Say you already agree with me on these items below:
CSM shouldn’t be a popularity contest
CSM should be a fair representation of most playstyles.
CSM should be made of experts in their areas instead of those with social skills who managed to get in a block ballot, or those who merely outbid others for SP farm votes.
People will tell you a better system is impossible. This post sketches you a better system that is actually viable, so you can go tell these people that there is one.
1) CCP picks 5-10 main playstyles in which they need player feedback.
The items here are negotiable. I’m sure we/CCP can sit down and decide 10 most important ways you can play Eve in which CCP needs feedback.
2) CCP creates 10-20 person permanent focus groups in these playstyles.
CCP did create focus groups before and effectively utilized them (e.g. t3c group). You probably noticed that the above playstyles are not mutually exclusive. To do justice to that fact, one person can be a member of multiple focus groups (e.g. a prominent null empire builder who is also a good whaler and hisec ganker can join all 3 groups if he is indeed prominent).
Some will say it’d be “too much work” for CCP to create 10 focus groups. I agree that in the beginning, the amount of work would be higher than usual. But these groups can be converted into self-governing bodies with CCP supervision. Once each year people could be added and dropped depending on activity. But the focus group members themselves could be the ones that figure out who else to invite, and CCP could just be the final decider on who is added and dropped, and the entity that makes sure people don’t abuse these groups (e.g. one entity takes control of a group, etc).
These groups can be in direct online comms channels (e.g. discord) with devs who are making changes or developing new content in their areas of expertise. They would be a day-to-day source of knowledge for devs of every level. However, they wouldn’t handle NDA information so it wouldn’t be like 200 players under CSM NDA.
3) Focus groups elect a CSM member each year.
This would be the usual CSM who handles the NDA stuff. Except:
They are now a diverse body of experts in their fields instead of null empire builders.
They were chosen by other experts instead of people who merely cast their alliance’s blockvote.
Nobody could blame CCP for picking this person instead of that person to CSM, as they were still chosen by their own focus group.
It’s a nice idea but you can be damn sure the system would be gamed by large nullsec blocs given their connections to CCP and within 2 years we would be basically back to square one, with a load of nullsec bloc ‘‘experts’’ making up all the focus groups.
Your first mistake, though, was thinking the CSM is something worth saving. It was created back in '07 as a pressure valve after massive public and player backlash when a CCP dev in Band of Brothers was caught spawning a few T2 bpo for his buddies so they could all print isk and have a laff consequence free. It remained largely toothless for the next 5 years, simply used as a smokescreen or a bait for player frustration and then somewhere around 2012 to 2014 it became quite literally a lobbyist entity for nullbabby RMT empires.
The CSM has never ever been good for the game, and that’s not even taking the cheats and insider traders into consideration (of which I would guess only a handful have been caught). It should be disbanded and replaced with a CCP Rise vs CCP Guard wrestling match once per month, where the winner gets to dictate the next set of balance changes.
How do choose a person like that if not by a popularity contest? Best solo pvp players are many with their own niche… who do you choose if not by others? Even then how can that not be gamed. Same with every other option on the list. Let CCP choose… remember the last time CCP hired people because streaming, pvp capabilities and so on… gave us the same people that have had things implemented that everybody is complaining about right now.
No matter how valid the complaints are or not. People will always find something to complain about.
Just have a pop up question when you log in about stuff every day week whatever that way they get a reply from every active player.
Examples:
Which pve activity you practice the most:
DED sites,missions,abyss,anomalies
What do you enjoy the most about lowsec.
PI, piracy,FW,exploration
This way they can pick what’s most popular to the entire player population as a whole rather than those voted on orders by some 0.0 alliances and CCP will finally get feedback from that huge silent majority that plays their game.Just my 2 cents for a better healthier feedback model from players to CCP
Even that can be gamed. Because the same people can answer the question to benefit their alliance. Your never going to get away from that in EVE. Unless CCP puts their foot down and says this is how it is.
CCP can ensure diversity in these groups as they are still the final call on who joins them. But groups themselves can offer candidates etc, which takes the main workload off CCP.
CCP needs a focus group as they can’t immerse themselves really deep into the game, and they need feedback from many such areas.
Despite all the negative sentiment I have, I disagree with this claim.
They created topics, received candidates, and used their judgment and also got help from the community and the CSM to elect the best people in their fields. Top people of many areas are already pretty much known, and others can prove themselves by producing content etc.
Focus groups for ship/game design was a good idea. But not permanent. Everytime ccp want to consult with the playerbase on a significant change they round-up some applicants invested and experienced in the area to make their focus group.
This may be more work and reduce familiarity. But maybe we don’t need to consult players as often as we do when making game changes and maybe lack of familiarity isn’t such a bad thing.
Having a csm beyond this that act as a conduit for feedback to and from players is still a good thing IMHO. Though maybe their should be positions pertaining to areas of the game.
Agree with the concept of the OP. To the notion of ‘too much work’, I say: CCP has revenues of $50-80 million per year. They have consistently, for years, wasted this money on side projects nobody asked for, code that didn’t work, programmers and staff that aren’t doing their jobs properly, events that are completely out of touch with the playerbase, etc.
They absolutely need to start spending money on plans to engage with, understand, and make the game relevant to, their current player base, and their potential new players - which they are currently throwing away to the tune of 10,000 players per week.
Virtually no investment CCP could make would have more potential impact than something like Olmeca Gold is proposing. Well, assuming they can do it right, of course.
To Olmeca’s proposal I would only add that the groups should have some notion of representation by population - not by ‘who dictates the most votes by telling their alliance where to vote’, and that new players/alpha/NPE should be a group.
The current system is a farce and basically a mechanism where CCP tries to make the whales in nullsec happy, then has a board of null-whales elected to the CSM to tell them they’re doing a good job at making the whales in nullsec happy. Lather, rinse, repeat.
