Matterall for CSM14

[Matterall]

As a long time player and analyst of EVE Online, as well as a creator of EVE-related media, I’m running for a seat on CSM so I can bring a new perspective to the Council. My point of view is that EVE needs to capture the imagination, not only of current players but prospective players as well.

About Me

I am a writer, a speaker, a podcaster, and the founder of Talking In Stations, a clean news source for EVE Online. I have written numerous articles and presented at three conventions, where my focus has been on the great wars of the last five years.

Here is a quick Origin story:
I arrived in EVE in 2008 and worked my way up Adhocracy, Dead Terrorists, Nulli and NC. I PVP’d in large and small groups and have played most aspects of the game; exploration, mining, industry, trade, and missions, all at various levels of intensity. At this point, I’ve made hundreds of billions on the markets, bought and sold Keepstars (the Perimeter Keepstar was one of mine), and even acted as a gunrunner for wormhole friends that needed a fully loaded battleship fleet to defend their home. I’ve also been a 3rd party for trades - structures and sov. I’m known as a neutral and trusted player, but more than anything I am a student of the game. My passion is to highlight what other players do in EVE and that’s why I write and talk about the history and current events in EVE.

I’ve streamed EVE to 12,000 viewers for nine hours (Battle of 9-4), and also streamed the Eviction of HK and Judgement Day; where Gigx was banned live on stream. My work spans over 250 articles, 300 podcasts, and lots of live-event streams, including interviews with everyone from DBRB to Hilmar. All my work aims to get player stories out to the public.

EVE is a hobby that fits my real life well. I have worked in the Entertainment Industry in Los Angeles for seven years as a marketer and artist, as well as developing advertising technology for more than 16 years. I was even Wes Craven’s assistant at one time, which taught me that the nicest people can have the most twisted minds! Perfect preparation for EVE Online.

About CSM

Most of what CSM does is work with the dev teams and the production leadership on the features, ideas, balancing, and messaging.

I can help with general marketing and messaging, with new player onboarding, player retention messaging, weaving lore into messaging, and creating an authentic livable Sci-Fi setting. I can also help CCP attract and keep new players because I have a background that proves commitment to working with various groups.

I believe I bring a fresh and unique perspective on the future of the game. Where many of the seats on the Council have historically been filled by game experts, with thousands of followers, my experience comes from interviewing players, researching history, analyzing patterns, and communicating with all types of different people, from CEO Hillmar to industrial experts, FC’s to explorers, and lore enthusiasts to emerging players. I am as interested in Signal Cartel as I am in the Battle of UALX-3.

Agenda

I don’t have an agenda, nor am I thinking in terms of high-sec, low-sec, FW, or null players… those distinctions don’t make sense to me. Most players dabble in everything so advocating for a particular demographic is not very useful, especially since the CSM doesn’t get to push agendas as much as they get to react to CCP’s development.

Examples of my beliefs:

• EVE should be complicated but not stupid. If a player loses all their ISK because they hit an extra zero before hitting return, that’s stupid.
• EVE can be casual, and players can live alone if they want to.
• Doing things is important, but building your potential to do things is a secret to longevity.
• Players need to be held accountable for their actions.
• There should be more avenues for players to build their reputations.
• Scams are weak gameplay; clever scams are incredible gameplay.
• Problem-solving players should be supported and rewarded.
• Markets and industry need a form of active gameplay.
• PVP isn’t everything, nor is balancing over and over again as important as new features.

Next Step
The only way I get into CSM is with your help, so I’m asking for your vote and your confidence that I can add to the development of EVE Online. Thanks very much.

References
Talking In Stations - Discord Invite: https://discord.gg/hKhxq4m
https://www.talkinginstations.com
twitter: @ Matterall373

[Nunosh]

Best of luck. You have my votes

[Cheradenine_Harper]

Intrigued. Mildly horrified by the thought of “active” gameplay in markets and industry. Could you expand more on this? Wouldn’t it drastically slow down the market?

Q: What did you think of the JesterTrek AMA?

[Friend_of_Matterall]

Xander Phoena 2.0?

[Mynxee]

Best of luck with your campaign. You’re an easy vote for me, based on working with you for several months behind the scenes editing INN content, watching you demonstrate time and again a natural ability to bring people together for productive discussion on TiS and keep discussions and emotions on the rails, your curiosity about EVE and appreciation for the players’ stories, and not least of which because we’ve been friends for a long time and I feel you can be trusted to be a good questioner and good communicator as a CSM member.

