CSM Campaigns

My Name is Borat Guereen, and I approve this message (minus the two spelling mistakes... )
Thanks!

Mon nom est Borat Guereen et j'approuve ce message (sauf pour les deux fautes d'orthographe )
Merci

Gevlon, from the Greedy Goblin blog, has published his CSM X recommendation list today.
Give it a read!

Thank you!

I know this aspect of my campaign is vigorously attacked and/or dismissed, and I appreciate hearing voices that support my choices in the matter.

THAT is something on which I agree with you! o7

I really like the upcoming changes to new player experience. Congrats to CSM IX for participating to what seems like a good way to improve this experience.

I particularly like that people will start in a ship in space, warping to their own anomaly, instead of inside a station without a spaceship...

I just hope that they won't be able to be probed in that starting anomaly and no griefer can mess with their first experience, until, of course they leave it after having acquired some basic rudiments (including not shooting at somebody targeting you, having learned that being targeted is different than being shot at...)


Je trouve la nouvelle approche du jeu qui est presentée dans le dernier post de CCP plutôt bien. Bravo au CSM IX pour leur participation dans ce qui semble être une amélioration majeure de cette premiere expérience.

J'apprécie tout particulièrement que les nouveaux joueurs démarreront dans un vaisseau de novice, warpant sur une anomalie qui leur sera spécifique, au lieu de démarrer en station sans vaisseau...

J'espère juste que les nouveaux ne pourront pas être probés dans leur anomalie de départ, et qu'aucun griefer ne pourras venir déranger leur première expérience, jusqu'à ce qu'ils quittent cette anomalie de départ après avoir acquis quelques rudiments de base (incluant de ne pas tirer sur quelqu'un qui vous cible, en ayant appris que être ciblé est différent que de se faire tirer dessus...)

This post focuses on digging more into one of my program points, and summarize my thoughts or what I said about it in various medias.

CSM representatives can only be elected once. This is important to make sure the CSM seats truly represent all players each year and does not become a stagnant pool of power players

Eve Online is not like any other MMO out there. Players build resources and assets that they can lose in-game, and have a wide variety of options to set their own goals. There is no final boss, no end point in a players' influenced story line. For a lot of players that chose to stick with this game, Eve is more like a hobby than just another game.
Eve has celebrated its 10 years already. For all those involved, the passion, and the stakes, are high and the nature of this game is about long term commitment.

The more recent information about the CSM interaction with CCP clearly shows that CSM members will have the ability to voice their thoughts directly in confluence, the system that CCP uses to manage their projects.
CCP also clearly stated that they are the sole and final decider about what they do with the game, and they reserve the right to not make everything public to the CSM (as I think insider knowledge on some stuff can favor certain groups over others, and is difficult to verify regardless of NDA signed).
Still, a direct access to the makers and deciders of the fate of New Eden is a significant power, as the teams in CCP can read everything logged and kept in Confluence.

CCP's goal is different from the players' representative goals: CCP is there to make money while providing long term fun and a unique sci-fi experience. The CSM members represent the voices of the players that voted for them. CSM members are not game designers, they are part of a focus group, or a think tank, and represent the community that elected them, to bring up points that may be ignored, or acted upon at CCP's discretion.

My main point is that being elected only once will keep in check a non-CCP employee individual's influence over the game we all share, and allow other voices and faces to rise up. As younger players become vets, there is no shortage of talents in the player base to represent a community that evolves each year.


I also support an increase of the term for CSM to two years, and possibly an increase to the number of representatives to keep up with the growth of the active community, keeping one election every year for half of the members
Large players' groups, with their voting recommendations, will always have representatives on the CSM, but it is up to them each year to find new people to represent them.

I also support activity feedback for CSM members, with a public activity report for every CSM member every 6 months, and consequences for two poor activity reports in a row, like loosing your seat to a candidate next in line from the last election. This process must not become a possibility for other CSM members to black-ball someone they do not like, and be fact checked with activity data, and clear expectations.


version Française

This post focuses on digging more into one of my program points, and summarize my thoughts or what I said about it in various medias.

Make sure API data availability does not provide too much Out of game information, and allow some kind of in-game data privacy option.


My goal is not to make API data disappears altogether. API have a large role to play in a MMO such as EvE, and there are a lot of excellent third parties' tools that use them, but...

The amount of information API generates automatically is too prevalent in the metagame and favors large groups with the IT capabilities to sift through the data and identify information. This is currently too exact, without even needing to log in. What I support will not fundamentally change available information, but as it will involve players’ action, it will not be as exact and will add a fog of ‘metagaming’ war effect.

My main focus is around the killboards' data, as I am not as familiar with the other aspects of the API, even if I believe that each API aspect should be looked at with the concept of fog of "metagaming" war in mind...

