Hi All,
I’m En Guarde, also known as Gordo. I’m the CEO of The Reason is Treason, a corp in Pandemic Horde. I started playing eve about 6 years ago. Like many players just starting out, I was thoroughly confused and dropped the game after just a few hours. A couple months later, I reinstalled it and joined Pandemic Horde.
During the beginning of WWB2 at the start of the Fountain Campaign, I was added to Horde’s Drone Expeditionary Force (DEF) FC team. I fought all throughout WWB2; participating in keepstar fights, M2, and all the breakout attempts. Then during the final siege of 1DQ in Delve, I promptly joined VOLTA just before PAPI’s dissolution. VOLTA was my first introduction to medium and small scale content. I took part in the Otsasai dreadbomb which really solidified my love of capital gameplay, and meant that I was overjoyed when my CEO at the time announced that we would be jumping out to caldari lowsec and joining Snuffed Out.
Snuff was one of the peaks of my EVE career. We liberally used capitals, blingy ships, and generally being in an incredibly well skilled team of players was fabulous. After Snuff, our Corp moved to Thera, and formed the next iteration of Therabois. We even formed an alliance for a bit called There Will be Violence [NMARE] and had some really amazing times flying blops fleets and nano escalation chains out of thera with D-sync, Peak, Hole punchers, dead terrorists etc. Eventually this too fell apart, and I decided to rejoin Pandemic Horde inc. where I caught the FC bug once more. I then started my little Corp and this is where I am now, strat fc for pandemic horde once more.
My areas of expertise and my reasoning for applying to the CSM.
- Most importantly, Skill expression - One of my biggest ideas around eve is how to ensure that new mechanics or changes ensure a low barrier of entry AND a high skill ceiling, as these are some of the fundamentals of what makes a game great. I like smartbombing enemy fleets or nano-ing or fighting outnumbered as I like to feel like I’m doing well at the game, and so I want to ensure a big focus in upcoming changes on ensuring healthy skill expression.
- Projection – I think the nerfs to ansiblexes were good and have forced super-coalitions to spread out in ways that have added some complexity to the nullsec ecosystem. But projection is a constant iterative process in EVE, and vehicles for smaller groups to take and move across space, along with projection mechanics which are designed to encourage fun without becoming mechanisms for 1000-man armies to project across vast regions of New Eden are still needed.
- Conflict drivers - Skyhooks are too influential and painful to bash, metenoxes are awesome conflict drivers but could use tweaks around their hitpoints/resists. Similarly with ansiblexes. And I think we would all like to see a limit to the number of plates you can fit on an upwell structure. As an FC I am always on the side of advocating for greater conflict drivers, and I understand how to balance them so they aren’t overwhelmingly one-sided.
- Capital/supercapital meta - This has obviously seen a big shakeup recently, with price adjustments, tank increases, Doomsday buffs putting titans back on top of the capital hierarchy (where they belong). But I think some focus on carriers could be interesting, lock range changes, fatigue bonuses, mild application buffs, longer jump ranges, small t3d-like bonuses to remote reps are all interesting ideas that could bring carriers back in line as a class of ship that can fight but isn’t oppressive, and that has a working niche.
- Corporation management - the Corp interface is bad! Corporations are the lifeblood of eve and even simple little things like a tooltip over each role explaining its permissions could be a great bonus for new CEOs and enabling new groups within eve.
- Freelance/Corp projects - CCP has indicated their desire for this to be the new mission/NPE, which is a very interesting concept and makes EVE even more player driven – which is good, but we need to avoid more ‘deliver items doesn’t actually deliver the items’ debacles and I think as a CEO and Corp leader who has to put in the work to recruit and motivate membership, I stand in good stead to give feedback on these initiatives.
What you can expect from me on the CSM:
I’ve turned from bittervet to believer in the last year or so, I think CCP has made some really good changes recently, but there’s always more work to do in the never ending cycle of EVE updates. I have a good reputation in my alliance as someone with a good knowledge base who is dedicated to getting better at and developing my understanding of EVE, I enjoy answering questions in our newbro channel as much as I love logging in to FC a stratop, and I want to bring that same degree of dedication and enjoyment to the CSM. I care a lot about EVE and I want to give the best feedback possible so that I can keep playing for many years to come.
As a member of Pandemic Horde I would be sure to keep track of concerns and issues raised around new patches via the CSM channel, and to endeavour to be a representative of the wider eve community as well as my alliance as I believe the game’s health is correlated to the health of all regions of the game.
you can always reach me on discord, my handle is jesuisgordo, and my public Corp discord is a good way to find a way into my Dm’s. my reddit DM’s are always open, as is my in-game mailbox.
Media:
