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Nova Knife
Seituoda Taskforce Command
Caldari State
1058
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Posted - 2013.06.24 22:19:00 -
[1] - Quote
This is not going to be a popular post with most people. I think it's safe to say the vast majority of people want to feel like 'their voice matters', which is the core principle behind the CSM/CPM (Or at least, that's the intended perception). It's also a flawed one because elections should never be necessary for that.
In a perfect world, an elected council is the ideal solution. However, our world is not perfect. Look to any democratic institution in real life, and see how competent most of those politicians really are, and how many of them actually stick to their platform and work for the people they 'represent'. Not many of them do. (One should also note, that democratic bodies are almost always much larger than a dozen people, and for good reason)
The real questions you should ask yourself though, are :
- Why should I need to elect some dude for CCP to actually pay attention to them?
- Should someone be getting flown to Iceland and Shanghai just because they're popular, without proof of actually deserving to go because they'll be helpful?
- Can a 6-12 person council really cover all the aspects of the game that need to be covered, with enough people on it being -informed- enough to discuss each subject on a meaningful level without bias?
- What happens when you get a 'zerg vote' and someone with the intention of only benefiting their specific corp/alliance gets elected?
Questions like this deserve to be thought long and hard about.
I'm not saying that CCP shouldn't look to the players to get dedicated, quality feedback. What I'm saying, is that CCP should know which players they can talk to for that. Having one council with a dozen or so people on it is great, but at no time are they are going to know everything about the game, and there is no promise they won't try to push an agenda with no one to stop them because it's all happening behind 'closed doors', or just give well-intentioned but poorly informed feedback which ends up harming the game.
The sad truth is : As much as some people would try to do everything, nobody is capable of remaining completely objective, or being informed/experienced with everything in the game. A voted council is unlikely to have an even spread of players from each aspect of the game, so at any given time, key parts of the game will go un/misrepresented.
This brings me to the solution that I feel is ideal:
Why only have one council? There's dozens of development teams within CCP, all who work on specific stuff. We should push towards most of those teams having access to a group of player volunteers to give feedback. Ideally, this would be a large ISD team with several sub-groups. This provides an NDA, and is an extension of already existing infrastructure within CCP. The NDA is really the more important part here. This would mean that each sub-group would be privy to upcoming informations, and the 'experts' in each field can provide proper feedback without having to deal with uninformed opinions of people who've never touched that aspect of the game yet think they know everything.
"The CPM" or it's public face, could be comprised of the team leads of each sub-group. These team leads could be chosen by the people in the group, or even the public. CCP could then either fly these few individuals out to the summits and then have a conference with the rest of their sub-group(s) respectively when talking about the stuff that applies to them, or they could fly a full subgroup or mixed portions of multiple groups, as needed based on what is upcoming in the development cycle.
This is getting windy, but I think I've made my point. The format of the CPM as most people seem to expect/want it to be, will never be ideal for proper, actually helpful feedback. There's better ways. This is the most ideal IMO, but also the most difficult to pull of logistically. However, I didn't make this post just to plug this. I want people to throw up not just support and/or disdain for this idea, but to suggest their own format that would provide proper feedback channels for the designers to engage the people with the most know-how. (Aside from the obligatory : "They should actually post on the forums, lol")
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Nova Knife
Seituoda Taskforce Command
Caldari State
1059
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Posted - 2013.06.24 22:30:00 -
[2] - Quote
:P
The point of making a new thread is that I didn't want to completely thread-jack other posts and take them off-topic. Cheers for the consolidation effort.
Like I said in the OP: This post isn't just about plugging what I feel is the best option; It's about seeing if anyone else can some up with something else that is even better. |
Nova Knife
Seituoda Taskforce Command
Caldari State
1061
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Posted - 2013.06.25 00:49:00 -
[3] - Quote
Django Quik wrote:We need an overall council to represent the entire playerbase across issues that pertain to the entire game - not single issue heroes that care about nothing but their own expertise.
Yet, how can anyone be sure that 6-12 dudes won't be single issue heroes? I don't think single issue heroes are a bad thing, because those people might be super knowledgable about their given subject... but when being placed in a position where it is (or should be) a requirement to care about the game as a whole... Those opinions which may be excellent for one topic, but on the flip side, they could do more harm than good by trying to pipe up on something they really have no firsthand knowledge with.
I'm not saying we should have literally dozens of subgroups to correlate with every team though.
