Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Gwen Ikiryo on 23 Dec 2014, 21:26
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So, I was recently explaining the nature of the IGS and why it's not really considered acceptable to post extensive setups and preambles before your IC content to a new player over in Eve Fiction (https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=393597) and how it tends to funtion as sort of a... In-universe forum for characters in peoples minds, rather then sort of the traditional sort of roleplaying board that exists as a meta-platform for freeform roleplay, with threads serving as essentially by-post versions of in game RP channels or organized RP events. Or rather, as physical (or not-so-physical, for VR or video roleplay) locations.
And while trying to explain the reason for it being that way, I ended up genuinely confused: Why is it like that? Because it's really strange and almost completely unique amongst online roleplay communities, paticularly MMOs. If you look at literally (http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/874702/) any other (http://guildwars2roleplayers.com/home/m/2737230/viewforum/673041) MMO roleplay forum (http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=21), even the sci-fi ones for which an actual modern dayish forum (http://www.swtor.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=103) in the game world would make total sense, (http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/forumdisplay.php?f=391) all of them follow the exact same model of having a spattering of private roleplay signup threads and mostly (and I say this with as much affection as possible) threads of very in-depth, prose heavy dueling IC essays.
Now, you might be the about to say that it's because of Eves inherent unique sandboxyness, or because of CCP half-clarifying what the IGS is in meta terms in how they moderate it. But here's the thing: Even the Dust 514 IGS has fallen into the same standard overall. (https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=175822&find=unread) And no one seems to really be objecting in the same way strong way they do for IGS, despite the forum being contextually identical. So what's the deal?
I've never really questioned it before, and don't really dislike it per se, and in fact sometimes find it relaxing - Though I do think the IGS is a little shallower then most places as a result - But I don't really get it. Why can't threads like that be more common and accepted alongside the traditional ones, instead of taking the place completely at face value and scorning those who don't?
It's kinda... Dull.
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With the IGS being as it is, much like ingame channel RP, i.e. going back and forth comment for comment, a post like the one that got moved to Eve Fiction leaves very little (that is, nothing) to engage with.
My character looks at a post full of unknowable thoughts and motivations and so on and so forth, and while it may all be good and interesting writing - nobody else knows any of that stuff, and therefore cannot actually respond to/interact with it.
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With the IGS being as it is, much like ingame channel RP, i.e. going back and forth comment for comment, a post like the one that got moved to Eve Fiction leaves very little (that is, nothing) to engage with.
My character looks at a post full of unknowable thoughts and motivations and so on and so forth, and while it may all be good and interesting writing - nobody else knows any of that stuff, and therefore cannot actually respond to/interact with it.
Well, I was less talking about that post specifically - There are a few little problems with it that are frequent newbie mistakes from people not intimately familiar with the setting - But rather just the general trend of rejecting forum threads that can't be contextualized as your-character-literally-reading-a-forum.
Or, rather, why is the IGS "as it is"?
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Because one of CCP's rules is that it is an In-Character only forum, and any out of character threads will be locked or shut down. OOC posts are also removed.
Over time, those rules came to be interpreted both by GMs, ISD, Devs, and Players to mean that the IGS is a place for characters to post In-Character. The typical habit of EVE players to post battle reports, call-outs, and host discussions carried over into the IGS and turned it into the roleplaying version of the rest of the forums.
In short, EVE's player mentality and CCP's rule against OOC posting in the IGS shaped it over time into what it is today. I don't think CCP ever sat down to say how the IGS needs to be considered, but rather a continuing pattern of posting behavior came to be seen as the only acceptable norm.
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Because everything in EVE is IC.
The Intergalactic Summit is no more OOC than any other part of the game. It doesn't need set up, it doesn't need scene-setting, it is what it is. It's an IC message board that capsuleers post on in their freetime, just like we do RL.
I, for one, see nothing wrong with this. Precisely because it's unique and immersive. "Meta-platforms" are dull and boring because there is no real point to them. You have to invent scenes, invent reasons for characters to be at those scenes, and so on. It makes them feel very fake (honestly, in-game physical events in chat channels feels the same way, but there is sadly no way around that without a proper avatar game). IGS on the other hand is literally something my character is browsing and posting on in her own time. That is very immersive.
It's the simulation aspect, which is what makes EVE as intriguing as it is for RP. That's what I want from my EVE RP. If I want to be writing a cooperative story I go to a site that is built around that. That isn't EVE, and frankly for me isn't any other MMO either. MMO RP is the place for real time, immersive 'getting-into-your-character's-daily-life' RP. That is what the IGS is and it's better for it. IGS is the only MMO RP forum I actually engage with precisely because it's about stepping into your character's head and experiencing their life instead of writing fictional stories -about- a character's life.
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I, for one, see nothing wrong with this. Precisely because it's unique and immersive. "Meta-platforms" are dull and boring because there is no real point to them. You have to invent scenes, invent reasons for characters to be at those scenes, and so on.
How is this different from RP events and BaRP, though? I mean, what you do in those has no real impact on the game itself, and in most cases the only reason your character is showing up is because "this is where the RP is" on a meta level. So why does it matter if the exact same thing is just done in a play-by-post format instead? You might say "because it isn't live", but really, RP in channels isn't really live either - Considering it sometimes takes people upwards of five minutes to write a message in really heavy stuff - It's just not live faster.
I mean, generally speaking, I totally agree with what you're saying. I love Eve because it has the potential to create an environment of immersion and real cause and effect like you're talking about here that you simply can't get anywhere else, that can lead to fascinatingly fluid and dynamic roleplay that's completely impossible in a static, dead world, even if that often leads stuff that takes you out of your comfort zone as both a player and a roleplayer.
But there's no rule that says it has to be that way, not on the IGS, or in the game itself - It's just what the mechanics tend to encourage. The idea of "Everything in Eve is IC" is ultimately a player invention. So what would be the problem with letting people engage in that kind of roleplay if they wanted to/prefer it, if you don't interface with them? I love both storytelling and immersionist roleplay, and doing both with Gwen would be great.
But that's kinda not gonna happen if we chase people off for violating unwritten IGS convention.
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I am no authority by any means, but I think the history of EVE has a great deal of influence on this particular matter:
During beta, more traditional "forum roleplay" happened a great deal. Since it was just about all players could do that would have any hope of surviving to actual launch, it was noticed. Then actual launch hit, and all of a sudden what you did ingame mattered; what you did on the forum, did not (or, at least not to the same degree). The incentive for "traditional" forum RP was removed.
So instead the IGS took on a new role: Discussion of what was going on ingame. While words could not actually destroy spaceships, they certainly could provoke, hint, or attract players into fighting. Many corps were at the very least what we would call "RP lite"; more dedicated RP groups were also more numerous. All of these flocked to the IGS as a central point for making announcements where they could be sure they would be seen. In this day and age news articles were also far, far more common than they are now; at the very least, you could expect a new news piece every week or so, "fluff" or otherwise. This discussion, too, was funneled into the IGS.
In time CCP embraced it in this role as well, using the IGS as a central place in which people could throw questions at Live Event or news-central characters and actual expect a response.
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How is this different from RP events and BaRP, though? I mean, what you do in those has no real impact on the game itself, and in most cases the only reason your character is showing up is because "this is where the RP is" on a meta level. So why does it matter if the exact same thing is just done in a play-by-post format instead? You might say "because it isn't live", but really, RP in channels isn't really live either - Considering it sometimes takes people upwards of five minutes to write a message in really heavy stuff - It's just not live faster.
The answer is exactly because it's live. It is you playing out your character's life in real time. Text naturally slows it down, but that's much different from an RP scenario on a play-by-post forum where you are quite literally RPing the same event over the course of a month or longer.
But there's no rule that says it has to be that way, not on the IGS, or in the game itself - It's just what the mechanics tend to encourage. The idea of "Everything in Eve is IC" is ultimately a player invention. So what would be the problem with letting people engage in that kind of roleplay if they wanted to/prefer it, if you don't interface with them? I love both storytelling and immersionist roleplay, and doing both with Gwen would be great.
Because it breaks immersion if posted on the IGS, because the IGS IS an IC forum. It is not a half-and-half OOC/IC forum, it is strictly IC.
If people want to write stories, either solo or cooperative, then EVE Fiction is the place for that kind of thing. Which is what happened with the post you are referring to... it was moved to EVE Fiction. The other alternative is Backstage.
But that's kinda not gonna happen if we chase people off for violating unwritten IGS convention.
That convention is not that hard to discover by reading other topics.
Story-writing is for the EVE Fiction forum. IGS is an in-character message board. It breaks immersion to allow non-IC posts on an IC forum, just as much as ((OOC chat like this breaks immersion on the Summit or any other IC channel)). And yes, storywriting in that sense is very much an OOC post, because it's treating the RP as an "other" happening instead of actually being IC in and of its own writing.
Anything posted on the IGS is written by the character, not by the player. That is the crux of it.
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It might be convention, but it's nowhere in the rules. They say, "This is a place for roleplay", not, "This is an in-universe forum".
Do you think if I made a thread like the one I linked in the Dust 514 forum, with less preamble then the one we're talking about and an [Open Roleplay] tag at the title, it would get moved?
I might do it and find out.
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Yes it would, if it wasn't treated as the character doing the actual writing.
ICly, Sami would assume that Gwen, the character, is starting a roleplay topic. There would be no thought of it being Gwen the player, because on IGS there are no players, only characters.
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And the rules state it clearly as I see it:
"1. In Character
Absolutely no out of character (OOC) comments or references are allowed. This is the only forum where players can immerse themselves completely in role-play... Leave your real self behind, stay true to your character and have fun!"
That to me says that the forum itself is IC, not simply a medium for players writing stories.
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And the rules state it clearly as I see it:
"1. In Character
Absolutely no out of character (OOC) comments or references are allowed. This is the only forum where players can immerse themselves completely in role-play... Leave your real self behind, stay true to your character and have fun!"
That to me says that the forum itself is IC, not simply a medium for players writing stories.
That exact same rule is in effect on the DUST IGS, and yet it's covered in those kind of threads. It's a pretty vague directive, all things considered - Is setting a scene in character? Clearly it's permitted to a limited extent for all the people who describe their posts as being video feeds. So why wouldn't it go further?
All the stuff you're saying about the IGS's inherent nature is only so because of general player consensus, which, considering it's not directly written in stone, isn't fair to people who might not share in that consensus. Even if lots of people believe in the idea right now, if the forum became covered in traditional roleplay threads, there'd be no choice but for people to OOCly accept a distinction between them and literalist posts.
I think it's something that should be tested. It shouldn't perpetuate itself for no other reason than "this is how it's always been". Because right now there's simply no place for that sort of roleplay, or the people who prefer it - It's far more out of place in EVE Fiction, a wholly OOC board that anyone can happily walk in on and interrupt roleplay in, then in the IGS.
