Corp/Alliance: Glorious Revolutionary Armed Forces of Highsec/CODE.
Country: Australia
Interviews:
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It's conflict that makes EVE worth playing.
Conflict is expressed when a miner bribes gankers to ignore them but kill their competition instead.
It is a trader buying Skiffs, then selling them in ganking hotspots.
It is a level 5 mission runner trying to keep their carrier away from predators.
It is a nullsec 'ninja explorer' shortcutting through wormholes to get their precious shinies to market.
It is an alliance logistician trying to stockpile a thousand Oneiros hulls without allowing their rivals intel.
Every interaction in EVE is about conflict.
EVE is best when wealth generating activities – mining, ratting, exploration and others – are balanced in ways that drive conflict, and incentivise players to take calculated risks. This creates conflict and excitement, but also the destruction that fuels EVE's economy, and opportunity for players to find unique niches in the universe.
Read my manifesto on the EVE official forums at https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=387461
“World by world, we would build an empire. Reach heights that were once unimaginable. But the spread of influence takes an iron will. Your interests might align with some, and with others... collide with the force of suns.” - Tyrannis trailer, 2010
An enemy is just a friend that you knife in the front.
I'm announcing my candidacy for CSM10, as one of the many people involved in bringing conflict, opportunity, destruction and excitement to high security space.
This is a long post and will be updated as needed throughout the campaign period. It is my campaign platform.
Philosophy
EVE is unique in gaming as it is a game where every interaction between players is competitive. This is the game's sole appeal. Players don't play the game for the thrill of scanning and running a solo Serpentis 8/10 site solo or with their static group for the fifteenth time – if that experience was what players sought, they'd load up the test server and get their fix there. Instead they play on a server where their actions matter, and so do those of their rivals.
It's conflict that makes EVE worth playing.
Conflict is expressed when a miner bribes pirates to leave them alone and to instead attack their competition.
It is a trader acquiring Skiffs to sell in a region that has been ravaged by gankers.
It is a level 5 mission runner trying to keep their carrier away from predators.
It is a nullsec 'ninja explorer' shortcutting through wormholes to get their precious A-type goods and pirate battleship BPCs to market.
It is an alliance logistician trying to stockpile a thousand Oneiros hulls without allowing their rivals intel on their fleet compositions.
Every interaction in EVE is about conflict.
EVE is at its best when wealth generating activities – mining, ratting, exploration, trading and others – are balanced in ways that drive player conflict, and that incentivise players to take calculated risks. This creates conflict and excitement, but also the destruction that fuels EVE's economy, and opportunity for players to find unique niches in the universe.
My EVE history
Prior to EVE I played a few cooperative online 'gear grinding' games. World of Warcraft where I was a nobody, and Dungeons and Dragons Online where I was a well known community member and semi-competitive raid leader.
Initially I approached EVE with the mindset learned from those games, “I need to level up, then I can PVP when I hit the endgame”. I joined a highsec player corp that I was a poor fit for, and was on my way to “levelling up my Dominix” when something interesting happened.
My corp was AWOXed. A corp director irritated someone, who hired a mercenary to infiltrate the corp and blow up that director's mission battleship. It wasn't a big loss – I've lost more expensive Ishtars to rats – and I wasn't online when it happened, but it was all everyone was talking about in corp.
Hearing the story opened up my eyes to what EVE could be, and I started taking risks, like running wormhole PVE sites and roaming solo looking for fights. Once I won my first 2v1 (as the 1) I was hooked on the game.
A person I knew from other games then linked me what they termed 'the greatest rant in internet gaming history', which was, of course, James 315's second Manifesto. I read it and (once I stopped laughing) realised that I agreed with his key points. This would result in me contacting the Minerbumping community, which has been my primary home in EVE.
I was one of the earlier people in the Minerbumping community to investigate ways to gank using my main character, and became our market analyst, keeping an eye on trends in the pricing of ganking equipment and precursor components, evaluating its impact on our operations, and intervening in the market to reduce our costs.
