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[Desiderya]

Hasn't Hilmar said that in an interview?

Eurogamer: The Council of Stellar Management [CSM] has been increasingly vocal and rebellious in recent months. What's your relationship with them like at the moment - your personal feelings and those of the company as a whole?

Hilmar Pétursson: The CSM has been under constant evolution based on what's going on in the current environment, what's going on with CCP and Eve, who's on the Council and all that. The CSM has helped greatly through the years in getting feedback for aspects of the game.

But some of my concerns right now relate to whether the CSM is maybe focused on a particular aspect of the game and I'm starting to get feedback from players that they worry the CSM is too pre-occupied by a certain playstyle. That might mean we may need to change the structure, but definitely the CSM has worked as a feedback tool greatly throughout the years. We will have them over at the end of the year, after everything that's gone on, and we will have a chance to talk about that. We'll just see where we are and take it from there.

[hellgremlin]

Milo, the problem with that is a group of people are midly dictating how others should play, or on what they should put their focus while ingame.

Gallente militia in particular has been succesful in their bonding process because they seek fighting partners, nothing more. Each  fleet fight brings people closer, and at some point the group can think of further cooperation.

I would approve if CCP assigned 1 person to a dedicated role of "pupeteer" controlling IC characters who would be grand admirals/generals/whatever that steered a sort of "campaign" goal with small in-game tokens (faction modules) in all militias. I think i've mentioned this overall scheme of long term campaigns before, just post 2-3 messages on the forum by a single NPC character and get the snowball rolling

If such model existed, with minimal maintenance, i bet some story driven content would be quite good in eve.

Trying to create some ridiculous "central command" for Caldari FW would be disastrous, as any such structure would find itself thoroughly infiltrated with spies and function as little more than a platter serving up fleets of nimrods for ambush.

[BloodBird]

That's what they said about the FDU's MDP pact as well. Didn't happen.

[Graelyn]

FW Commands: Bad idea.

That's basically trying to turn them into Alliances.

Amarr and Gallente seem to have our shit together as it is.

[Akrasjel Lanate]

Oh well... 

[Matariki Rain]

I'm actually finding CCP's responses to this promising.

Question: What would we want to see in the next CSM? Getting people aware of the politics and motivated to vote seems to matter. (Who'd have thought. ) Before we suggest throwing out the current system, or even modifying it, what could we do within that system to get a more balanced representation next time?

(I already have a default candidate--maybe two--in mind for my votes next time, by the way. Might want to start dialogues with the good ones to expand their awareness even more.)

[Alain Colcer]

Trying to create some ridiculous "central command" for Caldari FW would be disastrous, as any such structure would find itself thoroughly infiltrated with spies and function as little more than a platter serving up fleets of nimrods for ambush.

Slight misunderstanding there, as i might have expressed myself incorrectly, the "guy" representing central command (say caldari navy grand admiral), is a CCP employee in the content deparment.

Said employee uses an NPC char to post (just like Sansha plot just before incursions) and therefore gets the snowball rolling, there is no central command corp or channel per se, just general goals and aims in the FW militia of each empire given by the content department (go and attack X constellation this week).

On the other topic, the MDP worked well, but we knew it was full of spais (sometimes the spies were too blatantly obvious),  like any alliance chat, people just continue to use to do simple fleet organization but not for critical intel. Thats why the galmil is currently called a "rapid response group" in FW.

[Matariki Rain]

Slight misunderstanding there, as i might have expressed myself incorrectly, the "guy" representing central command (say caldari navy grand admiral), is a CCP employee in the content deparment.

Said employee uses an NPC char to post (just like Sansha plot just before incursions) and therefore gets the snowball rolling, there is no central command corp or channel per se, just general goals and aims in the FW militia of each empire given by the content department (go and attack X constellation this week).

Maybe I'm weird, but having been conditioned to play in the sandbox I now find the idea of having the gamemakers tell me what to do in that sandbox to be really unappealing. Does that mean we're just spear-carriers in some railroaded story? What if they suggest something dumb: do we go along with it because it has GM immunity? What does that do to our storytelling if we end up following or second-guessing the gamemakers?

That said, the idea of enough of us getting together to have A Plan that I can contribute to and see the results of appeals. Important work; people to do it with; visible progress with enough variability that the conditioning sticks...

