through with them.

Those statements are being translated, rereviewed and published most likely today.
There are always caveats when we can't talk about absolutes in such a tense situation. But I would advise the reader not to nitpick too much the wording.
I take the fact that CCP and the CSM argued so much over the definition of words and the statements in general as a sign they mean what they say.

The result is positive to me and I get out of the summit satisfied that I have done my job correctly, even though some things didn't go as far as I would have wanted (or as soon), but progress has definitely been made and the statements as they are stand on their own and it is my personal impression that this should restore a situation where we can finally start shooting one another again.

It is less important, but in addition to these things, we were shown parts of the next Eve marketing campaign (looks great), and received some surprising and welcome news as to the directions and progress several teams had made with their projects.

I am still in transit back from Iceland, and couldn't post yesterday due to hotel internet malfunction, but I'll be back home in a few hours.

If the devblog gets published and you have questions, I will log into Eve and here and on eve-o etc right as soon as I'm back home, so don't hesitate to ask questions.

Edit: while the released blog doesn't specifically address it: the player economy will not be circumvented. a painted/remodeled ship bought in the NeX store will require the regular version to be provided as well as AURUM.

Emergency Meeting

Day 1 of the emergency meeting is practically over. Now we have the "informal meetings" that happen over dinner and beer. (No, these are not attempts at buying us off, though I'd love that).

I won't be able to discuss some specifics of the meetings until the thing is over and we've cleared everything, but a status update is in order.

The atmosphere within the attending CSMs was relatively relaxed. Unlike other times, there was no discussion about World of Tanks or other non-CSM things however and all of the time spent yesterday was spent talking about the issues. There is general consensus on the situation with some slight nuances when it comes to specifics.

Today, we started with the "easy stuff". InCarna perception, CQ, Nex Store useability and pricing structure, we also touched up a bit on the 99 dollars program. Tension was present in growing quantities over the day, but the conversations were constructive and not overly confrontational. Points were made clearly and unequivocally, but in a decent atmosphere.

The Employees within CCP who don't participate in the meetings and knew us took the time to discuss aspects of the issues during lunch and breaks, on both sides, either appreciating our perspective or playing devil's advocate or providing mitigating (but still reasonable) points to the discussion.

As far as the meetings are concerned, progress has been made on some points, elements of answers have been found for others. Overall I deemed this day positive with one caveat I will get into after the public announcement has been made (note to self:230).

The toughest day will obviously be tomorrow, and we'll see how that goes, but considering the conversations we've had both with people who will participate to those sessions and others, I have good hope things will turn out fine. Hope I won't be proven wrong.

Sorry for not getting into the gritty details, but it would be unfair to promise or incite to rage either way until things are set in stone.

Now off for debriefing with the CSM delegates. Will update tomorrow.

PS: I don't have *real* internet access, please repost this to the appropriate channels as appropriate.
PPS: Sorry for not answering all your evemails, there was just too many to respond to individually, I read them all up to yesterday.
Stephan aka Meissa Anunthiel

Light at the end of the tunnel?

It seems CCP has heard our complaints, partially at least...

CCP Zulu's latest devblog goes on in a better direction than the previous one...

While it doesn't fully address our concern, and what it does address does not do so to the extent we would want, it is apparent our message has been heard and CCP is willing to engage (again) in constructive dialog.

It may have been the case that CCPers were under pressure from top management to "stay the course" and our recent demonstrations/cancellations/posts/shooting at structures started to raise some alarms.

Either way, we've been summoned to Iceland on very short notice. Frankly I don't see the point, we could convey mostly the same thing with the skype conversations we've been having non-stop. However there's genuine added value to being present face to face when engaging in conflictual dialog, so that may be that, and also the people we are having skype conversations with may not be the same...

I just hope they don't hope they're going to change our minds by getting us some dinner or something, but I doubt that's what they plan. We've had enough interactions in the past for them to know I, for one, do not shy away from strong words when they are necessary and cannot be bought of. Considering the tone of this last message and the discussions we've had over the past days, I expect something productive to come out of it. We'll see... To recap, my position is this:

1) I don't want gold ammo, ships for $, +10% damage implants or any other form of "pay2win". I'm fine with t-shirts, ship paint jobs, corp logos on ships & outposts, that kind of non competitive thing. I want CCP to stick with that stance.

