Jita Park Speakers Corner

Pinky . . . . I am not sure what you want but I doubt you are going to get it from us or if you do, you won't admit it.

You complain that we are silent and it is pointed out that we are not,

So you complain that we cannot agree and have differing viewpoints.

Which is what you should want if there are expectations of us representing the game.

Play a little experiment with me. If the CSM was everything that you think it should be or could be how would THAT CSM handle the ESS?

Or does it come down to your perfect CSM does not exist because you don't think the CSM should exist in the first place?

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Can you give an example of what you would consider "singularly beneficial"?

still waiting on anything but unfounded accusations

posting the same conclusion over and over is not premise, example or proof

so because you have nothing to support your anger others whom you accuse of being useless have to show wtf your talking about, let me guess, the sky on your world is green isnt it.

If you're expecting people to attach any kind of weight to your statement beyond 'oh look its the insane dribble from yet another frothing neckbeard' then yes actually it is your responsibility to find evidence to back up your claim.

The CSM was involved in every feature released in Rubicon. They helped in selecting which mobile structures were selected for rubicon, were involved in refining many of the balance changes, they assisted in clarifying issues like the ToS and 3rd party supports problems into salient points from the frankly overwhelmingly jumbled feedback of many threads and thousands of posts, and were even the entire reason that some features were added to the game.

Ultimately, the existence of the CSM makes the game better. They don't mean that we take the communities opinion into account any less, if the CSM existed our developers would read the forums and outside blogs just as much as they do now. Making the assumption that the existence of the CSM somehow decreases the strength of each of the 500,000+ players opinions, is a mistake. Additionally, just because a member of the CSM disagrees with something that you said and CCP makes a change doesn't mean we followed the opinion of a CSM member over yours, we took all of the feedback and made the call we thought was best.

The CSM works, and at the same time doesn't work:

Heres my point of view:

The CSM as an entity is a great institution, and a rather unique way for a games designer to actually incorporate player ideas and feedback into their development. In theory they represent all the players, and will give balanced feedback based on what the players want.

And here comes the problem. The election of the CSM is based on "an american system" wich means that whoever gets most publicity and / or has the most backers will get elected. With the few Mega-alliances there are in eve the publicity is rather onsided around the CSM elections, the big alliances get more attention of what they say and at the same time get a bigger audiance. Small entities, get virtually no publicity.

This means that even for the player who DOES want to vote based on idealogy, or planned projects has a hard time of getting the information of all the elects, and this information is often still diluded with propaganistic disinformation of the bigger entities.

This combined that the Bigger entities have a much larger playerbase behind them, wich automaticly results in a lot of extra votes the representation of the CSM shifts towards an electorial wich main intrest is accentuated to the large entities.

Ship and weapon system rebalancing, priority of new features, basicly everything the CSM is consulted on, shifts towards a more beneficial "big entity" framework.

So to sum things up. All inherent flaws of the CSM is not due to the institution of the CSM, but either a direct cause of the electoral system, or due to personality traits of individual CSM members.

What could be a better Way to represent the player community better?

What i propose is a drastic shift in the voteing procedure of the CSM.
Patriotic as i am, i believe that our Dutch system, is a lot more representative for this kind of electorial.

Instead of individual members running for CSM spots, the shift should go to a more uniform state. Entities that have common ideas in place. These entities can be a generic as "Empire" "Lowsec" "Nullsec" "Wormhole Space". Each Candidate for the CSM puts in its main concerns, and is then placed in one of the categories.

Next all votes are counted and Percentage wise allocated to each entity. Eg, if people in the Empire entity gets 20% of all the votes, 2 out of 10 CSM members should come out of that pool. Then the 2 persons that got the most votes in the empire section get to be in it.

So what does this mean for us the voter. This means that you as a voter actually get more to say, even if your prefered candidate doesn't get chosen. Because your prefered candidate is in a certain ideology group, the member that does get chosen out of that group is bound to have more in common then one in a diameticly opposed group.

As a result you will have less "lost" votes, players will be able to vote more clearly to wich area they think the attention needs to go, and the competition, and representation within a group becomes more uniform. (EG if 30% of the votes go to "Nullsec" the endresult would be more then likely that one of each large entity only gets in)

he's assuming, correctly, that's a term of art you've created that you're going to redefine so it doesn't apply to anything that you're presented with, so he's asking you to commit to a definition and then will skewer you with it because your point is bad and you can't support it without slippery definitions

I would like to point out that even IF the CSM was only a group of players skimming the forums for ideas, that that is still cheaper then setting up polls. For to do that, you need a few persons to be able to explain exactly what you want to ask, and be able to put that forward. Then dureing and after the poll you need to collect the data, (wich isn't just X persons voted A, Y persons voted B, but also what it means. And furthermore you would be restricted and limited to the questions you would bring forward, ignoreing anything of the relevalt data that might incure into dissision makeing, wich you would get from the same, or less amount of people searching trough those forums.

Plus in raw manpower you probably need more for the polls, and you lose more developers time (They need to brainstorm the topics, what they want to know, adress those to the pollmakers, then after data, they need to get back to the developers to talk things over, while going to the CSM can be as simpel as: "We have Missiles on the agenda for next year, whats your / the communities thought about them")

Are polls the easiest system? NO, They generally need a lot more work.
Are polls more reliable? NO, They are limited only to the question asked, and the interpertation of the one takeing the poll.
Are polls cheap and cost effective? NO, you need an equal amount of manpower to setup and collect the data, plus you lose more developers time


But seeing so far how you've treated eleborated discussion points, this no doubt is to defensive and thus not to be taken serious.

(Ow Csm you can actually snip that last remark as offensive if you so choose)

I am an ERP-Programmer (Enterprise Resource Programmer) in real life. That means i have to talk to the people in charge and ask them what they want to have steamlined in their company from intial order to product aftercare, and everything that has to do with it.

In that respect (EvE Online is still a product of a company) i have a good inside knowledge of how an advisory organ (wich ERP programmers are an integral part off) benefits a company, or even specific products of a company. CSM is just like that. It isn't a customer care devision, nor a development devision, its an advisory organ wich needs to stay on the outside and have a unique view to the company and or its product in order to work.

You've had replies from both CSM and CCP, a feat of itself thats not accesible for many other users. The've in detail tried to explain how and why things work for them. I charge about 400-500 dollars per hour for my input, 40 hours a week, 47 weeks a year, for an average of 2 years per company. Most companies with 30-50 employees, and only 100 to 200 regular customers, break even or have profit for the work i've done within a year.

CCP is a much larger company, a global company with hundreds of thousands of regular customers. For them The CSM works. They give the information THEY want, in a format THEY are content with, in a timeframe and cost they are happy with. How do i know that? Not because One employee says so, not because one CSM members says so, but because CCP is still a company. If it would not work for them, the CSM would not exist. If there was a cheaper alternative, they would choose so. Thats what companies do. They look at the cost effectiveness, and scratch additional expenses.

They don't NEED YOUR input, they don't NEED any players input. Because at the end of the day its their product, that your simply buying. They have the CSM, a large contributary force in the way of CCP members CSM members and GM's that in and outside of the game try to awnser your questions, keep you informed of whats happening, and ask for your input because THEY want to.

So show just a -LITTLE- respect, and instead of ONLY looking at it your way, try to see it from their shoes.

CCP isn't perfect, CSM isn't perfect, but guess what, thats because there People! What i'm thankfull off, and i hope that many of the other players are as well, in the effort to have this continued dialog.