It would be hard to try to remain objective[1] in my coverage of the CSM, were I on it, even if the ‘No Sions’ rule isn’t still in place.
We’ve got 3 very smart CSM members from my alliance already. Every one of them is focused, knowledgeable, and devoted to the betterment of the game as a whole, rather than simply advancing our agenda. Even Aryth. Communication within the Imperium is bi-directional and open. Anyone who is in the coalition can talk to any our CSMs via our forums, jabber, or catching them when they’re on mumble. Any ideas I have, they get. The CSM doesn’t need another Goon.
I am an arrogant, insufferable jackass. Seriously, I am, and I know it. There is a non-zero chance that, were I in a small meeting room with Hilmar for eight hours, I would consume a lot of the oxygen in that room for at least one of those hours telling him just how stupid I think he’s being. That’s really not helpful, but I know myself, and while I’d like to think I could refrain… like I said, non-zero chance.
But the big one is ‘no free time’. So… right now? No. No chance at all. Maybe in a couple of years. We’ll see.
1. Note the word there is ‘objective’, not ‘unbiased’. No human being can be unbiased. We all have inherent biases and preconceptions, no matter how hard we work to overcome them. An honest journalist—no matter how exalted or derided their platform is—can never give you an unbiased report, they can only present the facts as they know them, make their own inherent biases known and public, and encourage the reader/listener/viewer to take those biases into account when weighing the information presented. Anyone who tells you they are being unbiased is lying to you.
Only if you break the numbers game. A functional organization with 10000th of players will solve every new mechanic in days. At this point simple mechanic tweaks or ship nerfs will not help. You need to level the playing field of small and “big” entities, otherwise the answer to any obstacle remains to get bigger.
You can’t. Not without making fundamental changes to the nature of EVE. You’d have to limit the number of people who can even be on the same grid at the same time. Otherwise, we can coordinate out of game.
That said, no, a functional organization with 10,000 players (which doesn’t exist, even the Imperium tops out around 8000) won’t necessarily solve every new mechanic in days. Not everyone in the group will be focusing on that mechanic. Important testing can’t be done until the right scenarios present themselves. It takes time. And even once ‘solved’, they won’t necessarily be able to execute that solution perfectly.
But even once mechanics are solved, that isn’t what keeps the game from being ‘solved’. EVE is ‘solved’ right now not because we know the mechanics, but because the players have largely settled into a stratified cement. The mechanics just need to do two things: present the players with a reasonably dynamic environment to interact with, and then… get out of the way.
That’s what they’re not doing right now. Right now, the mechanics are in the way. Supercapital mechanics are impeding conflict, just by being both necessary for sov, and dependent on sov.
You don’t obviously need to be on TQ or any specific grounds to understand or analyse or quantify behavioral data. And it’s by no means complex to the right ‘behavioral-oriented-skilled’ person., ie., a good behavioral analyst will already be able to perceive trends, simply by readng a chat, threads and what not. The gathering of behavioral data should have already been part of CCP’s job, at least by the time they had past their 10th birthday.
I don’t quite remember the source (maybe it was on Youtube), but I think that I’ve read/watched something like that about Ubisoft - whereby they have psychological or political expert(s) who analyse their about their community, and advise the company how to deliver and improve games that appeals to a world audience.
It’s a growing trend, a requirement, an insurance and a nice tool to have assets like that within game studios, and a must for CCP.
You are completely right on those points… except… EVE’s ecosystem is more complex than anything Ubisoft puts out. Knowing the immediate, 2nd- and 3rd-order effects isn’t enough. Extended impact is always going to be bigger than immediate impact. And that’s something that’ll be difficult to pinpoint without live testing.
Any CSM will obviously attend to those who voted for him in priority, because those are the people who have stuck with him through the campaign, and made their choice based on his various points to address.
Also many CSM are not pros at everything in Eve online; some are nullsec based, most tend to be pvpers; a few industrials,a minority from HS, and very few NPE experts, etc.
