A vote for Solar is a vote for YOU!

Council Of Stellar Management CSM Campaigns
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Hi there. I’m Solar Taranogas and I’m running for a seat on CSM. What makes me different from the rest of the field? I’m a nobody. I don’t stream, I don’t make Youtube videos (love watching them though, keep em coming Rhiload) and I’m not a player in the high level politics and intrigue that EVE is famous for. Essentially, I’m spending my time like most of you, pvp’ing, isking, trying not to get ganked in that Jita to Amarr corridor.

In the interests of full disclosure, I would characterize myself as a Null-Seccer who likes to play in Wormholes, although I think it would be fair to say that the reverse is equally true. I maintain some presence in High Sec as well.

I think past CSM attendees have been able to successfully represent the large alliance and meta-game point of view. I’m running for CSM because I believe that the CSM/CCP dialogue needs to more representative of the individual player experience.

I’ll touch on some of the ideas that I have about the direction I think EVE needs to go:

  1. Stop Ship and Module “Balance Passes”
    Players experience nerfing as counter-intuitive. You don’t see any RL group giving up some advantage in the interests of fairness for all. It seems silly to lose and gain fitting slots and for base abilities to be adjusted. Why not replace the practice of nerfing with gradual and occasionally dramatic improvements to technology like happens in RL. An actual “Arms Race” if you will.

  2. Quit Nerfing Bounties
    The problem they say is that a few players make too much isk. The solution is to penalize everyone. Why not create something for those space rich players to spend their isk (and to lose it).

  3. New Players
    Let me tell you. The new player experience starts with Aura and NPC Corp Chat. Both of which are enough to turn someone off from EVE. Do you think this might have a part to play in driving some of our new players away from the game? What if a new player was given the option of starting out with a player corporation? You could have the chance to pick a corp based on region and or language group. As well you could choose a corporation that was active in the style of game play that interests you as a player. Player corporations could apply to be on “intake” for say a week at a time, and there would have to be several corps available in order to give a good menu of choice for someone just starting EVE. The benefits to player corps are obvious, but I think potentially immense for new players as they would have an established group, invested in their future, guiding them through this complex and rich universe that is EVE.

These and other ideas are why I’m running for CSM. Best of luck to all the other candidates! And remember, A vote for Solar is a vote for YOU!

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I feel that the realism of balance is almost irrelevant compared to the importance of regular balance and adjustments with occasional new mechanics to shake up the meta. By keeping making smaller balance changes similar to those in the march release we will end up in an environment where there is lots of room for innovation and experimentation, which I find to be one of the most appealing parts of the eve sandbox. If there was an “arms race” style approach this would involve making dramatic changes to a large number of ships which would have the highest chance of issues and drastic meta shifts rather than just opening up more opportunity to create good, bad and surprising new fits. Large meta shifts would make keeping up with the current meta significantly harder and would likely take up a lot of dev/qa time, which I personally would rather see spent on new mechanics to add new options.

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I am Sol and I am harsh sometimes. You want to be a space politician, so you better deal with it.

What you want are “Jesus features” that impress people, usually people who are easily impressed. I have my doubts about you understanding why this exists and why game companies implement such features. I have zero doubt that you are, or were, on the receiving end of such features, though. Easily impressed.

By “understanding” I do not mean “knowing that it happens and works”. I mean “understanding why it is done, how it works and who it targets”.

Not only is it hard for developers to repeatedly come up with something impressive, in this context your idea also throws balance out of wack. Powercreep is a serious issue.

This one reads like a shill-post for incursioneers who already have more ISK they have use for beyond being mindless consumers, of course, which is exactly what you are suggesting: Feeding consumers who have too much ISK on their hand, including steathily wanting that they can keep gaining more of it.

Something actually interesting. The problem: Many CEOs of so called “new player friendly” corporations are bad. Like, really bad. Not exaggerating-bad, but horrible. Many, many people believe they can be leaders, but the vast majority of them simply are not. A great part of them also literally abuses new players by sucking the ISK out of their wallets.

This has been a thing since ever, but got worse thanks to the new recruitment UI, where new players specifically look for such corps. Thousands of these exist, and they can not all be quality checked. It is a good idea in theory, but has serious issues in practise.

