Fireside Chat Transcript 23 Nov 2k19

So let me just grind through some stuff here, guys.
We are in an interesting period this week.
We have some news from EVE London we're going to be going over
about changes that are going to be happening to the game.
And perhaps most importantly, some of those changes are going to give us something to do
that's not a boring, shitty SovWar.
So I'm super pumped about that, involving, of course, the changes to bookmarks,
which in reality, the bookmark changes are cool and important on their own merits,
but the ACL bookmarks more functionally allow people to start fucking around in one whole space.
And we are going to start doing that, and it's going to be pretty awesome.
But...
First things first. Yeah, the Aether Wars thing is happening.
I completely don't care about that, and I'm pretty sure that nobody else here does.
All right, so first things first, Secret Santa is happening.
If somebody can link that thread, there is a Secret Santa thread that Cayman is going to be running,
and if you're going to be participating in the Secret Santa this year,
you need to RSVP for the Secret Santa by the 8th of December.
If you do sign up for the Secret Santa, you need to take it seriously
because it's considered to be serious business for Flurf,
and if you ghost on Secret Santa after signing up for it, bad things happen.
So, yeah. Thank you.
Next thing, we have our first announcement here.
I'm really pleased to see this. I did not have anything to do with this.
They just did this organically on their own and it requires some micromanagement from me,
which is great because I get to be lazy.
So, EVE Vegas 2020 has been announced on Reddit,
and they have this particular Twitter account, so if you're a person on Twitter,
please go ahead and follow that.
This is Greygal and all of the crew and the team that makes the volunteers that help make EVE Vegas happen.
Well, it's kind of on us, the community as a whole, to make sure that EVE Vegas occurs next year,
and already they're saying, "Hey, this is happening. We're doing this. We're getting feedback, blah, blah, blah."
So, as that progresses over the course of this year to make sure that EVE Vegas 2020 does occur,
you will be hearing me regularly promoting it because I don't care if CCV is doing some stupid San Diego thing.
We're going to be partying in fucking Vegas next October, come hell or high water.
So, that's cool.
Also, seeing Micromancer mentioned is pretty cool.
He did, in fact, send me a gigantic photo of his mostly naked ass with all his guns,
and I received that, and it was pretty cool.
Okay, so, before we go into the wormhole stuff,
because that's going to be the most interesting and substantive part of the fireside,
EVE London is today.
There have been a few announcements of things that CCV is going to be doing regarding the game.
I'm not sure whether the time zone tanking change that was discussed by Rise at the last Meta Show
is fully incorporated into what they announced at London,
but they did say that they're going to be removing the Defender's ability to pick the day of defense.
That's at least a positive change for Citadel mechanics,
but we'll have to wait and see about the rest of the stuff.
Ooh, Gargoyle update. That's kind of a big deal.
Or GTS, I should say.
So check that shit out, guys.
High fives all around for everyone who was involved with that project.
I did not realize that had happened. That is neat.
Okay, so one bit of minor unpleasantness to go through before we get to the wormhole stuff.
We are, as you guys know, on a monthly basis, Atrium compiles a whole bunch of statistics,
and those statistics are a lot more than just PAP scores.
They track engagement activity, forum posts, how many people are on Jabber,
how many people are doing things with the community.
And there are a couple of corporations that fell afoul of the dreaded suck metric.
And so Generals of Destruction, Syndicate, and Sub-Zero are going to be phased out of the alliance as a result.
One of the situations was a court merge, functionally.
They mostly moved over to Powerflate, so we need to be tidy when corporations start either merging into other corporations
or people lose interest and wander off or what have you because it becomes a security threat
unless we sort of close the door behind them.
But one of the things I want you guys to know, when we do say, "Hey, here's these statistics, here's things with the suck metric,"
it is not all about PAP scores.
I know that lots of other alliances only judge things by raw fit participation.
That is, of course, critically important, but a classic example,
corporations will have activity where they have a phase where everybody's playing.
And a lot of times where everybody's--especially if it's a friend group from one area
and they're all off playing another game together,
we will often give people a pass on PAP stats as long as you can see engagement and activity in other areas.
It's like, "These dudes are all hanging out on Jabber. They're just not going on fleets right now."
You sort of give it a pass for a couple months and see if people re-engage.
So when we do talk about removing corporations, when we talk about the suck metric and stuff like that,
the thing that I want you guys to take away is don't obsess completely on PAP stats.
And also, you can be the most high PAP corp out there, but if you're a bunch of insufferable pub lords,
I might just get rid of it anyway because it's awful and insufferable pub lords.
We don't want that in our group.
So yeah, that's a thing.
Corporations are being shown the door because of consistent and very low metrics.
And yes, as HM says, sending really obnoxious alliance mails are a great way for me to just completely subvert the normal process
and purge because the executive exists in the exception.
