CSM Candidates Roundup 6-12 February

If anyone here isn’t up to date, i’ve been posting weekly updates of new people putting up their CSM campaign threads up in my “What you missed this week” weekly roundup. But given as how the number of them has increased over the past week and most likely the next period as well, i’m going to be splitting these up as to not clog up the main WYMTW; but they will coming out on the same day, for consistency. I mostly review candidates off their threads and whatever tidbits i know of them and unless specifically mentioned, i don’t comment on their personal lives or how they act on twitter (#disclaimer). And if it needs to be said, all of this is subjective as hell. With ass-covering completed, let’s get this started.

We’ll go ahead and run first with ‘the big names’ guys that you really don’t need to hear about from me, and we’ll work our way down to people which their candidacy threads will be the first ‘public’ thing they’ve done in Eve.

Coming in from the big leagues of Eve-players we have Sort Dragon. He really needs no real introduction, seeing how he’s done the CSM rodeo two times already and has framed himself as a leader of alliances and coalitions. His platform is, as expected on 0.0 matters, but you don’t end up with that ‘aged’ of an Eve career without dunking your donuts in all corners of space. Quoting himself, he’s known to be ‘abrasive’ but whatever comments people may have of his person he has done solid work as a CSM in previous terms. Even so, given the plethora of a null candidates, even a twice-won CSM member might find a seat a bit hard to get these days, especially with only 10 availible.

Keeping in the line of big names and nullsec, we have The Judge, a ‘member of the leadership’ of CO2 and its AT team, and current member of the very successful CSM12. He’s one of the people i have kept tags on regarding his CSM11 activity and i’m not surprised when he mentions ‘having a perfect attendance’ in CSM terms. His candidacy thread is honest and to the point, focusing less on proclaiming excellence in a field and more on being a skilled communicator. I’m going to leave this here with a quote from his closing statements: “There are lots of candidates that promise you fixes or changes to your style of gameplay, and in all honesty, that’s not something the CSM has control over. We are a sounding board, a focus group, consultants… not elected junior developers. The CSM needs mature people who can talk and act professionally in a business environment.” Remember this, it will come back to bite in the ass some of the candidates i’ll be talking about later.

he’s been silently grinding away in the salt mines purely ‘doing work’

Nullsec, CSM12, you following the thread? We have Sullen Decimus up next, of The Bastion fame but also an active director of a low-class wormhole corporation. His thread focuses mostly on his achievements during CSM12, mentioning passing along industrial-focused experience from people regarding  Engineering Complexes and the rebalance of Mining Command-ships.  Again, this is one of the CSM11 members i tried to keep tabs on and while not as vocal as the other players, he’s been silently grinding away in the salt mines purely ‘doing work’. The fact that you have Jin’taan, Apothne and Xenuria recommending him within the first page of his candidacy thread speaks volumes, even if it has not reached a 10-page threadnought of +1’s. 

Vince Draken. You need more? Ok. When your thread starts with “i started playing Eve during the August 2003 beta” and mentions having a hand in Band of Brothers, Lokta Voltera and have been ‘doing’ Northern Coalition. for the past seven years, you don’t really need to know what else they’ve done in the game. They got the ‘experience’ cred down pat, and judging by over four pages of recommandations, he’s not one to have not learned the benefits of being a good communicator. The only real question you could pose to him would be “why did you not candidate for the CSM until now?”.

Let’s switch over from heavy hitting and well-known to heavy-hitting and poorly-known and talk about Kalbuir Skirate, a director in Pandemic Horde that with a very large and developed campaign statement, you know he’s serious about this and actually poured a bit of his soul in giving it a fair go. The core of his statement relates to his activity as the founder, upkeeper and developer of the system which allows Pandemic Horde to not succumb to issues faced by all the other newbie-focused corps in regards to handling newbies. If i’m not mistaken Pandemic Horde now has more people that Brave ever had, and seeing as i know a bit about Brave’s initiatives and how hard it was to keep up with the flow of newbies, i can only applaud someone that got that down to a well-oiled machine.
His platform thusly is squarely focused on newbies and their integration and also boasts some serious IT-related creds and experience with Eve’s API’s which he used to get to the point where you /can/ handle that amount of people without requiring a bazzilion supporting staff. Overall, he has piqued my interest, and definitely goes into my list of people to keep an eye out on.

