It's Crunch Time!

Welcome to the nineteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This months topic comes to us from @evepress, and he asks:

The CSM: CCP's Meta Game?

'The CSM, an Eve player's voice to CCP, right? In the grand scheme of things, yes, the players bring up issues and the CSM presents them to CCP. But in its current iteration the CSM was supposed to be given small authority to assign CCP assets to projects that the CSM thought needed work on. As it has not come out this was not the case. So fellow bloggers, is the CSM worth it, has the CSM improved the game in any way, or is it just a well thought out scam by CCP to give us players a false sense of input in the game? What's your take?'


For anybody that is in the dark about the reasons for the CSM being the focus of this Blog Banter, let me bring you up to speed with recent events:

- The election results for the 5th Council of Stellar Management were released at the end of May.

- The CSM members were invited to a three day summit meeting with CCP in their Iceland offices, in order to discuss Eve player's recommendations and look at what CCP have planned for the development of the game. This took place at the end of June.

- On the 12th of July CCP published the documented minutes of the summit meetings. These minutes were approved as a correct record by both CCP and the CSM.

- After reading through the minutes the majority of the Eve playerbase couldn't help but notice that many of Eve's issues or areas of Eve that were considered broken are not likely to be fixed by CCP any time soon. In fact there were hardly any issues brought up by the CSM that CCP committed to working on in the current development cycle. The overwhelming view was that CCP were focusing on new Eve features, rather than fixing and refining existing ones.

- The discussion has raged on ever since then, aided by the release of CCP Zulu's Dev Blog and the ongoing comments by Devs in the accompanying thread.

So there we have it. As Eve players we are concerned that CCP is neglecting already existing features of the game in favour of new shinies, and also that they are ignoring the CSM's calls for issues to be fixed. Thus, many people are wondering whether the CSM is really worth it.

Now I've posted before on this blog at length about my enthusiasm for the CSM. Despite current events my views on this remain unchanged. The CSM still remains an excellent opportunity for Eve players to take advantage of and get their opinions heard. In fact, if it wasn't for the hard work and dedication of the CSM, we would be in the dark concerning CCP's plans.

The reality is that this furore is a product of the developing CSM process. It has taken 5 consecutive CSMs to reach a point where the current CSM has the power and leverage to take CCP to task for not acting on issues that have been raised consistently by all of the CSMs.

There is now no excuse for CCP. They have had ample time to react to some of the major player concerns, and enough of the playerbase have bought in to the concept of the CSM to force CCP to take note. Thousands of people voted for the CSM and hundreds of proposals have been raised. What we are seeing is the culmination of 5 CSMs worth of work, both raising support and forwarding proposals.

In short, this is crunch time.

This is the crossroads for the CSM, and it's the reason I can't answer the question as to whether the CSM is worth it or not. Because ultimately that answer lies with CCP. If they listen to the CSM speaking on behalf of the players, and if they show us proof that they are acting upon player's recommendations, then every single CSM will have been worth it. If they don't, then it's been one gigantic waste of time and money.

I'm a realistic person. I'm not expecting a multitude of game changes. I'm not even expecting game changes anytime soon. All I want to see from CCP is that you're acting as a result of listening to the CSM.

I voted for the CSM. I read the Dev Blogs. I read the CSM meeting minutes. I read the summit meeting minutes. I even tried to read most of that Dev Blog threadnaught (44 pages and counting)!

I've bought into this whole CSM thing. CCP, please can you too?

Where Are My Wormholes CCP?

Just yesterday I lost a Minmatar Blockade Runner ship, a Prowler, to a Nullsec gatecamp. In total I lost around 400 million isk, which is a fairly large sum. In order to deflect accountability for this mistake from myself and attempt to stem the guilt for producing such a horrible dent in our killboard stats, I've decided to blame CCP for this tragedy.

To explain, I live in a patch off Nullsec where there isn't a very well-stocked market. So I rely on Highsec market hubs to re-supply all my needs. To reach these hubs I try and always use wormholes which are, arguably, a lot safer than attempting to traverse the perils of Nullsec and Lowsec. I will scan down a wormhole in my Nullsec home and continue scanning to try and find a route through to Highsec. I can then use this path to bring back to Nullsec anything I particularly require.

So how did I manage to get caught in a Transport ship in a Nullsec gatecamp? Well, for around four days the pocket of seven Nullsec systems that I call home hasn't contained one single wormhole. This, despite the fact that at least one of the systems has been upgraded with the Quantum Flux Generator, a sovereignty upgrade that is meant to increase the chances of a wormhole apprearing in the system. This lack of wormholes caught me at a bad time and forced me to attempt the more dangerous route to Highsec, and I got unlucky.

Maybe the lack of wormhole spawns in the systems is also just a result of being unlucky, but I'm inclined to feel that the Quantum Flux Generator is not doing its job properly and is not attracting as many wormholes as it should be doing. For this reason I feel justified in blaming CCP for my loss.

