EVE General Discussion

Given Seleene's answers so far, I don't think having null-sec representatives in most of the positions should be seen as an issue. As long as the representatives can champion causes beyond their own spheres-of-influence, surely it's not a concern?

Moreover, I'd say null-sec is a good recruitment ground for focused individuals with a sense of structure, organisation and communication. That benefits everyone. This them-and-us tradition is neither helpful nor accurate and it would be of benefit to get past it as a customer base, leaving the divisiveness and hostility for in-game shenanigans.

I can dream.

:)

Make sure that CCP keeps the iteration on broken and unfinished systems as the priority. Do not get distracted by ~awesome~. Doesn't sound like much,but I'm sure it will remain a near full-time job.

Everyone has an agenda, whether it be selfish or selfless everyone has a motivation to push them forward. The CSM is no exception, whether it's to champion a certain issue, a certain experience or playstyle within the game, or to try and be a voice of the playerbase and make improvements to EVE in general.


The problem isn't just who sits on the CSM (though that doesn't absolve such issue from being a problem) but the people who communicate with the members of the CSM. Yes the ones who went in championing a certain cause or representing a group of players will listen to their group, and there's little reason to suspect the opinions of others are worth a damn to them. These people have their votes and their ticket in, it's unfortunate but they organised, played the system and reaped what they sow.

Then you have the few people who go in and as Seleene claims (not to agree or disagree with such claim) to do, represent everyone. That's fine, someone who can champion any cause and point out what needs to be fixed in any aspect of the game...

So long as people communicate with said CSM members. As annoying as it is to admit, the highsec community are as bad communicating to the CSM as they are trying to push their own candidate through. That said when the last person to run on the highsec ticket in the CSM elections was thrown out pretty quickly after a controversial campaign full of trolling and shitposting there's a great deal of apathy towards the entire process.

Not to mention the same CSM the chair was a well known lowsec character, and lowsec saw zero improvement despite their efforts to change things. At the end of the day there's enough reasons to simply not care from the casual observer's PoV, too much effort involved with little to no payoff.


Yet even with a nullsec dominance of the CSM, at the end of the day CCP isn't that stupid. While the CSM gives feedback and it's opinions, it's obvious to know when people clearly don't have a clue what they're talking about (like not knowing wormhole space is 0.0 for example.) Suggestions like that are pretty much nodded and discarded, otherwise we'd be left with a godawful game and a significant drop in subscriptions.


So getting the majority of the playerbase involved? CCP needs to show the value of the CSM and it's potential, and it needs to do that by showing it offers potential to people outside of nullsec. There are several ways to achieve this:


Personally I'd like to see the anonymity in the CSM minutes go away, so you see who is pushing what ideas. This gives the player base an idea of who actually knows their stuff and is likely to be open to suggestions outside of their agenda, and a sense of responsibility to CSM members to do some research and not come up with the terrible statements that get dissected in the minutes releases. Furthermore after complaints from within the CSM itself, it shows up those who offer or say little at the meetings, essentially being a waste of a seat.

CCP should set the CSM members with projects, asking them to go out individually and get feedback on various aspects of the game, showing their ability to work outside of their ideal field and establish contacts with the community at large. Failure to deliver on these should risk your position on the Council as you're failing to do your job. Darius III's communication recently with the BTL and DTF channel leaders was a great example of how someone goes outside of their field and tries to get the insight of people who play an aspect of the game. This should be encouraged and on a more public level, so to integrate the main playerbase into the CSM's workings.


Other than that, there should be more in game advertising toward the CSM than a couple of 1 time promotional popups on the log in. A lot of people don't even see what's on them before clicking the x box and logging in. Telling people to vote when they've not followed any of the build up is a waste of time, they'll randomly click on a name that looks good and carry on their merry way at best.

