Drake Iddon for CSM18 - Content, Customisation, and Consequences above all

Council Of Stellar Management CSM Campaigns
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The past year and a half I have spent the vast majority of my time stewarding Pochven, from aiding players in cleaning up errant cheaters and RMTers that plagued the region in the past, to organising player roundtables to push CCP towards making the region a much healthier place. The previous roundtable was formed in January in response to CCP accidentally killing the region overnight with a “bug fix”, Representatives were gathered from all corners of Pochven to discuss the many issues that the region has, with CCP in attendance who asked and answered questions in as open of a forum as allowed for the devs)

Ultimately the roundtable was successful in its main goal; restoring the key pillar of Pochven to bring life back to the region. However unfortunately the work is far from done and Pochven is still by no means a fully healthy region.

One of the three core goals I have if elected to the CSM would be this, to help shape Pochven into the ultimate thunderdome that groups of many sizes, formed from around the eve universe, can gather to seek out brutal challenging content in return for the prospect of unfathomable riches that the region has to offer, be that from sites, salvaging, piracy or mining, Pochven should become THE region that personifies risk/reward.

In addition there is ample opportunity to bring Pochven’s unique take on content to nullsec, the lessons learned from Pochven could be used to great effect in the regions that are ultimately dead in New Eden to promote new challenging PvPvE that cannot just be solved by throwing bodies at it.

The other two goals are very simple:

  • ■■■■ cheaters

  • Annoy CCP until they finally give in and give us the customisation that the player-base craves (honestly the fact that we are 20 years in without a robust customisation system that they could monetise is absolutely dumb)

Cheaters, crime and punishment:

I have tirelessly aided the Pochven community in a campaign of rooting out and ridding the area of these people, by both helping people correctly identify problem behaviour, teaching them how to distinguish between actual infractions from the people who are simply using eve mechanics, and finally by liaising with CCP where and when I can to help these reports be seen to swiftly.

However this is merely pissing against the wind, without proper tools or the ability to converse with Team Security behind an NDA, no matter how much effort we put into this there will simply always be more cheaters to replace the ones that are banned. The CSM would allow me to continue this work in a far more productive manner and hopefully reach a breakthrough from a tool, strategy and policy implementation that would severely limit these people from popping back up instantly and continuing to ■■■■ up the game we love.

Customization is King:

The final core goal is something we all know and want, we are all sick of CCP’s attempts to milk the player-base in order to satisfy shareholders. From ship and SP sales to the recent Wisdom of Gheinok booster debacle, the first real cash only booster that affects ship stats, players are absolutely fed up of the constant cycle CCP finally repairing its trust with the community, only to inevitably ruin that trust by doing something monumentally stupid not long after

There is one area where we would LOVE to be milked and it would being us coming back for more; Character, Ship and structure customisation.

There is near unlimited potential and countless ways for ways to fund more development into EVE, Spamming the ever living ■■■■ out of the ship skin system, the implementation of the fanfest-promised hologram system, Hairstyles and beards? Yes please! You want cat ears? you can have cat ears for a price, you want goggles that make cat ears invisible because they are cringe? ■■■■ it why not, 250 plex and its yours

CCP is sitting on an amazing source funding and it simply does not act.

If elected I would ram this point down CCPs throats until they understand, there are so many ways to implement and scale the production and release of customisation options that it is frankly mind boggling that it hasn’t.

Thank you for reading to this point and feel free to contact me either in-game or on discord if you have any questions.

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Drake is my precious son and if you don’t vote for him for CSM you’re dead to me.

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Good luck on your campaign. :smiley:

What current activity, relative to pochven, would you current consider to be your top priorities to address with regards to cheating and exploitative behavior?

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Drake would be a great member of the CSM

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Why! Why, are there not giant billboard skins available for the Caldari haulers.

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Two core issues with Pochven that I would consider exploitative behaviour:

1: While Input broadcasting is heavily reduced in Pochven compared to what it once was that doesn’t mean that it is going to stay that way forever and the effort involved to get it to this point has been more than unreasonable, there needs to be new systems and tools in place for players to more easily identify and document instances of cheating in order to improve the reports that go to CCP, in the same vein I very strongly feel that GMs are not very knowledgeable in the mechanics of the game (both the mechanics of Pochven, the mechanics of certain legal setups and the mechanics of the game as a whole)

Another huge issue with this is bans which is easy to explain: Bans do absolutely nothing

The combination of Skill injectors and the seemingly complete lack of mechanisms to combat ISK laundering makes bans absolutely worthless unless you can keep the ban waves up, banned players will inject a fresh character straight back into the comp they run and be back in space in a matter of hours, combine this with the fact that ISK isn’t removed means that ban waves are simply a cost of business, as long as you recoup the costs between the bans (which is honestly pretty easy in Pochven lets be real) then it is extremely difficult to convince someone to change their behaviour

2: Pochven is probably the most surveilled region in the entire game, the complete lack of a counter to AFK cloaking and the absurdly high value of having CCTV networks in the system puts us in a situation where almost every established group will have AFK eyes on all gates in all systems without any downside

This isn’t cheating obviously, it’s well within the mechanics of the game, however I think it is very unhealthy for the region. It also is easy to implement the change for this: Allow the anchoring of mobile observatories

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thanks dad please ask CCP to up the GIF size on the forums because mine wont autoplay >:(

I cannot overstate how much customisation potential there is for EVE, its crazy

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Drake is the only person I play EVE with whom I talked to outside of EVE first. He had my vote in previously, this year is no exception.

