Jita Park Speakers Corner

You are entitled to your opinion, even if I consider it wrong.

I'd love to list the things we have discussed at length with CCP that have or haven't made it into the game, or are still works in progress, but you know... that pesky NDA. The community will never know 95% of what the CSM has worked on with CCP, and in all honesty, that's the benefit CCP gets out of it. We filter out the static of 1000 voices and condense that down to a workable list of concerns and ideas. CCP clearly finds value in the CSM, otherwise they wouldn't be flying this CSM out in full force (yes, all 14) a second time in one term. Unless you have been on the CSM, or work with CCP, who are you to make any comment on influence? I'd only dared to dream about having so much meaningful discussion with devs prior to being elected. But again, I can't exactly copy pasta things to make you think differently can I? That NDA and all.

To assume that these forums are the only place that a CSM should communicate is ridiculous at best. Have you looked at the googledoc stickied to the top of this section of the forums? No? Hmm... I seem to remember there being multiple ways for players to contact us. I have had no issues with getting a hold of players or them getting a hold of me. Feel free to add me on skype, dm me on reddit, poke me on slack or evemail me any time!

Yes, voter turnout was low last year. PCU was low, there was a change in coordinators (CCP Guard and CCP Logibro took over from CCP Leeloo) and a lack of any promotion for the CSM voting season because of that aforementioned. Do I expect a sharp upturn for the coming election? Probably. CCP Guard especially has been a strong supporter of pushing the next election season on the publicity front.

The age old argument of "the csm doesn't represent people". How I love this argument. Clearly we do. Someone had to vote us in, right? If you feel you, personally, are not represented, then perhaps you should find a candidate in the next election that suits you better? The number of times I have had to explain to someone that yes, I have flown everywhere in EVE and yes, I do understand a lot more than nullsec is amazing. I for example spent two years sharing my time between low class wormholes and highsec before joining CO2. Before that I lived in lowsec for a very very long time. And before that I was a mission runner and industrialist (a bunch of wasted SP for my current interests). It might shock you to find out that CSM members by and large know a thing or two about EVE. Again, I urge you to vote in a candidate who you believe represents your interest better, but I also urge you to reach out and have a real discussion with the current CSM members and see if your preconceptions are as accurate as you think they are.

Last but not least... We do control our own whitepaper. I'd personally like to rename it "code of conduct" and have a full rewrite before the next election. Maybe that's something we can get done as a service for whoever comes next.

o7

PS: Took me just over two hours to notice your thread and reply. How's that for communication!

Just wanted to bring something up about the ECs.

The CSM spent a lot of time talking with CCP about ECs, both before and after release of details. We saw hard figures at the same time as the community did, and immediately went back to CCP to talk about changes. (As a call out, Sullen Decimus put in a great deal of time there)


An important point is, the CSM have no control. We're an advisory body only. And yes, we have disagreements with CCP. They're under no obligation to do as we say; this, I'm sure you'll agree, is a good thing. They do listen, but they come at the game from a different angle from us.



Now, onto some of your points:

You do know that you can't really complain that CCP is listening to a very small subset of players, because they're the players who vote? The franchise is wide open. _Anyone_ can vote. _Anyone_ can run for CSM. And with the voting system picked, fringe candidates have a far better chance of being elected, because a vote for them isn't a waste. you can pick a handful of people who represent you, and the votes will condense on the candidates with the support to be elected. 5 highsec candidates don't destroy each other's chance to be elected. As long as they're all on the ballots, _some_ of them will be elected.



As for the forums being a primary point of communication:

The fact he responded to you quickly should tell you something. He's keeping an eye on the forums. So he's seeing what people are seeing. Perhaps not directly engaging with everything, but keeping an eye on the pulse of the community.


Onto the white paper:

The change in coordinators has brought a bunch of change to the CSM. this is one of the places. Now, CCP will always retain some control here. They're a commercial organisation. That's not going to change. And expecting it to is naive. But where there aren't commercial concerns (such as the conflict of interest to do with that article) they're very open with us.

What this shows is failing communications between the CSM and CCP.
Take Two Steps thread naught. he had to keep his mouth shut for ages as CCP would not listen and he was bound by the NDA. However as soon as it became public he was off the block. The fact your not even being told is worse than I thought.

Yes you are but compared to the earlier CSMs the influence is to such a point you have to ask, why bother.

Its not that people have candidates, it that the last few years have shown there is no point in voting.

You are asking people to vote for a lack of interaction with CCP, via a small group, that has rarely shown the ability to help the majority of the players in the game.


Yet besides your posting Steve there is damn all trace of the CSM on these forums.

Votes are almost at an all time low and the CSM is using silence to boost itself?


No I don't expect a commercial organisation to but it underlines the impotence of the CSM now as that was the first White Paper change ever rammed down the CSMs throat.

No actually it is more to the point that CCP uses and has for years now the CSM as a convenient way not to interact as much as they really should with the playerbase, while chucking the CSM under a bus when it suites them.

At at the end of the day we lose actual interaction with CCP for influence that is no longer worth the paper its printed on.

Its no so much that the CSM is the Null sec lobby, while it still is to a degree it is more the why bother group.

I do not wish to belittle the hard work you do, which I grant you do and probably a lot of, it is more what the CSM has become and that is useless.

