CSM XII

Once more it's time to vote for the CSM and this time around I really couldn't care less who gets in. As far as I know the outgoing CSM has been relatively drama-free which evidently equates to bad marketing. Mind you, I've pretty much drifted away from most of the meta surrounding EVE so probably wouldn't know if there had been drama.

I had a look at the list of candidates for CSM XII and the names were all pretty unfamiliar. Only seven of the 64 names rang any bells, and not all those seven were for good reasons. I turned to the wisdom of Rixx Javix to pick my names. I did swap Steve Ronuken to the top though.

If you haven't voted yet get your arse over to the voting page right now and bang in some names. Drama or not we players still want CCP to have access to players to use as sounding boards. Hopefully the quiet CSM XI shows CCP have learned how to leverage such a focus group without giving away too much information to be abused.

Vote CSM

In case you missed it in the EVE launcher we are currently in the middle of the voting period for CSM XI. I had been going to make some pithy post complaining about my lack of care for the CSM this time and selling my votes for ISK. I decided that with two friends running for CSM that would be somewhat disingenuous of me. I do actually care about at least two slots on the CSM so I should use my votes accordingly.

Somewhere I read that the official Goonswarm voting list is designed to screw the CSM. As weak a voice as the CSM has I think that's a pretty dumb thing to do. If you have a realistic view of what the CSM is, a focus group, then you realise that they shouldn't be expected to 'achieve' anything other than be a useful and representative focus group for the majority of players. Hopefully as many Goon members will follow the voting regime dictated to them as pledged to the Goons' Kickstarter campaign. That leaves the vast majority to vote for the good of the game.

If you have no idea how to vote I recommend Nashh Kadavr, Brodit and Steve Ronuken at the top. Beyond that try Rixx Javix's recommendations for further inspiration. Most importantly though, go vote now.

Brodit for CSM

Brodit joined my alliance in the winter of 2012. He came in through our then training corp, spent a few months there learning the ropes and then moved up to my corp. He's probably one of the few people where that progression actually worked as intended. In 2013 I met the man and his wife at a little "boutique meetup" I organised. Seven EVE players turned up for a sit down meal and some polite drinks. Since then Brodit has been to all but two of the EVE meetups I've been at and he's been to plenty I didn't go to. He's been to several Fanfests and it was he who knew the good places to go when a number of my alliance first went in 2013. Brodit is not running for the CSM on a specific platform. He doesn't intend to filter people out based on high/low/null/wormhole residence. If you play EVE and want to talk to a CSM member about any issue, Brodit is aiming to be the de facto choice for everyone.

For the entire time I've played EVE with Brodit it has been pretty clear that EVE has a special place in his heart. Nothing in the game seems to get him down. Anyone who reads my blog knows I am proud to consider the corp a generalist corp within the confines of wormholes. Brodit is the epitome of how we live in Zero. He's pretty much up for anything. If he doesn't know how to do it he'll listen and learn or go find out what the craic is.

I saw a comment in the forums which is trying to pigeon-hole him as a wormhole resident and miner with little to no PvP experience. While he might be a little crazy he certainly isn't nuts enough to be much of a miner in wormhole space. If there's a PvP fleet to be had Brodit is there. I've found him in nullsec with us, lowsec, yes some mining, site running, he's also the main man when it comes to planning our switch to self-built citadels. There's no part of the game he seems uninterested in.

As a genuinely nice guy I have no idea why the hell he wants to run for the CSM. As I alluded to in my previous post I greatly view the CSM as a destructive force in an active player's EVE career. Brodit's a much nicer guy than we EVE players deserve as a representative, but if he really wants to get on the CSM I'll back him all the way. Even if a term on the CSM destroys his will to play it'll happen with a smile, and he'll probably be back three weeks later.

Nashh Kadavr for CSM

I've been aware of Nashh Kadavr in EVE for longer than I have been blogging. I used to read his blog a long time ago and was fortunate enough to head to his leaving party in 2012. At some point after that he came back to New Eden and took control of The Bastards, a corp which another friend of mine had close connections with. In the past 18 months events conspired to draw The Bastards and Illusion of Solitude closer together. I had the luck to get to know Nashh, first on Teamspeak as we agreed on some joint operations with both our alliances, followed by in person at Fanfest 2015. Nashh is running for CSM on the platform of Lowsec, eSports and Community Meetings.

As long as I've been aware of Nashh he's been a dirty pirate. Lowsec is often seen as an area left forgotten by the developers. Nullsec is seen considered the be-all and end-all of the game with all the development time focussed there. Given the length of time Nashh has in lowsec it's pretty clear he'll push the lowsec opinion across with the force it deserves. Why do I care? Well my alt, Geo, is a dirty pirate who flew with Nashh for over a year. Wormholes are my first love but I do like a bit of lowsec piratey shenanigans too you know. I definitely prefer that to the politicking metagame of nullsec.

