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June Ting for CSM10 - newbies and independent PVPers

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Author
June Ting
Nobody in Local
Deepwater Hooligans
#1 - 2014-12-16 18:13:30 UTC
Greetings, fellow capsuleers.

I've been playing EVE for approximately two and a half years, since May 2012. My experiences are fairly diverse - I do everything ranging from 50-100 person fleets helping contest sov, 5-20 person small roams/local defense, wormholes, teaching classes to newbies, and running moon reaction farms. However, I feel that I am most qualified to speak about the challenges of being a small, independent entity PVPing in nullsec, and about the struggles of newer players.

Since August 2013, I have led one of the smallest and least veteran-heavy alliances active in sov nullsec, Of Sound Mind. We have lived in Providence, lived in wormholes, lived in Curse, lived in Syndicate, and most recently have been a part of the HERO Coalition living in Catch. However, my sovereignty and bloc isn't my identity -- my identity is as a mentor to newbies and facilitator for their learning first and foremost, regardless of who we fly with and where we live. I have maintained an active killboard since the very first week I've played EVE, and always have a boots on the ground perspective as to things that are fun/working well and things that are resulting in a stagnant game.

My perspective is unique because of my ongoing individual work with the new players we train every single day. I see firsthand how players struggle with EVE's learning curve, and how a little bit of individual guidance and mentoring can help transform them into confident, empowered players excited about EVE. I want to make that scale, and give every newbie joining EVE the same opportunity to become excited about the game that I had, and that I am only able to give a few dozen newbies at a time with the resources I have today.

My experience isn't merely the sum of my ingame activities. I have the expertise to hold CCP accountable to realistic goals, and to translate player demands into clear and reasonable requests to CCP. I have previously worked in the MMORPG space as a software engineer/anti-botting/anti-cheating czar working on Puzzle Pirates. I have substantial project management skills as well as software engineering skills, so I can easily determine whether something is realistically possible for CCP to implement, or whether it would suck time away from more important development work for comparatively little gain. I will be unapologetic about calling out vaporware bullshit promises without delivery, and will hold CCP's feet to the fire about making progress towards a healthier, more stimulating game.

In keeping with what I said about my experience, I won't promise things as part of my campaign platform that I am unable to deliver. I won't promise you REBALANCED SOV NOW!!!oneoneone, but I will promise to make the perspective of the small pirate corp/alliance that wants to plant their flag in null one day heard in the ongoing dialogue with CCP about evolving game mechanics. I won't promise you REDO ALL THE TUTORIALS, but I will be insistent about pointing out to CCP the pain points felt by the new players I work with every day. I won't be able to fix power projection with a snap of my fingers, but I can speak to the ways in which I feel that current power projection mechanics help/hinder fights today, and speak up if I see instances in which Malcanis's Law that "changes designed to help new players help experienced players/incumbents more" may be coming into play. Furthermore, I am always willing to open-mindedly listen to perspectives that I initially disagree with, and am comfortable advocating for the overall position of the community rather than only presenting my own views.

Some of my past writing on sov mechanics, coalitions, and force projection may give you an idea of my views on things that are working and not working about EVE's mechanics today.

Here are some overall principles that I will adhere to when speaking to CCP if I am elected:

  • EVE's challenge comes from making meaningful choices. Ishtars online and supers online do not make for interesting content. Everything should have a counter.
  • Newbies are the future of EVE. If something would hurt incumbents, but make it easier for newbies to get sucked into EVE, I will advocate it every time.
  • Smaller objectives make for more interesting content over 'big bang' once in a blue moon 10% tidi lagfests.


I look forward to answering any questions that the community may have for me. I'll collate my answers in a post below this one in order to make reading them at once easier.

I fight for the freedom of my people.

