Monday, March 25, 2013

Concord : Special Victims Unit

As all of the people for this years CSM are putting out their ideas this has sparked some good discussions inside of GetCo. This is one of those blogs.

Suicide gankers - I hate them! But they are a play style that some people in Eve seem to enjoy. All I can see in my mind is the equivalent of today's suicide bombers that everyone hates and wonder how anyone could even want to resemble that!

Anyways! Since it is allowable in game and even with the threat of Concord killing them this doesn’t stop them from doing it. So we need consequences if they do it.
Que the music: DUM DUM

Concord : Special Victims Unit
The Concord: Special Victims Squad investigates Crime watch crimes. It is housed in separate Regional Patrols (i.e. The Forge, Sinq Laison, etc).

The Special Victims Squad only investigates the following types of cases:
  • Any pilot who is the victim of any gank crime or attempted gank crime
  • Any victim of Crime watch Act (all degrees) or Attempted Crime watch Act (all degrees)
  • Victims of Aggravated Ganking (all degrees) in High Sec
  • Victims of Hulkageddon Abuse 1st Degree in High Sec
The Special Victims Squad does not investigate any Scam, theft or corporate theft cases.
If there is a crime against an Mining Barge/Exhumer class ship, a Special Victims Squad may assist in the investigation.

With the new unit formed, new and creative penalties will be brought into play.
For example, those found guilty of Hulkageddon Abuse 1st Degree will have:
  • Permanently flagged as a Registered Miner Offender and as such, a SUSPECT flag will be applied.
  • A fine will be issued in increments based on convictions of crime.
    • 1st offense = 50mill
    • 2nd offense = 100mill
    • 3rd offense = 500mill
    • additional offenses will incur a 100mill fine
      Example 4th offense will be 200mill 
    • This penalty applies to all ship classes belonging to the pilot for the duration.
Example Guilty of Aggravated Ganking in the 1st Degree will have:
  • Felon flag will be applied to
  • A fine will be issued in increments based on convictions of crime,
  • applied to online time only, so not logging in will NOT count towards the penalty time.
  • 1st offense = 50mill, Criminal flag for 24 hours
  • 2nd offense = 100mill, Criminal flag for 1 week
  • On the 3rd offense, will be classified as a Habitual Ganker
  • Crime watch Criminal flag will be applied to offender permanently.
  • Character will be flagged as non-transferable.
  • If the pilot is a member of a player based corporation, the corporation will be notified of sanctions.
  • Taxes doubled.
Other options:
  • Pilot could be deported to the nearest Low Sec and not allowed back in Empire
  • Should there be a biomass penalty or prevention?

Saturday, March 23, 2013

When does a "Sandbox" need to cleaned?

Keeping with the previous posts on how some people are playing their run for the CSM as "the game" I am going to take a few key quotes from James315's website. I find his misdirection not only fascinating but also 100% see through. The elections will be fun to watch for sure :-)

ok, James315 starts out with this beauty.

"After the candidates are determined, I will provide some information about them, to help everyone know which candidates have appropriate views on highsec, and which candidates have more malignant tendencies."

That right there folks is what we call "a tell" since James will not be running for the CSM8 seat now. He actually dropped out before I thought he would :-( since I knew he was playing "the game" all along.

Then he comes out with this insightful one.

"MinerBumping is quintessential EVE. Not only does MinerBumping showcase proper, legitimate EVE play, it showcases ideal EVE play, and provides a positive example for other players to follow. Suicide ganking a fleet of Mackinaws and then posting the ridiculous, tear-filled EVEmail sent by the mining ships' owner is absolutely in the spirit of EVE. That's true whether the ganker is a player, a CSM representative, the CSM Chairman, or an employee of CCP."

That statement shows you not only where his logic is flawed but also where he gets others to buy into his Rhetoric. It is amazing he has the following he has. Then there is this beauty!

"In the past, I have written at length on my concerns about the direction of EVE. I speculated freely about the possibility that CCP would introduce a series of nerfs to highsec aggression. As it turned out, my speculation proved to be accurate. Ironically, had I been a member of the CSM at the time, I probably would have had access to more information to back up my claims--but I would have been prohibited from writing on the subject."

