CSM Campaigns

New Player Experience
 
With the Ascension update we saw an influx of new and returning players and an update to the new player experience. The new introductory arc for teaching players the basics was definitely a step in the right direction, and I’m hopeful that the next iterations will build well off of what they have now. What I would like to see made part of the NPE is a better impression of the impact a player can have on their surroundings and universe. Choices and consequences have always been a big part of EVE, but the NPE as is exists only to teach the fundamentals and basic ways to make isk. With only a couple of hours on average to grab new players, even having the tutorial give examples of the kind of impacts they can make on the game could be enough to keep playing. I’ve also had a few newbros tell me that they thought the tutorial could stand to be longer, or alternatively offer advanced teachings that focused on educating players on more advanced mechanics like fleet UI or corporation mechanics. I also love the initiative that CSM members are making for basic suggested fittings of ships for newer players trying to figure out how to fit, and the flight academy tutorial videos needing to be made more visible to new players who are already struggling hardcore with learning all the UI already. 
 
Corporations Social Groups
 
I have seen tons of fledgling Highsec corporations that more or less exist because corporations provide the social structure that guilds, clans, and clubs offer in other MMORPGs. Corporations are easy to setup and offer all the tools that the aforementioned social structures provide in other games, but these tools will sometimes be underutilized by those who don’t plan to or understand how to use them. As an alternative for those who are not interested in building up their space, such as taking sovereignty or setting up structures, I think that the introduction of social groups would better suit their interests. Social groups could offer all of the social benefits of a regular corporation, such as private channel, member list, titles, etc. Unlike corporations they wouldn’t have the ability to alter the rate of taxation, anchor large structures, take sovereignty, or engage in wars. Allowing players to be able to join multiple social groups could give rise to more community based groups established in game, rather than outside of it. I know that this idea has been pitched before, but for players whoo are just getting started, don’t plan on having citadels or taking sovereignty, or are trying to avoid the risks that come with being in a corporation, creating a society could become the optimal choice over a corporation.
 
I like the idea of corporations of an investment of time and effort, so another idea I have been toying with is the idea of corporation specializations. When you start a new corporation you could be presented with a variety of options to develop your corporations benefits – so for example, you could give industrial corporations choices like slightly higher mining yields, improved industrial build times/material efficiency, faster producing/better yields on planetary interaction, etc. Increased rewards of loyalty points and isk could be handed out to those who specialize in Empire protection operations such as missions, incursions, faction warfare, and general ratting. Rather than just choosing which benefits your corporation would receive, the best way to receive these benefits would come from the members banding together to work toward their specialization. With multiple levels of proficiency goals corporations could either attempt to maximize their specialization in a small scope of skills or provide a more balanced approach across different bonuses.
 
Services
 
I would love to see the creation of an in-game services hub where players can advertise or look for services; mercenary work, industrial contracts, hauling, intelligence work, etc. Besides giving these services more visibility to the average player, it could also give newer players a better impression of the impact that they can make on the universe. Let’s say you and your newbro friends want to start a new industrial group that wants to create T1 frigates to cruisers – sure, you could always just sell them on the market, but let’s say you instead take a contract building ships for some players in faction warfare. Now there is more visibility to what your work is being used for, you’re communicating with other players and getting a better understanding of their universe, and you’re building relationships.

Wars
 
Regardless of where you might fly in space, almost everyone has experienced a wardec. For a lot of players these wars were likely underwhelming, with no notable engagements, aside from some careless players getting caught visiting a trade hub. A lot of these wars are declared to ensure content for the wardeccer’s corporation or alliance, rather than achieving a specific goal. To that end wars can be lackluster, as quality wars are those that are created with some sort of intent, whether it be tearing down every public citadel in Perimeter or simply getting revenge on someone who wronged you. But again, these quality wars are the exception, in part because there really aren’t a lot of motivations to go to war over Highsec space. 

[Cont.]

Ganking
 
Ganking is true non-consensual Highsec PVP and I love it. Players gank for different reasons - I gank for profit, I know groups that gank the neutral freighters of their enemies, and some even gank out of ideological beliefs. CCP clearly recognizes the need for ganking as a way to punish taking risks in Highsec, but the way that they rework ganking mechanics is very hands off. It feels like they view the ganking community as wolves and the rest of the players as sheep, and as if they think the wolves are getting too out of control they will make the sheep a bit harder to eat. I’d like more clarity on what CCP thinks of ganking as a whole if elected but for now I want to focus on some of the common arguments against ganking.

