CSM – Can't Stand Mediocrity
Been awhile – life (work) still sucks. Pulled an 84 hour week just now and am actually covering a nightshift right at the moment. At least I get to catch up a bit with the various blogs about the place.
Have been watching the goings on with the recent CSM/CCP meet with a great deal of interest, and I too am pretty concerned about the direction that things are going. Actually I went from cool!, to wtf?!?! and now reside somewhere around ambivalent navel gazing.
One one hand, I am very aware that CCP are expanding the game to fit with their overall vision, their need to react to competitors in the market, and the need to maintain commercial confidentiality so no one can steal their thunder. On the other hand… I pay for three accounts and despair of seeing things really fixed, polished, tweaked, refined and otherwise made sexy as hell.
This game is extraordinary. It could be truly great. The CSM is part of this, but and it is a pretty major but, how do we as individuals expect the CSM to carry weight with CCP if only a small percentage actually vote? What was it, 12% or so of the total player base?
Sure, you or I can pull the pin and cancel our accounts, but in all honesty, that achieves nothing at all.
I’m of the opinion the best thing we can do as players is to get in behind the CSM and support them 100%. There is little either the CSM or the players can do individually, but together… thats a different story. They are the tip of the spear, but we need to provide the heft.
We as players should not expect the CSM (as passionate and smart as they are) to break their hearts over this and we absolutely should not sit in judgment over any perceived “failure” on their part, especially without us getting off our arses and being involved.
Now we get to the tricky bit – how the sam hill do I make even a small difference?
Individually, I’m not sure we can. But we can do this: if the CSM asks for the player base to do something – do it. Do it right, do it smart, and above all, do it in numbers.
Be ready.
H
Aggressive Logistics 
I guess the major question I have is what if we don’t agree with some of the things the CSM is trying to do?
Keeping CCP’s feet to the fire for bug fixes? Of course. CCP knows that’s an issue, too. This is where CSM can apply pressure.
However, from what I’ve read, they think they can drive game direction. It’s only a handful of people. Granted, they are some of the best to represent the community, but that doesn’t preclude them from making bad judgements on what the community wants changed or what percentage wants a given change.
A lot of the bitching and moaning coming from CSM seems to be from not being able to drive game direction. They also want game data which would give a strategic advantage to anyone who knows it before the economic reports. Even if they do get that PI data ahead of the rest of us, are we to trust the few CSM will make proper judgments and recommendations to CCP?
I think that’s also what CCP wonders and thus they are only playing lip service to them in several areas.
Morphisat make some very good points and links to the three blogs that are most important.
http://www.sobaseki.com/wordpress/2010/07/01/csm-5-disapproval/
Everyone has an agenda though. Thats human nature. I have no problem with the CSM pushing things forward at a broader level as CCP will make the fine tuning (and final) decisions in any case.
Take lag for example – we all know it needs fixing (the UI is another obvious one). If you throw as much anti-lag computing power as is humanly possible, we humans will find a way to use it all up again.
You can’t fix this in isolation. It also has to be coupled with behavioural changes. Fixes to faction warfare, low sec, redistribution of resources, agent mission locations will all help move the player base out and away from the hot spots.
CCP appears to be saying to the CSM at the moment, great ideas people! But we’re not going to fix ANY of that.
As a rough analogy, it seems like they’re more interested in buying fluffy dice and new car seat covers, than changing the oil and brake pads and replacing the flat tyres.
I just REALLY hope I’m wrong.
H
P.S I’m still unsure about the PI data. I suspect we haven’t seen a major uptake… and the extent of it won’t be known until next major war when POSes get skittled enmasse.
That said, I agree with you for two reasons 1/. If Tyrannis has been a real failure in uptake CCP does not need the negative publicity and 2/. any data going out to the player base unecessarily will definitely skew the markets. Just look at RL stockmarkets when investors loose confidence…