Joseph Ridgeson
WarRavens
League of Infamy
714
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Posted - 2014.03.12 22:18:00 -
[1] - Quote
Note: this is not meant as an insult to ANY CPM member, past or future or to the CPM/CSM itself. This is simply looking at the concept of having a CPM rather than who is on it. If the players have a problem with a certain member past, present, future I think they are more likely to be less passive aggressive and more overt with their annoyance about a particular person.
EVE and DUST both have a player elected group that advocates on behalf of the players to CCP. The Council for Stellar Management and the Council of Planetary Management exist to help both the players and CCP. The players get a group of non-CCP employees to act as liaisons between 'The Man' and ourselves and CCP doesn't have to have too many employees be the "this is what the proletariat want" people. So, it is a win.
The problem is that it is incredibly difficult to see where the CSM/CPM is helping the community in anything other than the individual level. We can see Jenza 'appearing' on with Bamm Havoc to talk about DUST or Hans' skype page where he dun bleed all that information onto yo' face. But we can't see how CPM itself helps the community at the macro-level. We can be told that "the CPM was a huge factor in developing 1.7" but we don't see that. We don't see the process where the CPM head sort of raises their hand and states "the community has been asking for X. The CPM has had extensive talk about X and we feel that it is also an issue that needs to be resolved. We have a few larger ideas on how to fix X as well as some quick, small changes to act as a hold over until something better can implemented." To be fair, it would be pretty much impossible to show this. This leaves us wondering where the group itself fits in the schemes of development.
Even worse is when something happens in DUST that the players are not happy about that hasn't been addressed or resolved. I don't want this thread to be about those things because it isn't meant to but let's just take the "recent released information about Y not being entirely full" and "the bonuses to the Caldari/Gallente X not being altered." So we have Y which the CPM surely lobbied for but it didn't really happen in a way that most players wanted. It happened, them's the breaks, moving on. X was highly unpopular because of how out of line they are compared to the other bonuses. The other two would help in prolonged engagements while X really doesn't. X stands for 1.8. Again, them's the breaks. However, since "it didn't happen the way I wanted and the way they said they wanted!", we are left wondering if the outcome of X and Y was already planned and the CPM had no chance in redirecting it. We don't see it...
I assume the CPM mentioned both X and Y to CCP, even if it was a "ugh, the forums won't stop talking about it!" which it probably wasn't. When X and Y don't happen in the way we wanted, we wonder how much the CPM itself helps the community. Because we cannot see the discussion, we cannot be certain that the CPM/CSM doesn't exist simply because "it sounds like a good thing" but isn't really given much credence? Ever see a game that has multiplayer that is entirely pointless and isn't polished despite having top of the line single player? That is because "multiplayer sounds good" but the developers don't want to actually spend time/resources to having it 'done properly.' To the player, they could begin to wonder if the CPM/CSM exists because "it sounds good to the community and to the gaming press." Whether this is true or not, it does feel good as a player to know that there are people who play the game as recreation rather than for a job talking to the makers of said game and I think about every article that mentions EVE will bring up the notion of a CSM.
Is it possible that CCP pays lip service to the CPM, only using them as a marketing/company advocacy tool? Anything is possible. Simply put: we cannot see into the heads of the CPM or CCP in order to verify what is really happening. Thus when something doesn't break the best way for the players, such as in the cases of X and Y, the players are left wondering if the CPM "fights for the users" even when we shouldn't.
And this is why I never want to be a CPM member; because I get enough hate in my daily life to not need the anger of an entire sea of anonymous faces. 
tl;dr Problem: natural paranoia about how much a player group can affect 'The Man' |