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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  MMOG Discussion  |  Eve Online  |  Topic: CSM Elections Have Begun 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: CSM Elections Have Begun  (Read 41343 times)
Sparky
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Posts: 805


Reply #140 on: July 21, 2010, 02:21:36 AM

So the CSM is little more the a PR stunt?

It's destined to be taught in PR school as an example of stunts gone horribly wrong
Stabs
Terracotta Army
Posts: 796


Reply #141 on: July 21, 2010, 04:40:45 AM

Is there a better way to QA than to give it to people who meta-game and exploit the game mechanics?

Yeah, give it to people who will report the bugs, rather than keep them hidden for profit when live.

Ha ha, I take your point.

As for the CSM I thought they were doing fine until they announced it would be a stakeholder. It's actually more influential than player liaisons in other games and until they increased CSM expectations they were doing fine. Sure some people didn't have much faith in it but most people thought it was doing as well if not better than similar ventures in other MMOs like the class representatives in SWG.

Once they told people it was a stakeholder (when it obviously isn't and can't be) they were bound to disappoint people. The reason it can't be a stakeholder like Marketing, Accounts, Art etc is because of its stridency and the amount of stuff it wants. A guy from marketing might ask can you do shinier titans please? get told No and say ho hum no worries we'll just spruce them up in photoshop. The CSM, if given the same access, will send hundreds of pages of design ideas and fixes per week. It can never back down on anything (unless given reasons so persuasive they cause the players who broached the issue to withdraw). You simply can't treat all their output like the suggestions from CCP staff because if you did their volume would drown out all the other stakeholders.

If you ignore the silly stakeholder statement CSM is actually doing pretty well as a player council. They get to raise issues with devs and even 3 days explaining in depth what is wrong with the game to devs isn't something any other MMO fans get.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2010, 04:42:36 AM by Stabs »
Numtini
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Posts: 7675


Reply #142 on: July 21, 2010, 05:19:35 AM

Quote
Once they told people it was a stakeholder (when it obviously isn't and can't be) they were bound to disappoint people. The reason it can't be a stakeholder like Marketing, Accounts, Art etc is because of its stridency and the amount of stuff it wants. A guy from marketing might ask can you do shinier titans please? get told No and say ho hum no worries we'll just spruce them up in photoshop. The CSM, if given the same access, will send hundreds of pages of design ideas and fixes per week. It can never back down on anything (unless given reasons so persuasive they cause the players who broached the issue to withdraw). You simply can't treat all their output like the suggestions from CCP staff because if you did their volume would drown out all the other stakeholders.

The stakeholder part is incredibly silly. It's the kind of romantic stuff I'd expect to see from Linden Lab.

I agree absolutely, the pseudolegislative stuff with players posting bills proposals and people voting on them and then the CSM debating them and placing them on the federal register wiki and then approving them and sending them to the president's desk to ccp is ridiculously bureaucratic and I think responsible for a lot of the "here are 5000 highly specific ideas" that you find on the forum.

But I really don't think that's where the problem is this time around. Following it pretty closely through blogs and tweetfleet, the CSM seems to have pretty much ignored that and pushed a fairly limited number of issues, primarily pushing for more attention to be paid to old issues, bugs, unfinished expansions, etc than new development. I have been pleasantly surprised.

What I think pushed things over was not that there weren't unlimited resources for everything, but that there were no resources available to work on anything. And specifically no resources for anything for a period longer than their newly extended term.


If you can read this, you're on a board populated by misogynist assholes.
Kageru
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Posts: 4549


Reply #143 on: July 21, 2010, 05:27:00 AM


I assumed the CSM was largely PR. But the message that came out of the process was "nothing new or fixed for 18 months". If they'd called them stakeholders but still fobbed them off, said how much they valued their feedback, and promised to look into things but not doing much the players wouldn't have been surprised.

Is a man not entitled to the hurf of his durf?
- Simond
slog
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Posts: 8232


Reply #144 on: July 21, 2010, 06:01:39 AM


If you ignore the silly stakeholder statement CSM is actually doing pretty well as a player council. They get to raise issues with devs and even 3 days explaining in depth what is wrong with the game to devs isn't something any other MMO fans get.

If the measurement criteria is "They get to tell CCP where the problems and that's it" then I think the bar has been set pretty low. 

Friends don't let Friends vote for Boomers
IainC
Developers
Posts: 6538

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Reply #145 on: July 21, 2010, 06:04:19 AM

There has been a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between CCP and the CSM on this; as a result of which I don't expect any revisions to existing features other than entirely trivial detail stuff or actual bug fixes to happen in the lifetime of this CSM as things stand. It is possible that the CSM may have some extra input into the next expansion as a consolation for not getting to do anything else this time around but that's not even been hinted at in any official communication and AFAIK the next expansion isn't even in high level planning yet.