June Ting
Nobody in Local
Deepwater Hooligans
#2 - 2014-12-16 18:13:58 UTC  |  Edited by: June Ting
Compendium of questions and tl;dr answers:

  • Q: What are your opinions on lowsec? A: I have individual reasons that I don't play much in lowsec, but prefer not to force my opinions on people that do live in lowsec.
  • Q: Why are you running? A: Sov, poses, and alliance/corp management are very important issues to me that I want to see done right. Not in it for going to Iceland -- I intend to contribute remotely.
  • Q: What do you think about alts? A: Alts are a symptom of mindnumbingly boring gameplay. Make the gameplay more interesting for mains to do, or add deployables that eliminate the need for alts.
  • Q: What do you mean by 'forcing' people to do things? A: Give people incentives to engage with mechanics and/or add consequences for ignoring mechanics.
  • Q: What do you think of CCP Rise's NPE mechanics proposals? A: Great to see CCP experimenting. Some further thoughts into the EVE 102 of player interaction are needed, but the steps towards improving 101 look promising.
  • Q: Are you a bloc candidate? Are you Ali Aras's successor? A: Maybe, and maybe. In the event HERO does organized voting this year, I will likely only get a trickle after BRAVE candidates, similar to Malcanis in past years. I think similarly to Ali, but am not her clone.
  • Q: Are you electable vs. CFC candidates? Will you work for your coalition? A: CSM voting is not zero-sum, and I am neither pro-CFC nor anti-CFC. I expect it will be difficult, but that I can be elected. I will work for the overall health of the game even if it hurts my coalition, but my experience that I draw upon for discussions is primarily from flying with my coalition.
  • Q: Why should people vote for you in one sentence? What do you want to fix? A: I'm the only currently running candidate whose fulltime game job is teaching newbies. I think matching players to good corps is the key to player retention, and that the corp finder needs rework.
  • Q: How will you make PVE suck less? A: I do not want to see 30% or 50% of CCP's energy sucked away by level/content treadmilling. Increased vulnerability to other players (and commensurate reward) is the best thing to make PVE more interesting and less monotonous.
  • Q: What do you think about small/large fleet meta balance? A: Not necessarily broken - petes, bombers, cerbs useful for smaller gangs harassing larger gangs. If nerf becomes necessary, nerfing massed logi would be required to buff smaller groups harassing.
  • Q: How would you make smaller groups viable in low/null? A: Low/npc null: decrease value of carrier camping, increase supply of staging systems. Sovnull: remove incentives for people to have vast renting empires that take up spots on the totem pole that smaller groups should be contesting instead.
  • Q: What are your thoughts on wardecs, corp cycling, and awoxing? A: Corp cycling for dec dodging can be fixed by giving everyone a very strong incentive to own a POS, and making it so that POSes can't be taken down during wardec spoolup. If the corp disbands, you at least get to make it cost them. Awoxing is complicated - weeding out bad corps is good, but the mechanic also hurts corps that want to train newbies. If wardecs can be fixed, then that would be a viable mechanism for doing the weeding.


Cap Stable interview: http://capstable.net/2015/01/08/juneting/
Just for Crits interview: http://justforcrits.com/csmx-june-ting/

I fight for the freedom of my people.

June Ting
Nobody in Local
Deepwater Hooligans
#3 - 2014-12-16 18:14:52 UTC  |  Edited by: June Ting
The easiest way to reach me is by evemail or on tweetfleet slack, if you have questions you'd like to directly ask.

My recommendations for high ballot slots (besides myself) are, in no particular order:

  • Sugar Kyle (outstanding communication, newbie education efforts)
  • Dave Korhal (a smart genuine newbie)
  • Jayne Fillon (who has done *so* much to ensure fleet pvp is accessible to newbies through NPSI)
  • Steve Ronuken (who does an amazing job advocating for third-party development upon which every single organized community in eve depends so much)
  • Cagali Cagali (who works with an order of magnitude more newbies than I do by virtue of running the brave dojo)
  • Psianh Auvyander (who speaks for the non-highsec merc and small gang communities extremely well)


List may be amended as I see more of others' platforms in order to feel confident issuing recommendations. I do not accept or give cross-endorsement deals - I'm telling it like it is without any kind of kickback backscratching stuff.