Oh James, you are defiantly one of the reasons the Eve subscription numbers are so low! I am not putting the direct blame on you, Heavens no! Your just one of many people and reasons why CCP Seagull is working on trying to REVERSE this effect and find ways for MORE PEOPLE TO PLAY EVE! Your "concerns" are the same concerns that CCP now has. The part that you do not understand is that CCP wants more subscribers and you, dear James315 would take that away.

I also think that you even thought of this, so this is why you wrote this next.

"Before, I would have been guaranteed a seat at the table in Iceland, receiving one of the top seven vote tallies (regardless of whether STV was used). Now a new scenario presents itself, one in which CCP declines to include me--based on my platform, reputation, attitude or whatever--but in which I would still be under the NDA for a year or more. If the CSM is increasingly viewed by CCP as obsolete, or if they view it as a pool from which they pick and choose the useful candidates and marginalize the rest, then I must adjust my cost-benefit analysis of giving up my platform in order to take a seat on the CSM."


I agree with you on this, go figure right? :-) since it is a little of all of the above that would of kept you away. I believe this as much as you do. How about that! We can agree on something! :-)

So after reading all of this would you expect what he wrote next?


"Again, I return to the question I asked earlier: Does a (non-Iceland?) seat on the CSM offer enough influence to justify going under the NDA, as opposed to having someone else on the CSM who shares my views but doesn't have a comparable platform to give up? At this point, to ask the question is to answer it. Accordingly, I am withdrawing from the CSM8 race. Today was the last day to submit my application to CCP to include my name on the ballot for the first round of voting. Instead of sending my application in, I wrote this post."

WOW is all I can say. James315, I may not agree with you on 99% of what you say but at least you were saying something! There are not enough people in Eve that speak up. You fortunately are one of them. Because of people like you, people like me have come out to expose the things in Eve that make it the sandbox that we all want to enjoy. I wish you would of at least ran to see if "the game" would of let you become a CSM member. I would of bet that you would of made it.

Anyways, for those that say "TL DR" here is the summery.

James315 is out of the race. I'll blog on the others that will most likely fail to "the game" as well.

Waiter! Check please!

Regarding the research slots being full in stations.

This will be the first of several blogs focusing on some of the things that we have mentioned in the "Features & Ideas Discussion" threads on the official forums.
 
There are several things we talk about in GetCo over the years that really make us scratch our heads and have to just ask why CCP does the things it does. At times we even hear some of the people in our alliance ask the same questions. Even when I talk to other alliances I hear some of the same questions over and over again. Funny (strange) that so many people would have the same viewpoints, thoughts and opinions on some of the basic problems that we see in Eve that are never addressed.

Problem identified

Regarding the research slots being full in stations, especially the ME and COPY. CCP has always limited this. Why? What is the reason for making the "lurkers" of Eve that live in High Sec space (for the most part) lives so much harder?

Current answer

Players that create POS's (player owned structures) in low or null sec can avoid this problem (at a much greater cost) without having all the wait times or lack of slots.

GetCo's answer

If you really wanted to throw a curve into it, add faction standings as a requirement. Say at least a +5 or +6 standing. It would be similar to placing a POS. 

Additional bonus

That would cut out some alt's doing research.

And another idea

Adjust the price of research of it based on standings. A +10 faction standings would be the cheapest prices since there shouldn’t be any NEGATIVE Concord security standing pilots doing research in Empire at all.

Yet another idea

As a ISK sink, I think you should have additional options while renting a office. Why not add rentable Research slots to the office options to your office rent.

Final thoughts on this?

Let a +10 faction status mean something besides LP points. Makes the profession of doing this mean more and makes the players that do it have more worth while at the same time weeding out all of the bad apples.

Your thoughts?

Do you know your reader base? Most people don't...

With all of the CSM information out there I thought I would put in a few quotes for you from various websites that I want to comment on. If you have not read the blog before this one, now would be the time to review that before you go on.

RELEASE THE RANTS!!!


"It's CSM season again, with CCP opening up candidacy officially for CSM8. This is the first CSM election which has cropped up since TheMittani.com has been active, so we have a question before us: do our readers, uh, care?"

