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.

Re:Ideas rejected

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1038754

It is not out of the picture.

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:... 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.

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.