You probably have good intentions (though #2 reeks of shilling) but the “ideas” are rather simplistic and not really well thought through. You would rather have “jesus features” that “wow” people for a while, until the next “jesus feature” has to come to, again, “wow” people. As this would be about ships, powercreep would become a problem eventually.

The current system we have now creates new FOTM every now and again, making sure that the primary tool for interaction with the game - the ship - feels fresh again after some time. Balance passes are not just balance passes, they also give people new things to tinker with. People invent new fittings, new fleet doctrines and new ways of abusing a ship not actually meant to be used that way.

You can argue that your idea would do the same, but your idea demands far more effort, over and over again, and it includes the serious risk of power creep.

One big mistake you make in your post is that you do not actually post ideas. You post the idea of an idea, but there is nothing behind it. Like, for example: Thought out examples of what you have in mind. That would also help you realizing early when your “idea” actually is none.

Have a nice day.

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Thanks for the feedback. Sol, you remind me of this guy I met once. He had been hit by lightning twice. I’m not sure what you mean by a Jesus feature, but In the interests of further disclosure, I haven’t run an incursion site since about 2012. I was thinking more about carrier ratting. I’m glad my thoughts around corp options for new players intrigues you. Before I get into that, I should say that when I wrote my post, I spent a few days wondering about how much detail I should go into, and then finally settled on “I’m running to be an advisor, not a developer”. I think it’s up to CCP to provide specifics, but CSM gives players a voice. Back to new players and corps. If I was developing it, I would make it so that a corp would make an application to take on new players, and new players would be able to rate their receiving corps at say two week and one month intervals. This rating would become visible over time and could factor into CCP accepting future applications to take new players and even new players might see it, much like you can see vendor ratings on Ebay for instance.

Zolka, point taken. Perhaps the near-term solution is to make micro-balance changes rather than dramatic nerfs. TBH, the carrier “balancing” that took place came across as CCP kiting people to invest in carrier training and the ships themselves and then pulling the rug out. I think the same thing happened with Rorquals and excavator drones last year. For me it boils down to the fact that ship rebalancing just seems counter-intuitive.

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What would the criteria be for a corp being selected to be on “intake” and who would make that decision?

Any player corp that applied to be on the intake list that isn’t already part of some established group is going to end up getting wardec’d.

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You know, I hadn’t thought of the wardec angle. My guess is that an intake corp would have to be immune to a war for the period of intake. I suspect to hit the major demographics of timezone, language and area of operation, there might have to be a couple dozen corps on intake at any one time. I would suggest that the period of intake be quite short, say for one week, to allow more corps the opportunity to take part. As for who makes the decision about what corps get an intake period and when… some sort of blind lottery system would have to be set up.

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So essentially, an NPC Corp.

Wouldn’t it be better to just scrap all of the different starter corps, and instead, push for CCP to have a single ‘Capsuleer Training School’ that all new players start in, then have the ISDs and other players be able to join that Corp to help new players along.

Making player owned corps immune from war, makes it possible to establish 100% asset safety for anything located in highsec (even if the Corp is located also in nullsec). 100% safety of POCOs, citadels and POSs in highsec is a bad idea.

Also, from your OP, I’m not clear that you understand what the CSM actually is. So as a question, what do you understand the CSM to be?

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Then awoxing would increase dramatically. Protection from dangers is bad, because without dangers one can not learn to defend himself. Also, too many people who should not start such a corp would start such a corp simply for the protection and the vast majority of people are not capable of actually leading a corp anyway. It would just increase the abuse.

In theory it really is not a bad idea, but in practise people are too … to make this work.

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Solstice. I think you are right. Likely it would be imperfect and take some time and iteration to get it right. But I think the potential positive impact is too great to not try it.

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Immune from war for a very short period of time. Being an intake corp for a week might prevent you from doing it again for say six months. Therefore the immunity from the Wardec mechanic would be for a minimal time.

As for the CSM. It is a small group elected by the player base to represent them to the developers. CSM provides feedback on current game trends and mechanics and reviews proposed changes to EVE in order to give the player perspective. Also, it is a place to make deals and I just want to say that I’m willing to take half of what The Judge got.

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But can you play with only one hand? And what if you need that hand below your desk? D: What if you go slowly crazy because you can not decide where you need your hand first, at the keyboard or somewhere closer?? :open_mouth: You’d go mad! ):

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Thanks for that Solecist! You gave me a great opportunity to introduce another issue that I had dispensed with in the interests of being brief. Unfortunately, I don’t have time now. But we are going to have a chat about getting rid of the clickfest when I get back from chowing on this Easter turkey.

