CSM statement on Arnar's blog

[Trebor Daehdoow]

*looks at Mynxee's post*
*Looks at the post I was replying too*

OK, that's something I'm not sure I ever wanted to know about a person...

Girls love horses for some reason....

[Dodgy Past]

Girls love horses for some reason....

Same reason they love washing machines during the spin cycle

[Mynxee]

Girls love horses for some reason....

heh, if only what men like to imagine was true, you'd never get us out of the saddle.

[Trebor Daehdoow]

heh, if only what men like to imagine was true, you'd never get us out of the saddle.

Says the women with more horses than washing machines.

[Lana Torrin]

I would like to apologize for turning this once good thr.... hang on...

[Mynxee]

Says the women with more horses than washing machines.

I have no horses! ~~ eyes washing machine with renewed interest ~~

LOL. OK, I will stop the derailing now...it was just too amusing a sidetrack to resist.

[two step]

To un-derail briefly, we have another follow up meeting scheduled for Wednesday. We should be hearing some more concrete details on what CCP's plans are then.

[Malcanis]

To un-derail briefly, we have another follow up meeting scheduled for Wednesday. We should be hearing some more concrete details on what CCP's plans are then.

I'll just skip to the part where I'm disappointed because no concrete details will be released.

[Bartholomeus Crane]

I'll just skip to the part where I'm disappointed because no concrete details will be released.

That's no one's fault, that's the NDA .... ohh wait ...

[Malcanis]

That's no one's fault, that's the NDA .... ohh wait ...

Now I feel kind of bad about being mean to Fallout; https://forums.eveonline.com/default...865#post109865

[Bartholomeus Crane]

Now I feel kind of bad about being mean to Fallout; https://forums.eveonline.com/default...865#post109865

Well, serious now. That post by Fallout was a lot clearer and contained a lot more information than the one from Zulu in a way.

From it you can deduct that CCP, after all the emergency meetings and release planning, had this plan about what they wanted to do for the winter expansion. Somehow, overcoming the various communication blockages that do exist in CCP, it got through to them that probably that plan was not going to make the players very 'happy' (or come back, however you want to see it). Whether it was the CSM, the constant bittervetting, the plummeting player numbers, we'll probably never know. But someone, or a couple, we'll never really know who either, clued into the fact that another plan was needed. Perhaps faced with the inevitable, CCP finally relented some of their 'reservations', and is now replanning to do more of what the players have been asking for for a while. This is what it looks like at least, more from Fallout's post then Zulus devblog honestly. No one will actually know until CCP actually does it of course.

So yeah, you were a bit mean to Fallout.

Having said that, most if not all the 'reservations' mentioned earlier in the thread still stand. EVE is still 'under-resourced'. Is the new plan going to fix that? Who knows, but it should if you ask me. MT and the Nex shop is still crap, is CCP going to do something about that? I doubt it, so all of this will not do the trick for at least part of the ones that left, me included. Is 0.0 still on a 5-year plan or is that replanned forward? If not, quite a number of 0.0 dwellers won't be very happy with that. Time is still a factor, now even more so because it has marched on. So there isn't much time for long release planning sessions. Etc. etc. What I mean to say is, there's a lot riding on this, the problem isn't easy to fix by any standard, CCP still looks as flawed as ever (certainly where it comes to communication) and even with Fallout's post there isn't much information to go round, and on top of that trust in CCP as a company is basically at an all time low (and dropping if you ask me).

Sooo, with all that in mind, CCP shouldn't be surprised 'mean' posts have been written either. But if they really want to turn the corner, they'll have to come up with something soon, and something better than calling just calling everyone rabble.

But we'll see I guess ...

[Mike deVoid]

CSM: Beside staff/teams, what resources are available for distrubution on FiS development? I.e. are there new resources that can and may be applied, or are we going to witness a simple rejuggling of heads?

[Sponk]

CSM: Beside staff/teams, what resources are available for distrubution on FiS development? I.e. are there new resources that can and may be applied, or are we going to witness a simple rejuggling of heads?