The eSports aspect of EVE is something Nashh has been putting good time and effort into. In other games eSports is big business, you only have to look at the spectacle of some League of Legends tournaments to see that. EVE is sorely lagging behind in this aspect with only the annual Alliance Tournament well known. People also know that tournament has a high bar to gain entry with alliances spending tens of billions of ISK. This year we also had the Amarr succession trials and Nashh is part of a team which organises the successful #EVE_NT Collides tournament. If EVE is to make headway into the eSports arena properly we need more of these tournaments and this needs CCPs help to make happen.

The Community side of things is also something close to Nashh as he organises the twice-yearly #EVE_NT meetup in Nottingham. I went in November last year and had a great time. I was rather wasted by the end and spent a slightly sobering night trying to remember where my hotel was. In my opinion CCP are pretty good at supporting these events. I tried, unsuccessfully, to start a regular pub gathering in Edinburgh and CCP advertised my event and sent down some swag. Nashh is looking to push this further and make it even simpler for players to organise their own events. As far as I know EVE is pretty unique in the level of out of game gatherings players organise. Encouraging and facilitating people to start more of them can only lead to great things for all of us.

His platform aside, Nashh is a mental bag of energy who probably needs a term on the CSM to crush that energy from him. Everyone seems to come out the other side of a term serving in the CSM destroyed. If you vote for Nashh he should have the energy to last most, if not all, of the year without burning out. Hell, if this outgoing CSM is anything to go by he could be the only one left on it by 2017!

CSM everywhere I look

Once upon a time, when I was a freshly minted CEO, I had the privilege of having a member of the CSM within my corp's ranks. The venerable Trebor Daehdoow served four years on the CSM and still found time to play many of the various roles possible within New Eden. To us he was an industrialist, I believe in Dirt Nap Squad he scratched his PvP itch. Only he knows what other elements of the game he got up to. I was genuinely sad when he decided it was time to move on from Zero, not least because I lost someone I could make little comments to about problems with the game. I always hoped those problems would at least be considered to be aired in the direction of a dev or two. Since that day I have had only a tiny amount of direct interaction with a CSM member and that never amounted to much.

Many people either know nothing of the CSM or have been disillusioned by past and current CSM members. There's been allegations of insider knowledge being used to gain advantages, kick outs from inactivity, and the usual people just bitching that they don't think that the CSM is doing anything and encouraging others to bitch too. While I agree the current CSM hasn't been the model council we deserve I also don't believe nothing good came from them. At the very least it is important for CCP to have a sounding board to use to bounce controversial ideas off and get rapid early feedback. This hopefully prevents the rest of us being exposed to too many unexpectedly horrible changes.

Today I find myself in the presence of not one but two CSM hopefuls, Messrs. Nashh Kadavr and Brodit (of no surname) are both standing for election in the next CSM. I was going to write a single post covering both of them but it has grown far too long. In my next post I'll talk a bit about what I think is good about Nashh, and then follow that post with one about Brodit. Stay tuned.

CSM X

I meant to post about the CSM elections before the voting ended but life and some actually playing EVE got in the way. I hope you all voted. I took the lazy way out and followed the listing posted by Sugar Kyle. I enjoy reading her blog and believe her focus is on fixing the game in the best way possible rather than trying to eke out some edge for herself. I trust she picked candidates she thinks will align best with her beliefs so her list is likely better than anything my under-informed self could ever come up with.

To be honest I've felt somewhat underwhelmed by the CSM this past year. I can't entirely put my finger on why that is. There may be some element of feeling that CCP paid less attention to them than the past couple of CSMs. Hearing that they all cliqued up against their own member, Funky Bacon, was a negative against them too. That smacks of poor professionalism and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Anyway, their year is almost over. If the majority of people feel the same as I do then there will be a large changing of the guard for CSM X. Hopefully that will reset things and a better CCP:CSM relationship will be borne for 2015/16.

Wormhole Town Hall - 16 August

This evening at 22:00 GMT CSM member corbexx is running a wormhole town hall. CCP Fozzie has been confirmed to be attending. Read the forum post to keep up with any changing details.

If you care about wormholes and have the time to spare you should get yourself along to this. I think CCP already have a good idea of how we feel about the changes proposed for the Hyperion release but it does no harm to make sure.

Vote now for CSM 9

Have you voted for the people you would like to participate on the 9th Council of Stellar Management (CSM)? If you haven't, why not? There is less than a week to register your preferred candidates so go do it now. I consider voting a personal thing so I won't tell you who to vote for. If you are totally stuck you could do worse than checking out Jester's recommendation list and basing your choices from there.

I frequently see a lot of shit-posting about how the CSM do nothing for us. This generally comes from people who have very short memories, or people who consider the CSM is doing nothing because their particular area of the game isn't the one CCP are actively focussing on Right Now™. To those people I would ask you to consider the few crazy ideas CCP mull in public which we see the CSM actively address then consider how many other ideas are put to death long before we would see them.