"Coverage could range from specific candidate interviews (which I personally think are irrelevant and boring) to more high-level 'horse race' features where we analyze who is likely to win, who has bloc-level backing, and who are comedy candidates"

- by The_Mittani


I can take a shot at answering that for them. YES, your readers care (I am one of them at least that does) but I can tell you that all the other people out there that do not go to your website to read your posts DON'T.

Lets put this another way. You folks over at TMC know the numbers for your reading membership. Subtract that from the 500,000 reported Eve subscribers and I would care to guess that would be a fairly accurate number of people that DON'T care.

Throw into the mix that The Mittani does not feel that specific candidate interviews like the ones at Crossing Zebras count, then that number in fact may be even less then that. I think that as time goes on TMC is loosing touch with what the rest of Eve wants versus what they want. :-/

ok, on to the next interesting piece of internet Eve Online wisdom! This one come from Gevlon over at the Greedy Goblin and I find it to be what I would call pretty damn accurate.

"There is a common theme against the CSM platform of James 315 and the balancing of EVE economy at large: many people are high sec casual players, a new player will very likely start as a high sec casual and nerfing high sec would make them quit, ruining CCP."

and

"So a high sec casual can fully play his chosen game if he has a couple ten million ISK income per month. Even if his level of income doesn't allow him to buy a battleship or T3 in a year, it doesn't hurt his fun, just like it doesn't hurt the fun of lvl4 missioners that he can't earn for a titan or even fly it in high sec if he PLEX's one."

Here are 2 more interesting quotes. Lets tackle the first one...

How do you get to know the casual high sec player? They are not one of the people that read any of our blogs or forums if they have just started out in Eve. In some of the cases they have not even joined up with a corporation yet that they can call home. They are unguided, confused and don't quite know where they want to go or do yet. Nerfing High Sec is not a bad or good thing as a new player has no reference what it "should" be like.

How do they get to know what it "should" be like? Through others of course. Who are those others? People like James 315? People like you? People like me? In what ever case you choose it can be thed  players and it SHOULD be the players and not CCP in my humble opinion. I may not agree with James on his points but I do like the fact that he is taking an active part in trying to do SOMETHING.

I heard once before "if your not part of the solution you are part of the problem". Get your readers to buy into what your selling and who knows, maybe James will be on CSM.

On to the second quote...

These people that are not the readers are the people that play Eve for Fun. They are the gamers. Gamers play for fun. We, you and I and all the other bloggers, writers, pod casters, enablers, instigators and even the lurkers are the "hobbyists" of Eve.

Again, 2 different (or more) groups of Eve players. Only a small portion are our readers. How do we increase that? Well, we HAVE to learn about our readers. How do we do that? Good question.

Which brings me to the end of this blog since I could give you at least a dozen more examples but I don't want to bore you, only get you thinking.

I think that it is the CSM's job to work on this problem. How do THEY get more readers not only for themselves but for CSM and for CCP. If they can tackle that problem they don't need CCP's permission to do it. They only need the desire to do do it and then bring that increased reader base to the game with all of us as a voice with them being the tool to make it happen.

Make sense?

It does to me. ok, enough of this rant, more to write about in another blog.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

You’ve just lost "The Game"...


Each week I may post a few times about what I see in the Eve community, its Bloggers, Pod Casters and even CCP's Developers. With all of the current focus on the CSM elections I wanted to share how I look at some of the meta gaming that is going on inside.

I decided that I am not going to point any fingers in this particular blog so you can see what I am trying to say on your own. This is a fun and scary way to look at Eve Online. If you don't want to change your way of viewing the game then stop reading now.

About

The Game is one of the simplest distortions of game logic ever invented; by which simply thinking about The Game causes one to lose.

Due to the futility and inevitable loss, The Game could be viewed as a statement of the human condition; that is to say, humankind’s struggle against fundamental laws of nature. THE GAME results in a double negative scenario where trying to not do something is the catalyst for said event.