The main complaints that I hear related to the ganking are:
1.        Ganking has a negative impact on newer players
2.        Ganking is a low-risk activity for the ganker
3.        Ganking offers little opportunity for interaction
 
The first complaint is valid to an extent. I know that my activities have made players quit, and though I don’t target players by age, I have definitely blown up newbros hauling everything they own. My personal experience with being ganked proved to be a turning point for me in EVE, and even CCP has pointed out that retention is higher amongst players who are blown up in their initial time playing… but obviously not everyone is going to have the same reaction to losing their possessions. 

The second point is also valid to an extent. In classic EVE tradition, gankers have min-maxed the hell out of ganking to the point where CODE. provides a spreadsheet for calculating the amount of damage needed to break the tank of any mining barge or exhumer based on fittings. The complaint is similar to complaining that Highsec incursion runners have too low-risk for their reward - It’s generally safe because they have optimized their fits and operations to ensure optimal clearing of otherwise challenging sites. Killrights and a negative security statuses can be detrimental for some types of ganking or trying to enjoy other activities, but otherwise don’t matter to those who live the -10.0 ganking lifestyle. You can try to change the values of hull hp, change criminal timers,  change concord response times, and so on, but gankers will inevitably adapt and mix-max their way back to relative prosperity.

The final point is where I think there is the best opportunity for improvements to ganking. While there is counterplay to some aspects of ganking, such as counter bumping a bumper to try to free a freighter or trying to jam ships to ensure they can’t finish off their targets, it’s usually not much fun. Trying to disrupt a gank doesn’t even feel like you’re doing more than whoring on a kill most times. I would love to inevitably find a way that allows players to try and police gankers rather than the NPCs to some capacity while not imposing on a gankers ability to kill someone, but in all honesty I feel like the crimewatch system needs an overhaul before we can reach that point.

(Edit:) I’ve been toying with the idea of changing the way that CONCORD works, that instead of nuking a criminal after eventually arriving on scene, that they would simply apply significant damage reduction to that criminal. Eventually faction police would arrive and slowly tear them apart, but it could provide anti-ganking players with more ability to meaningfully interfere with ganks as it would take significantly longer to kill someone under the damage reduction. It could also lead to more freedom for gankers to use different ships than just max DPS gallente blaster boats or stealth bombers. The biggest downside to this would be that I think it would make ganking more prevalent in general because well tanked, larger hulls would be able to terrorize players outside of largely populated space. My thoughts here are still a work in progress but I’ve been reaching out to gankers, and soon anti-gankers for their opinions on the subject to hopefully build up some better ideas.

Missions

I know that this had been talked to death - Missions are repetitive, and lack a lot of substance. Some people enjoy them, but for a lot of players it is simply part of their grind to earn isk for other activities. It would be nice to see more variety and challenge introduced to missions with the newer Drifter AI for those that enjoy running them, but what I would really like to see is challenging missions that require small groups to run. Restrict the number of players that can run the mission to a certain amount and give these players that like PVE something more interesting to do than just running the same missions together on easy-mode.

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Thank you for taking the time to read my platform. If you have any comments, concerns, questions, etc. feel free to post in this thread or contact me:

Ingame: Toxic Yaken
Twitter: @Toxic_Yaken
Tweetfleet Slack: Toxic Yaken

Also please consider checking out The Wardec Project Discord!

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Interviews:
https://crossingzebras.com/csm-chat-toxic-yaken/

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Fly Fearless.

This pirate has stolen my vote. And my heart.

No. I came to terms with my loss as I grew to better understand the game. Eventually I even spent time learning to gank with lessons from a few CODE. folks. The option for revenge is definately there, (anyone familiar with Zopiclone's theft of CODE. assets?) but that's not quite the revenge a lot of gank victims want.

On the face of it a balanced proposal with a good idea of the current balance, however what do you mean exactly in terms of overhauling crimewatch, where does the issue actually lie. Is it the safety bar which you have an issue with, that is actually something that helps AG players in the very difficult task of anti-ganking which is not exactly fun as you quite rightly pointed out.

