Council of Stellar Management Voting Active

[bhodi]

You can vote, here.

I'd appreciate your solidarity in voting for either Bane Glorious or Darius JOHNSON. Bane Glorious's essay on titans was likely a contributing factor of their eventual nerf. Darius is currently goonfleet's CEO.

You could also vote for someone else, I guess. Go ahead, throw your vote away!

[Phildo]

CVA's rep is Hardin.  Niall Dologhan.

Edit: Seems like we only get one vote... seems ridiculous considering how many candidates there are.

[Viin]

What, you don't have 5 accounts like the rest of us?

[Endie]

What, you don't have 5 accounts like the rest of us?

i voted early, and voted often.

[Phildo]

I voted for the guy from Axiom.  Was that bad?

[Endie]

I voted for the guy from Axiom.  Was that bad?

You droll troll.

[Amarr HM]

Against all my better judgements & even though shes always primarying myself and flav I'm thinking of voting for Jade Constantine. I enjoyed reading his blog and wants to revamp the bounty hunting system, anyone working towards that is gonna win my vote. Ive read a lot of the other blogs I got bored with most of them and they are all pretty run of the mill by comparison. Apart from being one of the only real RP candidates most of the others strike me as idiots or yeasayers we need some radical opinions in there.

[Calantus]

What exactly is this council anyway?

[Thrawn]

I probably won't even vote, too many canidates to read up on.  They really should of narrowed it down a bunch more. 

[Nerf]

It's shocking that CCP implemented somthing poorly designed and hard to navigate.  Mind boggling, even.

[ajax34i]

I don't think even the CSM reps know what the CSM is.  Some of them are like "Yeah we don't have to have an opinion, our job is to present YOUR opinions to CCP, vote for us!" and others give you their opinions in posts and you reply and argue with them some to no effect other than publicity for them.  I figured I'd wait out the first one, see what they actually do and what tasks CCP gives them, and vote on the next batch in 6 months.

Besides, I don't think they can accomplish what I want, which would be to get CCP to not only acknowledge the issues the playerbase considers important, but actually commit to fixing them, with due dates and everything (no more "soon").  Not that the playerbase will reach consensus on anything, ever.  I just want to somehow get a "fix the fucking overview bugs" through to them and then see them be forced to fix it, like, next day.

Speaking of which, it's a feature not a bug.  They added code to move all the windows about and make them attach themselves to each other automatically, in order to avoid the map buttons being covered by other windows.  I guess they wanted to "fix" any instance of any button being overlapped by any other window/button, so they fixed it at some core level.  And they're not getting rid of it, despite how annoying it is (to me), because they want that feature in.

Anyway, sorry for the derail.

[Hakeldaima]

I don't think even the CSM reps know what the CSM is. 

CCP have themselves admitted that they don't exactly know what the CSM will do - it's a work in progress as far as they are concerned.

I've voted for Jade Constantine...him being my CEO is only part of the reason 

[Phildo]

How come Goonswarm has so many people running?  Have you all agreed on one candidate, or is it every man for himself?

[lac]

They are blobbing so they can lag out the csm. I think I read somewhere that the 'official' candidates are those Bhodi posted and they have asked their members to spread their votes between the two so they both get in. The others are probably just trying their luck/doing it for the lulz.

[IainC]

One of the candidates is an old LARPing acquaintance of mine. How odd...

[bhodi]

They are blobbing so they can lag out the csm. I think I read somewhere that the 'official' candidates are those Bhodi posted and they have asked their members to spread their votes between the two so they both get in. The others are probably just trying their luck/doing it for the lulz.

I don't know how GoonSwarm got so many candidates, whether it was because of their alliance size or the regions they hold. We had an internal vote to pick the top two candidates, with the hope if we spread our votes between them, both have a good shot at getting in.

[Gets]

I don't see myself ever giving an ounce of support to a group who's leader feels that "the ability to inflict huge amount of actual, real-life damage on someone is amazingly satisfying" (Wired Magazine Feb, 2008 "Griefer Madness") Certainly I know not everyone is part of GoonFleet for that reason and other benefits apply, but because of the ambiguity of the internet I'm left with an objective view based on simple principles of fun in multiplayer gaming and support for my fellow players, or as it's more widely known, carebearism.

I'm aware how impotent the CSM idea is at the moment, yet I like it for simply being a unique thing even if it's worth nothing more than a publicity stunt yet. It's still a good chance to let people with an initiative (greater than that which belongs to the obstinate morons collectively coughing up forum furballs made out of whine and inane bickering) direct their concerns to CCP. The current lead game designer for EVE, Noah Ward, started out as a volunteer bughunter. I'm sure something similar might happen to one of the candidates.

