Hello everyone, going to start this with a brief announcement on the format of these (heavy airquotes) weekly summaries. I just want to officially announce that the schedule will ? at this point ? be defaulting to a fortnightly schedule. Doing them weekly seemed like a great idea at the start of the term, but as I've talked more to you guys and realised that you wanted less frequent, but more 'substantial? communication, this was probably the best way to go.

I?m going to start this off with a topic I didn't cover last summary, much to my discredit, which is that of DICKS/Defender Missile Systems. Both we and CCP were surprised by the reaction that you guys had to it, as whilst we'd expected that there would be some negative feedback, it was surprising to see just how harsh it became on the subject matter. This prompted both myself, and other CSM's to talk to a variety of Bomber FC's to try and dig in a little deeper to find what the problems they thought were with the system, and were surprised to find that the general problems weren't with DICKS themselves, but with what they felt were consistent, targeted nerfs to their playstyle, which had made the skills they had developed more and more irrelevant. As such, we started a conversation with CCP on this department, and discussed the underlying issues here. Personally I feel that this is due to the ?binary? of Bombing, in that you either you have enough, and you kill the fleet, or you don't have enough and you don't kill the fleet. This was the primary way in which defenders were criticised, in that it made numbers even more critical. Personally I feel that giving more ?utillity? to bombers, in the forms of new bomb types would allow people to use bombers in a more supportive role if they do not have critical mass. I will note that I'd love to discuss this some more however, so don't hesitate to contact me on the issue.

The CSM also produced our second Quarterly Review, which was well received. If you want to know more about how a CSM you?re interested in is doing, or what ? specifically ? they?re focusing on, take a look here first. If you have any suggestions regarding questions for our third (and likely final) Review in Mid-Febuary, don't hesitate to throw them at me.

Our preparations for the next CSM summit have ramped up, with the New Player Experienced Roundtable having been announced for January 7th, and a little feedback questionnaire for anyone who's had experience working with newer players. This will help us to show trends, and key areas that need to be refined within the NPE to provide a better and more extensive tutorial, hopefully making the recruiters and player tutors of EvE's lives just that little bit easier.
We also ? as previously mentioned ? are intending to do an Industry Townhall (likely on January 14th), however I?m currently working with my fellow CSM members to make sure we have a solid list of topics and areas to address with you from the get go of publication.

In addition to all this, we?re working to get a Townhall more similar to those that were done by previous CSMs (i.e, less focused, more general Q&A) online, though in a different format. Our current ?plan? is to do a Video Townhall in Reykjavik after the conclusion of the summit, with questions culled from every avenue of communication we can, to help you stay in touch with the process. No promises here yet, but I'd love to know what you guys think.

We also discussed the Rorqual with CCP, both in terms of its usage as an Entosis ship, a jump Heavy Interdictor and all the other combat applications it has found usage in, and also as a mining vessel. The nerf to its mining capabilities was, well, expected by the majority of the CSM numbers, as on release it was incredibly overtuned. The intensity of it was something we debated, but due to how scalable (i.e how multi-boxable) it was, the number stuck. Personally I feel that this shows a problem with mining gameplay in itself, as anything that is so easily scaled up, the option of more engaged and (per account) profitability should be made available. See the differences between current Capital/Supercapital ratting vs VNI ?AFK? ratting as an example. Still, it will be interesting to see just how much of a dip this causes in Rorqual activity, which we will be looking at (in the very least) in our stats session next summit.

Beyond this we also brought up queries on smaller QoL and community related things, such as providing models & audio from the game to assist video makers (over the current need to 'scrape? these assets), potential for more to be done to make the PI experience more user friendly (and less RSI inducing), the usage & usability of custom probing arrangements, the continued usage of ESS? in odd ways that rendered their risk null, the hilarious interaction between mobile drones and Keepstars, the fact that Citadels don't reliably report or notify of their fuelled status, issues with graph labelling, Industry UI in general, and probably several other things I?m forgetting/can't find in a cursory look over our chat history. These more specific things make up a decent portion of what the CSM does to communicate with CCP, and whilst they aren't always acted upon, they serve as a more direct way of getting ?little things? that affect a larger number of people to the relevant devs. And, whilst I don't normally talk about them (as there isn't much back and forth between the CSM on the issue), it does give you an idea of how many things we pass on week-to-week, alongside more in depth discussions on other topics.

Faction Warfare was also discussed heavily; as we wanted to highlight the issues that Alphas were facing within the environment of that system, and what we felt needed to be iterated on to make it a better environment for all involved.

To wrap it all up, we were given a section on ">the o7 show, which led to me getting a significant amount of mails in game. I try and reply to every (non hatemail) mail I receive, so please feel free to contact me there if you want to do so privately. Thank you to both CCP Guard, Logibro & Seagull for their efforts in getting the previously unaware involved in the process, as the more points of view we have access to, the better we can represent things back to CCP.

Take care & Fly smart. See you in 2017!

Weeks Ending 11/12/16 & 18/12/16
Attendance Sheet Here