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Ralara
Caldari
Vivicide
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Posted - 2008.09.19 20:00:00 -
[1]
Pre-emtive ETI: I know this may be early - however people were campaigning for CSM positions long before the official voting began last time. This CSM is up within two months and voting will commence before then.
Boy, I'm not sure where to begin here, so please bear with me over this long post.
I started playing Eve over three years ago. My first character, Roczenjka (who has since been biomassed to make room for alts) was a Gallente. When I created him, I clearly didn't have a clue what I was doing.
I came into this game after playing Freelancer. I enjoyed that game; I was one of the first to buy it - I had it on pre-order. In fact, I played a similar game when I was younger; Wing Commander: Privateer (had to edit there, I wrote "privater" - silly 8.3 DOS file names!) which itself was based upon Elite.
Elite was the first computer game that I bought - or rather it's more appropriate to say my parents bought me, back in 1986. I was four years old at the time and the highest rating I ever got on that game was "Deadly" - but then we sold the BBC Micro on which I played Elite. Looking back, I wish I'd kept the game for posterity - I had the original box, the poster, the instruction and the novella which I have to admit I'd never read (being four to six, it was a little involved).
So fast forward to Freelancer in roughly 1999-2000. The game had multiplayer servers which originally could take up to, I believe either 64 or 128 players at any one time - this was a big deal - Counterstrike could only comfortably support 32 players at any one time due to most of us being on 33.6 or 56.2k MODEMs.
It was fun; I played on the Jolt servers and for several years flew around with random characters and such - joining clans and fighting against other players.
At some point in 2004/5 I was typing away in the system chat to someone I was fighting (I lost!) and I was commenting upon how I liked Freelancer but the one thing that annoyed me was that no matter what you accomplished in game, it had no affect on, well, the game. I could, for example, lay siege to a system and with the help of several other pilots we could blockade entire areas of the universe from players entering. But it didn't accomplish anything; Diamonds in Cambridge were always the same price even if we cut off the supply from Leeds - it was a static market and a static universe. Think of Eve's "High Sec" systems (where soverignty can't be changed) but with a static market - prices always frozen.
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Ralara
Caldari
Vivicide
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Posted - 2008.09.19 20:00:00 -
[2]
So I'm lamenting away in chat and someone mentioned Eve Online. I'd heard of it only through Lancer's Reactor (a Freelancer website) and I'd noticed the adverts. So I looked it up. By now I had broadband so the 550mb (ish) client download wasn't that much. And heck, there was a free trial. Sign me up!
So I joined and within two days I'd paid for the first month - looking back that was silly because I "lost" the remaining 12 days of free time, but no matter.
I browsed through the races. I didn't like the sound of the Amarr very much; I have nothing against religion or anything but seriously; religious fanatics who kept slaves? Meh. There was the Caldari; extreme capitalists and militaristic in nature. I liked the blue colour scheme but it wasn't my favourite colour. There was the Minmitar but they looked more like Klingons to me than anything else.
Then there was the Gallente. Hey, a democracy! They seemed to fit, more than any race available at least, my views in real life; this is a "role playing game" afterall, so I signed up for them. Sure, ok, they're French (I'm from the UK) but it did say that it was in the Distant Past. Besides, they were the most attractive. So great.
So I've got my Gallente character and I now have to pick the stats. I'll admit I did no research so I read through the descriptions. Charisma seemed important because it looked like a skill that would help me work with others. This is a "Massively Multiplayer" game - Social skills must be important here so I picked a base of, I think, 13 or 14. There was Perception as well - I can be perceptive so let's put that high too. I can't remember the base stat but I do know that by the time I'd finished and trained some of the learning skills to level 3/4, I had Perception of 19, Charisma of 18 or 19 - Willpower and Intelligence I can't remember but I do know that after training Instant Recall to level 4, I had a memory stat of ... 8.
Boy was that a mistake!
But I didn't know. So, I undock and... zomg wow. This station was HUGE. Oh, Aura was talking in the background. Back then, the tutorial was nothing like it is now. I had 30,000 Skill Points, a shiny ship (looked a bit odd, though; the Velator's wing was "unbalanced") and the entire Universe in front of me.
And WOW that station was big.
There I am floating in space, listening to Aura and she said something to me. Something like "But do not fire on another pilot as there will be consequences".