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If the rules leave it vague then it's the rules that should be changed, not the convention. The rules should make it clear that it's an in-universe message board.
And EVE Fiction can be that place. It's NO different than any other RP forum on any other MMO. The RP forums on, say, WoW were places comprised of both plenty of purely OOC discussions about RP and lore as well as the open RP stories you're referring to. EVE Fiction acts in that exact same capacity. In both cases, the only thing stopping OOCers from walking in and interrupting is common decency.
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Well, in that case, someone should make a traditional RP thread - A normal one that is clear about what it is, and not sort of vaguely half way between story and roleplay example like the one that prompted this discussion - in the IGS anyway, and see if CCP moves it to set a precedent.
That is, if the IGS is what the players have defined it as officially now, or otherwise.
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So, I was recently explaining the nature of the IGS and why it's not really considered acceptable to post extensive setups and preambles before your IC content to a new player over in Eve Fiction (https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=393597) and how it tends to funtion as sort of a... In-universe forum for characters in peoples minds, rather then sort of the traditional sort of roleplaying board that exists as a meta-platform for freeform roleplay, with threads serving as essentially by-post versions of in game RP channels or organized RP events. Or rather, as physical (or not-so-physical, for VR or video roleplay) locations.
And while trying to explain the reason for it being that way, I ended up genuinely confused: Why is it like that? Because it's really strange and almost completely unique amongst online roleplay communities, paticularly MMOs. If you look at literally (http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/874702/) any other (http://guildwars2roleplayers.com/home/m/2737230/viewforum/673041) MMO roleplay forum (http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=21), even the sci-fi ones for which an actual modern dayish forum (http://www.swtor.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=103) in the game world would make total sense, (http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/forumdisplay.php?f=391) all of them follow the exact same model of having a spattering of private roleplay signup threads and mostly (and I say this with as much affection as possible) threads of very in-depth, prose heavy dueling IC essays.
Now, you might be the about to say that it's because of Eves inherent unique sandboxyness, or because of CCP half-clarifying what the IGS is in meta terms in how they moderate it. But here's the thing: Even the Dust 514 IGS has fallen into the same standard overall. (https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=175822&find=unread) And no one seems to really be objecting in the same way strong way they do for IGS, despite the forum being contextually identical. So what's the deal?
I've never really questioned it before, and don't really dislike it per se, and in fact sometimes find it relaxing - Though I do think the IGS is a little shallower then most places as a result - But I don't really get it. Why can't threads like that be more common and accepted alongside the traditional ones, instead of taking the place completely at face value and scorning those who don't?
It's kinda... Dull.
That's a rather good question and even with so many Eve years behind me I still don't know the answer, though I never really thought about it myself. The IGS just is, and exists as such...
I also suppose that participative RP forum writing (which is the medium I prefer over any RP medium), which is very close to a tabletop RPG with a GM overall but in a novel format, implies a certain degree of privacy, or at least semi public with friends or circles of players you know. I guess you can jump in like this too, but overall the open public side of the IGS doesn't really help on the matter.
Also, and more important, such forums with participative storytelling, like authors cooperating to write a story, implies commitment (its main flaw imo, when someone starts to drop out of boredom or weariness...). The IGS the radical opposite to that, which is a place where you can show up, post casually, and gtfo. Or just drop your ugly troll.
So yes, in any case, and having myself been rather active on the IGS over one or two years, I can say past that experience that I find the place most of the time stupid, bland, OOCly aggressive with half of the time IC/OOC bleedovers, and dull as you say, overall. Not the kind of place you go to have insightful discussions and more subtle storytelling and character development. Well, much like The Summit, no ?
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Basically everything Samira said. The alternative is a dreadfully boring mishmash of IC, OOC and terrible meta. The Fiction forum is where you can go do the collaborative fiction stuff, which is what that kind of thing is.
IGS is a forum for capsuleers to communicate. Simple as.
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Not really, because the Fiction Forum is also dedicated to another completely different role, which is pure OOC comment about chronicles, lore, or questions about the lore.
Collaborative storytelling is not OOC mish mashed with IC. Collaborative storytelling is another breed altogether. It's RP, but it's what I would call IN (In Narrator) if you will. It's another layer put above the IC layer, it's a story frame.
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Which does not belong on the IGS. That leaves the Fiction forum for it.
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Imo it doesn't belong in either of those forums. And certainly not more in the Fiction forum than on the IGS.
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Basically everything Samira said. The alternative is a dreadfully boring mishmash of IC, OOC and terrible meta. The Fiction forum is where you can go do the collaborative fiction stuff, which is what that kind of thing is.
IGS is a forum for capsuleers to communicate. Simple as.
All of this is just your opinion, though. Lots of people love that sort of roleplay - Evidently the majority of roleplayers in online games, as I tried to illustrate in the OP - And there's literally nothing official that says the IGS is exclusively what you're saying it is. It's just something a bunch of players have decided amongst themselves.
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What would probably happen is that someone would report the thread just because it is different to everything they've ever seen there, and it would be moved afterward.
CCP tends not to go anywhere near the IGS unless that happens - I don't think they really look in there proactively.
As for why the Dust IGS is different... well, you get shot in the head a few hundred (or thousand) times and see how sane you are. :P
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It certainly is immersion, because it's ridiculously immersionbreaking to suddenly have an IC forum for posts by characters become dual purpose mish mash of IC, OOC and weird hybrids. It's not what the IGS is and not what it should be. Get a new forum for it or use the Fiction forum. Hell, use the Dust forum if it already works the way you want it to.
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Well, like I said earlier, it's about precedents, isn't it? I'll ask around and try and see if I find any people who would be concretely interested in participating in such a thing, then make a thread of that vein if I do and see if CCP still moves it despite me sticking an [Open Roleplay] tag on the title. Then if they do, I'll accept it and ask them (or by definition know) where it's better to put that stuff, and if not, maybe it'll be good for the IGS and Eve roleplay in general to branch out a little.
I dunno why you guys seem so serious about this. It's just a dumb roleplay forum, right?
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Well, it'd be another step in making the IGS even more shit than it already is, so go knock yourself out. It'd push for a new and better forum even more.
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As for gwen, I fear that you might be threading on people's special little private garden and beware the collective wrath if you ever dare trying to introduce new things there.
Well, that's maybe not how you see it folks, but that sure is how it is starting to sound to me. Those answers are so aggressive that I wonder what really is at stake here.
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As I said, there is no reason why the fiction forum is not fitting.
Every single other Roleplay forum in other MMOs acts in a similarly double role as an OOC discussion medium of RP and lore along with play-by-post threads. The argument that it doesn't work because it functions primarily as OOC discussion fails when most other MMO roleplay forums do exactly that. SWG's Roleplay forum was primarily OOC discussion topics with the occasional [Open Roleplay] collaborative story. Same thing with WoW's Roleplay forum. EVE Fiction functions in that same capacity in every way except that it doesn't include 'Roleplaying' in the name.
There is literally no reason why the EVE Fiction forum cannot function in that capacity for those that wish it, and those kinds of stories would belong there much more than on the IGS.
The IGS is an in-character message board. When you are staring at the post screen, it is your character staring at it. When you are typing a message, it is your character typing that message. The IGS is better for this and it would be immersion breaking to include the stuff being mentioned here.
The player behind the character has no place on the IGS.
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Again, everything Samira said.
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Well, how about this, then: I'll post the same thread on both the IGS and Eve Fiction, and see which one is killed. After all, like I keep saying, there's nothing concrete about the IGS being strictly an in-universe forum. By doing this, it'll force them to make a judgement as to if it is or if it is not, and where these things belong by extension.
Because right now, it is vague.
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As I said, there is no reason why the fiction forum is not fitting.
Every single other Roleplay forum in other MMOs acts in a similarly double role as an OOC discussion medium of RP and lore along with play-by-post threads. The argument that it doesn't work because it functions primarily as OOC discussion fails when most other MMO roleplay forums do exactly that. SWG's Roleplay forum was primarily OOC discussion topics with the occasional [Open Roleplay] collaborative story. Same thing with WoW's Roleplay forum. EVE Fiction functions in that same capacity in every way except that it doesn't include 'Roleplaying' in the name.
There is literally no reason why the EVE Fiction forum cannot function in that capacity for those that wish it, and those kinds of stories would belong there much more than on the IGS.
Well, they might work that way, but to me it sounds completely ludicrous. It would be like putting together the OOC off topic forum here and the OOC eve general discussion together, as I explained above.
The player behind the character has no place on the IGS.
On that, I agree, if that's the will behind that particular forum. I still think there should be a third one where one doesn't have to congregate lore pure OOC non RP discussion with RP storytelling.
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Well, how about this, then: I'll post the same thread on both the IGS and Eve Fiction, and see which one is killed. After all, like I keep saying, there's nothing concrete about the IGS being strictly an in-universe forum. By doing this, it'll force them to make a judgement as to if it is or if it is not, and where these things belong by extension.
Because right now, it is vague.
Except that, according to Esna, this was already done when the game first started, and it ended with the current convention: An in-character, in-universe message board.
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Well, how about this, then: I'll post the same thread on both the IGS and Eve Fiction, and see which one is killed. After all, like I keep saying, there's nothing concrete about the IGS being strictly an in-universe forum. By doing this, it'll force them to make a judgement as to if it is or if it is not, and where these things belong by extension.
Because right now, it is vague.
Except that, according to Esna, this was already done when the game first started, and it ended with the current convention: An in-character, in-universe message board.
Well, I think that's peculiar, so I don't see any harm in challenging it and seeing what happens. Stuff shouldn't be sacred just because it's been that way for ages.
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Agreed, tradition for tradition's sake is not a good thing. However, this is not a matter of "it's just been that way for ages". It's a matter of breaking and frankly ruining a working and unique thing in favor of turning it into something mediocre no one needs. The fiction forum would not be a problematic place to do this, as it is not explicitly IC in nature and there it would not break the immersion of the users.
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Well, what if I were to just post it in Eve Fiction, then? Because I'm willing to bet CCP's moderation team doesn't have nearly the deep player-constructed understanding of what the IGS is, and would end up moving it anyway purely on the base logic of "ROLEPLAY THREAD=GOES TO IGS".
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Well, how about this, then: I'll post the same thread on both the IGS and Eve Fiction, and see which one is killed. After all, like I keep saying, there's nothing concrete about the IGS being strictly an in-universe forum. By doing this, it'll force them to make a judgement as to if it is or if it is not, and where these things belong by extension.
Because right now, it is vague.
Except that, according to Esna, this was already done when the game first started, and it ended with the current convention: An in-character, in-universe message board.
Well, I think that's peculiar, so I don't see any harm in challenging it and seeing what happens. Stuff shouldn't be sacred just because it's been that way for ages.
It should be sacred because it's better the way it is, and there's plenty of people who participate in it precisely because of the way it is who would be turned off if it became what you are talking about here.
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i remember a thing, where someone made a post, and there was no indication that it was supposed to be anything other than what it was, i.e. a text-post on some kind of message system.
what happened next, was that someone else replied to the post, quoting the first few sentences and then typing something like
*character name interrupts the red-faced man's blustering commentary* "Actually you are wrong and this is why..."
which not only declared that the OP was some kind of video transmission (zero indication from the OP that that was the case), but also declared how the person commenting appeared in that video.
That sort of behaviour caused a bit of :| in ooc channels/forums (not necessarily this one), and I think that it kind of helped to bring to supremacy the notion that the IGS is a text-forum, and only a text-forum.
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Hm, somehow I find it relieving that the IGS is irritating for others as well. Maybe some of you read my try to post something there. I quickly became uncomfortable continue writing for it. I really thought the thread would also be moved or closed. From your posts above I think I understood what the IGS really presently is. For me, it was an experiment, I guess. But I still don't see where the right place for cooperative storytelling is. Would it be the Fiction board then?
As for the IGS, I can understand that classical roleplay/storytelling threads would irritate players who are reading it with a purely in-character attitude. That's new to me. Personally, I'm irritated by posts which are not clearly framed as in-character by some storytelling (be it only one line, saying the character is going to say something). I'm just not used to this kind of missing ooc/ic flag. Especially since some characters are actually trolling like you find it in hundreds of real life boards. I guess that's the reason why I did not feel very comfortable trying to get some roleplay going there. But well, lesson learned :D
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If people start a random collaborative RP thread in the Fiction part of the Eve forum, then what will happen ? Some people will enter and play the game, which is fine and good, and then other people will also enter and start trolling or posting purely OOC (non RP) irrelevant stuff and polluting the thread to no end.
There is absolutely no rule in the Fiction forum that separates RP from non RP. You could post that collaborative fiction RP anywhere in the forum, like in the general discussion, that it would be the exact same thing. The Fiction forum, be it logical or not to use for such purposes, just doesn't have the right and proper rules and frame for players to differentiate a non RP post about fiction and a collaborative writing effort, which is RP.
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Any way you guys cut it, the EVE forums are not really proactively moderated enough to allow this sort of freeform collaborative RP to take place. Someone will always come in and troll, be it IC or OOC. CCP just doesn't have the resources to allow that sort of fiction environment to work.
Now, it could work here. I could see people doing that in the fiction section of this forum, and having it go fine.
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I don't see it getting any less trolled on the IGS. It'd just be IC trolled, which could in turn be rather funny. Hell, go for it. If it's not moved from the IGS, it'll be a source of endless amusement as it's dealt with IC.
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probably more than 90% of the posting on the IGS is just trolling, because timezones and areas of activity are such that very few RPers actually have any ability to interact with each other with spaceships, instead of foruming at people, or typing in the chat channels ingame.
like, I get the impression that PIE and Ushra'khan's timezones don't overlap all that much, so while they post in each other's direction quite a bit, they don't encounter each other directly in space much.
Or say, the TS-F people. When the Sansha live events were happening, I encountered them on a number of occasions. But outside of those occasions, I'm in Imperial space, they're off in Stain or Syndicate, and so, RP interaction never really occurred beyond occasional typing at each other.
And quite a few people have moved to the proverbial back of beyond, such as 0.0 coalition stuff, or wormholes, so really whatever they type on the IGS is of meaning only to them. Why should anyone in the bleak lands warzone care what someone off in guristas space has to say about amarr-minmatar politics ?
it's all just :words: at each other.
Like, there is literally no reason to type a damn thing on the IGS, except to :words: at someone, for your own grandstanding purposes, because there's no overlap in areas and times of activity, so what is the point ?
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Play by play sequential rp posts have been a thing on eve fiction for years, because you can read them like a story without participating just fine.
They don't really work on igs, or at least I've not seen them succeed.
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The thing with roleplay is that it's an interactive story. IGS is really nothing more than an IC chat, where you chat in character, apparently. Although this isn't expressly written by anyone, and there's little rules regarding it - in fact the forum description says "roleplay" and "in character". To me, as someone who has roleplayed in this manner for over a decade, this involves describing your character's thoughts, feelings, motivations, as well as their actions and dialogue. What's considered IC and OOC on the IGS is indeed weird. Posting what your character is thinking/doing in their captain's quarters while conversing with other capsuleers is somehow "OOC".
Posting on the IGS is inviting character interaction. Posting on EVE Fiction invites player discussion.
If you go into IGS trying to interactive story - like you would in every. other. roleplay/IC. forum. ever. - you're gonna have a bad time, as I learned the hard way. It was actually rather insulting, after I spent all this work designing my character in the client, creating a unique backstory for her, a set of motivations and character flaws to explore, and then posted what my character was doing, thinking, and the message (scientific article) she opened for discussion with other characters - to have it moved to "fiction" and told that I wasn't roleplaying my character... it's like they were saying "everything you wrote is fake and invalid and doesn't actually exist." And then to be told that I wasn't actually roleplaying, and to read some IGS threads with their half-trolly antagonism and not-quite-complete-paragraphs, was really grating. Thus, my slightly less-than-polite posts to users who responded to my thread.
Elitism, a "cool kids" clique, the idea of "the right way" and "the wrong way", and resistance to change are prevalent in any RP culture. Without the mods stepping in and policing it with a clear concept of what RP, or at least what EVE RP is, the culture will remain as it is and stubbornly resistant to change and improvement.
I'm not suggesting that it should or does need to be changed. But it would be interesting, after all, to start a play-by-post, traditional RP, and get some quick replies/interactions with other characters in the same fashion, and see if CCP moves it or locks it.
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@Xiaohui : welcome in Eve, it's always like that. Nobody tells you anything first, trial by error, you learn by getting shot down every time, that a lot of people actually seem to enjoy. Courtesy of CCP and all.
Any way you guys cut it, the EVE forums are not really proactively moderated enough to allow this sort of freeform collaborative RP to take place. Someone will always come in and troll, be it IC or OOC. CCP just doesn't have the resources to allow that sort of fiction environment to work.
Now, it could work here. I could see people doing that in the fiction section of this forum, and having it go fine.
They do it for the IGS. Not saying they do it as much as we want it, but the IGS still seems to work decently enough for a lot of people to have fun in it no ? Why would it be so different for a collaborative fiction ?
Then of course you are right, the same way people asked for a private IGS right here, the reasons for such a thing are exactly similar. Since the policy of backstage seems to have changed from "no IC stuff on the forum" to "IC stuff on the forum planned, or at least on a sub domain", I guess it's right there.
I don't see it getting any less trolled on the IGS. It'd just be IC trolled, which could in turn be rather funny. Hell, go for it. If it's not moved from the IGS, it'll be a source of endless amusement as it's dealt with IC.
Yes indeed.
Play by play sequential rp posts have been a thing on eve fiction for years, because you can read them like a story without participating just fine.
They don't really work on igs, or at least I've not seen them succeed.
There actually is some of those on the fiction board ? And they are allowed or work fine ?
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To be honest, I feel that forum usage for an IC venue is a very odd beast of it's own and it is something I could never really get into. The idea of creating my character, posting on a forums as to what they're doing, and then someone else taking over their story with their own posts bugs me. In my mind, no one but myself plays my own RP characters (regardless of what MMO I'm playing in at the time) the way I feel they should be.
That being said, I'm glad the IGS isn't the typical IC MMO forums. As messy as it can be and often is, it'd be a far larger mess if it were otherwise. Just my two isks there.
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Usually that kind of RP does not involve players playing or using characters of other users. It's not so much different from IC venues ingame, actually, with short posts overall, unless some character starts to get an endless internal monologue or whatnot...
You start to write longer posts by borrowing other characters at times when you know the people you play with pretty well. I did that once of twice, not dealing with 10 lines posts but rather whole pages written by each like you describe it, and it was something else altogether. :)
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It might be convention, but it's nowhere in the rules. They say, "This is a place for roleplay", not, "This is an in-universe forum".
Returning to this.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/capsuleer-idolatry-on-the-rise-1/
http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/sansha-kuvakeis-resurrection-truth-or-trickery-1/
"Most notable was the rise in popularity of the GalNet forum, a podium venue for the capsuleer community to bring to light issues of concern to them and their associates. Originally intended as a pure communications vehicle for pod pilots, GalNet has, in the course of the last year, become something more."
"However, the appearance of a man identifying himself as "Master Kuvakei" on the Intergalactic Summit has whipped up a frenzy of speculation."
IC news posts that directly reference the IGS as an in-universe forum.
Everything you write on the IGS is your character ICly writing it. By lore, what you write on that forum is actually viewed by not just capsuleers but also by hundreds of thousands of baseliners. Posting on that forum is your character sitting at a computer (or connected via their Neocom), staring at their screen, writing a message on an in-universe message board. In many instances, things posted on the IGS have been referenced as official statements by capsuleers and capsuleer organizations by in-universe news organizations.
Ergo, if you were to, for example, start an [Open Roleplay] thread, it would be viewed as Gwen, the character, ICly starting a roleplaying thread. Roleplayception.
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That's lore, though, not the rules. The person who wrote that probably wasn't operating on any kind of grander understanding of what the IGS as a roleplaying forum is or should be, they likely just thought it was a cute idea at the time. It's distinct from CCP's actually dictated policy.
In any case, though, like I said, I'll make the thread on EVE Fiction and no where else and see if it gets moved, since people are getting kind of upset about this. If the moderators decide - Which I think they might - that roleplay belongs literally on the IGS and no where else under any circumstances, they'll be no choice but to broaden it's use.
And if they don't, well, we'll see what happens.
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That's lore, though, not the rules. The person who wrote that probably wasn't operating on any kind of grander understanding of what the IGS as a roleplaying forum is or should be, they likely just thought it was a cute idea at the time. It's distinct from CCP's actually dictated policy.
And yet they do the exact same thing with their own NPC actors. They post, in-character, on the in-character Intergalactic Summit. They make announcements, statements, and have even engaged in back-and-forth bickering.
If the moderators decide - Which I think they might - that roleplay belongs literally on the IGS and no where else under any circumstances, they'll be no choice but to broaden it's use.
No, you'll just get IC trolled on your IC roleplay thread.
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If people choose to troll me ICly on a thread I explicitly make on another forum entirely under the assumption that you are right, and that the IGS is only supposed to function as a IC forum, that then gets moved to the IGS in direct contradiction to that assumption, I won't know what to say. It'd be rather unfair to attack someone for putting something in the wrong place, when they, well, didn't put it there.
