Jita Park Speakers Corner

The entire idea of "Alternates" was rendered obsolete the moment CSM 6 started the Skype channels with CCP and we had members that gave more of a damn about helping fix the game than flying to Iceland. In both CSM 6 and CSM 7, everyone had as loud a voice as they wished to have on any subject they wished to air an opinion on. While attending a summit in Iceland is certainly an effective means of lobbying or clarifying a position, the ability for those unable to attend in person to be there virtually has also eliminated the whole "alt" nonsense as well. I'm very happy that it's officially dead.

No one in CSM 6 or 7 really cared about who was or wasn't an "alt"; all that matters is the effort you put into the whole. In CSM 6 we had Two Step that rose above the efforts of the 'Top Nine'. In CSM 7 both Alek and Hans have proven without a doubt that you can advocate as part of the group no matter what your vote number was.

But, since it's his thread after all, I can say without hesitation that the one person on the last THREE CSM's that has given as much or more than any other member has been Trebor. I have exactly ZERO stake in his campaign, but I very much want to see some of the new blood in CSM 8 have someone onboard that has proven their mettle over and over again in this arena. It's fine if you disagree with him due to a difference of opinion; vote as you please. But when nearly every CSM that has worked with Trebor over the last three years praises his efforts, that speaks more loudly than anything else.

You know at first I thought you were just another troll, then I thought maybe you were some kind of false flag operation to make Malcanis look bad by posting idiotic stuff while endorsing him in your sig.

Now finally you've admitted the truth: You hear voices in your head.

This explains so much.

Mostly responding to FD's sig, can't say anyone could make a case for me selling out. Accepting the reality of what the CSM can can't do maybe, but if I sold out still looking for that fat stack in the mail.

As for Trebor, I've seen him at work and he exceeded my expectations in every way. And if the voices in FD's head want to be part of the CSM 8 election dialog, bonus!!

Issler

I'm not even sure what you mean by "selling out" at this stage. It feels like you seem to believe that if the CSM isn't in a state of open warfare with CCP then it's not doing its job. I won't say that CCP have been 'perfect' during CSM7's term, but I do believe that they have done more things right than they have since the CSM started.

If "selling out" means "supporting CCP when they get it right" to you, then I'm afraid you have an endorsement for someone who is an enthusiastic and vocal sellout in your sig. When I see dumb stuff like "POS are only used by a small percentage of the EVE community", then I have no hesitation in exposing the terrible assumptions in such a foolish statement, but I'm equally all in favour of positive reinforcement.

A reasonable point.

Wardecs could be used as a tool to suppress the activity of your competitors. While this particular aspect was not explored during the summit session, it is worthy of analysis. So let's take a quick stab at that.

Some immediate questions that come to mind:

* Are wardecs actually being used for this purpose (and how could CCP measure that)?

* If not, why not? One possibility might be that it's simply not effective (as you note, people can move to NPC corps), or that there are other more effective solutions. I seem to recall that one in-game group decided to stop people from mining ice, and they didn't use wardecs...

* If the metrics show that wardecs aren't generating actual fighting, and aren't a useful tool in other ways, then assuming CCP decides they want to put some resources into iterating on it, they basically have two choices:

1) Iterate on the current mechanic to fix its current problems, or

2) Replace it with a new mechanic that (hopefully) will work better.

My position is simply that the history and evolution of the mechanic raises red flags that make (2) an increasingly more attractive option, just as the history of CrimeWatch finally forced CCP to bite the bullet and go back to the drawing board.

I'm not so sure I like the mechanic (I'd have to think about it for a while) but I certainly appreciate the problem it is trying to solve.

Basically, there are two ways to go about it -- give people an incentive to stay in corp during the hard times, or penalize rats who leave a sinking ship. The problem is that either one is just adding another bag on the side of the existing mechanic.

The problem is most highsec corps are a glorified chat channel so leaving when you get wardecced is the optimal thing to do. Especially seeing as you can dodge the high NPC corp tax by just starting a new corp.



I'm not hugely attached to the mechanic either, it was basically stolen off the top of my head from WoW with a bit of Eve flavour added (customisation, passive increase and diminshing returns). However, rewarding people for staying long-lived corps through adversity has benefits beyond just discouraging people fleeing wardecs. Right now the best way to run missions is in your own 1 man corp. Imagine instead if a corp could skill into loyalty point gain. Now mission runners who want the optimal experience have to join a corporation and stay there through the hard times. They might even start talking to people.

This would only further reinforce solo play in single person corps. Corp standings get exponentially harder to maintain as your corp gets larger and its possible for one person to screw it up accidentally to the point where your only recourse is to kick them.

Edit: Not that the answer to this isn't to fix corp standings to suck less.

I actually like this proposal a lot. Having player corps be mechanically better or NPC corps mechanically worse is a great way to incentivize being in a corp. Yeep is right that this further encourages being in one-man corps, but my thought on that is that if having that bonus costs more isk than one individual or less than a dozen individual would gain from it then that encourages larger grouping and more complex mechanisms within a corp.

I actually really strongly feel that something like this is one of the best changes corps could see, especially in highsec. It would incentivize corp membership and larger groupings and make the stakes higher, which causes more intense struggle.

I'd start by taking a leaf from your book, Trebor, and going back to first principles: what are NPC corps supposed to be for? The current mode of "unelected choice of undifferentiated dumping ground for people who aren't in a player corp" seems to me to be... suboptimal.

I'd like to see players able to choose their own NPC corp, and I'd like to see that choice actually mean something wrt to game mechanics - advantages, disadvantages, bonuses, penalties, drawbacks and opportunities. This NPC corp should be a natural choice for people who like mining, that NPC corp might attract haulers, and so on. As this would encourage people with similar interests to be in contact with each other, they'd be forming communities with a common outlook, and this in turn would also provide a good solute for more player corps to crystallise from