EVE General Discussion

So I'll say this again. What the CSM was formed to do is a very real thing that it should still be around today to do. It is supposed to be a player elected oversight organization to do the following in order of importance:

- Keep CCP honest and force them to maintain a 'fair" sandbox.
- To regularly review and report the general health of the game. That is why in the beginning we would spend nearly a day with the CCP economist.
- Talk with CCP about general game play topics.

What the CSM seems to have become and why I do not support it in its current form.

- A popularity contest that awards the winners an Iceland vacation.
- A lobbying committee for the special interests of the winners backing organizations.
- A place for wanna be game designers to randomize the real game designers.
- An echo chamber/cheering squad for whatever the current CCP "head designer" is in the chair at the moment.

So would I continue it in its current form? No. Would I replace it with something more like it was intended originally.? Yes. Does anyone care what I think or would do? No, its not at all likely that anyone would or does.

But here is how I've learned to live with it. In many ways Eve is much bigger than itself. It is played at many many levels. And the CSM is now one of the meta-levels that the more advanced players can choose to tackle. So celebrate the CSM! It is one of the things that makes Eve what it is.

My advice to anyone that gets worked up about the CSM is run! Who knows, you could surprise yourself and get elected. Should that happen though I fear for your soul! You very well could fall for the darkside and soon begin to believe you really know how to make Eve better. And that is the first step to doom! If you do get CCP to listen to you and agree to do what ever new shiny you think Eve needs they will crush your dreams, What they will deliver will be far from what you intended and what you will be stuck with will haunt you all your days!

My advice, sit back and enjoy the show. The CSM has less influence that you might suspect and less than they think or may claim to have.

Clearly you've never been on the forums for another MMO

Try the ones for any of Blizzard's games, the only difference in the whining there vs the whining here is the portraits next to our whining are nicer.

Other than that it's the same ****, claims that the devs hate one group but love another, often the same groups reversed in two different posts a week apart. Complaints about the state of balance, that patches aren't fast enough, that something hasn't been fixed that should have been, ect.

There are *certainly* communities and devs worse than Eve's, that I say without reservation.

ahahahahhahaha
PLS


don't write these bullshits ahhHAHHAHAHAHAHHAH
#Tilted

anyone that voted you is dumb as much as you, judging from what you are writing

Hey, CSM is not the wheel of pain or something, nor a vacation.

Its just CSM. They meet and discuss what has to be discussed. They argue with CCP about stuff they love, the game. That is additional strain on your mental health.

The CSm is no different from any other political situation. ie People make up these high minded systems and checks and balances and law and whatever, but at the end of the day, human nature wins out and you end up with greedy, corruption, broken promises and disenchantment.

In this case the 'human nature' problem is that you simply can't overcome power of organization and charisma. Null sec was always going to dominate any election process, because null sec is the place where active players go and manipulate the 'politics on the ground' to achieve goals. Null sec WILL always dominate any process CCP puts into place because of the kinds of people involved.

The high sec players will be too busy not giving a **** about anything but their generally solo pursuits to do anything.

The Low Sec players will be too busy basically not existing in the 1st place because low sec sucks (lol)

The Wormholes also generally don't exist and even if they did, you wouldn't know it until they showed up on grid with you because, well, no local lol.

All jokes aside, just like in real life, you can't make a system that will have an outcome other than the natural one where the active and engaged people win and the apathetic self defeating types lose.

And just like the old saying of "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink", well, it's the same in EVE. You can have as many pop ups as you want saying "CSM voting is open" but you simply can't make anyone in high sec give a damn enough to click on the link and spend 5 minutes to be represented.

A very cynical view, but actually somehow appropriate for an institution born of the dystopian universe of strife that is New Eden. I think if you view the CSM as more of an exercise in political role-play than a body expected to be a really effective part of the game development process, it is indeed much more palatable and makes much more sense.

No, the lack of diversity clearly impacts on their effectiveness. Just to cite two examples: the proposed (and eventually rescinded?) change to the monthly economic reports and the nerfing of the buddy list as an intel source. Whether you agree or not with these changes, the impacts on these changes on segments of the player base were not even raised at the summits when proposed. Now yes, we only have a tiny glimpse of what discussion actually goes on behind the scenes and maybe the minutes are not a fair representation of what went on, but any market watcher or active hunter of other players would immediately identify the impact these changes would have on their play style and that wasn't voiced. Having a broader and/or deeper bench of CSM members would make the body much more effective at catching potential issues early on which is suppose to be the main point of having these players sign an NDA as I understand it.