Origins

THE GAME was invented in 1977 by members of the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society (CUSFS) who would regularly meet at the Horse and Groom pub (Kings Street, Cambridge, UK) to drink and discuss game theory.
From losethegame.com

The members of CUSFS assert that the creation of The Game was a collective effort, but Nigel Goldenfeld and Mark Haslett were probably the most responsible for releasing it into the public. The CUSFS 1977 collective includes:
  • Dr Nigel Goldenfeld – “What’s scary about all this is that it took so long for it to take over the world.”
  • Mark Haslett – “We did not realise what a viral concept it was and I continue to lose from time to time now 30 years on.”
  • Philip Brice – “The idea developed of a game in which you didn’t know you were competing in until you weren’t.”
  • Dr Nick Lowe – “Our meetings are still punctuated, and often opened, with the words ‘Gah! I lose.’”
  • Dr Richard Pinch

Online Apperance

The first known appearance of THE GAME online was on Paul Taylor of West Midland’s blog in 2002.

A major contributing factor to this meme’s virability is the simplicity of its execution. Simply saying “THE GAME” instantly causes everyone within earshot to lose. Whether they are aware that they are playing or not, they have now thought about The Game. Similar behaviour can be observed in a multitude of scenarios because there is always that one person out there who enjoys screwing with other’s minds.

Other Responses

A niche execution of THE GAME has come into being in the form of non sequiturers. Essentially a story will be posted where the only goal will be to capture the reader’s attention. At the end of the story however, the true goal is revealed
Example:

You will never believe what happened to me this morning! I was waking up and doing my morning routine, eat breakfast, take a shower, brush my teeth, that sort of thing. When I was about to get changed, I saw something in my window that looked a little strange. I went to look and there he was, a man was staring through my window on a ladder!
Just as soon as he knew I saw him he started climbing down the ladder and I ran for the door outside. On my way out I grabbed the bat I keep under my bed. When I got outside I saw him running down my block and I began chasing after him. We ran for nearly 10 minutes and reached some woods. Then from there we ran another 15 until I lost sight of him.
Lost, in the middle of the woods, chasing a peeping Tom. I knew something like this could only happen to me.
The search seemed over when a bit deeper in the woods I heard the man scream. I ran out there and saw him sitting on the ground a good distance away from me. As I got closer I could see he had gotten his foot stuck in a bear trap! Actually I’m not so sure it was a bear trap because it was a bit smaller but you get the point. I walked up to him with my bat and said the sweetest one liner I could think up on the spot.
“Game over fucker” and I hit him in the face with my bat. He began to sob a bit as he held his bleeding nose, but to my surprise he began to laugh. This startled me so I hit him again and said “what’s funny faggot!” and he said, “read the first word of all the last paragraphs.”


Sunday, March 10, 2013

Ice Mining, Lurkers, CSM and no, Eve is not going to die...

I decided with this blog to I pick apart the things I see differently from not only from CCP but other bloggers and pod casters as well. Here are what I consider a few of this weeks highlights.
  1. First we start off with the blog This is how Eve dies, with a whimper by Rixx Javix on Mar 4, 2013. He states the following:

    "
    People are arguing over consensual and non-consensual PvP in every area of Eve. Including high-sec for goodness sake. I've got news for those engaging in such mealy mouthed debates, you are not expressing a viable opinion - you are feeding the beast of apathy. There is NO debate between consensual and non-consensual PvP! You log into Eve and you are agreeing to participate. Simple. You want to avoid PvP? Don't play."

    My answer to this is is very simple. Eve has been this way since the very beginning of it. Nothing has changed at all. People don't log onto eve just to PvP. I have been playing since beta, I have multiple accounts and last I knew Eve was a sandbox.

    If you want to check the following websites for statistics here are a few:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Online

    http://eve-offline.net/

    Ten people explode every minute in Eve Online. 604 people explode every hour. 14,502 people explode every day. In total, more than 21 million people have exploded at the hands of NPCs and other players since CCP added the kill report system on December 5, 2007.

    A weekend of epic destruction in eve online Feel free to use Google to find more :-)

    Final thought on this blog? Stop creating another "is Eve dying" post and stop telling people how to play the game! I think this is the best time to EVER play Eve!
  2. EVE Stratics has an interview from CSM8 candidates Malcanis, Marc Scaurus, Trebor Daehdoow, and Nathan Jameson.  If your into anything about the elections there is some information there. You decide if it is important to you.
  3. Jester has a quote that I is worth posting about. It is a good blog if you have the time to read it. I quoted a few parts of it to comment on.

