Jita Park Speakers Corner

You say nothing, and if anyone asks, you say "NDA". That's pretty much the blanket statement and execution from CCP on this regard. There are exceptions where - for example with regards to moon mining - one member is already so heavily involved in the market, them leaving said market would massively disrupt it. As such, they are told to freeze prices at the state they were in prior to any NDA discussion, and only allowed to react when the information is revealed to the general public.

And, having talked to CCP's Security, the amount they can see and watch of you and your friends is terrifying.

Yes, planning is allowed, but speculation is not. Equally, plans based around NDA information could not be shared, and any large post-reveal, alliance level action that had been pre-organised would be heavily frowned upon by CCP.

The primary reason big blocs send representatives - who very often burn out in the experience - is to ensure that the CSM isn't used as a blunt force object to push through things that are overwhelmingly harmful to nullsec. See CSM 5 for an example of when this wasn't a case, and the sudden rush from nullsec blocs to involve themselves in the CSM.

I would suggest if you take exception to this however, to vote in the election for as many non-bloc candidates as you can, and rally support for them.

(Also, I can tell you that I, personally, have nothing to do with our leadership. My primary reason for running is that I felt like NRDS and NPSI gameplay needed to be represented to CCP to ensure that NBSI wasn't simply presumed to be the be-all end-all of engagement doctrine.)

CSM 5 was where they literally tried to remove Jump Bridges from the game IIRC. Perhaps I am thinking of CSM 4, but I am almost certain that was why CSM 6 was so incredibly Nullsec dominated.



That is a fair concern, and I wish there was some way to police that.

My impression is that CCP lost their confidence in doing the right thing for the game after Incarna (I was not yet around by that time). The CSM let them outsource some of the pre-clarification and reality checks to players, instead of establishing a good understanding of each and every part of their own game in-house. I like the feedback threads and beta tests, and features that get removed if acceptance or impact is low, also the focus groups, but do players need inside into the internal (NDA) roadmap? Probably a question only CCP can answer.

Was that really CSM 5? Time sure does fly. I still have that jb map somewhere. Even after that nerf you could still go from Geminate to Fountain in I think it was 15 minutes.

If, prior to a patch - where CCP releases information on what they will be patching as with the Rorqual, or moon mining - and you do not simply plan for every major possibility, leaving execution down to quick reading of the devblog and going on a predetermined course of action, you are doing speculation wrong as a market player.

To the highlighted piece I would like to apply the adage which underpins the concept of rationality as a philosophy, simply as it is so appropriate in the circumstances - "What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?"

I would argue that the CSM has, in fact had a significant impact on the evolution of EvE Online, and whilst the best examples will likely only be heard about in 6 years when my NDA runs out, I can still point to ways in which the CSM has had a significant impact on the development of EvE Online in even the past term - without the fire and brimstone brought on by CSM 8 following the Summer of Rage;

Alpha Clones Multiboxing - This was something that was brought into focus by the CSM during our initial talks with CCP, and as one can see from their initial devblog, they weren't certain as to how limited multiboxing would have to be for them. And, as my own article at the time attests, 1 Alpha + 1 Omega was a fairly common thing being bandied about. However, the CSM talked to CCP about their concerns that this would make multiboxing an Alpha the optimal - and therefore only - way to play, and highlighted specific areas where it would cause significant disruption to existing gameplay (Lowsec griffin alts, Hisec ganking) that would only benefit an older, more experienced player.

The NPE - This was worked on as a collaboration from the very first drafts being shown to us at the first summit, followed up by in depth discussions and constant work to raise concerns and prevent 'bad habits' from creeping in. Since its release we've worked with the team to identify and raise points where the NPE is failing, or not teaching a lesson that is important, and generally gather as much feedback to them as possible - leading to a number of small iterative changes.

Engineering Citadels (And Structures in general) - This is something I, personally didn't even input in, as I am not an expert in the field and felt my other compatriots could better explain the problems. But they pushed CCP to constantly iterate on the structure system, and fix many problem areas with it, such as the lack of insurance in citadels, or tethering not working to repair certain items, or cap not regenerating alá stations. In addition to that, they have worked tirelessly to bring the painpoints of EC's vs existing manufacturing facillities to CCP, with especial attention to smaller producers, as they're not easy for CCP to contact, nor are they particularly visible in CCP's overall stats. (P.s. poke Sullen Decimus & Steve Ronuken with feedback there).

Pushing for more Balance Changes - This is something that's had relatively few tangible results so far, but this CSM has been in constant talks with CCP about what they (and their constituents) feel is a very slow rate of motion in terms of addressing problem ships in the meta, or reworking broken mechanics. But, the conversation was started with CCP, and I hope it continues into CSM 12, as we have reached the point of changing a few minds, especially given the current imbalance between the races of Alphas.