There are other people not listed here that still would be good on the CSM, but don't need any help getting there.

I fight for the freedom of my people.

Pike Chargrim
Carebear Empire
#4 - 2014-12-16 18:50:16 UTC
In your opinion:

1) what is currently broken about lowsec?
2) how would you fix it?
3) how do you see low-sec fitting into the universe as a whole going forward?

Thanks!
Vyle Feelings
Cheesemonger Managerial Consortium
#5 - 2014-12-16 18:56:01 UTC
Having had some experience flying with June when SOUND lived in Syndicate, and now being re-united in Catch with HERO, I give a big +1 for her bid for CSM!

She's good people, and we certainly need more good people fighting for us.
June Ting
Nobody in Local
Deepwater Hooligans
#6 - 2014-12-16 18:58:34 UTC  |  Edited by: June Ting
Pike Chargrim wrote:
1) what is currently broken about lowsec? 2) how would you fix it?

Honestly, I feel like lowsec is not one of my core competencies. I would prefer to avoid issuing major pronouncements about systematic issues in lowsec when I don't actually live there. You also are not distinguishing between FW lowsec and non-FW lowsec, which are two very different animals -- which one are you interested in hearing about?

That being said: I can say that my personal annoyances with lowsec and security status mechanics are threefold:
1.) Alts make the concept of security status and militia status meaningless, because you can get your own alts to take care of your market shopping, etc. for you. There is no reason not to go full flashy, because the consequences to it are mitigated with alts.
2.) Gate guns penalize frigate-sized fights on lowsec gates unless you've deliberately opted into FW.
3.) Fleet boosting on a station undock is stupid broken and defeats the point of CCP's changes to make POS boosting harder. That one's easiest to band-aid fix by giving boosters weapon timers if they run their links, but the long term fix revolves around CCP's plans to bring boosters ongrid and at risk.

Quote:
3) how do you see low-sec fitting into the universe as a whole going forward?

Rambling a bit -- I would love to see lowsec as a major thoroughfare that everyone has to pass through rather than being something that is easy to bypass. Many nullseccers and highseccers could care less about goings-on in lowsec because it doesn't affect them, and that's a problem. People should be forced to interact.

I don't know how well CCP's fixes to lowsec income via mordu's spawns and clone soldier spawns have worked -- anecdotally clone soldier spawns were helpful for BRAVE member income when BRAVE lived in Barleguet, but I'm not sure that problem is fully fixed. Having lowsec be a second class citizen for income potential because the income doesn't measure up to the risk-free income of highsec incursions, the unlimited anoms of nullsec, and wormhole cap escalations is definitely unhealthy for the game overall.

I'm pretty happy with the wormhole superhighway effect in lowsec that CCP added recently, because it makes lowsec much more attractive to use as a travel pathway.

In general though, I really prefer to defer to the opinions of people that are lowsec experts when discussing lowsec balance. I have my core competencies and dislike it when people that don't know what they're talking about try to too many cooks me. I'm not going to go trample over what Sugar Kyle has to say about lowsec. She lives it. I don't. I'm happy to say what things would make me more likely to interact with lowsec in my day to day gameplay though if it's helpful to discussions.

I fight for the freedom of my people.

Elnara Nashur
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#7 - 2014-12-16 19:59:27 UTC
Why are you running? Why this year and not years before?
June Ting
Nobody in Local
Deepwater Hooligans
#8 - 2014-12-16 20:13:55 UTC
Elnara Nashur wrote:
Why are you running? Why this year and not years before?

Believe me, it's not because of the free Iceland trips. Full disclosure: I am unable to physically travel to Iceland due to being responsible for the care of an epileptic dog. If elected, I promise to attend every session remotely via videoconference. I believe I can be as effective as someone attending in person -- I have plenty of experience with being a constructive remote contributor from working with teams in other offices in my day job.