Most players see the mining barges and exhumers as reasonably well balanced because people have an option to take a yield hit to use a tanky ship such as the Procurer and Skiff, so in affect those people getting blown up in mining ships made choices for yield, which is fine.

The issue with the CODE / Miniluv spreadsheet approach rests entirely with freighter ganking, but the issue in that area is more to do with bumping, because they can hold the freighter there indefinitely while assembling a gank fleet, that part of it needs looking at because it is not a dash to see if they can slip through and results in stale uninteresting play. That needs sorting.

With the arrival of citadels perhaps now is the time for NPC stations to have penalties for the criminal security status.

The war dec system is fine, but the fee for very large alliances needs to be reduced, and there has to be restrictions to prevent continuous war decs, but on the other hand I would make the war dec follow a character if he joins any player corp within the week of the war dec applying.

I am not in favour of something artificial to fight over but your suggestion of an impact in reducing the war dec time based on activity is a good suggestion The removal of the watch list is a good thing in terms of hisec wars as people can operate off the beaten path. which improves things. I would support the locator agents giving on-line status as people have suggested, however with one proviso, should I have very high standings with those agents corps they also tell me that I am being checked on, everything has to have a risk.

It would be good to have a player who while a ganker actually sees the balance side of things, though I would like to see a bit more meat on the bone in terms of proposals. So far I am interested in what you have put up.

Ralph, I was never sure whether they fixed it so that you could rep alliance mates which wa something that got my goat when I realised you could not, has that been fixed now, I know CCP said they would, but saying and doing is two totally different things.

The neutral RR is better than it was previously, in that now they go suspect, it annoyed the hell out of me when you could not even touch them in the past which is why I never partaked of any hisec combat until that stupidity got removed. I actually suggest to people to have an out of corp wing ready to come in on the neutral RR for when they go FY. If people get off their butt and start dealing with them as they go FY then great. All you have to do is follow certain people around and you can nail them. If some people started doing that it would change the attitude a bit, perhaps I should start doing that, a target does come to mind....

I agree the suspect flag for helping someone you are allied with makes no sense what so ever, that needs changing, it would also create more interesting conflict in hisec in my opinion.

To be honest I don’t have a lot of meat for the subject of ganking in part because I’m trying to balance what gankers think ganking should be, what anti-gankers think it should be, and what I think CCP wants it to be. I’ve been toying with the idea of changing the way that CONCORD works, that instead of nuking a criminal after eventually arriving on scene, that they would simply apply significant damage reduction to that criminal. Eventually faction police would arrive and slowly tear them apart, but it could provide anti-ganking players with more ability to meaningfully interfere with ganks as it would take significantly longer to kill someone under the damage reduction. It could also lead to more freedom for gankers to use different ships than just max DPS gallente blaster boats or stealth bombers. The biggest downside to this would be that I think it would make ganking more prevalent in general because well tanked, larger hulls would be able to terrorize players outside of largely populated space. My thoughts here are still a work in progress but I’ve been reaching out to gankers, and soon anti-gankers for their opinions on the subject to hopefully build up some better ideas.

Thanks for your points; I will update the platform accordingly after work.

I've never heard of referred to as the safety 'bar' before, thanks for the clarification.



I understand where you're coming from, I'm just stating that CCP seems to have hit a roadblock with their plans to change bumping, and I don't know if it's going to happen in the foreseeable future.



I would love to see more cooperation between smaller Highsec groups but the gaps of skill and knowledge between wardeccers and newer players is pretty large. It's part of the reason I wanted to advocate for service advertisements so groups could look for that help they need in potentially fighting a wardeccer.



I'm hopeful that some of the future structures coming out may further the idea of building up a corporation or alliance's space and hopefully create more incentive for defenders to fight... We'll see.



Appreciate your questions and support! I know you poke your head into C&P sometimes (I normally lurk there) and I'm happy to discuss these things with people from the other side. If you ever have any other questions feel free to drop them here or send me a mail.

Toxic

I voted for you last year, and might do it again this year if I can stop crying over that sad fate.

Other than that, thanks for the good work on the wardecs. There was a guy from RFF last year who also wanted to make wardecs fun, in last year's candidates. Don't know what he's become, but if you get in touch maybe you can bounce ideas with him.

Good luck, even though... FCON... seriously? right, good luck anyway.

I had a chat with Toxic. Great guy! Find out more: https://crossingzebras.com/csm-chat-toxic-yaken/