Dario Kaelenter for CSM 18 - Support positive growth For New Eden

Council Of Stellar Management CSM Campaigns
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Hi All,

I’m taking the step this year after playing for 18 years, to run for the Council of Stellar Management.
I aim to Champion the casual and the new players plus give a voice to all existing players, to help support positive growth of the Eve Universe.
I’m independent and not backed by any large groups that I know of.

My EVE Online story.

I was encouraged to try Eve by a good friend back in 2005. I was hesitant at first, but he sent me a link for a free trial, and I decided to download it … over ADSL which took a few hours and then I started playing and was totally lost! :joy:

After a few emails back and forth and some time playing on his PC as he pointed out some things (half of which I instantly forgot :exploding_head:) but I soon figured out many things and was hooked.

He introduced me to a couple of other players he had met and joined a corporation with which was very crucial to me continuing to play. They once even came 24 jumps with their Battleships to help me finish one of my first level 4 missions after I exploded 3 times :fire: :rocket: :fire:
Then a month later I moved some basic stuff to join them in some mining ops and check out their new POS in lo sec Amarr space. And I pretty much stayed there.
I went on to become a director then inherited another corporation and was entrusted with the leadership of an Industrial alliance that grew till some changes and real-life issues lead to many players leaving Eve (for now).

I’ve played continuously pretty much with just a week or 2 of reduced activity while on holidays ever since 2005 so have experienced many changes and evolutions in New Eden.

Your areas of expertise. In which areas of the game do you feel you are the most knowledgeable? What qualities set you apart from other candidates?

In the Real world I have experience with IT Systems Management, Database design and administration along with Application design.
With DB applications I focused on UI functionality and performance – things should be easy to follow and effectively capture all the information required, or make the info needed easy to find and understand.
Additionally, I’ve had a lot of work in Customer Service too, championing the customer but also balancing what’s good for the longevity of the business with the customer’s present needs and wants.

I’ve done a fair bit of bug reporting in my time in and out of Eve Online. Once I even found myself alone with a dev in lo sec local chatting about a couple of Planetary Interaction bugs that they were not always able to reproduce or weren’t totally sure of the context.
Our corp even discovered a potential issue with POS setups that could lead to “outlawed cloaking tech” which some of our attackers in a War at the time were not too happy with. :person_shrugging:
Myself and another worked with a GM to try and trouble-shoot the issue and even got recommended to look at joining the ISD Team but at that time I was a little short on free time with work commitments.

I’ve lived in New Eden mostly in hi sec and lo sec empire space though I have also had over 10 years’ experience in wormhole space and lived for a very short time in null sec outside of the fair few visits (sometimes welcomed by the locals and sometimes not so much).

I have extensive experience with PVP (solo and fleet), PVE and Industry. I like to think I have a good understanding of the economic landscape in New Eden and other players have commented in the past that I have some good ideas and know a lot of the intricacies of the game.
I have a fair idea on what I find to be fun and I’m aware that’s not always what others find to be fun. I’m open to finding a balance and opportunities for people to find their share of fun without building too many barriers to other’s style of fun game play.

Why are you applying for the CSM?

The development focus in Eve has changed lots over the years for the better (core Windows files no longer get accidentally purged in patching! :man_facepalming:) and maybe the worse (some aspects of the game have been more affected by the groups that have the largest number of squeaky wheels – to turn a phrase, to the detriment of better game play and progression.)

I now have more free time to help the often overlooked smaller groups and solo players who have been out squeaked in the past, get a bit more of a say. Plus, I think I may have some useful ideas to contribute also.
With good insight into how changes can actually work compared to how they are planned, I feel I can also give valuable constructive feedback and contribute to what CCP have planned.

Along with more focus on Quality Assurance and UI improvements I’d also like to see more emerging content to give players reason to continue playing Eve. Especially newer players who have done the New Player Experience and then wonder “What next?”, along with the more casual players that have Real World commitments which can prevent them from being involved in large alliance activities.

