Aurous Victoirespere for CSM 19

Council Of Stellar Management CSM Campaigns
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TL;DR: I don’t represent any alliance’s interests. I represent the average player who wants to:

  1. Reduce UI clicks for PI, corp management, compression, etc.
  2. Increase risk & reward by moving value of blue loot from Drifters to Avengers in C5/6 wormhole space, and by buffing both bounty payouts and ESS accrual in null sec.
  3. ■■■■ over bots every chance we get.

See my mug and hear me talk:

Chinese translation at the bottom. 下面中文版。

My EVE Online Story

Between 2009 to 2017 I played in high sec and Providence, but I found my footing in this game once I found a great group to play with in Syndicate and Cloud Ring. Since that moment in 2017, I have accumulated over 23,000 hours in this game, doing the full spectrum from solo PVP to slugging it out with dreads in TiDi shitfests. I have a hobby YouTube channel where I post silly videos and I occasionally contribute (hopefully fruitfully) to the EVE discussion on Reddit under u/TwitchyBat.

Areas of Expertise

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Yes, I live in a low-class wormhole, but that’s just one of many labels. For PVP, I’ve done a bit of everything - high sec missions, high sec ganking, faction warfare, NPC null sec small gang, blops, sov null fleet fights, now wormhole brawling. For industry, I use the gas and sleeper salvage from wormholes to produce a small but hopefully statistically significant number of the Tengu and Loki hulls sold in Jita.

Instead of knowledge, which I think all CSM candidates have in droves, what sets me apart is my drive to think of outrageous ideas and then just do them in the game, simply because it’s funnier and funner than spinning in the status quo. Some of the real things I have said on comms:

  • “That sounds like the stupidest idea ever. Let’s do it.”
  • “Stop podding them! Let them go reship so that we can kill more.”
  • “Coveters, splash hole and spread tackle.”
  • “I can’t believe our Praxis just tanked 4 marauders at the same time.”

Why am I applying for the CSM?

I hope to win, but I don’t necessarily expect to. At the very least, I want my candidacy to spark discussions or plant ideas for CSM 19. Especially ideas that ensure representation for the interests of low-class wormholers and all of their prey/neighbours, which I believe is a bigger population than a lot of people might expect.

What can players expect from me?

I advocate for incremental changes in accordance with three core principles:

  1. Minimize tedium
  2. Increase risk & reward
  3. Stand against botting

1. Minimize tedium

Maximizing fun requires minimizing tedium. Streamlining the UI speeds up tedious tasks, getting players into space faster. Fewer clicks = better player experience.

Consider Planetary Interaction (PI) - it can be lucrative, but setting it up is so labour-intensive that it can create burnout - I know at least 3 players who have quit, albeit temporarily, due to going too hard into PI, myself included. Another example is corporation role management. It’s necessary, but the esoteric interface makes changing permissions a potentially disastrous nightmare.

Some changes I would push for in this category:

  • Copy-paste PI layouts or community-built layouts
  • Simplify corporation role management, possibly tying it to access control lists (ACLs)
  • Remove the compression window - compress immediately from the context menu
  • Copy camera zoom/orientation between clients
  • Copy window settings between clients

2. Increase risk & reward

I believe in rewarding risk-seeking behaviour because risk creates fun and engagement for the player as well as those around them. Like real life, EVE requires destruction to give meaning to wealth. There is a natural human tendency towards loss aversion, and some players are more susceptible than others. This does not mean that they are any less valuable to the economy or gaming experience; rather, understanding the different player archetypes/personalities and sustaining suitable gameplay elements for each is essential. For example (keep in mind that these are extremely broad generalizations, and that they do not apply to you or your alliance specifically, the special snowflakes that you are):

  • Low-risk players stick to safe activities, regardless of ISK/hr. E.g., miners would enjoy larger asteroid sizes, even if their products’ market values drop.
  • Players who avoid low-risk activities weigh the tradeoff between expected loss and higher ISK/hr. E.g., wormholers will rat more with more blue loot but will transition to other activities if the ISK/hr drops without risk reduction.
  • High-risk players still minimize risk, so rewards should be balanced against the minimum achievable risk. E.g., wormholers roll/crit connections before krabbing to lower risk.