So naturally the first thing I do is open fire on another player. And... I'm dead. What? Huh? I redock and get a new Velator and undock. And I'm dead.
This repeated for about 2 or 3 minutes and I got bored and quit. I came back about an hour later and I was able to undock without dying. *Shrug*. So I go off and finish the tutorial; kill the drone in "Dead Space" whatever that was, and mine 100 units of Veldspar.
I can't remember everything from back then but I joined a corporation... Beasts of Burdon I think which were ... an alliance? Corp? I wasn't sure. But I mined away and helped out on either a mission or complex - I couldn't understand why they kept telling me not to fire on all the rats - I didn't want to listen - I wanted to blow things up! (Now of course I understand the importance of not getting full stage aggression when you're doing a 7/10 complex!).
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Ralara
Caldari
Vivicide
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Posted - 2008.09.19 20:02:00 -
[3]
Edited by: Ralara on 19/09/2008 20:04:38
But anyway, this corporation wasn't for me but I had a friend who'd joined Colossus Technologies - "The Oldest Corp in the Game!". KEWL!
So I went to 0.0 and ratted away, mined a lot (they are / were a mining corporation). The people were friendly enough but they didn't like combat (I have no idea if this is still true, you'd have to ask them!). Eventually myself and another player got kicked out of CTEC due to our wanton disregard for the corporation's rules of no piracy. I didn't really understand what piracy was (and to be honest, we weren't being pirates, we were just PvPing but hey ho - it didn't fit with the corp's ethos and that was that). By now, I'd realised that my original character's attributes were, to be honest, terrible. So I re-rolled and created an Achura character; 10/10/8/8/3.
So I formed a corporation with my friend and went off into the unknown. Didn't have much success but eventually he went off to join IRON and I joined OXIDE, part of the "North". And, if we put this story onto x64 speed, he joined Triumvirate, I did a while later; I left, went back to empire to do some missions, went back to Triumvirate, Tri split, we stayed with D00M. but I left after a while and here we are today.
Why do you want to know this? Well I'd like to give some background as to what I've done in EvE. I've been a miner, a trader, a pirate, a PvPer, a 0.0 citizen, a suicide ganker, a scammer, a trader, I've been a corp thief, I've built and produced ships, I've moon mined (and my god, complex reactions in a POS... never again!) and I've run a corp. I've been corp-robbed, I've had a spy enter my own corp with the intent on taking me down (revenge for my previous corp theft!) - and successfully - I lost a very expensive deadspace Raven to that! I've been in 200 vs 200 fleet fights with Titans, Motherships and Carriers, I've taken part in Faction Warfare, I've done roaming gangs, nano gangs, recon/SB gangs and I've soloed. I've done exploration, I've missioned for Empire races and pirate NPC's alike, I've done complexes (both as firepower and tank).
At this point in the game, I've done just about everything I can think of except pilot a capitol ship (and that's coming along on my alt, at some point in the next couple of months).
And if there's one thing I've noticed in this game, it's buggy as hell! It can be very confusing and there is almost no documentation on how to do, well, anything.
For example, when I was doing moon mining and complex reactions, do you know what I had to do? I had to work out by myself... well... THIS:
Yeah. Lol? LOL? How the heck are you meant to know how to do that? I mean, there's nothing that I could find from CCP that told me how to do this. I had to sit there for hours and hours - in fact working it out and setting it up took over 80 hours. I'm not talking 3-4 days, I mean 80 full hours over two weeks spent working it out in Excel, drawing that and figuring out exactly what the relationships were between all those nice POS modules...
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Ralara
Caldari
Vivicide
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Posted - 2008.09.19 20:03:00 -
[4]
Hi, my name is Matthew Newton and I'm 25 years old. I live in Nottingham, UK. By day I am a network and IT technician for a Top 10 accountancy firm. My role is to keep our company's network operational; anything from single computers to multiple thousands of PCs, laptops, wireless devices and more. I help run our firm's IP phone system and generally spend a lot of time doing very technical stuff; bug hunting in our propriety software, writing some code here and there and dealing with end users who need X sorting out because Y wont function (hint: turn it on!).
Now, a lot of the CSM for the current council came forward with specific issues and goals; some want(ed) to change how certain aspects of 0.0 warfare work, some wanted to look at High Sec space and how it functions and some wanted to look at balance between either different ships, races or play styles. I'd like to concentrate my campaign on something which I think is different; the technical aspects of the game.
