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.

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.

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.

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.