To this end, I believe that more fun is only created when both risk and reward increase. One idea to illustrate this concept would be to move C5-C6 blue loot value from the Drifter to the Upgraded Avengers, which escalate as they do today with different types of capitals on grid. This incentivizes wormholers to actively commit more ratting capitals to the combat site grid, increasing both risk and reward for using caps. Locking the Drifter Battleship behind a capital escalation does not accomplish the same goal, because the marginal decrease in income from killing only site rats is accompanied by corresponding decrease in risk. I believe that the MER shows this - the only thing that the 100km Drifter-capital lock accomplishes (aside from making a tiny ISK faucet dent) is reducing the number of targets in space.

3. Stand against botting

If it’s one thing I hate seeing in this game, it’s bots. Botters cheapen the experience for the rest of us. I report them when I see them and I ■■■■ them over every chance I get. Even if it is unrealistic to uproot botting entirely, I believe it’s critical to aggressively implement changes that incrementally discourage botting. Some thoughts here:

  1. Limiting abyssal filament activation in wormholes to within 14AU of any celestial would effectively kill low-tier abyssal botting in J-space.
  2. The ESS has a few levers that can help here. Increasing null bounty payouts while simultaneously moving a slightly greater proportion of it to the ESS rewards players who can successfully defend their money but punishes bots who cannot.
  3. Blackout (or local delay), as tempting as it is for someone who loves to hunt Ishtars in nullsec, would actually be counterproductive because it punishes real players more than bots, since the bots would simply use surveillance alts on gates.

Conclusion

I have no illusions that the CSM is some sort of omnipotent entity that can impose its will unilaterally on CCP, but what I can promise is that, if elected, I will stick to my principles and push for changes that advance them, and push against proposals that do not, all while lining the pockets of newer players with more ISK and pulling the ISK out of the bots’. Thanks for reading!

中文版

摘要：我代表普通玩家，我不代表任何联盟的利益。我想要提出以下的建议和意见：

  1. 减少行星开发【PI】、组织管理、压缩等方面的繁琐操作。
  2. 通过将C5/C6虫洞空间的蓝色战利品价值从漂泊者转移到复仇者身上，并同时提升赏金和ESS积累，增加风险与回报。
  3. 提供方法举报或者打击脚本机器人。

我和EVE Online的故事

从2009年到2017年，我主要活跃在高安和普罗维登斯服务区。但真正让我在游戏中有重要突破的是在2017年加入了一支很棒的团队，在辛迪加和云环地区作战。从那时起，我在这款游戏中积累了超过23,000小时的游戏时间，经历了从单人PVP到在TiDi混战中驾驶无畏战斗的全部内容。我还经营了一个趣味性的YouTube频道，发布搞笑视频，有时也会在Reddit上的【u/TwitchyBat】账号下参与EVE的讨论（希望有所贡献）。

专业领域

是的，我生活在低级虫洞中，但这只是我的众多标签之一。在PVP方面，我几乎做过一切——高安任务、高安抓人、阵营战争、NPC无畏小队、黑隐战术战、主权战争舰队战斗，现在还包括虫洞群殴。在工业方面，我使用从虫洞中获得的气体和沉睡者的残骸来生产腾鹤【Tengu】和洛基【Loki】船体，并将它们出售给吉他【Jita】市场。

与其说是对知识——这恐怕是所有CSM候选人都具备的东西——不如说是我对“荒唐点子”的追求让我与众不同。而且我会在游戏中尝试这些点子，因为这比继续维持现状更有趣。例如，我曾在通讯频道中说过这些话：

“这是我听过最蠢的点子。咱们做吧。”

“别爆对方胶囊，让他们去换船，这样我们可以杀更多。”

“考维特舰队，跳虫洞并扩散抓点。”

“我简直不敢相信我们的普拉克西斯【Praxis】号竟然同时抗住了4艘掠夺者。”

我为什么申请CSM？

我希望能赢，但并不完全指望如此。至少，我希望我的参选能够激发一些讨论，或者为CSM 19种下想法，特别是能够确保低级虫洞玩家及其猎物/邻居的利益。这个群体比很多人想象的要大。

玩家可以从我这里期待什么？

我主张在以下三大原则下进行渐进式改进：

  • 减少乏味
  • 增加风险与回报
  • 打击机器人
  1. 减少乏味

最大化游戏乐趣的前提是减少乏味的任务，从而让玩家更快进入太空。点击越少，玩家体验越好。

例如，行星开发【PI】可以带来丰厚的收入，但设置过程繁琐，会导致玩家感到倦怠——我认识至少三位玩家因为过度投入PI而暂时退出了游戏，其中包括我自己。另一个例子是公司角色管理。虽然这是必要的，但复杂的界面使得更改权限时容易出现灾难性错误。

