CSM Campaigns

Greetings Comrades!

My name is Niko Lorenzio, also known as Nikolai Vodkov (founder of Pro Synergy) and Valkyrie D’ark. I am not a widely known name in EVE, I do not have a backing of a large nullsec bloc and I don’t really have a presence in the EVE media. I do however have the experience, passion and understanding of EVE which I believe you may find useful in representing you in CSM XI.

In the interest of your time I’m going to post a summary of my beliefs and opinions below. If you would like me to elaborate my thoughts on a specific subject, please do not hesitate to ask either here or by contacting me in person.

• What is the CSM and why it matters

More than anything else, I see CSM as players’ ambassadors to CCP. CSM’s small size allows us to have ongoing, intimate, back and forth discussion with members of CCP. I believe this is the main strength of the CSM and cannot be substituted by less personal feedback channels like forums, reddit, etc.

• Why will you be an effective CSM member?

I have the experience and knowledge to contribute to the discussions.
I have the passion to dedicate myself to the CSM for the entire term.
I am patient, honest and a teamplayer which would help with holding dialogue with CSM and CCP.
I can see and analyze an issue from many different angles.
I can detach my personal interests from discussions as I have a broad perspective and tend to view things on a macrolevel.

• Who/What do I represent

I’m not running to represent any particular group, space or playstyle. I want to represent the values which I find fundamental to EVE and its success. While there are many, I'd like to highlight a few that I feel have been compromised or forgotten in recent years.

• Social Interaction Tools - Corp, alliance, fleet and other communication and organizational tools need much improvement.
• Death is a serious matter - Risk and losses are important because they gives assets and relationships value.
• Meaningful Choices - EVE should be about long term strategic planning and choices should carry meaningful consequences.
• Emergent gameplay - Game mechanics and features should give rise to creative, unscripted and unpredictable behavior.
• Specialists - Interdependence between players enriches the universe and fosters cooperation, which leads to stronger communities.
• Player freedom/control - Players should be given the freedom over how they experience both the EVE client and New Eden.
• Player agency - Over the universe but also over the game's development and direction.
• Persistent Universe - Players’ investments should not be undermined without careful consideration and debate.
• Communication - As curators of New Eden, CCP needs to be open and communicative with content creators (players).
• Conflict drivers - Limited resources, limited space, strategic locations give value to holdings and provoke conflict.

These are rather vague, so I’m posting commentary on how some of these would apply to past and current topics.

• Citadels

I have several concerns regarding the upcoming citadels.
We know from past that balancing things with price alone is a terrible idea. I would like there to be some kind of limiting factor to promote competition over “Citadel space.” We also need to be careful not to end up with a situation where one entity ends up with a 100 of them in one system, making them practically unbeatable. Possible solutions: Limit 1 XL per system, 1 large per planet, 1 medium per moon. And/or, rising fuel/maintenance costs with each additional citadel in system.

I dislike the idea of automated transfer. Current proposal makes it too advantageous to simply abandon the assets rather than attempt to defend/evac/retrieve them. Evacs and the emergent gameplay surrounding them should be encouraged. Possible solutions: Have the option to retrieve assets from wreck or jettison to safe spots. Uncollected assets will be available for automated transfer after 30 days. Possibly add an option for the conquering party to release assets for automated transfer earlier.

I’d like to see more interesting options than simply owning or blowing them up, i.e. transferring ownership, incapacitating and conquering them.

• Carrier Rebalance

I like the fact that they are breaking up carriers into two distinctive roles, encouraging specialists and ATK gameplay and reducing dependence on alts. Ideally all major roles within fleets should be filled by individual pilots with interesting and unique gameplay.

• Skill Point Trading

I could write an entire article on this subject but in short, I hate this proposal. It introduces non-vanity microtransactions to EVE. It allows for instant specialization into any area, reducing dependence on others. It tempts people to grind for ISK to “level up,” undermining one of the unique appeals of EVE - grind free progression. It is a massive ISK faucet (Yes, faucet not a sink, as turning unused idle SP into active SP makes it a faucet regardless of penalties) which will further raise the bar of entry and make higher end up ships/skills more ubiquitous and harder to compete with. Worst of all, CCP did not even attempt to communicate their real motivation and reasoning for this proposal to the players, refusing to even acknowledge the massive resistance to this change.

• Removal of Language Channels

Chat channels are the first tool that new players use to find and meet other players. The language channels were being used by thousands of players on daily basis, but more importantly they were used by newbros to find their native communities. Their removal is a big loss for EVE and makes no sense whatsoever.

So, Niko kindly agreed to answer some questions for me, interview here

He finally decided to run for CSM... :)

Endorsed. As a businessman, I have never been disappointing by this candidate, fun gamer, gets my votes.

Since Niko has requested a question, I thought I would oblige him. Here it is:



Regards,

S. Santorine

Niko,

Sometimes more information doesn't make things easier. Except for being able to pilot back to docking range, which I expressly made impossible because of your burrito eating, none of the other distinctions matter. You can choose whichever arrangements for the other parameters that you'd like.


Regards,

S. Santorine

Thank you for answering. I'm posting all my solutions sometime this weekend.

Best of luck with the CSM elections!


Regards,

S. Santorine

** Reserved +1

I would like to thank everyone again for their support and votes during the campaign. While I have not managed to get on myself I'd it to think we are least helped Jintaan secure his victory. Well done all.