On top of that, it wouldn't make any sense. It'd be like ICly calling Gwen obsessed with tabletop games because I made a thread on the off topic boards about Warhammer Fantasy or something that then got moved. The only people to point the finger at will be CCP, or, if they don't accept that finger-pointing, the understanding of the forum itself as it exists.
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I think I've figured a bit more of it out.
It's the nonconsentuality of EVE.
EVE is of course built on the idea that other people can and will do their best to mess up your day. Traditional forum roleplay is, for the most part, built on the idea of a few mutually-agreed-on base rules among the players, to avoid fights on who can do what and that sort of thing. EVE's 'win at all costs' mentality doesn't cross over well; being ganked in EVE is a thing you accept by playing the game, but is no fun in forum RP.
The two simply don't mix well, unless you can have moderator control over the thread in question - which, of course, CCP does not provide to us or have the time to do on their own.
Hence, no forum roleplay.
It was different back in the beta-era of EVE when forum RP was more common, because back then that was all you had. Everyone there was betaing the game, and had a vested interest in making the game, community, and interactions work: Making a stink there was like pissing in your own drinking water.
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Well we've solved the mystery then: katbutt.
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The thing with roleplay is that it's an interactive story. IGS is really nothing more than an IC chat, where you chat in character, apparently. Although this isn't expressly written by anyone, and there's little rules regarding it - in fact the forum description says "roleplay" and "in character". To me, as someone who has roleplayed in this manner for over a decade, this involves describing your character's thoughts, feelings, motivations, as well as their actions and dialogue. What's considered IC and OOC on the IGS is indeed weird. Posting what your character is thinking/doing in their captain's quarters while conversing with other capsuleers is somehow "OOC".
Posting on the IGS is inviting character interaction. Posting on EVE Fiction invites player discussion.
If you go into IGS trying to interactive story - like you would in every. other. roleplay/IC. forum. ever. - you're gonna have a bad time, as I learned the hard way. It was actually rather insulting, after I spent all this work designing my character in the client, creating a unique backstory for her, a set of motivations and character flaws to explore, and then posted what my character was doing, thinking, and the message (scientific article) she opened for discussion with other characters - to have it moved to "fiction" and told that I wasn't roleplaying my character... it's like they were saying "everything you wrote is fake and invalid and doesn't actually exist." And then to be told that I wasn't actually roleplaying, and to read some IGS threads with their half-trolly antagonism and not-quite-complete-paragraphs, was really grating. Thus, my slightly less-than-polite posts to users who responded to my thread.
Elitism, a "cool kids" clique, the idea of "the right way" and "the wrong way", and resistance to change are prevalent in any RP culture. Without the mods stepping in and policing it with a clear concept of what RP, or at least what EVE RP is, the culture will remain as it is and stubbornly resistant to change and improvement.
I'm not suggesting that it should or does need to be changed. But it would be interesting, after all, to start a play-by-post, traditional RP, and get some quick replies/interactions with other characters in the same fashion, and see if CCP moves it or locks it.
I'm not suggesting that it should or does need to be changed.
You just did both of those things, very explicitly, just as you did in the thread (after it was moved out of the IGS into the correct forum) by asserting that everyone on the IGS is doing it wrong and only you were there to try and do it right before being oh so wrongfully moved out of the IGS.
Well then they should elaborate "This is not for actual roleplay. This is just for IC chatting."
Because I went in there actually roleplaying.
The thing that you need to understand, and internalize, as someone who apparently has so many years of RP experience (based on this comment where you by implication call the IGS's form of IC interaction childish and/or juvenile:)
Wow, I haven't RP'd like that since I was 13.
Is that New Eden as a campaign setting (is that a veteran enough RP term? I'm not always sure) is set something like 25-30 thousand years in the future, it has an IC internet ("GalNet") and the IGS is a forum on that IC "GalNet," and posts are structured as such.
What this means is that, just like in channel RP, or text-based MU* roleplaying games (yes, I still occasionally fire up SimpleMu and see what my old mates are doing), nobody wants to read a narrative full of internal monologues and backstory their character would know nothing about (and thus, not be able to engage with at all). That's what Eve Fiction (both in the Eve-O forums and here on Backstage) is for.
You've registered to post, so I have to assume that you've already seen the Eve Fiction section and the Character Development section - both of these are full of interesting things involving and/or about our characters, and we all read these things if/when we are interested in these things. The IGS is not the place where we look for things that our characters couldn't interact with even if they wanted to.
PS: I reported the post when it was on the IGS. No telling if I was the only one to do so, but for as quickly as it was moved, it's hard to imagine that I was the only one.
Welcome to Rome, learn to speak Latin. Which is to say, coming here with your ass up on your shoulders and pointing the finger at the entire Backstage community (lol @ Elite cool kids clique, most of us don't even like each other) about how all our current IGS interactions are just trolling and how resistant to change we are, for not having embraced a post in which there was literally nothing for our characters to interact with (bolding the same words you bolded in your post, you see that?)... isn't going to gain much traction.
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The thing with roleplay is that it's an interactive story. IGS is really nothing more than an IC chat, where you chat in character, apparently. Although this isn't expressly written by anyone, and there's little rules regarding it - in fact the forum description says "roleplay" and "in character". To me, as someone who has roleplayed in this manner for over a decade, this involves describing your character's thoughts, feelings, motivations, as well as their actions and dialogue. What's considered IC and OOC on the IGS is indeed weird. Posting what your character is thinking/doing in their captain's quarters while conversing with other capsuleers is somehow "OOC".
Because what your character is thinking is OOC knowledge. Our characters don't know what your character is thinking and we aren't telepaths. Want your character to run a video feed from the CQ, go for it. To many of us that does tend to look rather silly on the IGS as it has usually gone hand in hand with rather derpy characters and overly dramatic bores, but go ahead. You might be the exception. Video still doesn't transmit thoughts, feelings or motivations. It just transmits what is visible to other characters. The IGS is IC in that both the writer and the viewer are IC. I can read a book and know the thoughts and motivations of the character, but I can't talk to another person and know their thoughts and motivations. That would be out of character information that should be implied rather than forced onto the participants.
If you go into IGS trying to interactive story - like you would in every. other. roleplay/IC. forum. ever. - you're gonna have a bad time, as I learned the hard way. It was actually rather insulting, after I spent all this work designing my character in the client, creating a unique backstory for her, a set of motivations and character flaws to explore, and then posted what my character was doing, thinking, and the message (scientific article) she opened for discussion with other characters - to have it moved to "fiction" and told that I wasn't roleplaying my character... it's like they were saying "everything you wrote is fake and invalid and doesn't actually exist." And then to be told that I wasn't actually roleplaying, and to read some IGS threads with their half-trolly antagonism and not-quite-complete-paragraphs, was really grating. Thus, my slightly less-than-polite posts to users who responded to my thread.
Everything you wrote was fake and didn't actually exist. Like all RP, ever. If you mean it didn't happen IC, well... that'd depend entirely on you. What happens in my character fiction certainly happened and exists IC, like most fiction written involving the characters. It's just not presented IC to other IC characters, because no other IC characters would know the things fiction presents, like the inner thoughts, motivations, and so on. What you see on the IGS is exactly what you get when capsuleers post to a shared forum, in character. It's helluvalot more immersive than suddenly having to break off and be the player reading a lot of internal slurry only available OOC, then switch back IC and back OOC and then IC within the same sentence. That's not roleplay, that's fiction.
Elitism, a "cool kids" clique, the idea of "the right way" and "the wrong way", and resistance to change are prevalent in any RP culture. Without the mods stepping in and policing it with a clear concept of what RP, or at least what EVE RP is, the culture will remain as it is and stubbornly resistant to change and improvement.
I'm not suggesting that it should or does need to be changed. But it would be interesting, after all, to start a play-by-post, traditional RP, and get some quick replies/interactions with other characters in the same fashion, and see if CCP moves it or locks it.
Relying on CCP to be the arbitrators of the RP community would be a monumentally terrible idea. They're frankly not involved in it. They don't even moderate the IGS by their own rules. It's entirely moderated in a "Sheesh, the reports are piling up. Let's see, IC or OOC? Fine, we'll move this and hope no one bothers us again this month." way.
You seem to be experiencing a culture shock. Yes, there are other RP forums elsewhere that does things differently. This does not mean better by any stretch of the word. It simply means different. Eve lends itself to a uniquely immersive RP style in that damn near everything is IC no matter how you swing it. You undock and zoom around space, it's IC, particularly when someone else comes and RPs a volley of Republic Fleet EMP M into your hull and you return the favor. You fit a ship, it's IC as your character gives another character ISK in return for T2 modules that they had earlier in-character gathered materials for and hauled to a POS for manufacture and back to the trading station. You die and lo and behold, it's IC as you activate a new clone and grumble as you go ahead and replace your lost implants and the other guy is linking your shiny pod in every brag channel he has.
Almost no other game in MMO history manages this. They fully require you to mix and mash IC and OOC at the very same time, with no clear boundaries and having to ignore half of what happens on the screen. This does lend itself to a different forum posting environment (again, partially because of the setting where forums don't even exist in the gameworld so it's by necessity a completely different narrative tool than the actual In Character Forum that the IGS is), one that doesn't actually work here in Eve because here the forum exists on a very different IC level than in damn near every other RP setting out there.
I understand it might be alien to you, but it is how it is for a reason. It's immersion on a completely different level. It actually exists IC and is engaged with entirely IC. Mixing in halfway OOC stuff there simply doesn't fit. It's an easy mistake to make if all your experience has been with the "lesser" settings that is OOC more than IC but give it a real try before you dismiss it. It's a quite a bit purer and more immersive roleplaying experience if you try.
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Yeah, and every people speaking about Earth merry xmas and Pacific timezones or whatever, are also perfectly IC. There is a limit, even for Eve ingame, as to how completely IC it is. Not even speaking about the sheer lore pve inconsistencies we were speaking about in that other thread. If everything is IC, ohmy, I killed billions of battleships and all /o\
Or is it IC only when it suits people ?
Collaborative RP is completely IC to me, the only thing that makes you groan when someone tries this on the IGS is the unofficial status the IGS has become over the years, and it's mostly about tradition and unwillingness to accept the narrative parts for what they are : narrative, and not the character speaking. I think that dissing on collaborative play by post RP equates dissing on ingame channel RP, since it's exactly the same damn thing.
However I can see what disturbs people, which is all the omniscient narrative stuff like thoughts, and everything that is explained from a narrative pow, versus everything that merely describes what the character does (which still is totally frown upon on the IGS no matter what anyway). I already faced the same issue on other MMOs with more standard RP venues, and was part of the people a bit annoyed with other people describing thoughts, explaining everything in chat bubbles instead of just describing what the character looked like and was doing. It only becomes interesting when you start writing pages of collaborative RP on a novel format, but not for ingame channels or basic/standard play by step RP.
