Greedy Goblin

Friday, December 18, 2015

Gevlon Goblin for CSMXI


The CSM is in horrible state.
  • Members leak
  • They represent big null powerblocks who game the election with spy candidates (Ali Aras, Corbexx...)
  • They openly feud to the point where Endie called another member a Nazi war criminal
  • They lost the trust of CCP
  • Players barely vote since it's clear the CSM isn't representing them
  • The final straw was member Sion suggesting them to get control over which player can talk to CCP by special forums where CSM decides who can post to CCP and what
The ultimate problem: EVE is a competitive (PvP) game, where groups of players fight each other. Each player is biased for his playstyle and make suggestions that are directly conflicting with the interests of other player groups: for example miners want harder ganking while gankers want easier. Being well-informed and experienced in the game makes no one a good advisor to CCP, it makes him a dangerous snake who will influence devs to cater to his group at the expense of other groups. My thoughts are about helping highsec groups and groups like MoA while directly hurting Goons. For me as player, that's completely fair. For me as CSM member, that's a clear abuse of my position as I must serve the whole playerbase which include Goons. The only way for me to be unbiased is to keep my mouth shut. Same for everyone else.

So I call all players to boycott the CSMXI election! This obviously means not to vote for me either! My candidacy is only to be able to speak in CSM election forums, participate in CSM candidate interviews and such. If enough trolls vote for me to be elected, I solemnly swear to be completely inactive on the CSMXI until removed and will never offer my biased crap to CCP.

My idea is that if enough people take my advice and vote for nobody, CSM will be shut down and CCP will only listen to devs. While they will have their shortcomings and mistakes (who doesn't), at least they will be unbiased and genuinely interested in the long-term survival of the game.

Vote for the end of CSM! Vote for nobody!



Official forum campaign thread.


PS: There was a battle between MoA in T1 dessies and 2x more Goons in titan, carriers, pirate battleships, T3 dessies, cruisers. Guess who won! Any questions left who are the most elite group in Nullsec?

38 comments:

Anonymous said...

"My thoughts are about helping highsec groups and groups like MoA while directly hurting Goons. For me as player, that's completely fair. For me as CSM member, that's a clear abuse of my position as I must serve the whole playerbase which include Goons. The only way for me to be unbiased is to keep my mouth shut"

How does this differ from politicians and advisory groups in the real world?

you think a local right wing politician suddenly takes on board the concerns of immigrants and poor people and the unemployed if elected?

You think focus groups are unbiased?

Anonymous said...

Players already boycott the CSM vote, just unknowingly. If an organised boycott occurs then the same thing as always will happen; Goons will vote, Goons will win 3 or 4 seats. PL will vote, PL will win 2 or 3 seats. The russians will vote, win 1 seat and so on.

Gevlon said...

In real life we have to go with democracy do to the lack of "wise leaders". In EVE we have devs who are "gods". We can trust in them.

I'd love to see a full Goon+PL+Russian CSM, as its obvious bias would make CCP shut it down. As long as all groups are represented and Goon+PL+Russian "just" dominate it, CCP listen to them.

Anonymous said...

I would not bet on CCP shutting down the CSM. No one shuts down democracy because of a lack of participation, except of those who should better not have the ability to do so in the first place (Nazis).
If CCP does shut down CSM, they would not do any better than before the CSM existed. Any CSM is better than no CSM, even a biased and abued CSM, will at least prevent some stupidity from CCP.

Amarr-Zon said...

I also don't think, that CCP will shut down the CSM so easy.
Even if only a small part of all (active) users (not accounts) votes - which only CCP can see, because they don't provide the numbers - there is an impression of democracy.

I think, the problem is, that CSM members can not be "forced" to be active. They simply can ignore anything CSM related after being elected. Sure, they won't be elected next time. But for this time, they're blocking a seat. All the discussions and decisions are made without them. Their opinions are not heard and so not considered.

In my opinion the CSM can handle different groups with different interests. If all members participate (somewhat regularly), they would have to talk about compromises.
And at the end, CCP decides. But for good (in terms of player-wishes) decisions they should hear multiple opinions. Maybe in such a discussion of 'pro or contra' there will come some new ideas to the devs. Like in a plain, old brainstorming with users.

@Gevlon
Maybe I'm a troll then, but I'd vote for you for CSM (see above: participating - yes; absolutely neutral - not needed).

Anonymous said...

