Fireside Chat Transcript Feb 17 2024

Asher Elias:

All right, hello. Welcome to the fireside. We just got done with some very productive meetings.

R. I. P. Brisc Rubal, who got promoted to the directorate. F's in the chat.

Apple, you got any problem with me strategically declassifying that ping, as in actually sharing it?

Apple Pear:

That's why we made it, so yeah, cheers.

Asher Elias:

Perfect, okay. So first off, I wanted to strategically declassify a ping that Golems just sent out. I think I've been telling you guys that, that they're, they're deep into overpinging themselves and getting ping fatigue.

I think I mentioned that a few firesides ago. And Ol' Golems can we link that ping Apple? He's he's just proving our point for us. It's very nice.

Apple Pear:

Let me find it. Give me a moment.

Asher Elias:

Sure, sure. Ping fatigue question mark. That's when, uh, you're not getting the results you want. So you ping three or more times. And that's that's something they've been going hard at. It's not quite rage pinging. Rage pinging, like, if you're in a fight and you send out 80 pings, that's relatively normal. There we go. But you can check that one out.

https://i.imgur.com/OypWqev.png

Apple Pear:

They, they, they literally for those, like, 25 man roams that we sometimes have, etc. They, they sometimes ping, like, four times for that.

Asher Elias:

I watch what happens when our lads go in there, Arkadios' fleet or Alterarri or Tetra. When they go into their space, they ping so many times. It is, it is monumental. I also enjoyed the too much zoomer chat part. That was, that was good. That really made my day to day. Thank you for that ping Gobbins. That was, that was nice to read. I don't know what the, the content is no longer available. Thing is sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn't. Here, hang on, let me just screen cap this and upload it to imgur. I should fix that. Try that. New link with the imgur link. That should do it. You're trolling me, right, that the imgur link?

Snipereagle1:

For the question in Elysium, zoomers are the people who make millennials feel old.

Asher Elias:

I did fabricate that response. You are correct. This is a fabricated ping. I photoshopped it. It didn't happen.

All right, so we're going to have, we have some interesting weeks coming up. This fireside is more of the intro to that. The directorate is abuzz right now. A lot of people working hard, watching our numbers come in. Our, our fleet attendance is good. I saw the MER you guys are out producing everyone, out mining everyone, out ratting everyone.

We are humming as a Coalition right now. There have been attacks in Catch. Basically, they're trying to do some low intensity warfare and burn us out. It has not worked out for well for them. Their numbers have fallen precipitously on these on these guerrilla tactics. They have called GMs in to whine multiple times. We have seen them come into look at our POSes and, and after they cried to the GM's about the POS. So we know that that that's working and that they're very upset about that. Right now we're in the medium to long term planning part of what's going on. It's hard to make plans exactly because we don't know what the future will bring as far as the changes CCP will make to NullSec. So we're not making plans as far as, this is what we're going to do SOV wise or attacking space. But we're making plans contingent on, you know, different things happening.

Do a CSM Q and A at the end of this at the end of this meeting with Kaz, and he's going to try to answer questions we're very serious about our, our CSM, like not leaking. So, you know, I don't get leaks like I imagine you guys think I'm totally filled in. I don't, I don't know what's going on in the CSM any more than you guys do. Overall, that's a good policy for us because it engenders trust with CCP that they can talk to our guys and believe that, you know, what, what they say will stay within that. In the short term that might not be, you know, it might not be satisfying for me, I'd love to hear what's going on, but in the long term, that's always been our policy and will remain to be that our policy.

Oh, a bunch of faction Dreads are dying, I'm getting Zkill updates. There's no wink at the end of that, Nosato. It is very much that way. Let's see, I'm reading what you guys have said. I'll get to questions in a little bit. Yeah, something's happening in Tama, I keep getting the updates.

