Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => General Non-RP EVE Discussion => Topic started by: Casiella on 07 Jul 2010, 12:45
-
CCP removes Ankh (http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=3979&tid=1):
Today Eva "Ankhesentapemkah" Jobse was removed from the Council of Stellar Management due to a breach of the non-disclosure agreement (NDA). We are deeply saddened but feel that it was the only possible solution in order to protect the integrity of the Council of Stellar Management. As this is a matter regarding confidential data we do consider this to be a private issue between Eva and CCP, therefore we are unable to comment further.
An EVE discussion thread (http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1349635&page=3) is also available. DV indicates the offense occurred prior to CSM 5, but hasn't specified anything further right now.
-
Heard it got something to do with a (blog) article about lag in which she spoke about some of the inner workings that shouldn't be revealed. Got told that over vent so no sources to quote.
-
I don't believe that's correct. The blog article doesn't say anything that devs haven't discussed in the past (dynamic node re-allocation and jump lag on the jump out rather than in).
Dierdra Vaal stated that it had to do with something pre-CSM5, and I have heard from another knowledgeable source that it was bad but not the sort of thing that Larkonis pulled.
-
It is all rumors now.
At the rumor Myrhial refers to has already been stated false by Nyphur and Sokratesz (http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1349635&page=1#24), none the less.
-
The fact that she works for a browser game development house could be interesting, but I suspect it's a red herring. Still, I'm digging as hard as I can. Any info would be hot.
-
The why of it aside, I can't say that I am unhappy she is out.
I didn't like the majority of her ideas, and found those things of hers that I read to largely be annoying.
-
The why of it aside, I can't say that I am unhappy she is out.
I didn't like the majority of her ideas, and found those things of hers that I read to largely be annoying.
agreed, she was a carebear extreme.
we're better off without her
-
[mod]Please be careful when posting on this topic, and avoid personal attacks[/mod]
I am surprised and also a bit baffled.
-
Had a suspicion it migth end up like this.
-
CSM is a dumb experiment to begin with.
Having made it a popularity contest is the real source of the issue. You're not electing people that you think will represent you well, you're electing your friends and corpmates and so on.
More importantly: You're not electing anyone that knows fuck all about Game Design.
And that is the crux of the matter.
-
Bye bye, CSM Rep who I disliked the most.
EDIT:
While Ankh's backstep off the edge of the pool of the NDA appears to have come close behind her swan dive off the cliffs of (IMO) acceptable social behavior, and even though I believe that the CSM is considerably enriched by her re-discovery of private life, I still must question the behavior of CCP in regards to sending her off.
Simply hushing up and saying nothing does not increase the credibility of the company and the CSM, or create trust in the player-base.
And I'm just the tiniest bit sorry to see someone willing to yell at CCP go, TBH.
-
Wonder if it has something to do with her real life political carreer as well. She was on the voting list for the pirate party this year. While nothing to do with EVE pirates I did giggle at the irony :lol:
-
Hushing up what? What exactly she did?
CCP is acting responsibly there, in my opinion. You don't talk about why you dismiss someone, even a volunteer, except in the broadest terms.
-
Especially when what you're dismissing them for is revealing confidential information. Talking about it makes the place where the leak occurred that much easier to find, if it's made its way onto the web.
Sorta defeats the point, you know?
Have to agree with Silver: CCP's done fine, here. Or as "fine" as was possible under the circumstances; any time you say "We can't talk about it," somebody's sure to scream "COVER-UP!"
-
I disagree. Not in that they didn't specify what was disclosed, but rather that they clearly say what it wasn't: that had to be explained by the CSM and so forth. It wouldn't have been any more difficult to say "...this is not related to any of the recent CSM meetings or publicity" or something similar.
It's not enough to be factual in cases like this, you need to be as specific and open as you can be, if only to eliminate as much doubt as possible.
-
I'm of the "CSM is a privilege not a right" school of thought. Therefore I really don't subscribe to the argument that some people make that CCP are obligated to give us more information (that hasn't been said here, but it has come up elsewhere).
That said, the CSM is an exercise in PR. And if CCP want good PR they probably should give us some information. Personally, if I was CCP, I'd have a meeting with the remaining CSM, give them the reasons, and let it roll from there. Admittedly, it's still very early days.
I think a big part of the response we're seeing here is the typical CCP moaning from a subset of the player base. The "them and us" attitude that seems to permeate Eve. My take on this is that CCP are a business, they want to make money, and they are not out to piss us off.
Minor aside:
People repeatedly complain that CCP aren't listening to their customers by introducing new shinies before fixing lag etc. This is the common argument made on SHC and co: we are the players, we know all, listen to us, fix lag first. Eve is a pvp game they say.