[Mike_Azariah]

A good candidate. Easy endorsement

m

[Matterall]

Your comments mean a lot to me Mynxee Thanks very much. Very kind.

[Matterall]

Active gameplay for industrialists, not for Trade. Revamp Trade and contracts.

Industrialists
CCP tried a semi-active indy feature a few years ago called Teams, but that fell apart due to player abuse of the auction mechanics that distributed Teams. What teams got right was the ability to create a home system and deploy industrial production lines to Teams systems, allowing the creation of items for less than normal for a limited time. Teams made indy a bit more strategic and dynamic. Unfortunately, CCP deleted the Teams feature to prove that they would remove features that didn’t work rather than let them hobble along. Instead of fixing it, or iterating on it, they just took it out.

Currently, industrial gameplay is passive and about is cutting costs, not making better products, or marketing those products. Cost cutting gameplay makes a player feel like they are always losing to ground to low or null-sec manufacturing, which puts pressure on them to leave safe areas to set up in dangerous areas that have better discounts on production - and this is why “renting” was born. Renters want to harvest and create with good margins and will pay for protection to do it. Renting is a whole other conversation.

CCP has created active gameplay in the form of PI cycles - the shorter, the more abundant harvests are. They could do the same for mining and other forms of harvesting. I also think you could use something similar to hacking mini-game to create better industrial products in short runs.

Trade
Trade has (player-made) active gameplay in the form of .01 bidding. Unfortunately, market bots exist and can leave players losing ground to machines.

Trade needs attention in general. It is too complicated for newbies. I heard a story where a newbie wasted all his ammo shooting out of range, and wanted to buy more ammo. He quit rather than have to figure out how the market worked. It was too many jumps to find the ammo. CCP should prob put ammo in all NPC stations or list market order caps so players can fill small items all over New Eden. (more on that later).

EVE’s current market was built in 2003 (by Hilmar) based on trading apps of the time. Since then it has been beautified (thanks Crius expansion!), but it is the same 2003 market. In real life, the trading tools and financial models have evolved since then. When I have talked to CCP about market improvements, they said, “more PVP means more production.” Trus, but market features have the potential to bring in new types of players that are attracted to financial modeling and research. Those new types of players could become full partners in leadership, next to FC’s, Diplos, etc.

I’m not a dev, but here are some suggestions;

• Markets need more settings. We have WAY too few settings in EVE.

• Have a default view to a basic “store” which should be full of T1 items. Advance view to play the market order game.

• Maybe allow manufacturers to work for NPC corps and let the NPC corp handle shipping.

• Revamp market skills - lots of useless stuff here.

• Lift order limits based on the number of orders and make actual ISK amount caps instead, and have skills apply to increasing the caps on ISK amounts on order. This would make stocking trade hubs easier for the majority of players. It would cost big investors more to trade in massive amounts of ISK. (Full disclosure, I trade in massive amounts of ISK). Army of alts would be required to trade empires worth of minerals, as it probably should be.

• Create options for players to own and profit from shares in corps. This exists but is voluntary, and the game is NOT set up to trust even corp mates, so I’d ask CCP to build financials into the mechanics rather than trusting a player that cannot be held accountable. This would make heists more complex, but smash and grab heists harder or impossible.

• Make the station screens advertise more than Corps. Maybe trade hubs or products.

• I’d like to see corporations go “public” or have some corps buy others, or buy a cut of their profits.

These are examples off the top of my head. I’m not a dev, but the point is more imagination into the game. It’s not just about PVP creating demand for stuff; it is about finding ways to attract players to EVE.

[Sora_Takei-uchi]

Out of all of the running CSM candidates i feel the most connection with you Matterall. Your vision for EVE is something that is very (and should be) noteworthy. One of the things that always striked me was ‘living your own space dream’. In addition to, your working effort for this game also indicates that your hearth for the game is in the right spot!

No matter what people will say, but my vote will be for you!

And i hope you can get one of the free spots. (i hate politics and the way the csm voting is confirms it even more, the fixed seatings etc.)

Keep up the good work with TIS.

o7 Sora

[LadyScarlet]

Great person and great with the community

Good luck

[Eimar_Akytamku]

You have my vote(s).