I've always lived in highsec, although I'm comfortable in lowsec.
To some people, highsec is a training area you look to leave. To me, that isn't all that it offers. The competitive gameplay that makes EVE unique can be found in highsec, through wardeccing (my present pasttime), suicide ganking, contract scamming, market manipulation, mission invasion, AWOXing, bumping ransoms and many other avenues.
Just as highsec is defined by having the most restrictive rules governing aggression against players, it is also defined by having the most target-rich environment in EVE. In lowsec you are safe when local is empty – in highsec, there's always a number of neutrals that might be peacefully mining, or might be probing you down or laying a trap for you.
Other community involvement:
I'm extremely active on the New Player Questions and Answers section of the EVE official forums, answering factual questions, offering help in choosing short term goals for skills, and most importantly, offering new players guidance toward becoming predators or (if they choose to remain prey) how to make sure they aren't the ones culled from the herd.
I'm also active in the Market Discussions forum, where I comment on the state of the game economy and intervene into it, and I may even have alts (on untraceable accounts) that have run scams there.
Despite all of the rumors of my alliance being a front for Goonswarm to project influence into highsec, I'm neutral with respect to nullsec wars, and will happily build guns and sell them to both sides. I don't care who wins wars over sovereign null, but I want those wars to happen and to be destructive.
The 'Carebear' issue
There's definitely people that want to see highsec made safer, and for it to become an area where players can safely generate wealth, sometimes even totally AFK, that they can either hoard or use in fights in lowsec or nullsec. I utterly reject this idea.
These 'carebears' claim that they mind their own business. This isn't true. A multiboxer running 10 Skiffs stripping asteroid belts floods the market, undermining the ability of regular miners to generate income. A mission blitzer running Sisters missions in safety in their shiny Paladin directly harms the value of every other player's Sisters probe launchers. And an incursion farmer pumps tens of billions of ISK into the economy each month, increasing the PLEX to ISK conversion ratio and devaluing the CONCORD LPs owned by other players.
These actions are every bit as much a form of PVP as shooting someone's spaceship.
I want to see players able to set the level of risk they are comfortable with within some limits, and obtain very low rewards for putting low value assets at low risk, medium rewards for putting high value assets into low risk situations or low value assets into high risk situations, and high rewards for (sensibly) putting high value assets at high risk.
I would strongly advocate rebalancing those parts of EVE that provide high income at minimal risk. Sometimes I would advocate direct nerfs (for example, to the liquid ISK paid out for incursion sites) and other times I would favor indirect nerfs (for example, providing more Sisters level 4 mission agents in lowsec and introducing level 5 ones).
In addition I would lobby for in-game rewards for highsec miners to join player corporations of at least a few people, and actively defend themselves from any predators that come after them – or to outsource this protection work to others. Presently miners are encouraged strongly by game mechanics to remain in NPC corps or to form one player corporations; changing this will generate conflict, opportunity, destruction and excitement.
A series of changes over the last few years to highsec combat mechanics – from the increases to wardec fees in Inferno, to the replacement of 'can flipping' with the much harsher suspect flag, the banning of the 'Boomerang' strategy, removal of insurance on CONCORDOOKEN losses and the tolerance by CCP of wardec avoidance (which was once declared an exploit) have made ‘carebears’ safer and made it harder for new players to have the sorts of experiences that broke me from the “level up your Dominix until you quit EVE” path.
The thing that has kept highsec competitive gameplay alive has been the increasing organisation and seriousness of our community. It's a problem that this is necessary, as it adds a barrier to entry for rookie gankers, mission invaders and wardeccers.
The 50 million ISK minimum fee to carry out a wardec is one of the most destructive of these changes, as it forces wardeccers to band together into large alliances to reduce costs. Small groups of newbies should be able to experiment with wardeccing more cheaply, rather than having to join a larger group like CODE., Marmites or the like.