I think I've figured a bit more of it out.
It's the nonconsentuality of EVE.
EVE is of course built on the idea that other people can and will do their best to mess up your day. Traditional forum roleplay is, for the most part, built on the idea of a few mutually-agreed-on base rules among the players, to avoid fights on who can do what and that sort of thing. EVE's 'win at all costs' mentality doesn't cross over well; being ganked in EVE is a thing you accept by playing the game, but is no fun in forum RP.
The two simply don't mix well, unless you can have moderator control over the thread in question - which, of course, CCP does not provide to us or have the time to do on their own.
Hence, no forum roleplay.
It was different back in the beta-era of EVE when forum RP was more common, because back then that was all you had. Everyone there was betaing the game, and had a vested interest in making the game, community, and interactions work: Making a stink there was like pissing in your own drinking water.
That sounds rather insightful, I think I agree.
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@Havohej - You provided a perfect example of the elitist RPers I was referring to in my post, thank you. Also, I never said the people on IGS were roleplaying wrong, you've got the situation reversed there. I just disagreed with the assertion that I was roleplaying wrong, and traded a little tit for tat on that point (and it seems you don't like the shoe being on that other foot!) And you know what - it seems there's people on EVE-O and on this forum who agree with me on this point. Also I never said this forum was full of the elitists cool kids, so there's no need to be defensive on that point. If you think there was nothing for you to interact with in my post, maybe that's because you lack imagination or didn't understand the post. Other people found a way to interact with it, in a seemingly IC fashion, when I originally misposted it to EVE fiction, here: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=393494&find=unread (https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=393494&find=unread)
@Mizhara - You keep saying this phrase "OOC knowledge". OOC means out of character. So "OOC knowledge" is knowledge that exists out of character. "Humans definitely come from Earth, and Earth is definitely on the other side of the EVE Gate" is OOC knowledge. What my character had for breakfast that day, or how she's feeling, is IC. The thing you fail in here is that if my character knows it, then it is in fact not OOC knowledge. My character's background? Yeah that's IC too. Your character might not know it, but mine does. I get it - IGS is just an IC message board. Point taken. But all this other arguing over what is RP and what isn't RP doesn't accomplish anything, and you're in fact being elitist by saying that my roleplay style wasn't real, and coming up with these, frankly, strange definitions of IC and OOC.
There's really no need for this particular debate to continue, as we're just going in circles at this point repeating the same assertions, and I've already adapted my style accordingly, so I'm going to end it here. You're both free to make whatever parting points you want though I'm sure it won't be something you haven't already said.
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It is out of character knowledge to our characters, who are the ones reading the post. It is knowledge they can't have, unless your character specifically come out and say or emote it. It can't be known or engaged with, which makes it fiction. It's reading a book versus playing a role. What your character had for breakfast or is feeling that day is only IC knowledge if it's told or emoted IC, which internal monologue or thought is not.
To reiterate, neither I nor my characters are telepaths. It'd be rather ridiculous to have all this forced on the audience when it's not actually available nor engageable information.
@Lyn: Yeah, let's take it to ridiculous extremes, shall we? That'll certainly change the fact that Eve is and remains the only MMO with this level of IC immersion and correlation between gameplay and roleplay.
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Tbh, CCP's moderation of IGS about IC/OOC stuff is not very consistent. Santa lolthreads, for example, stay, while Xiaohui's post got moved. Also, my thread of marysue stories never got moved, even if I fully expected it to be dumped in Eve Fiction (for the whole two and a half people to read).
Depends on the moderator I guess.
As for the nature of IGS, I think Esna is right. In EVE, everything that happens ingame is IC material; this can hardly happen in any other MMO (perhaps, except Elite: Dangerous, but E:D isn't really an MMO in a classic sense, and it has a really limited gameplay compared to EVE, even if much more immersive.) That approach spread to IGS and became a semi-official policy. The community sustains it and also weeds out everything that breaches the norm much more effectively than any CCP moderator.
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Yes, I agree, it's the only MMO with this level of IC immersion and correlation between gameplay and roleplay... Or is it ? I am not sure. I personally think gameplay and RP in that game like in most MMO are pretty much disjointed, just not on the same issues and the same way. I do not consider particularly extremes the silliness of the factional war, the pve missions, the universe stagnating, and all the other lore plotholes that we all know about. And well maybe you don't consider it that way, but I think those are very important and core part of the game itself. In other MMOs, you have issues about the relevance to what happens ingame, the fact that everyone killed Illidan in a raid, or people that you just can't attack when there is no guard nearby. In Eve, the issues are different, but they are here imo.
@Xiao : a lot of people like to assume that they hold the only right view on how things should be done and that you are in fact wrong, especially when you are a novice. I have seen it countless times when they hasten to come tell how the novice is wrong to do this or that because it doesn't fit to their conception of traditional eve RP. Its very eve-ish and stems from its very spirit. And the tactic used most of the time is often "You are the only one to do it the way you do, that's silly". Since the novice can't know much about that yet, then the novice feels bad and stops.
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Ergo, if you were to, for example, start an [Open Roleplay] thread, it would be viewed as Gwen, the character, ICly starting a roleplaying thread. Roleplayception.
Brb starting an in character fantasy roleplay thread/
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@Havohej - You provided a perfect example of the elitist RPers I was referring to in my post, thank you. Also, I never said the people on IGS were roleplaying wrong, you've got the situation reversed there.
No, you literally explicitly said exactly that - I quoted two of the several instances of it in my reply to you above.
vOv
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@Mizhara - You keep saying this phrase "OOC knowledge". OOC means out of character. So "OOC knowledge" is knowledge that exists out of character. "Humans definitely come from Earth, and Earth is definitely on the other side of the EVE Gate" is OOC knowledge. What my character had for breakfast that day, or how she's feeling, is IC. The thing you fail in here is that if my character knows it, then it is in fact not OOC knowledge. My character's background? Yeah that's IC too. Your character might not know it, but mine does. I get it - IGS is just an IC message board. Point taken. But all this other arguing over what is RP and what isn't RP doesn't accomplish anything, and you're in fact being elitist by saying that my roleplay style wasn't real, and coming up with these, frankly, strange definitions of IC and OOC.
There seems to be a set of mixed up definitions at work here.
Roleplaying is something that's done interactively. Nobody else can interact with things their characters don't know. What your character had for breakfast that day, or how she's feeling deep inside? Yeah, that's not an in-character knowledge for our characters, which we would be able to interact with, unless your character communicates this knowledge to our characters - by speech or written word shared with our characters In-Character. In order for anyone to remark on what your character had for breakfast that day without such a communication taking place, we would have to "god-mode" our characters' intimate knowledge of your character's minute-by-minute life and their thoughts/emotions.
Are you expecting other players to respond to that post with their own internal monologues full of thoughts, emotions and eating habits that your character by necessity of not having had any direct interaction with our characters must also be ignorant of (and thus unable to engage with)? I am not one of the people who is familiar with the brand of Forum RP that you are suggesting is the only way to correctly RP on a forum without being "elitist" somehow, so please, explain to me how it works. If I wrote a post like yours about things Havohej is thinking and/or doing, how do A: You respond to that as a player, and B: your character respond to it with no actual knowledge of anything I wrote about Havohej?
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In that kind of style, Havo, posts are written in a narrative style for the sake of, well, good writing. It's like writing a normal story, except that you bounce back and forth between players instead of just writing by yourself. It's a way to engage in proper writing in a collaborative way. Yes, characters can't see each other's thoughts, but in that kind of style you're writing it for the sake of writing in a fleshed out, narrative manner. In other words, the writing style is for the benefit of the readers, rather than the characters.
That kind of style works just fine on forums and sites based around it. It's fun to do and is something a lot of us got started with. It's primarily about the writing of stories in a social manner, getting the benefits of fiction writing with the benefits of additional participants to add random variables and portrayal of other characters.
There's nothing wrong with that style. Just, the IGS isn't the place for it, because the IGS is an in-universe forum where everything posted is posted directly by the character, instead of by the player describing the character. In other words, if play-by-post storywriting is third person writing (the author as a timeless/faceless "third party" describing the actions of the characters), IGS posting is first person writing (the character is the author and doing the writing themselves). For the IGS, it is the character doing the writing, not just the player.
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I think I understand. If I'm reading that right, everyone makes big, long posts and picks out the action or dialogue that their character could respond to - like old-school text gaming. Telnet-style...?
If that's so, I can't help thinking of all of the "RP Elitists" on those games with notes in their Info write-ups about how "If you pose less than 12 lines, I'm not going to give you the time of day."
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Yup, exactly.
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That could be fun. I always enjoyed the telnet stuff I've played on. Sadly I don't have time for that sort of thing right now... 10-hour days, many commissions, much shekels.
EDIT: More to the point, if someone starts a thread like that on the IGS with that in mind, good luck. But with it not being what Eve RPers are used to (and I know so many people ingame for whom Eve is their first experience with intentional RP), I would not have high hopes. Someone go enter it into the "IC Forum is going to be a thing" thread as a suggestion, I don't see why we can't have an area just for that format on the IC test forum when it opens.
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Collaborative writing like that can be very fun. Needs the right medium though.
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Collaborative writing like that can be very fun. Needs the right medium though.
Could this forum be the right medium? We could do some test threads in the fiction section.
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Collaborative writing like that can be very fun. Needs the right medium though.
Could this forum be the right medium? We could do some test threads in the fiction section.
I don't see why not.
If you (or anyone) starts a thread like that and it's well-received, when the IC test board opens, we'll make sure there's an area for the format and any existing threads on the Fiction board will get moved into that board.
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I think I understand. If I'm reading that right, everyone makes big, long posts and picks out the action or dialogue that their character could respond to - like old-school text gaming. Telnet-style...?
If that's so, I can't help thinking of all of the "RP Elitists" on those games with notes in their Info write-ups about how "If you pose less than 12 lines, I'm not going to give you the time of day."
If I had to describe it with a tl;dr, it would be "it's like writing a fiction, but in multiplayer". :)
And from experience, I think it is often best in that kind of collective effort not to actually write wall of texts, unless you do it with people you know well and that are not afraid of that, because it's enormously time consuming. So, the most lines people write and do it casually, the most the risk for players to drop out of it, and usually when you lose a character on a closed RP adventure like that, it's like losing a main character and it often dooms the whole fiction (you know, kind of like someone you are ICly speaking to in a venue drops out without notice and leaves you alone in the middle of a conversation). Most of those I had the pleasure to be part of (most of the time kinda like a GM since I was the main engine behind, adding stuff and fluff), they didn't last very long. So it's not a bad idea to set up small settings and stories that actually consist of a glimpse or an episode of anything. If you set up a big and longer adventure, it's best to know what you are engaging into. The only one that worked very well for me was waiting for SWTOR, where we had like more than 150 forum pages of that with 4-5 players (+ one on SWG that sadly didn't last more than 15 pages, but it was like half a page per player lol, since we knew each other perfectly), and when the synergy takes off, it's the most awesome thing I have experienced in RP to this day.
