+1. Kshal has gone above and beyond by taking the time to conduct thorough and thoughtful interviews with CSM candidates and will definitely be a recommendation on my ballot.
In my interview with her, I learned more about her group and how to be a representative for new players who don’t have big bloc representation.
I look forward to learning more about EVE Rookies and seeing how I can lend a hand / my expertise for their WH Community!
O7 Kshal Aideron,
Last year I asked eight questions and then compiled the answers into a huge mega-thread. It was massive. With the exception of MILINT_ARC_Trooper, no one had a thread bigger than mine, to be fair MILINT_ARC_Troopers’ thread was so weighty and knowledgable it teetered on the edge of collapsing into its’ own core.
That catalogue of replies is now a time-capsule and encapsulated within are the hopes and disappointments that CSM 18 candidates considered worth speaking about during the year of EVE’s 20th anniversary.
The responses gave voters en masse an opportunity to test and compare each hopeful CSM 18 candidates commitment to their claims of being community oriented, knowledgable, responsive and representative of player values. Given that the CSM does not directly control any aspect of EVE’s development and that the successful candidates are those that can identify existing and future consequences, co-operate with other CSM members, and communicate issues -from a player perspective- to CCP staff one-to-one, I’ve formulated a set of questions designed to seperate the compressed ORE from the Long-Limb Roes in this years election race.
Year-on-year the Independent Representatives, Solo players with single accounts, Worm Holers, Triangle People, Semi-nomadic Role-Playing Sandbox Explorers, and Salvagers, have been organising and gaining traction against the self-secure Null-Bloc Empire Candidates and their vast hordes of leather-skinned, evil, flying-monkeys. More-and-more players are choosing to vote in members they believe can positively impact CCP’s approach to the game regardless of their in-game affiliations.
Exposure matters, who are you, what is your clue?
As was the process last year I will post each candidates reply in a super thread, first-in first-served.
This years questions:
What ONE identifiable consequence requires CCP’s attention?
What PROVABLE evidence can you supply to support your belief in this situation?
What practical, and balanced change can be made to support a solution if any?
What support do your observations have from other CSM candidates?
How will you present your findings to CCP?
If you have already identified and spoken about a problem in your CSM candidacy bio at the top of this thread feel free to copy pasta that response where applicable. I’ll copy paste directly from your response to this post. Choose your goblet…. wisely.
Let the games begin, and may the odds ever be in your favour.
+1 for Kshal. I wish EVE Rookies was around when I started playing this game. New blood is so important for this game, and the more newbros we get and retain, the better the experience is for everyone else.
This gets talked about a lot within my leadership team.
The ER core values were formed at a time that a lot of toxicity was coming out in the open in an incredibly large community. There were also some pretty toxic streamers and content creators. Even in ER we used “gamer words” quite a bit.
While all this was going on, we were on fleet one night. We were liberally using a certain R word. One of the fleet members got very quiet and when we asked what was wrong he said, “My son has a severe mental disability. I don’t think I can be part of a group that casually uses this word.”
We never used that word again and we really thought about what we wanted to promote within the community and came up with our Core Values.
Every single person in my (now 89) person leadership team knows we can only control ourselves and our Discord server. But, we’ve found the way we act heavily influences those around us. I’ve actually been on a few large NPSI fleets as a line member, being very close to just leaving and someone saying, “stop talking like that, Kshal is here.”
So regardless of getting a seat on CSM19 or not, the Eve Rookies team will continue working on a less toxic Eve.
Interesting set of questions this year. Honestly, this one is pretty easy.
CCP’s communication to the player base. I think the release of Equinox speaks for itself on why this needs CCP’s attention.
If you can’t feel the rage from the player community about how Equinox was released and the decisions made about the Skyhooks, I can’t really can’t help you.
This has to be a decision within CCP to become more communicative and transparent with the player base. Or, allowing the CSM to explain more to the player base on how and why we got here.
I honestly think a lot of the rage is being left in the dark, which is pretty understandable. The other part is being given a new playstyle that gives you a reason to log in only for it to be yanked away without any in depth reasoning on why this is happening.
These types of player reactions are really a bitter sweet “I told you so.”
I think the candidates that are serving or have served will agree. I believe that other candidates will agree that lack of communication is a problem (because it is) but until you get to experience it one can never truly understand.
Player reactions to the expansion and patches are talked about a lot in our weekly meetings. So really it goes back to point 3 with the bitter sweet “I told you so.” Though, we’re usually a little more diplomatic than that.