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So the clickfest thing. Does anyone else notice that we have an unecessary amount of mouse clicking? My life isn’t made any better by unceasing clicks, unless it comes in the form of real life currency transfers! Why not re-approach the interface with the goal of making it ergonomically friendly? Heck, let’s start moving towards a real capsuleer experience. Do you see the awesomeness for purposed integration of eye tracking to control some aspects of EVE? Let’s tell them we WANT THIS!

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The how does this even help?

Wardec groups will start new characters to find who this weeks group of corps are and then wardec as soon as the very short period of immunity ends. How is a few days or a couple of weeks in the game before being subject to wardec any different to now?

And how is isolating anyone away from aspects of the sandbox helpful to them?

The whole wardec immunity part of what you are proposing sounds very thin on logic. Not meaning to sound mean. It genuinely doesn’t make sense to me as you’ve currently explained it.

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The intent isn’t to make a corp immune to Wardec, it is to give new players a more rewarding and supportive entry to EVE and therefore enhance player retention. Perhaps the answer is that a new character comes with a month long booster that provides some measure of immunity from tackle. That way everybody stays happy because the Intake corp can be Wardecc’d, and the new player has some measure of safety.

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This is where Malcanis’ Law kicks in, especially with the benefit of skill injectors.

Just create a new account, inject into a Rorqual, Carrier, Super (it happens), or whatever and then be tackle free for a month.

Awesome way to keep new players happy. The vets will have a field day.

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Anyone claiming that new players need to be protected from dangers, so they can learn how to deal with said dangers, is ■■■■■■■ nuts. You learn to swim by being thrown into the water. It works amazingly well.

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So from what I understand, your main points are

  1. Remove nerfs from the current balance pass strategy in favor of only compensatory buffing
  2. Increase isk faucets and introduce new, more attractive isk sinks
  3. Improve the New Player Experience through incrementations to Aura and NPC corp chat, and replace NPC corps with player corps as the initial corp experience

I want to clarify your perspective on some issues, both broad and specific:

  1. What are your thoughts on power creep in MMOs?
  2. How much of a difference should a veteran player be able to gain over where they began?
  3. How much of a background in economics do you have?
  4. Can you give me a concrete example of some way you’d like to see as a place for the space rich to spend isk?
  5. How do you propose a new player with no knowledge of the corp offerings choose a good corp? How do you plan on dealing with or avoiding accusations of favoritism?
  6. Bad corporations which exploit new players exist. How do you propose that new players are shielded from them? Or at least, made aware of the offerings as they stand?

You mentioned other ideas. What other ideas do you have? What are your interests and goals in your CSM career?

What sort of time can you devote to being CSM? What communities are you connected to and listen to for advice?

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Thanks for your question Katherine. I have to admit I’m not quite understanding questions 1 & 2, can you reword them? With regards to my background in economics, I have none (other than a High School economics course which I found fascinating) I work in Healthcare, in the area of Psychiatry to be more specific.

Your fourth question about isk sinks for the space rich is an interesting one. In short, I’m not sure what is possible, but I think a company whose economic lifeline depends on creativity could come up with something. I do know that as a mid-life player (by that I mean I wasn’t there at the beginning, but came in about halfway through the games current cycle) I have often felt demoralized as I have worked towards perfecting some angle of isk generation, only to see it nerfed almost as soon as I achieved the skillpoints for it. So I’m talking about the Drake, Tengu, Ishtar, Anom Bounties, Carriers, Carriers again etc. I think players understand that the market will change, but to have CCP arbitrarily deciding that the player base is making too much isk and to then take action to dampen that is the wrong approach.

I think that Corporations in my “Intake” system would have to make recruitment adverts that detail timezone, language and style of play. New players would have the option to write a review of their corp after an interval and enough negative review would trigger CCP to take that corp off the intake roster.

I hope this helps. BTW I was crafting this reply when my turn came up for the Tallking In Stations podcast. You can find it if you’re interested at talkinginstations.com Thanks for your interest.

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All I got out of this thread is that you’re a talker with absolutely no clue what you’re talking about.

The CSM are lobbyists, not politicians. He acts like a politician though, and as such would be a wasted seat at the CSM.