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 using the standard cerebral accelerator 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.
My goals (my continued work) if elected to CSM 20
Pochven-specific:
- Rework Stellar deployment sites into the dynamic dungeon system
- Pull out World Ark Flashpoints in full and rework, rebalance, and redesign it, laying the final ground work for an LP store overhaul and fixing an honestly insane amount of issues that the site has currently
- Rework the (currently, 64 separate) wormhole dungeons and the wormholes themselves, address spawn logic issues with the wormholes themselves, make the sites worthwhile to run, and rebalance the roaming gangs that spawn from them
- Rip out the LP store root and stem, and replace with an entirely new LP store that actually adds value to the players using it, that adds a viable and needed isk sink to the region, one that does not have impossible to redeem items, one that actually offers trig salvage much like the DED LP Store
- If resources allow, look into significantly changing Home-systems that are currently no different to the rest of pochven, with the sole exception of its home mineral field
- The most resource intensive part of this would be turning the Anchorages into an actual dockable station, one that provides useful bonuses such as, manufacturing, reactions, and reprocessing, for those with high standings, allowing the home systems to serve as a hub for the respective Clades.
- More wishlisty bit here: There are multiple triglavian ship assets that are not flyable by players, while it isn’t easy work it seems a no brainer to allow many of these ships to be built and flown by players.
Outside of Pochven:
- Continue to work on closing multiple abuse cases that exist in the game
- Continue to work as an effective liaison between players and Team Security to continue to crackdown on cheaters and RMT
- Continue to be proactive in fixing as many bugs as possible, actively responding to players who find a bug, working with them to re-create it, and submitting details of said issues to internal CCP channels to effectively get fixes rolled out as fast as they can
- Roll out various accessibility options for deaf and colour-blind players, I have done a fair amount of work with this already alongside CCP k1p1.
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.