And, of course depending what reaction we’re bringing to CCP, there can be screen shots, video, spread sheets (because we’re Eve players) and other supporting evidence.
Kshal You’ve got my vote!
But can we drop the whole anti-toxicity thing. We are not a bunch of altar bois. I don’t think Eve has the toxicity problem you seem to think it has.
Absolutely not. I have players with all abilities and from all walks of life who come to play a game not run into the casual racism, have slurs thrown at them or be discriminated against just because of who they are.
I literally had one of the CSM candidates talk about their experience with toxicity from 6 months ago yesterday. Nobody should be ok with that.
I just don’t experience any of this. Especially not racism. Are you getting offended when someone calls someone else a “n00b” or something?
Anyway, no big deal. I asked you to drop it. You said no. It’s your ticket.
Dude, your asking mike to withdraw cause of kshal and now you act like this?
Just because you arent experiencing those racist slurs etc, does not mean it doesn’t happen. (It does)
Oh no it doesn’t, oh yes it does…
Let’s move on, yeah?
(Actually I decided to join Rookie Help to see how bad it is. Ten mins in so far, just newbs and people helping them + 1 RLM’r)
It’s both very interesting, and refreshing, to see a CSM candidate being willing to interview other candidates on their own platform.
It’s always nice to see an open mind in the campaign, even if others may go through with blinders on.
good luck
o7
Kshal, allow me the privilege to edit your remark; I think the release of Equinox slurs, mumbles, and murmurs, for itself… 
I mean you must agree that the noise is somewhat dulled when you’re disincentivised to log in.
On a personal note, if you don’t mind me sharing my opinion with you as a reply to your reply to my made-up questions, I think that CCP must; -first and foremost- get it’s ducks in a row,. They must improve their internal communication processes, I mean to infer that there most certainly is a disconnect between the objectives and intended outcomes between departments. I point to the marketing department, vs the community team, vs the development teams, as a really superficial example of how these different organisations within CCP itself do not appear to be in-line with each others designated objectives.
Outside of that they need to be honest (WITH THEMSELVES) if not with us about what matters and that inludes a sober understanding of what is necessary financially to keep the company and therewith, the game, afloat and then they must reconcile those necessities with what the game MUST provide if it is to grow and prosper as an attractive option with-in the gaming community at large.
Then they must decide on how they want to frame the resulting vision to the player base. If they fail to be completely transparent in the third task but succeed at the first two, then there’s hope. I mean, and this might not be a popular outlook, but I’d rather be misrepresented to but confident that CCP are on top of their game internally, then say have each department confidently share with me a different truth .
It’s that bad.
I got to the point after participating in the ship skin fiasco whereby I just checked out.
The vision of building community through identity that was shared with us at last years fanfest was inspired. The ship skinning feature that was delivered demonstrated that all the artistic choices were overwhelmingly determined by fear of financial loss. The odd thing being that if they had leaned into the envisioned premise of the friendship machine and the building of identity and community that they had shared initially, that got the buy-in of the player base, it’s possible they would have doubled up on the good capital they built with Uprisings release. Instead they squandered the faith that they had earned from the player base and delivered some obtuse and deliberately convoluted system. It boggles my mind how much purposeful effort has been put into making the Ship Skin Skills as obscure as possible. If a tenth of that time had been put into delivering what they promised perhaps CCPs’ Studio wouldn’t be in danger of a terminal decline.
You have campaigned on toxicity within EVE, well I would make the argument that CCPs’ treatment of its player base and the way in which it gas lights its subscribers is toxic.
Your reply really got me talking, I hope that you don’t mind. It just really pissed me off how far from the objective that they set for themselves, an objective that nobody forced them to set, they fell. This situation goes beyond ‘well ideas can change in development’ ideas can change, the practical limitations of development and execution can alter the substance of an intended outcome. Having said that, what they showcased and what they delivered were entirely juxtaposed in their purpose. They showcased a tool that would empower players to fly their colours. They delivered a tool that was designed specifically as PLEX sink and about which not a single feature enabled or allowed a group of players to share and wear their teams jerseys’ into battle.
I suspect that the development team are getting high on their own supply. Yes EVE is a dystopian Universe and gas-lighting the player base, obscuring information, and generally behaving in a dastardly manner are all part of that. But should the developers be screwing their players investment into the game at the development level?