Let's look at the current breakdown, excluding QA, GMs etc:

Incarna : (9 teams - only 2 stolen from eve, approximately 70 developers)

Dust 514/EVE link : (1 team, approximately 7 developers)

In-space features : (3 teams, approximately 22 developers)
"a feature team, the mission design team and an art/effects team."

EVE Gate : (1 team, approximately 10 developers, all of which are terrible)

The others! (4 teams, approximately 15 developers) doing
* testing automation (also fleet fight in a can)
* tools and reporting for GMs
* core infrastructure and release management
* performance monitoring

Looks like they can steal back 2 teams from Incarna, maybe more if you accept that WoD will be a bit delayed. DUST won't be available for a while yet.

Could probably also temporarily steal some art teams from incarna, but they still tend to need developers unless they're doing really cosmetic stuff.

[Mynxee]

Let's look at the current breakdown, excluding QA, GMs etc:

Incarna : (9 teams - only 2 stolen from eve, approximately 70 developers)

Dust 514/EVE link : (1 team, approximately 7 developers)

In-space features : (3 teams, approximately 22 developers)
"a feature team, the mission design team and an art/effects team."

EVE Gate : (1 team, approximately 10 developers, all of which are terrible)

The others! (4 teams, approximately 15 developers) doing
* testing automation (also fleet fight in a can)
* tools and reporting for GMs
* core infrastructure and release management
* performance monitoring

Looks like they can steal back 2 teams from Incarna, maybe more if you accept that WoD will be a bit delayed. DUST won't be available for a while yet.

Could probably also temporarily steal some art teams from incarna, but they still tend to need developers unless they're doing really cosmetic stuff.

That 124 devs doesnt look like WoD resources are included. CCP has said all along that one big benefit of the Carbon technology shared by Eve and WoD was gonna be the ability to swap devs between those (and other) projects with little or no learning curve productivity losses. If that is still true, you have to assume WoD resources could be assigned to FiS and be able to hit the ground running.

What % of the overall headcount in a gaming studio is on average devoted to coding and art? Seems like for CCP it is roughly half if Dust and WoD have about the same number of dev resources as Eve.

[Xiang Jiao]

I don't think we will ever get an honest assessment of resource allocation in a dev blog ever again. We will only have the 18 month benchmark and have to guess how everyone has been reassigned from there. We've already picked this information apart and surmised that at least 1.2 million man hours have been consumed by Incarna, not including the features still destined for the Winter expansion. I'm not familiar with how the industry works, but it seems to be common sense to me that writers and artists in Atlanta can work on any project universally. However, given CCP's preference to selling new features over polishing old ones, which project do you think has priority over the other?

[Evelgrivion]

I've had a sneaking suspicion that CCP's approach for resource allocation has been a horribly mismanaged approach of throwing 30 people at tasks more suited for teams of 3 (assuming the time frame is consistent between the 3 and 30 man approach), while many features have been getting teams of <5 when needing teams >15+.

[Malcanis]

Well, serious now. That post by Fallout was a lot clearer and contained a lot more information than the one from Zulu in a way.

From it you can deduct that CCP, after all the emergency meetings and release planning, had this plan about what they wanted to do for the winter expansion. Somehow, overcoming the various communication blockages that do exist in CCP, it got through to them that probably that plan was not going to make the players very 'happy' (or come back, however you want to see it). Whether it was the CSM, the constant bittervetting, the plummeting player numbers, we'll probably never know. But someone, or a couple, we'll never really know who either, clued into the fact that another plan was needed. Perhaps faced with the inevitable, CCP finally relented some of their 'reservations', and is now replanning to do more of what the players have been asking for for a while. This is what it looks like at least, more from Fallout's post then Zulus devblog honestly. No one will actually know until CCP actually does it of course.

So yeah, you were a bit mean to Fallout.