我在这一类中推行的一些改进：

  • 允许复制粘贴PI布局或使用社区创建的布局
  • 简化公司角色管理，可能将其与访问控制列表【ACL】绑定
  • 移除压缩窗口——在上下文菜单中直接进行压缩
  • 复制相机缩放/方向设置到多个客户端
  • 复制窗口设置到多个客户端
  1. 增加风险与回报

我相信应该奖励追求风险的行为，因为风险能为玩家及其周围的人创造乐趣与互动。就像现实生活一样，EVE需要破坏才能赋予财富以意义。人类天生有厌恶损失的倾向，有些玩家对此更为敏感。但这并不意味着他们对经济或游戏体验的贡献就更少。理解不同玩家类型/个性，并为每种类型维持适当的玩法元素，是至关重要的。

例如【请记住，这些是非常广泛的概括，并不适用于你或你的联盟】：

  • 低风险玩家会坚持进行安全的活动，无论ISK/小时如何。比如，矿工们会更喜欢更大的小行星，即便这会导致其产品的市场价值下降。
  • 避免低风险活动的玩家则会对预期损失与更高ISK/小时进行权衡。比如，虫洞玩家在蓝色战利品增多时会增加刷怪频率，但如果ISK/小时下降且没有降低风险，他们会转向其他活动。
  • 高风险玩家仍然会尽量减少风险，因此奖励应与最低可实现的风险相平衡。比如，虫洞玩家在打怪前会滚/触发连接以降低风险。

为了增加游戏的乐趣，我认为应该同时增加风险和回报。举个例子，可以将C5-C6虫洞空间中的蓝色战利品价值从漂泊者身上转移到升级后的复仇者身上，这些复仇者在今天的首都舰舰队上战斗会进行升级。这样可以激励虫洞玩家更多地投入打怪首都舰，从而在战斗现场增加风险和回报。将漂泊者战列舰锁定在首都舰升级背后并不能达到同样的目标，因为只杀怪物所带来的收益下降也伴随着风险的减少。我相信EVE经济报告【MER】已经显示了这一点——将漂泊者与首都舰锁定在100公里以外唯一的作用【除了对ISK水龙头的微小影响外】就是减少了太空中的目标数量。

  1. 打击机器人

我个人不喜欢在这个游戏中看到机器人。机器人会让其他玩家的体验变得廉价。当我发现机器人时，我会举报他们，并在有机会时狠狠打击他们。即使完全消灭机器人是不现实的，我也认为有必要通过实施逐步的改动来积极打击机器人。以下是一些想法：

  • 限制在虫洞内激活深渊传送门【Abyssal filament】，仅在距离天体14AU以内的地方激活。这将有效遏制低等级的深渊机器人。
  • ESS【应急救援系统】有一些杠杆可以帮助应对这个问题。增加0.0地区的赏金收益，同时将更多的赏金移至ESS，这样能奖励那些能够成功捍卫自己资金的玩家，而惩罚无法做到这一点的机器人。
  • 黑暗模式【或本地频道延迟】，尽管对于那些喜欢在0.0空间猎杀伊什塔尔的玩家来说很有吸引力，但实际上会适得其反，因为它对真人玩家的惩罚要大于对机器人的惩罚。机器人可以简单地在门口布置侦查角色。

结论

我并不抱有CSM能够单方面强加其意志给CCP的幻想，但如果当选，我可以承诺的是，我会坚持自己的原则，推动那些能够实现这些原则的改变，并反对不符合这些原则的提议，同时帮助新玩家赚取更多ISK，并从机器人那里吸走他们的ISK。谢谢！

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I like Aurous, he’s a good man who only occasionally rages about things and has a nice laugh. He also has many good ideas, vote for this man!

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A man who goes out of his way to get content for others. Who is not focused on just bettering his personal space in eve but is looking to see improvements for players new and old. But above all he loves a good Pun

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Are you for bringing back the drifter for C5/C6 space without capitals on field? I do agree that the avengers need to be more profitable, but me as an average player (single boxing) I do not find it worthwhile in c5/c6 to do ratting sites.

The risk is not worth the isk. A standard marauder fit is 3 billion while sites only go for 225-250m (Garrisons and Strongholds).

Are you for bringing back ratting before the change? Or to keep it the current way but with more value to the avengers?

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You got my vote on on QoL updates alone.

