CSM 14 – Week 8
CSM Meeting – August 9th
As always, there’s not any specific information to share due to the confidentiality of the discussions.
Much of the meeting was focused on coordinating sessions for the upcoming summit in Reyljavik.
There was discussion of upcoming player meetups and CSM opinions surveyed.
A very significant topic was raised at the end of the meeting that engendered passionate discussion. Further detailed chat on the topic continues with the Dev Team online and will be a key topic at the CSM Summit.
This update is painfully vague, but due to the details of what was brought up, there’s not a lot more to publicly report.
Dunk’s Corner
With nothing specifically CSMy to talk about, I’ll just amplify my thoughts from a recent tweet I made.
A cool thing about being on the CSM is hearing from a wide variety of players that I don’t normally bump into. It has been eye opening to get small glimpse of what the CCP Dev Team faces on a daily basis.
I enjoy these interactions and try to respond to everyone that contacts me. I don’t want it to stop, but I have learned a few things.
What I have learned is that most players look at EVE with a narrow view, focused on what they like to do, which is commonly known as a ‘playstyle . And there is nothing wrong with that. Each of us gets that sweet drip of dopamine in the brain from something different.
I have heard an enormous variety of concerns over the nerfs to various playstyles. Examples such as:
- The Contracts ESI feed has killed the ability to scoop up underpriced deals.
- High sec mining is too safe and ganking is too hard.
- High sec mining is too risky and ganking is too easy.
- The mythical small gang PvP fights have been nerfed.
- Reissue of SKINs nerfed the retired SKIN market.
- High Value ‘whaling’ is too hard.
- High Value ‘whaling’ is too easy.
- VNI ratting has been nerfed.
- Moon Mining POS removal nerfed PvP funding.
- Citadels nerfed station games.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Some of you are going to want to argue about those examples, but that’s not the point here.
Basically, there is no good way to base the game design on which “they nerfed my playstyle” group yells the loudest. Brigading, echo chambers, and other techniques are use to amplify minority voices to appear to be majority voices.
So that leaves me with a choice to make. How do I decide on what ideas and changes to support with the infinitesimal influence I have?
If I just supported the things that helped my personal playstyle, well you’d obviously see Tech 2 Salvage Drones, bug fixes to the Industry window, ACLs for intra-character hangar use, and easier structure fueling.
But I’m not on the CSM to address my playstyle. I’m on the CSM to help the game continue to grow and thrive, even if there are negative impacts to my personal wants or the needs of my specific group.
For small issues and tweaks, I want to listen, learn, and advocate change where I can. But with significant and major issues, I need a clear metric to help focus my thoughts.
For now, my metrics on major issues will be these:
– Will this change get more people to login and spend time in EVE?
– Will this change lead people to stop logging in and quit EVE?
– Will this change lead to more new players starting in EVE and staying for the long term?
This may not be what you want to hear. You may want to hear, I dunno, that the Bhaalgorn needs more SKINs or a new low sec gate to a null region is needed.
But with upcoming major changes in the Chaos Era, you all deserve to know how I will be focusing my energy and how I will decide what I should support.
As always, I’m interested in hearing your opinions.