I don't stand for any particular cause or play style - I'm more or less of the mind "each to their own". Sure, I have an opinion on whether Level 4 missions in High Sec need changing or whether nano-ships needed a nerf (NO! :-D ) but I don't think there's anyone, so far, who has wanted to look at the bugs in the game as their main aspect of their campaign.
For example, I'd be looking at why certain skills don't always function properly. I'd be looking at issues with the forums and website. I'd be looking at how come when you do X, Y happens (when it shouldn't).
I'd also be looking at the documentation and implementation of new player experiences.
Now I just want to raise my hands here; I am not looking to "dumb down" the game in any way. I like that EvE is complicated, I like that EvE has it's .. um .. "little ways" and "features"; but these are things that I've picked up over time through trial and error, not because the manual told me.
I'll give you a good example; when I'm in the Fitting screen, sometimes I'm dragging a module across and it sort of "freezes" on the screen - it "ghosts" the image of the module in the middle of the screen and it won't move - even undocking or changing sessions wont change this. How do you get rid of it? Move another module or an item in your cargo bay! That removes the remnant.
Another example: Sometimes a ship will "stick" on my overview; I can change sessions, jump systems and so forth but there'll be a ship and pilot's name, at, say, perhaps 9,370km away from me, all the time. The ship isn't there, it's just that the Overview hasn't updated itself. How do you fix it? Double click on the overview title (to make it truncate) and then double click to expand it again and voila.
Why does it do this?
I don't know.
But I want to find out. And I want to fix it. All those annoying little bugs that don't really affect the game; I mean, sure, having that ship there wont alter anything but it's... annoying.
Ya know?
And that's what I want fixed, that's what I want to pursue. I want to investigate issues such as this.
I want to know why when I refresh an item's market details, my "sell order" or "buy order" screen gets pushed behind that window so I can't click on it.
I want to know why my drones don't behave properly or do as I tell them.
I want to know why on some missions releasing drones is fine but on others I get full stage aggression.
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Ralara
Caldari
Vivicide
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Posted - 2008.09.19 20:03:00 -
[5]
I'd like to know why the text layer (overview, the Drone's 'X' symbol, general text on the screen) causes graphical lag on the client and a big drop in FPS.
Why hasn't the sound effects been updated much; why do my Heavy Drones (which fire "neutron blasters") have the same sound effect as my Small Drones (which fire "electron blasters")?
And so forth.
That's what I want fixed and since, after... what, 6 years almost, they haven't been fixed, I want to be the person to stand up and say "No more".
Don't get me wrong; I am also for new content. I do not wish that new content be delayed or not implemented in order to fix these bugs - expansion and new content is what drives this game and any MMORPG. Without it, people will get bored and leave. But at the same time, I think issues like the ones above need to be addressed. They need to be brought to the front of the queue and they need to be looked at. Can they always be fixed? Perhaps not; but I'd like to know why. I'd like to be able to speak to the programmers and database maintainers and find out exactly what causes these issues.
Some of them cannot be fixed; I don't doubt CCP has people looking at these issues but I firmly believe that they can be complacent. I think over the years they've been caught up in adding new content or spending time looking at some things whilst ignoring other things; small things - they aren't game breaking by any means, but they're there at the back of my mind.
Now, after all of that text, here's a TLDR;
I want to fix the bugs and I want to make it, not necessarily easier, but more accessible to new and old players alike.
Maybe I'm wrong, perhaps I place too much emphasis on it; perhaps these issues do not bother you. If that's so, then obviously, don't vote for me! But if they do bother you, if you do have an issue with something - even if you've bug reported it perhaps it hasn't been fixed or you've not had an answer to your satisfaction, I'd like to know about it.
Even if I don't get elected to the CSM I'm going to start a database of these errors submitted by the players and I'm going to be sending this information to CCP. I'm going to do what I can to get the gears moving regardless of whether I get my free holiday to Ic... err, I mean, join the council or not. These issues have been, if you'll excuse the pun, bugging me for a while now and I cannot think of a better way to look into them than being right there in Iceland to take a look and the big picture.
I apologise for the lengthy introduction as well, I do have a tendency to talk a lot :-) But I felt it was important to give you some background on my experience, how I've joined this community and what I have to offer.