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I don’t think C5s can go exactly back to the way they were before. I’m in favour of small incremental changes, observing/collecting data, then more changes.

Instead of bringing back 300M Drifters, something like 150M Drifter with the same DPS/neuts and proportionately less EHP. Or simply increasing the number of sites that spawn in C5s. Either one would give something back to us humble low class folks.

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I cannot in good faith vote for you. By looking at the economic report C5 and C6 blue loot has dropped significantly. The fits required to run these sites cost way too much for 150m drifters. These sites have so much damage and ehp requirements and there’s not other way to run it solo.

I do think that the drifter can come back to the way it was. As it is now, many C5 wormholers I know do not want to do ratting because of the cost. It just isn’t worth it.

If anything, it seems like I will be making much more isk in null-sec than C5 and even C6 WH space.

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Fair enough. I don’t think any other candidate is going to be able to or willing to promise a return of subcap ratting to the levels they were pre-Drifter nerf, though.

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I understand. If people wish to see C5 wormholes to join the grave along with C4 space, then so be it. I do hope you change your mind on this however.

The future of WH space will continue to get worse if things are not changed from the current path.

We as wormholers have not and will not get anything to supplement the income loss from the drifter being removed subcap wise. If we were to get better moons to crack or get roid belts to mine unique ores limited to WH space (just like Pochven) I wouldn’t be too critical.

We don’t though. We are slowly being bled out and with how things are continuing to go, it looks very bleak.

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@Aurous_Victoirespere Do you support hiring (EVE Vanguard) Warclone Mercenaries as an attack/defense vector in Capsuleer conflicts? Like attacking/defending Planetary Infrastructure, Skyhooks/POCOs and Upwell Structures?

As a CSM would you try and pitch for CCP to make stack multi-split (splitting a stack of items into multiple stacks of same size in one go instead of just on split at a time) happen?

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First of all, I don’t see an ISK issue in wormholes. It was a huge ISK faucet and wormholers are known for being relatively wealthy. ISK is not one of the major issues facing wormholes right now (although the Drifter was a huge chance, I have to say).

I’m not sure you quite understand what Aurous is saying about the Drifter change either. Aurous isn’t saying that they support the Drifter change or even that they’re resistant to it being reverted, they’re simply saying that they don’t think CCP will change their mind. You have to remember that the CSM can’t force CCP to do anything.

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O7 Aurous Victoirespere,

Last year I asked eight questions and then compiled the answers into a huge mega-thread. It was massive. With the exception of MILINT_ARC_Trooper, no one had a thread bigger than mine, to be fair MILINT_ARC_Troopers’ thread was so weighty and knowledgable it teetered on the edge of collapsing into its’ own core.

That catalogue of replies is now a time-capsule and encapsulated within are the hopes and disappointments that CSM 18 candidates considered worth speaking about during the year of EVE’s 20th anniversary.

The responses gave voters en masse an opportunity to test and compare each hopeful CSM 18 candidates commitment to their claims of being community oriented, knowledgable, responsive and representative of player values. Given that the CSM does not directly control any aspect of EVE’s development and that the successful candidates are those that can identify existing and future consequences, co-operate with other CSM members, and communicate issues -from a player perspective- to CCP staff one-to-one, I’ve formulated a set of questions designed to seperate the compressed ORE from the Long-Limb Roes in this years election race.

Year-on-year the Independent Representatives, Solo players with single accounts, Worm Holers, Triangle People, Semi-nomadic Role-Playing Sandbox Explorers, and Salvagers, have been organising and gaining traction against the self-secure Null-Bloc Empire Candidates and their vast hordes of leather-skinned, evil, flying-monkeys. More-and-more players are choosing to vote in members they believe can positively impact CCP’s approach to the game regardless of their in-game affiliations.

Exposure matters, who are you, what is your clue?
As was the process last year I will post each candidates reply in a super thread, first-in first-served.

This years questions:

  1. What ONE identifiable consequence requires CCP’s attention?

  2. What PROVABLE evidence can you supply to support your belief in this situation?

  3. What practical, and balanced change can be made to support a solution if any?

  4. What support do your observations have from other CSM candidates?

  5. How will you present your findings to CCP?

If you have already identified and spoken about a problem in your CSM candidacy bio at the top of this thread feel free to copy pasta that response where applicable. I’ll copy paste directly from your response to this post. Choose your goblet…. wisely.

Let the games begin, and may the odds ever be in your favour.