My guess is that CCP will continue to cater to the big null power blocs whether there is a CSM or not. During Monocle Gate, the CEO said they listen to what people do not say. As long as subs stay up, I don't see CCP caring much about the CSM.

Anonymous said...

I was so happy about the title. Then I read the post. I think you could separate your personal opinion from the rest of your ideas. You could be a great High-Sec candidate, just promise to yourself that you will only fight goons ingame.

If I vote for you, is there a remote chance that you will be active and useful in the CSM instead?

Anonymous said...

why would you even pretend at neutrality?

i would vote for you with all my accounts no problem if you would simply participate

and by participate i do mean try and fuck the goons over while making the game better,for instance "0.0 is under populated,we could reduce the number of regions as Sion suggested last year,starting with Deklien. Off course all assets in those regions would be forfeit,and removed from the game. We should do it at tomorrows downtime."

And if CCP does it we can all laugh while hearing the lamentation of our enemies. :)


short version: you would make a good candidate,and no candidates are not impartial,and neither should you be impartial or even friends with goon candidates

Anonymous said...

http://www.stealthvape.co.uk/image/data/Mawsley/Vapefest/brewster2.jpg

Anonymous said...

"We can trust in them"

Unbelievable. I lack the words to describe my feelings about your naiv behaviour. The CSM was brought to life BECAUSE CCP was doing mistakes all around and even now they just go on pissing players off. Literally.

Tabletop Teacher said...

Wait... so you're saying players elected to the CSM to push their voters agenda, are in fact bad for pushing their voters agenda?

That's the kind of thinking I want in my CSM candidate. Gevlon, you've gotten my vote!

But wait... you're right! Clearly the best way to make sure players voices are heard, is to not participate in the mechanism by which players voices are heard! I don't know why no one thought of this sooner.

Clearly the devs who we trust to run our game for us, can't also be trusted to manage a player sounding board. No doubt they'd suffer serious legal ramifications for not agreeing to unreasonable CSM demands. And, as we've seen in the past, they are powerless to remove the corrupt CSM members.

maxim said...

Your blog - and overall Eve history - has been an excellent sandbox version of whatever is going on in actual reality.
For example, there is a very real trend in modern politics where people are democratically choosing to let go of their democratic powers.

Just wanted to get that out there :) Best of luck in returning the Gods of Eve to their rightful seat of power.

Gevlon said...

@First anon: What we know that big null powers control CSM. It is possible that they could keep their control without CSM. But then we lost nothing. The CSM has no value to us.

@08:28 anon: "promise myself" is a good way to prevent abuse of power. It worked every time in history.

@Next anon: you sound like The Mittani. Why don't you join Karmafleet?

@dobablo: indeed that movie gave me the idea

@Next anon: I don't trust devs. I merely trust them more than in Sion, Endie, Manfred and the rest of the fucks in CSM

@artificial scientist: our voice will never be heard on the CSM as its dominated by null powers. The best thing we can achieve is to make sure their voice is not heard either.

@maxim: indeed. People will realize that giving up their vote is a little price for taking the vote of the idiot who believes that lizzard men are controlling us via substances distributed in airplane exhausts.

Anonymous said...

Your first propose should be:

I will convince CCP to make the CSM vote an ingame mechanic. When the voting is up there will be notifications, mails, pop up windows and billboards all around New Eden. When you click on any of them there is a short explanation of the CSM and then links to the candidates and to the voting page.

This way maybe HS players will also vote.

Gevlon said...

The voting process wasn't complicated. If we bug people enough to just vote, they'll do that. Just vote for the first guy on the list. That would be quite an improvement.

Anonymous said...

"The voting process wasn't complicated."

Its not complicated to go to a place and put an X on a piece of paper. Many ppl dont bother with it. If you could do it from the comfort of your home, I think many more people would vote and not for the first Party on the list.

I think it would work similarly with the CSM. If I wasnt reading blogs I would have no idea about the CSM, I dont read reddit or eve news sites or the official site/forum. My friend who invited me to the game had no idea about CSM for 2 years, info just didnt went through.

Gevlon said...

These people are uncommitted enough to don't trust in their judgement. I mean if they can't be arsed to lift up their asses and go to place the X, the chances are high that they couldn't be arsed to gather information, discuss with people and contemplate over the options. They'd vote randomly or based on some triviality like "who has the friendliest face"

Anonymous said...

