Due to all the incredible mis-cues by CCP surrounding the launch of the Incarna Expansion, especially around the opening of the Nobel Exchange in-game store, CCP took the extraordinary step of flying the Counsil of Stellar Management out to Iceland for a special summit to hash out the community problems with Incarna.
The joint statements from CCP and the Council have finally been released and are available online.
Key items I pulled from the statement.
Nobel Exchange
CCP:
It is CCP‘s plan that the Noble Exchange (NeX store) will be used for the sale of vanity items only. There are no plans, and have been no plans, as per previous communication and CSM meetings, to introduce the sale of game breaking items or enhancements in the NeX store.
The investment of money in EVE should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time. The CSM, under NDA, has been presented with CCP‘s plans for continued evolution of the business model and agrees that nothing they saw breaks this principle. CCP has committed to sharing their plans with the CSM on this front on an ongoing basis.
CSM:
Game-affecting Virtual Goods: We are convinced that CCP has no plans to introduce any game-affecting virtual goods, only pure vanity items such as clothing and ship skins. We have been repeatedly assured that there are no plans for ‘gold ammo’, ships which have different statistics from existing common hulls, or any other feared ‘game destroying’ virtual goods or services. We have expressed our deep concern about potential grey areas that the introduction of virtual goods permits, and CCP has made a commitment to discuss any proposals that might fall into these grey areas in detail with CSM at the earliest possible stage.
Captains Quarters
CCP:
The CSM helped CCP understand the emotional connection players had with “ship spinning.” They vehemently demanded the return of the feature, which CCP committed to introduce in some form at a future date. Until that functionality is added back in, the option to load station environments will remain in the Settings menu.
CSM:
Captain’s Quarters: We discussed the hardware and lighting issues within the CQ and we were satisfied that they were being addressed. We were pleased when Torfi announced that the current “Disabled Incarna Door” will be replaced with an environment that will provide similar functionality and performance to the pre-Incarna Hangar, and this environment will be available until Incarna performance is similar to pre-Incarna performance. While the final details and timelines have not been worked out, ships will once again spin all over New Eden.
Sentry Drone Firing Animations
CCP:
“…”
CSM
“…”
Ah well, I guess that was only important to me.
The CCP and the CSM also produced a joint video, nearly 11 minutes in length, featuring Aarnar Gylfasonand The Mittani discussing what went on during the summit.
The summit itself has been covered by a couple of sources in the CSM including a blog post by MadOverlord (and a follow up here) and a series of posts on Twitter by The Mittani, the long time chief of intelligence and current leader of The Goons. I am sure much more will follow. The Mittani wrapped up his view with:
http://twitter.com/#!/TheMittani/status/87035349720772609
http://twitter.com/#!/TheMittani/status/87035688574386177
Now will people believe the results of the summit, accept them as good, and go back to playing EVE Online and not screaming about CCP? That has yet to be seen.
Does this affair prove the usefulness of the CSM?
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
“The investment of money in EVE should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time.”
I love how in the next paragraph or so, CCP note snarkily that the CSM expressed concerns about being able to run multiple clients with Incarna (cos paying for multiple accounts isn’t at all an advantage associated with investment of money.)
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@Spinks – Snark is in the view of the reader I guess. I did not get any “snark” from that paragraph. Performance with multiple clients running had been covered as a topic in a pre-Incarna Dev Blog post and was the main reason for the introduction of the station view that only shows a door rather than the captain’s quarters.
As for the multiple account thing in general, what MMO forbids their use? I know, for an example, SOE has done work on their clients to make sure players could play multiple accounts. It seems to be a pretty common thing to have people multi-box in these games, why the expectation that EVE should be different?
And while EVE is the only game that I know of that actively promotes players using multiple accounts, you do still have to level them up the old fashioned way. As you said in your own post on the subject, from the outside they still look like another player. It gives you no more advantage than grouping up with another, very cooperative, individual.
In my mind, multiple accounts is different from being able to buy something for cash that is not available in game that gives a player an advantage. The “gold ammo” was the worry the CSM brought to the table, special rounds from the NeX that would be better than anything available in game.
I’m interested to see who buys into this result. I’ve already seen plenty of “bullshit, they’re going to sell game affecting stuff, you just wait” tweets.
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Just a correction. Following the Goon bill-paying fiasco in Delve, The Mittani became the head Goon. God save us all.