If you have any questions, by all means, please contact me or reply in this thread; I'd greatly appreciate any feedback you can provide.
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Ralara
Caldari
Vivicide
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Posted - 2008.09.19 20:07:00 -
[6]
[Reserved]
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Maximus Imbecillus
Player Corporation 104
GoonSwarm
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Posted - 2008.09.20 02:47:00 -
[7]
star fraction alt spotted
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Vital Efters
Caldari
GoonFleet
GoonSwarm
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Posted - 2008.09.20 02:57:00 -
[8]
familiarity breeds contempt bad move bro
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Maximus Imbecillus
Player Corporation 104
GoonSwarm
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Posted - 2008.09.20 03:17:00 -
[9]
also you are ******ed, it took me 5 hours to figure out my fulleride chain, and you aren't doing it very effectively.
Use three larges, keep to simple reactors on one pos (silicates hydrocarbons), mine those directly into the reactor and move the plat/ tech there once a week. Split those in half, and move it to the other two poses once a week, link silos in the complex reactors. One complex reactor on a tech moon and another on a plat moon.
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EdFromHumanResources
Caldari
GoonFleet
GoonSwarm
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Posted - 2008.09.20 03:42:00 -
[10]
Christ even the tl;dr is 5 paragraphs.
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Everyone hates goonswarm for one reason or another. ... And they promote ***gotism -Zurrar
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KeratinBoy
GoonFleet
GoonSwarm
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Posted - 2008.09.20 04:25:00 -
[11]
The two things that occur to me after reading all that are:
You should have read The Dark Wheel novella, it is awesome.
Did you discover the front pulse laser trick?
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Ralara
Caldari
D00M.
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Posted - 2008.09.20 10:15:00 -
[12]
 Originally by: KeratinBoy
The two things that occur to me after reading all that are:
You should have read The Dark Wheel novella, it is awesome.
I did try, but it was a bit difficult to read as a kid. There's probably a copy on the net somewhere; writing that post's made me want to read it, finally. I'll go hunt it down now.
Quote:
Did you discover the front pulse laser trick?
No; I never managed to get out of the first galaxy. I've read on the net that people managed to get all the way to the 7th but I kept getting killed by the Thargoids 
I have a BBC emulator and a copy of Elite for it somewhere on a disk; I'll go hook it up later 
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Ralara - Technical CSM Candidate for the 08/09 Council |
Arithron
Gallente
Gallente Trade Alliance
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Posted - 2008.09.20 21:27:00 -
[13]
More bug fixes and tweaks...excellent, that'll get the meetings to run to the alloted time quota, and make the CSM appear as a useful, forward thinking entity...
Arithron
Better to be a live dog than a dead lion... |
Ralara
Caldari
D00M.
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Posted - 2008.09.22 10:11:00 -
[14]
Originally by: Arithron
More bug fixes and tweaks...excellent, that'll get the meetings to run to the alloted time quota, and make the CSM appear as a useful, forward thinking entity...
Arithron
I'm pretty sure my sarcasm detector is making beeping noises at the moment so forgive me if it needs a mechanic 
Individual bugs and small technical issues aren't something that I think should be brought up in the meetings; by that I mean if we had a discussion about every single one (and there's hundreds) the meetings would go on for hours and hours over what they should.
So no change there, I guess  
No, what I intend is to bring bugs and errors into the light and to make it transparent. The known issues page for example, has stuff on there dating back years - What my role would entail is communicating with the Devs and programmers, keeping a tab on some of the more sensible "how to fix lag" issues and bring suggestions forward to the Devs.
Basically, it would be like acting as a point of call and a "go to" person to discuss and present these issues.
During meetings, items and concerns could be brought up and discussed however there isn't really anything on which to debate; a bug is a bug - a graphical error doesn't need a vote or a discussion - it's just that - an error that needs fixing.
With that in mind, I can't see how it would delay meetings any more than anything else does with the CSM - it's not an issue such as, say, nano-ships where there was a debate on both sides giving forward their arguments and these were discussed at great length.
As for the CSM being useful; I think this could be an incredibly useful position or an angle from which to campaign; who doesn't want the bugs fixing? It's about the only issue on which nearly every player is in agreement.
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Ralara - Technical CSM Candidate for the 08/09 Council |
Farrqua
Minmatar
Turbo Mining Inc.
