My Story
I joined Eve because I needed a new sandbox game, where choices mattered and consequences for actions existed. A friend from a previous game recommended that I join Brand Newbros, to learn about the game. Within a few weeks I was delving into the various forms of content available to me in Esoteria and the surround regions, and beginning my PvP journey in Delve with the Algos as my primary ship. Over time, as my skillqueue completed I moved up the ship trees, doing more and more varied solo and small gang PvP, and starting to branch out into other things such as capital hotdrops and small organized fleets. As I gained experience, I got more and more involved in the newbro recruitment and teaching process, as I became one of the regular small gang fleet coordinators for the corp.
Fast forward a year, TEST has been pushing Fraternity pretty far back and the world war that featured UALX and X47 has disappeared. I am getting bored due to a lack of content. So, I made the leap out to the unknown, and joined up with Unspoken Alliance. We eventually settled in Tribute, where I began my journey as a proper FC. Full fleet comps, capital support, dread brawls, and the like. After a while, I got the news that Brand Newbros, my old home, was going to strike out on their own and try and make it as an independent alliance. I took that opportunity to help some old friends, and I’ve been FCing for Brand Newbros since then, duking it out with folks up in Vale.
My Expertise
My experience is primarily in sovereign nullsec space, with a decent amount of experience dealing with Highsec war mechanics (the highsec PVP experience, but not the highsec PVE experience). However, my experience is built firmly in the perspective of a small or medium sized group. I fight in fleet comps than range from 10 – 100 characters, and have worked with characters ranging from incredibly high SP and skill level to players that started just a week or two before they ended up on my fleet. I am deeply embedded within the highest activity area with small groups, Tribute and Vale, and have access and constant contact with many other FCs and leaders in small and medium groups both across that geographical space and the space in which all these small and medium groups interact, where they occasionally work together versus larger threats.
I am a theorycrafting FC at heart- I delve deeply into the mechanics of ships that I fly, and almost never fly a doctrine I did not at least partially design or modify. There is a wide network of folks I already keep in contact with across nullsec, lowsec, and wormhole space that I reach out to and discuss changes with already, to get their feedback and insight into how changes have impacted those areas of space and whether there are any ideas or thoughts they’ve had that I could build into my own theorycrafting work.
I currently operate in the leadership of the only small, independent Nullsec group that recruits new players in USTZ. This gives me a lot of first-hand knowledge when it comes to the challenges new players face, both in just figuring out how to play and learning about how to be impactful in the dangerous outer regions of EVE. I also was a new player myself far more recently than most players on the CSM, so my experience in getting into the higher levels of gameplay is much fresher than someone who was already skilled into all the T3Cs and Capitals back in 2014.
Why I am applying for the CSM
I am applying to the CSM because right now, we have a complete lack of direct input from small, sov-based or NPC nullsec groups. The few non-bloc-aligned CSM members are either focused on very specific playstyles (whaling, independent of interacting with objective fights at all), or are focused on other areas of space such as wormholes or highsec.
Rather than knowledge about what the EVE experience is like for small and medium sized groups coming second-hand from people that only occasionally interact with these groups and only get a vague, overall picture, I want the experience to come from someone who is deeply embedded in that experience, and constantly talks and interacts with groups that are also embedded within that experience. Rather than a 30,000 character alliance player trying to guess what the experience of a 25-man corp or a 80-man alliance looks like, get that information straight from the source.
What can the players expect from me?
I will bring this perspective listed above to the CSM. I will listen and work to understand the experiences of players across New Eden, to balance these experiences so that I am pushing for an EVE Online that keeps it’s reputation as a one of the most complex and in-depth gaming experiences available, while improving the ability of new players to dip their toes in the water. Above all, I will try and keep the idea that EVE is a game of choices. Low risk, low reward. High risk, high reward. Building trust, putting in effort to gain a result. And all of these choices are built into a game that people want to play, because in the end, it’s just a game.
Contacts:
Murray Rothbardo in-game
/u/SerQwaez on reddit
I’m happy to move any discussion from either of those places to Discord.