Hello, friends!
I’ve decided to run for CSM16 this year!
My platform will be mainly focused on the following topics:
- Low security Space / Faction Warfare
- Ship/Module Balance
- Story/Lore Visibility and Use as Content Generator
- New Player Experience
Who Are You?
Me at an Eve Vegas event.
I’m predominantly a roleplaying PvPer who has been playing the game for around 11 years. I started the Arsia character (my ‘main’ and first successful character) in mid 2010 after failing to get into the game a few times during some trial accounts spaced out a couple years apart. I started my Eve life as an explorer and ran around high sec and then low sec sort of without many true goals until I got into Faction Warfare (FW) in 2012. I had started the character intending to RP but was mostly quiet and stayed to myself until I started interacting with other RPers in the context of FW.
A little while after getting into Faction Warfare on the Amarr side, I joined PIE (Praetoria Imperialis Excubitoris). Back then I played fairly casually and just logged on and kerfuffled around the warzone a few times a month. To this day I think Eve is a good game to play casually (even if I’m fairly not casual at this point). Over my years I began to develop some FCing capabilities within the context of FW but stayed mostly casual and quiet until the Amarr Succession Trials in 2015. In the Succession Trials I was on Mitara Newelle’s team and we became the Sarum champions, breezing through the preliminaries and had a respectable showing in the tournament, falling short one win of making the finals.
After the tournament I was pretty burnt out from the practice and emotional toll of the whole thing. I played very little in 2016. In 2017 I came back pretty strong in the middle of the year and started streaming. I started to become very not casual at this point. My corp was small and had little to no activity in my timezone most of the time, so I started a weekly semi-public fleet that ended up running every Friday evening until early 2020. My public fleet grew over time and started getting more ambitious. We had a citadels in Sifilar and Sahtogas at times and the public fleet formed to defend it alongside the Amarr RPers in LUMEN and PIE. I also spent some time as a director and co-executor of LUMEN (Khimi Harar) from the character Lyra North-Onren after it was formed because ARC didn’t like the corp SFRIM participating in my fleets because it wanted to remain politically neutral and my fleets were Amarr aligned at the time.
In addition to roaming, I also got involved with an increasing number of medium sized fights and campaigns around the cluster. Some of them were done with various RP or FW groups working together and some were done with the public fleet and reaching out to friends around the game. But without getting into the specific details of all the various campaigns I’ve been involved in over the years, the main theme of most of my campaigns has been either kerfuffles over RP politics/events or a bunch of smaller groups banding together to fight a bigger group.
In late 2019, after some RP events that went in an in-character forum thread I made started a major war over game world news, I left PIE. After the Triglavian Invasions started, I served as an FC for the EDENCOM side and was involved in many system sieges and fights in low security and liminal invasion systems. Arsia (who had formally defected) joined Electus Matari where I still am now. I am thinking of starting to do semi-public fleets again and working towards new goals now on the Minmatar side of the RP spectrum. Since I’ve joined there’s been quite a few medium to large sized fights in low sec centered around Snuffed Out’s burning of our FW regions or defenses of our structures or allied structures from various groups. Lately, we’ve been practicing for the Anger Games where we’re participating as the team ‘If All Else Fails.’ Additionally, I still regularly stream and am part of the Eve Online Partner Program. I also am a regular Sunday co-host on Talking in Stations. As far as null goes, I consider myself politically neutral in regards to all null security blocs and mostly use it as a playground for roaming. I use wormholes (especially Thera) predominantly for moving around between regions of space quickly. I do have some opinions and experience regarding high security wars.
Why Should I Vote for You Over the Other (Admittedly Fantastic) Low Security Candidates?