I think EVE plays best when the Developers play the good guys and the player base devolves into blood-thirsty animals hell bent on destroying each other. Time spent fighting the developers is exhausting and wasted. The EVE dream has in a sense polarised on itself, the player base are the games biggest advocates, the player base are being forced to be ‘the adults’ or risk losing the game entirely. So large a part of the EVE population when asked individually, reasonably so, advocate for representation in all of EVE’s areas of play and acknowledge the necessity for vibrant and dynamic cultures outside of their own community, sectors, and play styles. While we may disagree on the impact and balance of power projection, bubbles in Zarzack, time zone tanking and multi-boxing, we all agree that getting screwed by CCP and losing players is never good.
The vibe in the lead up to Equinox was perfect, I think that’s why the players were so awake with anticipation and expectation. Building upon the success of Uprising and the potential of Havoc, Equinox promised to bring opportunity and new beginnings to Null sec with its sleek designs and morally ambiguous population manipulation. The setting was ripe for a terrible outcome perpetrated by the players. Blessed with all these new resources and coupled with the “seemingly” dynamic potential of the newly developed ‘system-based’ values -it was possible- that Hilmars’ vision for a dynamic underlying tapestry was about to be realised. But alas that did not happen, the new system is just a reshuffling of of the old system and is as static as ever. The resources don’t change, once the new topography is established it will be fortified and no naturally occurring, environmental pressure will evolve to destabilise it. It will, as was the case previously, be entirely reliant on the player grudges and personality differences to instigate warfare in Null-sec again and the blue doughnut will once more reign supreme. .
I believe that one of the reasons that Wormholers have more fun is because their environment naturally changes. Wormholes open and close and you never know what’s coming next. I had hoped beyond hope that the resource base in Null sec was destined for a similar treatment. Wherein which the populations on different planets would gradually wax and wane over the seasons requiring a redistribution of workforce and resources that would force alliances into uncomfortable self-serving decisions that would inevitably lead to warfare and conflict with their neighbours. Sorry, we’re bigger, I know we’re friends, but we need more or our industry will die is the perfect reason to go to war against your allies. I hoped players in Null-sec, flush with their beautiful new structures would bathe them in the blood and flames of their friends rather than on the forums complaining to CCP that nothing has really changed.
Kshal I watched a few of your interviews of other candidates. Thanks for doing that.
But it became obvious to me that you are just too fixated on the whole non-existent toxiticity issue. You brought it up in every interview. I like how you qualified it to not include “minor salt”, as I think you put it.
It became a bit of a running joke for me as I watched. Wait 11mins has passed and she hasn’t mentioned the “T” word yet.
I even joined rookie chat for the last few days and all I have seen is helpful dudes helping eager newbs. All good stuff.
I won’t go into details but pretty much one of the candidates in one of your interviews states how his mate got banned for 7 days for saying stuff in local that is categorically not against any EULA. I can say that with confidence without having read one word of it, lol.
I would like to go into details, ofc, but if CCP can 7 day ban someone for that, then they might do the same to me for “■■■■ sturring” or daring to point something out. (It was the pochven guy, go check it out).
But the point is, you just nodded along. You didn’t even bat an eyelid. What he said should have sent an immediate alarm bell.
I am out. You aren’t getting my vote. I want someone that is focused on Eve. Goodbye, good luck
I think that CCP must; -first and foremost- get it’s ducks in a row,. They must improve their internal communication processes, I mean to infer that there most certainly is a disconnect between the objectives and intended outcomes between departments.
100%. It’s quite maddening to see the disconnect, point out the disconnect (many times in several different ways) and get no apparent improvement. Communication is one of those things any organization must constantly improve on and it feels like it’s hit a unpassable brick wall at this point.
You have campaigned on toxicity within EVE, well I would make the argument that CCPs’ treatment of its player base and the way in which it gas lights its subscribers is toxic.
I honestly don’t feel that CCP is gaslighting. To gaslight, there needs to be the intent to mislead or deceive for one’s own advantage. It’s pure miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Take scarcity for instance. What sounds better as a expansion PR release? “Scarcity breeds conflict” or “We need to keep the economy and ecosystem healthy.” So instead of just having a conversation with players they just left the fancy, in game/in character messaging.
BUT, I do agree that the lack of communication is causing a toxic relationship between CCP and its player base. I don’t think right now it’s beyond hope, but there’s going to be a point of no return at some point.
We’ll see what happens next. I’m waiting just along side everyone else.