Okay, so, I wanted to talk about a couple things on my Let me pull up my notes here. Probably the most important thing that we can do right now is I mentioned that they are having you know, low intensity guerrilla tactics. Most of the space they're hitting is Dracarys space. And now that space has been timed out of Chinese time zone. So Dracarys obviously is mostly Chinese time zone. So we do have a corp. And if we could link that corp, this is a like an Entosis corp. You can put alts in it. Anyone can, there you go, it's EGG, Enterprise and Goon Guides. Anyone can be a good egg and put an alt in that corp and run Entosis. We need people to join and be a good egg just to help out with Entosis. You can have your character in there, they don't leave they don't leave, you know, the coalition or whatever, so you can still rat, do whatever you do, right? That's not a problem. But if you...

Snipereagle1:

Do not put your ratting alts in that corp.

Asher Elias:

Oh, okay. Apparently not.

Snipereagle1:

PI alts, manufacturing alts, like stuff like that. Don't make us yeah, I don't know what the tax rate is, but it's probably really high. So, and if it's not, I'll go make it really high.

Asher Elias:

Yeah. But yeah, if you could be a good egg and join, that would be ideal. It would just let us spread the load a little bit as far as having people ready to help fight the Entosis that's going on pretty much nightly or near nightly. If you've been forming up for fleets in U. S. time zone, you've probably seen some of those fleets going over to catch. And it's a pretty important thing that's going on. Alright yes, you can bring your Drake.

https://goonfleet.com/index.php/topic/352892-entosis-alt-corp-enterprising-goon-guides/

Survey, we are closing it tomorrow, so if you have not yet filled it out, I know most of you have, but if you have not yet filled it out, you can fill out the Imperium survey for one more day. There is the link, the survey. It will be closed tomorrow, so. If you did not get a chance to do it, if you're just tuning in after you've been away for a little bit, you can go ahead and fill that out before we close it tomorrow. You do get five paps for filling out the survey. And yes, it is a fabricated survey.

https://survey.goonfleet.com/

All right I'm going to go ahead and answer a couple questions, then I'm going to throw it over to Kaz. So you don't have a chance to win an iPad, but you do have a chance to get five PAPs, and that chance is 100%. Ooh, Kirkland, I need to go to Costco. That's a good, thank you for reminding me, Omri.

What is the POS you've been talking about? We have a, a long range POS over in EX6 to help defend the jump bridge.

Will CCP ever do something serious against frat and botting? These are not, by the way, if these are supposed to be CSM questions that I'm going to answer questions then we'll, we'll have Kaz step up.

Can someone link the entosis thing again, please? Someone drop the egg corp in, that's the corp you need to join.

What is it about the POS they whine about? POSs can shoot further than just about anything. You can shoot a POS, like, can shoot like 1, 200 kilometers away. It's always been that way. Just most people, especially newer players, don't realize this or don't understand this. If they're gunned, they can shoot really far away.

What role has Brisc been given as a director? He is now a member of MiniTru, the ministry of ministry of truth helping you get your daily dose of propaganda. Kaz, are you here and ready to field some questions?

Kazanir:

I suppose so. Hi everybody.

Asher Elias:

And we're getting, it looks like most of the questions are for you anyway.

They're, they're more interested in you. So we're going to,

Kazanir:

I don't know. I haven't... I hate my job.

Asher Elias:

Yeah. You don't, you love this job. Don't lie.

Kazanir:

Let me see if I can still read.

Asher Elias:

Have you been having some space cake too?

Kazanir:

No comment.

Asher Elias:

One of our, one of our directors not Kazanir, but someone else was getting higher and higher as the meeting went on, it became very evident by the end that they were basically useless for, for directoring. You can make your own guess as to who it was.

I know the game updates might change this answer, but is our main mission statement the free use of NullSec, or does it destroy Horde, PanFam, or both, or something else? So, yeah, this is a good question. I like, I like the answer to that. The free use of NullSec, I assume you mean, you're talking about rental, we, we oppose renting because we do believe it's bad for NullSec. And that is sort of a, that is sort of a belief of ours. And, and yeah, it's something that we would like to be able to address, but it is, it is relatively hard for us to address. And that's something that CCP would be better at doing than us. But we do oppose renting on a moral level. to destroy Horde or PandaFam.

