Kshal Aideron for CSM 17 (the newbro candidate)

My name is Kshal Aideron and I’m a newbro. Yes, that’s correct. I’ve only been playing for a little over 2 years. I’m sure you’re thinking, “WTF? What makes this lady qualified to be a CSM?”

Ask yourself, who’s better to petition on behalf of new players than a new player? Especially a new player who tried playing twice before and rage quit each time because the tutorial was a hot mess at the time?

I’m not a bitter vet (quite yet), but I’ve accomplished a lot in my short time in New Eden.

Kshal was born in early 2020. The only reason I tried Eve a third time was because my husband and a friend at work played. You know what they say, if you can’t beat them, join them. I just refused to move out to Null to play with them.

Over the years, I watched my husband (and later my friend) play from the sidelines. I saw and heard their frustrations and decided that I didn’t want to play like that.

I didn’t like the concept of “blues.” I want to go out and shoot whomever I want, whenever I want, however I want. I figured I’d go solo until I found the NPSI (not purple, shoot it) community near the end of my first 30 days of playing.

While I was having fun flying NPSI fleets, I was also streaming Eve. At the time I started Eve, I was the only new player streaming. As a marketing professional, I thought that creating content and promoting it would be a fun experiment. Little did I know that I would become the Eve help desk for other new players.

Being a small time streamer means that frustrated new players would show up in my chat to ask questions. My chat was slow and I’d be able to spare them the attention they needed. When I realized what was happening, how I played Eve changed. Instead of playing as a new player, I was playing to help other new players.

This, of course, isn’t where my Eve story ends. Now we need to talk about the birth of a thriving public community.

In January 2021, I created www.everookies.com. This website was meant to be a place for new players to find articles and tutorials to help them along. When March rolled around, I was asked to try to revive a failed project from the previous year involving a newbro friendly incursion fleet. The project was revived as Eve Rookies Incursions.

Incursions are endgame PVE content. To get involved it costs a lot of SP (those battleship skills HURT), isk, and time commitment due to incursions moving around New Eden. Needless to say, the barrier of entry is quite high.

While the two main public groups allow newbros (or starters), it still takes an investment to just try incursions. Can you imagine trying them and then hate doing them? The goal of Eve Rookies Incursions is to allow a player to try incursions at a much lower level and with the lowest commitment possible.

The pilot just needs to be able to get into our basic Praxis and get themselves to where we’re staging. They don’t even need to buy a ship! Just show up and borrow one of ours!

With the help of the wonderful people who believed in this idea, I managed to put together an entire fleet of ships that could run the Vanguards and started advertising. At first we struggled to fill one fleet of 13 pilots once a week. However, over time we added time slots to our schedule.

Today we have over 500 pilots on our Discord server, 3 full FCs, 4 FCs in training and we’re getting ready to cover US time zones as well! All of this has been accomplished while staying open to new players and inclusive to all that wants to join. Who could possibly think someone with only 2 years in this game could pull off something like this?

So, Kshal. What is your area of expertise in Eve?

New player experience: one of the things that comes out of my mouth a lot is, “If I have to do the tutorial missions or career agent missions one more time I might go crazy.” I don’t know how many accounts I have at this point in various stages of “beginning” due to getting ideas for a video tutorial or article for Eve Rookies.

I am intimately in tune with the new player experience and I can start listing off in my sleep the things that I think CCP has gotten right and what new players still get confused about.

Here’s the thing. My stream is aimed at new players so they can watch me do something and ask questions. I understand what confuses them. I FC newbro roams frequently so I get first hand knowledge of what concepts of PVP are easy or hard.

I also run a lot of PVE fleets via Eve Rookies to try to get new players into a community so I hear their frustrations with the game. And of course I play as a new alpha account so I can see what is feasible and what isn’t. Without new players, we wouldn’t have content so it’s important to understand their view point to keep them in the game!

Community development: while I can’t say that I’m an expert on developing every type of community in Eve, I’d have to say I know a little something about developing PUBLIC communities (If anyone remembers Everquest, I set up the first public raiding community on my server).

This is honestly why I love the NPSI community and haven’t thought about leaving. It’s welcoming to everyone regardless of who you are, who you know, your age, experience, or affiliation. The NPSI concept has been the base of Eve Rookies along with welcoming anyone who just wants to fly with good people.

Highsec game play: I know, I know. I think some people would be surprised that as an avid PVPer I’d list this as an area of expertise. However, very few newbros go from the tutorial straight into low or null pvp. They fly missions, do anomalies, abyssals, or mine. There are some who find their way to high sec incursions but regardless, they tend to spend their first few months in high sec.

And because I know someone will question my stance on ganking. No, it shouldn’t be taken out of the game. However, I think something needs to change to make it MEAN something. A loss of security status isn’t enough.