Personally I'd like to see simple yet large aspects of the game fixed. Mainly the newbie experience, which is dreadful. Throwing more info and tutorial windows at the player isn't making the game easier and certainly not much fun. I felt that telling people to read more theory about the game turned me into the guy sucking fun out of the game.  When I pictured myself as if I was playing the game for the first time, I was surprised how I didn't feel any of the old cockstabs disappear. I tried to get many friends and guildmates to join our group, but it mostly failed as the game was such a turn off to many of the guys I have played other games with in the past. I spent several days letting newbies private message with their problems and the same questions kept popping up over and over again. CCP doesn't seem to have a working Q&A department, or everything test-related happends on the test server where nothing resembles the issue I'm derailing this thread with.

So if the Council of Stellar Management manages to convince CCP how unattractive the game is to the consumer not because it's "really niché (of a niché of a niché - Schild)"  but because it deliberately fails to satisfy some level of standard consumer gratifications. How many new players get to experience the fun of liberating someone's cargo instead of waiting for their manufacturing mission to finish? Or maybe they don't really want more people playing their game.

[Hoax]

Yeah voting for a goon would be fucking dumb, because well, goons are dumb and at their core are prone to doing things that are bad for everybody because it is funny and doesn't matter because this is internet spaceships.  Fine by me but putting them in charge of speaking for the game community at large?  FFS.

I voted for Jade because as Amarr said, Jade has always put waaaay too much work into the game, respects RP and the game lore, respects the game itself and will undoubtedly be more worried about helping out smaller gang combat then the large alliance versions of pewpew.

It was either Jade or the CVA guy but I've been reading Jade's posts since 2003 so it wasn't that hard for me.

[ajax34i]

Personally I'd like to see simple yet large aspects of the game fixed. Mainly the newbie experience, which is dreadful.

Ah, but is the newbie experience dreadful in and of itself, or is it dreadful because the parts of the game that need explaining (to newbies) are so damn counterintuitive and poorly designed?

The questions I see asked the most aren't about what goals to pick in the game, or about what the end-game content is, or anything like that, they're about the UI.  People just don't understand it.  Or they're about ships and fittings, or the aggro/flag mechanics, which I again attribute to the UI being crap.  This is the only game I've seen where the UI flashes the button to open a container (a silo) at 3000 m, then pops out an error message saying you have to be within 1500 m to open said container (and other similar examples).

Polish matters, and I wish we could demonstrate to CCP just how much (by getting them to fix the damn bugs and UI, and then letting them see just how many MORE players they get).

But I don't think that the CSM can do that.  I got the impression from the various blogs and news items that CCP isn't willing to give the CSM or the playerbase much decision-making power.  Or any kind of power, really.

[Nerf]

It's alot more than UI, it's useless bullshit that serves no purpose except to cockstab newbies.  Like learning skills,  early level missions that need heavy polishing, etc, etc.

CCP needs someone to tell them that only crazy people will play for hours and hours and hours trying to "find the fun" in an otherwise unfun game.  Hear that CCP? FUN IT UP!

[Gets]

CCP notices your attempts and draws the "It's a sandbox" card.

I love the fact that it's more of a simulation or "true virtual world" or how you want to call it. It allows us, the experienced players, to find or create our own fun, but this aspect isn't being grasped, instead, as Nerf suggested, blurred out with serious gaps in gameplay, or lack thereof actually. To EVE players it should be obvious, to really old EVE players it's less of that (and guess which part of the community makes the most noise). I know subscription numbers are slowly but steadily rising, but I feel it's because EVE has improved only a tiny amount in regard to attractiveness and mostly it's because of the MMO market boom. It does well at holding onto old players, but the bait'n'hook department is undermanaged.

[Simond]

Yeah voting for a goon would be fucking dumb, because well, goons are dumb and at their core are prone to doing things that are bad for everybody because it is funny and doesn't matter because this is internet spaceships.

Counterpoint: You could replace 'goon' with 'CCP' in that sentence and it'd still hold true.

[MahrinSkel]

I think at this point, Eve has tamed the goons.  They may still have their unique "Fuck all of you" flavor, but the infestation that was determined to destroy the game has pretty much burned themselves out.  If you think of them as just another set of roleplayers, everything fits right into place.

--Dave

[JoeTF]

ice burn

Sorry, couldn't resist. Actual content to follow shortly.

[Endie]

GF has definitely changed several times.  It reflects the character of the leaders, which in turn reflects the membership.  So we had a fat lulz griefer (Remedial), a fuck-CCP emo spymaster (Mittens) during whose reign we became pretty rabidly anti-CCP on the grounds of their cheating and game-imbalances, a general (Sesfan) during whose leadership we became focussed on war and took massive tracts of space, and now Darius, who has started by lending his official imprimatur to scamming and griefing, with (apparently) a series of wars against long-deserving targets developing.