Some Key Initiatives I’d like to see and help with would be:

  • More Flexibility in some of the new UI customisation (Colour and Some shading/Size tweaks).
    Many may not remember when we once had more colour choices for the UI. Now we have limited choices based on shades (3) or similar colours to “match” our selected faction or ship. These aren’t exactly that flexibly and don’t really make things all that easy on the eye. I’m all for wider scroll bars! Also some of those text fields and shaded areas do not make for a very function UI.

  • Additional Pass to the Hi sec War-Dec Mechanics.

  1. Put in a more realistic cap on the number of wars that any corp or alliance can have concurrently so that more strategic consideration is given rather than just war dec’ing everyone you can for easy kills in hi sec.

  2. Additionally with that an increasing cost to the war decs over time so there is also consideration given to the value of having a corp or alliance permanently war dec’d.

  3. Maybe also a cost tier depending on whether it’s a corp or alliance that’s being war dec’d - Make Alliances more valuable.

  • Player Structure QoL and Flexibility Pass.

  1. Extension to some of the functionality of the ACL (Access Control List) mechanics for things like access to Moon Mining Ledgers and access to Feeding structures separate from controlling defences.
    Plus it could be nice to have more info in the ACL details like Who Created this one?

  2. Give Structures more fitting options to balance their potential between Defence, Attack and Support roles. Presently they have very limited (reasonable) fitting options, so it seems many corps just don’t fit them at all to mitigate the cost when they are lost and need replacing.
    What if they had more fitting slots and a greater choice of mods? More useful mods – 30 sec web or warp scram – such a joke for the fitting and operation cost of them.

  3. Potential for players to strategically refit after the first reinforcement to give the gameplay more variety and better chance of defending. How many attacks are actually defended these days ?

  • Player missions and Exploration Sites.

  1. Some more guide type missions to follow on from the Career Agents to give new players some additional tricks and tips and a bridge to where they feel they would like to take their Eve experience next. This could be a conclusion of the initial NPE plot which seemed to be left very unresolved. This could be a great way to introduce and explain the various factions in New Eden without too much of a huge lore dump all at once.

  2. Updates to missions. These have not really been given much love in a long time. Some new missions were added a long while back now and the burner missions were added but some prefer to only do one type.
    Maybe make some optional missions that cater to small fleets similar to the Homefront sites but with more variety, so they aren’t always identical giving players more of a reason and opportunity to team up and work together without needing to have the high level of skills and expensive equipment that things like DED Sites and Incursions require. Also, less lost time to having to travel there and back.

  3. Tie some Storyline missions into the underlying lore of Eve more and have them help affect the fabric of the universe. Things like Supply missions could help boost the spawning of some FW sites or intercept missions could vary the composition of FW NPC spawns.

  4. I’d also like to see some of the new raw materials for Battleship and Capital production have a chance to drop in some missions and even more so, exploration sites to help bring down build costs and spread the wealth a little more.

What can players expect from you?

I tend to be a good listener and diplomatic, taking on what people have to say with no judgement giving honest and respectable feedback based on facts and rational thought.
I’m a great team player and realise that often can involve helping others shine and achieve their goals or group goals over just my own.
I’m very approachable with flexibility in hours which can be key seeing I live in future land (New Zealand, GMT +12/13 hrs :new_zealand:).
I’m dedicated and reliable so if something’s promised then I’ll work my hardest to deliver to my full capability. But on top of that I have also been known to slip in some witty light-hearted contribution cause life should have its fair amount of fun. And that’s what I feel Eve Online should be too … Fun !

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@Dario_Kaelenter

  1. What has CCP got correct?
  2. What has CCP got incorrect?
  3. What do you wish existed in-game that doesn’t?
  4. What exists in-game that you wish didn’t?
  5. What exists in-game that you think ought to continue to exist?
  6. What doesn’t exist in-game that you hope never comes into existence?
  7. How would you improve PI?
  8. How would you improve the entire corporation UI?
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They created this awesome space ship game which is pretty open ended with a very rich back story and continue to develop and add content to keep people interested.
One cool evolution especially that people don’t really have too much ongoing interaction with tho is the character generation tool. So much flexibility and customisation options that I’m sure many other character games have tried to get close to and until Balder’s Gate 3 most have failed. I have friends that have played with it just for the cool flexibility there.

