Roc Wieler:  Ohhhhhh Roc.  Never mind the nonexistant platform.  Never mind the ego-trips that make even mine seem tame.  I’ve described the CSM as a sounding board / advisory board.  This year Roc’s message is both “Look at me” and “Listen to me.”  About.  What.  Well let’s check out his blog.  Hang on looking for a post about EvE that isn’t a repost.  Still looking.  Maybe on the next page.  Hmmm bit of RP stuff there but nothing in or about the game.  You know what it’s already October of last year.  I’m giving up.  He doesn’t talk about EvE. Mittens may have an ego but at least he has a message too.  Real easy to not support.

Kelduum Revaan:  This one is actually pretty simple.  He’s been running EvE Uni, a teaching corp/alliance for a LOOOOOONG time.  This is what you teach your people?  Seriously?  That much fail in lowsec in 1 month?  If Kelduum cannot communicate the importance of proper fittings to his own people than how can we expect him to communicate important issues to CCP in his role as a CSM member.  This ignores his ludicrous dec-shield stance (ironic post on this coming up) a “Fix War-dec” proposal even more unworkable than mine, and I wrote half of mine drunk, I just cannot find anything to like about this guy other than the fact that his debate with Hans has me looking at Hans in a totally new light.  Kelduum gets no support here.

Michael BoltonIII:  Let me look at his platform:  Nope, nope, nope, troll, troll, nope.  There are two things on here that are more or less straight lifts from theme park games.  If you want to play theme parks they are out there.  Audio Alerts for Local.  Hmm.  Situational awareness is key, but so is stealth and surprise.  I’m leaning more towards a delayed local in the first place, not easy warnings for people.  Not Supported.

On the bubble:

• Mike Azariah:  I’m actually ok on his platform, but I don’t trust roleplayers.  They do stupid things for the wrong reasons
• Riverini:  Not anything personal, for heaven’s sake the man pays me to write articles from time to time, but more because I suspect he is a more valuable asset to the community outside looking in.
• Elise Randolph:  What’s there to vote for that isn’t better covered elsewhere?
• Voloses:  What more nullsec people?  Also very vague goals.  Of course if RAZOR votes for him he gets a seat.

I'm using it every time I can

Seleene is supremely knowledgeable, and intimately familiar with the people involved at all steps in the process.  He networks well, has a clear vision and communicates well, even if he does so infrequently.  He focuses on iterations and content development more than introduction, and has experience in literally all phases of EvE gameplay from the backrooms at CCP to the forefront of battles large and small.

Meissa… I just cannot support Meissa anymore.  I have nothing but respect for him, and for Rooks and Kings (as any reader here probably is already aware) but Meissa has been ignored for too long.  As he himself says he’s been in CSM 2,3,4,5, and 6.  What has changed in lowsec for the better?  What is promised in the future?  Meissa has been there too long and his effectiveness is reduced by that fact.  If he offered a fresh voice or had shown effectiveness in getting a message across to CCP in the past it would be one thing, but Meissa has not gotten CCP to recognize the issues facing lowsec.  Simply hasn’t happened and likely wont.  Meissa even includes two “damning with faint praise” quotes in his candidacy thread.

“hard to categorize “

“smart dude with a different perspective than most”

When a girl said this about me in high school I knew that it meant another Friday night at home with the PlayStation.  If that is the best the devs have to say about Meissa after “more than 3 years” it is time to hang up the silly hat I like to imagine they make the CSM wear and blow stuff up.

So there you have it, upvote for Seleene, downvote for Meissa.  Next up:  I’ll look at a short list of candidates for my now freed up second vote.

I'm using it every time I can

Over at Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah Kirith Kodachi has posted a bit of internet gold.  Allow me to quote

the best end game content is other players. Bar none.

Some of the greatest satisfactions I’ve had in EvE haven’t been in EvE.  They’ve been on this blog, or on the forums surrounding the game.  The end game isn’t Regulos, Deathwing, Malgus, or even Sansha Kuvakei.  The end game is the community, it is rising out of the mass of pretty faces to become a voice, a leader, an influence on a larger community than your pub rooms and corp/alliance chats.

By not putting a huge endgame boss in-game CCP has created a situation where the villain for one person is usually another person.  For a long time for me it was R3dskull.  Now in Nulli Tertius.  Then it was Gods[insert descriptive term] then for a while it was goons/test/russians.  Now… now I’m mostly focused on having fun and avoiding the Debbie Downers of EvE.

