Khador Vess
Corp/Alliance: Blue Republic/RvB - BLUE Republic
Country: United Kingdom
Twitter: @khador_vess
Interviews:
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I am definitely what you would call an eve generalist, the ultimate try everything player who takes new areas of game play as a challenge to expand my knowledge and experience.
I am passionate about improving the experience of both vets and newbies and my platform covers a range of areas I feel I can offer insight into including newbie experience (embrace your immortality), newbie management, recruiting, the horrendously complex corporation and role management system, structures and isk making opportunities like PvE and industry.
Beyond this I want to help encourage more timely feedback on feature development and idea's from CCP, not to the extent that we have broken promises like times gone by, but improving on the other extreme that we have swung to where features sometimes only hit the CSM the day before its announced and significant changes come as a complete surprise to the whole player base. There is a balance to be struck there and I feel we have a way to go.
My Fellow Capsuleers,
My name is Khador Vess and I hope to prove myself worthy of your vote to be part of the 10th Council of Stellar Management.
I've been playing Khador as my main since 2012 though my original main stretches back to 2008 and while Khador is exclusively a PvP main, I am the ultimate 'try everything at least once' sort of guy. I'm extremely passionate about this game, the health of the game and the community around it.
I'm currently a member of RvB as a Fleet Commander, Team Leader and I'm on the Alliance Tournament team having participated in the last three Alliance Tournaments. My legion of alts have spread far and wide across the universe allowing my to try lots of different corps, game play styles and , for example In the past I've been in EvE University and dozens of other medium and large corps, I've played a (terrible) spy, tried my hand in FW, I've lived solo in wormholes looking for both PvP and PvE and much more beyond.
Lastly I'm a some-time twitch tv streamer (http://twitch.tv/Khador_Vess), streaming RvB good fights whenever i can and all the solo goodness.
TLDR - What do you stand for
In a nutshell, my platform is quite diverse and that is a reflection of my gameplay style... I try so many different parts of the game that i see many things that can be improved.
Continued Improvement of the New Player Experience
POS Improvements
Exploration and PvE updates
Boosters & Implants
Corporations and Alliances
Enabling HiSec PvP
Tournaments / Player Run Tournaments
3rd Party App Development
Sov / Null
I believe that with your help and your vote we can make sure that the great progress that CCP have made this year improving Quality Of Life, introducing new features and removing old bad ones continues by making sure that the CSM is truly representative of players within the game.
What do you see the role of the CSM being?
The CSM is quite simply an interface between the players and the developers of EvE, in the past it has been more of an advisory body that was meant to reflect the voice of the players and to a degree it has been seen as a PR tool.
This perception (and to a degree reality) needs to change and it is the job of the CSM to make sure that it shows its effectiveness in measurable ways. For example unless the CSM as a body keeps that communication path as two-way as possible (NDA taken into consideration) I feel it fails in its job.
Its the responsibility of the CSM to be facilitators, they need to be out there communicating with the player base via Podcasts, the forums, one to one, through blogs, etc. because it is tasked with raising awareness of issues, collecting ideas, challenging opinions, challenging proposals, engaging in debate and helping to bring the best points of the arguments to the fore.
The work this year of the CSM has been good building on the efforts of previous CSM's in getting the word out, but this year we can be even better.
So how can i contact you then?
You are welcome to post in this thread any questions you have, beyond that the easiest way is via twitter (@Khador_Vess) or by EvE mail or in game convo.
That's all well and good, but what about a slightly more detailed platform?
Ok, if you insist...
Continued Improvement of the New Player Experience
I've recently re-run the new player experience several times to create alts and I've walked my daughter through it as well... Its better than its been in the past and the changes that have been made are positive but there is so much more we can do to help new bro's get into the game, choose a direction in the game and make sure that they don't just go down the solo path of 'grinding for my raven'...
POS Improvements
Again improvements in quality of life here, allowing POS to be anchored anywhere except special systems, removing standings however there is stuff that still kill us... anchoring mods, timers, notifications and modules all of which need updates, changes in some cases just plain removal.
As it stands a single pos in a system can affect the indexes by far too much and to a degree if you are manufacturing a diverse range of items you have no choice, for example you need two different types of arrays to manufacture t1 and t2 ships, meaning if you manufacture all ships up to freighters you need nearly a dozen modules on a POS. Why should a large t2 array not be able to manufacture T1 ships as well or perhaps smaller ships?
As a community we have been understanding, its old code, we get that, we know how hard it is to change some of this stuff, however there is a point where the pain of living with something that's broken is too much and i personally believe this time is now and focus needs to be placed on this aspect of the game.
