EVE General Discussion

Several people are saying, if you can't be bothered to vote then why should you be represented, in a game. Is this really a good attitude? Sure it's a HTFU attitude but does it actually work? It can't be good for CCP to be excluding the more casual players as that is what is most common. Voting doesn't take that much work, but it does of course take work, and the more solo a player you are the more personal research you're going to have to do to choose a candidate. It's is far easier to live 'with your head in the sand' as it were, in a game compared to real life. In my RL, I can't get away from people talking about politics, but in my eve gameplay I have only ever heard anything about candidates when my alliance leaders have told me who to vote for. The amount of 'work' drops to next to nothing when you've been told who to vote for.

I think there would be a way to equalise the amount of effort put in to have your voice heard, by using surveys of the entire playerbase. There the only 'work' is answering what you think, and CCP can do the work of compiling and sifting through the data.

hmmm, almost sounds like maybe we need some sort of electoral system......

or maybe just make it so there are seats available based on primary areas, Amarr/Caldari/Galente/Minmatar/Anokis(WH spelling myight be wrong)....ok thats 5 seats.

Hmm, now what else do we need......
Nullsec....
1 seat for the North (PureBlind/Tribute/Venal/Deklein/Vale of the Silent/Fade/Branch/Tenal/Geminate)
1 seat for the West (Cloud Ring/Outer RIng/Foutain/Delve/Querious/Period Basis)
1 seat for the Drone Regions(east), (Cobalt Edge/Outer Passage/The Spire/ Etherium Reach/Oasa/The Kalevala Expanse/PerrigenFalls/MalPaise)
1 seat ffor the Southeast (Great Wildlands/Scalding Pass/Insmother/Curse/Wicked Creek/Detroid/Cache)
1 Seat for the South (Providence/Catch/Immensea/Tenerifis/Impass/Omist/Feythabolis/Estoria/Paragon Soul/Stain)

5 nullsec seats, 1 Wh seat, 4 Empire seats........

Then CCP makes it so that your character can only vote for the quadrant it is currently living in when voting for the list of any Candidates for that particular region.

---

But then again why trade one convoluted mess for another?

Easily gamed. I cast my characters out to geographically disparate areas, then vote for five people of my own ticket.

The current CSM process already provides an excellent census.

It's ok Cade, i wrote basically a troll post that i did not really plan nor expect a reply of any seriousness to.
1 guy answered that he could game it.

So I simply asked him how, and provided the context of meaning behind the post, the question is still valid though. How?
and i would also like to know now to what end?
Is that guy really that important to place whatever Candidate he wishes in every quadrant and have him/her win by default?

LOL ok, either now you are backpedaling on theoretically discussing a theoretical topic, or as just a Director of Finance somebody higher than you told you to quit your lid. either way, unless you want to actually continue it, this troll discussion of a troll post has pretty much run its course i think.

The CSM process offers the strongest incentive to have all alts self-identify what playstyle they most favor. It is blatantly obvious in a game such as EVE that the location of the character is significantly less predictive. Certainly there are ways that the census properties of the CSM could be improved - but it is far and away better than any other metric. It is widely advertised and CCP seeks to get as many people as possible to participate. It has a tangible incentive not to lie: your responses are private and anonymized but have actual effects. And it goes to the person behind the character, so it avoids the trap mechanical measurements of where characters are, what their skills are, and what their frequent activities are where they miss the underlying reality.

I have an npc freighter alt. It does nothing but autopilot packages from point a to point b in empire or, in rare cases, manually pilot them. I have nothing in common with a red frog guy though a mechanical review of the characters would show them as very similar. My NPC alt is simply part of my personal logistics chain, not how I play the game. A red frog's guy is how he plays the game. Many characters in highsec are simply bots that supply someone else: most stats won't tell the difference between someone's L4 missioning bot and some poor guy whose life is so terrible his leisure activity is running missions in empire (because if the stats could, the bot would be banned!).

Highseccers have believed for a long time, in defiance of all reality, that they are the vast silent majority. They rail against the CSM because it shows that it's not true. There is no groundswell of people who run missions in highsec. There's no silent majority of people who actually love mining in empire without the wonderful player vs player interaction offered by CODE, Goonswarm, and other noble self-sacrificing EVE players who take the valuable time out of their day to venture into highsec to make it a little more exciting for everyone else. People begged for a more representative voting system, they got it, and huh, it turns out that that silent majority still isn't there. So despite the fact that STV is very well understood, used in real life, and its edge cases are well known garden-variety EVEO idiots continually spout as a postulate that it prevents highsec from getting representation, without the slightest attempt to explain why. It is taken as a given that because highsec gets little representation and nullsec lots, that the voting system is flawed: not that that's what the reality is.

This highsec majority doesn't exist because most of the people who just play eve in highsec quit, because frankly EVE's pve is not very good and never has been. And people who like it despite how terrible it is are the very last people you want representing highsec. Hi, i'm the person who still likes highsec despite highsec driving away every normal person. I'm the person you should speak to about making it better, me, the crazy person who if i get what i want will only reinforce the things that make it terrible for normals. What this game needs is to appeal to people who want to roleplay as bots more, without any annoying interaction more difficult than someone with thirty seconds of coding experience can script a response to. Please eliminate anything like that like ganking, thanks.

I don't know about the others, but I have this attitude because I trust the non-voters to take care of themselves. It comes across as HTFU because of the second assumption that there will always be non-voters. Where do you draw the line and move forward without waiting anymore?


Its probably easier to explain with an IRL example: In my college days I was in a fraternity with about 20 guys.

My first year as a member they spent a lot of time trying to plan recruitment and other formal events around when all 20 people could show up, and what ended up happening was an enormous game of calendar tetris, and events full of people that didn't want to be there but had to because we moved the event back just for them. Who would join a fraternity when none of the members want to be at the events?

When I was in charge I took the opposite approach. The event is going to be Wednesday at 7pm, and I don't care who is there. You have 3 days to get your **** together and free your schedule for it, and you choose your level of involvement.

We were able to plan more events, and had stronger member showings at each event because only the people that wanted to be there would show up. No more dragging horses to water, just to watch them not drink.



Taking it back to EVE, do people honestly expect a CSM full of representatives for the non-voters would be as useful to the player base compared to what we have now? I don't like a CSM full of "null-sec wanna be devs", but I'd rather the pro-active, highly engaged people get their candidates instead of people that aren't aware CSM is even a thing.

it says that the system works, because it allows groups to elect representatives without needing broad approval, so similarly highsec pubbies can elect someone without needing to kiss the ring of the mighty goonswarm empire. you've just proven the complete opposite of the point you claim to be making. you did, of course, prove what your actual complaint is: you are very mad that better-respected people got elected and you didn't

also are you ever going to explain what you think your idiot graph in the first post means

Taking this comparison back to eve in my view; your system would in fact be more like regular player surveys of the entire playerbase, where each player can choose the level of representation he gets, in the responses to the questions. Instead of the once a year scheduled CSM elections which involve research outside of simply playing the game.