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Whereas I missed the boat on Dust 514 because I didn’t own a Playstation 3, I still hear EVE vets talk about how cool it was for Dust and EVE to interact with each other. However, having played a lot of the Vanguard playtests, I feel that the amount of work remaining to polish Vanguard might make Warclones directly impacting EVE at least a CSM 20 or 21 item.

I love this and would definitely add it to the UI streamlining wishlist.

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New player acquisition and retention.

PCU trendline since 2010, plus the anecdotal evidence that an increasing number of new characters seems to be older players multiboxing (I am personally also guilty of this).

Incremental changes to streamline the new player experience, increased AIR Career rewards to help newbros ramp up, and re-tuning risk/reward for mid-tier PVE (e.g., in low class wormholes but also everywhere else) to encourage the newbros with the right personality matrix to undock for finding a big pile of money or die trying.

On the flip side, since botting is a phenomenon that simultaneously cheapens the gaming experience for real players and competes in similar spaces as newbros do (mining, high sec missions, low tier abyssals, null anomalies, etc.), increasing friction for bots also supports this goal.

To be determined throughout the rest of this campaign period, but regardless of where the CSM candidate comes from (null sec, low sec, high sec, anywhere), increasing the number of people who start playing this game and keep on playing is good for everyone. I would frankly be shocked if anybody said “no, Aurous, we don’t need to work on new player retention.”

Powerpoint, probably. In all seriousness, CCP holds way more data on this than any of us players do. If given the opportunity I’d be happy to help crunch the numbers but on this topic it’s not so much a matter of hard data as it is a self-evident issue that grows larger year by year.

Wait, which one do I want to be? Both sound equally (un)attractive.

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+1 for Aurous. He’s a great guy and flying with him and his corp last week was a blast.

Meeting with Phantom Space and other low class corps has been a fantastic experience in getting some unique perspectives and solid ideas for improvement. A vote for Aurous is a vote for engaging and evolving content that puts more people in space.

A great candidate that will definitely be on my ballot this year!

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+1 for Aurous, really straight up dude who puts quality eve content above else ; very much worth your time and your vote.

+1 Also for Mick Fightmaster who shares many common goals and ideas with our group

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I met Aurous within a couple days of having started eve, I couldn’t have met a better teacher for a game that appears so complex to a new player.

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Here’s Aurous’s interview that he did with me last night! I encourage everyone to check it out and get a little different view point than some of the other interviews and shows!

Thank you again for coming and talking to us!

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But the isk in C5’s and C6’s really didn’t change.

Prior to that change 80% was done with a capitol because the dread on grid can get the sites down to 1-seige cycle per site.

The only thing that this change did was stop people from outside of high class WH space from getting to that isk.
Which means the farm holes are even more secure than they were before, as now they don’t have to contest with roaming groups stealing their sites.

As seen in the Sept monthly report, there has been zero net change in terms of isk drawn from the sites. But that just means that the isk is concentrated into a smaller group of folks.

More sites doesn’t make the sites more lucrative – in terms of fleet isk/hr, without a cap on grid, there is no point. Having more of them doesn’t change anything when the sites don’t give enough isk to be worth the effort to run.

This change does nothing more than to reinforce the status quo of high class renters and alt/farm holes, and removes the incentive for outsiders to bother with those sites. That is bad for the overall health of wormhole systems. If the high class folks don’t have to contend with others for sites, then the only content in those holes is the dreads in the WH blue renter donut. That space gets more dangerous to run as it gets more lucrative for ALL folks to potentially run them – to include random groups that roll in from low class and k-space.
The main limit on isk generation is the number of sites, as they are very limited – the folks who own those holes should be expected to contend for and fight to protect their sites. This change that makes the sites not worth doing by others is a bad change for the overall health of WH space, and gives less reason for folks to explore high-class WH space. And CCP doesn’t seem to realize those truths, which were immediately brought up a couple months ago when this surprise change was sprung on us.

How are you going to bring up these rather easily projected second and third order impacts to CCP, and advocate for systems (pve and pvp) that incentivize more people to roam and daytrip into WH space, to make for a more healthy WH ecosystem?

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CSM candidates being asked this question
Fighting against toxicity is a strong case, as it comes with the territory of gaming -everywhere-

However. How would you handle a hypothetical stalemate wherein both parties are believe the other to be toxic, but only one party can really be telling the truth.

But then again, truth is based on the perspective of the perceiver.

How would you handle this?