I think, so this was interesting in this survey, we asked who who do you hate the most in this game or dislike the most? I don't remember how we phrased it, but what group do you dislike the most? And a lot of you answered CCP, which I guess I should have expected, but I I forgot to do that. But yeah Horde or PandaFam was certainly the number one answer. It is the thing that most people dislike. TimeZones was also an answer that we got a lot of. Test was not a particularly popular answer. I think most people have seen them humbled. So you know, they did MaxForm CTA the other day. They got 10 guys, so it was, it was impressive for them. And like I said, MaxForm CTA, yeah. Test was next. They have been nexted.

Yeah, we, we obviously oppose botting, but once again, that's one of those things where we can't do anything about it. And having been accused myself of being a bot before when I have absolutely, like, I wouldn't know how to do it. Yeah, it is, if you know anything about my, my ratting or, you know, that it, it's, it's the furthest from botting possible. But people are just bad at identifying what a bot is or isn't.

Kazanir:

I'd I'd love to go back to that question if I can find it. About our, our main mission statement to sort of segue into CCP and CSM summit time, if I can.

Asher Elias:

Yeah, please do.

Kazanir:

So a lot of people haven't been playing this long and don't remember this, right? But there was a time in the game's history early on where to get into Nullsec, you had to join a corporation. And to get into one, you needed, you know, 50 or 70 million skill points, typically on your main. And you had to have a long PVP kill board, and it was really the elite. And these are the guys who. You know, fought each other at first, and we're also the guys who tried to toss goons out of NPC NullSec in 2006, which is sort of part of our supervillain origin story way back when.

And it turns out that various groups like that will have consistently, you know, maintained a lot of power in this game over the years, and we see ourselves as an important counterweight to where otherwise, you know, someone like PanPan would just be dominant and be unable to be stopped by, and I think that's really been true for like at least 10 years, ever since Initiative blued us, well, they blued us because NCDOT and PL blued each other first, in a sense. So there's a whole long history here of, of needing to be competitive against forces that were greater than us before we ever showed up on the scene, so to speak.

What I have done and this, if you remember my CSM post back in the fall, is try to talk to CCP about an abstract analysis of the game that actually says, who are all of these people who are the different types of people who have played in NullSec and where are the mechanics that we have lost, where some of those people are not playing anymore.

What, what is the reason that now our great enemies, FRT and PanFam currently actually look a lot more like us then they did 10 years ago. They, they are both not copies, but have a lot more similarity to goonswarm 30k than they did a long time ago. And so that, and the CSM post goes into some detail on this.

Asher Elias:

If I can hop in there very quickly, one of the great ironies about Horde was they were started by PL as a, as a recruiting ground, essentially. And they were meant to be poached from, and then they became bigger than the people they were meant to be poached from, and became the dominant you know, relationship in that.

Kazanir:

Right, yeah, exactly. And so my, my hope, ironically, and like I said, the CSM, this should not be a surprise. My CSM post from 6 months ago goes into this, but of course, CS... CCP has now come out and said, you know, we're going to look at Nullsec. And what I have told them is my hope is that they can pull off something that really invites a lot more people to compete for the map in Nullsec, people who have resources and are willing to be elite EVE players, but haven't competed for a long time for a variety of reasons due to mechanical changes and that you would see other significant players think that NullSec is interesting again and come out to fight. In addition to other mechanics that are supportive of small groups that are just getting their foothold for the first time, and that we would not need something like the Southeastern Agreement, because in order for a large group to take too much space, they would end up making real trade offs, and it would be effective for some other group to come, you know, perform a border war, take their stuff, whatever, or for some small groups to gang up and do that while they are distracted elsewhere.

So, that, that was always my take on how to approach things in order to create a game that can't get as, you know, air quotes stagnant. The game is not really stagnant, I don't think, but the meta is a lot harder to shift than it has been historically. And that is what I, I wanted to work with CCP on overthrowing, and that was my attitude going into the summit, if that makes sense.

So with that in mind, I'm happy to take questions. I don't really know what to say necessarily. There's a lot of obviously we can't say, and I don't know, you know, if there's a particular thing I want to share. I guess what I'll say is we've been pleasantly surprised by how nice CCP is to us in certain ways. They're very frustrating and I hate this job. Don't don't get me wrong. But there are times when I've either been impressed with a lot of the, the knowledge and reasoning that they brought to the table and we're, we're pretty happy with the amount of stuff that they are sharing with us, even though there are many times when we wish they would do things differently or where we have been completely caught off guard and the player base is mad. There's still a lot of that. I understand that.

