First off congratulations on getting elected to the council.
As a player, all I’m asking from those elected is to try to be as active as possible in communicating with as much of the player base as possible, obviously within the bounds of the NDA. Not just on reddit, own alliance comms etc, but here also on the games own forums, as over the last couple of years have noticed some council members have been a bit slack, while others have been great and maintained that connection with discussions of topics with the players (within the confines of the NDA). Regardless of anything else we all play the same game and want to see it grow.
Once again congrats on being elected, all the best, and looking forward to seeing what comes of CSM 13.
Elected, voted in, endorsed, picked, chosen by the player base etc etc… , just hope that the members of CSM 13 actively engage with the player base as mentioned in the post that’s all.
Bought, rigged, etc. What this CSM election has demonstrated is that there’s zero point in voting in the next election and that EVE will be once again focused on null-sec for the foreseeable future.
It’s fast becoming obvious that the end-game for EVE is at hand, so the only recourse is to stop playing.
Always vote. And beg others with your opinion, to vote. Or the large blocks win by default.
From reddit -
[–]querns_gsf
Like I’ve said countless times, our best weapon for CSM dominance isn’t our cohesive voting power, but the sheer disenfranchisement of the rest of the player base. Every person that doesn’t vote adds more and more power to us.
You never get 100% voter participation in any election. Most elected officials in governments across the world are elected with half or less of the voting population choosing to exercise their franchise. That doesn’t make the election invalid - if somebody doesn’t vote, that’s their choice. If they honestly don’t care who wins, then they have no incentive to participate. That doesn’t make the outcome any less the result of a democratic process.
29,000 characters is about the average load of TQ in any given primetime. Maybe more, maybe less. It’s 13k right now as I type this. Getting that many characters to login and vote is nothing to sneeze at. More votes were cast in this election than in the two I ran in real life combined.
Considering that there hundreds of thousands of active characters, this is maybe 10% of all eligible voters if we are extremely generous. An election with this low of a participation is by definition invalid. The 29000 votes were also cast over a week, not in a single day. And a lot of people have a ton of alts to vote, which is why it is important to not say that many players or people voted. Considering that we have had a lot more votes in the past, the ever decreasing number of votes show how important and meaningful the CSM is as an institution.
There may be hundreds of thousands of active characters, but with the advent of Alphas, they had to restrict voting so as to stop folks from gaming the system - it’s the equivalent of only allowing citizens, rather than all residents, to vote. So it was just Omegas.
The election was held over one week - past elections have been held over 3 or more weeks. Turnout was essentially the same as last year - barely 2k fewer votes, despite having a smaller voting window. This reflects real life voting, as early voting in some jurisdictions plus absentee voting in almost all means votes are being cast for a far longer period than just on “election day.”
When we had 50k votes being cast, that was prior to the Omega/Alpha change, and they also allowed both subbed and trial accounts to vote, and that was gamed - when they stopped allowing non-subbed accounts to vote, turnout went back to normal levels.
There hasn’t been an “ever decreasing” number of votes. Each election has to be placed in context and it’s hard to compare one election to another because various changes have been made that impact the outcome.
By all means, though, help us increase voter turnout next year if you are concerned about it.
I am talking about Omegas. Alpha trash does not matter.
That number is a big difference in my opinion. Especially for a representation that can sway CCP’s opinion on matters into their majority’s favor. After such a decision was made, it takes an excessive amount of club… effort to sway their opinion back in favor of EVE, not just one group. This year will cost a lot of work to keep CCP from screwing over EVE just so that some people can have their twisted ideas turned into virtual reality.
There is no relevant context change for the voting process. The same voting method has been used for years now and, as you yourself stated, most voting takes place early after the voting started. Hence, the elections are easily comparable and popularity has gone down or stayed stagnant at best.
Dyver, I understand that you’re cynical, but I don’t understand where the cynicism comes from.
Do you see any evidence that Goons or any of the other nullsec block candidates are “swaying CCP’s opinion” into their favor? I don’t. As Innominate and others have said - we all play this game and we want to keep playing it. That means making it fun and ensuring that folks have reasons to fight and a desire to do that, as well as do all the other stuff that helps drive conflict. It isn’t in anybody’s interest to implement game mechanics that literally benefit only one group of players over the majority of the community, and the CSM doesn’t have that power anyway.
The Devs aren’t stupid. If somebody puts forward a completely self-serving idea, they’re going to get called out on it.
And yes, there is a relevant context change for the voting process this year - the timing was completely different, the election period was completely different, you had a scandal in the middle that impacted ballots, you had a different number of candidates, you had a larger number of incumbents running again than in the past. The only thing consistent between this election and the last one was the STV system. Everything else was different. And the differences between CSM 11 and CSM 12 are manifold, including the reduction in size from 14 to 10.
Comparisons are nice, but you’ve got compare apples to apples. It’s hard to do that when each election introduces changes that can impact turnout and the final results.
Then you are not looking closely enough. The utter focus on capitals online is one of the prime example of how CCP followed the CSM lead and made EVE arguably less fun for most, but ridiculously solidified for some. The next step where structures, which again turned EVE even more into a mess and reinforced the introduced notion that you must own a massive capital blob to remain “relevant”. Neither changes made EVE better or more fun, quite the contrast happened.
CSM full well has the power to influence decisions by sweet talking CCP into believing certain things are great for the cluster, when they are demonstratively not.
Are we talking about the same CCP? The CCP that introduced the Agency window that is, despite lots of feedback, worse than what clusterscrewer we had before. The same CCP that introduced a “race” that is nothing more than a game of paddle-ball. The same CCP that introduced a new chat system that made almost everything worse than before and which has not been improved since. And these are only few examples of recent development. You must be talking about a different entity.
We are still talking about apples because it’s still the election of the same body and the same voting system. The number of candidates varies in each election anyway and scandals also took place in previous CSM elections.
After five elections of having a “different” mindset (including this one), it should be painfully obvious to anyone that the individual vote just doesn’t matter.
It’s completely delusional to think that the general populace has any chance of disrupting the status quo. Null-sec has too much to lose by not stacking the CSM in their favor - including all the NDA information that has been used to game the market for years.
Goons could quite literally buy any CSM election (and they very well may have) by PLEX’ing enough Alphas just during the election to increase their vote.
I’m looking closely, but you just moved the goal posts - I’m talking specifically about evidence that one coalition or alliance used to the CSM to benefit that alliance alone - Goons doing something just to benefit Goons, for example. I have seen no evidence of that.
I think you can probably make a fair argument that nullsec has been most influential, but that’s also considered end-game content for many players. Same with capitals, and the like. But that’s not what we’re talking about here - I’m trying to address the concerns that one player group (a corp, alliance or coalition, not a playstyle) in the game could get CCP to change their game to benefit that player group by getting a majority of the CSM elected.
I’m not talking about a different CCP - just because they implement features that folks didn’t ask for doesn’t mean they can’t smell when somebody is being self serving. You can make bad decisions but realize when somebody is trying to take advantage of you.
As for the comparisons, you’ve got to look at the variables. The number of candidates and the number of positions matters - if Brave, Horde or any of the other big groups had a popular internal candidate, that could have driven turnout. I’m sure my guys voted in greater numbers than in the past because I was on the ballot. That impacts turnout. Every election is different, and the fact that despite the changes to the nomination period, the length of the campaign period, the format of the announcement (not at fanfest, for example) and the length of the voting window, to only drop 1800 or so votes is pretty good.
But hey, like I said, if you are concerned about this, let’s work next year on getting the numbers up.