In the 2 years I've played the only time I've seen any CSM advertising in EVE was when Ankh pretty much went on the campaign trail around all the major highsec hubs, to which a fair number of people were asking "The f##k is the CSM?" There's a huge untapped market of voters that remain unaware of the entire process, there should be a goldrush to these people to not only educate but sway them on your side.

"Iteration" meaning "rescue nullseccers from the uber-efffective boredom they've encaged themselves into, at the expense of nobody else getting any fun".

I seriously wish there was a study on subscriber life cycle. How long they subscribe, what do they do, how many try the current endgame and how many quit without trying it.

I feel that nullsec endgame is causing more people to leave than to stay, as, frankly, as time goes by, older players with more life and less time to play become the industry standard. And EVE seriously fails to compel to one-hour-a-day'ers.

It seems they really try hard with this ~awesome~ things, look at the neocom... Looks awesome but it's less effective than the old ugly one.

If you're referring to the people I think, the said "hisec champion" (the famous spoon thrower) was more of a troll than every single shitposter that came in her threads combined. Every single thing I read from her or about her was just a stockpile of nonsense, childish behavior and honestly, I would be most intrigued to hear a psychological report on her case.

I think one hisec champion would be very interesting to have in the CSM, but only if it's someone with some goddamn sense.


As for the Lowsec champion, I guess you're referring to Mynxee, for whom I personally have a lot of respect, but this CSM have been trying to do too much in too little time, and their term coincided with the "OH GOD WE ARE THE KINGS WE DONT HAVE TO LISTEN TO ANYONE" period of CCP. You can't really blame the CSM for CCP being giant douchebags at the time.

Now, CCP seems to have chilled down a bit, part from the Jita protests, part from the rage unsubs (I was part in those), and maybe part as well from the December CSM summit, and when I read several members of the CSM writing that they found the summit very constructive (Seleene and Meissa come to mind at once), I tend to think it was.

On the contrary, we were right in the middle of it and trying to stop it from even happening by constantly bitching at CCP about the idiocy of what they were doing. Feel free to compare the dates of when stuff was going on to easily verifiable things like my blog / forum post, EVE Radio interviews and the rest of it.



I'm actually not that bored and do quite a few things that have nothing to do with null sec. v0v



That data does exist but CCP tends to shy away from releasing information that is directly business related unless it's in some kind of formal release. User information is a pretty sensitive thing for any MMO.



I can't disagree with this at all.

Ergo sum the corruption in the system, and the thing that isn't therefore helping to benefit the game holistically.

And yet the CSM constintutional specifically states:

"The key question that council members must consider before casting their vote is whether or not the issue at hand has the potential to improve or otherwise benefit the entire EVE society, and not just a select group within the community
that was successful in bringing attention to their unique case. Seeing the big picture—in this case, the needs of a society with over 300.000 individuals—is the primary responsibility of a CSM Representative, and reconciling that view with
the interests that won them the election is the greatest challenge they will face in this implementation."

and

"CCP is unable to accommodate any issue considered detrimental to the collective interests of EVE , particularly if the issue(s) touch upon meta-level concerns."

So assuming that CCP ignores meta level concerns which you have admitted by having members being focussed towards interest groups, should CCP therefore ignore anything those CSM members contribute? As surely their position is that of neglet to others which is a significant meta-interest.

CCP should, and does, take obviously self-interested advice from individual CSMs with a grain of salt. In some situations, they use entire handfuls of NaCl. And other CSMs are quick to pipe up when they detect the sweet smell of bullsh*t.

Usually, any conflicts are obvious.

For example, right now there is a spirited debate going on about the issue of tracking-fit Titans being able to "blap" small ships (like cruisers and even smaller ships).

I personally don't think they should, for what I believe are solid game design and balance reasons. But at the same time, I have a clear conflict, because my corp (DNS) runs a Black Ops squad and was on the pointy end of a Blapping Titan recently.

Similarly, some of those arguing that there is no problems happen to be Titan pilots...

Go figure, right? Most people are excited about nerfing themselves.