In the essence of simplifying work load, minimizing time loss and high emotions - all related to the after effects of major Dev blogs (and respective threads), this is what I propose to the CCP Team at large:
Prior to posting a dev blog (or a sensitive subject that concerns many players, eg. mining or capital) , would it not be more efficient at the CCP management level, that:
1st: you post the CSM minutes file;
2nd: briefly state the incoming changes (on your web page);
3rd: make an in-game poll/survey
4th: post results of the survey;
5th: only then, you may ask for any forum feedback.
Make the poll/survey available for 1-2 weeks when the players logon their game client.
Benefits of survey:
it will validate whether to go ahead with the changes that the CSM had decided;
it will help limit the waste of time from your developers, ISD, community managers;
it will limit the high emotions, or any rash decisions (because the majority at time present would have voted);
it will prevent a power block to have upmost control over major decisions.
Considering that not every cast of the player base have the talent, money, time to have their representatives within the CSM at any point in time, I furthermore think that could be an efficient way of proceeding towards greater positive change, while limiting collateral damage.
The OP wasnât suggesting that they do. By sharing the minutes it would show the rest of the playerbase the thoughts and feedback that the CSM was providing in their role as representing us to CCP. It would be providing greater transparency and accessibility to that information which would inform us as to their thinking on the matter that CCP had then taken steps to address. I think it would be a good idea.
Maybe in terms of visibility of the CSM.
However popularity voting is a terrible way to run development of a game. You end up oppressing minorities in the game, and your vision doesnât stay cohesive.
The voting wouldnât require CCP to do anything any differently if they didnât wish to for whatever reason, but it would give the playerbase a concrete method for making their own wishes known. The game has survived for 16 years with CCP choosing their own way and I donât expect that to change anytime soon. With that said, them being more informed about the desires of their paying users probably wouldnât hurt.
Feedback comments already is a way, which actually has nuance and requires people to put real thoughts in. Not just spam 200 votes with forum alts or direct their alliance to all vote one way.
Devs should never take opinions about how something should work from players (players being implied that they do not have professional experience in the industry).
There is far to many moving parts, and technical issues with the gameâs development.
Players should however, tell the players what they want (ie more station types, new jump gates, etc).
Further, designers should never stick themselves hardly on a âcore conceptâ especially for ambiguous game philosophies like âsandboxââŚ
Those of us who are more experienced then ccpâs designers, know that we should only design the ring, and what is in it, should not be decided by us, but the players. another way of stating it is, we should design the sand box and the initial tools, and let the players decide what the other tools are that are added, or we should improve the exissting ones (like ccp has done with pos > outpost > upwell).
ccp is bad about this because they tend to try to control every small detail in the game, and that ultimately means the game is not really fully a sandbox. Actually, i am questioning if its even possible to truly make a sandbox, as even real sandboxâs are controlled in some ways and never truly free like people claim.
People leave eve because of the simple fact that the majority of them are not pvpers, and once their learn pvp is forced, its over, they are done and leave. A point iv raised many times, yet is still ignored.
You donât know squat about game design.
Youâve lied every second post here, directly contradicted yourself, scammed newbies while claiming to be super rich.
And the fact you dismiss players knowledge as well as irrelevant⌠Yeah. That about says how worthwhile your views on this are.
Eve players have greater access to the developers than many other games - through the CSM, player meets and the forums and player feedback does influence development.
That said, CCP also has mountains of data on what we actually do in the sandbox - which can be quite different than what the vocal minority says we do! Most of the threadnaughts Iâve seen are arguments between a handful of players - hardly representative of the 300K people who play the game.
I do not agree that CCP needs to hold a referendum on significant changes - these can create more problems than they solve (look at Brexit). For CCP, their paychecks depend on getting it right - thatâs plenty of motivation.
Any change will affect some players positively and others negatively. As the game evolves, we need to adapt - the âgood old daysâ arenât returning and. if they did, youâd realize they werenât as good as you remembered! For me, part of the enjoyment I get from the game is figuring out how to profit from the changes. All I ask is that the developers try to keep the playing field reasonably level.
Your idea makes sense logically but it has a fundamental flaw in it.
Iâv seen it in another game where the public pretty much decided the next changes with voteâs, what happened is that the biggest groupâs always got their way and that made the smaller groups just leave the game completely.
When the smaller groupâs left it gave much less pvp opportunity for the larger groups who eventually got board and left as well, the game died after that.
People trying a game and deciding it is not for them is not a problem. Most players that try a game do not play it very long. That is normal and to be expected. If someone tries Eve and decides they donât like that is fine - even with infinite resources and all the best minds you cannot make a game that will appeal to everyone. If someone tries Eve, and decides they donât like the game play on offer, or anything else for that matter, and decide it isnât for them, so be it.
Trying to develop a game by appealing to what is popular is as bad a strategy as letting the players dictate the design by voting as insinuated in the OP. The best games come from a clear vision of what the game is to be, and then sharp focus on implementing that in the most intuiting, engaging and entertaining experience for the players, free of the influence of the marketing department and the flood of tears of people who arenât successful at the game.
Sure, there is a whole business side to making a successful (read: profitable) game, but that isnât the same thing as a good game. Skill Extractors made Eve Online more profitable, but I have yet heard a clear case how they made the game better that holds up under scrutiny other than they indirectly gave CCP more cash and thus, in theory, more developer resources. And I guess profitability is linked to sustainability and thus part of making a good game, but in general, the profit motive of the game industry leads to generic clones, exploitative and annoying microtransactions, and prioritizing short-term metrics over long-term sustainability of a game.
So no, players should not be significant stakeholders in game development, especially in a single-universe, competitive sandbox game where in-game motives can leak out into the real-world. Feedback is clearly necessary and important, especially in a expansive and diverse sandbox game like Eve, but developing-by-straw-poll seems like a disaster waiting to happen and would be gamed even more than current things like the CSM already are. Also, the appeasing-the-whiners development strategy is equally as dumb, and CCP should do their best to ignore the loudest complainers on the forums and elsewhere, especially those that claim to know better than them.
What are you talking about? Eve Online takes in tens of millions of dollars a year. That is more 99.9% of the other games out there, and I would even venture more than perhaps a handful of games released in the same era. Like literally there are a couple games released in the early 2000âs that are making such financial numbers.
Eve has been an unqualified success. Sure, we can always claim it could always be more successful if CCP had done this or that, but we canât claim they have failed to build a long-term successful game.
Those are a lot of words to put in my mouth. The only people I have seen who I believe legitimately are acting to kill the game come from the butthurt carebear camp who are angry about losing something and take their childish anger out on other new players, at least for a bit before they are banned.
But there is something to be said about your last sentence. Eve is Eve. If it isnât your thing, you will be much happier moving on to another game that is in better alignment with your expectation, at least as compared to starting a futile crusade to change the very core of such an ancient and successful game. Eve wonât change for you. It also wonât change for me. It is what it is.
Come to grips with that and then decide where your limited time on this planet is best spent. This probably isnât the hill you should die on.
Well first off, thank you all for your input, much appreciated.
To reply @Salt Foambreaker:
The thing with developer, designer, creator (etc.) is even with decades of experience, weâre bound to think we know what the customers want/needs. Sure you can be a former player-now converted to dev, and yes, you can be right at some point. But in the complexity of todayâs design implementation process (where feedbacks come in real-time on a massive scale, and news are sprung out of control around the internet space), and with a world of competing mmos fishing every other players we push away - it is not a prudent move just to âassumeâ our views is the right one.
Because by the time we realise we are wrong, it might need another chunk of time and investment to roll back to where we would like to be. We have to become mature enough and set aside our ego, our space-pride, and genuinely ponder on the different avenues that will maintain the future of eve online.
Other than this;
âŚand if you are wondering, there is nothing else more enjoyable than pvp for me. Alas as friends gradually leave the game, I begun to lose interest in my usual 8hrâish/day presence.
Thereâs ton of âclearly envisionedâ games out there, while their launch is successful, they stall on pulling their weight over the years - this because the world is an always changing bubble; the customers, technologies, platforms, communication systems, all evolve. And without proper consultation with their audience, even the best ones crash in the ground after their ascension.
Skill Injectors made the game better, because some people can spend a lot of time in the game, others can spend a lot of RL money, and then again another bunch can only spare a couple hours or a few bucks weekly. For that latter, SP injection is a worthwhile investment, and a good-enough motive to stay. If this works in line with CCPâs portfolio, then the merrier it is! Afterall, letâs be objective, Eve online is a business alike any other, and the purpose of it is to make a profit so it can keep growing (I doubt CCP would work for free, food or just to please its sweet player base).
Agreed, it is impossible to please everyone, you can only meet the requirements of most. But testing, surveys, or any pre-processing efforts are worth considering, specially for the implementation of major developments. As all things in Eve online, it will be abused, and up to CCP to make it a banable offence if so. However, the real disaster might be with a CSM group not effectively reflecting the population of the game, where (for eg. in its current state) the majority represent the null sec block. While, from experience (of helping newbros), I will say that most new players (alphas / omegas) would play through high sec in their first year. They barely know the existence forum by then, only the very few will hop around the internet to look for answers. Then, if we are to say that new bloods keep the game healthy, who in the actual Council of Stellar Management will proritise the newbros needs?
In your mind ⌠why do you believe this not a regular thing already?
I ask because, as you probably are well aware of, this idea isnât exactly ground breaking.
Most ideas are not ground breaking, until they are put in application and results are obtained. And history show that when world avant-garde innovators came forward with their ideas, most of the people would bring it down, and discourage it. Yet decade later, we the consumer, are profiting from those same inventions. Not implying that I am of those great minds - no, far from it. But I believe we have tried every trick we had, and it might be time to kick out the previous âtrial and errorâ tactic.
When working with a wide multinational array of audience, in this ever changing âmine fieldâ of the technological age in line with internet business, it is best to rely on numbers, probabilities, educated speculation and the analytic approach before investing ahead.
And in the line of bringing in and retaining newbros, so far Eve online has switched from P2P to F2P, adding SP injection, safe Rookie systems, Wardeccing changes, among other developments. Yet, weâre still stalling at retaining the new kids.
Therefore, that ânone-groundbreaking-survey-ideaâ is what I propose CCP implements.