And as I blogged about, I think that the CSM has to focus on getting CCP to release more, low-quality 0.0 space, difficult to get to from existing space, into which younger characters and alliances can move without the problem of being tiny fish in a shark-pond.

[Hakeldaima]

I was lucky enough to get snapped up in a corp soon after I started the game, and got involved in the (very old and experienced) role-playing community of EVE. Without the guidance and experience provided by my corpmates I don't know if I'd still be playing the game.

Then again, solo-eve is fucking boring.

[Simond]

And as I blogged about, I think that the CSM has to focus on getting CCP to release more, low-quality 0.0 space, difficult to get to from existing space, into which younger characters and alliances can move without the problem of being tiny fish in a shark-pond.

Or do...something with low sec.

[ajax34i]

New blog about what the CSM is all about.

You know, I've been thinking about the CSM, and CCP seems to be hoping that these volunteers and the process itself will block the noise and just get the gems (good ideas) out to them, but I'm waiting for the next occurrence of the following:

Bungled patch -> record number of "issues" gaining 10,000 votes the very same day -> CCP being forced, per their own rules, to "document" and "address" everything they did wrong (that's what "issues" are, right?  stuff that's wrong) -> beating on the dead horse with these issues up to and through the next live meeting (possibly, for months).

Repeat a few times, and all you have as a result of the CSM process is a string of published and very very documented instances of "oops we did that wrong", "oops, our fault", "oops, we did it again", and "oops, but here's what we're doing about it".  Then "oops, that didn't work".

Of course, the language will actually be "The Game is in this state/condition, and that's not good, so we'll improve it this way," which sounds much better.

[Sparky]

Jade Constantine takes three long ass posts before he even gets to the "what I believe" stuff.  Thanks for the 3000 words telling me it's Eve Online we're discussing Jade, just in case my taskbar was fucked up and I'd forgotten.  Though if tons of words no-one will read passes for intelligent then Jade is your man.  However worst of all he thinks titan proliferation is just dandy and titans are somehow "anti-blob".  Anyway who's actually tried to take down one of the fuckers would laugh at that notion.

He's right about cyno jammers + titans being extra retarded but it's just too much triangulation when he's praising the dumb ships and looking forward to everyone DDing the shit out of each other in following paragraphs.  Forget Capitals Online it'll be Supercaps Online if they keep getting produced at this rate and barely dying.  He's the Hillary Clinton of this election.

Bane Glorious on the other hand wrote that monster Titan Manifesto which I believe was instremental in if not actually getting the things nerfed then at least reducing the outcry from the older playerbase with it's methodical detail of everything wrong with them.

Bane '08!

[nurtsi]

I haven't been following this CSM stuff at all other than just reading about it on the login screen. But from what I've read here it seems every candidate has some titan agenda. I wonder what percentage of the player base actually gives a flying fuck about titans. I've never even seen a supercapital during the six months+ I've spend playing the game. What was it, 75% of the players stay in empire? Are there any candidates that would appeal to the majority (i.e. people not in 0.0)?

[Jayce]

Best point so far Nurtsi.

Good job of elucidating why I can't seem to work up a flying fuck about this election.

[ajax34i]

Unfortunately, that majority in Empire is also interested more in PVE than in PVP, and CCP's not into PVE much.

From what I've seen, a lot of candidates (not all of them) have agendas that promote radical changes to the game / to game mechanics, and I think CCP's gonna cut that short very fast.

The only things I want are UI improvements, and not just better / faster bugfixing, but for CCP to improve their QA to the point where it shows they care.  The question of whether any candidate has this on the agenda has been asked, with only a couple resposes, so I guess we'll just have to ram it through via 10,000 votes.  Maybe next patch day.

[Slayerik]

I haven't been following this CSM stuff at all other than just reading about it on the login screen. But from what I've read here it seems every candidate has some titan agenda. I wonder what percentage of the player base actually gives a flying fuck about titans. I've never even seen a supercapital during the six months+ I've spend playing the game. What was it, 75% of the players stay in empire? Are there any candidates that would appeal to the majority (i.e. people not in 0.0)?

If you aren't in 0.0 than you are a second class citizen. Didn't you get the memo?

[Phildo]

I'm only in Empire because the slave trash decided to declare war on us.  Does that count?

[Hakeldaima]

I'm only in Empire because the slave trash decided to declare war on us.  Does that count?

Surely you are in Empire to fight the slave trash, and not to escape from them :)