As a comparison to why, even as an unknown, you have to have a good campaign thread, we have Fawlty7, CEO of Tactically Challenged. While his name does have a ring in my ears for some reason that’s as far as it gets, and his candidacy thread seems like it may say a lot, but doesn’t. The only thing he touches on specifically is alliance mechanics/UI. Give us more information man, it’s hard enough to pick ten people out of the fifty active threads right now, and you’re not making it easier, especially if you’re not a brand name.

He even named his thread “Zkill guide to”

Speaking of brands, we have rhiload. He even named his thread “Zkill guide to”. He doesn’t skimp from mentioning that first and foremost he’s a video content creator, though i’m not sure why that’d be a good experience to have for being on CSM. I guess ChanceRavinne/wingspanTT, the other instantly-recallable video creator that got made CSM, did have a few suggestions in regards to the camera when it was remade, but i’m not sure that’s a single good cause to run for. If i were rhiload i’d try and highlight my AT experience and participation a bit more and focus on talking about my lowsec roots and PvP experience. But i’m not rhiload and on the other hand we can at least be glad it doesn’t delve into being a ‘joke’ campaign thread, something i can at least respect.

Some people actually decide not to use their brand, such a Kael Decadence. While he goes on to talk quite a bit about his Eve podcasting history, not one mention of Mindclash can be found in his thread. His platform is based on new players and the act of teaching, given his own previous frustrations with getting to grips with Eve, and he’s apparently very frank in saying he knows he won’t be a ‘junior dev’ as a CSM member, something that apparently really needs to still be said nowadays seeing the other campaign threads. I wish there was more to recommend him but i guess it’s a boon that people can figure out a bit about what makes him tick if they check out his podcasts. Still, a bit much to ask of voters…

White 0rchid makes it easy for us, listing their activity via a timeline annotated with exactly what they engaged in for that duration: a WAFFLES. director  with solo/small gang under their belt and constant activity on various battlefields from 2015 onwards. His reasonings for joining the CSM relate to lowsec and he makes a poignant point to how lowsec has become increasingly more dangerous than null, but without any of the real benefits of null. That’s about it for him, but for a player that’s barely two years old, it’s telling of activity and willingness to engage when you can pack Eve Uni, Incursions, wormholes, lowsec, solo and smallgang and getting to be a WAFFLES director in under those two years.

he is a lowsec and faction warfare candidate, on the duct-taped minmatar side

Other people kind of need to go under their brands, given CCP’s rule to use the character you’re most ‘known’ as the main candidate, like DJ-Thomas had to. While his more visible activity consisted of being a host and a trainer on Eve Radio as well as working in a media and interviewing capacity with EvE_NT and various CCP devs, he is a lowsec and faction warfare candidate, on the duct-taped minmatar side. He is right in saying that new members are either getting stuck in highsec or getting carted off by the hundreds to nullsec, with little incentive given or shown for lowsec; speaking of incentives, he also made a larger point on the random seasonal events having no bonus for doing them in higher danger environments. Either way his thread is pretty well structured and decently touches on the issues faced by lowsec, so it seems there is a smart head behind that great voice. 

If so far we’ve mostly had good threads, as a counter example of how to run i would point out Goldsnake. He starts out with a joke and points us to read other CSM applications. He continues telling us of the years he hasn’t played Eve until he bought his main in 2014. His focus, after that nothing that he told us, is in ‘null sec space and larger scale fighting, battleships or larger’. That’s not saying much to his experience or really anything that would qualify him. After that he moves on to saying ‘what would he accomplish if he was ellected’, listing systems and even entire shiplines that he’d introduce, logistics battleships, nevermind changing vital and sensible mechanics like jump fatigue. He also wants to ‘introduce more events’, like he could physically turn dials and make CCP do more events. And then it ends.

No Goldsnake, that’s not how you run or make a campaign thread. That’s not how even the CSM works.

JTClone also seems to have the same thought pattern Goldsnake does, listing an entire page of probable things that he wants to implement or work towards that looks remarkably like a featurelist. Adding to that is the fact that he has a lot of things he wants to touch but given that he’s been playing two of this three years in highsec, i don’t see how the addition of new T2 battlecruisers, player-owned-stargates, new EWAR support capitals or having level 5 missions in null-sec falls under his purview or experience, of someone that does ‘a bit of pvp on the side’.

