Greetings all, my name is Drake Iddon and, with a lot of pushing from friends and the Pochven community, have decided to run for CSM17.
For the constantly requested list of ideas that I would like to push for, look here
I began my EVE journey back in 2009 as a teen and fell in love with the game, the stories it produced and the community that made those stories possible. My career back then was not much to write about frankly, I spent a lot of my time missioning and mining in highsec, dabbled in lowsec here and there, eventually winding up in nullsec, first in a renter alliance in Vale of the Silent and eventually making my way over to Fountain as part of Important internet spaceship league as a simple ratter and F1 monkey.
Eventually I started getting burned out with the game as most people do, I left null and only logged on to chat to friends, doing the odd roam with some of them in hydra reloaded helping them kill carriers using a Sin that I was barely trained to use and could not afford to replace.
Soon after I quit the game fully to go to university, however I was not away from New Eden for too long as I was immediately back with DUST 514’s release under the characters Delta Iddon and Tech De Ra. Despite its many flaws I loved the game and had a few crowning achievements, namely winning the Prime League and naming the planet Eon Prime in 8S-0E1, successfully organizing hosting the Squad cup alongside CCP Logibro as a small event between CCP and Electronic Sports League and winning the Dust 514 tournament at Fanfest 2014 along with winning the MVP award (granting me a shiny Nvidia titan I then immediately almost lost at the airport)
As with many ex-EVE players, I eventually got itch to come back, with the pandemic letting me work from home I decided to re-sub to a universe that was vastly different to the one I left, I dabbled with invasions and nomadic wormhole life along with enjoying the seasonal events. After winning the Federation Grand Prix I moved into Pochven full time, from introducing the sport of Seagulling to the blue triangle of the time along with 3 friends, fighting off the attempts of large groups to turn the space into a crabbing heaven (which is ongoing to this day I guess), and generally having fun flying around the space in my panther, enjoying what has become an eternal thunderdome.
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?
I have lived and breathed Pochven starting months before the gates were opened and many players considered it a dead area of space, along with my corp and many friends made along the way we have experienced (and sometimes, orchestrated) first hand an ever changing, often chaotic life cycle of an area of space involving numerous small and large groups of players all with different leadership styles and goals, this is not really something that has been available in the rest of EVE for a good while and I am confident that I can apply this background into constructive concepts that can benefit the rest of the universe.
Why are you applying for the CSM?
There are many reasons and ideas behind the candidacy, but by far the most important one is this: The players do not trust CCP and it needs to be repaired.
After returning to EVE there was a noticeable difference in atmosphere surrounding the game; While the usually referred to “bittervet” sentimentality around a decade ago, generally describing a section of the player base that felt themselves and their play styles neglected with a lack of updates and no news or content to look forward to. This was, back then, a reasonably small section of the community at large but has now grown to encompass a huge portion of the player base, including both active players and those who have now quit because of it.
Almost everyone used to get hyped up back when new content was announced and for the most part players had a feeling of their time and money being valued by CCP, but as we come into the 3rd decade of EVE online, a milestone that should be celebrated by all, instead is overshadowed with near intense hatred of what CCP has become where announcements are met with weariness and distrust instead of excited speculation, planning and scheming to get one over on rivals (and allies).
This rot needs to be stopped if EVE is able to thrive again, it doesn’t matter if the upcoming content, shrouded in mystery on a redacted roadmap, is on the levels of well-loved expansions such as Apocrypha or Crucible, it will not stop a declining player count if the customer base that actually creates the stories in EVE feels like it is not being valued.
As far as I see it; the CSM is potentially the best tool the community has for achieving it; it’s the only way to get members of the community deep within CCP to speak to them directly in order to get them to understand this fatal disconnect it has between the company and the customer.
Secondary to this there are a lot of ideas I wish to push CCP on to improve EVE in many aspects of the game, people have been starved for content for a long time and I feel that the concepts that have made Pochven enjoyable and dynamic could be applied elsewhere; invasion style sites that have natural systems in place to discourage blobs, that take long enough to have to be defended by pursuers, with a large reward incentive to be profitable even after risking and/or losing ships multiple times. While this is not an ambitious idea, it is something that uses mechanics already coded into the game which could be adapted to other areas in a short time frame when compared to designing a new idea from scratch. With such little relative investment required I am confident it could be pushed to EVE quickly.
Alongside this I want to push for as much dev time into QoL changes as I can, EVE is a very vast, deep, complex game with insane amounts of interactions between the player and the client, there are potentially an infinite amount of QoL changes that can be done in a short span of time which can remove frustrations with the game, frustrations that over long periods of time and even short intense play sessions contribute to the increasing amounts of burnout we are seeing in the game that is causing the painfully low player count, the lowest we have ever seen in this decade of the game.
Finally I wish to work alongside the community devs to add more events that are able to be dictated and messed with by player action, events are consistently invested into at CCP but recently these have been relegated to either seasonal rehashes of old events, or instanced abyssal-esque areas that remove any interactivity with the rest of the game. People are regularly complaining about this and I completely agree with them, while the events are fun they are essentially theme park rides masquerading as part of a sandbox when they are anything but, I hope to work alongside events teams to shape the designs they have into systems that will actually contribute to the sandbox of EVE, instead of temporarily removing players from it.
What can players expect from you?
Fixing the broken bridge between CCP and you, the player, requires a huge step up in communication, this applies to the CSM as well and I will be an open door to everyone who wants me to listen, bring your ideas, your complaints, your anger and everything in-between, I will always be open to anyone who wants to engage and interact with the CSM, that is going to be the foundation of rebuilding the players trust in the CSM and with CCP.
As said above I want to be a completely open door to everyone willing to talk, ask me anything you want either here or in via in game mail. Let’s help each other bring EVE into its 3rd decade in a state that we can all be proud of.
Thank you.