Exploration and PvE updates
PvE is a bit like Marmite (or Vegemite if you live in the land down under), but like it or not, it makes the wheels of New Eden turn and I feel PvE is something that needs an overhaul... because if i have to rescue that damsel one more time I think i will go insane.
In all seriousness, the mission generation / pool needs some work to keep it fresh. Burner missions were a great step in this direction and i would love to see larger variants of these with PvP style tactics from the NPC's perhaps requiring small fleets to complete them and ways for players to group up for these sorts of missions without yelling 'MAD DPS LFG' in local.
Finally I think some radical revisions could be made to PvE to give it some new life, for example NPC's as a general rule dont pod or use warp interdiction bubbles or infini points, (true some sites can kill your pod if you are unlucky)... Perhaps things like this need a rethink and revisit to make PvE more challenging, but in line with that increasing the returns to make it more rewarding.
Boosters & Implants
Drugs are bad m'kay.... well no they aren't. In EvE drugs are at the moment a bit niche, especially in Hi-Sec because making, transporting and selling them can be awkward and there's no good reason for this.
When i first started in EvE I imagined myself as some sort of Han Solo, running drugs and contraband across new Eden... and what I actually got made me sad. This could be an amazing area of game play if there was something other than blind luck and guaranteed standings loss for moving them. Imagine instead trying to bribe customs officials, smugglers holds in ships, getting caught and making you suspect in the system... there's so much more you could do with this area of the game.
Implants need a second look as well in particular the current system for learning implants and pirate implants need a revisit in light of the clone changes recently. I'd like to see more implants that affect your pod (imagine an OP interdiction nullified pod) or specific ships and reviews of concepts like implant salvaging
Enabling HiSec PvP
I applaud the changes made and the progress we've had this year in improving PvP generally in the game, from the recent clone changes to the pirate implants changes and interceptor re balances. Its been a good year for PvP and things that encourage PvP, but we've also seen some things that worry me for example removing in-corp aggression, while i can see and acknowledge that this need to change to encourage new bros to join corps, there are groups in the game this seriously affects (RvB for example) and although i know the current CSM and CCP recognise this, I want to make sure changes to core mechanics are properly counterbalanced by choice... something that is at the very core of EvE. I can choose to join a corp with PvP in-corp, i can choose to join a corp that doesn't allow aggression, I want to make sure this choice is something that can be made, and made in an informed way.
More Tournaments and Enabling Player Run Tournaments
The alliance tournament exists on the good will of a dedicated bunch of developers. If they didn't put their free time to making this happen then things like the alliance tournament wouldn't exist and while we already have tournaments like the NEO etc. I want to push for more tournaments and for the tools to allow player run tournaments by improving on, revising and expanding even abandoned concepts like the dojo, perhaps getting volunteers access to special characters with some limited tools to help run tournaments (with these people under NDA) and improving in game and out of game broadcasting tools to support these events.
Beyond this making EvE sports more widely visible by putting tournaments on the front page of the launcher and possibly things like in game advertisements is something I think needs to get some attention. I would also like to see more acknowledgment and rewarding of the enablers for these in game tournaments.
Corporations and Alliances
As a recruitment manager i feel this pain day in day out... managing roles, managing members, advertising the corp to new bro's, banning users, accepting new members, etc. it can be really hard. Anyone who has managed a corp of more than a handful of friends will have felt this pain as anything like granting access to POS', hangers, roles is clunky and far too complicated. It needs to be made easier to manage and perhaps even CREST enabled to allow management of these resources in the same way we manage our comms servers, forums and other OOG resources.
I want to make sure that this aspect of the game gets its time in the sun, that due consideration is given to what needs looking at here and making sure that the management system is fit for the decade to come.
3rd Party App Development
The improvements made in the area of 3rd party / API this past year are a testament to the work of the dev team there and the current CSM but this still needs further work. First and foremost the development of CREST (please, please please give us read-write access to things like skill queue, mail etc.), documentation improvements, SSO updates and improvements, etc. Lets give the tools to the people who create the great apps and systems that compliment the game so much.
Sov / Null Fixes
Last but by no means least we need the long overdue and promised changes to Sov. This has now become one of those items that just needs to be fixed, to show us that its being taken seriously i believe that now is the time to start feeding back some of the thinking to the community. Even if just a bit more flesh on the bones, communicate more often has to be the message delivered here.
While we await solid plans for change from CCP, my position is one of wait and see, we have heard from a vast array of people on the issue of sov / nullsec changes, the current CSM have put forward some idea's, the community has fed into the process so now we need some plans from CCP and soon, so we can provide concrete feedback on their thinking.
Wow, that was a wall of text... I would like to thank you for reading though to the end here and I hope that I prove worthy of your trust, your time and your vote for CSM X.
Thanks and fly safe o7
.K