Asher Elias:

Let me throw out a couple just yeah rules here, please, please don't ask him is CCP doing this or have they said this, he can't answer that you know, you can ask about impressions or how you feel about something or how CCP reacts to how what you say, I think those are all valid questions that can be answered it to some degree. Also, please don't get mad at him if Kaz says I can't really answer that because he can't answer that and it's the same thing that we all have to go through.

Kazanir:

For sure. All right, I'm going to start up at the top of my thing and go down and see if there's stuff that looks good.

The weather in Iceland was cold, but good. It wasn't, they said it was the best week they have had there, really, since the start of the year.

Let's see, question I can't answer. Troy Baraya asks, nice to the CSM or nice to GSF? Really, they're working with all of us, right? There's no, of course, I think it would be bad if there were any partisanship, but there really is not a problem like that. Yeah, and the CSM works remarkably well together, given how I mean, I, I understand that it could be a lot worse than it is, so to speak. So I think things are honestly not the worst there. Does that mean I necessarily trust the hostiles who are on the council? You know, not like I trust blues. Of course not. But things are not as bad as it could be for sure.

Symbiotes says, can you talk about the 4 percent tax thing or no? So this is one thing where I told them. This is one of those changes that we have, Angry and I both have done a lot to try and actually support because there's some fundamental things about it that are actually good. The base flat tax compared to other changes they could make is one of the best ones in balancing terms, we feel like. But, of course, the way they have done it with sort of minimal communication and now a giant hike after a couple small one did not make anyone feel good. I have also told them I feel like the, the index formula change that made the SCI, the system index higher. Seem... went in the wrong direction. So I'm not, I'm not completely happy, but these are a set of changes where the, the fundamentals are sound. I also, I felt in the aftermath, like I was caught off guard by how much it affected blueprints. I think I've discussed that in gs_isk that now research blueprint costs are much, much higher than anyone has paid historically, and we're not happy with that. Of course, I can't predict if they're ready to do anything or if they will even agree. But I'm highlighting that as a big thing that makes it difficult for new people that we were caught off guard by, where the rest of it for industry, the change will get through the market within a matter of months, essentially, if that makes sense.

I'll answer Cynthia Gray's question. Does CCP actually care to make the game better and not just monetized? I'm really, honest to God, the answer to this is absolutely yes. It is, it is not at all like they are sitting there scheming about how to extract the most money from the player. They do know that that doesn't work. You know, of course, there are people with KPIs about sales, and they have a marketing department, and they have promotions, and they have PACs, and not all of those departments always talk to each other, as the player base has clearly observed sometimes. And when there are things that happen, and then there's a freakout. But it is not, you know, it's not like we're dealing with evil people who are just out to get your wallets. It's not like that at all. I have been at least moderately impressed with the amount of planning and effort they had put in to try and rework their monetization strategy that has not seen a lot of payoff so far. But I, I'm not, I'm not upset with them on that score. This is not a thing where I think this is the thing they need to solve. If that makes sense. I wish they had made a lot of better choices over the course of the last 5 and 10 years, but the problem is not with them just being too greedy, if that makes sense. The problems are way more complex.

Karmabad asks, Kaz, do you wish to limit multiboxing or is it in a good state? I, I am a, like, I guess my principles are that everyone should be able to play however they want. And that the fact that EVE allows I mean, let's say a 3, 000 APM demigod, hypothetically, to play. Of course, I don't want anyone to be cheating and doing input broadcasting, but there are people who are dramatically more skilled at video games than anyone currently within the sound of my voice, unless Globby is here.

And I think that the game, EVE itself, should support those people being more interesting to EVE. Right now, those multi boxers are doing stuff like 50 EOSs in Pochven, or whatever, or 20, or whatever it is. I think that there should be ways for them to be more relevant in Nullsec or on the map than they currently are. Sorry, I should have included Joe and Jason, I guess, as well in that category. But that, right now, user mechanics only partially support those people. I think there should be more for them to do in a way that is more impactful, even though they are just one person, where right now those are sort of limited options. So I guess I'm super pro multiboxer, but want big changes to EVE. In a way you can see Nevermind.