It is funny though to see all the candidates who ran on a 'fix bugs before adding new stuff' platform line up and rationalise CCP's decision to do exactly the opposite.

- And in stranger Iains, even Death may die -

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Stabs
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Posts: 796


Reply #146 on: July 21, 2010, 08:00:23 AM

@ Slog the bar is the WoW official forums. WoW is the big mmo, the one that defines "normal" for the MMO industry. Their version of allowing customer feedback is that you too are allowed to claim that you will stalk a developer in real life if they don't buff Ret. CCP is a million times more proactive than that.

@Iain. Missing out on the CSM must have been very disappointing for you but I think this was a good one to miss. The expectations have been set way out of line with reality and many players will blame the delegates. In fact I think that's why people like Mynxee and Ankh were being so blunt about being disappointed because they know that people will shoot the messengers and that the message sucks.

I do think the CSM will turn into a very useful player council. It may well have long term influence once the current long term projects have been implemented. If you bide your time and go for the CSM next year I think you'll have a much better experience than this year's delegates. Well at least you won't have people podding you because you didn't get them to fix lag.
tazelbain
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tazelbain


Reply #147 on: July 21, 2010, 08:11:20 AM

CSM is a whitewash and is functioning as intended.

"Me am play gods"
Numtini
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Posts: 7675


Reply #148 on: July 21, 2010, 08:32:33 AM

CSM is a whitewash and is functioning as intended.

If it's intended purpose is whitewash, then it's most certainly not working as intended.

If you can read this, you're on a board populated by misogynist assholes.
tazelbain
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tazelbain


Reply #149 on: July 21, 2010, 08:51:34 AM

Yes, the purpose is to whitewash, but the function of CSM is to do nothing visibly. The function not meeting purpose is why it was a dumb plan to begin with, same as every other player advisory counsel.

"Me am play gods"
UnsGub
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Posts: 182


Reply #150 on: July 21, 2010, 11:41:57 AM

The reason it can't be a stakeholder like Marketing, Accounts, Art etc is because of its stridency and the amount of stuff it wants. ... The CSM, if given the same access, will send hundreds of pages of design ideas and fixes per week. It can never back down on anything (unless given reasons so persuasive they cause the players who broached the issue to withdraw). You simply can't treat all their output like the suggestions from CCP staff because if you did their volume would drown out all the other stakeholders.

If their feedback system cannot hand volume or any type of feedback it is broken.

Small software companies can manage +100,000 bugs and ~1,000 of specs just fine and so should CCP.  Making a priority list is easy.  Choosing what to do and executing on that is where it can get hard.
Numtini
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Posts: 7675


Reply #151 on: July 21, 2010, 12:15:54 PM

I think this was in the transcripts before they went to Iceland, but I believe they discussed identifying specific areas that CCP wanted to work on and then compiling a list of issues/bugs/suggestions within that category ie, if they're going to work on the interface, while you are in it, this is what we see as issues and fixes.

If you can read this, you're on a board populated by misogynist assholes.
Goumindong
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Posts: 4297


Reply #152 on: July 21, 2010, 02:54:55 PM

How can they fix something when its working by design. This assessment is just as bad as the post at SHC about CCP turning assault ships into AB interceptors as if they didn't intentionally do this.

People shouldn't insinuate to CCP their game design might not be fun and is ruining appeal when such remarks will just go over their heads just like the reaction of the CSM and subsequently the vets after reading the minutes.
I was a part of that discussion and am not sure what you're trying to say. Care to enlighten me?

With regards to "Stakeholder" status:

You're blowing what a "Stakeholder" is out of the water. Stakeholders are people who have interests in companies but do not necessarily have a profit interest in the company. Employees who don't own shares are stakeholders. They don't profit off the profits, but are directly benefiting by the continuation of company.

In the same way every player is a stakeholder and so is the CSM. CSM's Stakeholder status was not "new" when it was announced it was just another terminology for "a group which has an interest in the product"
ajax34i
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Posts: 2527


Reply #153 on: July 21, 2010, 03:40:58 PM

Well, "stakeholder" is a new label, and so people expect some powers to go along with that.  They shouldn't have used the word; CCP should have just repeatedly used the phrase "look, we all want EVE to succeed."
Stabs
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Posts: 796


Reply #154 on: July 22, 2010, 01:37:30 AM

@ Guom The actual wording used by CCP made it very clear that they did not mean stakeholder in the general sense of anyone with an interest. They meant it quite specifically to mean "on a par with Accounts and Marketing:

Quote
It was agreed that CCP formally recognizes the CSM as a stakeholder in EVE development on equal footing with stakeholder departments within CCP, allowing the CSM much greater influence on development prioritization.

http://www.eveonline.com/council/transcripts/2010/CSM_CCP_Meetings_18-20_02_2010.pdf
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