While there are a number of fantastic low security and even lore based candidates this year (seriously, there’s a lot of fantastic people running), I think I am in the unique position to be an advocate for the Eve Online lore and events as a primary content driver for conflict. Having participated in many RP based wars and conflicts ignited directly or indirectly from world news and goings on, one of the most frustrating things to me is that a lot of these things are hidden from people who aren’t in ‘the know.’ I’ve had some of the most fun and unique experiences in my Eve career in PvP during these battles and full out wars. World events such as the Invasions had a lot of impact on long-term introverted players. Both the EDENCOM and Triglavian side had plenty of players showing up who had played for years and literally never been in a fleet before. On the EDENCOM side, there were a lot of players whose home system was invaded and they joined up in order to fight for it, fleeting for the first time in their careers. Many of these people went on to join the cause and run around playing the wack-a-mole and trying to defend other systems. The low security invasions got some people out of high sec and into low sec for the first time because there were the experienced players in the groups to guide them through the process and help them. The Invasions had failings (especially in the lack of any reward or content for half the players at the end), but the fact that this style of world events brings people together and gets newer player especially out of their comfort zone and engaged is clear to me. But with the in-world news not being in game, on the launcher, or even on CCP’s new ‘news page,’ lot of the pieces of lore and content drivers smaller than the Invasions stay invisible to far too many people. I think that the Eve setting and lore is one of CCP’s best tools for driving content and that it’s not being used as such as well as it should be or nearly enough. People have plenty of different opinions when they hear the term RPer, but the truth is, most people in Eve RP with their guns in some way. By supporting a faction, alliance, or even running around solo you are playing a part in the beautiful Eve universe. People you choose to shoot, not shoot, side with, or fight against say something about your character even if you don’t think about it that way.
As somebody who also failed to get into Eve on two or three trial account attempts before I stubbornly subscribed and forced myself to learn it, I also have the perspective of somebody who could have been lost entirely from the game because the New Player Experience was lacking. I think Eve loses a lot of people who could have succeeded and been valuable players if not for the game failing to teach a lot of unintuitive mechanics to new players, leading them to get frustrated when those mechanics are leveraged against them. I don’t think that the solution is to make Eve ‘softer’ or get rid of those mechanics, but to teach players them. A lot of long term introverted players don’t even know a lot of the most basic mechanics of the game because they simply never ran into somebody to teach them.
What Can Players Expect from You?
I’ll be a neutral entity politically. I’m not trying to hurt anyone I dislike out of spite or simply help my own gameplay. I want to improve the game in general. CSM is obviously a focus group for CCP’s ideas and the main purpose isn’t to tell CCP what to do, so representation from many different viewpoints in such a diverse game is very important.
I have experience in living in low sec, using wormholes as mediums for traveling long distances quickly, Faction Warfare from both inside and outside militia, small gang warfare and roaming in low, null, and even high security space, medium sized fleet engagements, RP and lore, and high sec wars. I will bring that knowledge to give my opinions on how proposed changes will affect people of the gameplay styles that I participate in. I care about improvements to Faction Warfare space.
I like hearing when people disagree with me (so long as you do it civilly). I’m happy to talk to people, so if ever.
What Are Some Specific Changes Would You Support?
As previously mentioned, the main role of CSM isn’t to tell CCP what to change, but it is important for people to know what sort of concerns and opinions I have. Here’s some of them. I’m not going to go on forever, but if you have any more questions about specific ideas or opinions I might hold, please do ask me! None of these are things I can make happen as that’s not what CSM does. My experience, principles, and perspective being brought to the focus group is the main point of my run. With that point out of the way, here’s some of my opinions.
Faction Warfare: Faction Warfare needs a front-line mechanic. There are certainly arguments against it, but right now the whole ebb and flow of the warzone is controlled predominantly by farmers who don’t necessarily interact with the players. Faction Warfare should be mainly about warfare. I like the Front-line system pushed by KiithSoban in his post last year. It would be a front-line mechanic that would restrict the available systems, but in a fashion that widens as activity becomes hotter. That way you have options besides Blobville on where to go, but there’s always some concentration of players. Faction Warfare would cease to be about your four AFK alts in unfit frigates 20 jumps apart from one another manipulating warzone flips for ISK and more about people actually fighting one another for control.
In addition to traditional plexes, roaming NPC fleets a la the Invasions should be implimented. Destroying small npc fleets from one side or the other would give small amounts of system control. The balance of said NPCs is very important so that no side auto-pushes (as was overlooked during the invasions). Make them all functionally identical, basically. This way, the cheap ship focused plexing content would be balanced by the better with a fleet/doctrine focused roaming content. You’d have both styles of gameplay.