Well... erm... not necessarily. Eve is a service sold to customers. If there is evidence that 1337 pvpers make up the majority of customers, then I'll eat my hat. I think CCP have their priorities just right: most players are probably carebears or casual pvpers who barely log on.
-
I don't think anyone is arguing that any of us has a right to anything from CCP. I'm personally speaking from the standpoint of what is good PR, not just efficient action.
The more you inform and involve your customers, however, the more comfortable they are in buying your product.
-
I agree with Vik here. Clearly, CCP has no obligation to tell us anything more than they have. That said, I would believe that they would do themselves a PR favor by adding a small amount of detail. Ankh is an individual with a point of view and a voice, albeit controversial, and if she uses those in the near future to tell her side of the story and dispute the sparse facts in CCP's announcement, that will work against them.
Given that we don't know at this time the nature of the actual incident, though, we don't know what other exacerbating circumstances prevent them from commenting. Perhaps they will take legal action, or perhaps the incident has to do with internal personnel issues. I don't want to speculate here, just to point out that they really could have legitimate reasons not to comment further publicly. I want to believe that this is the reason they are saying so much less right now than they did in Larkonis' case.
-
That said, I would believe that they would do themselves a PR favor by adding a small amount of detail.
Therein lies the problems with speculation. You don't know what it is, so you make the assumption that it is better that we know. Whereas that could be the furthest thing from the truth, be it CCP or Ankh (or her employer) that gets screwed by it.
Your belief has no foundation, other than the rather longstanding misconception that John Q. Public has that "open transparency" is a good thing all the time.
-
Actually, the belief that CCP could stand to be a bit more transparent in these matters largely arises from some very notable occasions when they have not been - and should have been - more transparent, as they have admitted. Therefore, our statements are based on logical extrapolation of CCP's typical mode of operation: it is possible that they are better off in this case by keeping it as quiet as possible, but unlikely.
-
Hindsight is 20/20.
-
On one hand, I want to give CCP the benefit of the doubt. They've come a long way on fairness and transparency in the last few years, and I salute them for that.
On the other, I have personally witnessed some pretty shady shit at CCP from behind the NDA curtain and the resulting cover-ups. I can't just forget that. It leaves me feeling conflicted.
So I guess I'll wait and see if any hard facts come out. :s
-
Damned if they do, damned if they don't. Either way, cranky people will find a reason to bitch.
-
For some reason or other, I don't really care that much.
-
For some reason or other, I don't really care that much.
I find it hard to care because I realize that CSM is a joke and can't really be taken seriously. Perhaps if they went the way SOE and other companies do and actually hand-picked the representatives as compared to a silly popularity contest. . .
Even then it would be tough to take it seriously, but I'd take it more seriously than I do now.
-
We have had CCP hand-picked representatives before. I believe it was called MSN Messenger. Also, any idea that it works in the EVE of today is ridiculous. With the amount of metagaming and the afterglow of some actual shady stuff still present, people would be making threadnoughts titled T20 (despite that he's currently an APB dev, no longer at CCP).
The only problem with the system is that the voting percentage as a whole needs to go up before "democracy" works, as currently the amount of votes required to get through is about the size of a common alliance plus alts, should someone get serious about it. The perceived lack of power in the CSM does likely stop this at an alliance scale, though power blocks still have enough numbers to have "their" candidates thru even with ridiculously low voting activity. (I assume that the most visible clue of organized voting would be the high voting activity in Serbia - most of which would likely be from Vuk Lau's corp and/or immediate Serbian community close to it. Of course, this is just a guess)
The problems are thus about the same as in "real" politics. You get the career politicians and the celebrity candidates as well as people who just don't have a clue. Of these, the career politicians (powerblock-backed candidates) and some celebrities (if Chribba was a candidate, what would happen?) get thru.
Edit: Oh, hi:
"During this time, the media company Submarine took an interest in EVE Online for the documentary they were making, "Another Perfect World". They approached me, and accompanied me to Iceland. Later on, I assisted Submarine with the development of their documentary, providing them with valuable footage"
Quoting from her Portfolio Website, during her time as previous CSM candidate
Source: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1349635&page=10#295 (http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1349635&page=10#295)
Quite unlikely to be the reason, though, but depending on circumstances (whether CCP was involved from the start or not), may set a precedent.
-
The problems are thus about the same as in "real" politics. You get the career politicians and the celebrity candidates as well as people who just don't have a clue. Of these, the career politicians (powerblock-backed candidates) and some celebrities (if Chribba was a candidate, what would happen?) get thru
I'm not exactly a democratic-oriented individual, so I would suggest this is why it's bad. The people who want to get elected are the ones who are the least capable of doing the job properly, those who could do it properly either don't want to get involved, or haven't got a shot in hell.