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Goto OOPE on the eve o forums. Look for a thread called the Greater Fool Bar. This is the kind of RP being refered to. I made a few posts even. It's kinda neat.
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Ergo, if you were to, for example, start an [Open Roleplay] thread, it would be viewed as Gwen, the character, ICly starting a roleplaying thread. Roleplayception.
Brb starting an in character fantasy roleplay thread/
I think Ché once participate in one of these, until it died...sadly. Roleplaying Ché roleplaying...soooo meta...I think?
Ok, so...EVE is my only online RP experience I've ever had, so the IGS is pretty much all I know about IC forums...but now I've learned it's somewhat unique because of that, I'm sort of even more fond of it.
I admit that I already do not read like 90% of IGS posts, but if this...I'll call it In Narrator RP, would be there, I would it read even less, as I prefer to keep OOC knowledge to a minimum. And I also would find the "OOC" bits immersion breaking, as well as an [Open RP] tag.
I did pen and paper RP, mostly WoD, when me and my friends still had the time to do so, but I don't recall any of us mentioning a lot of our chars thoughts and motivations during sessions, so this kind of RP is somewhat strange/new to me, as I imagine EVE RP was/is for Gwen and Xiaohui.
Anyway, I feel compelled to end this post with a quote from Charles V after he visited the newly build cathedral inside the Cordoba Mezquita (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosque–Cathedral_of_Córdoba):
They have taken something unique in all the world and destroyed it to build something you can find in any city.
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We've been a bit overdue for someone new to register and start throwing shit at people out of the gate, so good to see that tradition holding strong :ugh:
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I believe that the second sticky in the IGS forum state that everything there must be posted IC.
So I use it like a New Eden BBS where bunch of capsuleers bicker with and troll each other.
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I've been away and not had access to a posting-friendly computer for a few days, but something came to mind on my train ride home today.
First off - I've done that particular kind of forum RP before. I participated in an EV:Nova-themed one called "670 NC". (Assuming I remember the name right, anyway.) It was fun, but even though I knew two of the other participants personally from school and was often able to work with them directly on posts, and I had plenty of other stuff to do, waiting for other people to respond really could be painful.
Anyway - that specific style of RP? It might not be happening on the official forums, but people are already doing it every single day. Regularly. Can you guess where?
In channels. In real-time.
Every interaction is important and can have an impact on every other interaction that follows it, especially in an environment like the one that EVE provides. Look at it this way.
Let's say two characters meet up somewhere and talk. For whatever reason, some sort of meaningful ~thing~ happens or is said during that interaction that would color and influence those characters' interactions with themselves and others.
If that interaction happens in a chat channel, then the two players are immediately able to act upon what happened and use it elsewhere in other interactions, in real-time, as part of the universe.
On the other hand, if it played out in an RP-by-snail-mail forum thread? It could be days, weeks or even months before that impactful thing actually was written out and would become usable elsewhere, even though it technically happened quite a while before that in-universe.
Reconciling the two completely different timescales is difficult and incredibly unpleasant, especially when you KNOW something important and meaningful would have occurred during that scene, but don't know what it is yet because you haven't gotten there yet due to the nature of that RP style.
I'm not saying that the two methods are 100% incompatible, but when it comes down to it, one is a lot more compatible with EVE than the other: when there is an actual, living world that changes from day to day due to the interactions of the players, RP-by-snail-mail is approaching equivalency with shooting yourself in the foot RPwise. Perhaps in another game where the universe is largely stagnant and the players' actions have no effect on the world around them, it works better. But in EVE, you are generally going to be better off with the more real-time interaction you can get through channels and treating the IGS as an in-universe forum, than trying to old-skool it.
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Why post about shooting the other guy in the face and take away all his corp assets when you can do it in-game?
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I've been away and not had access to a posting-friendly computer for a few days, but something came to mind on my train ride home today.
First off - I've done that particular kind of forum RP before. I participated in an EV:Nova-themed one called "670 NC". (Assuming I remember the name right, anyway.) It was fun, but even though I knew two of the other participants personally from school and was often able to work with them directly on posts, and I had plenty of other stuff to do, waiting for other people to respond really could be painful.
Anyway - that specific style of RP? It might not be happening on the official forums, but people are already doing it every single day. Regularly. Can you guess where?
In channels. In real-time.
Every interaction is important and can have an impact on every other interaction that follows it, especially in an environment like the one that EVE provides. Look at it this way.
Let's say two characters meet up somewhere and talk. For whatever reason, some sort of meaningful ~thing~ happens or is said during that interaction that would color and influence those characters' interactions with themselves and others.
If that interaction happens in a chat channel, then the two players are immediately able to act upon what happened and use it elsewhere in other interactions, in real-time, as part of the universe.
On the other hand, if it played out in an RP-by-snail-mail forum thread? It could be days, weeks or even months before that impactful thing actually was written out and would become usable elsewhere, even though it technically happened quite a while before that in-universe.
Reconciling the two completely different timescales is difficult and incredibly unpleasant, especially when you KNOW something important and meaningful would have occurred during that scene, but don't know what it is yet because you haven't gotten there yet due to the nature of that RP style.
I'm not saying that the two methods are 100% incompatible, but when it comes down to it, one is a lot more compatible with EVE than the other: when there is an actual, living world that changes from day to day due to the interactions of the players, RP-by-snail-mail is approaching equivalency with shooting yourself in the foot RPwise. Perhaps in another game where the universe is largely stagnant and the players' actions have no effect on the world around them, it works better. But in EVE, you are generally going to be better off with the more real-time interaction you can get through channels and treating the IGS as an in-universe forum, than trying to old-skool it.
Yes, that's exactly the problem, especially with a game timeline running in parallel. Thus why I often prefer to deal with past stories, or something rather timeless. Shalee started one or two like that in KotMC, one involving our characters when they were children. That was exceptionally original and fun, but sadly it didn't took off.
But anyway, forum RP is often at its best peak before games are released most of the time.
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Also you clearly have a story in your head and man it seems pretty interesting. You should use this chance to start an RP arc with a few others and gradually expand it to get more folk involved. Could be pretty baller.
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It might be convention, but it's nowhere in the rules. They say, "This is a place for roleplay", not, "This is an in-universe forum".
Returning to this.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/capsuleer-idolatry-on-the-rise-1/
http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/sansha-kuvakeis-resurrection-truth-or-trickery-1/
"Most notable was the rise in popularity of the GalNet forum, a podium venue for the capsuleer community to bring to light issues of concern to them and their associates. Originally intended as a pure communications vehicle for pod pilots, GalNet has, in the course of the last year, become something more."
"However, the appearance of a man identifying himself as "Master Kuvakei" on the Intergalactic Summit has whipped up a frenzy of speculation."
IC news posts that directly reference the IGS as an in-universe forum.
Everything you write on the IGS is your character ICly writing it. By lore, what you write on that forum is actually viewed by not just capsuleers but also by hundreds of thousands of baseliners. Posting on that forum is your character sitting at a computer (or connected via their Neocom), staring at their screen, writing a message on an in-universe message board. In many instances, things posted on the IGS have been referenced as official statements by capsuleers and capsuleer organizations by in-universe news organizations.
Ergo, if you were to, for example, start an [Open Roleplay] thread, it would be viewed as Gwen, the character, ICly starting a roleplaying thread. Roleplayception.
That is exactly how I view it. I know I am late to comment, as per the usual.
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That could be fun. I always enjoyed the telnet stuff I've played on. Sadly I don't have time for that sort of thing right now... 10-hour days, many commissions, much shekels.
EDIT: More to the point, if someone starts a thread like that on the IGS with that in mind, good luck. But with it not being what Eve RPers are used to (and I know so many people ingame for whom Eve is their first experience with intentional RP), I would not have high hopes. Someone go enter it into the "IC Forum is going to be a thing" thread as a suggestion, I don't see why we can't have an area just for that format on the IC test forum when it opens.
I like this idea by Hav. +1
I'd be willing to give it a try. I do agree that the IGS isn't the place for it.
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History has a lot to do with it. There were very *strong* ideas about what it meant to be an RP PvP group back when EVE started. Some of them came out of the Ultima community, others out of the Shadowbane community. But aggressively confrontational propogandistic RP posting was one of those elements (Another was PIE's one race/one set of ships rule. That sort of thing was much more normal in the first few years of EVE). People's idea of what it meant to play a MMO, especially a PvP one, was a *bit* harsher back then.
I think a big thing was that EVE, unlike other MMOs, actually allowed people to embrace RP philosophies that were much more extreme. You can't say "everything that happens in game happens" for WoW or Everquest, you could for EVE. This was especially true in the early days before missions got to the state that they are now in. The decision to ban OOC commentary on the IGS came from that philosophy.
In many ways the original chatsubo OOC forum was created specifically to fill in the hole left by the decision that IGS was 100% IC. Things like those sign up threads mentioned in the OP were supposed to be done there, and then they could play out on the IGS. In practice that never really worked, for all sorts of reasons.
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Well, I disagree on the fact that you can say that everything that happens in Eve happens. To me it's a big delusion, something that eve players like to tell themselves...
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Well, I disagree on the fact that you can say that everything that happens in Eve happens. To me it's a big delusion, something that eve players like to tell themselves...
When almost every mechanic is given an IC reasoning by the devs themselves, and the actions of all players including OOCers is regarded as IC within the universe, that lends to viewing everything that happens in EVE as happening.
It is not always feasible, though these instances are rare and thus it is certainly far more the case in EVE than in any other MMO.
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How so ? On most MMOs it's a pve issue mostly.
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To drag this right bacl tp page 1 - that tbh is why I has so much of an issue finding the 'backstage' EVE RP, or I'd have been around in 2009, not .. whatever my backstage signup date is.
In 2009 though all of my RP went into C&P >:)
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How so ? On most MMOs it's a pve issue mostly.
In most games, the things in the patchnotes are treated OOCly. Mechanics are treated OOCly. In most games, there is a heavy divide between 'what is OOC' and 'what is IC', both among the devs and among the players. The devs don't care about keeping changes in line with the lore, and make no attempt at describing them in any IC capacity.