All we really need are the following teams (Someone might think of other ones we might need, feel free to suggest) :
Community/Market
Dropsuits/Weapons
Vehicles/AV
Map & Level Design
Like you said: A lot of stuff depends on each other, and there's no reason why you couldn't or shouldn't include multiple teams during certain meetings. As far as choosing people goes; It's rather simple. People volunteer. There's no elections. The 'screening process' would basically be the standard background check for ISD/CSM (Checking to make sure you can travel if needed, Checking to make sure you don't work for any other gaming company, etc.) It's like they say: The more the merrier. You don't need a group of 6-12 people pretending to be experts in everything when you can have literally dozens of people with firsthand experience with specific areas at your disposal, all in one organized place.
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Nova Knife
Seituoda Taskforce Command
Caldari State
1083
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Posted - 2013.06.25 21:35:00 -
[4] - Quote
Aeon Amadi wrote:
Further more, I was under the impression that CPM does not give input on game balance? This was stated by Jenza, so having multiple teams for different subjects seems a little fruitless when their job is still to look at new content and nod/shake their head. An exaggeration of course.
The reason we've stated that, is because we've said to CCP "Don't come to us, if you can go to the players first." Most of the CPM don't have the mindset for proper balancing, so we've as a group agreed that it's better something we try not to do, directing CCP to people they should talk to instead. This is mostly because we weren't chosen to balance things, we were chosen to help set up 'the process' that facilitates CCP --> Player engagements towards the betterment of the game.
Future groups/members would and -should- be chosen for their ability to help with balance, among other things.
Deadeyes Anterie wrote:
(snip)The CPM isn't here to develop the game.. (snip)
Actually.. That's the goal that the CSM and CCP have been pushing for together for the last few years. The term 'stakeholder' floats around a lot. The CSM has been heavily involved with one of the Eve online Dev teams for the last year or two, giving input on 'the process' from (or very close to) step 1 of something they're working on.
The stated goal for the CPM, is to mirror the efforts of the CSM when relating to dust. A natural conclusion is that CCP wants the players to help take a much more active role in shaping the game. It is to this end, that I feel a democractic system has the potential to do much more damage than a meritocratic system. Not only that, but while the CSM has 'stakeholder status' with (I believe) Team Five-O... That's all they've had success with. Their relatively broad backgrounds don't give them stakeholder status among any of the other teams (Even if Five-0 is awesome)
Now... What if "The Council" was divided into those four (or more) main teams, and each of those teams had stakeholder status with the corresponding team within CCP? The players would be directly involved in the shaping of the game from almost literally the ground up. No greater argument for the 'players having a voice' could ever be made. The debate then becomes : "How does one decide who gets to be that voice?" Like I said above (many times) : I believe actions speak much louder than popularity. A merit-based system does far more to ensure someone will be a positive contributor than any political system.
This would be much harder to organize, and the subject of summits would be difficult to manage as far as who gets to go. Overall, though? If something like this was set up, It would be infinitely healthier for the game as a whole. Not only would "The council" be watchdogs for CCP, but for themselves. A larger pool of people per subject means that someone trying to push a self-serving (or harmful) agenda, is easily called out and held accountable by the others in the group. With a 6-12 person group where not all of them might know about a certain subject, the risk of something like this slipping by and negatively affecting the game is much greater.
Kevall Longstride wrote:
From what I understand the CSM and now the CPM, are primarily sounding boards for CCP. When the Dev's have a proposal that they think needs player input the CSM are brought in for their opinions, thoughts and concerns.
(snip)
And an elected CPM adds legitimacy to its job and can considered free of influence by CCP.
Perhaps something to consider, is the best of both worlds?
What if... The 'elected' council was essentially the 'Community' part of the teams I suggested in the above posts, and the other teams became a critical part of the development process, without necessarily having to be part of "The Council"? These ideas aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, if the two entities aren't stepping on each others' toes in terms of what they do
I don't mind the idea of a democratic election nearly as much, if their role doesn't place them in as much of a directly influence on the game, but provides the company an outlet for community engagement at an early-ish level. For example : Say, the "ISD Teams" as suggested earlier in above posts are on the ground floor. They work with the dev teams closely to plan out and design a new feature. After the planning stages are done, the idea then goes to "The Council" for additional player insight before being shipped off to the playerbase.
Like someone said above though... The risk of creating roadblocks becomes much higher with something like this. More channels, approval processes, and stuff can certainly work to slow down the movement of information. This would mean that whoever is organizing this is an absolute champion at what they do, as it is no small task.
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