In a very casual manner, we sat with Council of Stellar Management’s The Mitanni and chatted a bit on the pressing issues taking priority for the CSM.

In past days, The Mittani announced an open campaign to push CCP into acting to break what he perceives to be the currently stagnated state of the Eve Online game, we invite you to read on the brief interview we made to him, reminding you that he is also talking live on Eve Radio now.

The United States of the Eve – Interview With CSM Chairman The Mittani.

What are you up to and how do we make sure we don’t step on your toes regarding this CCP thing?

Generally covering the issues is good, the problem is that EVE is stagnating due to bullshit expansions and we need ccp to give us something new to actually do since incarna has failed so badly.

Basically your bad rap with CCP is just about the lack of “content”, that’s it we got no new Dungeons to Raid, right?

Incarna and Tyrannis are expansions for other games we haven’t had yet. The last true ‘EVE’ expansions besides Incursions we had was, fuck, years ago

New ships, new races, new ammo types (plasma) new galaxies to explore (milkyway maybe), new sov mechanics. I loved Aphocrypha and the bunch of goodies it bought, would it be correct to say you feel ‘this’ is what EVE is currently lacking?

Exactly, Apocrypha was an amazing expansion we need more Apocryphas, less Tyrannis/Incarna.

Why do you think CCP chose to do less Apocryphas and more Tyrannis/Incarna, laziness maybe?

Not laziness, they were overconfident and decided to develop 2 new AAA titles and use EVE Online as a testbed for those different games so we got DUST content and WoD content in EVE, which EVE players firmly do not want.

“The DUST issue for Eve player is grounded more on the fact that’s it bundled to a console rather than a PC environment”. Would you agree with this startement or correct it with what you consider to be the most troubling element of DUST 514

DUST itself seems like a cool game to me. Tyrannis, however, ate two expansion cycles to bring us PI, which basically no one uses, as a planned eventual dust link. But it doesn’t offer any real gameplay for EVE players.

Like Incarna, Tyrannis was a non-impact expansion if you look at the PCU numbers.

What sort of measures do you have in mind to coerce CCP into getting back to reason, considering that being CSM chairman also puts some limits on you?

CCP is enormously reactive to media pressure. We’ve seen that before, and we’re going to see that again.

Having a background as a lawyer, would threatening with a boycott campaign (legal in some countries) against these new products CCP is producing was been considered?

Nope, that wouldn’t do anything as those products haven’t been released yet people often suggest really foolish tactics for pressure on CCP such as resignation, violating the NDA, etc.

All you need to do is have them called out in the media for their failures. Devs are very reactive to the media because the media influences customers significantly.

Resigning is the kind of tactic teenagers think matters. Many CSMs have resigned in snits over the years, it’s accomplished nothing, ever.

Going back to the “Content-Less Expansions” issue, 18 months ago the problems that plagued EVE were mostly LAG, unbalanced weapons/ships, bugs, etc. Looking back at those 18 months, what would be your assesment on enhancements CCP has made to the game given, at the time, an existing situation where most players simply clamored for a “FIXING SHIT EXPANSION”, that’s it an expansion which would sacrifice content while concentrating on technical enhancements, would you feel any of the past three expansions focused on this?

I’d say that the 800 pound gorillas of Incarna and Tyranids have mostly blocked the development of those issues. the ‘need’ for PI for DUST, the ‘need’ for Incarna for WoD, has taken up a ton of dev time that could have been spent on fixes for the spaceship game. That said, the people who work at CCP on FiS (Flying in Space) are genuinely competent these days. They just need more free reign and resources to devote to spaceships. Team BFF and Gridlock are particular standouts.

The most controversial and polarising theme for Eve right now are Super-Capitals and the much asked for rebalance for them. Most agree that even a 50% reduction in total EHP and drone limitations aren’t enough when say an entity like Raiden. is able to field 100 supers at once, all this of course comes from speculation, how would you handle the super-capital rebalance, should you to feel the need to?

I’ve openly called for a super-capital nerf; my position is simple. Super-capitals should not be able to impact sub-capital ships at all. They should require a sub-capital fleet to support them. This means dooms-days and Titan guns not impacting subs, super-carriers not having drones only fighters bombers/ fighters, and I think an EHP nerf would be wise.

I’m quite happy with the comments Soundwave made at PAX regarding Supers.

Should CCP put any meaningful priority to out of server “content”, Considering that there is a web team which just finished some forums nobody asked for?

I tend to focus on what I call ‘sucking chest wounds’ of what’s wrong within EVE. There are other CSMs who focus on the 3rd party services issues.

Finally, How much do you feel the lack of iteration for previous features affects this overall feeling of lacking content for the expansions?

In general I want the existing content fixed, then I’d like new spaceship-related content. Sometimes ‘new content’ is actually ‘iterated content’ – the Dead Horse POS Fix proposal is ‘new’ POS modularity, but actually a fix for the old problems of towers.

My priorities right now are a Supercapital NERF, lag fixing via Time Dilation, and farms and fields providing a purpose to null-sec. Ship balance is also a huge priority in general.

Thanks for your time.

R