That doesn't apply in EVE. In EVE, the changes are almost always explained in some way by the lore (often but not always directly by the devs through news articles, chronicles, and so on). Even bugs are treated as IC (the first bright star was a bug, and yet got 5-6 news articles about it, treating it IC). And there is no divide whatsoever between what you do and what you RP. You cannot say 'I only died OOCly'. You died ICly.
Your UI is IC (the Neocom). The UI is definitively not IC in other games.
EVE is very, very unique in this capacity. You can't play full-time IC in any other game, because you are consistently faced with OOC mechanics and scenarios that were designed solely with playability in mind and not lore. You will be laughed at, mocked, and ignored by other RPers if you attempt to claim that those mechanics are IC in any way, and even the devs will tell you they're not IC (for example, warlocks having demons out while wandering the streets in Stormwind is not IC, as stated directly by the devs. It's purely an OOC tolerance for the purpose of gameplay). In EVE, you can and are expected to be IC in everything you do. Hell, every single developer department is given an in-universe explanation, complete with corresponding chronicle.
In almost two decades of playing MMOs, never have I experienced an environment like EVE's, even in other sandboxes like SWG. EVE is unique in its all-IC-all-the-time mindset.
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I don't know, I used to think that way too in the past, but now... Now that I have seen all those silly discrepancies in Eve, the only thing i'm more or less sure of is that in other MMOs as you say, the divide between OOC and IC is clearer while in Eve they most of the time try to put square pegs into round holes, since their gameplay doesn't always match or directly contradicts PF and lore. One one hand I find it laudable that they care that much about the lore. On the other, I find them more dishonest than their fellow other MMOs by trying to hide the obvious silly things under the rug.
What I'm trying to say is that it's not because you see it less in Eve that it doesn't exist.
Edit : I understand perfectly well how immersion breaking the things you describe like death (duh, explanations for death in SWG were so awful, but that game is maybe the worst example ever in terms of respect of its lore), or your WoW example (even if I never played it). I mean in SWG one of the things that made me cry tears of blood was watching idiots aggroing NPC guards and mass killing them for hours and piling up their bodies at the city gates, since the devs were obviously not even able to balance that out like CCP did with CONCORD (but again, SOE and balancing in that game... lol). What I mean is that since the goal behind Eve has always been to provide consequences and meaningful actions, you will not see balance breaking immersion like that, but what you will definitely see, and in a decent amount as well, is like your WoW example. We can go very far in Eve finding for silly things, and pve is only the most visible of all : where has gone all civilian traffic ? How is that undocking takes me exactly 3 sec to do instead of full minutes ? etc etc. We all know why so, but the reasons are purely OOC. Maybe you can find stretchy IC explanations for that, but I'm pretty sure you can for everything, starting with your wow example (are they just illusions and not the real thing ? It's probably silly, I don't know, i'm no wow expert...). But in any cases, those explanations are completely silly, and some of the ones that are given to us by CCP are sometimes silly to begin with (how many silly things with cloning and the likes ?). You can also ignore it, but that's exactly the same thing in other MMOs.
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Oh it exists. You'll note that in my posts I've used words like 'almost every mechanic', and 'not always feasible'.
It's why I say EVE is more IC than any other MMO. While yes, there are some things that are unexplainable or silly, you cannot deny that EVE as a game at least tries a lot harder to narrow the gap between IC and OOC than any other MMO out there. I'm a person who never thought that playing a game full-time IC was even possible until I played EVE.
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I wouldn't be so unequivocal myself... I have played MMOs like TSW and they explain most of the things perfectly well, fluidly, and I have had a very much harder time to find discrepancies than in Eve. Maybe because the setting is less obnoxiously complicated, sure, but the result is here. Then, maybe i haven't experienced everything in that game though. :)
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Most of the easy places to find discrepancies are in features that weren't there in the first couple formative years, as well. i.e., much of the PvE. Edit: Also civilian traffic is still there, but warp to 0 means you don't really notice it and the total population of EVE is so much higher than it was that the civilian traffic feels ridiculously tiny. When the total population online each day was 4k and you had to snail crawl into the station, those little 5 ship convoys were much more impressive than they are now.
I find it much harder to say that everything that happens in EVE is IC than I used to. In many games the game is *better* than it was in the early days, but it also feels more like a game, if that makes sense.
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Honestly, I have mixed feeling about Eves literally-everything-is-IC attitude. While I really like and admire it for it's effect on immersion, I think it also fosters kind of awkward trend of both players and developers trying to make everything in game work ICly, even when it streches the game world to a ridiculous point and would be better off being glossed over. Here are some things I've had people claim at me:
- That pod pilots are not permitted to go down to planets under any circumstances. Ever.
- That all stations have a mandatedly uniform internal structure.
- That all clones are based around identical templates, which is why pod pilots never have height or body type variation (I heard this one from a dev!)
- That Russians are an actual group in the setting based on their widespreadness in the game community, even though that breaks immersion enough on it's own and defeats the whole point!
It also seems to lead to bunch of really awkward in-universe justifications when the lore inescapably conflicts with the gameplay, that players feel the need to resolve ICly in ways that are also awkwardy and doubly-contradictory, rather then suspending their belief like every other group of MMO roleplayers have learned to do as a habit. Such as claiming CONCORD can shut down any capsule they want instantly (why wouldn't they do that to the people murdering them in nullsec?) when license aren't paid for, or that Capsules are rigged not to be able to see civilian vessels, except for when they sometimes can?
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Here are some things I've had people claim at me:
- That Russians are an actual group in the setting based on their widespreadness in the game community, even though that breaks immersion enough on it's own and defeats the whole point!
that's an extrapolation from a very minor one line in Templar One, where a Russian word is described as a Khanid dialect.
:|
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Here are some things I've had people claim at me:
- That Russians are an actual group in the setting based on their widespreadness in the game community, even though that breaks immersion enough on it's own and defeats the whole point!
that's an extrapolation from a very minor one line in Templar One, where a Russian word is described as a Khanid dialect.
:|
Ugh, that's so dumb!
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Everything needs an IC explanation, including the russians, but they don't have to be *Actual* Russians. Its generally assumed that language in EVE is not actual modern language, anyways. :P
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Honestly, I have mixed feeling about Eves literally-everything-is-IC attitude. While I really like and admire it for it's effect on immersion, I think it also fosters kind of awkward trend of both players and developers trying to make everything in game work ICly, even when it streches the game world to a ridiculous point and would be better off being glossed over. Here are some things I've had people claim at me:
- That pod pilots are not permitted to go down to planets under any circumstances. Ever.
- That all stations have a mandatedly uniform internal structure.
- That all clones are based around identical templates, which is why pod pilots never have height or body type variation (I heard this one from a dev!)
- That Russians are an actual group in the setting based on their widespreadness in the game community, even though that breaks immersion enough on it's own and defeats the whole point!
It also seems to lead to bunch of really awkward in-universe justifications when the lore inescapably conflicts with the gameplay, that players feel the need to resolve ICly in ways that are also awkwardy and doubly-contradictory, rather then suspending their belief like every other group of MMO roleplayers have learned to do as a habit. Such as claiming CONCORD can shut down any capsule they want instantly (why wouldn't they do that to the people murdering them in nullsec?) when license aren't paid for, or that Capsules are rigged not to be able to see civilian vessels, except for when they sometimes can?
Also, SCC, a division of CONCORD, controls all wallet and market transactions. Why don't they shut down all market transactions from pirate stations?
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Everything needs an IC explanation, including the russians, but they don't have to be *Actual* Russians. Its generally assumed that language in EVE is not actual modern language, anyways. :P
Russians = Deteis diaspora from a number of backwater planets in the State that adopted one of their archaic dialects as means of communication, exactly because it confuses the translator. They stick together mafia style, like many other diasporas. Russian in local = ancient Deteis (Arabic = ancient Ni-Kunni, chinese = ancient Jin-Mei, etc.) Here, IC problem is no more. At least, that's how I deal with it.
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At least, that's how I deal with it.
Therein lies the problem. When everyone comes up with their own internal logic to deal with these issues, and tries to use them in roleplay...
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It doesn't have to cause problems. Although the language example above could cause problems when used in RP, you can come up with logic more suitable for RP use, as long as you make it an hypothesis of your character without claiming it to be fact.
But yeah, sometimes, like when some npc organization does something strange, it can be better to just shrug and realize you don't know everything, like the things going on behind the curtains. Often things only make sense when you've got all the puzzle pieces, and I doubt thats the case a lot.
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We're all going to be coming at this from different places, but I personally find EVE really easy to treat as IC all the time. Not everything works, but I have to strain way less than anything else I've played, and I was willing to suspend disbelief -then-. The fact I have to suspend so rarely, like in the case of discussing Russians (laugh) I find it hardly a bump in the road. It's no different than glossing a really new player until he gets the hang of it. The small stuff breaks immersion here and there but its great that gameplay and posting IS our lives. That the HUD is real, that some effort is made to help us gloss mechanic changes, even if ultimately imperfect. It's just a conversation or two anyway, and helps the game setting feel like it moves and changes even when there's not much lie content. It's amusing at least to chat about changes or grump about them immersively. I don't think I'd be held to my actions and positions as much in another game without a lot more posturing. In eve, looking up personal details to inform aggressive actions is something even non-rpers do. That's pretty fantastic. The gray zone here is not perfect, but its pretty close for a game that actually has some content and unreal setting. The only thing more immersive is something like Ingress, I think.
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The business about CONCORD being able to shut us down and regulate capsuleer operations and sensors remotely (and associated discussions) is something Falcon said in response to questions about why we can't see stuff.
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The business about CONCORD being able to shut us down and regulate capsuleer operations and sensors remotely (and associated discussions) is something Falcon said in response to questions about why we can't see stuff.
Falcon is also the guy who made the "All Capsuleers have the same builds because ~cloning~" remark, despite it kinda contradicting the already established cloning lore, so I am inclined to take what he says with a few grains of salt, especially since that makes... Well, zero sense.
I wish people wouldn't take every casual dev remark as gospel, by the way. In my opinion, until something is properly published in a chronicle or article, it's fluff.
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I think Falcon makes up a lot of shit on the fly, not quite thinking it through. Hell, when he was a PC, his char was gargantuan.
Char size is simply one of those things we have to accept is a game mechanic hurr durr that doesn't translate well into IC.
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I have a problem with the HUD behind real as well. It would look so prehistoric and out of place in the setting that... what ? Everything is instantly transmitted by the sheer power of the mind and the senses, and pod pilots suddenly use a basic UI designed for mouse and keyboard ?
What.
We as players can't do as they do ofc, but trying to find reasons and explanations for that is ludicrous.
Also, I have to admit that the scale of the immersion breaking stuff in other MMOs is often a lot more outrageous than in Eve, where it's at least hidden or veiled, even if done poorly. The biggest immersion killer to me in every other MMO has always been seeing lolpeople running all around like crazy for no apparent reason. Doing lolquests or just bunny hopping around.
