What the........ you talking about ?

Pay to Win..... now Pay to Vote ? so much for the original idea of a Free to Play game huh ? Maybe you guys using a different dictionary than i do.

Free ;

Not affected or restricted by a given condition or circumstance.

Please reread the last sentence of my last post....

The (in most cases) 16 digits that make up a credit card number are just numbers until they are verified to be a valid account. And unless CCP starts issuing credit cards this means that CCP would need to set up the system needed to check potentially millions of cards for each election. While this isn't anywhere near impossible it would be a huge hassle for CCP, would cost them money, and would involve them in dealing with the card issuers (many of which aren't known for going out of their way to help other companies) if anything goes wrong.

I'm not saying the idea isn't feasible, I'm saying I don't see it being worth the hassle. There are plenty of alternative ways to set up voting that aren't as technically or financially complex, and which don't require dealing with outside forces.


And people, please remember that so far this discussion has been between members of the community, not CCP. So saying things like "so much for free-to-play" is ridiculous.

Honestly, isn't a single in-game voting system you can use that will be fair, and to be honest, is only the people that is involve in the outside game activities, that will be interested in voting in this "Council".

Solution is very simple ; A forum voting system, or a website voting system.

People that "only" plays the game, won't care about it, or won't even know who the best candidates are.

Panther Alpha, are you seriously suggesting trying to keep the people who are being represented from having a vote? The point of the council is to be the voice of the people playing the game, so any voting system NEEDS to be in the hands of the players.

What i saying is ; That just like in real life, if you interested in voting you go to you nearest polling station, and vote. If you not interested, you stay at home... and don't vote.

What i saying is ; That just like in real life, if you interested in voting you go to you nearest polling station, and vote. If you not interested, you stay at home... and don't vote.

Laurent, if you look through the threads I posted you'd see the first thing I did when I began discussing an idea was link to the post that brought it up.

I'd rather continue discussing this in the thread I made for it so we don't clutter this thread more. So I'll just comment on the fact that what you said would mean CCP would be relying on the system Sony uses for it's voting security.

What i saying is ; That just like in real life, if you interested in voting you go to you nearest polling station, and vote. If you not interested, you stay at home... and don't vote.

I personally believe a voting system will always be flawed, do note this is my 'opinion' and i am by no means disputing anyone else.

My reason for believing this is that people are inheritantly lazy when it comes to things they don't see of importance.
I believe a large percentage of the gaming base will be content and just playing along as is ( I mean this in general across many games with varying administrations. ) So those players will not want to bother with 'game politics' because they have enough stress in their real lives and want to game as a means of escapism without the responsibilities or pressures and concerns.

Now amongst that number, i am convinced the better leaders / council members / advisors / designers / analysts will be.

Time and time again we see that those who 'desire' to be in a position of authority, generally do not have the capacity to do the role they are wanting, and generally have another purpose or scheme in mind. I would also say that generally, these people are more easily corrupted by the power they obtain and use it to influence people unfairly.

Now this is the crux of the point i'm making.... I truely believe that some of the greatest leaders have emerged from a rise in circumstances and situations. Those who didn't vie for the power, but felt change had to happen and because noone else stepped up, they felt they had to. Though this kind of person is not usually the type who craves power, more often they actually would rather not be leading but they have a natural capacity to and noone else is doing a better job so they step up and take the responsibility to 'help others', rather than 'help themselves'.

In my eyes... that is the kind of people we need on the council. Those who have the drive to shape things for the better of all, not just a certain group.

So this is where i believe voting is flawed.... The majority of those who vote will be the 'louder' breed of gamers, the ones who seek more depth, which i believe is a tiny percentage of the gamerbase. Whereas the majority will quietly be doing their thing and not getting involved.

Some will say.. "well it's their fault for not getting involved" .. and i'll agree with you. However, you then have to ask yourself whether this situation is a fair way to select people of quality then, and i'd simply say i don't believe it is, it can too easily become biased.

---

So... what do we do?

I don't have some 'great all seeing answer' for you.. sure i wish i did, but...

i feel we need a system of election... where people can recommend people 'with their consent'. They can have their 'respected/skilled' friend fill out an application form and send it in to the council.

These applictions should then be made visible in full on the internet with personal names etc.. removed, just the content of why the person suits the role.

Rather than tolling a voting system, i believe a comment system should be used, people can look at the applications and post their comments on the suitibility of the person for the role based on the information provided.

The council can then review the applications, review the comments incase they notice something the council didn't. The council can then hopefully make a qualitive decision rather than a quantitive one.

Thus, hopefully providing with people who are inspired to help the populace and help push the game forward, shaping it to be 'balanced' for all, which means varying degrees of fairness and un-fairness. Remember balanced does not mean every choice in a game is I-Win. There are pro's and con's to everything, and balancing is a very difficult concept in a game, and rebalancing will be needed every time new things are added.

I hope that this idea will resonate amongst you, i'm sure there are flaws in the system, and i'm sure there are others out there who could refine the system, adjust it, tweak it to make it even better.

But i believe it would provide us a fairer way of getting the right people than a biased number based system. Voting systems in games i'm afraid simply become 'who has the most friends/influence wins'.

I'll just wrap up this again by saying, this is my opinion, i am in no way discrediting other people's systems, as they may also work, my beliefs in this post can even be changed if facts are provided and prove anything i believe to be false. So i'm not trying to antagonise anyone or deny them what they feel is their right, etc... Just throwing out an idea which i believe would lead to a fairer system and remove the need for a numeric based voting system. I hope people can have an open mind as they consider it, and feel free to please offer constructive critisism whether you agree / disagree and why.

Thanks all.

NanoCleric, I think the basic idea you have is good but I don't see how it could scale up. If there were only a few thousand of us then it might work. The problem is it would become useless if even a third of the CURRENT players become involved. It's one thing if an application has a couple comments on it, it's another thing entirely if each application has Hundreds of comments on it. Only a handful of people would actually read that.

Tuesday?

Congrats to Cerebral Wolf & Iron wolf for being interviewed. Hope you both make it in!

what makes you so sure they have been interviewed? Ironwolf has already said he didn't get an invite (maybe he got an invite later on?)

The first rule of WC is that you don't talk about invites/interviews to WC. There is a lot of "so and so got this" and "so and so got that" flying around, keep in mind that some people will foolishly try to metagame this even before its fully formed.

These applictions should then be made visible in full on the internet with personal names etc.. removed, just the content of why the person suits the role.

Every single candidate for CSM is required to (and readily volunteers) their personal name when they decide to run for the council. My real name is Noah Garaas and I live in Seattle, nice to meet you all. See? It's that easy.

where it state that? you know someone who got in? anyway few guys were chatting about it in corp chat. I thought maybe it was announced.

8. Posting of personal information is prohibited.
The posting of personal information including but not limited to contact numbers, email addresses, account names and passwords, home addresses and real life names is strictly prohibited. CCP respect the right of our players to privacy, and will not tolerate the divulging of real life personal details.

Congrats to Cerebral Wolf & Iron wolf for being interviewed. Hope you both make it in!

If it's been announced, let me know! I haven't seen anything yet, has Dolan said anywhere which day the announcement would be?

And to answer your question - It might not, but CCP's just really tight-lipped about this kind of stuff and is always going to announce it on their own time in their own way.

Dolan said end of the month... its the 28th already :(