Let’s be real here. Just because you haven’t seen or experienced it, doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. I am 100% certain that there is toxicity in EVE and the anonymity that you can have online certainly gives a certain type of person a platform. There are several groups in the game that are infamous for this type of behaviour. What you are doing is downplaying the issue just because you have not seen or experienced it.
We should be thankfull that a lot of players don’t experience or witness it but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve attention and need to be rooted out as much as possible. Because in the cases that it does happen, it tends to be taken to 11. When in doubt, look up the infamous ‘bonus room’.
Who? I will go check.
Bonus room. I did a google and found 11year old reddit posts so, ofc, I didn’t read one word of it.
Where in real-life are people expected to have issues with things they don’t experience or believe to be an issue in any way?
I’ve done my bit. I just wanted to raise awareness that perhaps Kshal isn’t an ideal candidate because she is too fixated on toxitity. We have a crap Equinox to fix first.
I won’t be voting for her. I suggest you all do the same.
Thanks for your reply! A lot has happened since I wrote my message, CCP has released the details of the next expansion and it addresses many of the issues that I highlighted in the later part of my unpacking my issues. So… there’s that (which is positive).
Before CCP can properly communicate with us it must be internally consistent so… yes, I would say that I share your shared frustration however I imagine your level of disbelief exceeds mine since you’ve witnessed it first hand.
I will easily concede to you here based upon the benefit of the doubt. I will back myself up by deferring to Hanlon’s Razor to “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
…and accept your explanation which I interpret to mean that at CCP the left hand doesn’t always know what the right hand is doing AND framing difficult decisions in creative ways, at least in the short term, appears to be a better solution to them than having a difficult conversations with the player base.
Y’all seriously out here doing a search for “toxicity”, not finding anything recent, and then going “that proves it, no one has announced that they are being toxic, it doesn’t exist”? 
As DutchGunner said, not experiencing a negative effect of toxicity yourself or noticing it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. People who are not themselves part of a minority group or who are not otherwise being harassed also tend not to notice when it happens, or understand the stress of experiencing it over and over again in what’s supposed to be their time off.
People who aren’t themselves toxic don’t have anything to fear from a push to reduce the amount of toxicity in the community. The only people who are worried about what will happen are the people who are themselves worried that they’ll have to put any effort into changing their own behavior or become unwelcome. If it were truly not an issue, then there would be nothing to worry about.
Meanwhile, why would anyone post about experiencing toxicity on the EVE subreddit? You would be bounced right out again by harassment. I don’t want to create an alt account for reddit and more often than not, whenever I consider posting on the EVE subreddit I decide not to because of the risk of EVE players going through my post history and using details of my life to harass me. I don’t worry about that in other communities. The one time I truly quit EVE for a while was when I left my alliance and got sick of constantly hearing sexism and homophobia in comms. But I will grant that that’s on third party platforms and not on CCP; those groups are just choosing to be at a disadvantage for recruiting all the great players who won’t put up with that.
As happy as I was to see that CCP was promoting more tolerance when I came back to the game in 2019, eventually I realized that it was a pretty uneven and shallow effort. There is still a great concern about protecting toxicity because of the backlash that might occur from doing anything about it, and much less consideration about who we are losing from the community because they can’t be bothered putting up with it. You can see this in how CCP allows harassment on their own official discord despite it being against the rules, with mods who have said that they’re afraid to take action out of fear that they will be harassed in retaliation, and new channels made specifically so that they don’t need to touch the toxicity in existing channels and risk upsetting even people who aren’t active players. They changed the rules for the AT to dis-allow a whole alliance that had been under fire for toxicity, then most of those same people simply re-formed under a new alliance so now it’s okay again. Someone who personally called my friends slurs comes back every year with official endorsement as a commentator, even as new and more diverse voices are added.
There have certainly been positive changes, as I said, but it’s a problem when I consider recommending the game to my nerdy spreadsheet-loving colleagues in science, most of whom are women and/or LGBTQ+, and have to add an enormous disclaimer about ever looking at the rest of the community.
I guess you just care about these things more than me. Sure I hear sexism all the time, as in light-hearted lad-jokes. “That’s all she’s good for” and crap like that but if there’s no women about I would just give my little chuckle to show to all the lads that I am just as heterosexual as they are. No harm done, right? (/cough)
Guess the people I hang out with are just funnier since they have to come up with their own original jokes 
But yes that is absolutely an example of something that will make people just quietly leave. It’s not fun knowing that some aspect of your fundamental self is regarded as a joke or an inconvenience by the people around you.