Getting back to answering the actual questions - I have two reasons why this specific CSM term is important to me:

  1. This is going to be a pivotal year for EVE and for the CSM. The increased tempo of changes coming from CCP demands a laser focus and early feedback so that CCP doesn't release something botched that it then has to backpedal (or worse, simply allows it to damage the game). I'd much rather have a steady cadence of on-point releases that take the game in a healthy direction. With sov, poses, and alliance/corp management on the agenda for 2015, I feel that representing other players that are small, independent fish is going to be important. The heavyweights have their voices already - Sion, Endie, and Mannie among others, that are almost certainly going to be elected. I can speak coherently and competently for the 50-300 character sized groups. One size does not fit all.
  2. I felt that Ali Aras represented my opinions very well and saw no reasons that both of us should be in the running in previous years. I helped her with her campaign planning, and advised her to the extent that the NDA would allow. She is not standing for reelection this year, and I feel that no other candidates represent my perspective as well as I could by representing directly.

I fight for the freedom of my people.

Dersen Lowery
The Scope
#9 - 2014-12-16 21:06:53 UTC
As an early supporter of Ali's, I'm glad to see you running to take her place. I have a few questions:

Quote:
Alts make the concept of security status and militia status meaningless


Alts make a fair number of intended mechanics in the game either meaningless or hobbled to the point of redundancy (I'm thinking of bounties). Nevertheless, CCP seems to have embraced them wholeheartedly. I realize that this is a huge can of worms, but since you're brandishing a can opener, I have to ask: do you have a specific approach on this? Not necessarily answers, but an approach you want to take toward the issue, since you clearly think it's an issue?

June Ting wrote:
People should be forced to interact.


Could you clarify this? I get twitchy when I see the word "force."

Last question: did you see CCP Rise's presentation on the intended direction for the new NPE? What do you think of it? Right way? Wrong way? Hard to tell? Would it dovetail with the way you've brought new players under your wing, or interfere?

Proud founder and member of the Belligerent Desirables.

I voted in CSM X!

June Ting
Nobody in Local
Deepwater Hooligans
#10 - 2014-12-16 22:02:53 UTC  |  Edited by: June Ting
Great questions, thanks!

Dersen Lowery wrote:
Alts make a fair number of intended mechanics in the game either meaningless or hobbled to the point of redundancy (I'm thinking of bounties). Nevertheless, CCP seems to have embraced them wholeheartedly. I realize that this is a huge can of worms, but since you're brandishing a can opener, I have to ask: do you have a specific approach on this? Not necessarily answers, but an approach you want to take toward the issue, since you clearly think it's an issue?

There is a huge amount of EVE that is so mind-numbingly boring that no player is willing to do it as a career, or requires so much trust that you'd rarely delegate it to another player. Cyno alts or eyes alts definitely spring to mind for that. Multiboxing also is a huge problem -- if your brain is so un-engaged by what you're doing that you have plenty of attention span to spend it on three other accounts at the same time, then maybe the mechanics should be changed to be less AFK or 'click a button every 10 minutes'. There should be a reason to get another human being to do something for you instead of doing it yourself on an alt. I think that deployables present a good solution to cases in which you really can't make it more interesting such that a player would be interested in and valued for doing it.

Quote:
June Ting wrote:
People should be forced to interact.

Could you clarify this? I get twitchy when I see the word "force."

Feel free to treat 'forced to engage with X' as "there should be meaningful consequences for ignoring X, and meaningful benefits to becoming more engaged with X". I honestly cannot say I am happy about the fact that except for the fact that I need to light a few logistical cynos in lowsec, there's not much of a game mechanical reason for me to care as a person living in nullsec about what happens in lowsec. There should be more incentives for me to want to do things in lowsec, even if I don't live in lowsec. Right now my alliance pretty much ignores the existence of lowsec since there's no benefit to us from engaging more, and no penalty to us for how little we engage in lowsec activity.

Let us imagine, for instance, that the spawn rates of outbound wormholes from null->low increased dramatically and the spawn rates of null->high wormholes trickled down to ~0. That gives me a very, very, very powerful incentive in combination with, say, a JF range nerf, to start doing more logistics through wormholes through lowsec if I live deep in null, and to start escorting industrials through low or roaming low more often instead of just waiting for the next wormhole to highsec.