In addition to my inability to plunder the Highsec market, our corporation as a whole has been starved of wormhole PvE. Although we live in Nullsec, it is a key desire of the corp to exploit high level wormholes from our Nullsec base. Many days we have had plenty of people online and plenty of shiny ships ready to go, but no wormholes to raid!

This method of wormhole raiding from Nullsec is a legitimate interaction with wormholes that I think CCP should support. So I'm intending on gathering some evidence on the wormhole spawns in our pocket of Nullsec and examining the effect that the Quantum Flux Generator is having on spawns. I would be really interested if anybody else has any information to give on this as well. If I feel the effect granted is too small I might ask the CSM to present it to CCP as an issue that needs looking at.

But, moaning aside, wormholes can be exploited in a large variety of different ways and it would be really nice to have Nullsec wormhole raiding as one of these ways. It should be able to provide a viable source of activity and income for a small Nullsec corp, and I could definately use a little bit of that income right now.

Excercising Your Right to Vote

The Council of Stellar Management, or CSM for short, are a group of 9 individuals elected by Eve players. Their job is to take the views, suggestions and criticisms of the Eve playerbase and present them to CCP, the developers.

Voting has just begun for 5th term of the CSM and will continue for two weeks. There are 53 candidates running for a place this year. If you are anything like me, you will have never heard of the vast majority of them, have no idea what they stand for and have no idea how to find any of this stuff out!

So, in order to help you excercise your right to vote, here is a collection of links that should help you find out everything you need to know about the CSM, voting and the candidates.

About the CSM

CSM Summary - A short summary by CCP of the structure and purpose of the CSM

CSM Expanded - A much more in-depth look by CPP at the theory and design behind the CSM

About the CSM - An Evelopedia article explaining the CSM

The Work of the CSM

The Assembly Hall - An Eve forum where game issues can be raised and brought to the attention of the CSM

Jita Park Speaker's Corner - An Eve forum for CSM members and candidates to air their views

CSM Meeting Minutes - An archive of all the minutes of CSM meetings

CSM Issues - A list of all the issues that have been raised by the CSM

Attendance

Attendance of previous CSM members can be found from the meeting minutes.

CSM4 Attendance - CSM4 Secretary TeaDaze has compiled a handy attendance report for CSM4

Candidates

Candidate List - CCP's list of candidates for CSM5

Most candidates for CSM5 have posted a campaigning thread in the Jita Park Speaker's Corner forum. Read these threads for information about the issues candidates are campaigning on.

CSM Candidate Interviews - Mandrill of the 'I am Keith Neilson' blog has posted the results of interviews he has conducted with applicants

Vote Match - An interactive survey created by Dierdra Vaal that shows you which candidate agrees the most with your opinions

Voting

Candidate Page - Vote for your candidate here, this will require logging in

Hopefully these links will give you a little more information to help you choose who to vote for. If you have any other relevant links or data please tell so I can include it.

Power to the Players

Last week a CCP Development Blog was released detailing how both the creation and use of 'deep safe-spots' was to be removed.

This fix meant that anybody who had a ship, bookmark or other object located in a 'deep safe-spot' would have to move them. If they didn't, the items would be destroyed on the day that the fix was released.

However, just yesterday, a further blog was released. CCP have had a change of heart. They intend instead to find away to move the items, rather than destroy them. Now, I'm not really interested that much about the specifics of the fix since it doesn't really affect me that much. What does interest me is the reason for this changed decision by CCP.

In the most recent blog the reason given for the changed decision was to me, initially, confusing. There is a lot of talk about 'solutions' and I had to read it all through a couple of times before I understood what they were saying. Entertain yourselves by counting how many different adjectives they use to describe their two different solutions. It's definitely not the most lucid blog I've ever read.

So to help you all out I will attempt to translate it for you:

- We at CCP wanted to nerf deep safe-spots
- The 'neat' (also referred to in the blog as 'proper' and 'better') solution would be to move players ships and objects
- But everybody was pretty busy so we went for the 'quick' solution of just destroying stuff
- Then you players started moaning
- So we found somebody with enough time to implement the 'neat' solution instead

Basically CCP were going to rush a game change. The playerbase then responded with their concerns and CCP decided instead to implement a slower but better change.

Now as I said I'm not particularly interested in the game change decision itself, but rather the player interaction with CCP that prompted it. The Council of Stellar Management, or CSM, is a prime example of this interaction. They are a group of players, elected by players, that have a definite say in what happens to the game.

I think the reason we have seen this change on deep safe-spot policy is partly because the CSM were never consulted. As a result, both the CSM and player-base were unhappy, firstly about the decision, and secondly about the lack of consultation. This lead to a huge thread on the Assembly Hall forums, begun by TeaDaze, a current CSM member, registering concern about the proposed change.

I think CCP listened.

Eve is a little bit unique in this respect, and I think it's worth realising this and expoiting it! Many players I talk to are either unaware of, or apathetic to the opportunities available to us through the CSM. In short, make your vote count and your voice heard, because, as we have seen, we have the power to change this game!