    "The most egregious problem with mining in general and ice-mining in particular is how unengaging it is.  Trust me, if I do get to Iceland it's something that's going to come up -- I don't care if CCP already knows"

    and one more quote from that post:

    "Having been in mining ops myself, I can tell you the only bearable way to do it is to make it a social activity, and that's what I recommend here"

    and

    "The simplest way to make yourself a hard target and deflect gankers onto the other guy is with cooperative tactics.  As long as you can find people you trust and can share the overall output of a mining op, there's no reason why you can't (and shouldn't) support your mining op with a few support ships.  The best first ship to add is a Scythe."
    and then later he talks about a Scorpion as well. Here are my thoughts and rants...

    First, some of us LIKE the fact that Ice Mining is unengaging. It allows us to play eve while AFK or even blogging. Here is a screen shot of with Eve on my left screen and blogging on the right screen.
CCP developed this type of game play because it also fits a needs of player base in the game. The "lurker" class in Eve. Not exclusively as you mentioned in your article. How do I know this? Well ALL of the people in my corporation play the game this way. MOST of the people in our Alliance that mine also play the game this way. We are not the largest Corp or Alliance by any means BUT we are also not just a few people here and there.

In other words Jester, there are just as many of us are there are as many of "you" and another difference is that the Lurkers stay quite and just play the game since that is what they are content with. They do not feel the game is broken in this aspect at all. I can go into greater detail in this if anyone wishes but that will be in a different blog.

ok, on to the next quote from Jester, he says that the only way to make mining bearable is to make it social. Here I have to disagree again. I can quote THIS website to show you a real world example of way his quote is off center. Go take a look at the website and when you return I'll be waiting. Click HERE if you want listening music :-)

WB (welcome back)

I think that this show, Gold Rush, helps illustrate my point fairly well. There is one 3 person team on that show that reminds me somewhat of my own corporation GetCo. The other "teams" in that show to me represent the other corporations that I also know that make up our alliance.

Starting to see MY viewpoint yet?

Even though there are a lot of people in this show, they all operate in their own little groups and work at how to obtain what they want, which in this case is Gold. In Eve, for us, and for this example, is Ice.

Now if you want to go back in history a little bit we can look at the California Gold Rush and see that it is the same then as it is now. It attracted the miners even though they knew it was not going to be easy and that they could even possibly die from. This is what changed their lives back then.
and this is what has done it for Eve Online now. All one has to do is look at "The Big Picture" to see the similarities. A good solo miner can make good ISK with multiple accounts. Get several people together to mine together and you don't increase those profits. You SPLIT them. So seeing hundreds of miners mining together is never going to happen. Seeing small groups like you do now is how it will always remain. Make sense?

4. Finally this week we finish up with what I would consider a very good article with insight over at Merchant Monarchy that tells everyone "Eve is not a PvP Game" and my favorite quote out of that blog is:

"The vast majority of Eve players who call themselves PvPers are really nothing more than risk averse gank farmers and bullies preying on the weak"

I have often thought along those lines about a good portion of the griefers and gankers that us miners have to deal with. It is good to see someone else at least putting in writing how they feel. Now what is going to be done about it?
Please add your comments below while I go get another beer...

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

The CSM7 Winter Summit minutes...

This is going to be a long rant post about my thoughts and observations of the CSM7 Winter Summit minutes. I printed them out, made comments all through the document and waited to see what other Eve players had to comment about it. Now that they have had their time in the limelight it is time to give this bitter vet's view...

Eve Online - The Next Decade

I am going to make a bulleted lists of the things that I found of interest in this section. Then comment on them afterwards.
  • CCP Unifex states the following and it is not taken out of context.
    • 1. "the hardcore will always look past the flaws"
    • 2. "it is a game of social interaction"
    • 3. "there are competitors out there that are going to challenge us"
  • CCP Seagull states the following and it is not taken out of context.
    • 4. "looking at each player group being served"
    • 5. "Instigators & Enablers"
    • 6. "What is this Lurker? They constitute a lot of our accounts"
All of the current CSM7 members commented on their thoughts on what was said by these 2 developers in this section of the minutes. For the most part I agree with them. Mostly. Now onward to ROCK's ranks about this...