Quote:
Last question: did you see CCP Rise's presentation on the intended direction for the new NPE? What do you think of it? Right way? Wrong way? Hard to tell? Would it dovetail with the way you've brought new players under your wing, or interfere?

Unfortunately I wasn't available at the time that that was scheduled on the Vegas stream, and I didn't realize that the videos were helpfully being archived and published to Youtube after the fact :) - I'll watch it in the next day and get back to you.

I fight for the freedom of my people.

Alekseyev Karrde
Noir.
Shadow Cartel
#11 - 2014-12-16 22:57:45 UTC
I've gotten to know June pretty well over the past year and a half. I think she'd do a pretty solid job as a CSM rep!

Alek the Kidnapper, Hero of the CSM

Jayne Fillon
#12 - 2014-12-17 01:28:12 UTC
Are you running in place of Ali Aras?

Are you the official candidate from HERO?

Can't shoot blues if you don't have any. Long Live NPSI.

June Ting
Nobody in Local
Deepwater Hooligans
#13 - 2014-12-17 01:38:33 UTC  |  Edited by: June Ting
Jayne Fillon wrote:
Are you running in place of Ali Aras?

I am a close friend of Ali Aras. I am running this year in particular in part because she chose not to stand for re-election -- in previous years, I would not have wished to split her support base, and also felt that she represented my interests well. I leave it to her to announce her CSM X endorsements upon her own schedule.

Quote:
Are you the official candidate from HERO?

I made my decision to run without regard to whether I was getting support from my blues. I intend to pursue support from all parties - blue, neutral, and red. My belief is that I will need every vote I can get in order to be elected - if BRAVE announces any official candidates (again, I do not control the schedule upon which any such announcements might take place), they will very likely come well before me on any ballot that BRAVE or HERO would produce. My situation is similar to Malcanis's from past years.

I fight for the freedom of my people.

June Ting
Nobody in Local
Deepwater Hooligans
#14 - 2014-12-17 12:32:35 UTC
My answers to Foo's questions, which should appear at http://foo-eve.blogspot.com/p/csm-10-candidate-questions.html shortly:

Quote:
Why should my readers vote for you (TLDR version)?

My fulltime game focus is on new players. No other running candidate works as much day to day with newbies as I do, except maaaaybe Sugar. (1)

Quote:
What one thing do you realistically want to fix in Eve? What is your solution to this one thing?

Problem: The corp finder needs to be more useful. There is no middle ground between the recruitment forum/chat channel cesspit and the austerity of the corp finder. (2)
Solution: Add more filters to the corp finder, as well as explanations of what each filter category actually means. Give players longer blurbs to sell new players on their corps instead of meaningless one liners.

(1) As of time of posting this - BRAVE fielding candidates would obviously change this answer slightly.
(2) What Sion said though - it's not the CSM's job to be a junior game designer.

I fight for the freedom of my people.

BadAssMcKill
Aliastra
#15 - 2014-12-17 14:40:50 UTC
PVE in Eve kinda sucks from the lowest levels up to Incursions and stuff like that, would that be part of your focus
June Ting
Nobody in Local
Deepwater Hooligans
#16 - 2014-12-18 13:42:20 UTC
BadAssMcKill wrote:
PVE in Eve kinda sucks from the lowest levels up to Incursions and stuff like that, would that be part of your focus

Let me first describe my experience with PVE, then describe how it informs my viewpoints.

My personal primary income source is alliance SRP, which is primarily funded by hunting and killing hostile ratters. My secondary income sources are selling PLEX and running combat signatures. I do not personally do any ratting in anoms. I do try to help the newbies in my alliance establish their own income streams commensurate with their interests, and see secondhand many of the struggles that they have with finding profitable and useful PVE to do in nullsec. I spent a week grinding L3 missions in highsec in order to run Quafe L4 missions in Syndicate as my income source when my alliance deployed there.

