TL;DR: I don’t represent any alliance’s interests. I represent the average player who wants to:
- Reduce UI clicks for PI, corp management, compression, etc.
- 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.
- ■■■■ over bots every chance we get.
See my mug and hear me talk:
- CCP Twitch CSM19 Candidate Interview
- EVE Rookies - Kshal Aideron’s Twitch stream interview October 7th 19:30 EVE time (YouTube video)
- Other venues TBD!
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
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:
- Minimize tedium
- Increase risk & reward
- 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:
- Limiting abyssal filament activation in wormholes to within 14AU of any celestial would effectively kill low-tier abyssal botting in J-space.
- 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.
- 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!