EVE General Discussion

I think everyone forgot why CSM was created inthe first place.

Somehow their purpose has changed.

I think turnout would be better if we all got a Gecko per vote.

Overall the CSM is a good thing, even if I did not vote this year. Having CCP push the voting at the login is the first thing that would help numbers every year. It would have helped me for one

Only one term at the CSM for any single person, regardless of number of accounts/alts/experience.... If CCP likes working with some of them, then hire them or have them in some other consulting role. But as an elected council of the current Eve players, bring up fresh minds every year.

I would suggest to emphasizes more play styles representation. CCP can identify all the main play styles, and have every player candidate sig.n up only one of their character to represent one play style. Put some statistics requirement for each play style based on averages, and then confirm that the character matches the requirement (no character exchanged/sold allowed - it would have to have been owned by the player the entire time).
This way it would be easy for the average population that can't follow closely what is going on to identify the options between the characters that represent their favored play style ( fleet leaders, miners, industrialists, CEOs, wormholers, bounty hunters, transporters, incursioners, and so on...)

Last, have a quota for the big political groups. Let say the goons represent 50% of the characters population! then no more than 50% of the elected players can have characters that are goons related. Use the next best vote results to go down the results until finding a valid indictee.

There is significant value to the CSM in having at least a few incumbents who have the process and organisational knowledge needed to interact more effectively with CCP.

Given the workload of the current CSM structure, I think that the 5/14 who were successfully re-elected is as many as we'll see. 9 new faces is plenty for bringing new perspectives in.

agreed buy most don't understand how the votes are tallied. which means they might think to only fill in one name. Its quite rare in the US to see this system used I had to brush up on the specifics when I started as well.

The primary point remains. Why did 18,500 less people vote this year? We didn't loose 37% of our player base so something clearly happened this year to effect it. Considering the growth in population the vote count should track with that. not make leaps and bounds the opposite direction.

Lots of people seem to think this is me being bitter about loosing, Quite the opposite, I enjoy seeing the data and fixing issues.

Also as i said in the blog I’m broke, unemployed, and recently out of an engagement with my Ex fiance. Trust me the CSM9 vote was not and is not the biggest deal in my life. Simply put I will just run again and again. Doesn't change the fact that the CSM needs to being to repair relations with the player base and needs to find out how to spread the word about the elections for next time.

I would appreciate seeing voting data from specific alliances in game to see what the different areas have done.

People misinterpret my meaning and rightfully so. I don't intend on attacking the CSM I plan on helping Fix it. in order to do that a conversation however painful needs to be started. I do like the removal off officers on the CSM I feel that aids in equalizing the playing field for candidate elected.

So to those out there that didnt vote why not?

In my opinion they should scrap the entire CSM and replace it with a "Two Lane Highway" for development and balancing cycles.

The Oncoming Lane: CCP would identify and work on content that they, as the owners of the game, wish to work on. This would give us changes such as Wormholes, W-Space, incursions and the industry revamp. All very good ideas that only CCP can flesh out properly through the use of their metrics and knowledge of how the game works.

The Driving Lane: Instead of voting on a CSM within a certain time frame, non-trial players with a minimum SP requirement could access a web application that would allow them to submit new ideas to a review forum.

The "new idea" web app would have a series of radial buttons that ask all the important questions such as "Does this idea attempt to resolve an issue with current game mechanics?" If the player selects "Yes" on that radial button then it would open up an area for a block of text that would ask "What issue does this change attempt to resolve?".

"Does this idea concern an existing ship or class of ships?" if "Yes", then "Select which ship, or class of ships this idea would effect from the pull down menu".

All text blocks would have a minimum word count to be accepted. It would take some time and thought to fill out these responses and lead to fully fleshed ideas rather than the current situation where 1/100 player ideas has any thought behind it whatsoever.

Of course not always. There will be the occasional snotty brat that fills the minimum word requirement with random characters, so simply ban that account from accessing the web app again.

There could even be an area for the player to insert images and documents that further illustrate their new idea.

These ideas, would be voted on by the player base once a year just before fanfest and the top, say, five ideas would then be forwarded onto the dev team to work on over the course of the next year and would make for a great announcement during the Fanfest opening day speeches.


Currently, IMO, the system provides too much potential for abuse.

Lord Acton didn't say it first, but he certainly framed it best when he said; "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The CSM do not have absolute power, I'm not trying to insinuate they do. They do receive knowledge about the game far in advance of the average player, which in and of itself is power. Not only that, but they provide feedback to CCP which is used to further shape the outcome of proposed changes. Who in their right mind wouldn't use that kind of influence to ensure that those changes don't benefit their own position somehow?

If CCP were to bring ideas to myself, for instance, regarding small gang warfare, I would blot out the sun with influence to regain the 2007-2009 glory days of small fleet warfare. It's simple human nature to work to the benefit of yourself, or the group you identify with over other groups. CSM members will always attempt to benefit their position more than differing positions. Those that claim they don't are either lying or trying to sell us something.

You're really good at lying to yourself if you think that some CSM members aren't pulling their non-CSM alliance leaders aside and saying "Hey, psssst, they plan on doing XXX over the next six months so we need start stockpiling XXX commodity for huge profits".

Half a dozen other scenarios spring instantly to mind, but I've written too much already.

I'm sure someone will care enough to read it.
Your alts, maybe.

You have the two basic groups of people in EVE entirely wrong.

There's the smaller group of EVE players who are actively engaged in the politics and the future of the game. These are the ones who will potentially vote. The Dinsdales fall within this group. They care about the future of the game, but they believe that the CSM is corrupt and choose not to vote due to that.

There's also the far larger portion of EVE that never once have visited these forums. They've never read a CSM's platform, and they probably couldn't even name the leaders of the major nullsec power blocs. They log on, turn on their mining lasers, run missions, station trade, scam other players, or simply jump in a ship and look for something to blow up. Their interest in these matters is zero and most of them don't even know a vote is taking place.

EDIT: My point is that bloc voting will always be successful due to the two very different natures of EVE players. The players who have a stake in the game, who live in null sec and have sov over a number of systems are much more vested in the system.

A null sec player who only logs on twice a week is more vested in the game than a high sec player who runs missions for eight hours a day. One has a lot more to lose if certain decisions by CCP aren't in their favor.

CSM? What is that?

Not only do you have a very dubious understanding of game mechanics and the CCP/CSM relation, but you just contradicted yourself in the space of one sentence.