Would a CSM style council be something that would positively benefit ESO?

It's pretty clear that the most recent patch notes (3.0.0) has been met with less than warm reception. Almost all players were in favour of a nerf in sustain, but opinions vary to which extent.


What is/are CSM?
First I have to explain what the CSM is. CSM stands for "Council of Stellar Management", and comes from an initiative from CCP in their MMO, EVE Online. Players (democratically) elect other players to represent us at a peak level, interacting directly with ZOS. A Student Representative Council is an easy analogy.

CSM members have direct and frequent communication with CCP Developers, working with CCP to bring attention to key areas that need either reworking, and are CCP's first point of contact when it comes to discussing / implementing their vision for the future.

Over the years the CSM in EVE has undergone a few iterations, particularly post Incarna, each iteration the lesson is the importance of using player representatives as both consultants and advisers.

http://cdn1.eveonline.com/community/csm/CSM-WHITEPAPER.pdf

The white paper is particularly a good read on the benefits, responsibilities, and function of a CSM council. I highly recommend reading it.

Taken straight from CCP's intention for the CSM:
Generally, CCP wants to work with the Council of Stellar Management in 3 major ways:

Getting feedback on EVE development priorities and long term roadmap

Discussing ideas, theory and design approaches for potential EVE Online features

Getting feedback on features in active development

These points are expanded on in the community url from here: https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/


Why do we need a CSM style council - what is wrong with current feedback methods & channels? What would be addressed with one?

There is nothing inherently wrong with how things are done currently - dozens of other competitor MMO's do the same as ESO - publish changes late in the dev cycle and see how much the forums meltdown. Often when the changes are very negatively perceived, it's either too late to make changes, or there's a big delay as things are changed even further. Reworking changes late in the dev cycle wastes Dev time that can be better utilised. A CSM, just as it has in EVE, helps to alleviate this by advising CCP early on in their dev cycle on proposed changes, tweaking them before they move further down the pipeline, from the end user perspective.

The end user perspective is an important distinction, for as while ZOS may have all the pre/post change data, datasets from the wild are A: Inherently skewed by only including players who remain, and B: Changes need to be released into a live environment! Any change can look good if there's a shift in the meta and players adapt, but if players quit because of the change, where is their impact? Re-recruiting players can be hard, negative word-of-mouth is very damaging, it doesn't take much to break a game (SWG).

Secondly, imagine walking into a to a crowd, where 100 people are yelling at you simultaneously, each with an issue. Some of these issues overlap or are similar enough that they can be clumped together (say 30/100) but due to the noise of the other 70, the issue may not reach the ears of whom it needs to with the right gravitas. A player elected council reduces noise, making it easier for ZOS to understand and get a handle on issues.

Players on the forums are the most vocal - it's true. There's a lot of players who don't care enough to try and improve things, simply jumping ship when their fun ends. There are players who just lurk, rarely voicing an opinion. Just as we elect people in real life to protect or further our best interests, so to do CSM representatives. This addresses the quiet majority (players who care about the game, but might not regularly post or be notorious players), as an election is a one time affair, people will take the time to elect the individual they believe to represent their interests the best.

A CSM Member has a unique distinction of being a player involved in the development cycle - this is markedly different from a developer who plays the game, or someone who is paid to do so. A developer may see a mechanic as "this mechanic is this way because reason", whereas a player may say "this mechanic is / isn't fun because reason." CSM members allow the gap to be bridged between players and developers by offering unique insight from a player perspective.

It isn't uncommon to hear of the upper echelons of our community have sat in TS and spoken or played with devs, they do play ESO, those player guilds often are a very small slice of our community, in a very small timeframe. There is no continued or static influencing, feedback, consulting, or advising outside of an adhoc basis. An effective CSM is a continual communication between the representatives and developers on coordinating an effective and positive implementation of future changes and content.

There is (IMHO) only positive things that can come from top level player interaction and guidance on the health of ESO. We already have 'influencers' in the form of streamers, or more notorious players, where what they say and create can have an impact on the development direction of ESO. Unfortunately, while these players are able to influence, albeit slightly, the direction of ESO, the lack of an official unified player front presents both a missed opportunity for ZOS to create a better product, for for players to get a better game than they had yesterday, and frankly, it's a better way for us as players to be heard, than through the mass communication that is both the forums and social media.



What are the challenges that can face our CSM?

One of the common issues that you hear in the CSM is gerrymandering by alliances in EVE - simply put with a large player base everyone votes for the guy from their alliance. ESO fortunately is a different beast than EVE, as there are no alliances or excessively large player organisations - the number of guilds that have an active member base more than 500 are tiny, if not non-existant outside of trade guilds.

This issue can be extended to "How do we know whom to vote for?" - players often have their own renown. I personally never do trials as that isn't my interest, but I have been carried by, and by extension know some excellent PVErs and have ties to their guilds. Some players have their reputation precede them. Commonly people who wish to be elected campaign on a platform, and that's the point of a CSM - to bring existing issues to the fore, and to safeguard interests of their electors in the future.

Being mere figureheads is another key challenge - if this were to be earnestly implemented, it needs to be more than just a token fashion. ZOS would need to treat these player representatives as equals, the same as a business partner or hired consultant - if they advise you on something and they give you a good reason to do so, it's bad for business to not do it. The early EVE CSM suffered from this, to CCP's detriment, there are interviews of CCP's CEO speaking about this fact (search EVE Online Incarna).



If we were to do it, how would we do it?


Imitation is probably the easiest starting point - CCP have gone through and done much of the hard work when it comes to establishing a player council.

9 representatives, voted for by players wholly. If there's a framework built to accommodate voting, players will do the rest. As long as players can nominate themselves, and there is a place for them to demonstrate their platform and experience on the forums, with a voting mechanism to accommodate, at the end of the elections we should have our representatives. People are inventive.

Annual elections held on the ESO Website / Forum (The actual voting mechanism could even be conducted ingame). Timeframe is generally 30 days for CSM

Face to face council visits with top level developers as a council, covering both the short term and longer term roadmap, bi-annually, at the start of the term and half way.

Direct and consistent communication with the developers, regarding current issues, current implementation and execution of previous development.



Conclusion

There isn't much to say other than let this be the first vote towards whether we should have a player council!