Jita Park Speakers Corner

Yes, of course. However, if you'd look at my history of posting you would see that I have been a champion of improved war decs for some time and this is not some new thing for me.

Furthermore, it is very important with regard to the election because I want to vote for a candidate that I believe has the 'right' answers to the things I would like to see improved in the game.

Is this political? Yes
Is this tactical? Yes
Do I genuinely want the best solution for war decs for all? Yes

Cant really ignore mails I haven't received Grumpy. But I'm happy to respond to your question.

Make it so players can work up their sec status to max and work for CONCORD. Such a job with CONCORD would restrict them to certain activities, but allow them to attack criminals on sight.

Skimming this thread for valuable data ground to a halt rather quickly. It is ridiculous, but this thread has more trolls in it than goonfleet... Says something there. Mmmm conspiracy theories, neat!

Anyway, skimming this obnoxious tripe is harming my rational thinking patterns. Kelduum Would you do myself and many others a huge favor and start an in-game mailing list where you, as a CSM candidate, take a legitimate concern from the community on a fairly regular basis and answer it directly so we don't have to read through all the long-winded blathering from forum alts.

I want to know more on your position as a CSM candidate because I want to get more of my friends and family into eve, but at present I really can't offer them many immediate reasons to join up. As you are the big boss of Eve Uni you know what keeps players playing and what chases them off. It is my belief that such experience with new players in a CSM chair holder would aid CCP greatly in making the first few months of Eve more enjoyable and allow me to finally recruit a few of my friends and family away from crap like WoW and WoT.

Thank you for your time.

I make no secret of it but I also qualified my position of genuinely wanting to see the best solution to war decs. I asked Kelduum if his proposition was a straw man. The question was not rhetorical.

My position is tactical but perhaps not only in the way you might think; The fact that this summer's release is all about War and will probably involve input from the CSM means the two are not mutually exclusive of each other and therefore I see no issue of discussing both under this post. I'm sure Kelduum feels the same about this and you might notice there is one "like" against my straw-man post, which happens to be from Kelduum.

It goes without saying that I respect Kelduum's creation of EVE University and I accept he probably knows a lot about this game that I personally do not. This is not some personal attack. However, I know a lot about wars and do not agree with his idea and because it is tied to his election campaign because of the focus this year on "Inferno" I feel obliged to make the criticisms I have.

I believe it may be the case now that Kel is shedding the skin of his war dec idea in the interest of his election campaign. Makes sense given the circumstances, however, I will remind you that it was him predominantly that landed us in the position of the "dec shield". I worry that these examples are how his thinking is in general in relation to EVE. Perhaps Kelduum is too close to EVE University to be the right candidate for the community as a whole.



I chopped out the parts which were not relevant to me. I have also clarified my position in this post.

Your other communications are mainly mud-flinging or not directed at myself.

I don't. I agree. The problem in this case is that in this and every other CSM the Issues can not and have not been clearly defined They really can't be at this level. So people with even the remotest interest have to trawl through several walls of text looking for a thought process that is similar to their own.

I'll say this for the Goons tho. They had the courtesy and the courage to announce their Ice campaign before they launched it. That makes them a better breed than most.

The CSM process is's messy and it's inefficient. So it the rest of life.

BUT, at least a candidate like Kelduum can got to the CSM and say hey guys, you got big computers and genius mathematicians in your employ. can you spend some time digging through your database to see how many alliance leaders are exploiting the relative safety of high-sec for isk at little risk just so we can get the rapier claws of noir out of our back.

if they do that and have to admit to you that there is a problem then Kelduum has won a victory for you.

I'm glad to see at least you are now more focussed on talking about the idea.

Edit: Off topic part removed, CCP Phantom

PvP is easily avoided

EvE Online is a fundamentally PvP game. The PvP aspects pervade all of it. If your friend is not physically fit to handle it then he probably shouldn't play. Not expecting PvP during a wardec is also not wise. EvE Online PvP is one of the few activities that gets my heart racing and gives me a rush. A lot of that is because of the risks inherent in it. You risk your ship. You don't know what the other side is up to or if your planning has been enough to make victory certain. Devalue PvP and you devalue EvE.