All right, so on to more fun things.
So the ACL bookmark change is coming in on, I guess, Tuesday, next Tuesday,
and this is something that we have been preparing for for a long time.
We want something new to do with you guys.
We want to go and do a campaign and have something cool and different and not just have it be another, like, oh, tribute campaign,
and we're all going to go blow up a bunch of citadels and then nothing comes of it,
and we're all sort of like blue balled to fuck with that and not getting our pounds of flesh in our screens.
So Kathy Aron and the guys at Pathfinders have been working really hard on preparing for this,
and when the bookmark change goes in, we are going to start sending people sort of at the small scale level,
sort of six and squads type engagement into wormhole space to look for stuff to do.
We have been approached by a lot of the major wormhole entities because they are reasonably
and understandably afraid that we are going to destroy their ecosystem.
And there will be some destruction, but our goal in this is not we're going to be all conquering people coming into wormholes
and we're going to kick everybody's ass, because in practice,
we are very likely going to make a whole bunch of terrible mistakes and get our asses kicked, at least initially speaking.
And I think that's going to be kind of interesting.
Wormhole space, if you've ever lived in a hole for any length of time, is a very different and unforgiving environment,
which is cool and good.
This is not intended to be like the Imperium as a coalition invades wormholes and burns them all down.
This is kind of like, hey, we want something new to learn.
We want something new to do.
We want to get our asses kicked in new and different ways.
We will also end up crushing a bunch of people that get in our way,
but we want to do it in a way that isn't ruining the ecosystem,
because we need something to do that's not like fucking Fuzzy Sov garbage,
which is not to say that we're not ever going to be doing Sov Wars or things like that,
but my sense for talking to you guys at a variety of events and firesides and shit is that
we don't want to go launching off on a big-ass Sov campaign and have it be unfulfilling and boring like the Tribute one.
We want something new. We want something that actually involves spaceships mashing into spaceships.
And one of the things that is kind of nice about the potential about the wormhole stuff is that
they are kind of used to arranging fights in wormhole space, and that's not a bad thing for our purposes.
Like, if we arrange through back channels with certain wormhole entities that we're going to mash 50 spaceships into their 50 spaceships,
I'm fucking happy with that, and there's going to be some people who are going to piss us off,
and we will kick over the sandcastles the old-fashioned way, and we'll have loot pinatas.
So I just want people to have the right attitude about this.
This is not going to be "We are amazing, and we know what we're doing."
This is not our space. It's not our territory. Pathfinders know what's up about this shit,
but as far as your average member of the Imperium, most of us are very confused about wormholes
in the same way that we're very confused about Hi-Sec.
It's a strange place where the rules don't normally operate the way that we understand.
So don't assume it's going to be an awesome victory all the way around.
If we get kicked in the dick a few times once we start messing around wormhole space, that's awesome.
I want to see challenge. I want to see novelty. I want to see us forced to learn
and confront different opponents, different challenges.
Anyway, yeah, so I think it's going to be really cool. I'm glad TCP is finally done,
because I can come to you guys and say, "Hey, we're going to do something cool."
And, Kathy, I don't know if you wanted to use your words and talk about this a little bit, or--
I'm going to make sure you're unmuted if you are here, too.
I am here. So basically, you guys can hear me, yeah?
Hang on a second.
I believe.
Okay.
Am I good?
Kathy, you are unmuted if you can use your words.
I can. Can you hear me?
Why is this not-- Can you guys hear me?
Okay. Geez. Thank you. I appreciate it.
The whole wormhole thing, it's going to be a combination of like Six and Squads,
and it's also going to be folks who just want to kind of show up and do the things.
But we'll have a channel that everybody can consolidate in the Jabber,
and there'll be a ping target that'll be working for that kind of stuff as well.
But you guys will-- I'm pretty sure it'll be pretty content-filled at this point,
based on everything we've been gathering in terms of intel.
So it's going to be wormhole living, and it's going to be scanning chains--
I'm glad that you've all enjoyed hearing from Kathy Iron.
I think he gave a great pitch as to all of the fantastic things that we're going to be doing
in the wormhole space.
So I really appreciate him speaking to us today.
And I feel inspired.
I'm sure you all feel inspired as well.
I--
You guys are either completely fucking with me or my mumble is screwing up.
I can't even tell who's fucking with who and who's trolling who.
Like I haven't heard a damn thing he was saying.
It's okay. It's going to be fun.
We're going to enjoy ourselves and look for pings and whatnot coming up soon.
It was actually talking?
Goddamn it, my fucking headphones must be screwing up.
I couldn't hear anything. I'm so sorry.
I thought you guys were trolling me about him being silent because I couldn't hear him.
So I'm all like, "Ahh, I'm very inspired."
Sorry, Kathy. You go. I'll fuck with my headphones. They don't suck.
I actually want to hear the recording for that now.
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