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CCP Speaks On Player-Elected Advisors For EVE Online
Kheldon points us to an MMOGamer interview with Petur Oskarsson, Valerie Massey, and Dan Coker from CCP Games about EVE Online's Council of Stellar Management, "a democratically elected group of players who serve as advisors to the development team." The elections happen every six months, and regarding their effectiveness, Oskarsson says, "I did some numbers checking and the council has brought up 128 topics for CCP. And out of that, nine have been denied. The rest has been either injected into a backlog, or if it was already in the backlog it has been given an added prioritization." In a related interview on Massively, he said this is a tool he thinks most new MMOs should use, since it facilitates two-way communication, especially in situations like the recent economic exploit.
To introduce this system into Warhammer and make Mythic listen.
Let's face it, democracy in something as small as an MMO, is a "two wolves and a sheep" dinner discussion. There are quite frankly Alliances that can ensure they have a few seats in this.
And, well, why'd you think players are more altruistic than the average politician? Especially in a cutthroat game like EvE?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
With many MMO's (WoW coming first to mind obviously) having their playerbase divided into realms/shards to cope with the load, a lot of players never come in contact with oneanother. Selecting two or more advisors (for different factions that might or might not be able to communicate) from large amount of reals could quickly produce unreasonably large amount of elected folks.
Using WoW as an example, I'm rarely confident that the MMO developers already listen to the community concerns by keeping an eye on moderated and intelligent conversation, such that happens on Elitist Jerks forums (http://elitistjerks.com/forums.php) for example.
In a way, the most respected and popular discussion forums are elected to represent community as it is. The votes are simply count as "page views" and "posts".
Developer : Hi, tell me what the advisors want the new release to do.
Advisory Council : It has to have a 45" screen and still fit in a purse or a wallet. It needs to act as a communications satellite as well as a room freshener. It must cure deadly diseases and whiten your teeth while you sleep ! HA HA !! And it has to be capable of time travel !! And have a telepathic user interface !
*** SLAP ***
Developer : I could write a patch that allows you to fart in your opponent's general direction.
Advisory Council : Yeah...a lot of people want that.
Squirrel!
What's really important here isn't how much they listen or plan or talk, but what they actually implement. CCP has one of the worst track records in the entire gaming industry for actually fixing or addressing player concerns.
And of those not rejected, how many have been implemented? One I recall having cropped up at tje CSM a couple of times was black ops battleships, which failed pretty hard at anything, only in th last week or so have they begun to address them, but one of there most requested fixes, a fuel bay, is still out of the picture.
For all the talk and CSM meetings, very little of there suggestions seems to make it into the game, as CCP add what they want more than anything.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
People forget why they initially implemented the CSM system. Initially, CCP was so isolated (geographically and otherwise) from their playerbase that they didn't even care when one of their developers helped his Alliance get access to the richest region of the game (Delve) and gave them exclusive rights to blueprints that gave them monopoly rights to some of the most powerful ships in the game. After they got called out on it, and it looked like their subscriber numbers might drop, they brought in the CSM system to help hold them accountable.
It's worked. They're a lot more in tune with what players want than ever, and while the stuff from the new patch seems to be utter failure, the core game is solid. People are actually debating ideas with the knowledge that someone is going to pass them along.
The system isn't perfect - the community representative for faction warfare is intentionally filtering out player suggestions so she can help her own Alliance - but it's created a stronger game. The skill queue system means that my friends and I can log in when it suits us, log off to do other things, and not have to babysit the game every time a game finishes. That's directly due to the CSM system.
RFO has already had this for a while. The game focuses heavily on PvP, and In order to become a race leader you must be voted in. That allows you to get into the leader chat and have the ability to choose enemy play targets for your race, and to chat restrict players within your race. The whole game is contingent on the race leaders getting their team to do good and figuring out exactly what the other two races are up to. Pretty fun stuff.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
How on earth can players make an informed decision about who to vote for in a situation like this?
They would probably get better results by just taking a random sample of the players.
Actually, if we're at using WoW as an example, an even better thing they do is: generate statistics from the servers, so they can actually know if they actually have a problem or just a bunch of whiny arseholes. They don't need to have the players vote on whether the Rogues' backstab needs to be even stronger. (Let's be honest. Half the players will likely tell you that if there is anything on the server, whether player, elite boss, end boss, or faction ruler, that they can't one-shot, they're nerfed and mistreated by the game.) They can just generate the statistics and see if one class, faction, piece of equipment, or whatever, is performing as intended and balanced.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What is to prevent the gold sellers in a game like this from voting a few of their own into this advisory council?
Is there at least something of a vetting process?
Full disclosure. I've been playing eve since 2003.
The CSM is widely regarded as a joke. According to numbers released by CCP the total votes for _all_ candidates (winning and losing) is less than 6% of the player base. A single CSM member has less than 1% of the player base vote for them.
Just like any MMPOG company CCP does what they want regardless of how much the players yell or the validity of said yelling.
I find being offended by me offensive.
i wonder how many who play EVE would want the CSM to actually have a say in what happens in EVE. For example i recently read about eve university not being able to function on the account of being constantly wardeced. what if the developers put in a new type of institution (called nco - non-corporate organization) that would operate like an ngo. it couldnt be wardeced but in return it couldnt join alliances, and would have restrictions on what it was able to own(e.g. pos, capital ships, etc). for your group to gain nco status you would have to petition the CSM for a charter. if accepted it would have to singed off by the devs and then instituted. the charter could be revoked at any time by the CSM, dropping the organization back to corporation status. this gate-keeper function would allow for them to limit the number of people applying. It would also give the CSM a feel of governance in EVE. so what do you think?
I wonder how many who play EVE would want the CSM to have a greater say in what happens in EVE. For example i recently read about eve university not being able to function on the account of being constantly wardec'ed. What if the developers put in a new type of institution (called a nco - non-corporate organization) that would operate like an ngo. It couldnt be wardec'ed but in return it couldn't join alliances, and would have restrictions on what it was able to own(e.g. POS, capital ships, etc) or do (no sovereignty). For your group to gain nco status you would have to petition the CSM for a charter. if accepted it would have to be signed off by the devs and then instituted. The charter could be revoked at any time by the CSM, dropping the organization back to corporation status. This gate-kepper function would allow for them to limit the number of people applying. It would also give the CSM a feel of governance in eve.