I'll answer fourth time last time. I, I can't say anything about what they say to us. He asks, do they lose more money than what they make, or do they talk about that? I, of course, can't either answer anything about that. But, their financial statements, we get information about how CCP is doing. I think twice a year it is, or quarterly. Pearl Abyss, yeah, exactly.

Asher Elias:

Those are public, CCP makes a lot of money off EVE. A lot of that money goes into other projects, and it's not necessarily funneled back into EVE. EVE is a very profitable game for them. It's probably Pearl Abyss most profitable project right now.

Kazanir:

Almost certainly, yeah.

HacksMalachite asks, Has there been a positive for the near future of this game? I mean, no, I hate my job and I'm super cynical. But, the game is currently very popular. You know, more than it has been within the past couple years. Clearly what they are doing is in a sense working, even though a lot of the, I'll say air quotes, theme park content they produced in LowSec has not been for us. The game is a lot healthier than it was when I took office a year and a half ago. A lot healthier. You know, I can't argue with that. It's popular, or it's possible that the moneky's paw is getting ready to just fist everyone, and we'll be deeply unhappy this summer. It's equally possible, I think, that it'll be EVE's most popular expansion pack in five years. So that, that, from one end of the spectrum to the other, I think, is a possibility at this point.

Bunch of stuff I can't answer. Bunch of stuff I can't answer. Eagleclaw, I'll answer, Eagleclaw asks, What's your favorite thing that you are most proud of that you have done with the CSM? And I will say there is one thing, and it's completely classified, and you won't learn it until the book is written.

Leonora D asks, Is the next book being written? No.

Asher Elias:

Yeah, Andrew Groen said he wasn't sure if he was going to write number three, because one and two were such like a challenge for him. Mm hmm. My guess is that he will probably do so.

Insidian asked for the Good Egg Corp. Can they be alpha accounts? Yes, they can.

Apple Pear:

No, they can't. No, they can't. You can only Entosis with Omegas.

Asher Elias:

I'm just going to answer every question about this wrong.

Apple Pear:

So, that's why we suggest to use your PI alts for it, because PI still works, because you still get the same things, et cetera, and you need to be Omega with your PI alt anyway, so that's why that's a good one to use for that.

Asher Elias:

Kaz, Kurt Von Eggers has a good question. How do you prep your concepts to present to the CSM and CCP?

Kazanir:

I actually went on a vision quest where I read all of the patch notes for EVE Online in reverse order from the present all the way back to the beginning.

Ranger Gama:

I was on comms when he did that. He's not lying, it was weird.

Kazanir:

I took notes while I was doing it too, that was the setup a year and a half ago. It was, it was intense and I had like a visionary experience at the end of it when I got to the Exodus patch notes. I think it really only took, you know, a day, maybe a couple overall, I can't remember.

Asher Elias:

He ascended to the higher plane. It was like watching a gigabrain come to life.

Kazanir:

Some of them are only on, like the web archive site now. It's hard. I, I went through the major ones, expansion patch notes, and any, when they were doing like quadrants, which has been like two different times, I think, I went through all the quadrant patch notes, anything with a name or a sub name, like Revelations, for example, I think had three different sub patches.

BluePlexus asks, what was the most radical patch in your opinion? I think it's probably either Exodus or Citadel. Or, there's a, there's a strong case for Ascension actually, with skill injectors, which were in Ascension.

Asher Elias:

Yeah, for people who don't remember patch names, why do you think those are the most?

Kazanir:

So Exodus is one of the game's first expansions. In like 2004 it was probably the, it's the second real expansion and feels like the first real one in the timeline, because it's the one that introduced POS and moon mining for the first time, and the concept of NullSec as a map game. Citadel, obviously it introduced Citadel. Is really part of a trifecta with Ascension, which introduced skill injection and Alpha and Omega, and Lifeblood, which introduced fracked Athenors and fracked Mining.

