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What Game Devs Should Learn From EVE
An anonymous reader passes along this excerpt from Gamesradar about EVE Online's Council of Stellar Management (CSM), a group of elected player representatives that serve to facilitate communications between the developers and the community:
"On the last day, the devs announced that after the earlier discussions about improving the CSM’s ability to effect change, the CSM was being raised to the status of its own department within CCP. This is revolutionary; in one swift move, the CSM went from what could be considered a glorified focus group to what CCP considers to be a 'stakeholder' in the company, given equal consideration with every other department in requesting development time for a project. That means the CSM — and the entire playerbase it represents — has as much influence on development projects as Marketing, Accounting, Publicity and all the other teams outside of the development team. This is, of course, the stated intention. But has any developer gone to such lengths for its fans?"
There've been calls to vote for the CSM smack dab in the middle of your login screen for weeks.
If you overlook something that is right in the center of your monitor just what are they supposed to do, send you private messages every 5 minutes? :P
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Maybe if we ask people what they want and then give it to them, they will tell their friends, blog positively, continue to subscribe to our subscription-based service instead of wandering off in boredom.
A key part of this, though, is filtering out the noise.
There are a lot of whiners on the EVE boards (just like pretty much any game's forum). Lots of the them think the game is too tough, too time-consuming, and too unforgiving. Lots of them would like it to be friendlier and more casual in nature.
CCP doesn't respond to every single whine on the boards like some companies do.
Instead, they ask the players to elect folks who actually represent them. And then they ask the representatives what to do with EVE.
You'll see CSM members of a piratical disposition... Folks from large alliances... Folks who are carebears at heart... Folks from tiny corporations... All sorts of different people represented... But you won't see a whole lot of folks who whine that EVE needs to be more friendly and forgiving.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
EVE divides space into regions that have several (10) different levels of policing. This affects many game dynamics, but in short:
In systems with a security status >= 0.5: If you shoot at another player, the fuzz show up with overwhelming force almost immediately and kills you with extreme prejudice (aka: Empire space)
0.1 to 0.4: The fuzz won't show up to deal retribution, but gates and stations have stationary turrets that will fire on you if you shoot at other players within their range. (aka: Lowsec)
0.0: Absolutely lawless space. Anyone can shoot at anyone. Usually ruled by alliances because they have enough firepower to assure relative safety. (aka: Nullsec)
You can, if you want, pay isk to "declare war" on another corporation. In that case, all of the fuzz/turrets won't intervene, no matter the security status, as long as you only fire on THAT corp, of course.
> no, yes, maybe (tagging beta)
I've played Eve for 2-3 years now, and I solo. Never been in a corp other than my own for more than about 2 weeks. It's quite possible to make it on your own.