What I'd like to see regarding the killboards is that players opting for privacy would not have their destroyed modules in any killmails, so that the exact value of their fit would not be represented with such accuracy.
All the other information would still be there as it is now.

More importantly, I'd like to see a human factor to the data gathering, and limit the all-automatic nature of killboard data uploading, when APIs have only been shared by one side.
Privacy for each character would be considered for any killmail, and if any of the pilot involved in the killmail has their privacy setting set to ON, the killmail would not be automatically uploaded to any killboards, but the player receiving the kill mail would still be free to upload those themselves once they have it.
If all pilots involved have not opted for privacy then it would stay exactly as it is now.

This is the only extent of this aspect of my program, and I believe it is fair to intorduce a concept of fog of "metagaming" war around the Apis, with more involvement of players choices.

I have also mentioned in my post about siphons about the consequence of a too precise API data system, that allows to locate wich POSes are under a siphon effect from out-of-game. When API have a direct effect on in-game features, there are questions to be asked, as I believe it only benefit a specific section of the player base at the expense of others...

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This post focuses on digging more into one of my program points, and summarize my thoughts or what I said about it in various medias.

Encourage new features that would truly allow for a nomadic life style in New Eden.

New Eden is huge, and only small parts of its vastness beyond high sec are heavy with activities from the current sovereignty holders (null sec) or inhabitants (low sec and wh) while most of it remains nearly deserted except for the automated POSes that get only get visited once in a while, or the occasional or regular farmer. The permanency of the Eve servers and single world approach adds to that emptiness from the simple timezones requirements, as a system may be bustling on AU TZ zone, and be a desert a few hours later or earlier in in EU TZ.

The introduction of Wormholes has created real possibilities to be more nomadic as the gates to Null-Sec are not anymore single points of passages. We can roam deeper via wormholes routes, while remaining only a few jump away from home. But we still all need a home that is a fixed feature. Home can be an station or a POS. Both are the main places where our assets can be stored reasonably safely for long amount of time. For most of Eve pilots, it is where you can start from and roam around, and then come back

Ships like Rorqual, or Orca immediately comes to mind as potential staples of nomadic life, but today risking them for long amount of time away from home is a huge risk for those that are not looking to establish or increase their SOVs. Other options includes setting up temporary POSes and dismounting them but carrying those limit the capability to transport other things and benefit from the nomadism.

Here are a few concepts I'd like to discuss more with everyone, to encourage seeing nomadic outpost in the most deserted parts of New Eden (and I fully understand that the upcoming activity based sovereignty may change some things in that aspect in the next year).

- A concept of a ship that can morph into a POS, thus not having to carry the necessary weight to bring a POS infrastructure with you

- Some kind of respawn bay (no jump clone!) that could allow nomadic players losing a fight and podded to not get totally cut out of their nomadic assets, so as to encourage them to participate in fights instead of clamming up.

- A nomadic outpost would not necessarily have timers like structures have, and once deployed should still have defenses that only a coordinated efforts from a fleet would be able to take out, without needing capital action.

- The capacity for ships that would become a staple of this nomadism to use any WH (so having a max mass like an orca) and possibly tie this to the black ops redesign and capabilities to bridge such ships across more dangerous areas.

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This post focuses on digging more into one of my program points, and summarize my thoughts or what I said about it in various medias.

Request that all players link all their alts publicly, with a slight change in the EULA


This is the most controversial point of my program. The point causing prominent members of the public community to shake their head condescendingly at my run for CSM X and sigh, the point that sets me apart from the accepted "norm", the black sheep, or the simpleton that just "does not get it".... Everyone is entitled to their opinions.
For me this point is the true test of the votes of this CSM X to bring independent voices to bear.

X like 10 years... Eve is already ten years old, and all the doom sayers of "Eve is dying" have been proven wrong so far. Eve is leaving infancy behind, and entering teen years on a human age scale. Many tantrums have been had, and the game continues to grow, and offers an unparalleled experience of social interactions mixed with a cut-throat environment where players build assets, and can loose them on simple mistakes, or a bad look from a powerful individual, or long lasting grudges. Eve is not for the faint of heart, or the ones full of great ideals... It is gritty and unforgiving, but everyone can set their own goal and agenda and expect a reasonably fair field of play...

but is the gaming field truly fair as the power of a player is multiplied exponentially by the number of unrelated accounts one has?