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Posted - 2008.09.22 14:49:00 -
[15]
Good luck with your campaign. And you are targeting the "Bugs" which is one of the universal issues everyone deals with from time to time.
However, if you would recall the result of the meeting with CCP, it was considered niggling and not what they are looking for from the CSM.
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Parid
GoonFleet
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Posted - 2008.09.22 15:52:00 -
[16]
Originally by: Farrqua
Good luck with your campaign. And you are targeting the "Bugs" which is one of the universal issues everyone deals with from time to time.
However, if you would recall the result of the meeting with CCP, it was considered niggling and not what they are looking for from the CSM.
This is also my understanding. I don't think CCP is looking for the CSM to report bugs to them. They already have systems in place for that.
I do think the bugy nature of EVE has been a huge issue for years now, and needs to be seriously addressed. I just don't think the CSM is going to be able to do anything about it.
You might want to do a little more research as to the nature of this council and what its role is.
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Santaria Boon
GoonFleet
GoonSwarm
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Posted - 2008.09.22 16:02:00 -
[17]
Originally by: Parid
Originally by: Farrqua
Good luck with your campaign. And you are targeting the "Bugs" which is one of the universal issues everyone deals with from time to time.
However, if you would recall the result of the meeting with CCP, it was considered niggling and not what they are looking for from the CSM.
This is also my understanding. I don't think CCP is looking for the CSM to report bugs to them. They already have systems in place for that.
I do think the bugy nature of EVE has been a huge issue for years now, and needs to be seriously addressed. I just don't think the CSM is going to be able to do anything about it.
You might want to do a little more research as to the nature of this council and what its role is.
You are correct. CCP does not want to hear about "bugs" as there's already a method for reporting them. Giving people the same information via 8 different directions is annoying. The same goes for "lag". They know.
Caldari Alliance PVP Championship Winner
Current RKK Ranking: (PSCAL6) Proficient Short Tanto |
Omber Zombie
Gallente
Frontier Technologies
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Posted - 2008.09.23 04:14:00 -
[18]
Originally by: Ralara
No, what I intend is to bring bugs and errors into the light and to make it transparent. The known issues page for example, has stuff on there dating back years - What my role would entail is communicating with the Devs and programmers, keeping a tab on some of the more sensible "how to fix lag" issues and bring suggestions forward to the Devs.
Basically, it would be like acting as a point of call and a "go to" person to discuss and present these issues.
I think you might want to read the CSM documents again, you won't have continuous contact with CCP. Developer contact is limited to 1 live meeting and 2 online meetings...
Don't get me wrong, I would love up to date Drawing Board/Known Issues pages, but as far as I can see you'll be doing very little to influence it as a CSM.
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CSM 08 Blog |
Ralara
Caldari
D00M.
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Posted - 2008.09.23 06:48:00 -
[19]
Originally by: Farrqua
Good luck with your campaign. And you are targeting the "Bugs" which is one of the universal issues everyone deals with from time to time.
However, if you would recall the result of the meeting with CCP, it was considered niggling and not what they are looking for from the CSM.
Well they can look for what they want, of course; but I thought the CSM was there for the player-base to bring their concerns in a neat little package to CCP to get thing resolved, not what CCP wants to hear. 
--
Ralara - Technical CSM Candidate for the 08/09 Council |
Ralara
Caldari
D00M.
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Posted - 2008.09.23 06:50:00 -
[20]
Originally by: Omber Zombie
Originally by: Ralara
No, what I intend is to bring bugs and errors into the light and to make it transparent. The known issues page for example, has stuff on there dating back years - What my role would entail is communicating with the Devs and programmers, keeping a tab on some of the more sensible "how to fix lag" issues and bring suggestions forward to the Devs.
Basically, it would be like acting as a point of call and a "go to" person to discuss and present these issues.
I think you might want to read the CSM documents again, you won't have continuous contact with CCP. Developer contact is limited to 1 live meeting and 2 online meetings...
Don't get me wrong, I would love up to date Drawing Board/Known Issues pages, but as far as I can see you'll be doing very little to influence it as a CSM.
I've got to go to work in a few minutes so can't start typing now else I'll never stop :-)
I'll add a post when I get back this evening expanding on what it is I'm aiming for.
--
Ralara - Technical CSM Candidate for the 08/09 Council |
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