Hi all, I am Drake Iddon; current member of CSM 19, avid 1400mm artillery enjoyer and a die hard resident of Pochven since it’s inception
Over the past year I have had the amazing opportunity to serve on CSM 19 as one of the two CCP selected representatives, and I have been far more productive in my tenure than I could ever have imagined.
In less than a year the internal balance of the black-sheep region has improved drastically, its unhealthy wealth generation curtailed and redistributed across a larger swathe of players and groups, its sites reworked, unhealthy areas of its ecosystem addressed, exploits closed, hundreds of bugs and inconsistencies fixed both inside the region and elsewhere, and by my count; hundreds (if not, thousands) of cheating accounts banned.
Pochven has not been my sole focus of CSM19, from aiding in identifying and removing botting networks around the game, assisting players with reproducing and reporting bugs, and most importantly conveying player feedback to CCP every step of the way.
There is still much more to do and I intend to continue this work should the player base support me in doing so.
My major contributions to the game while on CSM 19
I have had an honestly absurd amount of input into the game beginning with the Revenant expansion, below is a condensed version that goes beyond simple tweaks and QOL changes
Pochven-specific:
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Completely replaced flashpoints with a version built on a dynamic dungeon system, supporting all 4 empire factions and not just the Amarr.
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Simultaneously added region wide visibility of anomalies, adding a permanent counter to AFK cloaking regionwide, and cracking down on botted CCTV networks to remove unassailable advantages that stifled combat in the region.
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Fixed the bugged NPC AI in the region where they would be asleep until one of their spawn group was killed.
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Reworked the smaller sites which were previously not worth running, except torpids for standings, to be viable for solo and micro gang sizes to run for reasonable income
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Added salvage beacons to anomalies so that salvagers can access them after the site is completed.
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Prevented roaming NPCS from warping to interior rooms of multi-grid dungeons, preventing bots from self-farming LP and ISK in every system, simply by orbiting the site 23/7
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Added support for Triglavian clade standings, allowing for reduced taxes and will support future features in pochven in the future. (I hope)
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Rebalanced Overmind Nursery sites to provide a new source of Triglavian salvage, helping to offset the market shock due to the popularity of the Babaroga.
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Ongoing, Data and player driven, balancing of all sites
Outside of Pochven:
- Removing the missile rate of fire and turret damage bonuses for brand new characters, closing an extremely abused system when combined with skill injectors to create unassailable bonuses that other characters cannot match.
- Removing the Omega window popup, eliminating an abuse case where gifting someone omega could disable their game for a period of time while out in space.
- Closed an ESI abuse case: you can no longer use a repeating query to spam invites to a player via ESI in order to see if they were online or offline, depending on the return value of the query. (this has been around for a long long time and good riddance)
- Advocating for an increase in skyhook raidability duration to 2 hours, and increasing their visibility ahead of time on the map. (big thanks to fellow CSM candidate Itaer for providing direct input on this)
- Work on Force projection limitation: Filament changes and Ansiblex changes in the revenant major update.
- Input (along with the rest of the CSM) on the feedback from the overpowered nature of the originally advertised system effect generators.
- Advocating for finally removing the last half of the surgical strike resist nerf.
- The Babaroga – Input during its stat design.
- Input on freelance jobs with regards to potential abuse cases.
- Work and testing on the global plex market.
- Ongoing feedback from players to devs throughout the drifter crisis.
- Pushing for as many people as possible to provide direct effective feedback to CCP regarding the ingoing problems with VRAM and stability issues after the GPU pipeline update (ongoing).
- Advocating for a single button to disband fleet as fleet boss (a QoL change, but this one has been requested for a long time).
- Allowing for direct enlistment to pirate factions while in Zarzakh.
- Closed a few abuse cases surrounding wars that stopped people from fighting back, fight honourably you cowards.
- Changes to the core system behind gates and keys, allowing the server to remember if you have used a key on a specific gate, you will no longer lose multiple keys for spam activating a gate, or if you stopped your ship after activating.
On top of the above, I have relentlessly pursued those who break the ToS, anywhere from botting to input broadcasting, to RMT and irl threats. I absolutely despise players who decide that they do not need to adhere to the baseline rules that makes EVE enjoyable for us all.
From establishing a (one way, by design) liaison with team security to quickly highlight to them areas where cheating/RMT/etc is occuring, and also assisting players with ways to effectivly identify, document, and report cheaters, I can proudly and confidently say that multiple hundreds if not thousands of infringing accounts have been banned throughout CSM 19.
I was granted a vote of confidence from the playerbase and CCP last year, I hope that I have lived up to expectations and ask for that confidence once again from you all.