In the interest of being transparent and not doubletalky catering to everyone: if you make your money through highsec incursions, I want to nerf your income stream, because it's bad for game balance. It's highly repetitive gameplay that requires little attention, and is nearly risk-free unless you're being stupid. It is a hugely unbalancing force that causes people to have incursion alts running on a second screen that they make their real money with grinding in order to fund their other activities, rather than being vulnerable targets in space for me to hunt/harass. I've done incursions a few times to see what the fuss was all about and left very unimpressed. I've been happy with lowsec incursions because of the potential to interact -- to outright kill fleets running them and have a brawl rather than just plink away at the same thing for hours and end.

Overall, my high-level goals are to push CCP to get people into space and interacting with each other, with reward commensurate to risk and balanced across all classes of space. However, similar to how I answered the lowsec question, if your question is specifically about the ins and outs of L4 missioning in highsec, I am not going to be the best person to address that need. Having a balanced CSM of people from all areas of the game is important.

Specifically addressing your question about the PVE being boring - more randomness in spawns would certainly help to some degree of not making every anom exactly the same, but let's be realistic: CCP currently does not have the tooling or personnel to handle both doing ambitious other projects and also getting into the content mill grind of an absolute shitton of level design. Look at WoW. Look at how little time (order of a month or two) it takes for players to 'finish' grinding what takes multiple developer-years of effort to create. EVE's content is other players first and foremost, and developer effort to encourage player interaction scales into far more distinct possibilities for player enjoyment rather than CCP focusing on simply making the risk-free content less dull. Take the risk-freeness out of things, and you will tend towards a much more compelling universe without having CCP permanently stepping onto the level design treadmill.

Obviously, FW button orbiting mechanics are a counterexample to my point about adding risk solving problems - there still has to be something to keep you occupied while you're waiting for a fight, other than just sitting there. But to some degree I think that's already the case with anom ratting at least - triggers to think about, managing drones/guns/etc. (unless you're doing AFKtar ratting, but that's a whole other bucket of worms.)

This post has gone on long enough, and I'm sure it'll spawn a new wave of questions, so rather than try to preempt what people are going to ask, I'll take followups.

I fight for the freedom of my people.

Lanctharus Onzo
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#17 - 2014-12-19 05:30:58 UTC
Well hello there!

My name is Lanctharus Onzo and I am one of the co-host and writers of the Cap Stable Podcast.

In early 2014 our podcast interviewed a great majority of the candidates for CSM9 and we will be doing the same for CSM10.

Here is our announcement:http://capstable.net/2014/12/01/council-of-stellar-management-x-call-for-candidate-interviews/

As we stated in the announcement, you can contact us to schedule your one on one interview via any of the following methods:

Email: podcast@capstable.net
Twitter: @CapStable
Or via our contact form

We look forward to speaking to you about your particular skill set and expertise in EVE Online and we hope you success in your candidacy.

Sincerely,

Lanctharus Onzo
Co-host & Writer of the Cap Stable Podcast
Military Director, Alea Iacta Est Universal

Executive Editor, CSM Watch || Writer, Co-host of the Cap Stable Podcast || Twitter: @Lanctharus

June Ting
Nobody in Local
Deepwater Hooligans
#18 - 2014-12-20 02:09:23 UTC  |  Edited by: June Ting
Dersen Lowery wrote:
Last question: did you see CCP Rise's presentation on the intended direction for the new NPE? What do you think of it? Right way? Wrong way? Hard to tell? Would it dovetail with the way you've brought new players under your wing, or interfere?

Much belated response, now that I have working internet at the same time/place as me having spare time (this week is kind of crazy with holiday-related travel for me):

I approve of many things but disapprove of one or two things with Rise's direction for the NPE. Let me start by saying that I'm hugely happy with data-driven approaches using A/B testing and user studies. I very much like the 'new CCP' approach of fairly rapid iteration compared to the CCP of old that released twice a year and stuck to guns when things were going pear-shaped.