Red Dot additions :sweat_smile:
Though I think also the transition from POS code to Structures. There still are so many using POS because they still has some great advantages over Upwells. And some of the advantages of Upwells have been eroded as they may not have been as carefully thought out initially and then CCP pandered to the moaning from a certain block.
I think the changes to Capital and Battleship Production had good factors such as expanding to include other resources but maybe it was a little too much. Capital parts alone now costing 4 or more times as much to produce plus the addition of additional parts really has impacted on more than just dread blobs and turned people off small time production giving the larger lo sec and null sec blocks more monopoly over the production.

Walking in Stations. I can understand that cost and resource requirements for this would have been pretty considerable though I also think it would have been cool to have something to do outside the space ship spinning when you are over the flying about. I know of people that would have played Eve alone (or continued to play) for this sort of content and I think it also gives players more connection to their character and motivation to progress apart from just more isk and a better ship. Plus it opens up more potential revenue streams with cosmetic add ons.

Toxicity. I guess it comes with people and their insecurities. There are aspects of the game that can exacerbate that… I’ve often wondered why Eve has no in game chat filtering like Forums does. Some words best left out of the game and maybe being advised to consider why you want to say that may give players a moments to calm down and think again.

The supportive community. There are many players that are very willing to help with advice, isk, resources and providing opportunities and more positive environments for others to spend their Eve time in. Coming together to also help with Real World issues and make a positive difference in the world. I have never really seen that to an extent in any gaming community as much as we see in the Eve Online community and I hope that continues.

A singular focus on one aspect in the game such as PVP only. Not everyone comes to Eve to just shoot other stuff. Many come for a more relaxed environment to chill with friends and have a bit of fun. That could be small gang PVP tho also Mining, Industry or PVE content where they aren’t under pressure to match their physical abilities against other player as much. I think that’s also why Eve online appeals to more mature players as they don’t need to have those youthful quick reaction times or l33t coordination skills to succeed and enjoy the game.

First some credit to CCP for the recent change in halving PI material volumes - that alone has really had some positive impact on PI. Much less micromanaging required now. In the past just all that daily clicking used up my motivation and time available for Eve :smile:
I thought it would be cool to have a couple of add on build structures (at various cost levels) that could be used to adjust CPU and PG balance.
Also remove the cost of links as some planets like Gas Giants are so large that even with your smallest distance possible between nodes you lose so much PG to just the links as it’s based on distance rather than “length”.
Some way to reduce the clicking to save my poor mouse buttons! Some work was done here that made a real improvement but there is room for more. Moving extractor heads can be frustrating as instead of the head moving the UI decides I want to rotate the planet instead :man_facepalming: . Having the option to save a formation similar to probes and then move all of them in one go would be a blessing!

It’s getting there. Some areas are pretty ok as they are.
I think the main issues are some tabs that take a while to populate so clicking on one tab while it has a sub-option tab selected can waste a bit of your time before you can click to where you really want to be.
Main area I guess that could do with work is the member management area which can be pretty confusing.
Leverage the work done on the implementation of the ACL system could be used to cover some of the Corp functions.
At least some pop up or help on what some of the items and options there mean would help many figure it out as one look and most people’s brains explode!
There is the Title system which kind of is a half way update put in a while back on the way to something ACL like that could be iterated upon to quickly give the level of access you want to members.

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Support :+1: :+1: (Now with TWO left thumb flavor!)

Will you oppose RMT and Gambling operations being run off TOR and other means?

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Not 100% familiar with TOR and what it is exactly (Dark web related?) though RMT and Gambling outside of Eve itself I do not support in any way as :

  1. It’s against EULA as involves a breach of CCP’s IP rights.
  2. Brings profit and business motivations into the game (outside of CCP’s :smile: ) Which takes away from the fun aspect of Eve.

I know a couple of players/friends who have gone for opting out of Hypernet even, as they know they have issues with addiction in that area so happy they don’t have those issues to worry about and can just enjoy Eve for the game itself.