[Bobmon]

Yes!

This man was one of my right hands at EN24 and he is insanely good. I’ve know this man will be a good addition to the CSM!

[Xtra_Squishy_lol]

Can you elaborate on what you plan to do about scammers just saying they are bad doesn’t help what do you play to do about them that doesn’t destroy the way people play the game?

[Matterall]

Scamming
“Scams are weak gameplay; clever scams are incredible gameplay.”

Let’s start with this - Vampiric PVP is a big part of the danger and reward that EVE offers players that outplay each other. It is also a way to keep the player hungry to learn more, and part of the investment culture that makes long term players. This needs to be balanced so that players that don’t do not get devastating setbacks from stupid mistakes.

Analogy: If you know about plants, pruning branches will make a tree fight harder for its life and will invigorate growth, but if you chop the tree down to the trunk you have basically killed it.

CCP should balance the ability to outsmart players, in a fair way.

"Clever scams" are what brought me into EVE Online. If you have never read “Murder Incorporated: ten months of deception for one kill in Eve Online” you owe it to yourself. (link). In this story, an intricate plot was planned and executed that took out a corporation (equivalent to Alliance these days). there was some art in this and it lit up the imagination of readers and brought people to EVE that wanted to outplay others.

"Stupid scams"
Smash-and-grab robberies. One guy in corp gets mad and takes everyone’s work with them. This makes trusting corp mates a problem and pushes people to play alone.

Trade Window scams - someone trades you 1,000,000 ISK for your item. You see that that number agree to it and make the decision to hit “accept” but as you hit accept the number changes to 100 ISK. Its too late, deal goes through. There was no warning the price changed. No popup to warn you and no confirmation.

The amount should be locked like items are when traded. If the contract is wrong, restart the process, just like an item trade.

Contract scams - Contracts or named deceptively and spammed by bots creating “Jita Spam.”

Take scam this for example:

A bot barking links that look like a good deal. The first two are contracts to the scammer (an alt) which are good deals. The third one is a trick that is 1/10th the value.

CCP should lock contract names to whatever the default item is or “multiple objects” for more than one item. No renaming contract links will dampen bot barkers in Jita.

Stupid scams are actually bad gameplay. They just ruin tools like trade windows, or contracts, and breakdown the ability to work together. If EVE is social, we need to encourage trust by making mechanics that have “expected results.”

If I do a thing, I should get the result I expect.

[Xuxe_Xu]

Caveat emptor

[Matterall]

Funny how Latin is everywhere in EVE, and there is little Greek.

[Arrendis]

GALLENTE

Enyo
Talos
Hyperion
Thantatos
Myrmidon
Lachesis
Eos
Astarte
Helios
Thorax
Occator
Nyx
Moros
Obelisk
Deimos
Phobos
Miasmos
Kryos
Nereus
Ares
Eris
Oneiros
Thalia
Kronos
Nemesis
Proteus
Hecate
Erebus

NON-GALLENTE

Anathema
Apocalypse
Cerberus (Kerberos)
Chimera
Archon
Pheonix
Aeon
Apostle
Hematos
Griffin
Charon
Manticore
Rhea
Echelon
Orthrus
Hydra
Apotheosis
Nestor
Basilisk
Adrestia

Yup. Sure is funny how none of those words ever show up in EVE.

[Matterall]

I meant by players - Legion, Pax, etc. CCP uses Greek sure, but players like the military organization of Rome.

[Arrendis]

Some continued thoughts on the language issue, but that's kind of off-track and I have actual questions about your platform, so sticking that in here.

Rome left its language all over the place. ‘Legion’, to use your example, is found in one form or another in most of the languages of Europe. In fact, when you put it into google translate (which, I admit, ain’t the most amazingest thing ever, but it gives a convenient list of 104 languages), all but 24 of the languages there give a primary translation that’s pronounced, more or less, ‘ˈlējən’.

Of course, the Romans would have said ‘Legio’ or ‘Legii’, since ‘Legion’ is an English word through French. Which is the other part of what you’re looking at: English, the lingua franca of western computer games, is full of French, and thus, Latin. It also retains a tendency to reference things like ‘Pax’. In part, that’s because of the prevalence of Latin through the Church until the Reformation (and further with the RCC and Anglicans).