So saying a CSM ‘should’ represent the entire player base is a pile of bs. Sure a pvper focussed CSM can relate to say, FW and maybe some Industrials - but they will not properly defend* cases to which they are unfamiliar with.
1st recruit an expert behavioral analyst / let him get understand this universe for a few months while gathering intel / then live test on Sisi / use the behavioral analyst to relate to new Sisi test data / let him make his report / then make group works with Devs, etc / only then decide whether to implement or not. End result = save money, time, game public appeal grows and less thread naughts torture!
if a CSM has no idea about a subject, that CSM needs to remove himself from the discussion and not taint the discussion with his lack of knowledge and bias because of that lack of knowledge or other aspect
Not at all. If a CSM has no idea about a subject, that makes them a perfect person to be involved in the discussion, because they can ask questions. If you put a bunch of experts on something in a room, they’re going to discuss things at high levels, but they’re never going to question the things everyone there knows. It’s the outsider, the person who doesn’t already know, who will ask the questions that can challenge baseline assumptions.
I mean, we’d talked, in the past, about doing something to Local. But the key there is ‘doing something’, not ‘turning off’
And yes, you want outsiders to give their opinion. As long as it is weighted appropriately. Because people get very tied up in “this is the way it is.” An outside opinion is useful.
Have the isk/lp reward that pve runners get per mission, been the same since 5 years ago? Do the rewards change pro rata of the fluctuations of the PLEX prices? Cause personally I think, early security missions up to like level 3 earn you peanuts! Wouldn’t it be good incentive to drive those prices up a notch, for the sake of encouraging NP retention and eventual growth?
Also, how about giving NP the option to begin their Eve life-cycle in NS or LS? That way their perception would be untainted from anti-NS blabla, and they will already be somewhat ‘pvp-ready’ when the time comes to join new corps etc? Cause if you live in HS and ask help in that rookie channel, most of the helpers tend to propagate an ill-concept of Pvp, NS, or WH, fear of loss and what not.
No, it really isn’t. A lot of the people who advocated for removing local were very, very knowledgeable and very experienced in nullsec. In fact, that was the problem: the people who were advocating for it, by and large, never stopped to question their baseline assumptions of ‘how will different parts of the playerbase react?’, even though those assumptions were made when they first started advocating for the removal of Local… ten years ago.
Having an actual outsider involved to ask ‘ok, so what makes you think people won’t just go do something else that isn’t wasting their time?’ might have made things better.
I don’t think so, since I’m not arguing in favor of blackout coming back, or that it was good for the game, because the evidence is clearly there that it wasn’t.
And I’m not fanboying CCP - like you said, I’ve got zero reason to do that, so nobody should be reading that into what I’m saying.
What I am is fair - and I have listened to a ton of players over the years, and one of the things I heard over and over, and thus I passed on to CCP, was the demand that they be willing to make bigger changes and iterate on those changes or roll them back if they didn’t work. That’s exactly what they did here, so I’m not going to take a giant crap on them.
a) CCP needs to post here. CSM generally doesn’t bother. I was one of the few who did it.
b) You’re still conflating facts with opinion. You can claim that their goals were bad and dumb, but they did have goals.
Here’s the problem - if you’re defining communication as “things posted only on the EVE Online official forums” then you’re cutting out a ton of the outreach the team has been doing. They’ve been doing the talk shows, posting here, dev blogs, reddit, gaming media articles - there’s been a lot of conversation about all of these topics.
There was a time when running for CSM meant thatyour real name was put out there. Little advantage was accrued and those who work hard, did. Those who chose to be asshats still were.
Yes, but you can limit it to only ask if access happens from a new origin (same as the EvE client). Webmailers for EvE with ESI access would not work anymore, but this is kind of the purpose.
Just secure the access to your char data as you would secure your personal bank data. A third party must not have access. That simple.
Seriously, I am, and I know it. There is a non-zero chance that, were I in a small meeting room with Hilmar for eight hours, I would consume a lot of the oxygen in that room for at least one of those hours telling him just how stupid I think he’s being. That’s really not helpful, but I know myself, and while I’d like to think I could refrain… like I said, non-zero chance.