My EVE Story
I started playing EVE in 2012, starting in highsec with E-uni. After a few months, I left E-uni for Goonswarm Federation, where I have stayed since. I was able to participate in a number of the big events and wars in that time period, such as Asakai, the Fountain war, the Halloween war and the battle of B-R, mostly as a line pilot. In 2016 I took a multi year break due to my poor financial situation at the time.
The more relevant part of my eve career started during the blackout period of 2019. I returned to eve after finishing school and with a few years of data-analytics work experience. I quickly grew bored with nullsec PvE after finding that nothing had really changed, and decided to focus on industry for personal income. This drove me down a rabbit hole of spreadsheets and large volume data processing that kick started my second major interest in EVE, which is macroeconomics and looking at how the different systems in EVE interact with each other. I started posting my public analyses, and having people say that they were helpful/interesting kept me at it.
Examples
My Goal on the CSM
My primary goal on the CSM would be to provide feedback and data analysis that would help CCP on the right path out of the period of scarcity. While I agree that the EVE economy 2016-early 2019 was excessive, CCPâs heavy handed approach to rebalance the economy leaves much to be desired and many players unhappy that their preferred activity was upended with no notice, or that they couldnât afford to fly the same ships they could before. However, the new systems that CCP has implemented also show promise of enabling better fine-tweaking of the economy, provided they know which way to turn the knobs.
On a more personal side, the content of one of the posts I linked above was dismissed by CCP on the ground that âit is hard to lend gravitas to someone called Angry Mustacheâ. I would very much like to prove that players with silly names can make serious contributions.
Why should I vote for you
With the game economy coming to a turning point, itâs important to have someone who understands the game economy on the CSM to provide feedback. It is my belief that of the candidates for CSM16, I have among the best macro knowledge of the game economy. Feel free to ask anything in the comment section.
Example positions
These a sample of changes that I think would be beneficial to the game, and arguments for.
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Reduce Sales Tax and Broker Fees in NPC stations to âprevious levelsâ: In 2020, Sales Tax and Broker Fees were sharply raised in both NPC stations and player owned markets. While the reason for raising the Sales Tax and Broker Fees were understandable (the game needed more faucets at the time), increasing transaction costs is a poor way to do so. Transaction fees affects everyone in the game equally, and high transaction fees pushes out newer players who lack the capital for vertical integration by making selling âintermediatesâ less profitable. If CCP wants players to be able to specialize in intermediate production without selling the finished good, reducing transaction fees is an important step. With isk faucets lower than 2020 levels, the original reason for raising fees no longer exists.
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Reintroduce âCreditâ, through either reintroduction of Margin Trading or another mechanic: In 2020, Margin Trading was removed as a skill because of the ability for certain people to âMargin Scamâ new players. What this also did was remove the only reliable source of Credit in EVE, which allowed player to leverage their liquid isk. This greatly lowered velocity of money, which is generally a measure for a healthy economy, as well as made it harder to grow as a trader/industrialist as you needed much more startup capital. While the ability to margin scam was problematic for newbie retention, these sort of second order effects from changes need to be considered. Having access to limited credit through a game mechanic would be a positive addition.
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Introduce advanced gas harvesting ships/modules and gas compression: The recent industry rework has made gas a critical part of production, yet the actual ships to harvest gas starts at the venture and end at the prospect. This put a high manpower bottleneck on harvesting gas which could make the whole rework moot. At the same time, gas can not be compressed, so it takes over a whole jump freighter of gas to make a single capital ship. For gas to become a core part of eve industry, it needs the supporting attributes like other core raw materials (ice, ore)
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Convince CCP to do an overall review of the Capital and faction ships. The current build cost of these ships is far out of line and make them prohibitive to use in situations where they might be lost. Conversely, the power of capital ships has not be decreased so these ships remain oppressive where they can be safely used. Furthermore, the resource harvesting environment around some of the components used in capital and faction ships is immature. Currently these ships are very uneconomical to build, and the limitation on both exploration drops and gas harvesting will hinder construction even if/when the prices on these ships appreciate to the point where it may be plausible to build.
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Encourage CCP to conduct more thorough System Analysis on changes. There have been multiple âGameplay Style Killerâ patches where unintended consequences of heavy handed changes have killed off the gameplay styles of certain players. This has serious effects on player retention, and the concerns of players who will have their gameplay style âkilledâ need to be taken seriously.
