E-UNI to host last CSM8 Town Hall: April 26 @ 19:00

Council of Stellar Management

EVE University will host the next Council of Stellar Management (CSM) Town Hall meeting on its public Mumble server on Saturday, April 26 at 19:00 EVE time.

This will be the final Town Hall for CSM8. The ninth CSM will be elected April 8-22, and announced at Fanfest on May 3.

Instructions for access to the UNI public Mumble server can be found here: http://eveuni.org/publicmumble

Each Town Hall is an open forum for the CSM to dialogue with EVE Online players about possible future directions for the game’s development. The CSM is a key stakeholder in CCP’s development process, and represents players’ interests.

This Town Hall will be simulcast by EVE Radio. Participants may submit questions to the CSM during the meeting, using an in-game chat channel.

EVE University CEO Kelduum Revaan wins CSM7 post

Kelduum Revaan, CEO of EVE University, one of the largest alliances in EVE Online, has been selected by players as a representative to the seventh Council of Stellar Management. As one of the 40 candidates, Kelduum received 3,163 votes, coming in sixth place, out of 59,109 total votes cast.

The Council of Stellar Management (CSM) is a player-elected council who represent the views of the members of the EVE Online community to Crowd Control Productions (CCP), the providers of EVE Online. The CSM communicates with CCP through at least two three-day summits held each term in CCP’s headquarters in Reykjavik, Iceland, and through dedicated forums and online conferences.

“I am very pleased to have been elected to the CSM and would like to thank all those who voted for me,” Kelduum said. “I’m looking forward to taking my seat on the council and will do my best to ensure that all EVE players are represented fairly.”

The CSM 7 term will begin on April 4th, and last into early 2013.  The next CSM will be elected before Fanfest 2013, scheduled for April 25-27, 2013.

For full details about the CSM elections, see this devblog published by CCP: http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28529

EVE University is is a neutral training institution in New Eden. Founded in March of 2004 by Morning Maniac, EVE University takes in pilots who have a desire to learn more, and train them in all aspects of EVE Online, allowing them to be fully capable of making a name for themselves in the galaxy.  For more information about EVE University, see this page: http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/

 

Kelduum Revaan for CSM7

Less Drama, More Results

Who Am I?

For those who don’t know me, I am Kelduum Revaan, CEO of EVE University for the past two years, and director for more than three years before that. For those not familiar with E-UNI, we are the most successful training corp in EVE and one of the few truly altruistic groups. We provide an assortment of resources to the EVE community, including education and training on various subjects as well as the UniWiki. We are funded primarily from donations from the community, both in time (none of our staff are paid) and other more tangible resources, and our members may stay as long as they want before they move on to other corporations while remaining a part of our community.

During my time with the Uni, I have seen the corp go from a handful of players to over 2,000 active members, and have seen tens of thousands of characters pass through our doors – going on to be everything from alliance leaders to fleet commanders, wormhole dwellers, pirates and industrialists, as well as more than a few well known members of the EVE community.

Personally, I of course started out as a regular newbie, and soon moved to Director of Diplomacy for E-UNI, dealing with more than a few interesting situations; then to Director of Operations, where I took over the leadership reigns of the Uni, helping it grow and dealing with many issues at every imaginable level; and finally to CEO, where I continue to lead the Uni to new strengths.

Outside of EVE I work as a ‘problem solver’ for a small internet provider in the UK, and use my significant experience in both programing and reverse engineering to resolve complex issues, which coupled with many years gaming experience, gives me further insight into how various mechanics interact within EVE.

Why Am I Running For CSM?

This is obviously the popular question. I believe the CSM needs an experienced yet neutral voice to help ensure balance and prevent control of the council from moving to push the agendas of any one player group to the detriment of the rest of the player base.

As it stands, CCPs recent refocusing on ‘Flying In Space’ and solving long older problems is a massive improvement over how things were this time last year, but it is important to ensure they continue on this path in a way that is even and balanced, maintaining and improving on existing systems in a way that benefits all players of all play-styles.

What makes EVE special is its community, which makes the universe both harsh and unforgiving, where the far side of every gate could see you in a new clone; whilst also being a catalyst for events like FanFest and other player meet-ups where bitter enemies can swap stories over a drink. However this community has a fragile balance which risks being disrupted if the CSM is populated by single-focus candidates.

With my experience and knowledge of the underlying mechanics of EVE, years of practice dealing with vastly differing viewpoints and a commitment to hear all sides before making any decisions, technical background, not to mention the thousands of alumni throughout the community who stay in contact with us, I feel I have the experience to be a valuable member of the CSM and serve the greater EVE community.