Returning to Kirith’s point, EvE’s long-lasting appeal is the people that play it.  The endlessly inventive.  The endlessly brilliant.  To the endlessly cruel and entertaining.  Also:  Start bugging sassy to do more art and Helicity moar bloggingg.

People leave the community, some with fame and fond farewells, like Mynxee some with a kick n the pants and a shove towards the door, like Ankh.  And new ones come in.  We lose Lost in Lowsec, we get Sand, Cider, and Spaceships.  The cycle continues.  Endgame iteration in EvE happens through the players.  CCP puts sand in the sandbox, we build castles, we destroy them, and we blog about it and chestbeat on the forums.

I'm using it every time I can

]]> http://madhaberdashers.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/nevermind-that-shit-here-comes-kirith/feed/ 1 corelin If this person is around you in EvE, you aren't having fun. You would too. http://madhaberdashers.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/things-id-like-in-a-wardec/ http://madhaberdashers.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/things-id-like-in-a-wardec/#comments Tue, 21 Feb 2012 01:22:32 +0000 Corelin http://madhaberdashers.wordpress.com/?p=704 ]]> Higher Dec Costs:  Isk is devalued compared to what it used to be.  Let’s let the cost rise with the value of isk.

Refundable Dec Costs:  Spend all day station camping people?  Dec costs are refunded by CONCORD in increments.  Eventually it should start to hit the defending corp’s wallet.  This would have killed me by the way.  I’d get on right after DT then go to work when I was in the Army.  As a member of TRAPS.  Wardecs out 24/7.  Defenders can turn the tables on attackers and collect on the wardec fees and hit the attackers wallet as well.

Sticky Decs:  The dec is on a CORP and its MEMBERS.  Members who leave still have the Mark of Cain on them.  Corps that join and then leave an alliance will still be decced.  As will the Alliance.  Corps that leave an alliance will still be decced.  You want safe?  www.hellokittyonline.com

Dec Shield discouragement:  Bounties and payouts for missioning, ratting and incursions reduced by 90%

Ending wars early:  If the defender manages to camp out attackers they can start a timer rather than taking money from the attacker.  Timer hits 0 war ends.  Timer counts down faster on a scale of diminishing returns you have 1 person it goes at 1x, 5 people it goes 3 times as fast etc.

Mercs:  A defender can bring in mercenaries.  They will inherit the wardec and all attributes and don’t have to sit through the 48 hours of garbage to come in.  When the wardec is declared the attackers will set their “default time” like a POCO timer, when mercs come in they will enter the NEXT TIME that timer rolls around.  The timer set to go in an hour or so?  You might get a nasty shock.  An EvE mail will be generated as soon as the mercs declare.

I'm using it every time I can

There simply isn’t one defining activity for EvE players to chase to the exclusion of all else.  There’s no “Deathwing Raid” there’s no final gear set that is definitely the best for all things.  At the end of the day even a player deep in null with 120 million SP might be in a supercarrier or might be in a Rifter.  Yeah a full set of X-Type Hardeners and other mods might do for his SC, but he will certainly not be collecting them himself, nor will he need a limited number of sets.  Supers die and of course some people use high-end mods for other things.  I’d go out on a limb and say there is no frakking way he went out and found those mods himself though.  He bought them, with isk he got for doing other things.

The market in EvE turns the focus of PvE from the gathering of specific items to fill gear slots to simply gathering liquid money to buy and equip ships.  This results in a lack of not just a focus for endgame PvE but a lack of a “need” for any of the traditional endgame PvE mechanisms.  CCP has used this freedom to develop several competing systems where players can feed their isk needs and done it quite successfully.  On the “Shooting Red Crosses” side players can shoot sleepers, belt rats, mission rats, complex rats and incursion rats.  On the “Shooting Rocks” side players can… shoot rocks.  For hours.  Have I mentioned I hate mining?  On the manufacturing side players can build… Well… Everything in EvE.  And they have to because it damn sure won’t come from anywhere else.  Even more esoteric are the market games and economic manipulations that I know enough about to know I don’t know a damn thing about how they really work.

On the PvP side things come closer to a real progression from a notional standard.  Notionally players progress from frigates upwards to wherever they feel like, even to supercaps.  In addition they might well choose to progress from highsec down through systems of lower security status until they are deep in Wormholes or Nullsec.  Certainly most players will encounter their first PvP in highsec or adjacent lowsec.  Usually at their own expense.  However there are some players that vault directly to wormholes or nullsec and get their first PvP in the deepest of the inky black.  Meanwhile some of the scariest PvPers occupy lowsec or even intrude on the lives of highsec folks who think they are “safe.”