"chances are high that they couldn't be arsed to gather information, discuss with people and contemplate over the options"

Do you think the current voterbase (in EVE, in RL maybe a little more) does gather information, discuss with other people and contemplate over options? They get a ping from the ally leader to vote and they vote their own person without reading any of the official campaign threads (not even the one they vote for).

Tabletop Teacher said...

@artificial scientist: our voice will never be heard on the CSM as its dominated by null powers. The best thing we can achieve is to make sure their voice is not heard either.

Silencing a voice you don't agree with is not a victory of your idea. If that is your only option to win, then your arguments are not strong enough to begin with. And again... you trust CCP to manage EVE without a CSM, but you don't trust them to manage the CSM. Can you see the problem here?

Gevlon said...

@Artificial Scientist: my arguments have no chance to reach CCP, so their strength is irrelevant. My options are:
- Goons are heard and we're not
- No one is heard
The second is better

Managing EVE needs "nerdy" skills, mostly analyzing logs, seeing which ships or playstyles are overpowered. I trust they have these. Managing the CSM needs "people-skills", which they clearly lack.

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, the Gods that brought you T20, Incarna, Greed is good.

Tabletop Teacher said...

False dichotomy. You also have the option to create your own group, and indeed run for CSM. If your ideas have merit, people will vote for you.

It's also an unfounded assertion to say only Goon voices are heard. A quick look at the CSM summit notes show that all members of the CSM were allowed to voice their concerns. If your ideas have merit, CCP will listen to you.

Furthermore, the proposal put forward by the Goon CSM was 'killed'. Clearly, the idea wasn't good enough for them.

It also appears that CCP is hiring those with "people-skills" with their new Chief Customer Officer.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: on the other hand we have the CSM which trivialized nullsec. There is no "good" here, just bad and worse. I believe the Goon-dominated CSM is worse.

@Artific Scientist: CCP will never listen to me, regardless of merit of my statements as explicitly told by the community manager: http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/3f3p9m/gevlon_has_spoken_moa_better_than_blncpl_fighting/ctle0xm

Anonymous said...

I'd vote for Gevlon if he campaigned for social Corps in High Sec that are immune to wardecs but have no roles or functions (basically player named NPC corps).

A.K.

Anonymous said...

"@Artificial Scientist: my arguments have no chance to reach CCP, so their strength is irrelevant. My options are:
- Goons are heard and we're not
- No one is heard
The second is better"

Why do your arguments have no chance to reach CCP?

Your narrative says that only things goons want ever get done.

How does this sit with your support of Sugar Kyle, and the way that CCP say she is an excellent CSM member. Is she also a goon?

Secondly, the candidate rules state: "Because election winners will ultimately make appearances on EVE-TV, EON or other media, candidates must run under their real-life names, and may either create a new character or use an existing account name to give themselves an in-game identity."

Are you going to do this if you are a candidate?

Gevlon said...

No, Sugar worked very hard to reach minimal results. If you read her blog, you see how disillusioned she became recently, likely because of the little result on her huge work. She isn't running again, so the very last good member was lost.

Elizabeth Norn said...

Is there some kind of reason you pasted your face on an image of Donald Trump?

>They represent big null powerblocks

Which blocs do Sugar Kyle, Steve Ronuken and Mike Azariah represent?


>They openly feud to the point where Endie called another member a Nazi war criminal

How is this different from your posts against Goons? You also compare them to nazi war criminals.

>Being well-informed and experienced in the game makes no one a good advisor to CCP, it makes him a dangerous snake who will influence devs to cater to his group at the expense of other groups.

This is so, so wrong, people who have a lot of experience with the game often have a much better knowledge than individual CCP employees because they spend so much time playing the game they know the ins and out of it. Experienced players are able to present actual use cases of players and provide insight that CCP may have completely missed. CCP are not stupid, though they may make stupid decisions, they are not so easily manipulated. Have you even read the CSM minutes? CCP do not implement most of the ideas the CSM comes up with and often seem to ignore the CSM's criticisms of new features (Aegis Sov, Jump Fatigue and SP trading come to mind). I imagine if anyone was looking to push for changes that only benefited them then the other CSM members would shoot it down too, I'm sure that has happened.

>For me as CSM member, that's a clear abuse of my position

Trying to help or hurt specific groups because of allegiances or vendettas would be an abuse of your position, but suggesting ideas that would benefit your gameplay

>What we know that big null powers control CSM.