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@Noizy – Corrected. I recall him being interim leader at one point and stepping down, but my own source within the Goon alliance confirms what you say.
And on another topic, I do mildly resent the statement about “the emotional connection players had with “ship spinning.”” I could care less about ship spinning. I want to be able to see what ship is currently active and be able to open up the cargo and drone bays without either having to find the special button in the Captain’s Quarters or opening up the ship fitting window. That seems to me to be a practical not an emotional issue.
But that might just be me. Remember how I felt about the quest log in WAR.
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For someone who claims to be many things in real life, Mittani looks more like a douche than anything else he claimed to be. And a young one at that. So this is the face of one of the most powerful player in EvE, lol. No wonder Russians are taking over and kicking ass there.
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As a long-time SoE subscriber I can immediately see the gaping hole in this statement: “There are no plans, and have been no plans…”
Past, present but no future. If they announced tomorrow that they had decided to sell gold ammo there would be no disconnect with their stated position. That’s why many players won’t be mollified.
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This whole fiasco should be used as an object lesson for future community relations people in what not to do.
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@Wilhelm The “emotional connection players had with “ship spinning.””” bit riled me too. It’s like CCP won’t even admit openly that a door, or even the current balcony part of CQ is a piss poor replacement for the _functionality_ of the old docking bay.
I want to be able to see which ship I’ve equipped at a glance, and have a nice big area to doubleclick and rightclick on for ship related windows (cargo, dronebay, etc). Not a tiny one in the ships window that doesn’t even indicate which I’m flying.
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“We have been repeatedly assured that there are no plans for ‘gold ammo’, ships which have different statistics from existing common hulls, or any other feared ‘game destroying’ virtual goods or services.”
and as a Turbine customer, that assurance strikes me as big enough to drive a Titan-class vessel through.
“we won’t sell ships with different statistics from common hulls’ = we WILL sell ships (with the stats of common hulls) in the store.
“game-breaking” is the same phrase that Turbine used to describe what they wouldn’t sell, and there’s a healthy, ongoing ‘discussion’ in LOTRO as to whether stat scrolls, best-in-class mounts, and unique (but not totally OP, thus not game-breaking… in theory) legendary relics constitute ‘game-breaking’.
one could also argue, quite strongly, that World of Tanks’ Lowe tank – a Tier 8 tank, available for 25€ – is not game-breaking, because although it saves you months of grinding to get to Tier 8, it’s not best-in-tier. it will, however, earn you far more money and xp than a regular T8 tank. and it will get you playing with the big boys long before you otherwise would.
in essence, what CCP have said is ‘we take your concerns on board’, and we all know what that means when someone says it to us.
the cat really is out of the bag on this: microtransactions make a company *far* more than subscriptions do *and* they have the added benefit, for CCP, of reducing the in-game supply of PLEX, thus causing regulars to buy more subscriptions.
the reason MTX models make so much more is because they provide means for the committed player to *spend more*. sure, they let new players enter by paying less, and thus encourage more new players, and some level of conversions; but the real profit increase comes from monetising those who can pay and will pay if the option is there.
thus, no statement from CCP saying ‘we won’t provide players the option to pay us more’ can be regarded as anything other than sophistry.
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@Sean – Your comments seem to take a pretty dim outlook. One could reasonably take the view that arguing that CCP intends to do something because they did not specifically and categorically say that they would not do it might itself fall into the category of sophisty.
On selling ships and the like, they technically already do that since you can convert PLEX into ISK. Selling them for Aurum would seem to be counter-productive, due to the reaction they could expect from the community, as well as providing only one tangible benefit, instant delivery. They also risk putting a price cap on a ship for the live market, since people will immediately run the ISK/PLEX/Aurum exchange rate to figure out the optimum purchase path.
Anyway, my real point is that I’ll get mad at CCP for doing something once they’ve done it. I found Incarna lacking enough to unsub. I don’t need to start imagining things they might do to get annoyed.
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I think people just over react too quickly. The CSM chats with CCP about the controversy, tells them the exact same thing they have been telling players for weeks and now everything is ok? A council of their peers, who are probably some of the most cutthroat people that play the game get a sit down with CCP who explains to them the exact same thing that’s been out since the leak and everything returns to normal?
And people are worried about Trust??
Man, this game is more wacked that WoW. Which is probably why I started playing it. lol
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