For those who don’t know me (yet), my name is Kshal Aideron. I started playing Eve in January 2020. Here are my accomplishments in my 3.5 years of playing Eve:
- NPSI pvper
- PVP and PVE FC
- CEO of the public community Eve Rookies
- Fanfest 2023 player presentator
- CSM 17 candidate
- Eve content creator
If you’d like my complete story up until now, please read: About Kshal Aideron
The TL;dr version of my story is 2020 wasn’t the first time I played Eve. I tried once in 2015 and again in 2018. The first time I couldn’t figure out how to get undocked and the second I did get undocked but couldn’t figure out how to fly to where I needed to go.
In other words, the entry into the game sucked so much it made me rage quit not once but twice.
The third time was a charm and the day I started playing Eve I also decided to try streaming as kind of a little pet marketing project. I didn’t think anyone would want to watch a 40 year old woman struggle through Eve but I quickly got around 7 regulars that helped me navigate the game.
At some point I’d have random newbies come into my chat to ask questions. At first I wondered why but then I realized something. Compared to some of the other streamers that were online I had few people and I’d engage with them. Instead of their questions scrolling by and not being seen by the streamer, they’d actually get their answer.
This was where I found “my place” in Eve. Helping other new players so they didn’t rage uninstall Eve like I did.
A year after playing I decided to address the problem of tutorial articles being too long and throwing in needless information. I created EveRookies.com. My intent was to put tutorials and other information like the Eve Terminology page. This lead me to making YouTube videos since I was also sick of people taking 20 minutes to address a 20 second issue.
At around 8 months into Eve I started FCing fleets. For the past 2.5 years, nearly every other Wednesday you can find me taking out a newbro roam. Players get free ships or SRP if they bring their own. We encourage pilots to try new roles (including FC), and go out and shoot stuff. If a newbro gets overwhelmed and lost, no worries we’ll slow down or come back for you.
A year into Eve the open community Eve Rookies was born. We started doing entry level vanguard incursions with handout Praxis. I was told that the incursion community didn’t need any new groups and I’d fail. Well, 2.5 years later we have ran 407 incursion fleets and have seen 549 individual pilots come to try it out. Sometime towards the end of the first year someone came to me and asked if they could run FOB (forward base) fleets under Eve Rookies.
Then came the mining fleets, mission and ratting. Eve Rookies now has partners out in Null and I’m actively looking to get more groups that do open fleets to come join what’s now probably a coalition.
The reason I’m talking about Eve Rookies and not myself is because I firmly believe the proof is in the pudding. For over 3 years my mission has been to help new players and make their new player experience better. I’ve learned over the past year that community is the way to do this.
Here’s what I’ve managed to accomplish to date:
| Fleet Name | 2022 | 2023 (so far) |
|---|---|---|
| Incursion fleets p/m | 18 + 21 new pilots | 20 + 33 new pilots |
| FOB fleets p/m | 1 + 2 new pilots | 4 + 4 new pilots |
| Mission fleets p/m | 1 + unknown | 1 + unknown |
| Mining fleets p/m | — | 4 + 14 new pilots |
| Ratting fleets p/m | — | 3 + 4 new pilots |
| PvP fleets p/m | — | 2 + 18 new pilots |
We’ve completed 7 months and so far Eve Rookies is running an average of 34 fleets a month and have 73 people who’ve never flown with Eve Rookies before trying out a fleet of some kind.
I don’t track how many people stick around, but at the time of CSM17 elections the Discord was around 300 people. As of today we’re verging on almost 1700. With the help of my stellar leadership and all of the FCs that believe in getting people active in fleets, we’ve created a place people WANT to be.
So the 3 areas I want to focus on are as follows…
New player experience: Eve is a game that heavily depends on its players and our engagement to continue existing. If we didn’t have a stream of new players coming in and getting engaged with the game, New Eden would become a boring place pretty quickly.
CCP has put in a lot of work since Fanfest 2022 on the new player experience. We have a beautifully engaging NPE, had an addition to the tutorial in the form of mining, updates to the career missions (as well as bug fixes) and the AIR Career Achievements.
The last expansion was aimed at new players but they’re still hitting a brick wall in regards to finding people to run those homefront sites with. They have to come across someone who knows someone, a post on reddit, the Eve forum, Facebook group, Youtube video or stream.
So this directly leads me into…
Community development: I didn’t believe that community is everything in Eve when I started. All I saw was the terrible experience my husband was having in his corp and I swore I’d remain a solo player. But then I found the NPSI community.
One thing I’ve learned in the past 3.5 years is a community can be a corporation and alliance in Eve but not every community is a corporation/alliance. I don’t “need” a non-npc ticker on my characters to be part of a community. All I have to do is show up and fly with people regularly or talk to them in Discord.
My two main goals is to try to:
-
Get non corporation communities to get more visibility within Eve
-
In game tools for communities. From being able to push in game calendar events to Google Calendars to being able to allow people access to hangers that aren’t part of the corp the hanger belongs to.
I’m sure there’s some folks over at CCP laughing at this because I think this comes out of my mouth everytime I get to talk to someone about fleets or community.
Accessibility to Eve: in the past 2 years, I’ve had the gamut of players come through the doors with different levels of ability. Of course we have those that don’t read, speak or listen well. We’ve had those come through with autism all along the spectrum. We also have players with physical disabilities that even use assistive devices to play.
Personally, I like inclusivity and hate the thought that someone isn’t joining a fleet because they don’t think they can hear the commands. Or that they don’t think they can do an activity because they can’t use the Q button to align.
What’s sad is there’s some QOL additions that could be made to address some of the accessibility issues without breaking the game or giving an advantage to bots. So why don’t we ask for them in order to get people even more involved with this game we love!
I’d love to know more ways from all of you that parts of the game are inaccessible.
I know from last year’s campaign there will be those that will hold my playtime of 3.5 years against me. I remember seeing the comment on my CCP interview, “What can she do that someone who’s played over 10 years can’t?” I think my accomplishments speak for themselves.
Like with last year, I’m not promising any grand changes. However, once again I will promise:
- My 100% dedication to the CSM for the duration
- To listen to the players and bring forth issues where I can
- To stay impartial (remember, I’m an NPSI pilot - no blues)
- To lend my real life marketing experience and knowledge where I can
- To be as transparent as I’m legally allowed
And of course to do my best to live by the Eve Rookies Core Values.
The support is much appreciated!
