CSM Campaigns

While Sion Kumitomo is running again for a CSM position, Mynnna, the second member that Goonswarm elected, has decided to stand down after a great couple of years. Through the rigorously democratic constitutional processes of Goonswarm (a “One Man, One Vote” structure where the man who has the vote is The Mittani), I have been asked to stand for the CSM.

In Eve, it is notorious that many senior leaders log into the actual game itself less and less as the years go by, choosing to play Jabber Online. That is not the case for me: I play Eve very regularly, both in large fleets and small gangs, and what keeps me tied to Eve are the roams with my corp, Bat Country, many of which I FC. Badly FC. I’ve also experienced a range of Eve playstyles: I’ve lived in wormholes, both solo and as part of a group; Bat Country regularly deploys as a corp to lowsec for weeks at a time in order to PvP and to lose titans; and when I started the corp we lived as an empire-space wardeccing group of newbies getting very excited at being paid ransoms of a hundred million ISK to leave people alone.

In addition, many people know of my corp, Bat Country, as the creators of Miniluv and the home of Warr Bakini. This should give you a good idea of my views on highsec, suicide ganking and more.

On the political side of Eve, I have been head of the Goonfleet Intelligence Agency for almost half a decade, as well as serving as chief diplomat for Goonswarm in the year after we accidentally slightly lost Delve due to being differently good at Eve. That period – one of scrambling and recovery and of being the underdog – still stands out for me as some of the best fun I have had in Eve and has shaped my attitudes to the game, to its problems, and to how CCP can shape the game universe to help the players to solve those problems.

I’m terrifyingly aware that the CSM is a great deal of work: last year, I declined the chance to stand as I was not in a position to commit sufficient time and effort to the role of CSM to justify my inclusion. This year is different, and I am very keen to help CCP to continue the exciting and radical changes that they have revealed in recent months, whilst hopefully encouraging them to throw in a little more carrot amidst the gleeful stickery that has been going on.

For those who are interested in my vision for Eve, I wrote a short series of fairly controversial blog posts in the summer in which I called for the system to favour smaller groups and a more fractured, Balkanised Eve Online: http://www.endie.net/wordpress/2014/07/the-most-unpopular-statement-in-todays-eve/ http://www.endie.net/wordpress/2014/07/192/ and http://www.endie.net/wordpress/2014/07/patchwork-eve-money-making/

As many in the CFC, on Reddit, on the late unlamented Kugu and even on the Test forums (R.I.P. me) know, I love to post and to communicate, and have never confined that to inflicting myself merely on Goons or Bat Country. I launched The Mittani dot com and have had several articles published by en24 – a fairly rare double – so I hope I bring that aspect of accessibility and openness to my candidature.

Contact info:

Blog: http://www.endie.net/
Twitter: @EndiePosts
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/EndiePosts/

Edit: I now own the character Endie so the previous announcement is no longer valid! :toot:

Endie, posts we can believe in, and changes we can stand behind.

I believe that they were not only compatible with it but that something like them was necessary for the Balkanised Eve I'd like to see. I posted at the time (I think that the article was called "Fifty Scales of Gray") to say that I welcomed them. I disagreed with a few details but those were changed anyway before it went live.

Edit: It is also important to stress that the CSM are not game designers: all they can really do is help provide feedback and input: CCP will not try to implement something some random blogger dreams up in his capacity as amateur game designer!

Hope & Change!

I think the most important thing is;

Endie, how do you feel about a compliant and subjugated Scotland continuing as a card carrying member of the glorious United Kingdom?

Endie, what is the single biggest threat to Eve being placed on the game history junk pile.

Let me direct your response a little so you get my mean. Is it perhaps the never ending 'how to fix null sec' debate, or is it simply new players not resubbing after their trial because they weren't handled correctly.

The "CSM are not game designers" thing needs to be qualified with "but they need to be very interested, informed and articulate about the design of the game".

CCP have a pretty good track record of implementing things that some random blogger (or poster) dreamed up, but they do tend to be resistant to CSMs pushing what CCP see as their "pet projects". That's far from the same thing as CCP being unwilling to listen to CSMs who have something to say about game issues though. For instance I invested considerable effort in making the case of a PP nerf, and while CCP weren't much interested in my ideas on exact game design to solve the problem, it was absolutely within our remit to highlight the issue, explain in detail the secondary and tertiary effects and provide a quick response to the initial objections, eg:

"Power projection allows massive events like the battle of B-R to take place, and that was amazingly successful in recruiting new players. Why would we want to disable such a powerful marketing tool?"

Played right, a CCP seat can allow you to have considerable influence on the future design of the game.

Endie is a good man and will be on my list. Seriously vote for this man he is the good stuff.

What are your goals for the CSM?

My hope is to be able to influence CCP in the direction I have talked about on my blog: an Eve of smaller groups, more frequent and more numerous wars fought between more localised actors. I want to log into TMC or EN24 or Crossing Zebras and see reports from a dozen wars spread across Eve.

This may seem counter-intuitive for someone who has helped build Goonswarm into the dominant actor in one of the two largest blocs the game has ever seen, but I feel passionately that an Eve of smaller groups offers greater chances for more leaders, more new FCs and more content creators. That will be good for us, for the rest of Eve and for the game as a whole.

For this reason I would like to try and influence CCP towards denser populations; towards an Eve that can see smaller groups stand alone and does not drive them into vast webs of neo-feudal relationships.

I think that most players would love to be part of something more human-sized in an Eve where a bunch of plucky new players can decide to take the plunge and grab a piece of nullsec to call their own without renting, without having to get the permission of one bloc and without bowing the knee to the other bloc.

Most importantly, I want to see it be extremely hard to remove an alliance from space as long as they keep turning up and defending it (not just using it, mind!) If someone doesn't defend their space, however then it should not require multiple fleets and masses of supers to swiftly take it from them.