Serg Sinist does the exact same thing, making promises of more anomalies in C1-C3 if he ends up on CSM12, adding second statics to C6s, adding respawns in wormholes if you’re killed in a pod in your ‘home’ system and some feature of moving jump-clones between constellations? And then he closes up his WH-focused candidacy with making additions to sov. This is exactly not how you do the CSM.

While we’re here, we’re also going to look at Kalen Tsero. While he’s thoroughly honest, and that can be appreciated, mentioning that he’s going to candidate as a lowsec man to represent faction warfare – without actually never doing faction warfare – may just be ‘too honest’. His reasoning isn’t much better and can be summed up to “make FW better so i have more FW people to kill while not engaging in FW itself”. With that sound reasoning in place, i am going to disregard what was left, not much, of his candidacy statement. Again, “not like this” example.

one of the most proeminent leaders of FW and a member of Templis CALSF

Let’s bleach ourselves off with a true FW candidate in the shape of Scylus Black. He’s one of the most proeminent leaders of FW and a member of Templis CALSF, standing for lowsec, Faction Warfare and its accompanying small gang and solo elements. He mentions specifically that he submits his candidacy as an effort to represent the virtually never-represented Faction Warfare element.
A strong point is made with him saying that Faction Warfare and lowsec can be a ‘gateway’ of transition to other types of gameplay or areas of the game in which people can activate, and as such deserves a good deal of care. There are a LOT of mechanics intertwined with FW that really only the people that do FW can know even exists, let alone how they interact and function. The other fact that there are almost no strict FW-focused candidates around should make him a solid vote on your voting slip, even if you don’t play in FW, for a balanced CSM.

There is an alternative or even a second place on the vote if you want more lowsec representation, coming in the form of Jonatan Reed from Did he say Jump. A 2009 player with Black Legion and its various incarnation, Origin. and a skit in old NC under his belt as experience, he’s running on a lowsec platform with a tinge of FW. He has his eyes set squarely on how citadels interact in lowsec/FW and various FW mechanics regarding timers and resets. Given his Did he say Jump roots, he also gets to act in a lot of the larger capital squabbles around lowsec and has a few points to make about Dreads and ofcourse, the jump-tackle-Rorqual. He seems like a solid candidate but given his on and off FW activity i don’t know if he’s your man as the ‘FW guy’. Either way, hats are going in the same lowsec ring.

It also is nice to see people try, really try to get on the CSM above just a flick of ‘yeah sure i’ll try getting on, why not’. Lorelei Ierendi has been candidating for the CSM for the last two years, making this her third candidacy. She covers the uncoveted crown of representing the carebear highsec, but not the ganking highsec. The points made ring quite true, there is no unified voice to speak for highsec carebears, which are still a large part of the game’s population, and they often go unheard since they don’t interact with the community at large. She even mentions in the candidacy that if you’re reading it, you probably aren’t her target playerbase. If we’re talking equal representation, Lorelai has to be on your voting slip, even if at the last position at the bottom.

“i have ~40 accounts with over 80 characters..”

Some candidates dazzle us with ‘playing since 2003’, others with ‘bloc FC’, while others list all the milestones of their long and well-known career. And then there’s Frezinviper which says, and i quote, “i have ~40 accounts with over 80 characters and i have experienced everything the game has to offer at least twice”. I mean, you’d think there is a lot of expanding on that that you could do, right? He quickly mentions being in charge of a few alliances, no names given, leading fleets, no names given, and now apparently prefers manufacturing, mining and trading while making, and i quote again, trillions of ISK. I don’t think there is another candidate that i wish to know more of than Frezinviper. If any podcasters out there are looking for CSM candidates to interview please consider this dude.

I also enjoy when people come out of the woodwork from the administrative/boring side of Eve to run for the CSM. God bless their little hearts, but it’ll be difficult to make headway. Djavin Novienta is one of them, part of Eve University’s ‘backend’ staff as well as a teacher and a curator for the Eve-Uni wiki. As such, his views on the game are more ‘global’, he speaks of ways of exposing knowledge in the game, how to integrate lore smoothly in to the experience, as well as having a focus on NPE and tutorials. But it’s not all ‘soft’ talk, he mentions COSMOS missions reworking as well as reworking security missions and tweaking drop rate of faction tags as well as making Data Centers reusable. An oddball candidate but which speaks of ‘the forgotten’ and often glanced-over things in Eve. While i will make a larger ‘Cosmo’s CSM ballot recommandations’ post right before the voting period, i have a very vague feeling Djavina Novienta will be somewhere on it.