I also think that the tier system encourages manipulation and incentives the losing side not to interact. I think that the tier system should be removed entirely. What should happen to increase the value of FW LP is the removal of FW missions or simply making it LP for a different corp with mission corp priced rewards (ie. Not cheap FW LP priced ships).
Ship/Module Balance: One of the main points I have with this is that battleships need some love. 1600mm plates and large shield extenders are really cruiser sized modules and the fact that they’re the best battleships have for buffer needs to be fixed. I think 3200mm plates and XL shield extenders that can not fit on ships smaller than BS should be introduced. Battleships seem weak compared to higher tech cruisers and these larger mods are one piece of help they need by giving some ehp and freeing up slots.
Ships should have zero offensive capability if Warp Core Stabs are fit. Right now many farmers farm anomalies in null with drones and warp core stabs. As long as you’re paying attention, you can align and/or warp if a threat enters system (which you usually know is around well ahead of time due to vast intel networks). You shouldn’t have that ‘get out of jail free’ card if you don’t pay attention and get pointed by a ceptor. It’s already pretty much risk free to rat if you’re paying any attention.
Supers are too safe in low sec. I think low sec needs a special ‘bubble’ used by Interdictors that affects only capital ships. I like the differences in mechanics between low and null and bouncing between both, but more ability to hold Supers and larger numbers of capitals down in low sec is just needed, I believe.
I don’t think T3 Cruisers are good enough to justify the skillpoint loss anymore. They’re flexible and can do a lot of things, but just not as good as they used to be after years of changes.
Story/Lore Accessibility: CCP Delegate Zero’s news articles are fantastic. The Eve backstory is wonderful and really makes the game world interesting to me. Much of that information about it is buried so deep it’s hard to find or is behind paywalls like Eve Source. The world news updates aren’t even on CCP’s new ‘news’ page. The game world news updates should be on the launcher and the fiction portal should be vastly expanded to include the information in Source and other various sources. There should be an in-game compendium accessible to players which contains the world’s lore. Additionally, the world news should be accessible in game as well.
Lore/Story as Content Drivers: A lot of extremely interesting content has come out of either players reacting to lore or lore reacting to players. Wars like Thebeka or Floseswin, conflicts like Kahah, The Evacuation of Skarkon, and of course CCP events like the Invasions, the Battle for Caldari Prime, and the Colelie Incident. I’ve seen a fleet of NPC dreadnoughts attack a Fortizar in high sec and been part of a fleet warping a freighter from planet to planet in low sec as the Triglavians tried to stop us from evacuating the liminal system while the Republic aligned forces tried to give us cover and an NPC was yelling at us. Yet, a lot of people weren’t even aware of many of those events. Delegate Zero reacts to players and gives hooks for content well, but news should come more consistently than it does. Small events also need to happen more often (and in all timezones). As both of these things show, Delegate Zero needs more paid staffers and volunteers like ISD. The lore is not a job for just a couple people. Events do not necessarily need to be invasion level events, but things that both get people to react to it and stuff that reacts to the things people do.
New Player Experience: A lot of the Eve mechanics are very unintuitive. Player innovation on these unintuitive mechanics put those aware of exactly how the mechanics work at a tremendous advantage over those who do not know how they work. There should be new player agents that teach things like instant-dock and undock bookmarks, how to use the directional scanner, how suspect, criminal, and gate gun mechanics work, and various other such things. I don’t think things like hub campers or gankers are necessarily a problem. They’re playing within the rules. I also don’t think the rules should necessarily change in most regards. I just think players should be taught more of the rules by the game. Additionally, the default overview needs to be much better than it is. Just copy/paste Z-S or something, really.
Conclusion.
In conclusion, the Harbinger is the best ship in the game. It looks like a Hammerhead shark.
Err… I mean…
So that’s my history, perspective, and opinions. I look forward to hearing all questions and comments, whether you agree or (respectfully) disagree. I view Eve as a game with as many different purposes, objectives, and gameplay styles as it has players and look forward to this CSM campaign regardless of whether I am elected or not.
Thank you!