[Alain Colcer]

my my, you sure are a hard bunch....

Ok, ill try to explain myself a bit more:

1) FW is inconsecuential in terms of storytelling, plot advancement and repercusions.
2) FW is just people in a perma-war fighting for e-peen and fun, nothing wrong

Let's try to tackle that together in a nice mix, throw in "campaign" mode:
Campaign mode is by definition vapor, it is not a mechanic ingame, it does not change wars, landscape, nor provide rewards (except if the task is epic perhaps?).

a) The conditions of the sandbox are not changed, people can do and will be able to do as they please, completely ignoring campaign mode.

b) Should i choose to try and follow campaign mode, actions ust need to moderately follow the goals proposed by the NPC actor from CCP content team.

c) NPC goals are specific and measurable, yet not set on rules on how to complete them.

d) Depending on the result, newsfeeds and very minor story telling happens.

End Result?: Players play for the e-peen of having accomplished something that reflects "lightly" ingame......has plot advancement, provides feedback content (content started by CCP and carried on by players) and gives additional reasons to fight for.

I for one, would welcome such an addition.

The above could well apply to pirate factions, making the concept of FW for the minor factions much more interesting and not bound to "beacons", victory points or whatever other ingame limited mechanic a game designer can come up with.

[Bacchanalian]

Campaign mode people can still be hunted down and blown up to cause failure in their campaigns, yes?  If so, whatever, sure, don't waste too much time developing it but sure.

[orange]

Campaign mode people can still be hunted down and blown up to cause failure in their campaigns, yes?  If so, whatever, sure, don't waste too much time developing it but sure.

As much as you anyone could shoot at those taking part in the Pre-Incursion Sansha events or FW plexes (so some restrictions based on plex size) - so yes.

As for development time, it is another use of existing tools (used for the already story events) and a similar number of developers.  IE all the code development is complete, it is just story that needs direction/work.

Bruno and I are talking about the same idea.  FW has the potential to be a CCP-controlled, player influenced story dynamic.  Null-sec should be all about player conflict/story and is to a large extent, I think.

Another option is for CCP to utilize the Incursion mechanics to also focus the warzones a bit; providing 3-4 constellations of conflict for the militia's to fight over.  Instead of shifting randomly when defeated, it opens up the adjacent enemy constellations to conquest.   Have owned constellations provide members bonuses to ratting, exploration, mining, etc to the owning faction.  Just ideas....

[Graelyn]

Ok, the 'Admiral' idea is not so bad at all.

Hell, that would be somewhat like certain event arcs back in the day.

"Go deal with this area, we'll check on your progress in a few weeks. Good luck."

[Alain Colcer]

Campaign mode people can still be hunted down and blown up to cause failure in their campaigns, yes?  If so, whatever, sure, don't waste too much time developing it but sure.

As much as you anyone could shoot at those taking part in the Pre-Incursion Sansha events or FW plexes (so some restrictions based on plex size) - so yes.

As for development time, it is another use of existing tools (used for the already story events) and a similar number of developers.  IE all the code development is complete, it is just story that needs direction/work.

Bruno and I are talking about the same idea.  FW has the potential to be a CCP-controlled, player influenced story dynamic.  Null-sec should be all about player conflict/story and is to a large extent, I think.

+1

On the concept of re-using incursion mechanics, not so sure i agree, cause features that can be min/maxed go against the overall concept of a "campaign".

And frankly, Graelyn resumed the whole concept to 3 lines much better than i could have imagined 

It is a very simple, low maintenance approach to give content to players that can result in storytelling, reversing the "stagnation" feeling that FW currently suffers.

[Lyn Farel]

With what you said, Jade.

Thinking of going Fanfest try to confront CCP on the open mic to say the CSM does not represent the players, but represents nullsec players, and all that jazz about FWers wanting nothing to do with nullsec.

Oh DO EEET please. >

The CSM needs a serious kick in the ass.

[tarunik]

With what you said, Jade.

Thinking of going Fanfest try to confront CCP on the open mic to say the CSM does not represent the players, but represents nullsec players, and all that jazz about FWers wanting nothing to do with nullsec.

Oh DO EEET please. >

The CSM needs a serious kick in the ass.

Agreed, a good chunk of them do, starting with Mittens ofc.