The CSM now makes as much sense as paying twice the price for a left handed screwdriver.

The CSM is not a government, and no one CSM member can be representing all players and all play-styles. imho, the quality of CSM is in the breadth of the play styles represented, which for CSM XI is... limited.

CCP is the government and make decision for the game for the best of their business interests first, and their business interests are for the game we all share to continue to grow.

I believe the best way to see CSM members is that they are elected lobbyists.

Most of those that are elected without a real platform get a seat because they are friends with the right opinion leaders, (i.e. space warlords), and are expected once elected via bloc votes to report to the power players who helped them get their seats so that they can better anticipate, or alter, the effects of upcoming changes to their own in-game activities.

A few like myself run on specific platforms, so that people can see upfront what I would lobby for if elected.




Yes, unfortunately at that time each player cast one vote per account, so the richest players with the most accounts have an undue influence on the results of the vote, which partially explain the influence of Null Sec.

You should not ignore this part of the game, and the associated meta. It impacts the game we all play. Some features have been altered by the influences of CSM members, like for example the limitation of Null Sec access from WH space, or the weakening of siphons to combat passive moon incomes, or the rapid across-the-board regeneration of entosis nodes in favor of the defenders, regardless of the true reach of their space...

While CCP is keeping the CSM has an elected body, the CSM needs lobbyists to counter the Null Sec blocs agenda, and it needs voters to fully use the STV system, that is a fairer system for electing representatives.

OP, check out the eve subforum on Reddit. This is where the real conversations take place. Where CCP has no control. Devs and CSM both are regulars.

Yeah it makes about as much sense as saying "Yeah but we write a weekly article in the New York Times"

And they wonder why no one bothers to vote for the CSM any more.

Oh, CCP started paying the CSM now? Maybe a nice few hundred a week?

No? No?

Well then the CSM members gotta go to work sometimes.

I was on the CSM. I attended weekly meetings when I could. Aint got the stats to hand, but I'd guess it was about 25%. Sometimes I was on holiday. Sometimes I could work from home. Sometimes I didn't have some damb family business to attend to. Sometimes I was able to put in some unpaid hours to talk with the other CSMs and the CCP people whom I all liked quite a lot to give as much input as possible into whatever I knew somehing about.

When I couldn't make those meetings because I had to, you know, work to get money to pay the rent and buy food, I caught up by reading the minutes and talking with the other CSMs. I didn't just sit on my ass.

So please have a nice hot cup of shove your entitlement about what you think you can demand unpaid volunteers do.

Attendance at the meetings is a good thing to have. However, it's not a requirement, and most of what we do is done asynchronously, via the CCP's internal wiki, and using CCP's hipchat. The meetings are, tbh, a minor point.

Unfortunately, the other interactions are somewhat difficult to quantify. Unlike meeting attendance. Of courser, if you can't see how even a 100% rate could be useless (It's not in this case. I'm speaking in hypotheticals) then you're not thinking about things.

Except we highlighted in that that we did have a lot of communication with you guys!

We have had a PvE Townhall, a Capital Industrial Roundtable (prior to the Rorqual changes), 2 Ganking Rountables (one with anti-gankers, one with gankers), a Nullsec Content Creator Roundtable, we're active on Reddit, here and Twitter. We also appear on podcasts and streams regularly, and I have sat around in Rookie Help to observe the shift in questions being asked after the NPE changes.

I also know I've responded to every mail I get sent, I write weekly (Well closer to fortnightly) CSM updates here, and in response to that article we tried to do a CSM podcast with Apothne, but it had a pretty mediocre response so it was cancelled. I also do a Quarterly Review with the rest of the CSM, which lets even our more quiet members have a public face, if they wish to.

I like to call it the Schrodinger's CSM effect. We're either too powerful and ruling everything for our own benefit and therefore we should be eradicated, or we're doing nothing and therefore we should be discontinued. No-one seems to accept that there is a happy middle. And - whilst I don't think we are there yet - we're working towards it.

One of the problems is that people only want to hear from us when they are having problems and want to give us a solution to be implemented right then. I'm sorry, but we are not junior game devs, you are not a junior game dev. We don't drive changes to the game, we help isolate and identify problems with the game and bring them to CCP, and they present us aspects of their plans and we work to give them directional feedback to it. It's a valuable part of CCP's process, it's just not what everyone seems to think it is, which is why there's so much frustration between the CSM and the community, leading to threads like this, where we're forced to come out to simply stop our names being dragged through the mud and defend what we do.

Personally, I'm working to create some more simple, understandable outlines of what the CSM does to give to the people planning to run for CSMXII. I'm also planning to do an Industrial Townhall in January (expect that thread soon) to get a solid overview on the impacts of the EC's after the changes have settled and to bring their problems to CCP next summit.

Also, on why our communication does - at times - seem to be sparse or slow. It's simply because if we express something improperly or even make a mistake, we will simply be torn apart publically. And we accept that. It's part of being a public figure. But it means communication has to be checked to make sure it's perfect. And, to prove my point, I haven't proofread this, and it took me about an hour less than the updates I write because of that (not including the NDA checking process).

EDIT: That said, I am looking for more ways to communicate. Would having a list of what - actively - all members of the CSM do in the game help? Would it be easier if I provided the weekly updates in audio format? Video format?