The very nature of the CSM operating under NDA makes it difficult to appreciate what does and doesn't happen there. I am confident that if CCP thought the CSM did nothing useful they would stop flying the CSM members to Iceland for meetings and the whole CSM concept would go away.

VOTE NOW!!!

The folks over at the Crossing Zebras podcast have organised a Community Free For All event. The idea is to get all us bloggers, the podcasters and the CSM members in one system at the same time to kill us repeatedly.

Where: Asakai
When: Saturday 5th October, 2000
Eve Ships: Frigates, Destroyers and Cruisers (T1, T2, T3 all allowed – no ship or module restrictions)
Length: I have no idea – until we exhaust all local supplies of frigs, dessies and cruisers I would guess!
Channel: CZ Community FFA

This should be awesomely destructive fun and I really hope to make it there. I've posted something about awarding prizes inside my alliance for members who get themselves over there too. I just need to work out what prizes and whether or not to make them all based around deaths rather than kills.

Unrepresentative

The final result is in for The Mittani's punishment against his ill advised comments at fanfest. To limit the damage Mittens had already apologised to the victim, as he should have, and donated a significant sum of ISK to him as well. Additionally Mittens decided to step down from the position of CSM chairman with the intention of retaining an ordinary place on the CSM.

It appears this plan had failed to succeed to appease CCP. Yesterday CCP issued a statement that Mittens would be receiving a 30 day ban as per their Ts&Cs. As a result, Mittens would not be eligible to sit on CSM7 at all.

So, what does this mean for the CSM? Well, CCP and the CSM just lost one of the most successful CSM members to date. They have also just removed the single most popular candidate ever, regardless of behind the scenes machinations. Let's look at the numbers:

This CSM had the highest turnout of any CSM vote so far at 16.63%, which equates to 59,109 votes. Mittens himself received 10,058 votes which was more than double any other single candidate and around a quarter of the total successful votes. With Mittens' participation excised from CSM7 we might as well cancel out all ten thousand votes he received meaning a equivalent voter turnout of 13.8%.

This equivalent voter turn out is less than the turnout for the highly effective CSM6 but still more than the less effective CSM5. The main thing I understand from CSM5 is that they apparently built a solid foundation for CSM6 but did little else other than mass-resign. So, let's see if CSM7 has the player support to actually do something useful this term now that CCP has removed 23% of their influence. It will also now be interesting to see who takes the position of Chair - Two Step or Trebor.

Serious Internet Business

So there has been one hell of a shit storm kicked up in the aftermath of the Alliance Panel feature of Fanfest. The issue in question is that of a drunk Mittani's questionable content during his presentation, and the later suggestion that people may want to go grief a certain player into taking his own life.

There have been calls for Mittens to resign from the CSM, which he has offered to do but so far has not. These calls come both from the player base at large and also from a certain CSM alternate who almost wasn't (umadbro?). In my opinion this whole situation has been blown up to a ridiculous proportion for no particularly good reason other than pretend politicians politicking for their own perceived gain or players who think "Goons Are Evil" ™.

Now it was definitely wrong for Mittens to go down the route of naming this player and suggesting others go gank him to push him over the edge. It is questionable whether Mittens should have included the content at all, but this is the internet and people who air their private lives to people they don't know shouldn't really expect privacy. Mittens himself says being drunk is no excuse and he's correct. Traditionally throughout the drinking world more allowances are given to people who're inebriated unless someone has an ulterior motive to suggest otherwise.

Drunk or not,though, we do need to accept blame for stupid things we do. I bet nobody calling for Mittens' head on a stick can claim to have never ever done something stupid and hurtful to someone else, drunk or otherwise. To expect Mittens to resign off the back of this is somewhat hypocritical.

If you are one of these people calling for his resignation you need to ask whether you want him to resign because what he did is genuinely wrong (and you need to be sure you've never made such a mistake yourself - ever) or if you just want him to resign because he's the head Goon. If the former applies then is it really more harmful to the game to have him on the CSM considering the potential positive benefits he brings to the table? If the latter then you clearly don't actually care about Eve and are just looking to grief Mittens and are, thus, just as bad as the Goons themselves.

Just to be clear, I am not a Goon nor have I ever been one or plan on ever flying with them. I do not agree with their method of playing the game by ruining everyone else's game. I do find their antics amusing from time to time, even if they adversely affect me. I also did not spend any of my votes on Mittens, not that he would have needed them in any case.

What I do think is that Mittens has been good for the CSM and unlike a certain friend of mine I think the CSM does have a role to play in the future of Eve. If CCP use the CSM as a sounding board it is probably one of the most effective ways for CCP to determine if the next great feature idea is actually a great idea or yet another lemon. The big problem is the 'if' is not certain. What is certain is that CCP will not use the CSM if the CSM does not exist or is ineffective at what they are meant to do.

I'm going to leave this now but if you want a much better analysis of this whole issue then Jester has written a long post about this whole situation with even more links to more discussion.