There’s also the Romans writing a lot of self-aggrandizing histories and the Roman Church preserving those histories. Alexander’s self-aggrandizing histories, by comparison, suffered a fair amount by the Romans not just conquering the western areas of his empire, but also… they burned down his library in Alexandria, and did a fair amount of active ‘let’s obliterate history before us’. I mean, look at what Virgil does to Odysseus, dirus Ulixes (‘cruel Ulysses’).

More at work there than just ‘we really like the way the Romans organized their regiments’ (a legio was 4500ish people in the Republic, 5500ish in the Empire, about the size of modern military regiments).

On to the platform questions:

@Matterall

Trade Window scams - someone trades you 1,000,000 ISK for your item. You see that that number agree to it and make the decision to hit “accept” but as you hit accept the number changes to 100 ISK. Its too late, deal goes through. There was no warning the price changed. No popup to warn you and no confirmation.

How’s that work? After all, they have to hit ‘accept’ after changing the number, too, right? After all… the amount is locked in, like items. As soon as you push the ‘offer isk’ button to change the amount, it cancels your acceptance (which is when items get locked in, too). So that’s enough time for you to put any number in, or toss another item in on your side and cancel your acceptance so you can see what changed. And are they supposed to just know when you’re pushing the button? Seems like if they change it before that half-second, you’ll spot it, if you’re paying attention.

Which is kind of the thing on those contract scams, too: you have to pay attention. So, what, you want to make it so people don’t have to pay attention to what they’re doing? To what other people are doing? If I put up a market order and there’s an issue with my keyboard resulting in the last 2 0’s being left off, should I be able to get that sale back?

I mean, I know you, man, I know you’re sincere and want to push ideas that will make the game better, and that’s laudable, I’m just not sure you’ve thought through the issues you’re suggesting. Is ‘be lazy and don’t pay attention’ a lesson that will make the game better?

Similarly, you talk about ‘smash-and-grab’ theft (where there is no smashing, btw… you can’t break into corp hangars, you can only take the stuff someone willingly gives you the keys to) damaging trust between corp-mates… but that’s right after praising the Murder Incorporated scam.

Don’t you think that hurt trust between corp-mates? Do you think someone getting mad and stealing some stuff in a moment of rage does less damage than finding out that people you trusted for a year were lying to your face, and laughing and having fun with you all while actively planning to hurt you? You think that promotes more trust between corpmates?

I know which one would leave me more jaded and suspicious, and it ain’t some guy flipping out cuz he got mad. That happens all the time: people get mad, they flip out. Then they calm down, and they can work to undo what they did. Ten months of working, playing, living with someone in the way EVE players live together in-game, only to find out that every piece of that was a lie…

And you think that doesn’t make ‘trusting corp mates a problem’? At least the guy who loses his mind in a rage is being honest the whole time, no?

[Matterall]

Hey Arrendis, I’m here to answer questions from people who might vote for me. My examples are for people to get an idea of what I’d contribute to the CSM. (Debates in threads can go on and on forever. I’m happy to go back and forth on chat somewhere, or TIS Discord or any other discord.)

Points to clarify:

ISK trades should work the same as module trades, and yes scams happen when you are selling a thing, and the buyer changes the price on you without any game mechanic to tell you it changed. If the scammer times it right (and they are skilled at this), they can buy your item for pennies on the dollar.

Overall, there should have safeguards to allow players to work together, especially in corporations. There should be accountability for bad actors. Some players care about their reputation; others make alts over and over to escape harm to rep. Skill injectors and character bazar make that more convenient. the point is - Let’s let people work together to play this game.

The “Murder Inc” moment was important for EVE. CCP siding with “anything goes” set a standard that has made the game a cult classic but also limited it’s the appeal to a broader audience. I think they were partially right.

The “crime” lit the imaginations of thousands of people, attracting them to the game to pull off a caper of their own. That’s a good thing, executing a well planned takedown. What takes away from that is the “rage-quit smash and grab.” The smash-and-grab example was to show the difference between an 10-month plan (Murder Inc) of deception vs. a rage quit money grab (Judgement Day/BOB sov drop). One is imaginative and creative, the others, not so much.

Recently we saw HK get evicted and what was celebrated was the sneaking into RAGE system for months and months, setting the eviction up.

These are my opinions. This is how I see EVE.