When I see CCP talking about “Endgame” I shake my head.  The industry seems to demand that the term be used, but how do you define it in a game such as EvE and what appeal would it have if people were channeled into one aspect of the game at the expense of others.  What makes EvE so different from the theme parks is the very lack of direction implicit in the traditional endgame system.  EvE doesn’t draw a line from the Valley of Trials to Deathwing’s lair.  EvE drops you in the middle of the known universe and leaves you the fuck alone.  Attempts to classify and endgame will be at best awkward and at worst totally irrelevant comparisons to concepts that don’t exist in EvE.

I'm using it every time I can

We are courting a new alliance, in lowsec around Evati.  We tried to move some ships in and ran into a bit of fun.  We lost one guy on one side of the gates.  On the other side (where we meant to engage) Srs bizness began.  http://tfhc.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=12489670 and http://tfhc.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=12489700.  The Cynabals were dashing around, not engaging, finally we shot one he jumped through we waited our timer down he held his cloak with our guys waiting on the other side.

We got through the gate right after he decloaked, our guys missed tackle and we ended up chasing them in armor tanks.  Our tackle wasn’t that good so it looked like we were about to get whelped.  Then we got some gifts.  The tornado warped in something like 4k away from me.  New primary fast killmail.  WOW do they go down fast.  Then a cynabal angled in, I’m not sure if he was approaching when he meant to orbit or what but he cruised right into our slow-assed armor ships.  Tackled and popped right before we lost our last ships.

Some things we noticed.  The other side had a lot better plan for the fight.  I honestly got a little behind the curve and settled for killing what I could as fast as possible.  Thank you gate guns for popping the Cynabal otherwise it wouldn’t have gone down.  They were bringing in tier 3 BCs at range through a good portion of the fight and not aggroing until after gate guns were aggressed elsewhere.  If they hadn’t had the bad warpins we would have been wiped out for no kills.  We had some scouting issues and some aforementioned command issues that hurt our fleet amd MY GOD were we rusty, but we came out a tiny fraction ahead in isk, had fun and got some kills flying as a group.  Look for more “OH MY GOD CORELIN UNDOCKED” posts in the future.

I'm using it every time I can

Give me your trust, said the king on high…

Give me your trust, said the lady and lord…

Give me your trust, said the love of your life…
…
Trust is the taste of death.

This is a message for CEOs and alliance leaders, or people who want to be in those positions.

$14.95 a month per account in your corp.  If you are a leader, especially a CEO, this is the value you owe to the people in your corp.  Depending on the activities your corp members pursue there may or may not be a varying level of responsibility for it, but the people in your corp are trusting you to make their game, which they pay for every month, more enjoyable.  I’m going to look at this from my perspective.

Tomorrow I will have 15 people with around 17 accounts in Fancy Hats.  Yes we have a bunch of alts.  It bugs me a little.  That’s around $254 dollars a month.  Now certainly I am not on the hook for ALL of that.  I expect my minions PILOTS to have some fun on their own.  However as a leader I am always on the lookout for exciting opportunities and activities to keep us occupied and enjoying the game.  The more there is to do the more corp members play, the more they play, the more they accomplish, and the more they accomplish the more they have fun.  There’s tools I can use to spread the responsibility, but ultimately the buck stops with ME.

Lets look at the tools

1. Forums/Blogs:  The EvE Community is a wonderful savory stew filled with.  Well.  Let’s not go into detail there, some of us have delicate stomachs.  I can usually find ideas for some kind of roam, group activity, and the background information needed to properly plan it on the forums or the blogs.  When I got into Incursions the wealth of information available made getting my corpmates into the right ships, channels and techniques a snap.
2. Delegation:  People misuse this term a lot.  It does not mean absolving yourself of responsibility for what happens.  It means picking people to work on tasks under less restrictive supervision.  I can tell someone they are in charge of recruiting.  By the way if anyone wants to help me with recruiting I will love you forever, I suck at it.  Even if I find someone, recruiting is MY responsibility.  I need to make sure the person I delegate to has the resources, ability, and drive to do it because it comes back on me to make sure we get new people.  If someone isn’t doing their job it falls on me to replace them.  Don’t use delegation as an excuse to not take any stand in the issue.  It doesn’t work that way.  This is a powerful tool, but a three-edged sword.  It is still my job.  I have help to do it.  Credit goes down, blame goes up.
3. Alliances:  An alliance should make CEOs tasks easier.  Many don’t.  Part of the reason is alliance leaders delegate down and CEOs get extra tasks.  Alliances should provide substantially easier planning for major ops, and a good rotation of leadership with regards to FCs and “special task” pilots like logis and scouts to make sure people stay fresh and don’t burn out.  I poke a lot of fun at Mittens but the man juggles chainsaws, daggers and grenades with the pins out and makes it look like he’s not even trying most days.  I struggle to run a 15 man corp.  Fancy Hats off to the man.
4. Planning and Communication:  I am not kidding, get some planning done ahead of time.  Have meetings to plan out key events like moving bases, or joining/leaving alliances.  Communicate in an effective, timely manner.  No one cares if someone messed up a recruiting drive 6 months ago.  Communication about that isn’t effective right now.  Plan ahead, review the immediate past, let the rest burn.

