Election Time

So there is this computer game called Eve. Some mad bastards in Iceland created it in a feat of similar heroics and ingenuity with similar angst, destruction, looting and pillaging as Ragnar Lothbrok finding a way to sail to England. The Vikings arrived in MMORPGs. And arrive they did.

It's fun because it is hard. It's hard because it is both rich in mechanics and at the same time does not pander to sensitivities. You have freedom of action. This leads to unexpected things. Dealing with unexpected things in a tough unforgiving environment where consequence is the only true currency - that is, well, Eve.

CSM XI is about to be upon us. I shall stand as one to be voted for or not as the players see fit.

About The edeity

So let us begin, with my tale of wooing you, potential voter and laying out my plan to influence the future of this game. I shall start a little with me, so you can gain a sense of the man. What matters in these things more than a single platform or policies is the person behind the position on the council. What are they interested in? What are their biases? What depth, focus, insight can they bring to enrich all of us if we give them voice?

I play the character edeity. edeity is an Amarrian Faction War pilot, and runs a corporation called Holy Amarrian Battlemonk. He has been part of the Provi block (providence is still very dear to his heart), the CFC (twice), was for a short time in a mercenary alliance known as Noir in his formative years, was one of the earliest members of Fweddit, and at first one of the most vocal opponents AGAINST Dirt n Glitter in the Amarr faction war zone, and now amongst their strongest supporters.

edeity is known well to his enemies, the Minmatar both through his killboard but also steady presence on theirs. I take pride in my non elite pvp - I fly true solo. No links, no alts, no scouts, no spies. One time flying an unstabbed Paladin 36 jumps through hostile 0.0  solo - I think it cost me more in cigarettes chain smoking to travel that distance than to just buy the PLEX, but this is how I roll. edeity has one character, one character only and buys and shops in Amarr even when wardecced by Marmites (including old Marmites, when they were good) and camped by Minmatar. This is Eve hard mode.

The man behind edeity, is a 42 year old Australian. Professionally he works in the technology industry in an executive advisory role. Describes himself on Linkedin as "Moderately epic at powerpoint". Drinks a lot of coffee, smoke (its bad for you kids, seriously don't do it), played PONG when it came out at age 4, Dungeons & Dragons since age 10, and has basically played every game ever. By every game I mean PC. PC Masterrace you scrub consolers.

How edeity wants to make your eve awesomer

I want to run for CSM XI because there are a few simple things in eve that if focused on I think will set the game up for the next decade. I want to be playing this game for many years to come, and I want it to be amazingly fun, exciting, engaging and interesting for people who start playng Eve  today and even more so after I have finished my term on the CSM. Thats the bottom line motivation. The rest is about how to do it.

#1 Information is everything

In the Eve universe, its far into the future, with amazing technology. But it seems they pretty much missed the information age. Now when eve was first released, it would have exceedingly stressed the server(s) to do analytics and provide real time stats (why a lot of stats were only available after DT updates probably), well.... that time is passed one would hope. I am very excited about Brain In A Box and would like to help shape how they harness these new information capabilities to enhance the player experience - specifically around what information a player has available to them in real time.

The most used data analysis tool, full stop is undoubtedly the D-Scan. It has been enhanced lately, and that is good. But in the complex world of Eve, we could do with a lot more.

Some thoughts on where to go:

• WTFLOCAL Analytics. Has this person killed me before? Recently? Have I killed them? Has Their alliance killed me? Are they friends (Friend of Friend is specific interesting form of analytics, often done using a Graph database which can give very interesting insights) with someone who has killed me before?
• HATE Analytics - how many people / % from this alliance / corp have been blocked, how many have been individually set -5 ? 
• SYSTEM HAX Analytics - Smartbombings incidents this week + system location, Time since ECM incidents today, On Gate Engagements LocationsToday, On Gate Engagement Location Frequency

Now finally, i think in this future age, it would totally be possible to send a probe through a stargate and get it to return and report back what is on other side. Now of course people on other side could shoot it.. to stop it returning... and even more dastardly NOT SHOOT IT to make it look like they are benign... but for solo players this would be awesome give them opportunity to get more intel whilst at same time making them vulnerable on a gate...

#2 ECM

I bitch a LOT about ECM. I refuse to ever use it. That said, I think it does have an important role to play, and dont want to see it gone or nerfed out of existence. So some basic principles.

• ECM is about disrupting information flow. It is a powerful asymmetric warfare tool and force multiplier., that said it should not rule supreme.
• ECM should be more effective against people in fleets. More data is flowing, there is more to disrupt. But it needs more nuance, not the simple binary - You can do nothing OR You can do everything. It should degrade not completely incapacitate.
• ECM is by definition, A MASSIVE BALL OF ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION - it should dramatically effect your sig radius. Like massively.
• Partial ECM effects should be considered - losing lock of some ships in local (i.e. based on sig radius) - this can lead to interesting doctrines of low sig radius fleets with ECM support.
• Non target lock ECM effects - loss of command / link benefits should be considered as partial effects
• Redundant ECCM - multiple ECMs required to lock down a ship with multiple ECCMs - again add a bit more depth and options for fitting.
• ARMOUR buffers against the strength of ECM - just like IRL! More raw armour points, stronger protection (resists have no effect).