The CSM process is fairly easy to understand. Those involved in the community will vote for representatives: The CSM. The CSM itself are "lobbyists" - they take all the various issues and concerns that the community puts forth and present them to CCP for review -- trying to convince CCP to follow through on any/every one of those community supported suggestions.

They really don't do much more than pick the ones that they will present. It's rare that they can "invent new ones", just pick from what's been put forth or what CCP brings to the table while they are members.

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The CSM position is a political one - it has no actual authority nor ability to do anything. They can simply try to convince CCP's internal contacts that following through on community suggestions is a good thing to do.

As such, they have "no power" but they do have influence -- to the degree that those assigned to communicate with them from within CCP have actual power or influence to help make decisions. It is a derived position of authority -- no actual authorities involved but "power perceived is power achieved" - they do have a prominent position as representatives of the community -- *IF* backed by the bulk of the community *AND* recognized as such by CCP.

The "special interests" that put them there, aren't so special.

They simply are the people who get involved in the process by electing CSM members who will follow through on THEIR ideas of what CCP should have presented to it. If more players are involved, these special interests wouldn't have as much sway so the LACK of involvement is what allows them more say than they might otherwise have.

"Intelligence" involved in such selection of CSM should look at the breadth of issues/understanding by CSM but beyond that - they should look at who has the ability to communicate with CCP in a fashion that will get CCP listening.

They also need to be able to leverage the community by garnering support when CCP doesn't listen by communicating with us so we can help them better represent the community as a whole. (not violating NDA's but there are a variety of ways of saying things, discussing things, that won't breach an NDA but gets the idea across...)

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That out of the way - let's look at our LAST CSM a bit.

From the "riots" they went off to a summit. They came back talking about how everything was OK and CCP would address things. In the mean time CCP "stuck to their guns" with comparisons of adding MT to PLEX being added to EVE and such.

While the CSM was backing their claims of "it's OK" - CCP came out with a plan for making nullsec easier to live in, more profitable with less effort, etc... The CSM's reaction was "FINALLY a good vision of null!!!!" - feeding their special interests with high-praise for CCP's "vision".

In the mean time, many vets kept saying "screw this crap" and canceling accounts. All the while the CSM is telling us that we are over reacting and it'll be fine in an attempt to calm the community.

A month or so of this and CCP *FINALLY* comes out with an apology and changes their dev focus. New ships, fixes, balances, etc... Things start turning around and the community starts to reconsider the annoyance at CCP with a "wait and see" attitude about their proposed changes.

Look at the time-line. Go dig up those blogs and posts and threads... /boggle at the opinions of how 'great' this CSM has done.

What we did see was this CSM come out claiming that this new direction (which has zip spank to do with their "nullsec improvements" and everything to do with fixing other parts of the game...) and says "see what we did for you?"

Sorry - either they were bribed to be part of CCP's PR group's effort at that summit or were so gullible as to buy into what CCP said but, either way, they sure as hell don't garner a hell of a lot of good feelings from me.

They didn't get ideas across of value to the community as a whole and when real changes came about, they try to hop the good-will gravy train.

As such - I think some adjusting to a better representation is in order. Either this batch can be bribed or are very gullible and neither is what I'd like "representing the community". We need people to represent the games interest but with some back-bone and guts.

The Mittani is very much a political animal but suggesting he was bought off by CCP is a bit of a mind wrench.
Selenee has too much invested not to pursue his particular agenda and Trebor is an honest to gods enabler and far too straight laced to be that two-faced. I've not got a perspective on the others.

BUT, one of the reasons I'm supporting Kelduum is that the whole incarna development had been scuppered (Not so much now it seems from a recent dev-blog). Still, that would have been a nice place to put my ailing friend if it had any meaningful game play and the sooner the better.