CSM Campaigns

With the starting of the new year, I am proud to announce my candidacy for CSMX.

My name is Jayne Fillon, and I've been playing this wonderful game without pause since early 2012. Like many, the sandbox nature of EVE was overwhelming to me at first, and I struggled to find my place in New Eden. After a very brief stint in highsec running missions, I joined a small PvP corp in Syndicate, only to be robbed soon after joining. From there, I tried to start my own wormhole corp, which failed early on. Finally, I moved onto lowsec where I tried, unsuccessfully, to become a mercenary.

At this point I was on the verge of quitting the game, and would have, had I not found the NPSI community.

My love for the NPSI community started over two years ago - eight months after I started playing - and I have not looked back since. My experience flying NPSI helped me learn how to PvP and eventually led me to become a fleet commander. Before I knew it, I was the CEO of a successful PvP corporation - and from there, I founded a completely new NPSI channel called “Spectre Fleet,” where I spend most of my time.

My Eve story is far from unique - I've heard countless stories just like it.

Unfortunately, unlike mine, these stories often end with “I was on the verge of quitting the game, and then I did.”

Out of all the the things NPSI showed me, the most important was the need to be engaged in what you do. Playing this game alone is not enough, you have to be an active participant within the community to truly experience Eve. The community as a whole is what makes this game fun, it’s why we stay. The community is the sole reason why we still log in despite no shortage of other games to entertain us.

Despite all this, the tools players have to facilitate forming groups and playing together are severely lacking.
Thankfully, CCP is aware of these complaints and are actively taking steps to address the current issues.

Last year, during the FanFest keynote speech, CCP Seagull outlined Eve Online’s development roadmap. There were two main focuses during 2014: Industry (released with Crius), as well as a redesign of corporations and alliances. The latter topic was discussed during the summer summit with CSM9, and the details were published in the meeting minutes later that year. The twelve page section covering Team Five-O’s meeting with CSM9 placed the scale and difficulty of this project into perspective:

“Fozzie explained that CCP had their external testing partner come in and map out corporations and alliances. The information was so thick and obscure that there were things no one knew about. [...] The partner company has produced a one hundred and five page document [...] that explains the current corporation and alliance system and how it relates to the rest of Eve.”

Unsurprisingly, during the Eve Vegas keynote speech in October, a new development roadmap was released, listing the redesign of corporations as an ongoing project. This means that whether you like it or not, redesigning corporations has become a priority for CCP, and will be the precursor to both sovereignty warfare and starbase management. This is an important project. This project will lay the foundation of future releases and development, and it goes beyond just corporations and alliances...

Whether it’s been called “Corp Lite” by CSM9 Funkybacon or “Social Groups” by CSM9 Mangala Solaris , there is a need for something more than what the traditional corporation structure can provide. There are a myriad of groups operating all over New Eden who operate outside of the current corporation and alliance mechanics: nullsec SIGs, highsec incursion groups, roleplayers and lore aficionados, gankers and anti-gankers, podcasters, traders, bloggers, and of course the NPSI communities themselves.

None of these groups operate in game with anything other than a chat channel and a mailing list.
There is literally nothing else in game for these groups to use, and this needs to change.

The list of things that could (and should) be either tweaked or completely redesigned is rather substantial, but I'm confident that with my experience both as a corporate CEO and leader of the largest channel based community in the game, I can help CCP make the right decisions. If you are a part of any of the communities I listed above you should know that your most vocal advocate on the current CSM, Mangala Solaris, has elected not to run for another term. Let me be your voice in his stead, and help CCP create an Eve that promotes and encourages social interaction, building a stronger Eve community.

Cheers,
Jayne

+1, count on my vote!

Met Jayne at Eve Vegas.

Nice guy. He'll be somewhere on my Ballot

Having flown under - and with - Jayne for a decent amount of fleets and hearing him talk about these subjects I can confidently say he is suited for the job!

You have my vote!

+1 vote/endorsement from me for his support of cloaky ninjas!

Can you tell me your opinion on a few of the current Eve issues ? For example ganking in high-sec. I know the player, but not yet your ideas about the game play.

I am overjoyed that Jayne is back in the running and he will be on my ballot for many reasons.

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In regards to the faster release cadence, I've been extremely impressed with the rate at which CCP has been churning out new features - and good features at that. I feel that the flexibility of this system compared to the older 6 month release cycle has given the developers the freedom to be more brazen with their changes, knowing that they can tweak them if they don't bring the desired (or at least, beneficial) results - see the removal of industrial teams for an example. I think that CCP's old rigid release cycle hindered development, and if they need to "stray" from the current release cycle (a week forward here, a week delay there, etc) then this system gives them the flexibility they need to make it happen, and they absolutely should.

Modules tiericide is awesome for everyone - except probably Entity, who I assume is crying into pools of ISK now that all his defunct and unique items are either being rebranded or removed. Oh well, can't make everyone happy, and the changes are certainly for the best. As for recons, specifically the dscan change, this one plays on my heart strings for the simple reason that dscan immunity falls under a category of game design called an "incomparable". With a bit of nifty math, you can quite easily determine which ships have the most dps, or the most tank, the most maneuverability, etc. However, there is no way you can equate "dscan immunity" to having 100 more dps or something else equally quantitative. Hopefully I haven't lost you.

What this essentially means is that there is no way to empirically determine if this feature will make recons overpowered or underpowered compared to other ship classes, as their attributes are "incomparable." This is good game design, as it forces players to move away from minmaxing and towards to use of tactics to best one another in combat. I'll indulge myself and take this one step further: this leads to a state of play referred to as "cyclic" imbalance. The recon upon first release will be widely considered as powerful (if not overpowered), until suitable tactics are created to counter them, at which point those mechanics will come under scrutiny. Now you need ongrid scouting of enemy fleets, etc etc.

That being said, I can see dscan immunity wreaking havoc in faction warfare. I'm sure CCP isn't oblivious to these dangers, but their effects in lowsec warfare will have to be closely monitored to ensure it doesn't lead to less fights, and an even more risk averse playstyle. That would - I assume - be the opposite of what is intended.

FAKE EDIT: I reread the post, CCP Rise had already commented of the dangers of dscan immune recons in FW.

Oh christ that list is massive.... you're asking about specifically NPSI Fleets?

1) Fleet standings, either manually set or inherit from FC.
2) More options in fleet adverts, saved presets, etc.
3) More granular fleet, channel, and mailing list roles.

It pains me to just pick three, but there you go. For more, you should check out the discussion here or again watch my presentation from Eve Vegas, where I talk about this near the end. The link is in the OP.

I would support anything that helps give these groups of players a sense of belonging, such as a collective symbol or identity to rally around. Think of how important the bee has become in goon culture, or the phage or pandemic legion, or even middle management dino from TEST.

It doesn't overly matter to me what medium is used to create these, as both player created or provided tools would work, but there has to be something. Even simple cosmetic items such as logos or tickers often hold a lot of meaning for players. This has become an issue with new alliance logos being delayed indefinitely, which is something that hopefully gets resolved soon.