CSM Campaigns

I feel Ali definitely pulled her weight in the CSM this last term and proved that she was more than up to the task. My vote last year did not go to waste.
And I dont feel she should have any problems getting re elected this year.


I do hope that this year she tries to stay away from the propaganda pieces that her CSM spotlight allows her to bring forth easier.

I have a few regrets about the 9UY engagements, actually. That said, if folks from Providence want to talk Provi politics, I'm happy to do so somewhere off-thread (podcasts? A separate thread, perhaps on a Provi forum?). I'll be sticking to CSM stuff from here on out in here, though. With that in mind...

I've raised the alliance standings thing. It hasn't happened yet-- I'd love it if it would, and I'll bring it up again. However-- and this gets to a point raised in the post after yours-- the CSM can only persuade, not directly commit changes to the game's codebase. We win some, we lose some. The more incremental the change, the easier to win, so I'll be bringing this up again.

I've nudged a few noobs in the direction of Providence when it seemed like it'd fit their needs well. I've advocated for more and more interesting Live Events, which serves the RP part of that NRDS community. I spoke out on a feature, but unfortunately, can't say much more than that due to NDA.

Regarding the siphons and ESS, well. Siphons I've spoken out against repeatedly. I'm not sure if you've listened to Declarations of War, but we talked about it on Episode 61. Skip to the CSM section to hear just the siphons bit. In concept, they were supposed to *benefit* groups like Providence, by making it possible to screw with moons without going to all the trouble of knocking towers over. In practice, they're a giant kick in the balls to anyone's logistics team, promote blue-on-blue violence, and are challenging to police. Remember when I said you win some, you lose some? ;-) Multiple CSM members have kept on nagging about these.

The ESS, meanwhile, we won some on. It was released to bad community feedback, I collected and streamlined a lot of the feedback, and the structure was changed. I'm actually somewhat surprised you're not a fan-- SOUND would have used these every day in Provi. They're best when you're in an active region with viable defense gangs (like Provi...), and they provide benefit to everyone in the system, regardless of alliance (meaning there's no weirdness with neuts or blues ratting in your space as well). Assuming you can loot them, they're a bonus to ratting income as well. Hostiles can't really drop one on you, because you can just shoot it as soon as they leave. Can you say more about what you don't like about them?


This is a really, really, really excellent question, thank you for asking it.

I didn’t explicitly run on a communication platform last year, but communication is one of the things I was known for. A part of that, while I wasn’t the one who did the lifting, was csm8.org. The multiblog is really useful, but the site could be better. This year, I’m partly running on an organizational platform, and I’d like to make something like that useful for CSM 9. A big improvement would be a calendar, multi-twitter feed (and maybe an outgoing twitter feed that autoposts blogs or something?), but those take some time and effort and gentle loving prods of other CSM members.

Also, I could be better at answering my damn eve-mail. Sorry :(

In general, I think as with most things, CSM is a skill, and it’s one I’ve gotten better at over time. I’m more effective now than I was nine months ago, partly because now I know how to ask the right questions in the right kind of way, both of other players and of CCP. I’ve become practiced in the art of NDA-fu, and I’ve seen more issues that arise over time. Each time something new comes up, I learn from it. So, next year, I'd like to keep getting better at the stuff I'm already doing-- representing players to CCP, and following up on important issues.

aaaaand two part post, I'm out of words...

Ali, speaking of communication, did the discussion on missiles rebalance get brought up, as asked in the November Town Hall? I just want to make sure there's some acknowledgement of the issue being raised to CCP, as I haven't seen anything in the Jita Park thread to know if the loop has been closed on the dicsussion.

Frankly, I was fairly frustrated at my attempt to raise an issue to the CSM to discuss solutions. The responses on thread were fairly unhelpful, and I never got responses from EVE Mail. I appreciated the input being brought via the Town Hall, and blog posts, but how do you think you can help make this process better?

I've talked about it a bit with them, but...I'm not really sure how to "bring something back" :-/ It's hard given the NDA; I know that's a common refrain among CSMs, but it's also *true*. "Can you post that to the thread?" works well when there's a clear answer to a player question; when there's not, it's harder.