The aspirations are overall pretty great about players feeling like they know what they are doing, and that they're being pushed towards interacting with others where possible, and I think the tooltips/module renames are definitely great for "WTF is this Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor and what does it do?". However, I'm wary of approaches that rely only upon tooltips for conveying information (for instance, pretty much every single newbie I train still is very confused about the meta/t2 system because it's un-discoverable even with tooltips). It feels like what's important is to be able to provide players the option more information, but only in contexts where it makes sense rather than making it a blocker to 'finding action'. Definitely it's a great step that CCP is thinking about making it easier for newbies to find action to get hooked on EVE. In general, making the tutorial experience much less linear and more self-directed definitely conveys better what EVE is about.

On the negative side, however, the work that Rise showed didn't appear to actually push newbies into interacting with other players (nor help them find other players that they'd get along with -- although some caution there is merited about putting incompatible people in touch with newbies and trolling them out of the game). Perhaps it wasn't feasible in the case of the UX studies that they were conducting because said studies were not on TQ - however, getting that piece right I feel is going to need to be an important EVE 102 thing once EVE 101 is redone in the style Rise describes.

I fight for the freedom of my people.

Solaris Vex
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#19 - 2014-12-20 10:24:48 UTC
What are your thoughts on the state of small fleet vs large fleet balance? What should ccp do to make small groups viable in low/null?

Whats your position on multiboxing?
June Ting
Nobody in Local
Deepwater Hooligans
#20 - 2014-12-20 15:05:53 UTC  |  Edited by: June Ting
Solaris Vex wrote:
What are your thoughts on the state of small fleet vs large fleet balance?

There are plenty of things that smaller fleets can do to harass larger fleets, iff they can alpha through the logi reps of the larger fleet. You should know that, having seen PL successfully deploy petes and bombers against HERO fleets to score a pile of kills plenty of times. Or from The Afterlife. harassing the **** out of HONOR with cerbs then warping any time stuff got too close. Any solution along these lines to make smaller fleets better able to harass larger fleets is going to have to rely upon weakening logi by diminishing effects (or just removing broadcasting for reps) -- however, I'm not sold based on what I currently see that large fleets are necessarily overpowered in and of themselves, necessitating that nerf. Yes, ishtars online is an annoying balance problem, but I don't think that's intrinsically a problem with the small vs. large meta, it's a problem with the specific ship balance meta.

The first question you asked is orthogonal to the latter question:
Quote:
What should ccp do to make small groups viable in low/null?

Npc null/low: My previous experience with npc null and lowsec says that playing station games is definitely harder for smaller, lower SP groups to avoid getting stamped out. What in the heck do you do when someone has a carrier+bubble camp on your station that you can't hope to break without a pile of caps of your own, and that will deaggress at the first sign of real trouble if you batphone? In lowsec you can instawarp, in npc null you can instawarp with a travel inty, but it's just a way to get out and set up shop somewhere else rather than actually being able to usefully fight back. Granted, the cloning changes have helped a lot in that there's now no longer a very fixed and finite number of viable stations to live in, so the scarcity problem of staging systems is less of an issue than it was before in which any new group would find itself contesting oversubscribed cloning bay stations.

Sovnull: Making smaller, less sp-intensive groups viable in null requires more gradations in quality of space, fewer regions like the drone regions and period basis where you *have* to be blue to your neighbors to run logistics, and making it so that it's difficult and undesirable to hold more than one region at a time. The way towards better null balance is having a totem pole, with people with high numbers and skillpoints competing for the most desirable regions, and not interfering with people with low numbers and skillpoints contesting the least valuable regions. The changes to force projection have been good so far, but haven't yet fully solved some of the game balance issues that would allow smaller groups to take sov wholesale. (PFR/YARR/PIZZA being examples of some of the first pioneers in this area).

Quote:
Whats your position on multiboxing?

Indication of repetitive, low-attention gameplay. See earlier answer to question about alts.

I fight for the freedom of my people.

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