CCP control the CSM, they have the sole ability to appoint and remove players and they absolutely do not cater to the CSM's every whim, not by a long shot; a big complaint from CSM X is that CCP rarely listened to them.

>- No one is heard
>The second is better

No it's not, if CCP design in their own little echo without consulting people who play the game daily, the game will suffer for it. CCP know about their game, but the players know it better and they even admit that.

Also you know that you need to publish your real name to run for CSM right? If you refuse this then your topic will be closed. Though your topic will probably be closed any since you're not really running.

Gevlon said...

@Elizabeth:
- Because Trump is the best contemporary example why democracy is bad (most people don't remember of the 1933 Germany democratic elections)

- Sugar is the only good candidate I know. She burned out. Mike represents nobody, Steve represents third party devs

- It's not different. But I'm not an elected representative

- The increased anom count from the document of shame succeeded. They can be very much manipulated.

- Helping my group = hurting competing groups in a PvP game

- The proper way of getting player feedback is getting statistics. Not asking n dudes "did you like Bloody Omir" but checking how many went to his sites.

- I will check out the rules, what data should be submitted and to whom. However I fully informed my employer about my EVE stuff after the monument incident, since it becamse clear that Goons are ready to commit real world crimes against me. They know that if they suddenly get a bunch of mails claiming the worst nonsense, it's because of EVE.

Anonymous said...

If there is no option to vote directly against gewns, I'm going to vote for you as an anti-gewn vote.

I'll also vote for you alone, so nobody else will carry with my votes, and you can go on with whatever scheme you have planned (yes, I believe you have an ulterior motive, but there's nothing you can do worse than current CSM, so I can just let you go with it without hearing it first).

Elizabeth Norn said...

What statistics could have been gathered to fix the market quickbar reset button, adding multibuy/sell, the contract window setting to private if you type a name and the multitude of other QoL changes we've had?

nightgerbil said...

Shame your not willing to stand on a real platform. You actually have really good Ideas about the game and your "how to trade/mine/gank/anti-gank guides" are things I still link to newbies. Your pessimism about what you could achieve if you tried is our (the communties) loss.

Elizabeth Norn said...

Hmm, forgot to finish this sentence:-

Trying to help or hurt specific groups because of allegiances or vendettas would be an abuse of your position, but suggesting ideas that would benefit your gameplay is not necessarily a bad thing that will hurt your competing groups. Everyone was so sure that jump fatigue or Aegis sov would hurt Goons, while they only smugposted about it and now look at them, still king of the hill while many, many other alliances have died because of it.

Anonymous said...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/3xej7b/free_stunt_flores_for_christmas/

Gevlon said...

@Elizabeth: quality of life changes need no CSM, just a forum, as it needs no NDA, has no balance problems and can cause no bad PR.

@Nightgerbil: many tried to do that. Sugar did inhuman amount of work. All for nothing. The CSM is useless and dead, because of the reasons listed. The best idea about it is burning it.

@Elizabeth: Jump fatigue was clearly anti-PL and pro-Goon, directly aiming to enable carrier ratting. Aegis could hit them hard, but thanks to their CSM, the anom count was doubled, so they can rat more in their shrinked land than they could if they still had Fountain.

Tabletop Teacher said...

@Gevlon That reddit comment is evidence that CCP is already listening to you. In this case, one employee happens to not agree with you.

So which is it? Not heard or not agreeing with you?

Gevlon said...

He didn't express disagreement on any of my statement. He stated that he consider everything I say useless. Which is "not listening".

NoizyGamer said...

@Elizabeth - The disclosing your real name to run requirement was dropped beginning with CSM X.

@Gevlon - I can't speak for Sugar, but I get the impression CCP isn't the main reason Sugar is sounding frustrated lately.

To all of those posting ideas on how to make voting easier, I'll just leave with one note. That seems like a very un-Gevlon like thing to expect him to endorse. After all, that would just help the M&S crowd.

Anonymous said...

I don't vote or write forum posts.

look at past giants like SOE or Blizzard. the moment they start listening to their vocal minority the games turn shit. utterly shit!

Same with CCP. They are too braindead stupid! they guess and don't log and hire some statistics people to help them out to make any sense of it ... if they even bother.
Sure you need feedback .. but who ever thinks in their right mind that they will get good feedback from some openbeta weeks and the general playerbase. They just deserve to go bankrupt, fast!
Don't get me started on crowdfunding.