First, I disagree with the statement 1. Are you kidding me?! There are features that were the selling point of this game brought up over a decade ago that are still not in the game! Want a list?
  1. Interbus - Where is it? It was supposed to be in the game during BETA and has yet to be instituted. Interbus was going to be the NPC freight mover in the game. You buy something in game and they would ship it to where ever you wanted it to go. For a fee of course.
  2. Ghost training - IT WAS A FEATURE! They advertised the game with this FEATURE that they took out in pursuit of more MONEY!
  3. Bounty hunting - Yes, it WAS a skill book! There were many other skill books that were removed from the game in the early days. Thoughts of the bounty system were way back in BETA and failed all the way to recently. The skill increased the bounties you received. 
  4. Another skill book was DED Connections which also disappeared about that time period.
  5. The Black market skill book has been unavailable since they changed the start to 800k skill points. I had that skill trained on a couple of my first accounts.
Now on to statement 2. Eve is a game of "social interaction". Yes it is, but it is ALSO a sandbox.

Most of my corporation "GetCo's" members are SINGLE players. They log onto Eve and do lots of things by themselves. There can be ten of us online for 4 hours on a Saturday or Sunday at the same time and other then saying hello and goodby to people as then come and go there is hardly any corp chat. Yes, we use voice coms a lot to talk to each other but we are not interacting WITH each other in game. Now don't get me wrong, we also mine together, A LOT! but lest say for arguments sake that it is a 50/50 split. I log onto Eve to unwind and relax. If I do it solo I am fine with that. I do not need others to make this game enjoyable for myself.

Statement 3 is a good one. There is the new Planetside that people are looking into but I have already subscribed to Star Citizen. Why you might ask? It will be another space MMO and of course I will be in the BETA in that and work from there on it. A lot of the features that were in the game I played before Eve (Earth & Beyond) have made it into Eve. So I expect to see some of Eve in Star Citizen and if Star Citizen takes off expect some of what makes that game special come into Eve.

Statement 4 is also a interesting statement. "looking at each player group being served". With CCP also stating that new releases were going to be in a different format it will be curious how they intend to pull this off. They have never been good at this in the past. Lets see if Seagull can pull it off. My ISK is on the simple fact of "not in a million years". When you have players that form groups that make the largest alliance in the game on the CSM, there is NOT going to be a CCP and CSM agreement on this. Stay tuned for lots of finger pointing with CSM8.


Ah, statement 5. The "Instigators & Enablers" idea. Now THIS is something that sparked my interest. As the CEO of my corp and a past alliance leader of the NEC I found this to be VERY interesting. Since I am both a "Instigator & Enabler" for everything I do in Eve online I spend a lot of time OUTSIDE of the game planning things for everyone to do. Then I had these things off to my directors OUTSIDE of the game via real world emails and then log into game to do my own things. So the "social" aspect for me in game does not exist since I spend a majority of my time OUTSIDE the game setting it up for others.

Now is also a good time to add the answer that was one of Crossing Zebras questions for the CSM candidates. Can I give the 20 or more hours a week to the CSM if elected to do the job to the best of my ability? You bet I can! I have spoken over this with my family and they fully support me on this. I am going to Fanfest this year to start getting the feel for everything, take lots of notes and start to do all the networking that will be required to be a very good CSM member.


Next, statement 6. "What is this Lurker? They constitute a lot of our accounts". This is something that the current CSM could not answer at all. They didn't even try! CCP Seagull did not even go into detail on what she thought this was. Well folks, I'll let you in on the big secret that no one wants to talk about. No one wants you to know about it either. Who are the lurkers?!?

The "bitter vets" like myself ARE the LURKERS!

So for the record you have:
  1. Instigators
    "are players who have plans, who want to do things, to make an impact on the universe. They are the ones will go and organize people, or inspire people, to go do things. There's always someone starting it. There's always someone that says, ‘I'm going to have THAT’."

  2. Enablers
    "are the people who make the logistics for these large-scale things actually work. They are people who run mad spreadsheets to organize production lines for war efforts, they are people who manage roles and membership of big corporations and alliances, they build tools to do different tasks. And we kind of have a history of treating these people like…shit. We put these people through a lot of painful, unnecessary work."