I have in the past reported online and email adverts for Trading Eve items for $ to CCP to help combat RMT and report bot accounts when I spot them to keep the game for the actual Players.

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I don’t have any more thumbs to give you an up, sir. You are good. Stay that way. :slight_smile:

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One thing I would really like to see is an accessibility option to make the cursor in the game bigger.

I would also love to see this in game!

I really hope you do what you can to prevent/eliminate toxicity.

I hope you do what you can to maintain a supportive and positive EVE community.

I also hope that players continue to have the freedom to do what they want in the game.

You have my vote!

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One other thing I had though about that would be very handy for the Corp Member list (Under Corp UI) is an optional page that players can use to Tag their Mail character.

This page could have options to make it visible to Corp mates and separately Alliance mates if applicable. It’s never shown to anyone outside the corp/alliance.

It would also have a note field where the members can see special roles or tasks this toon can help with or provide such as “Builds Battleships”, “Builds T2 ships”, Tax Manager, SRS manager etc (Set by the player). Other Corp/Alliance Players can then find that info in game without needing to jump to other tools like Discord and hunt. (It shows in a Members list that all members can see).

That info could then be useful for Directors (who can always see it) when granting roles/access.

It could also be used with the Eve Mail system so that a player can tag that alt with an identified main to not receive Alliance or Corp emails.
That way they don’t have to read through all the same stuff on every alt or clear the “New Mail” indicator.

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Connected to the Accessibility list feature perhaps

yes, almost like the way you can set a search for a corp that does a particular thing. Like we can set roles in the corp UI but what if you could designate your own Prefered role or apply for a role.

OMG yes YES!!! This is what I’m talking just increasing the fluidity and integration of the information exchange. Imagine how much that speeds up the process of generating content if say I start a project and can email a list of players who have self designated an interest in a particular role. And how useful it would be if they’d applied for that role and I had had the freedom as a director to either confirm or deny it etc.

I’m always asking myself how does management of real corporations work, well there’s a dynamic back and forth between roles and opportunities that people compete over, there’s levels of management, and measurable performance tests determine success. The Projects interface is covering part of this, but the whole roles thing, while probably good for its time, has grown dated and stagnant.

Dario, you have my vote

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EVE is also kind of a social platform where people meet new people and make new friends. I think an important feature would be to have private chats and EVE mails end-to-end encrypted.

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Yes, being online these days there needs to be a balance with security and accessibility.

I know that for my connection to the Eve Servers my data is travelling a long way through up to 18 Jumps so lots of chances there for anything to be intercepted… not that anyone would really find anything interesting in what I send in Evemails but they may be interested to know where the Blue Moon Pops are perhaps ! :sweat_smile:

With a current trend of migrating many systems to Cloud based services it would be nice to see plans for redundancy being built into the Eve connections to allow for instances where servers in one location go down. This would of cause mean that a greater focus on security of data would be required but I think many players would hope that this doesn’t lead to any time overheads in essential game data like navigating your ship and activating modules.

Having regional nodes with more secure and prioritised high capacity connections with the central eve database could also potentially help reduce latency in some connections like those Down-Under currently experience and ideally reduce issues of outage time as a backup DB server could kick in if the main one went offline.

I experienced the vast difference in responsiveness in things like PI a couple of years back when I visited Europe and the UK.
Dragging items from cargo to Customs Office here in NZ you can pretty much see each item transfer one by one and count the time taken, while in the UK it was all done in the same tick and so fast in comparison.
This may not seem like significant difference but it does give advantage to players closer to the server in things like looting cans/wrecks under pressure, hacking nodes in exploration and even tackles on gate camps. I have on more than one occasion been caught at a lo sec gate in a ship that’s fast align or cloaky just cause my client is telling me I can’t cloak cause I’m already cloaked.

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EXACTLY!