Having said that, most if not all the 'reservations' mentioned earlier in the thread still stand. EVE is still 'under-resourced'. Is the new plan going to fix that? Who knows, but it should if you ask me. MT and the Nex shop is still crap, is CCP going to do something about that? I doubt it, so all of this will not do the trick for at least part of the ones that left, me included. Is 0.0 still on a 5-year plan or is that replanned forward? If not, quite a number of 0.0 dwellers won't be very happy with that. Time is still a factor, now even more so because it has marched on. So there isn't much time for long release planning sessions. Etc. etc. What I mean to say is, there's a lot riding on this, the problem isn't easy to fix by any standard, CCP still looks as flawed as ever (certainly where it comes to communication) and even with Fallout's post there isn't much information to go round, and on top of that trust in CCP as a company is basically at an all time low (and dropping if you ask me).

Sooo, with all that in mind, CCP shouldn't be surprised 'mean' posts have been written either. But if they really want to turn the corner, they'll have to come up with something soon, and something better than calling just calling everyone rabble.

But we'll see I guess ...

"Deduct" means to subtract. The verb form of deduction is 'deduce'.

Despite my admitted meanness, it was meanness in the form of difficult questions, not witless abuse. And I'm going to keep doing it until my sub runs out or until we get satisfactory answers.

[Malcanis]

I've had a sneaking suspicion that CCP's approach for resource allocation has been a horribly mismanaged approach of throwing 30 people at tasks more suited for teams of 3 (assuming the time frame is consistent between the 3 and 30 man approach), while many features have been getting teams of <5 when needing teams >15+.

I think by now it's pretty obvious that the approach has been to throw teams on the basis of Icelandic brosefness and the ability to talk a good game in the bar.

[Malcanis]

Let's look at the current breakdown, excluding QA, GMs etc:

Incarna : (9 teams - only 2 stolen from eve, approximately 70 developers)

Dust 514/EVE link : (1 team, approximately 7 developers)

In-space features : (3 teams, approximately 22 developers)
"a feature team, the mission design team and an art/effects team."

EVE Gate : (1 team, approximately 10 developers, all of which are terrible)

The others! (4 teams, approximately 15 developers) doing
* testing automation (also fleet fight in a can)
* tools and reporting for GMs
* core infrastructure and release management
* performance monitoring

Looks like they can steal back 2 teams from Incarna, maybe more if you accept that WoD will be a bit delayed. DUST won't be available for a while yet.

Could probably also temporarily steal some art teams from incarna, but they still tend to need developers unless they're doing really cosmetic stuff.

Even "stealing" (ie: returning) those 2 teams from Incarna would mean a ~66% increase in FiS resources.

Really, the Incarna project should be busted down to 1-2 teams until they team leaders have proven that they can actually deliver something, or at least that they have a coherent idea of what the want to do. releasing 7 teams back to FiS and keeping them there for a year would work wonders for a lot of the problems CCP and EVE are having.

[Virtuozzo]

Even "stealing" (ie: returning) those 2 teams from Incarna would mean a ~66% increase in FiS resources.

Really, the Incarna project should be busted down to 1-2 teams until they team leaders have proven that they can actually deliver something, or at least that they have a coherent idea of what the want to do. releasing 7 teams back to FiS and keeping them there for a year would work wonders for a lot of the problems CCP and EVE are having.

But it still wouldn't solve anything for dealing with the bottlenecks. It's not simply a case of production resources for Game Design, so to speak. But keep in mind the dependancies between not just teams, but divisions. Will CCP Explorer maintain his insistance on not learning lessons by continuing to assign full programming resources unilaterally for a few weeks post any patch. Will an Art division get rid of its methods of stupidity and decisons on the basis of personal preferences. Will CCP for once do proper QA for webcell related tasks. Will they for once build in time and resources for regression and other testing along the way of meeting targets, or is QA still just something you need, cause of old textbooks, but nothing important at all (god forbid teams outside of QA should actually consistantly test their methods and deliverables along the way).


It's really not a case of manpower, or teams, for CCP. That's just a detached management view of making things work on paper. What use is getting 20 programmers on a project if it has a dependancy in art (which blabbers about "come back next year we're doing awesome stuff man") or gets no regression testing or has "one meeting too far" and someone from upstairs steps in without say GD knowing it to reassign some heads or pull a few people out to lend Marketing or such a hand.