It’s not about my or your Daddy issues, it’s about sending people who can translate “ingame meta knowledge” to clueless CCP. And hoping for the best.
To explain it, let me elaborate. We live in a virtual world that has code, and those lines of code have to be guarded by men with in depth knowledge. Who’s gonna do it? You, Aisha Katalen? You, CCP Hellmar?
Every CSM candidate has a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for pubbie gameplay and you curse the Goons. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what the CSM knows; that CSM’s activities, while excruciatingly slow, probably saved the game.
And the CSM’s existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves this game. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about in fleets, you want them on that CSM. You need them on that CSM. They use words like honor, lazy code, customer loyalty.
The CSM members use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a person who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that the CSM provides, and then questions the manner in which they provide it!
I would rather you just said “thank you” and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weblink and vote the imperium ballot in the exact order. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to!
Everyone will have a slight difference and preference order depending on who they interact with most. I hope the best candidates make it as they are our last and only hope for the future. Without the CSM, their conference room would just be used to sling poop randomly and hope some of it sticks.
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:
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.
Although I totally agree, I want to make it very clear to all geniuses around I did not explicit suggested anything about how to vote or anything.
I just wanted to have a laugh about CCP trivializing the word “democracy” and the joke about giving players “rewards” to do it.
I keep my convictions to myself, I either troll or put questions to the forum, I never tell people what to do.
If my joke about it started a sensible discussion about what I consider a joke, that’s not my problem, for real. Not that I care, but it’s sad for me to have to put good players on their place because the “heat of the moment”.
Democracy is a form of government, not a form of election. The term you’re looking for here is proportional representation.
Edit: I seriously can’t get what you said out of my head. It’s not democratic for me to let you decide which hand I’ll chop off just cause you get to have a say in it. A government system is not an electoral system, and neither has to do with who has the right to vote.
This is ovesimplifying things but a lot of the complaints are a set of recurring arguments. The most common and fundamentally flawed are certainly:
“My vote won’t matter or change a thing because of the big and organised voting blocks”. The more votes that are made with a full 10 candidates, the bigger the total voting pool and the more votes are needed to make sure a candidate gets in. After all it’s the total number of votes / 10 + 1 that needs to be met. So if you don’t vote or your vote holds only 1 name, that means the voting pool is smaller and each organised voting block has more power to dictate the results.
“The CSM holds no power”. Be glad that is doesn’t have any official power because that would mean whoever is elected gets to directly determine the direction of the game and what does or doesn’t get focussed on. It would prevent any development and/or progress from happening. It would have killed the game years ago as it would just be an echo chamber of whatever group managed to get the majority elected.
The CSM is a focus group that brings things to the attention of CCP , provides feedback on whatever CCP brings to the attention of the CSM and it point out oversights or blindspots in what is being developed. It means that representatives of the playerbase get to help make things better or more bearable with their respective expertise.
Democracy is often used as a colloquialism for a process that involves an election. Elections are referred to as ‘democratic.’ It doesn’t have to be about a government, or a legislature or some kind of ruling body. There are elections for a variety of things that don’t often include any actual significant power, yet they are still commonly referred to as democratic.
So, basically, stop being pedantic, login and get your free stuff.
That’s fine and all until people start confusing “power to the people” with “pick your tyrants” without noticing the issue. Yes, I know it doesn’t apply in this case. I’m just using it as an example for why it pays to know what the hell the words one uses actually mean.
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
For most people, democracy is when they are asked to vote for a representative. Not everyone graduated political/social sciences. So it’s fair use to call it democracy.
If you feel it may not be called democracy but rather meritocracy, I’m fine with that too. The CSM candidates forge their own path to leadership, not simply by working hard and smart, but also by expressing unique ideas that have the ability to positively impact their team and their company.
