CSM Campaigns

1. Yes. 100%. Pretty much anything that can liven up dead areas of space where people feel they can AFK rat without any problems is a 'good thing' in my book. Interaction in my humble opinion is always a good goal with this sort of thing.

2. I think you misconstrue my affection for the ESS. The ESS obviously doesn't increase ship-on-ship 'PvP' in the most traditional and literal sense. It does allow small gangs to go in and cause aggro to bigger alliances and from that there is the potential for a fight. (FWIW, I do think there should be some POS module or 'something' that allows people to receive notifications when they are being siphoned even if you don't get a warning by default.)

3. I am not privy to the facts and figures CCP has or even someone like Mynnna can access. Also, I am not a game designer. With those caveats aside, perhaps an expensive mobile deployable which allowed the system security to be modified beyond a certain level for access to better ratting but had relatively low HP for those who own the system? Or conversely, how about a mobile depot that can be placed in a system and drops sec status in that system while gaining HP the longer it is left there untouched (to a maximum level perhaps)? These are quite literally off the top of my head atm. I'm sure there will be some obvious hole to pick in either concept. Point is, from a design perspective, they are far 'cleaner' than the ESS and I believe there is a greater possibility of them generating fights.

Or the alternative of a mobile which can be dropped to reduce system income by assailants forcing the system holders to destroy it before it gets out of hand. The ESS is incredibly clunky. Increasing %s over time, you can steal but paid in tags, you can share to everyone but it resets timers, that it started as ostensibly a null nerf and was flipped around - from start to finish it is badly thought out and designed which is why I am guessing Ali and Malcanis said in my recent interview that they consider it a major failing of CSM8 that it slipped through the net.

I have already suggested two designs for deployables for both the defenders and the attackers which I believe achieves the same goal in a cleaner fashion. They are more intuitive and I believe (especially the second one) would generate more traffic as small gangs can go out there and take charge of the situation - they can actively go out and mess around with alliance's ratting space. You are actively giving them a reason to go there and take part as opposed to simply going on a roam hoping to pick up a careless AFKer. Anything that increases red traffic in a region increases the chances for interactivity - ostensibly fights. I can tell you from my own experience that we've seen little to no increase in traffic in Vale despite the ESS being ubiquitous.

Ali, I ostensibly agree with you here. The problem is, if you can't do it in an intuitive and clean way that people actually want to use, what's the point? I can only speak to my experience in Vale (I could/should probably use Dotlan to go crunch the maths to prove me right actually) but I haven't seen an increase of roaming traffic in Vale despite the ESS being used absolutely everywhere.

My suggestions lose that theft mechanic you mention which is a 'bad thing' but if it were used more and generated more fights then does it actually matter? Surely the point of these disruption modules ultimately is to generate interaction and fights and to let the little man feel he can screw over the big man? The theft thing is the cherry on top but if it isn't mechanically clear and understandable to the player, I personally don't see the point.

So while the 5 year NDA thing is true, I would only have 1 years worth of 'unmentionable intel' and even that I can speak about as soon as it becomes public. I think it's one thing to hold CCP's feet to the fire from the outside. Hopefully I can make a difference to the game with the vastly increased influence I would (may? should?) have from behind the curtain.

I'm also fairly certain I tag in Ripard Teg to the 'holding feet to the fire' job this year while I get to take over his 'inside communicator' position. I hope you'll consider me top of your ballot come the election either way and thanks for your post o7

Hey Mangala! Thanks for the question dude.

So like a lot of players, my Eve career started in high sec and I spent a good year scrabbling about there. I ended up unsubbing as I didn't enjoy it at all but I think that was down to me more than anything. When I resubbed, I went straight to 0.0 and have remained there ever since apart from a wee stint in RvB when my corp was in down time. I enjoyed that muchly. Apart from the odd wee nervous roam, I have spent very little time in WH space staying predominately in 0.0.

As for WH stabs, I GUARANTEE* I will make them a part of the game if I am elected to CSM8.








(*not guaranteed as they are a dumb idea.)

i been following this now a long time and read alot about what people have asked and you told them back your getting my vote any way but this is what i want to ask are you wanting to try stop people from stealing from other people at the end of the day ESS can be stolen from but only if your silly and not puttin them in the right place then the siphon unit steals moon stuff from POS you want to give people messages when there getting stolen from whats next you going want to give CEO messages every time something getting taken from the corp hangers or POS been able to steal from people and take large or small amounts of ISK or assits is one thing in the world that no other game let's you do and for some people it makes the game more enjoying

I have a funny feeling, especially coming from you, that this is a loaded question Ripard. But here goes...

1) Kind of...

2) Hm. So, I think that by definition, any game that allows the players more freedom, more capacity to be mean or nasty, will attract that sort of person. Eve is a sandbox MMO which attempts to allow people to be as free with their choices and morals as possible. Rules are minimal in comparison to the likes of your example, WoW.

