Aurous Victoirespere for CSM 19

Council Of Stellar Management CSM Campaigns
, ,
1

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:

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

jspaceisscary
jspaceisscary1920×969 126 KB

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!

11 Likes
2

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!

2 Likes
3

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

1 Like
4

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?

5

You got my vote on on QoL updates alone.

1 Like
6

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.

7

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.

8

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.

9

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.

10

@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?

11

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.

12

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.

13

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.

14

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.

15

+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!

2 Likes
16

+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

1 Like
17

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.

1 Like
18

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!

1 Like