Interview with Happy Joymaker

What is your ingame name?
Happy Joymaker

Links to your forum thread and site.
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1038984
Not doing a web site.

So, how long have you been playing?
I have been playing eve for about 2.5 years.

What have you done in Eve during that time?
A lot. I have been a part of a major space holding alliance, and was in charge of coordinating things relative to alliance level POS assets, from fuel purchases & deliveries, to providing mods for the towers, to making sure that the towers were installed with the mods, along with doing all of the same things for my own corp. I have fought PVP in 0.0, empire wars, and was involved in faction warfare for significant periods of time. I have done the mining thing, done the trading thing. Run cosmos missions, run level 5 missions regularly, and run criminal faction missions. I have explored wormhole space, done 10/10 plexes, and participated in titan kills. I was also the assassin in the recent tournament (didn’t do too badly for being stuck in a BS when at the time I only had BS3 and Torps3, when I am nominally a command ship and below specialist). I have done a lot.

What real life experiences do you have that will aid you in your elected position?
I work with politicians, as well as holding political office at times. I understand the nature of large organizations from the inside. I have played video games since pong, before the Atari 2800 system was released. I am also the president of a small civil engineering firm, understanding business and the needs of business.

What do you think of the recent Bob/Goonswarm fiasco, including the renaming of Kenzoku?
CCP did a mistake in doing the name change. They have admitted it. Let’s move on. It is unfortunate that CCP has a game where it took a flawed game mechanic to effectively dislodge BOB from Delve. There are some serious flaws in the game, such as absente ownership of space. Hopefully, with the new sov changes that are anticipated with the upcoming patch, many of those flaws that prohibit newer entities from competing with older ones will vanish. I am neither in favor of Bob or Goons, but it makes great 0.0 politics for those of us in the peanut gallery.

What do you think of the re balancing of ECM?
It was needed. Hey, I am a falcon pilot, so I got really hurt by this – but ya, for balance issues it was defiantly needed. Unfortunately, I fear that it will make the sniper fleets that can hit at the 180+KM range that much more powerful, particularly when combined with the speed changes that were introduced not to long ago.

What do you think of the re balancing of Stealth Bombers?
I think they are some very good changes. I would have looked at making them able to fit both torps as well as cruise missiles, but a couple of SB’s can really devastate a BS now. I would look at allowing bombs to be used in low sec as well, not just 0.0.

How much of an affect should players have on the broader Eve storyline?
Limited, to be honest. Yes, it is great to think of being able to change the game, but as it needs to be available to all who wish to do so… well, you understand the dilemma. In small ways, I think it is very important for people to be able to participate, but in the grander scheme of things, CCP needs to keep a relatively firm hand in order to guide the game in ways that actually work.

Does it bother you that Veldspar is more profitable than any low sec minerals?
To some extent. It is largely market driven, and CCP has made it so that Trit is used A LOT. I think CCP needs to look hard at resource balancing, and go back to some of their older ideas of introducing “Super Veld” in 0.0 space so that logistics are not hampered. The stealth removal of the mission that provided large amounts of trit into the game hurt a lot of industrial concerns and places major burdens upon logistics – time sinks for no other reason than to have time sinks. The introduction of the Orca and the jump freighter has helped out a lot, but more balancing needs to be done.

Methods of being able to mine in low sec effectively need to be introduced, but in such ways as to not remove the ‘pirate’ from the game. Knowing that about 1/3 of all minerals in the game are in essence recycled, not from mining, is also something to be considered. Being able to mine all day in empire is also not, in my opinion, a good thing either – but I prefer to see that become a game mechanic as opposed to a player mechanic. I have many ideas on how to do some of these re-balancing, and by being elected to the CSM, I can effectively work with CCP to help bring some balance to the issue.

What's your opinion on current war declaration mechanics?
I think it is relatively fair and reasonable. There are some mechanics that I don’t like so much (corp votes, for example), but overall it appears to work.

What is the single largest imbalance in game, and how would you fix it?
The disparity between the older, wealthier players/corps/alliances and the newer – in particular as seen by the ability to have the Dispro Cartel meaning virtually unworked for yet extremely massive amounts of game wealth. Keeping such massive amounts of wealth sources in the game that are static isn’t good for the health of the game. CCP realized this when they made the static plexes above 2/10 no longer static, but have not done anything in regards to this massive imbalance in regards to moons and moon mining. By making it so that Dispro, and to a lesser extent Promo, is so rare, yet so needed for the production of T2, CCP has set it up so that these static resources are disproportionately utilized. This is not a good situation for the economy of eve, nor for the ability of newer players to feel that they can succeed in the game. By having the resources static, and in essence a passive income to such a large degree, it has created a very static playing field that newer alliances cannot hope to enter.

Changing sov mechanics to no longer allow absentee owners to control large selections of space will be a significant first step. You need to occupy the space to control it. This, however, will not help with alliances that can project might into areas that sov does not play a factor, areas that should be available to up and coming groups to allow them to build (or fail) instead of being sucked up by the super powers to support their endeavors while keeping the newer folks out (it is about as much resource denial as it is resource usage).

Secondly, changing these resources so that there is no longer the massive disparity and massive wealth will be necessary. Alchemy was an attempt, but it failed in that the economics of it were out of proportion to the problem. You need to run how many large POS’s to make up for a single reaction that uses dysprosium? And what are your overhead for doing so (additional equipment, fuel, manpower, etc)? Right, it is out of whack. The two ways I have seen that can both work is to no longer make the resource static – by either making it run out on a moon, so that it respawns on another moon in the same region (think faction war plexes); or moving it off of moons entirely and into gathering sites similar to asteroid / gas belts.

Of course, one of the things CCP should look at is the actual usage of the materials. A rebalance of the blueprint needs would also do wonders by increasing other moon requirements while decreasing the dependence upon Dispro and Promo. T3 ships will, also, hopefully take some of the pressure off, but it will need to be more of a longer term, as opposed to a shorter term solution.

As players gain experience and begin to take notice of the greater eve universe out there, they often feel obliged to sign up with the existing large alliances or forever be a “small fry” out there. There isn’t a way for newer folks to effectively work their way into the big 0.0 game (which is perceived as the end game content), so a lot of people just walk away – after all, how many missions can you run, how many belts can you strip? Eve is a game about social interaction, and these game mechanics so effectively place limits on these interactions that it is broken, and will drive players (read: CCP’s clients) away from the game.

Anything to add?
Thanks for reading the wall of text, please vote for me!