I’ll start where I left it before
You talk about you want to build trust again with CCP and the players but how do you propose to do this?
I think I can boil this down to two main areas, monetization and communication
A huge portion of the player base right now quite rightly feels that CCP is completely disconnected from them, dev blogs and discussion around patches usually occurs just before or even after the actual patch is live. Teasers about upcoming content in the form of expansions and quadrants have disappeared. This is something that needs to be addressed as soon as possible, players need to be included and hyped up about upcoming patches instead of being told “we arn’t going to tell you, you’ll have to figure it out yourself” like they did at fanfest this year.
Monetization and value for money is another huge aspect of this, the increased prices especially at low durations its going to massively hurt the influx of new players, a large amount of them are going to be look at a 1 month sub to test the waters if they enjoy omega or not before committing to longer durations, with the 1 month sub being so high now there is going to be a significant number of them who will decide it isn’t worth the price
We all know the root cause of the price increase, CCP exists to make a profit, want’s to offset the increased server running costs from electricity and needs to try and claw back lost revenues due the war in Ukraine. I don’t think any reasonable person can fault them for this, what we CAN fault them for is for constantly ignoring the request by players for CCP to monetise customisation content, CCP would make a killing if they just channelled the spirit of riot games and made some of the art team pump out tonnes and tonnes of skins, they can be recolors sold for cheap, more expensive but well designed skins like YC121 Yoiul line, we can even tap into the netease designed serenity skins and just give them a portion of the sales on those lines as additional profit, absolutely everyone wins in that scenario.
If CCP can fully tap into giving players multiple avenues of customising their ships, characters and any other ideas that they can think of, this should provide a huge demand for purchasing plex on the markets, which in turn drives the price of plex up making more people decide that its worthwhile purchasing plex from CCP
If this monetisation part can be solved then CCP won’t have to resort to knee jerk price increases (and in an ideal world would give way for them to bring the price back down), player value for money goes back up while also letting them enjoy the game more, showing that CCP can actually listen to them and give them what they have been asking for.
It sounds simple on paper because it ■■■■■■■ is, i want to drill this deep into the skulls of the devs so they don’t forget that.
Can you also please elaborate in how the CSM has shaped the game in the past and how the CSM differentiates as player feedback when CCP can gleam the same information and discussion in a online forum or focus group?
You said it yourself really, CSM is basically an elected focus group and this is a valuable resource to them even if they sometimes forget that.
In terms of what CSM has brought in the past it’s hard to comment on that because I havn’t been on the CSM and the things they have pushed for has been wide and varied between them over the years (the one example that comes to mind is an old friend of mine, Prometheus Exenthal, was on CSM long ago back when assault frigates were considered a joke, the contribution that he was most proud of was pushing tonnes of ideas to CCP to buff the assault frigates and was successful, as those ideas were implemented.
I disagree it was the CSM, CCP was concerned about it was actually the players. It was the players threatening to leave not the CSM that caused CCP action. The same result and objective would still been achieved without the CSM. The prospector pack removed was not because of what the CSM did, It was the collective voice of players.
Both is true, however i wouldn’t discount the added voice of the CSM open letter allowing the voice of the community to be focused in a single area of discussion as I believe it was a big reason CCP decided to change course on this, while yes I agree with you that the players were ultimately the reason behind this it was the CSM that amplified that voice. This is what the CSM SHOULD always be doing, amplifying player voices, community sentiment, etc and shoving it into CCPs faces so it can never be ignored.
I am yet to hear a compelling arguement of why we even need a csm.
I think you have in the ways that you have described focus groups before, but you don’t see CSM as a focus group due to what you said next
It just became an egotistic echo chamber
I absolutely ■■■■■■■ agree with you, I’ve seen people laud their CSM status (or the status of CSMs in their corps) over other people and I personally can’t stand it. CSM shouldn’t be for personal glory, clout, or for advantage whatsoever, it should be to help steer the game in the direction the player base wants.
That is why it’s so important that as many people vote as possible, the less people vote the higher chance of organised voting ballots is to elect echo chambers that only exist in certain areas of space
an illusion of power and that your voice has more weight that my voice. It doesn’t.
And it shouldn’t make the CSM’s voices have more weight, it should make EVERYONE’S voices carry more weight