That said, I think your definition of 'horrible players' isn't granular enough. To clarify, I know many incredibly brutal, harsh players who will stalk their foe to the ends of New Eden utilising every tool at their disposal in game to try and kill their prey. Once they have got their kill, the other player may feel embarrassed or humiliated that their skills weren't up to scratch but I don't see that the killer in this example is in any way 'bad' despite being incessant in his search for the hunt.

The guy who sits at his computer relentlessly 0.01ISKing the market because he is a student and has no classes that day. If I am at work that day trying to keep an occasional half eye on my orders and see this guys stomping me at every turn, I'm going to be pissed off but the student isn't doing anything wrong.

So I think a lot of this is subjective to be honest Ripard. If a guy is continuously smart bombing your undock trying to get cheap kills from you, as far as I see it, as frustrating as that may be for you, that is fine in my book. A little playful teasing in local? It's a grey area but as long as it is kept civil, I personally consider it fine.

Telling people to kill themselves and eat a shotgun barrel and all that nonsense? That's not on but I think it's unavoidable (I'll come back to this in answer 3).

So 'more inclined to see how far we can push another player... see if we can break him' - that I have no problem with. It's the inherent nature of the game. To change it would be to fundamentally alter the key best things about Eve.

'humiliate each other, much less likely to treat each other with respect... see if we can drive him out of the game or make him snap.' 'humiliate' is a tough one. I wouldn't set out to humiliate someone by casting dispersions on their parenthood for example. If I can humiliate them by taking advantage of a known in-game loophole to scam someone or by a cool flight manoeuvre or play? That's fine in my book. Maybe afterwards I tell them what they did wrong, maybe I keep it to myself. Either way, I don't see that as disrespectful in any way and if the other dude is humiliated, well I acted well within the rules of the sandbox. What isn't cool in my book, what crossed the line, is going out of the way to abuse the guy in local or in Eve mails or whatever. It's a woolly area though, I'll grant you. A bit of playful banter isn't only fine, I'd personally argue it's some of the best fun in game. I love a bit of back-and-forth in local during fights personally as long as it is kept fun.

Do I go out of my way to drive someone from the game? Absolutely not. Do I accept that if I manage to scam a relatively new player out of their entire 400m fortune that they may leave the game? Sure. In that particular scenario I'd maybe try and talk to the person afterwards and explain to them what they did wrong and I certainly wouldn't laugh at them no matter what. But in making that sort of action - taking their ISK - we have to accept that may be a line for that personal player and they won't come back. Of course, I've also heard countless stories where a bad event early on in a young Eve player's career was the making of them. Losing a bling fit destroyer unnecessarily due to some dastardly pirate inspired them to a career PvPing in lowsec for example.

3) CCP shouldn't change anything mechanically in terms of Eve being a harsh environment. It's what makes Eve special in my eyes. It's what differentiates Eve. It's the root of all those great stories.

Should CCP crack down on bullying, abusive chat in local and in Eve mails and such like? Yes absolutely but I'm inclined to think they probably won't simply due to how manpower intensive such a process is.

Eve Online is fundamentally a game about allowing personal freedoms. It is a game about internet spaceships where you can be whoever you want to be. There are few other games like it in that respect. And we know that given the opportunity, people in an anonymous environment will regress towards a baser version of themselves. Trying to curb this too far destroys the nature of Eve at it's root.

(As a side point, it is fascinating to me that one of Eve's most famous players (Chribba) is famous pretty much just for not being a douche. What other MMO that you can name would someone be so famous simply for not exploiting in game mechanics to be 'bad'?)

I know where your questioning goes by the way - if Eve doesn't stamp on the 'bad', there new players will dry up and there will be no Eve in the years to come. The subscription stats suggest otherwise but even if that were the case, I personally would rather Eve remained as a true virtual sandbox with CCP as janitors rather than try to police a game which is subverted from being 'Eve'.

Thanks for the question anyway Ripard o7

In theory, yes. I especially think it would be good to have logi on killmails for example as they contribute a huge amount to any battle.

In practise, I suspect it is nearly impossible to do due to so if ship D reps ship C (which is also a logi) then ship C reps ship B which kills ship A, does ship D appear on ship A's killmail? It becomes a convoluted mess and I'd imagine a nightmare from a programming perspective for CCP.

So yes in theory but in practicality, there are higher priorities for dev hours.

Yeah, I don't think this is an either/or one tbh. If you focus purely on new shiny Jesus features, people will complain about the problems the game has had for a long time (look at the moaning from people such as me when Rubicon was announced with no POS changes or sovereignty upgrades in 0.0). If you focus purely on fixing the latent issues within the game, people complain CCP are resting on their laurels and not giving the bittervets new content to take part in.

If you are going to push me, I'd tilt a little more to the side of refining existing mechanics / ships / problems in the game. You only have to see what a great job Rise/Fozzie/Ytterbium have done on the ship rebalancing project to see that with small tweaks to a number of ships, you can make a number of them that were previously redundant seem like brand new exciting ships and that opens up a whole new area of game space.

But yeah, tl;dr - a little of A and a little of B. Or, a lot of A and a lot of B :)