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@Drake_Iddon would you back any idea mentioned below as CSM member?

  1. Insane idea - pay with PLEX in NES for extra dev time
  2. Quafe+ is from "biomass" (...or corpse reprocessing)
  3. Little things / Small QoL suggestions - Better Visibility Of Other Players’ PI Networks
  4. Little things / Small QoL suggestions - 8 (search shows 13) requests for Stack Split enhancement since Jun’18
  5. Little things / Small QoL suggestions - PI KB-shortcuts for toggling between groups of structures
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1: This would almost definitely have a negative impact on the game, you would be giving CCP the ability to fully recognise deferred profit without any actual game time redemption, tldr it would be a boardmembers wet dream because you get profit for absolutely zero work

2: Kinda cool idea, corpse reprocessing to get a chance for materials and maybe implants would make a secondary market

3 and 5: 1000 times yes, PI needs much needed QoL and has for over a decade

4: also a good idea, along with pyfa-esque keywords for searching, inventory management tools in eve is honestly pretty poor and can always use upgrades as the game gets older and more complex

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Bookmarks? Easy clap quality of life with just a little effort there. Having to online/offline folders is tough. And also one click compression for krabs who are not me.

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Would you ever consider addressing the underlying fundamental issue of NPC standings lacking real pratical incentives to effectively choose a side? Thinking of ways this can be interlaced with PVP as a complementary system rather than being divorced from it. This holds true for any faction where there’s a lack of clear meaningful incentives to choosing a side. How this matters from an individual faction standpoint can very widely but the overarching issue is the current system of standings and LP is badly broken.

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Bookmarks could definitely use some love, the 3 folder limit is pretty annoying when you need to use a different one (and then afterwards try to remember which of the 20+ offline folders you need to online again)

Compression I have no clue about and can’t answer as I am not a miner

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The standings system has definitely withered away at the sidelines and also needs an overhaul,

  • Triglavian/Edencom standings are the most useful but are entirely detached from social skill

  • Pirate standings are easily the second most powerful standings in niche situations allowing you to personally turn FOBs into your own personal army

  • Empire standings are now effectively the least useful; you get better tax but that is outdone by player markets, or you can get access to better missions which (outside of level 5s) are just not good income anymore, there are tonnes of better options for making money now

There would be a huge effort required to overhaul that system because it interacts with so many things and has so many implications, but I would definitely support it

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What sort of punishment do you think would be sufficient for cheaters, Criminals or CCP if for example they dont give in to your (us) demands?

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awful dad jokes until they question thier own existance

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P-00 (Drake Idderon)

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Thanks for the thoughtful reply on this one - meaningful reasons to ‘pick a side’ would of course be subject to the values of the faction who’s standings are being gained/lost with a risk / reward based system that could be commensurate to the side chosen. The underlying logic being the reward and risk being meaningful for the player rather than just a ‘cost of doing business’. So wholly supporting one faction against another has real net adverse consequences to the faction adversely affected and conversely rewarded by the faction who’s standings are being gained. LP is sort of a milquetoast way of CCP seeming to say we don’t know what you actually want here’s some LP, spend it how you want (which is fine to a point) but for harder standings grinds the reward should be more meaningful.

I’m just using this as an example so please take it with a grain of salt but perhaps Triglavian dedicated players being able to deathclone in Pochven at 8.0 or 9.0 or higher and being able to formally join the Convocation of Triglav Outside the Struggle at 10.0 and perhaps the option to support Svarog, Perun or Veles Clades the ability to conduct operations inside those Krai’s and meshing PVP and PVE objectives (similar to how agents work in high sec). What’s meaningful at higher tiers may require further investigation based on the faction, subfaction, objectives etc.

Caveat for those players who currently enjoy the obvious practical advantages of being dual standings for both Trig and Edencom I would consider it better game design to not take away from those players who worked for dual-standings but at a trade-off of losing out on some potentially really nice and meaningful practical rewards down the track for wholly supporting their chosen faction.

This is a deeper conversation but the underlying logic is risk vs reward in the context of standing and faction objectives/values.

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In terms of standings, I think the Pochven region and Triglavian standings are a great system that could be copied to at least the pirate factions in their null regions.

Right now, to a new player, standings really only are there to dictate what missions you can run.

Having certain station services or even access to certain systems locked behind a standings requirement really gives players something tangible to strive for.

CCP has stated at past fanfest that they want to rework the standings system. In particular, they would like to have players be able to declare for or against certain groups. This would for sure change things up.

All that said, standings are a major part of the game. Any change to the system would probably make a lot of people upset, but it would also probably make a lot of people happy.

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ugh fine you have my vote

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