2) I want NeX price to be altered, ideally between the $2 and $5 price range for the vast majority of the items so that everyone can participate, as opposed to the to 10% richest plebs. I don't mind $150 monocles as long as everyone can participate to a significant degree.

3) I want commitment that the option not to load CQ stay in place until such time as the performance for docking & loading station environment becomes acceptable (read: 20 seconds on my machine, subjective criteria, I know :p)

4) I want clarifications on the $99 program so that fansites are not milked if they manage to recoup even the slightest bit of their cost through ads.

This is what I'll be going to Iceland with, as well as the reasons for those things. Should there be anything more to add, be sure to contact me or one of the other CSM delegates.

I'll definitely keep you posted.

And so it continues...

Yesterday I was informed a mail was making the rounds, purported to be from CCP Hellmar (CCP CEO). That email was really really not good, and I hoped, for the sake of trying to find solutions, that it wouldn't get released to the world... The cat is out of the bag: http://www.evenews24.com/2011/06/25/ccp-hilmar-global-email-shows-the-reasoning-behind-ccp-zulu-devblog/

In that mail (that I couldn't confirm comes from Hilmar, so it may be wrong), we hear several things:

[the latest expansion: CQ] rolls out without a hitch, is in some cases faster than what we had before, this is the pinnacle of professional achievement.

The pinnacle of professional achievement... The turd that lets me dock up in 90 seconds, has lighting issues all over the place, disabled cynojammers, broke effects in wormholes, removed implants from people's heads... Ok...

After 40 hours we have already sold 52 monocles, generating more revenue than any of the other items in the store.

 So, going by these figures, CCP made, at most, in the first 2 days 15,000$. And they call that a success.

This we have done after months of research by a group of highly competent professionals, soliciting input and perspective from thought leaders and experts in and around our industry.

And yet, a few weeks before release, they still didn't have a pricing plan to communicate to the CSM. I repeat, not that they didn't do it, they didn't HAVE it.

We went out with a decisive strategy on pricing and we will stay the course and not flip flop around or knee jerk react to the predictable.

Sooo, in essence, that says "fuck you guys, you can shout all you want, we won't budge". This explains Zulu's devblog, and paints a bleak picture as far as negociation is concerned.

However, he also says this:

I can tell you this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say.

Since dialog is conditioned to actions, let me ask all of you, readers, to protest in Jita, Amarr, Rens. Jetcan shuttles, shoot monuments, rename all your ships, whatever is necessary.

Also, if you have a subscription, cancel it. I don't ask you biomass your characters, I would rather see a resolution to these issues than stopping playing the game, but the only metrics CCP has easy access to is subscriber numbers. So cancel your subscription, and if you're about to lapse, buy a plex with that same CC. The non-permanence of your account will in and of itself send a strong message.

Will keep you informed.

Adding napalm to the fire...

So I've spent the past 16 hours reading forums, posting in 4 languages on different forums, chatting continuously with CCP, with individual players, with my fellow CSM members. Kudos to Trebor Daehdoow, Seleene and Two Step for the continuous and constructive posts throughout the day, btw.

I've tried to put things in perspective, provide constructive feedback to CCP as to how to handle the drama. I might as well have been pissing in the wind...

After lengthy discussions, CCP finally got back to us with a draft devblog for feedback. I was baffled at what I was seeing, I couldn't believe CCP would post that after all we had talked. So I put my thinking cap on again and posted constructively in that thread, mentioning things that needed to be addressed, like "will CCP add items providing in-game advantage to the store" and "this pricing scheme will not work, change it", and asking for data on what the grand plan that was alluded to but never presented actually was.

1 hour later, while still waiting for comments on our feedback, the devblog gets posted, nearly as it was.
Needless to say, I'm fucking pissed. What have I been doing if it's to get ignored?

Specifically, the lack of comments about:

Not going to include items that provide in-game advantages (read: gold ammo) is terrible terrible news, and a total change from past comments from CCP to the CSM.

The pricing scheme, not only is it against our wishes, but it's plain retardedness from CCP as they're not going to accomplish their objective AND are going to alienate part of the playerbase in the process...

The crap performance of CQ and the stated temporary nature of the "do not load station environment" settings.

I don't know how to make CCP reason. They seem hell bent on putting their fingers in their ears and singing in unison "everything's fine and dandy, lalalalalalalalala can't hear you".

I have to think some more about this, but this doesn't smell good...

We're being consulted on the price scheme for the next batch of MT items. If it goes the way of the devblog, well don't hope for too much...