This was very visible with the thankfully now banned input broadcasting, where fleets of bombers handled by one player could destroy a gang of numerous players with a single coordinated bomb run, or locust mining fleet could empty a site in mere minutes to the dismay of local residents with a more casual approach to their gaming hobby. They were not alts of the same accounts, but different accounts organized to operate at the same time. In that case, they gave away their anonymity to multiply exponentially the effect of one player on the game.
The community as a whole started seeing that as an abuse during the last year, while it was accepted for many years before. But as it started being more visible, as more players saw it working for some and duplicated the trend, this created a snowball effect that could not be ignored anymore. Gone is the very visible input broadcasting, because it became too obvious, but it also clearly showed that some players could afford many many accounts....

... and there are still today many ways that are not as visible to influence the game with a lot of anonymous different accounts and only one player behind them. From corps infiltration by "clean" alts, to non-productive cloaky campers that block in-game activity for local residents, to trading manipulated by alts of the same player, the power of multiple anonymous accounts is very much around, but it is not visible.

My goal with this point of my program is to cast a light on it, and continue the cleaning process for a fairer gaming field to all players that the input broadcasting ban started. Multiple anonymous account is, simply put, a subtle form of pay-to-win.

Removing the anonymity does not mean preventing players from having multiple accounts, as I believe this is truly a staple of Eve, but it will change the impact on the game that these extra alts can bring to the same player.

All activities in Eve are designed around risk versus rewards. Anonymous alts is all rewards with no risks. I have received angry messages saying I am going to kill the spy game....

Where is the difficulty in the spy game today? you are not working to turn another player, but you are adding a new account and having a real easy, no risk involved, run at a group of players in their corp that have no other way to protect themselves than not recruiting anymore...

What is the difficulty and the risk of sending a cloaky alt for weeks around, totally anonymously so that the recipients can't even know who is behind it and retaliate in other ways? A cloaky alt does not produce anything for the game, and has a no-risk opportunity to jump those that ignore the cloaky camper at the first opportunity. Why being afraid of retaliation against other productive alts?

The tenants of this type of play are the worst and most hypocritical carebears of the game, wanting to wield significant influence with the multiple anonymous accounts, and wield an influence that has little risk involved. It is not about the number of accounts, it is about their anonymity* hence my proposition to change the EULA accordingly.

I also received multiple messages of various sort about the paradox of me running from an anonymous alt and having this item on my agenda. Well it make sense for many different reasons:

- First I want to run on ideas I believe will make the game fairer for all, and be judged on these ideas, and not from the corps I have flew with or the state of my killboard. With me you get what you read on these forums, baseline statements that helps identify the points I will defend if I am elected.

- Not showing my main also ensures that I will not suffer from backlash in-game about ideas that I understand are threatening some players' influence over the game. Playing solo, my best defense is into this kind of secrecy.

- Running as an anonymous alt is also making a point about this particular aspect of my program. I have little reason to be the one linking my alts publicly, while anonymous alts remain a part of the game for all other players. If this change, I will be the first one to link all my alts to this account.

*Clarification: I am talking about the anonymity of alts, not the anonymity of players. Only CCP should know the players' names behind the accounts, all alts from various accounts of the same player being linked.

version française

This post focuses on digging more into one of my program points, and summarize my thoughts or what I said about it in various medias.

Develop the new player resources and first experiences in a more integrated way within the game.

CCP has recently communicated on new efforts to improve the new player experience.

This read is excellent, and the thing I like the most about it is that at last new players will start a spaceship themed game in a spaceship!
Also, being directly driven to an anomaly in the starting system is great too, ratting and mining as the first two things to do, then learning about the rest warping, docking, undocking... finding new stuff to do..
all that in a format that is not as linear and text heavy as the current tutorial.
That looks really good!

I just hope that no griefer can probe this starting anomaly or the player in it, and fleet invite and other tricks of that nature will be disabled until the players warps out of after having learned the basics, including not shooting in high sec at someone that is simply targeting you...

There is something else that is dear to me that I would push if elected:
A ship simulator within a spaceship game

In short the ability to sample every ship from your station in your starter system, through a simulator that will take you in a instance only anomaly (nobody else can get in as after all you will not be in real space) for a mission specially designed for the ship's role.

This simulator would give you access to the skills at level 5 and to your choice of any of the module to fit, and teach you the hard way when your fit is poor. The mission could be run multiple times until it is completed after you find by yourself the optimal way to fit the ship, and experience the consequences of a non-optimal fit, without losing anything yourself.

The access to ships class could be granted by steps, unlocked by completion of related simulations as well as real skill trainings, without being too linear, and would cover all the ships including capitals, so the training sim could be visited anytime by all pilots as they evolve and get closer to actually be able to fly said ship.

Learning process in Eve is a constant thing. Learning the roles and how to fit ships is something that even expereinced players can benefit from, even more if they can be exposed without risk of losing stuff to the consequences of poor fit in a training simulator, before being blown up for good in space.
Not having to install a second client for that purpose, and having a tailored mission for the ship's role, would be neat.


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