Why Should You Vote For Me?

  • I represent a neutral and balanced power, with nothing for myself or my corporation to gain from shifting the balance in EVE.
  • I have a proven track record of dispute resolution with hostile parties, collating all available information before making a decision.
  • I understand existing game systems very well, including the lesser understood and more complex ones such as corporation mechanics.
  • You think that overall EVE is not terminally ‘broken’ barring a few areas, and feel that CCP should continue iterating on existing mechanics and improving them, rather than diversifying into different systems which spread their focus.

 

Want More info?

 

As mentioned in the EVE forum thread, if you have any other questions, please feel free to post them there and I will answer them, or alternatively you can use my Formspring account to ask anonymously and I will post them here.

CSM7 – Formspring Q&A

If there is a question I haven’t answered, or not answered as fully as you would like, please feel free to ask me via my formspring account – you can even ask the questions anonymously. I will keep updating this as more questions come in.

 

What is your opinion; Is DUST 514 a benefit or a mistake to let it involve in planetary interaction?

DUST itself has a great deal of potential, especially after the recent announcement that the ‘cover charge’ has been dropped.

There’s not really enough detail at the moment to determine if DUST will be a significant benefit or hindrance with its links to EVE, although as an old PlanetSide player, I’m looking forward to trying it at Fanfest and attending the presentations and so on.

Similarly, its hard to say just what interaction it will have with PI, however it does seem that PI was built with the specific intention of it being the ‘resource’ fought over by the DUST players, and CCP are likely to be wary about upsetting the balance in EVE by adding any ‘game-breaking’ linked content.

I also expect further ‘industrial’ opportunities for EVE players to eventually supply the DUST player base with resources (tanks, guns, etc), and relevant timers/delays to prevent someone from getting ‘evicted’ from their installations without warning, but I suppose we’ll see in a couple of weeks as the information is released.

 

What is your thoughts on ship balancing, in particular Gallente? I know that hybrids have had a modes boost but overall Gallente boats still suffer from many well documented problems in the forums, beyond just their guns. Drone boats also.

The recent hybrid fix has brought a lot of the Gallente stuff more in-line with other other races, but due to their fragility, time to get into range and engage and so on, drones are not significantly used in PvP, which of course affects Gallente the most.

The clearest fix to this would be to improve the drone interface, for example making them work like a ‘normal’ module, and allowing a single hotkey to launch and have drones engage could be one way of doing this. The current system is horrible, and requires a rewrite as soon as possible (why does the window disappear when you launch all your drones? Why does it keep collapsing the sections? agh!).

 

How would you rank the following areas, in order of importance? 0.0, LowSec, HighSec, W-Space

It’s not really possible to rank areas of space in in ‘importance’, as each of them needs the others, however in decreasing order of ‘development focus need’:

1. LoSec – Needs development for FW/Piracy/Combat. People need reasons to go there.
2. W-Space – Needs a expansion of POS mechanics and a new POS/corp UI.
3. HiSec – Needs more mission content, and expansions to ratting. Bot
4. NullSec – Needs a solution to SuperCap proliferation.

Note that each of the above will effect each other, for example the POS/Corp UI stuff would benefit all the other areas of space.

 

How would you rank the following parts of EvE, in order of importance? That you think CCP should improve upon. Industri, Mining, Missions, Ratting/Plexes, Incursions,Pirating Small Gang PvP, Faction Warfare, SoV Warfare

With everything in EVE linking to everything else, its impossible to rank things in order of importance, however in decreasing order that CCP should improve them:

1. Pirating/Small Gang PvP
2. Faction Warfare
3. Missions
4. Industry
5. Ratting/Plexes
6. Incursions
7. SoV Warfare
8. Mining

 

What is your view on the Noble Exchange?

The launch and handling of it was a complete mess, and couldn’t have been much worse. I would still suggest CCP either drop the prices, or introduce the remaining items (those which are listed on the market but not current available anywhere) at significantly lower price-points, however they need to be careful to avoid devaluing the current items.

Similarly, I’m not against ‘customised’ ship skins, as long as they make no changes to the base stats of the ships they are applied to, but only as the current updating of all the ships is what makes this possible so there is not a massive developer resource requirement in adding them.

‘Gold ammo’ or anything else with provides a benefit, though? Never.

 

You mention using wardecs to encourage fighting. We can assume that you completely discount psychological and economic factors as reasons for people to go to war?

Not at all, in fact, quite the opposite. War for any reason (including denial of resources and similar) is fine, however there should be some level of fighting, at least.

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