Thanks for the question! This has a ton of points to it, so Ill try to address all of them
Sov timers and small groups: I think how ADMs interact with timers should change. There is a community-wide discussion going on atm related to the math behind timer rolls, which I support.
I think also the ADM system is incredibly one-sided. With no way to lower people’s ADMs (shout out to StormDelay for eloquently bringing this up the first time), it is simultaneously a little easy to hold on to vast swathes of space, and annoying to do so. I would welcome a discussion around a way to attack ADMs that bring a military objective for the attackers into it that isn’t pure entosis, like having ADMs decay if the hostile force does something. My initial proposal was if they reinforce and/or kill skyhooks, but the idea has no been explored in depth, so take it with a grain of salt.
One of the recurring game design points I have heard from devs in many of the games I play is that the community is great at describing the problems, ok at describing what they want to have the outcome be, and terrible at designing a solution. FC Okami talks about affordance theory, in that players only know of solutions that they already know about, and I agree that Fenris have the ability to come up with new solutions to things that the players wouldn’t. I think for the players, that is often because we want our solutions to be quick, easy and elegant, because we worry that we cannot get them implemented if they are not. When it comes to game mechanics that allows for smaller groups to exist and thrive next to bigger ones (as the Ansiblex change is meant to help), I think we definitely need Fenris to add things to the game that are currently not even conceptualized by the community.
At the risk of saying we need another sov rework (I honestly felt like equinox wasn’t as much of a sov rework as it was a resource rework for nullsec), I think the system currently is a little half-baked. The floofplains of the last system, the current inability to build tall rather than build wide has a number of problems: needing more space to support a population just spreads everyone out thinly and that is mediocre for many types of content. I have been spending more time in lowsec recently, and the game feels way more alive with many hostile groups living nearby.
The other issue (which Kazanir has put in a way I like), is that sov has to be worth holding. And it has to be worth holding in a small amount AND in a large amount. Let people customize their space to suit their needs and play style, whether it is massive mining, ratting OR passive income to support a core of people who mainly want to PVE. Make taking a single constellation or handful of system worth it for a small group. The current system makes it feel like one must own a lot of sov for there to be a lot of benefit, which naturally means that huge organizations will do better than smaller ones.
What do you think of the current state of content? do you think its too early to tell or did they go a bit far with the ansi nerf? I like the change but I feel content has been a little lacking at the moment.
I look forward to voting for you! very impressed by what I read.
100% too early to tell on the ansi nerf. I don’t think they went too far, but now that the ansi has gotten a change, we also have a year worth of data collecting while we can do other positive improvements to the game, without having to micromanage our expectations.
The lack of content (for me) feels almost synonymous with a lack of a big alliance military goal. Normally Brave has been provided that by having to survive an attack, but I admit I thought our wars against Horde and Winterco were a little lackluster from the back-and-forth perspective. As you know I have been hanging out in lowsec and also done a lot of tournament stuff, so there is always something to do, but I do want to encourage Fenris to look at medium and short term alliance-focused strategic objectives.
You have my vote of course, I think you have a good understanding of many parts of the game and understand how to work with FC - a critical skill for a good CSM member.
here’s a few questions.
What’s one ship or ship class you would rescue from being crappy?
Will you advocate for the the porpoise booshable?
Thoughts on Map changes?
If you win, will you eat spicy wings or some Norwegian equivalent with me in Norway in December?
If I have to pick a ship class, probably the combat capabilities of carriers. If it is a particular ship, I have a long list of ships I feel do too little, so I would pick something a bit personal, possibly aug navy. I would also like to get weapon bonuses for long and short range turrets split so assault cruisers could be good without being too good.
Now that carrier booshes exist, I don’t see why anything supcap or regular cap has to be unbooshable by the right size ship.
The new ingame map? I like it. I have also submitted a whole bunch of proposals for the next time they look at the map. For the geography of eve: I like that they are experimenting with new stargates at last.
There is a great ma la tang place near me. I enjoy spicy foods, but I haven’t ever had wings locally.
I’m concerned about projection through wormholes. Drifters are pretty numerous and the mass you can bring through them seems generous. I have been told you can bring something like a 100+ kikis through one. Are you happy with wormhole projection as it is or would you be willing to take a look at it?
The original nerf to drifter wormholes was mainly about discouraging people from having to make tons and tons of alpha characters to deal with them.
I am not sure I would describe the mass as generous, you can’t really take any viable fleets through that aren’t kikis and bombers.
I would like wormhole projection to be based on randomness and scanning, the problem with drifter holes is that they are very very precise when it comes to showing up exactly where you want. They are good for ganking and whaling, mainly, not so much actual fighting comps.
I think probably more projection nerfs while we are trying to see the effect of the previous projection nerfs is a bit too soon, but we’ll have to see what is proposed.
I love the direction the devs are taking with the new HUD interface, and I hope to see more changes soon. However, there are still features that the developers should integrate or embed in a more accessible and visible fashion. One of them is drone control. Drones should be integrated directly into the HUD, not buried in separate windows. What are your thoughts on this?
Also, as a hacker and explorer at heart, the current UI for hacking is kind of clunky. Mining just got its own dedicated button and window, and hacking honestly deserves something similar. Right now, the minigame window just sits right in the middle of the screen. We really need a transparency option for it, so we can actually keep an eye on the Overview and D-Scan while cracking containers, instead of getting blindly jumped.
On top of that, it would be awesome if this dedicated UI gave us more info about the site itself—like how many cans are left on the grid or what we are dealing with.
I think based on the rough sketches of the hud design progress from the dev blobs, we might see drones more integrated into the hud. It could be a bit better use of the space for the new radar, which is definitely hard to use and get much out of.
Expanding the hacking minigame to be more usable would be great. It feels like a while since we got that looked at. They do love using hacking for seasonal events, I’d be happy to encourage them to look at it and its placement.
Not only did mining get more of an update regarding the site, but ratting anoms did too, with the counter of waves and such. It is very natural, I think, to add that to hacking sites, I hadn’t even considered that.
I’m biased here but I think Dujek does a great job at advocating for players - he even managed to get one of my bad suggestions implemented. It was tragic when he barely missed CSM20 so I’m glad to see Dujek back on the trail for CSM21. Even if you’re not in Brave - Dujek is a great candidate to add to your ballot in November.
I’m always bad at these types of things but here’s some questions:
EVE has a problem retaining new players - thoughts on Exordium and the other recent NPE changes, are they in the right direction? There’s obviously no single solution to this problem but what would you propose to the devs as the next step(s)?
If you could force FCCP to ship one change in next week’s patch (within reason, not a whole new expansion), what would it be?
If you had to pick one, what is your favorite EVE ship?