Look, let's do a thought experiment. What if CCP said that due to budget cuts, they are going to slash the CSM to only two players and that CSM 12 will now only consist of Aryth and The Judge. Do you think they have sufficient breadth of experience and knowledge of all areas of the game for CCP to comfortable bounce game changes off of? Would you be comfortable with only these two filtering your concerns to CCP? If not, what is the correct number of players before you have a representative number? 4, 8, 10? The current size is an arbitrary number, or at least arbitrary as to the diversity of player activity its members cover, and seems to me a long way off from cover all the types of game play that goes on in Eve. I get that there are other concerns that will limit the number of players and that a too large council has its own set of issues that may limit its usefulness, but to claim that the current set of self-described nullsec-focused players is sufficiently diverse lacks any evidence from what I can see. And if that is true it just happened by chance given breadth of experience is not how most people decide how to vote; their in-game alliance affiliation is pretty much the sole determinant of whether a player is on the council or not.

Yes, the CSM members can talk to me or any other player and try to understand various aspects of the game they may not interact with daily and many of them do. I am very appreciative of those that make the effort. If the CSM is suppose to be just a communication channel then it will work fine as long as there are a few elected who take the time to do so and talk with the players. That is one thing and I don't think it matters much where players come from for that role. But if they are suppose to be directing game development or critically reviewing proposed changes to identify problems early then it very much matters that there is a broad representation of experience and play styles on the council who have signed the NDA. I don't see how anyone can argue with that, even if we all agree it is not a simple problem to solve.

I wish the CSM luck and I hope CCP continues to get some value from the institution. For me, I'll spend my time as you suggest making my concerns and views known to CCP and the community directly on these forums and elsewhere.

I don't agree with either of these examples, but for different reasons.

The MER change was proposed by CCP and no one on the CSM had any reasonable argument against it. The playerbase didn't either, there was just an outpouring of emotion towards keeping the stats around. That's not something any representative body is ever going to be able to accurately communicate.

For the Buddy List change that still doesn't have any reasonable arguments against it. Even as someone who mostly benefited from it it was absolutely free intel and the game is better off without being able to freely know when someone is or is not online without any restrictions.



This is a strawman not a useful example. It belongs, at best, in a philosophy class talking about the definition of a heap, not in any meaningful discussion of representative democracy.

If you want a statistically valid sampling you want polling, but that has more issues for the devs than the current system, and any sampling of players large enough to be statistically valid would also be too large for CCP to support. Let alone have meaningful discourse within that group.



Based on some comments by current and former CSM I feel the role of the CSM is something like a combination focus group, outside perspective, and sounding board.

While it's a valid crticism to say that the CSM doesn't always represent a broad swath of players no reasonable fix has been proposed, here or elsewhere, and all of the *other* fixes that have been proposed are either unworkable, detrimental to the functioning of the CSM, or wouldn't be accepted by the broad majority of players for good reason. Largely because they remove the democratic elements from the CSM partly or entirely.

Personally, in short, I think all of the fussing and fighting over the composition of the CSM is so much smoke with no fire. There's very little good evidence that the lack of one particular group being personally represented on the CSM has a major negative impact on their area of play. The whole thing feels like a relatively minor legitimate point that's being crammed full of a boat load of "CCP did this thing I don't like!" complaints disguised as democratic outrage.

dude!
you're going to argue and speak about a game that you LOVE and CARE for!
that is your HOBBY! that is something you love to play anytime!

tell me it's not a vacation!
tell me it's work! i dare you!

you are literally going (all payed) to speak about spaceships 24/7, trolling the devs, having fun with other nerds, metagaming with other alliances and whatever!
i can't see how you can call that WORK.

That's a HOBBY, and dedicating days to a hobby it's called vacation/holiday in MY BOOK!
and if it's so heavy to bear guys.... just don't go and candidate for cms LUL

i dunno what's wrong with you TBH

I voted for you then and I'd certainly vote for you again should you add your name to the ballot next year.

Mr Epeen

I was going to write about this same post. Here is why it's a vacation. I was away from work. I was in Iceland. I was put up in a pretty decent place. First time I went we had a waffle machine and my shower had a volcanic steam valve. We were fed pretty well. We got odd Icelandic soft drinks! Several nights we were taken out to local bars. We spent our days talking about a game we clearly all enjoyed.

Was it lounging on a beach in some tropical setting? No, would I do it again, yes.

The second time I was flown to Iceland as part of the CSM was during fanfest and that really was a vacation. I also enjoyed some of the other silly perks, I think I got a medal twice. :-) plus the CSM thingy when you forum post.

You know what the real pay off was? I got to meet some amazing folks in real life I would not have otherwise all on CCP's nickle. So there is a definite set of "perks" that come with being elected.

So now I'm changing what I first said. The CSM is now a popularity contest with an Iceland vacation and a gift bag if you win!