Everything needs an IC explanation, including the russians, but they don't have to be *Actual* Russians. Its generally assumed that language in EVE is not actual modern language, anyways. :P
Russians = Deteis diaspora from a number of backwater planets in the State that adopted one of their archaic dialects as means of communication, exactly because it confuses the translator. They stick together mafia style, like many other diasporas. Russian in local = ancient Deteis (Arabic = ancient Ni-Kunni, chinese = ancient Jin-Mei, etc.) Here, IC problem is no more. At least, that's how I deal with it.
I am not sure that I would like very much to see RL languages coming back as they are now as the language of X or Y faction... Like it was the case for lolfrench gallente. I never really liked the trope. I rather prefer the few inspirations and mythological names taken here and there as possible remnants of whatever mystical era... We are all speaking english (or kindof), which has absolutely no basis since everyone is supposed to speak his native language with the use of universal translators... And behold, all Amarrians played by russians should now be deteis... or arabic IRL ?
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I am not sure that I would like very much to see RL languages coming back as they are now as the language of X or Y faction... Like it was the case for lolfrench gallente. I never really liked the trope. I rather prefer the few inspirations and mythological names taken here and there as possible remnants of whatever mystical era... We are all speaking english (or kindof), which has absolutely no basis since everyone is supposed to speak his native language with the use of universal translators... And behold, all Amarrians played by russians should now be deteis... or arabic IRL ?
Of course, all actual RL languages in EVE have died out millennia ago. You'd probably find an occasional core Indo-European or Finno-Ugric or Semitic element here and there (Pator, Matar, etc.) but hardly more. You are tryng to see a hard rule where there is actually a very fuzzy attempt at suspension of disbelief. Or a semblance of it.
Let's say, for example, that there is a big independent nullsec corporation formed from the diaspora of the same region. They begin to use some obscure archaic local dialect that most of them know, because commonly available translator software doesn't get it. What they speak from the IC pont of view is not exactly the old Russian language that existed at some point, but something else that 1) common translators don't work with, 2) there are readily available third-party software and people who know it, so it isn't Navajo or Sumerian-level hard.
At some point, this entity, if successful, naturally begins to attract the capsuleers of all other races, and eventually some of them rise to the top of the food chain, but even a decade later the tradition to see each other as kinsmen and usage of the founders' dialect at comms stay.
Voila, "Russians".
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As to languages, remember that this is english just 600 years ago.
A cook they hadde with hem for the nones
To boille the chiknes with the marybones,
And poudre-marchant tart and galyngale.
Wel koude he knowe a draughte of londoun ale.
He koude rooste, and sethe, and broille, and frye,
Maken mortreux, and wel bake a pye.
But greet harm was it, as it thoughte me,
That on his shyne a mormal hadde he.
For blankmanger, that made he with the beste.
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I am not sure that I would like very much to see RL languages coming back as they are now as the language of X or Y faction... Like it was the case for lolfrench gallente. I never really liked the trope. I rather prefer the few inspirations and mythological names taken here and there as possible remnants of whatever mystical era... We are all speaking english (or kindof), which has absolutely no basis since everyone is supposed to speak his native language with the use of universal translators... And behold, all Amarrians played by russians should now be deteis... or arabic IRL ?
Of course, all actual RL languages in EVE have died out millennia ago. You'd probably find an occasional core Indo-European or Finno-Ugric or Semitic element here and there (Pator, Matar, etc.) but hardly more. You are tryng to see a hard rule where there is actually a very fuzzy attempt at suspension of disbelief. Or a semblance of it.
Let's say, for example, that there is a big independent nullsec corporation formed from the diaspora of the same region. They begin to use some obscure archaic local dialect that most of them know, because commonly available translator software doesn't get it. What they speak from the IC pont of view is not exactly the old Russian language that existed at some point, but something else that 1) common translators don't work with, 2) there are readily available third-party software and people who know it, so it isn't Navajo or Sumerian-level hard.
At some point, this entity, if successful, naturally begins to attract the capsuleers of all other races, and eventually some of them rise to the top of the food chain, but even a decade later the tradition to see each other as kinsmen and usage of the founders' dialect at comms stay.
Voila, "Russians".
Ah, you meant it like that? I see. :)
But yeah, in any case, hearing a RL language considered IC at its fullest (not just for mythological names) tends to break suspension of disbelief for me.
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I think specific use of IG language words help accentuate certain things. For example, when Jenn uses "kirjuun" instead of "friend," it denotes a deeper relation with consequences to her.
Beyond that, I think I agree that I find it disruptive when something is fully in a foreign language. It forces me to either ignore it completely or go through an entire Google Translate exercise.
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The only problem with that explanation, Tamiroth, is that the Russian groups in the in game EVE universe are made up from a completely random mix of people from the different racial backgrounds and there hasn't really been time for a realistic standardization of those diverse groups into a new culture.
You could perhaps simply that the languages represent group specific battle language that are in IC terms taught after the pilot joins the group, though I don't really know why that would exist with universal translators. Or you could go with a tech explanation for different RL languages being actively used in game. Something like them being the product of different encoding packages would work.
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The only problem with that explanation, Tamiroth, is that the Russian groups in the in game EVE universe are made up from a completely random mix of people from the different racial backgrounds and there hasn't really been time for a realistic standardization of those diverse groups into a new culture.
You could perhaps simply that the languages represent group specific battle language that are in IC terms taught after the pilot joins the group, though I don't really know why that would exist with universal translators. Or you could go with a tech explanation for different RL languages being actively used in game. Something like them being the product of different encoding packages would work.
We can draw some ideas from the Mandalorians from Star Wars.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mandalorian
The original Mandalorians were an alien race, but they draw in other races into their culture. Over time, they died out, but the other races that had lived and breathed their culture continued to persist, and these became the modern Mandalorians.
Of course, if we use this parallel, it implies that there was an original Russian culture. So how do we work that out to fit the setting?
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"The Russians" are just like "the CFC" when it comes to large amorphous groups on nullsec pilots to me.
I mean, try to rationalize in supersrs mode a conglomerate of pilots, over 35,000 Empyreans, flying under the supersrs banner of "The Clusterfuck Coalition" ...
.. the future need not be our version of serious, or superspecial beyond imagining.
It's 2015, and we're not wearing back to the future collanders on our heads, are we? ;)
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It's 2015, and we're not wearing back to the future collanders on our heads, are we? ;)
A casual glance at Twitter or any number of other social media would suggest otherwise. :lol:
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Thats just a photo, I certainly havent seen the stuff for sale at Target/Primark! ;)
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Everything needs an IC explanation, including the russians, but they don't have to be *Actual* Russians. Its generally assumed that language in EVE is not actual modern language, anyways. :P
Russians = Deteis diaspora from a number of backwater planets in the State that adopted one of their archaic dialects as means of communication, exactly because it confuses the translator. They stick together mafia style, like many other diasporas. Russian in local = ancient Deteis (Arabic = ancient Ni-Kunni, chinese = ancient Jin-Mei, etc.) Here, IC problem is no more. At least, that's how I deal with it.
Russian alphabet = moon runes.
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Russian alphabet = moon runes.
(http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/139/c/d/new_lunar_republic__siberian_luna_by_115predator-d4zt4xs.png)
on topic: see my answer to Lyn Farel above.
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I think specific use of IG language words help accentuate certain things. For example, when Jenn uses "kirjuun" instead of "friend," it denotes a deeper relation with consequences to her.
Beyond that, I think I agree that I find it disruptive when something is fully in a foreign language. It forces me to either ignore it completely or go through an entire Google Translate exercise.
I take more of an issue with associating an ingame faction with RL cultures than just having to google translate. For example I wasn't annoyed by gallente being lolfrench space federals because I had to google translate (since I speak it directly RL anyway) but just for the fact that it was equating the RL culture with the gallente manners and culture (fortunately they removed that from the lore). I am already much more at ease when it's just gallente mannerisms and memes, like corporate japanese tropes for caldari, spiritual japanese for achura, persian for amarr, etc etc, since all are inspired from that and so on.
And even that is already too much because players will obviously, as usual, force the trait to silly levels, but that's to be expected. vOv
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"The Russians" are just like "the CFC" when it comes to large amorphous groups on nullsec pilots to me.
I mean, try to rationalize in supersrs mode a conglomerate of pilots, over 35,000 Empyreans, flying under the supersrs banner of "The Clusterfuck Coalition" ...
.. the future need not be our version of serious, or superspecial beyond imagining.
It's 2015, and we're not wearing back to the future collanders on our heads, are we? ;)
Oh, this brings to mind about this part in Source that discusses how Capsuleers think they are in a game. It's probably just Capsuleer humour at work.
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I never even bought Source, as I operate (still) on the psychotic premise that EvE stated one would never need to pay more for content than the subscription fee, and Source costs extra.. ;)
.. anyway, people thinking they're in a game Ari usually figures is CDD (or what other player's chars call Capsuleer Dementia)
Also, capsuleers thinking something is a game would fit perfectly as to why baseliners are, in general, kinda scared shitless of capsuleers, as essentially you could run into one who doesn't even think you're a real person... ;)
Could be humor.. could be just bare facts. It is pretty much a clusterfuck, more or less... ;)
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I never even bought Source, as I operate (still) on the psychotic premise that EvE stated one would never need to pay more for content than the subscription fee, and Source costs extra.. ;)
.. anyway, people thinking they're in a game Ari usually figures is CDD (or what other player's chars call Capsuleer Dementia)
Also, capsuleers thinking something is a game would fit perfectly as to why baseliners are, in general, kinda scared shitless of capsuleers, as essentially you could run into one who doesn't even think you're a real person... ;)
Could be humor.. could be just bare facts. It is pretty much a clusterfuck, more or less... ;)
I mean naming a coalition the 'Clusterfuck Coalition' is probably capsuleer humour at work.
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There's one, fairly substantial, thing that hammers in the whole "what you see isn't IC", and that is the wormhole systems map.
In-game, until CCP disabled it, it was possible to map, the position of a wormhole system, using distances from POS towers. This showed the systems as being another cluster of systems, several lightyears to the south east.
A core of C6, surrounded by C5, then C4, with C3,2,1 being ever outwards to the periphery of the cluster of wormhole systems.
This is also repeated through examining the static eve data export, which has the universal co-ordinates of all the star systems. Again, same pattern of wormholes being in a tight cluster.
Except, according to CCP devs, all the J123 numbers used by wormhole systems refer to entries in a RL astronomy catalogue of something (quasars?), and they are scattered all over the universe, and their spatial relationship with each other bears no resemblance to what is seen ingame.
What you see ingame, is 'just a game' and not what you'd "see" IC.
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IKR! :psyccp: