While I get the point that “a blank vote is a protest against a bad system”, I don’t believe that’s effective in CCP’s case. They are so far out of touch with the reality of the game and the player base, they’ll probably interpret that as “players have no interest in the direction of the game, they’re very happy with what we’re doing”.
One of the few times of the year I bother to sub anymore is to vote in CSM. If nothing else, the totals of those votes give CCP some tiny clue about the areas that players are interested in or concerned about.
This is one of the very few types of feedback we can send to CCP that even gets looked at. As flawed as the process may be, we need to take every possible chance to send messages to CCP that have any chance of penetrating their wall of blind denial.
I cast my votes each year to indicate areas of interest. This year it’s:
- Cael Caderu for CSM17 - small scale PvP
- Arsia Elkin for CSM17! - lore, events, content drivers
- Baldin Tarmain for CSM 17 - low-sec and industry
- Benjamin Rushing for CSM 17 - community building
- DutchGunner for CSM 17. Highsec, lore,events, Pochven and more
- Jinx De'Caire for CSM 17 - Newbro corps
- Kshal Aideron for CSM 17 (the newbro candidate) - NPE, rookies
- Steve Ronuken For CSM 17 - 3rd party developers
- https://forums.eveonline.com/t/mark-resurrectus-for-csm-17-father-husband-wormholerbtw - WH
- Phantomite 2022 - Real Eve - PvP
Of course there are other good candidates as well. I’m less worried about exactly who gets in than I am about what ‘message’ we send to CCP with the priorities in our voting. It’s also about as close to “voting with your wallet” as you can get with CCP, since they seem to consider people leaving the game in droves not a clear enough message.
They may completely ignore it as they do most other feedback, but at least they can’t say players weren’t indicating their preferences.