I have unironically considered a ticketing system; I know we were playing with Jira at one point but I'm not sure if that's the best option. I already have "respond better to evemail" as a to-do (and to my credit, knocked one right off earlier this week! Better than forum posts!) but other than "be better at posting/mailing/tweeting/responding in-kind to issues brought up", I'm less sure what to do. Is it just acknowledgement of "this has been brought up" that you're looking for, or are you looking for an actual answer ("this has been brought up, and CCP is working on/ignoring/doesn't care about this")?


Haha, oh my. I'm going to interpret your question a little more broadly as the "new player experience" rather than the tutorials themselves, because it all works together and tutorial missions are a sort of necessary evil. If possible, I'd like to minimize them as much as is reasonable.

For an actual useful mission, though, I'd like something that *unexpectedly* blows the new player up. Get them in over their heads, get them tackled by scramming rats, whatever, then reimburse the loss with the NPCs. There was a "throw the new player right into the depths" idea that I really liked; you could do it that way or just alter the current missions that get a player blown up. Either way, a newbie shouldn't leave the tutorial zone without having heard their hull alarm. This acclimates them to loss in EVE and most importantly, it highlights the primary difference between EVE and other MMOs: In EVE, *all* equipment is consumable/disposable.

The second would be to add some signposting towards player corporations-- perhaps a means of "graduating" from your noobcorp into an NPC corp (or real corp)! Basically, an NPC informs you that "it's time" ~1 month in to your life as a noob, and invites you to investigate player corp offerings. They walk you through the corp recruiting interface, and also allow you to graduate to the facwar militia or your NPC older-corp (the one you go to if you go noobcorp -> player corp -> quit player corp). Rookie help chat can be folded into newbie corp corp chat, meaning you already have a sense that "this is where you talk for community".

The third would be to improve the dang PvP skills intro. It sucks right now. I would like newbies to know about d-scan and ship fitting, from somewhere better than the ship fitting guide. You could even introduce this by having them build several fits over the course of a mission-series, with mods and skills coming along the way instead of a random assortment of "here's a web. here's a shield booster. here's a railgun, which should go well with your blaster you already have." And, you know, you could do this with UI elements too...but there's a fourth thing, and I'm out of bullet points :P

Do you think having two CSM representatives from one alliance might cause any problems on the CSM? Even though you are both awesome people.
I don't believe this has been done in the past quite often.

It was really just an acknowledgement or response that the issue had been picked up and brought up with CCP for discussion. Knowing whether ithe proposal needs more information/discussion, or is being dismissed out of hand would be nice, but I can understand that might be restricted by NDA.

Thanks for the response!

One of the times it did happen I can personally speak to was CSM4, where Zastrow and Mrs Trzzbk both represented Goonswarm. Despite their membership in the same corp, they each brought a unique set of skills and perspective to discussions. They both contributed to a really successful CCP/CSM summit (back in the day when CSM only got one of those per term).

Having known Psianh for quite a while and worked closely with Ali on Declarations of War podcast since her election, I can say with confidence they're both extremely solid and passionate players. They have some different interests/skills as well as some shared ones. Ali has really proven herself to be a workhorse on the council and I think Psianh would follow in that tradition to be an excellent addition to the team that compliments Ali and carries forward the fantastic work CSM8 has done in general.

you do reaslise we have 2 csm from the same wh corp (not allaince) on csm at the moment maybe you should ask them.

on to ali a question for you.

In wh space when some one gets invaded (evicted) normally its fight or die if the defending group loses they basically lose everything in that wh.

Null sec has just started "dead zoning" do you think it would be just easier to allow stations to be destroyable?

I -- and the Chinese philosopher Mozi, who you should really look up sometime -- agree. The only outcome of siphoncarpeting is scorched earth; terrain unsuitable for anyone to live. I do disagree that you can't stop this, but the means of 90% prevention (constant patrolling system security) is more readily available to larger groups than smaller ones. (And as with all economic factors, once you've reached the point of diminishing returns on prevention, you just build the probable losses into your budget. Which again favors giants and nihilists.)

Anyway, you have my vote. Thanks for taking the time to dissect that question.

Ali, since I've asked other members of the CSM this same question, how would you go on about introducing more small gang into 0.0 warfare?