Content creation: I’m not a big Eve content creator. If I told you I’m called Gamergrrls on Twitch or Youtube, chances are most of you would ask, “Who?” My audience is small and very targeted at new players.

Once you’ve seen one newbro roam, level 4 mission, or incursion site run you’ve seen them all. However, I do it because helping those one or two new players feel a little less overwhelmed and frustrated is well worth the small audience. So my content is niche and specifically targets new players from day 1 until around month 4 or 5.

Why in the world am I applying for CSM?

Once again, why not? I may only be 2 years old in the game but I have a perspective older players have lost or have become skewed. I represent an audience who historically has either had no representation in the CSM or very little.

Look, I can’t and won’t promise to make any grand changes. It just won’t happen. Others have tried before me and failed. However, what I can promise is:

  • To listen and bring community issues to light where I can
  • Make sure that my CSM activities are centered around new players and community
  • To stay impartial (I mean, I literally have no blues)
  • To lend my real life marketing expertise and knowledge where I can
  • To be as transparent as I’m legally allowed (I’m a content creator, I WANT people to know what I’m doing as CSM!!!)

And there you have it. If you’d like the complete rundown of my Eve Story, you can read about it here. Otherwise, start asking questions!

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I think a proper newbro based viewpoint should be represented. Oftentimes it is veteran well known players which also makes sense. However as the general age of the playerbase is “I don’t want to talk about it now where is my ibuprofen” we need to shift focus slightly to retaining new players.

For this, you have my support.

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As the person that ran the original incursion community that kshal took over and revamped into eve rookies i honestly am astounded at the level she has taken the newbro friendly incursion fleets to.

She has now got it past the level I even dreamed of when I originally setup the program, she is a fantastic person in and out of game and really enjoyed meeting her at fanfest and discussing with her about the new player experience in the game.

I wish you the best and look forward to seeing more new bro content on eve, as a long standing eve vet its fantastic to see people actually caring about the new player retention in the game as without new players there will be no content for us vets that keep losing the tough fight with winning eve.

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Eve Mail sent requesting a CSM interview on behalf of Ashterothi. Looking to book this Friday - Sunday. Let us know if you’re interested.

Responded! Thank you for the oppertunity!

  • To stay impartial (I mean, I literally have no blues)

This is interesting.

And because I know someone will question my stance on ganking. No, it shouldn’t be taken out of the game. However, I think something needs to change to make it MEAN something. A loss of security status isn’t enough.

I would not punish the gankers more than they are punished right now, ganking is not easy, it demands a lot of work and discipline until it pays off.

But maintaining escorts, repairing people under attack, killing flashy reds or flashy yellows have no direct reward and the unkown random victim will simply keep it’s autopiloting to Jita. At least the wreck could be white instead of blue if you get top damage (or kill).
Also there are other systems that need some maintenance.

Ganking should be accepted with no shame and all it’s intricacies should include everybody who participate in this, being on both sides.

You’re absolutely right. Ganking takes patience until the right target is found (or shows up in the case of gate ganks). End of the day no matter what people’s feelings are about ganking, it should NOT be removed.

However, I don’t think sitting on the naughty step until the criminal timer cools down is enough consequence. There should be a little bit more spice to living the criminal lifestyle. It could be anything from losing a little bit of faction with the local NPCs until they shut you out of their station to not being able to loot concorded wrecks.

Whatever the effect, it shouldn’t hit like a hammer. But at a certain point, having to deal with the results of actions should absolutely be on the table.

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I’ve gotten a few “what can you do as only a 2 year old player?” questions. I elaborated on things here:

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I select candidates based on agendas I think aligns best with my personal way of playing Eve Online: A focus on solo, and small gang PvP, sometimes with NPSI groups, and for a while now also tournaments.

Kshal Aiderion is on my list, mostly because I hope that she will be able to provide a less restricted view narrowed by decade-long experience. Someone having a “fresh” look at an issue can be of value in many ways.

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Thank you so much! I have some big shoes to fill with Mike leaving so I’ll certainly do my best!

Hope you get on CSM. Good luck!

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Cheers! We’ll see! If not, there’s always next year! ;-D

Thank you to everyone who voted for me. For a 2 year old player, I’m amazed that I got as many votes as I did and lasted as many rounds as I did.

At the end of the day, I still won because my name is out there and Eve Rookies was given a spot light as a place for rookie pilots to go to participate in incursion fleets and community. In the last 2 weeks we’ve had a growth spurt and now have someone wanting to run FOBs and mission fleets in the same no strings attached, public community way.

I’ve learned a lot this campaign/election cycle and will be doing my upmost to make sure new players coming in now until then next campaign cycle KNOWS what the csm is and why they should vote. It’s a shame most only learn when it’s time to do the thing.

Again, thank you!

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