Long term readers might have noticed that I don’t always finish off what I start – but I did manage to complete the CSM meetings notes.
There were lots of stats provided in the later part of the document – just the sort of thing I find really interesting. Some of these were on the UI:
CCP Arrow produced a quick graph report showing the obscure “Snap Distance” UI setting … stating that over 96% of players have not changed the setting.
Station Services buttons – fewer than 13% of players have these set to “small”
Session timer – less than 20% of users have it enabled
Whereas these are almost literally the very first settings I change on any re-install / UI reset. (Please don’t remove these options CCP!)
Interestingly – 18% of people have audio disabled
And almost 22% of players use the Captains Quarters
That is far more people than I would have expected to be using the Captain’s quarters. I wonder how many are active Toons? Even still, that is probably an indication that the Incarna approach was of interest to players – the failure was in the forced change to an environment that lacked value or content.
Further on the UI:
“prototyping a new radial menu system to replace the existing in-space version using mouse gestures, and eventually the right-click menus … in an attempt to move the interaction in EVE to a ‘left-click’ like most other games/programs/web-pages” and other half interesting things about splitting navigation from the overview and the like.
What is a radial menu system? I presume it is something that is a little more modern looking. I’m not sure what the problem is with right clicks – it seems common enough for bringing up option lists everywhere else. I wouldn’t mind having some control over the menus though. Anyone wanting to quickly warp off to a celestial after losing a ship will know it seems to take an inordinate amount of time to navigate the current right click menu.
Every so often you read something odd in the notes:
Two step inquired when wormholes were going to get a nebula update.
BasementBen: They are super-expensive, it’s a matter of money.
Huh? The Nebula are super expensive? How does that work?
And on to the economy:
Taxes and fees .. insurance .. and NPC loot have.. remained stable in 2012.
In 2012, the Total Value of Final Production (“the stuff that people use”), per subscriber, was higher than in any previous year except in June, averaging about 160m ISK / subscriber / month.
It is odd to see this displayed as per subscriber instead of character – but that seems like a crap load of manufacturing. I can’t see too many new characters being able to pull the ISK together to build that much in their initial months. Actually – I would rarely build that much in a month.
Dr.EyjoG gave the CSM a short demo of some of the real-time queries they can now perform, providing statistics on some of the new ships and what modules were most likely to be fit on them
So CCP can corner our markets more easily than us..
In the past 2 years, the average active player’s wallet has increased from 290M ISK to 620M ISK, and the total in these wallets exceeds 460T ISK.
So my bank balances look ok in comparison to the average active wallet.
Total ISK in the game totals about 600T, of which a little over 400T is held by active characters.
460T is a little over 400 T? I wonder how much of the remaining 140 – 200T is with Alliances, Corps, and Inactive players?
High-sec mining volume is almost 8x that of Null-sec, which is itself more than 10x that of W-Space.
Interesting. I guess it is on volume, and not value.
CCP is working on the “master account” concept and may tie some discounts in with that.
Yes please!
And related Loyalty program ideas
The program will have two pillars: fixed milestone awards and flexible token awards. The fixed awards will be provided to all accounts based on account age, whereas the tokens will be awarded (including retroactively) at regular intervals, and then can be used to purchase unique items in a manner similar to the current in game Loyalty Point system.
Milestones are intended to be immaterial “bragging rights”, and would be visible pretty much wherever account/character information is displayed. .. An Opt-in option will be provided, so that old players will be able to pose as newbies.
Some more examples of milestones were provided. In-game: Portrait enhancement, fixed evolving medal system, billboard notifications, and a monument with character names. Out-of-game: Forum badges and website ticker. External: API and Newsletter. Real-Life perks: FanFest VIP access, EVE store items.
Moving to Token Rewards, these would be paid on a regular basis, perhaps monthly, to each account, be tradable in game, used for Loyalty items, and designed to benefit both veterans and new players.
I must admit that I wasn’t entirely enthused by the fixed milestone rewards initially suggested. Anytime you do a Show Info on another character, one of the first things you look for is their relative age. Having information indicating the age of the account easily displayed may result in most people opt’ing out of showing it. I rarely post on the EO forums and the like – so there is a chance there may not be anything beneficial in that side of the program. (Which would seem to kind of defeat the purpose of it.) Token Rewards, just based on the number of months you have had an account, might be able to be converted into cool enough stuff I guess – particularly at the suggestion to make them retrospective. But it might also take a while to populate a related Loyalty shop with items nice enough to spend your tokens on. (Have you spent your Free Aurum yet…?) I don’t want a program that results in us having a stack of loyalty tokens with nothing worthwhile to spend them on, and milestone rewards everyone opts out of.
So that was it. I am glad I read the whole thing – but I can’t say it was worthwhile as far as my game experience is concerned.
What was interesting (and bemusing) for me was to see the differences in the things I highlighted in comparison to some of the other bloggers. You can pick the Empire Carebear..
Evehermit 
I read the whole thing. Though the only notes I wrote down was on the first half of the minutes. Though I remembered much of the last half of it.
What had really struck me though reading the entire minutes as a whole was “How little CCP understand High Sec Players and the mentality of those that choose to play there”.
That’s what struck me the most, let alone the members of the CSM that also don’t.
I agree that many of the CSM showed that they did not understand the Hi-Sec player. To CCP’s credit, they did repeat a number of times that their focus was on catering for all types of players.