I doubt any of this would change your mind, and perhaps the minimal advantage you highlighted there is greater than the value you assign to any of the work we do, and quite honestly I would love it if we could stop people from planning on the CSM as well, but I feel like the advantages we are able to give to the community outweigh that, at least from my own personal experience and beliefs.

2/2

As for the other issues I personally think they are all fairly minor issues. Now I do think the csm should stay but the NDA should be done away with. Not only does the nda violate the core integrity of the game by giving some players inside info but the nda reduces transparency to such an extent that to call this any sort of democracy is an insult to the term democracy. When the elected officials completely control the information that voters receive the “democracy” is a farce. Both of these issues can be solved by just removing the nda. If we had to choose between "CSM with NDA" or "No CSM" I think it is clear the better option is "No CSM". Here is why:

The only big bullet dodged was the multi-alpha log in. And yes that would have been horribly dumb, and it is a concern that CCP may have been thinking that. But again the players gave CCP the feedback on why that was dumb on many levels. They really didn't need csm to do this.

As to the other issues they may have been important to a certain group to fix certain bugs or "balance" small artillary etc. I am not saying these things are bad. Except that they tend to focus ccp on issues that only hard core players care much about. Im not saying lots of people didn't want some balance changes. They did, but its not really the death of eve. Moreover, the balance changes that hardcore players get all bunged up about do have a down side. Casual players often find their ship fittings no longer work before they really have a chance to fly them. Currently most of the fit ships I have are not fit for the current game. Modules no longer online and even slots have disappeared. There is a point where many players refuse to log in because the meta changes so quickly that they don’t want to bother relearning it. So these changes may be great for those who are always efting but for the casuals this is a downer.

The other thing is these concerns of the hard core players drown out concerns of casual players. It has been over 3years since CCP said they would implement some changes to help faction war sov which is still hopeless broken by rabbit plexers. Yet while this null sec csm is holding CCPs feet to the fire regarding small changes to NPE and the powergrid on a small artillery no one even mentions this fairly large issue. I say its fairly large not only because of the numbers enrolled in Faction War but also because of its potential for content creation which even though it is only minimally utilized now is still substantial. (consider the amount of kills in FW space comared to the rest of low sec, null sec, and wh space.)

Why is fw ignored? Because Faction War is for casual eve pvpers. And Casual eve players typically don't sign up to spend a year basically taking on a part time job for a game. (Nor are they going to try to search the web trying to figure out what player thinks what) This is why CSM generally doesn’t represent casual players well. There is no way around this and it alone is not reason to end csm. Nevertheless it would help if ccp consciously understood this and considered whether the recommendations of the csm are somewhat misrepresenting the actual playerbase in favor of more “hard core” players. The sov system in fw is broken and it has been for years. CCP promised the 2 fixes (timer rollbacks and real time intel tools for when plexes are attacked) for it years ago but never delivered. CSM is too busy wringing their hands over minor bugs in their game to even bother addressing the core sov mechanic is faction war. AFAIK No one has even brought up these 2 promises in the years since CCP made them.

But the real problem is this integrity of the game. I soon realized that you might be able to make a few billion per day constantly one isking or trading. But the big money maker is what I call “CCP magic.” That is when ccp changes the rules of the universe. So suddenly things like this happen:
1) Suddenly certain ships will requires 2xs the minerals to build
2) All meta 4 items will be nerfed to be similar to other meta items
3) Reprocessing will suddenly be nerfed so you will only get a fraction of the minerals out of all your loot
4) New rigs/structures are coming out and they will take a huge amount of these resources
5) New faction war items/ships are coming out and they will require these items
6) A worm will suddenly have the dps and tank of a tech 2 frigate and be 2xs as fast
7) These capital ships will be buffed/nerfed
8) A plex will suddenly be able to also be used for multi character training
9) This item will no longer be sold by npcs…. Etc etc

I can go on and on. This is the sort of “ccp magic” that players save, gain, and lose massive amounts of isk from. With this sort of information you can double and triple 100s of billions of isk. Honestly giving this information out to select players makes the T20 scandal look like peanuts. And the minor changes you list do not come close to justifying this sort of fundamental breach to the integrity of the game. The NDA must go.

Now that the new plex dev blog is out, maybe we can hear how our csm "represented" players when they discussed this with ccp? Can we have minutes that cover this? Perhaps instead of just not doing minutes that cover nda stuff do the minutes but then release them when the info goes public.

After all I hear having the csm be a sounding board for this new stuff is supposed to be the real value to players. So why can't we read what they said?