Mr. Ranger asks, is CSM happy with the quality and or quantity of content in the last few and upcoming expansions? I won't speak for anyone else. Certainly Angry and I are excited to see CCP finally promise to, to talk, you know, look at NullSec. What I, I'm not unhappy. I am the game. Like I said, I can't complain that a lot of people are playing the game.

It's healthy, even if it's not necessarily Nullsec and they haven't completely mistreated us.

Asher Elias:

I think Kaz, myself, there's certain people where we like look forward to a challenge, right? So I don't know what's coming, but certainly I believe that you have the leadership to adapt to whatever it is, and I think we're better positioned than most of the other nullsec, you know, unless CCP comes out with some kind of change that really says, Hey, if you own 30 regions of space, you're doing great, which I have a hard time imagining. That would be bad for us. But if they, if there's something that, you know, works with you being in a compact space we are in a good position. And I think that that is the more likely result.

Kazanir:

So let, let me actually put a second part onto the answer to Ranger's question, which is, I, what I warned them of really almost as soon as I took office, and saw the initial stuff, which now has become the expansions you've experienced. Because we did get some information, I told them like, this can work for a while, but it is in a sense theme park content. And I don't want Eve to be trapped into a situation where the need to put out two expansions a year of new systems, like a whole FacWar revamp, just keep up. Right, I think there's a better way to do it, and I'm glad that they're going to focus more on the sandbox elements, because I think that that's, you know, longer lasting in effect.

If you want to look up the term theme park content, it's a term that generally is used to apply to other MMOs like World of Warcraft, where there's a more defined set of content with sites that you can go and either, you know, content you provide against other players or PvE sites and not as sandboxy. So, that doesn't wholly apply to the, the FacWar stuff, it's more complicated than that, but that, that was my general warning to them, is they don't want to get into a situation where they feel like they need two content heavy releases per year, even though it has gotten the game back on its feet.

Asher Elias:

They can't, they can't, I mean this is my personal opinion, but they can't compete at that level anyway, you know, World of Warcraft has way more money than they do. Final Fantasy what's the MMO? 14? Final Fantasy has way more money than they do.

Kazanir:

It's not their market. It's not their core market either.

Asher Elias:

And I don't think a lot of players want that. You know, a lot of us here, we like the sandbox. That's why we are here.

Kazanir:

Alright.

Asher Elias:

Kaz, I insist you answer a question about cat ears. I don't know what that means, but there's multiple people saying cat ears.

Kazanir:

Cat ears. Cat ears is about whether people should be able to put other, like, cat ear apparent cosmetics as a, like, an add on. Like, should you have clothing for your earship?

Asher Elias:

Oh, who cares? Nothing like that matters.

Kazanir:

It doesn't matter, but I, like I said, I'm, in principle, I support every playstyle. Let them sell cat ears. I'm, I'm down for that.

Asher Elias:

[Dramatic voice] In the Grimdark future, you can't buy cat ears.

Kazanir:

Right. To me, this is, I have gotten into tiffs at C, with CCP about this, because I don't believe that the science fiction future is only Grimdark. I think it is Grimdark and Neon and covered in plants and whatever else you can imagine out in space where people can do anything they want. I don't want the Barbie star back. But there are going to be Barbie star lovers in space in a million years if the human race gets that far and CCP should be selling those now. That's my stance. Alright, I think that's it. Is there anything else?

Asher Elias:

No, I mean, there's a lot of questions people have that I feel like you can't answer.

Kazanir:

I've had to skip over so many, yeah, I know. I will go through the logs of this and possibly post a thread of other answers if I see stuff that I didn't get to and we can post that on the forums. And I think that that would be useful.

Thank you all for coming. This is great.

Asher Elias:

Yeah, so you guys have got to experience a lot of what what I get experience in the directorship gets to experience where, you know, we can ask a lot of questions, but there's not a lot that can be answered. But that's OK. We think long term. We attempt to think long term, so it is much better to to maintain that proper NDA than it is to, you know, go around it.

All right. I think we'll just wrap up there and I will see you all next week. We're going to have a pretty big fireside next week and it should be good, so if you can make it next week, please be here.

Clap, sir. Goodbye.