Brianum is a diplo and alliance director of a ‘small’ nullsec alliance focused on industry. His talking points have been the localisation efforts of the CCP-assigned team, with dedication to the german effort. He mentions a lot of volunteers and community members helping out but he would want to be a spokesman for the various localisation ills that CCP has. His other talking point has been replacing passive gameplay by more active an interesting options. It’s a small but very potent point to look out for, as Eve is rife with play that has no counter play or avenues that allow play to happen in highly controlled environments. 

dislikes the actual shooty bits of this game. A heresy to say out loud

We can all guess for what platform is Vincent Eneticum running for; part and whole an “IT dude” that makes all the magic happen for EvE_NT, LUMPY, ISKstarter as well as a very active third party developer. His ingame activites are of the industrious kind, trading and moon mining, and he dislikes the actual shooty bits of this game. A heresy to say out loud, but i can understand that. He’s running here purely as a 3rd party dev, which indeed, is a very specific niche, that he mentions coupling with nullsec alliance management and organization as well as intel and counter-intel gathering. I would be a sucker if he’d have expanded more on the last points instead of just leaving them in the wind. All in all, personally i don’t know why we’d want a third party dev CSM specifically, especially with fewer seats. There is a lot of unofficial go between devs and CCP API devs already, and i don’t know if CSM’ing someone would help.

Other people have a much different niche to come at from, Lillik Eoner, a wormholer by trade and a 2013 player is lobbying for greater female presence in Eve and wormhole space. A noble goal but she doesn’t say much as to how she’d do that, or what she expects to do in the CSM specifically in regards to that. Other points are not made and the last post i see her make in her thread ends with “Sometimes, the best plan is none at all.”. I guess i don’t need to say much more here.

Moving on to ‘candidates from provi that aren’t Jin’taan’, we have Gecko Hareka also vying for a seat. He’s a provi member and has been playing since around 2013. His points of talk in his statement are short and sweet, but have sass. He mentioned the meta-history that was lost when the Eve wiki went down and how inexistent is the link between outside or player-created sources and the actual in-game. I have strong feelings about contextual information that ‘everyone knows’ but you can’t get ingame except by literally asking people or consulting dotlan and reddit. He also mentions better tools for interacting with Eve, both desktop and mobile, as well as something vague about interfacing with structures. I love one of his talking points, but given ‘big names’ it’s hard to fit him in a 10 person list just on that.

seeing as CCP doesn’t CSM lore

Staying in provi, we have bardghost Isu, a 2014 player and small FC/PvPer. He runs on a platform of quality of life changes, lore and listening. Again, there is not much here for us to chew on seeing as CCP doesn’t CSM lore and while quality of life is something to strive for, i don’t know if you could offer an unique enough view unless you’re literally also an UI/UX designer. I guess men’s character matter more, but unless he’s hiding a fantastic persona under that campaign thread, i don’t think he’ll end up on many votes.

Closing up this extremely long roundup we have Claevyan, a 2007 player that’s did highsec wardeccing and other highsec content before moving to high class wormholes for a while then returning to k-space and participating in various blops and caps warfare, all of it interspersed with NPSI fleet activities and solo wormholing, incursions and trading. After listing a hefty list of achievements and space-activities, i was hoping to hear what he has to say about Eve. Apparently all he wrote in his summary was all there was to the thread. But what was there is something that should be the core of all the CSM candidate’s statements. Quoting and cropping:

“I can make no promises as to what will happen when I am on the CSM. I don’t have a platform or a set of objectives that must be fulfilled. I don’t have any illusions as to my ability to force CCP to do anything it hasn’t decided to do. What I can offer, all any candidate can really offer, is an open ear and a channel through which CCP can hear you, know you, and trust you, the community.“

I didn’t mention here any joke/shitposting candidates since they aren’t and shouldn’t be worthy of your time. Depending on the number of people we have this week i might put the next roundup in the weekly, or make a separate post again. Given that this friday is the last day of campaign submissions, i don’t think we’ll get too many more.