:100: :100: :100: :100: :100:
:raised_hands: :raised_hands: :raised_hands: :raised_hands: :raised_hands:

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From what Ive read, and listened too in the Eve Uni Townhall, You have my vote. plus the fact your a fellow Kiwi lol

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You would have my vote if you suggested that individual players without structures should be allowed to aid the defenders in wars. I am tired of creating alts or juggling alts between corps, or simply anchoring a tower so I can do stuff.

I want freedom to aid friends and to be hired as a merc without hurdles and without having to resort the chores and circunvents we have today at our disposal.

If you consider my idea to be good and you would work for it, you will have a few votes from me, from each of my accounts

Reply here for votes

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Yeah there are many tweaks to the mechanics that I feel should be looked into and changes made.

Having been in a small fleet trying to defend, or attack aggressor’s HQs in the past (often with other smaller fleets that the mechanics compartmentalise and render futile) a fair few times and along with others stumbling across complex and frustrating issues.

Here are some things I’d like to see:

  1. Ability for defenders in wars to be able to work together without having to juggle about toons in corps/alliances. If a character is in any wars with the Aggressor then they should be able to assist another character also in any war with the aggressor (surely this could be easily recoded in the game).

  2. Check on the Concord Flagging mechanisms out of War conflicts so the parties in a war can still get logi support from neutrals where no War Target is involved. Mainly to give the the chance to still do things like help against hi sec ganks and co operating in missions/sites when not involved in War battles. I know a fair few people that have unknowingly got Concorded dealing with suspect baiting in hi sec (I believe for a while it seemed that even having Safety Yellow could get you Concorded in this case, not sure if that was resolved or not but it would free up Support from a few Tickets if this was logically reworked). The mechanics presently can be so complicated many just sit on Green Safety and find out the hard way they can’t do anything -such fun !

  3. More Strategic components on Structures with the ability for players to target specific ones (modules) and disable them until the module is repaired (which could increase the demand for some consumable items, like Nanite paste and/or other PI materials, and take varying amounts of time). This could give small gangs more of an option to make an impact in the war. It also adds more dynamic play over just sitting and bashing with as much DPS as you can muster. The easy of attacking the modules could also depend on whether shield are active of not too.
    While on the defender’s side the option to refit defences for specific purposes even after the shield has been reinforced. That way the fights can be more dynamic and depending on what resources you establish you have available can then look to have the structure focused for DPS/ECM/Logi support or maybe something else.

And I’m sure there are many other cool ideas that can expand it from the Bash with all you can (or watch and hope the timer rolls more in your favour as defender) then wait to bash again (or hope all your allies aren’t busy at that time to come help.)
On the defender side it seems the more common path taken now is try evac all you can and then sit things out till the heat dies down to replace what you can afford to … and go play something else till the war’s over. :thinking:

Your idea has some merit. There are ways at present to do that already though.
I do know of some groups that have helped in wars as I believe you can still ally in a war without having a structure itself … you only really need to have a Hi sec Upwell structure to declare a war (I think the time it’s been online should also have a bearing on that going forward… at least a week).
To ally you only need to have something in space like a POS (that’s what some friends use to be eligible as war ally presently) or POCO. If we ever manage to move on from POSes… which is a big question still. Many seem to be falling back to use them after being disillusioned and let down with Upwells.

One of my main aims would be to reduce the blanket war decing in the 1st place. Make it strategic and focused on specific reasons other than having as many easy targets you can shoot at while also hiding behind hi sec mechanics to limit pilots standing up and fighting back.
Larger alliances tend to be Lo sec or Null sec and they don’t care so much about Hi sec mechanics and navigating them and experienced players tend to use non war decable alts for moving things so the ship kills largely seem to involve less experienced and aware players, often leading them to have a bad experience and deterring them from continuing to play.

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I agree with you on the additions to PI. I am often frustrated with having to deal with some of the limitations the current PI system has. I would also like to add the ability to name PI structures with a title that makes sense to the user to help identify the PI setup they have created. Add ons for more power or CPU could require additional skill training so that you can get better performance from them with your higher skill level. And how about a way to save common settings like you can save ship fittings? Mining duration, routing, resources, and alerts when something needs attention would be part of that settings ability.
Oh and yes you got my vote. :+1: :1st_place_medal:

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