As a leader I need to make sure my friends and corpmates are having fun.  I can keep them informed of things going on even when I am not at the height of my own participation.  I can participate as much as practical to show them that I am invested in our success.  I owe it to them, because they choose to trust me.

 EvE doesn’t give you a damn thing.  EvE makes you assume risk for every activity.  If you want to make money you have to put money at risk in the form of a ship.  Your market schemes can get crashed by someone else, your massive PvP fleet can be destroyed by spies and crippled by incompetence.  Nothing worthwhile comes easy.

A pilot needs three things to succeed in any given task.  Proper Planning, Dedication to the task, and luck.

• Proper Planning refers to the skills, both player and character, to accomplish something, for PvP it means the ability to fit a proper ship and the knowledge of how to use it, ideally backed up by some experience.
• Dedication means spending the time to succeed.  There are tasks you can do without logging in much.  Plenty of industry doesn’t require a lot of effort if you don’t mind pinching the margins a little.  However if you want to PvP, lead, explore, or make piles of money, you have to log in.  A lot of people joke that you pay CCP for the right to not play EvE while you get better.  You pay CCP for access so you can find your enjoyment.
• Luck – Luck is your best friend or your worst enemy.  Good enough luck can get you everything, bad enough luck can ruin the most perfect plans.  Don’t trust it, plan for reverses, have ways to overcome simple problems.

I'm using it every time I can

The CSM is a very limited body.  It is basically a sounding board that offers the opportunity to lobby powerlessly for what they want to bring to the game that they feel will benefit them.  Mittens is not going to push for a Tech devaluation in isolation.  Meissa will not push for a logistics nerf.  So basically the CSM becomes a vehicle for already large and powerful groups to push ideas to benefit themselves on CCP, which is under no obligation to do anything.  Now Mittens as chair brings some clout to the game.  He has some genuine authority and standing with the players so that he cannot be simply ignored, but all the same there is no formal obligation on CCP’s part to really follow any guidance he gives.

That being said there are things I would like to see in a CSM candidate’s platform

1. Mining.  No I’m not kidding.  FIX FUCKING MINING.  MAKE IT A WORTHWHILE PROFESSION.  MAKE IT INTERESTING.   Yes, I hate carebears and I hate mining.  Part of the reason is it is Godawful, make it interesting and I might actually do it!  I’m not kidding.
2. Better communication from CCP –  I want to know what the “Future Vision of EvE” is.  Not the future vision of Dust.
3. Iterative Content – More Tech 3, ships, modules, whatever.  We already know Seleene had a plan when he worked there
4. Lowsec – Oh where to start, GCC, gate guns, standings hits, sec hits, moneymaking opportunities, small gang boosts… at this point I’ll settle for damn near ANY lowsec buffs.
5. Supercaps.  Wild off-the-wall idea.  The more mass of ships you move through the cyno the more static it builds up.  Ships with static cannot dock, jump, or log out.  Bring in your 50 supercarriers?  Hope you have a place to hide for the next 6 hours.  That 200 supercap blob?  Grab a snickers.  You are goin’ NOWHERE.
6. New Player help – Not necessarily protection, as EvE is a game of consequences, but perhaps ensuring that information is available and players are pointed to it.

I want to expand a little on New Player Help.  There is no push towards PvP.  Many new people become carebears without even considering other options.  They assume that the game is safe, and protects them, and when mean people like me come along they get blown up and killed and I get blamed for it because I did what I do in EvE, in full accordance with the rules, and usages of the game.

I'm using it every time I can