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.

Comments

So who gets elected?

[Opportunist]

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?

Re:So who gets elected?

[Judinous]

I'm a member of Goonswarm, both the largest alliance in EVE and the one whose reputation for meta-gaming might persuade you to think that we would use the CSM to give ourselves an advantage. While we openly admit to working as a group to get people into the CSM (we have enough votes to get 1-2 every time), as far as I know we haven't even tried to use it for our own political advantage because it would be almost impossible. What kind of change could we possibly propose that would benefit us over our enemies? Asking them to do something like improving the quality of the space we live in (which is the best in the game, anyway) would be transparent and silly. At best, we can (and do) ask them to fix some of the absolutely broken 0.0 mechanics such as POS setup times, titans, broken loot tables, among other things. While this does benefit us as an 0.0 alliance, all of our enemies are 0.0 alliances as well, so there is no real advantage gained. 0.0 alliances are not in direct competition with low-sec or empire alliances, so there is no advantage gained there, either. Of course, we also push for changes that affect the entire population, such as fixing broken ship types (probably half are worthless) and general balance tweaks (ewar springs to mind as the recent example).

I'm not saying that we wouldn't exploit the CSM for our own gain, but it just doesn't have the potential for doing so.

Re:So who gets elected?

[jtrainor]

If you had actually read the post, instead of just the first line, you'd know it was a decent post, one that deserves the +3 insightful a lot more than yours. Don't drag your stupid drama from other games onto Slashdot.

How to handle voting?

[Daedra]

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".

Design meeting:

[ciderVisor]

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.

What's Important?

[Plekto]

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.

Re:First vote!

[montyzooooma]

The problem is you're always going to have fundamental differences between, PvP, PvE and RP servers on WAR etc. EVE has 1 server (farm) to worry about so a consensus of players applies to that single server. With MMOs that have a multi-server philosophy you have to cater to fundamentally different mindsets across the different varieties of servers.

The other problem with listening to the players is that it dilutes any strong vision the devs may have originally had.

Ideas rejected

[FinchWorld]

"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."

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.

Re:Ideas rejected

[FinchWorld]

If you read the linked post, just as far as the second paragraph.

The functionality which allows us to add special cargobays to ships (such as a fuel bay, ore hold, fighter bay and so on). That functionality is not ready yet so a black ops fuel bay sits very high on our wishlist still.

And as such will not make the patch with other changes to Black Ops.

Re:Ideas rejected

[khallow]

I disagree with that. Players have a limited view of the game, but there's a lot of them within their view that know the game far better than the developers. On subjects like balance and the economy, the players are very knowledgeable and often able to predict in advance what problems will be caused by CCP changes.

It seems to have worked

[captainktainer]

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.

Re:It seems to have worked

[zerocool^]

Wow, you're mis-informed.

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.

1.) Delve isn't the richest region in the game. Fountain is, by MILES and MILES. Fountain has 12 Dysprosium moons and 19 Promethium moons; if you count Aridia, which is the low sec closest to fountain (and also controlled by Pandemic Legion), you can add 6 Dyspro and 7 Promethium moons to that. Delve has 8/12 dyspro and prom, and no additional moons in low sec near by except for the one in Sakht/Aridia. I can provide you with the list if you'd like.

2.) Bob moved there because CCP asked them to as part of a role playing event. There were other alliances that also participated in CCP-sponsored role playing events, but they've all fallen by the wayside as time has gone on. You have to understand - 4-5 years ago, the whole game was like that, and Band of Brothers is the only remaining throwback alliance to the elder days, so they catch a lot of shit from people who assume that this roleplaying stuff helped them be so strong. It simply isn't the case, it's just that none of the other old players are still around.

3.) T20 (the "dirty developer") spawned five T2 ammo blueprints and a Sabre blueprint. These aren't "the most powerful ships in the game". The fact that it happened at all is despicable, but it provided BoB almost no tactical advantage at all. Having the blueprints doesn't mean that the items themselves are free, for one. Not to mention, Evolution has a Sabre BPO anyway.

4.) T20 was reprimanded as soon as it was found that this happened. This was handled internally. Then, 6 months later, when the scandal became public (because someone HACKED A MEMBER'S PRIVATE FORUM), there was an outcry. CCP's response was "look, this is true, and it's been dealt with". What were they going to do, punish him twice for the same incident?

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.

5.) Factional Warfare doesn't allow alliances to compete - which is a bad thing, if you're a role playing alliance. I have no idea what you're talking about, and I suspect you don't either. There's nothing gained or lost in Factional Warfare - the NPC rewards are essentially worthless, so it's pretty much just free newbie PVP in low security.

Only new players give a crap about the skill queue. But yes, it is a direct result of CSM action. Much more important is the Attribute remap, for those of us with badly spread attributes to be able to take advantage of some better speeds at skill training. These are some of the only things that the CSM has done. It's basically a popularity contest.

So, um, yeah. Learn your history first, pl0x.

//Guiding Hand Social Club operative.

Re:... and the Gold Sellers Unite!

[Sobrique]

There's a vetting process - the council needs to be able to travel to iceland for a face to face once during the term, so passports and stuff are needed.
But ... if a gold seller could get onto the advisory council - assuming they could summon up the few thousand votes they'd need - so what? CCP has no obligation to _actually_ listen to them at the end of the day. And what'd be the worst they'd do? Suggest motions that make it easier to 'farm' cash? Well, they could, but that would alter their profit margin - it's not what I can buy with an ISK (EVE gold) that influences it's price, it's how much effort I have to expend to make it myself.
Anything else, like voting in macros or whatever... *shrug* not going to get very far I reckon.

CSM has no Mandate.

[harl]

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.