Hello everyone, I’m Itaer and I’m running for CSM 20. I’ve been playing Eve since 2007, through many different play styles in many different areas of space. My main interest has always been small gang PvP. I have spent an extensive amount of time in lowsec space, mainly in the caldari-gallente warzone. Currently, I live in wormhole space and am very interested in the PvP interface between kspace and wormhole space. In real life, I am a scientist (ask me about comets!) with significant experience in data science, and I hope to bring that perspective to my discussions with CCP.
There are three main things that I would like to focus on as one of your CSM representatives:
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Communication: Since I ran for CSM 19 last year, I feel that CCP has improved their communication with the community dramatically. CCP has opened a number of new community engagement channels, like the new podcast-style dev chats, CCP Okami giving frequent updates and discussion on discord, and more in depth justification for changes as seen in the Legion major update patch notes. This is a super positive direction, and I have heard from many CSM members that CCP has been very responsive to the CSM this year, and that a lot of these changes came about in cooperation with the CSM. This kind of communication is very important to me. My own personal conversations with CCP k1p1 and several CSM members, both at fanfest and online, led directly to the skyhook raiding changes earlier this year, as mentioned in Drake Iddon for CSM20 - Inflict me upon the devs for another year. I want to help CCP continue in this direction by supporting their communication with the community.
TL;DR CCP has been doing a much better job of communicating this year. We need a CSM that encourages that to continue. I have talked to CCP quite a bit this year, and I want to continue that relationship.
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Iteration: As a long time Eve player, the lack of consistent iteration has long been the most frustrating part of CCP’s development style. There is an old player joke that “the ‘I’ in CCP stands for iteration”, and for good reason. Eve is a graveyard of half-finished ideas. Tiericide, proving grounds, incursions, the Drifter storyline, and many more. If there is any one thing that I would actually like to *change* as a CSM member, this is it. Even the most exciting new feature needs attention as the game ages.
While CCP has improved on this as well, I think that far more work needs to be done here. There is a massive amount of untapped potential in the game. Players are already very familiar with existing systems; improving them is highly appreciated. It is impossible for any team of developers to match the creativity and insight of the entire Eve community. Once a change is made or a feature added to the game, it is nearly guaranteed that the community will spot things that CCP did not - things to be changed, things which could be done better, and things which can be expanded. Once all the work has been done to build, polish, and release a feature, iterating with community feedback is high reward for low effort. It is okay to make changes. In a game like Eve, stagnation is death. Please continue to change things.
TL;DR I’d really like to push for more consistent iteration across older systems, to revisit things which have aged, and for a commitment to continuing iteration for new features.
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The little things: CCP Karkur’s little things thread has been one of the most successful community-facing development conversations in the history of Eve. I want to make sure that CCP continues this as an ongoing commitment. CCP needs to hear that spending developer time on these things is important and appreciated. Let’s iterate on bookmark folder limits. Let’s add notes to ships in hangars. Let’s tie ACLs to corp roles. Let’s iterate on the skill extraction UI. Maybe we should consider expanding this effort to include a community polling system - something that may not be suited for balance changes, but could be super impactful when it comes to prioritizing which quality of life changes see dev time. More than anything, let’s hear a commitment to this. Let us hear that this is understood as important.
TL;DR I want to see CCP make a commitment to expanding and continuing the focus on “the little things”, and to improving quality of life.
I appreciated the outpouring of support last year, and I look forward to representing the smallgang community on the CSM this year. In the last year I have really appreciated talking with current CSM candidates @Drake_Iddon and @youngpuke2. Thanks for reading!