So as long as it remains a popularity contest, it will be utterly powerless and pointless, because CCP -- RIGHTFULLY -- will disregard the vast majority of what it says because it is bullshit that has no understanding of how all of the systems actually work, and not even from the coding level. Not many nullseccers have the slightest fucking idea how things feel balance-wise or fun-wise for a highsec player, carebear or not, and highsec players don't often have the slightest idea how things feel balance-wise or fun-wise for someone in nullsec.
And thusly any suggestions they have would only take into account half the player base at any given time.
Yay for popularity contests not electing people with any understanding of game design.
-
Having made it a popularity contest is the real source of the issue.
Welcome to why unmitigated democracy fails!
Also that I have more than 1 vote and yet am one person is also fail.
Oh and CSM have no actual capacity other than the basic to effect anything other than simple capacity everyone has to make suggestions and requests to CCP. As with many choices CCP makes I feel it’s a monumental waste of time and effort that should be spent fixing the mechanics of the game. Lots of work to do, why dick around with CSM.
Anyway Anhk failing miserably was previously called on pretty much every EVE related forum I browse.
I voted all my accounts for the one person who was closest to my views, and by closest I mean was 54% and that is pretty pathetic that 54% was the closest. It was not Anhk, though the trash talking made me consider throws a couple of my vote to the Anhk button. But with 54% being the best match, well clearly I’m an odd ball or something compared to those who feel the need to campaign for CSM. Maybe I’m at odds with the general game populace too. >_<
-
Oh and CSM have no actual capacity other than the basic to effect anything other than simple capacity everyone has to make suggestions and requests to CCP. As with many choices CCP makes I feel it’s a monumental waste of time and effort that should be spent fixing the mechanics of the game. Lots of work to do, why dick around with CSM.
Two quibbles:
1. Just because it's a public relations stunt doesn't make it unimportant. The CSM was conceived in the midst of massive scandal and widespread distrust; its existence provides the players someone who can at least exercise a wee bit of oversight-- even if it's mostly illusory.
The real importance of it is that providing players the impression that they have people pulling for them and keeping an eye on CCP to prevent game-manipulating shenanigans, so as to prevent player dissatisfaction from turning into player revolt (otherwise known as canceling subscriptions and stomping off to play Star Trek Online).
2. Fixing mechanics is not an "if you're doing anything else, you're not doing this" sort of problem. Nor is it the sort of thing you can handle just by assigning your whole damn staff to it (this results in "fixers" tripping over each others' feet; too many cooks in the kitchen).
That said, it does seem like CCP could stand to dedicate a team to stuff like, oh, say, fixing rockets. I don't grok how they managed to leave that problem in place for so long, but I'm pretty sure the people they would have used weren't assigned to do the CSM stuff (more likely they were assigned to planetary interaction).
Or did they fix those when I wasn't looking?
-
No, Rockets still suck ass.
But with 54% being the best match, well clearly I’m an odd ball or something compared to those who feel the need to campaign for CSM.
Your oddity notwithstanding, I didn't like any of the candidates.
-
I didn't really vote based on views matching. That is, I wanted somebody to see EVE reasonably close to how I do, but the ability to communicate and cooperate mattered at least as much.
So, for the last two elections, I've supported TeaDaze. Happy with my choice.
-
I will be running for CSM next year. 8)
-
You have my vote.
-
And My BICYCLE!
-
And MY Trout!
-
And My Back-Alley Services!
OT: Can't say I'm sad about the news. Never cared about Ankh's ideas and/or whining.
-
After having read the meeting minutes, it is fairly obvious that Ankh is in game design, as her presentation was the only one that seemed to have all of its ducks in a row based on the breakdown of topics. The rest had the action points of "CSM Will collect X information and submit to CCP" where "X Information" is shit they should have had to begin with.
And also why CSM is useless.
-
Trebor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Woodhead) is/was also in the game business. His platform was good, but ultimately might be outside the scope of the CSM as well as being something CCP well knows, but with no new answers to the problem (break up blobs). Haven't read the minutes of regular CSM meetings to see if he has a clue on EVE.
-
From what I read his presentation was very good but had no answers, only "These are all problems that need to be addressed", and didn't appear (the minutes weren't incredibly detailed) to have a good list of what balance issues were really major issues.
-
I don't expect the CSM to have real answers, other than maybe a pass at an idea. They don't have to be professional game developers, of course, any more than we need to be professional SF writers to know that The Empyrean Age was a steaming turd. The real value in thinking about solutions is to prevent unadulterated whinefests without having given serious thought to the causes of the problem. For the most part, CSMs strike me as having given problems the thought they deserve.
Stakeholders should provide input on general direction and validation of plans, not specific and overly detailed design docs.