What Is CCP Doing Now? Fixing Bugs? Adding Content? Eating Sheeps Testicles!

I posted this on the forum a while back, and thought this might be of interest for more of you that don't frequent the forums. EVE-I also posted it so some of you might have seen it there already. I'll just paste the forum reply here below.

The sheep testicle part is true however, it's now our annual "Thorrablot" where we eat various sour food, amongst them sour sheep testicles. It's all about being traditional and "going back to our roots". What I can't fathom though is that why did somebody decide that we should eat sheeps testicles in stead of roots, I think it would have been a better choice. I'm sure you agree. Well enough rambling, here is the post.

"Hello everybody, I'm a game addict. I am also a member of the CCP staff and management, head of the Content department and the Producer of the Exodus expansion amongst other things (Resident beer drinker and such).

I can't write a single line of code in Python or C. If I were to touch the source code of EVE, I would mess up by just moving my cursor. Fortunately I can't even do that since we have stringent version control.

CCP has 40 other staff members, where of 7 work for me in the Content department, the rest is split between Programming, Art, Testing, Marketing and Financials.

Of those departments, only one can write a single line of code in Python or C, which is obviously the Programmers (Trust me, you don't want Marketing doing that).

Now, as an example, programmers have been fixing bugs and improving systems since Exodus was released. There have been no new features programmed. There is minimal programming scheduled for the EW and Missile overhaul (about a week in manhours total) and that's it for the next months, because programmers are still dedicated fixing bugs and improving the server and the client. We did the client performance in Exodus and were successful, now we're working on the server and we will be successful. It'll take 5 manyears of work, but it's worth it.

Now the staff members that can't fix code, are working within the systems to create Art and Content. As an example, the new patch does not include any "new coded features" it's pure Art and Content (Reads: numbers in a database and textures/models). Neither did the previous patch or the patch before that have "new coded features".

The next patch will very likely include the weeks worth of "new coding" for the EW and Missiles depending on how that all goes, but it will still be predominantly fixes and improvements, like the patches before that.

If you are interested in seeing what was fixed in these patches, you can read the patch notes here, they are always available for previous builds.

If you are interested what is on our current agenda in the Content department, I posted this some time ago on the forum. I'll paste it here for your easy reading:

• Missile Overhaul
• EW Overhaul
• Fix some of the projectile turrets
• Tech Level 2 Missiles, Charges, Launchers, Drones and EW.
• Increased Hitpoints on all ships
• Tech Level 2 ships and tweaks to them

Recently added to that list are different sized Control Towers (might come out as specialized Tech Level 2 towers, hasn't been decided).

In addition to this, the Content and Art departments work in unison on the new ships and deadspace complexes. Agent missions are churned out at a steady rate and so are new Deadspace Complexes throughout the year (For example this patch features quite a sizeable amount).

New upcoming ships in addition to Tech Level 2 ships (New 2005' Megathron anyone?). These were also posted in a dev blog a short time ago.

• Freighters
• Dreadnoughts
• Carriers - Titans

It's not the first time I say this, and it surely won't be the last time, but all CCP staff members are just not trained in programming and hence can not fix bugs, they continue to work in their areas of responsibility throughout the year.

I just realized this is quite long so here is the condensed version:

The Content and Art departments aren't able to fix bugs, the Testers and Bughunters find them and verify that they have been fixed, you don't want Finance to fix bugs and you sure as hell don't want Marketing in there either!"