New Players
I want to ensure new players – both trial accounts and subscribers – are exposed to what makes EVE great, not just to level 2 and 3 security missions.
The first half of the ship Tiericide initiative was a mixed bag – it made new players more powerful in PVP engagements in frigates and cruisers (a positive), but it also increased cruiser build cost significantly and made it much more crippling for a new player to lose a ship. This is a significant issue – when I was a rookie, a Vexor cost 6 million ISK, or about 3 hours of running level 2 missions with low skills and little game knowledge. Now it’s 11 million, or about 5 hours, despite the mineral price index being about the same.
I want to see changes that soften the blow of losing a ship for rookies, so that rookies get into the mindset of seeing ships as consumables early in their career.
Whether elected or not, I intend to make a series of video tutorials oriented at rookies explaining things like the basics of tracking and why this makes small ships more than just a stepping stone toward larger ships; basic fitting and the various effective types of tanks; refitting ships for specific purposes; avoiding predators in highsec and lowsec; and suggestions for skill training.
I also intend to include advice on getting into predatory play as a newbie.
Most of all, I want to teach new players that they can be effective in the game *right now*. This isn’t World of Warcraft where you need to get to 2 or 3 levels below the level cap before you can even scratch a veteran player. I have known new players that have destroyed missioning battleships solo before their character has a quarter million skillpoints, and two hour old characters that have earned ransoms of a quarter billion ISK.
Sovereign Nullsec
I’m aware that CSM 10 will deal with a lot of built up issues related to the stagnation of sovereignty mechanics. My CSM pitch on this issue is simple. I’ll let the experts do the talking.
Members of sovereign null blocks that have the support of their respective alliances will likely comprise 30-70% of the CSM. These people understand these issues better than me, and I will listen to their expertise, offer any suggestions that I think might be a brainwave, and not push the point if the experts tell me I’m wrong.
CCP’s attempts to fix sov null will probably be the most important single issue the CSM discusses this year. This doesn’t mean that every person on the CSM needs to be an expert in it.
Cross-endorsements:
I will update this section with a list of candidates who I encourage supporters to vote for. I will encourage people to put ‘Category 1’ candidates near the top of their ballot, ‘Category 2’ candidates on their ballot, and to not put anyone from ‘Category 3’ on their ballot at all. Of course, it’s your choice as a voter.
Category 1: People I enthusiastically support.
Category 2: People I have done a cross-endorsement deal with (an ‘I’ll promote you if you promote me’ deal). I won’t consider deals with people who I think would be bad for the CSM.
Category 3: People I think the CSM would be better off without.
On December 8th, I hosted an informal chat with a few people about questions related to wardecs. This isn't edited but may interest some people. Everyone involved in the discussion was 100% fine with being recorded, and the participants were 3 people in the New Order community and one person that considers themselves 'neutral'.
It gets off topic after about 27 minutes but may still interest people.
https://soundcloud.com/sabriz-adoudel/wardecs
Summary:
- There should be more incentives for corporations that don't see themselves as PVP corps to actively defend against a predatory wardec.
- The price to initiate a wardec should scale with the size of the aggressor entity, not the size of the defender entity.
- Defender entities should receive incentives for inflicting damage upon their aggressors, similar to bounties.
- Defender entities need more resources on what wardecs mean, including advice on how to resist them. They have the option of laying low, moving their operations or fighting back, and those options should be explained better to them.
- We get off topic and start talking about gate and station guns, NPSI roams with newbies, newbie income streams, the cost of getting your feet wet into PVP as a newbie
I also realised that I wasn't recording when talking about unilateral surrender conditions, which I support existing in some form.
I'm planning an Ask Me Anything session in the Minerbumping teamspeak, probably around 2330 EVE time on Saturday 20 December. It will be recorded and posted on Soundcloud, and I'm hoping to get friendly, hostile and neutral questions. I may even be talked into freestyling an EVE parody song.
Details will be posted closer to the time.