The above are concepts,and require refinement (as does any position posted by a candidate really), but the intention is to make ECM as nuanced and interesting to fight as other forms of electronic warfare. N+1+Falcon should not always win.

#3 Social Integration

We're already doing it. Invest in integrating straight to Twitter, Youtube, hell maybe even Pinterest.... We need cleaner simpler in game connection to other people. Slack is really good, I use DNG's slack everyday its awesome. Something like a slack channel able to be read and accessed in game and out significantly extends the experience of Eve.

Also, I want to click a link and it fire up the right Teamspeak server to talk on. I want my credentials to be managed easily and integrated into my game corp, alliance and standings.

This is possible and very important. Eve is a social game. We need to make it easier to be sociable and not just for the large alliances that have dedicated IT support guys who get paid Moon isk to manage it. We need the social tools IN GAME to be as useful as OUT OF GAME. I dont want to feel i can talk more about Eve with better comms tools when iI' m Logged out. I want it to not matter whether im logged in or out, I'm always playing.

#4 Roleplay

I think Roleplay should have a much stronger influence over the PVE side of the game. I would like to see Roleplayers able to influence the real world of Eve by gaining political influence and power over NPC corporations. This in itself opens up a whole new PVE world, but I think making some small steps first will be a good start for the future.

We need a space for players that don't want to join large nullsec alliances to matter. Where they can still shape things at an epic scale, where they can matter. Declare wars. Proclaim certain groups heretical. Re-allocate the location of Navies and which gates are most heavily defended. NPC Invasions, tax rates, gifts, bounties.

A range of options for fine roleplaying, forum warrioring, rampant economic abuse and cronyism are out their. Add depth to our game. #WIZZARDHATSMATTER

#5 Home Defense

Experience players in systems they know well should start to get bonuses similar to command bonuses when solo. They know where everything is, they know the tricks of the system. I think a tiered experience point type system for players based on locations within a star system would be interesting. How the metrics for XP could be calculated is open, I would personally push a DKP style XP approach - time on location + critical events (i.e. fights, ratting, mining) - decay over time (thats right your xp degrades if you dont keep coming back to that spot).

This would give an interesting counter for solo guys or small corps that stick to areas and then get invaded. If they are a very active solo/gang - they wont need links, and will be tough badasses to fight.

I'm not sold on this, but I think it adds an experience based dimension driven by player activity and adds complexity for fleet engagements when picking off smaller fleets - requires people to know their enemy a little better.

And my favourite #6 Politics & Standings

Red, Orange, White, Light Blue, Deep Blue, Purple, Orange Star, Red Star. It does not quite cut the mustard when  your 20 man fleet makes a temporary truce with a deep red alliance so you can both focus fire on another alliance to kill their capitals on grid and a confessor and a battleship are moving quickly towards your fleet and your going oh shit do we shoot?

Confessor yes. Battleship no. But if we check the players, waited for eve to load their corporation in the character info screen, debated about which corps were allied to the ones we were friendly with, by that time the confessor would have cleaned up about 4 of our badly tanked ships. So we fired instead, kill the confessor, and fire on the battleship and then within 30 seconds have a whole fleet of proteous on us at 0 who were friendly until that point.

Anyway... the point is, the political information environment in eve is really complicated - which is a lot of what makes eve interesting. We need better tools to navigate this complexity.

Principle:

A single blanket "Standing" metric derived from personal, corp, alliance standings is not sufficient.

I need a multidimensional set of metrics I can analyse in real time. I need to be able to change how they are view in my HUD - IN REAL TIME. I want Dead Terrorists to appear in HUD as suddenly not the ungodly sinner Red they deserve but for the next 5 minutes I want to set them a nice hot pink but not change their standings.

Now maybe I want everyone in my fleet to see them that way as well. Click. Done. Suddenly a lot of the complexity of multi party fights solved, waiting in stations reduced, more undocking, more blowing up the ships we meant to occuring. It also of course opens up opportunities for dastardly sociopathic FCs to really mess things up... but welcome to Eve.

There is a lot further this one could go - but for now a basic ability to do real time analysis on political standings of individuals, corps, alliances and have that directly effect how they look on your overview and local, and make the fleet able to inherit that view would be the start of something great.

Conclusion

Well, thats it. I want to make the game better, and because my focus is Low Sec, Small Gang with occaisional large fleet / cap fights, thats where I have my solutions directed. I am a big supporter of 0.0 - and 0.0 needs a lot of love. I will be a supporter of improvements there. Be mindful though - I am not a supporter of arbitrary metric driven approaches to sovereignty. For me, everything has to be tangibly connected to a players action to have meaning. The more tangible that link is, the better the mechanic.