  3. Lurkers
    "*stands up* Hello....my name *clears throat* is ROCK MELTER... And uhh *shuffles feet* I am a lurker..."

    Any rate, I really don't know why I use to lurk in the shadows . I guess I just feel I didn't really have any conversation to contribute to the whole Eve community. I usually cruise the forums and blogs once or twice a day. I agree with a lot of you that there's been a bunch of mean/whining posts, but overall the forums are a really good resource. I've made some good meta gaming decisions based on the information provided here. Though I have started blogging, very slowly, recently. I guess there's something to contribute after all.

    Want a clue how to spot lurkers? Go to your alliance forums or corporations forums. NOT the Official Eve Forums. Why you ask? Because on most Corp or Alliance forums it shows you the members that are viewing the forums. Take a look at that list. There may be one or two that are actuall posters on the forums. The others? They could be members for 10 years and never made a post. They read the forums every day, are always online but never get involved. There is one clue on how to spot your lurkers.

    Want more in depth insight about Lurkers Seagull? I am at your disposal.

  4. Players
    "are the people that are none of the 3 above" For lack of an accurate number on this and I know CCP is working on this right now, I would say is 90% of the total number of players.

 So what are you?

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Introductions...



So, they tell me I need to introduce myself. Well, here I am.

I have had corp mates (Yes Bo, LT), Alliance members (you know who you are), bloggers like Jester's Trek and Pod Casts like Crossing Zebras that say time and time again that you need to be visible and that the eve players need to know you. Jester started his blog for this exact same reason so I thought that I would pretty much steal paraphrase what he said since it sums it up frankly quite well. I have changed it slightly but for the most part it is intact.

"I have made the decision that someday, maybe for CSM9, 10 or even 11; I'll be running for the Council of Stellar Management (CSM) in EVE Online.  This is a group of EVE Online players who represent the larger player base of that MMO to CCP, who develop the game. They have contact with the game developers, they talk to higher-ups in the company, they even get to go to Iceland (where CCP is headquartered) twice a year to meet with them face-to-face to bring the concerns of the game's players back to the Developers."

"In theory, it's a really cool idea: a semi-representative group, elected by the game's players, with the ability to request features, point out particularly nefarious bugs and exploits, learn about where the game is going, and otherwise keep the developers in touch with what their player base is thinking."

That being said, I have thought about running for CSM before and always backed out at the last minute because there were always players that were more active in the community PUBICALLY the I was. I am an avid forum poster in both our corporation’s forums and the alliance forums as well. I am one to always keep the information that I have close to the heart. "Loose lips sink ships" as the saying goes.

All that has changed with the pre-election for CSM8. Everything has become way more political now. You either needs to be in one of the largest alliances in Eve to get the votes or you need to be very well known in the community like Jester is to be noticed for the elections. The alliance I am in is not large enough (not in the top 10 in size) and I am not that well known outside of my corporation or alliance. That is something that I am going to change with these blogs.

So, introductions. I am in my mid 40's, married professional, I'm a transportation supervisor with a strong business and communications background. I play MMO's like Eve and usually get involved with them in an early beta process. I did that with Eve and I also did that with the preceding games I played. In reverse order they were Earth & Beyond, the "Freespace" series and the "Descent" series. I operated the website DescentWorld.com back in that time period and I am use to dealing with all the fun that a website can bring. Let’s see how this works out in Blogging.

In Eve, I've played just about every aspect of the game so far. I have done mining (ore, ice, and gas) to mission running, low-sec faction warfare, incursions, living in a C2 then C3 wormhole to 0.0 roams and null sec fights.  I'll talk more about my EVE experience in a later posts and if you can do it in EVE, I've probably at least tried it. My primary focus has always been around mining. That is why my character named  ROCK MELTER :-)

As I said earlier I haven't been much of a blogger until now, but having one will be a useful tool in recording my impressions of my CSM run. Along the way, I'll probably talk/blog a lot! If you have even spoken to me on voice comms you know I can talk!  I'll have stuff to say about mining, industry, and about EVE politics. I’ll try blogging first and if that does not work well for me perhaps pod casting. We will see what the future brings.

One thing I know for sure, I'll rant about some of my observations and give you some of my opinions. You may not like them, fair enough, but I can guarantee you that I am not your average Eve player. I see things a lot differently then all these new Eve players do. If you can put up with my “rants” you just might just discover something...