I'm not sure what the argument is, but it seems to be something like this.
Lyn: "If me and my friends are playing 'Harry Potter', and some of the other people in the room are playing 'Lord of the Rings', it's immersion breaking."
Havojeh: "If you are playing 'Harry Potter', and other people are playing 'Lord of the Rings', then simply avoid them."
This seems simple enough. However, the problem with EVE, or perhaps I should say the 'unique circumstance' about EVE, is that the background story is somewhat obscure and underground, existing independent of popular social media.
It's a lot harder to be a role-player in EVE than it is to be a role-player in 'Star Wars' or 'Star Trek' for example. There is no widely known, deeply familiar story to springboard from. It's not enough to be a 'logical Vulcan' or a 'mystical Jedi', you have to read reams and reams of background, chronicles, novels and so on to be 'caught up'. Perhaps for that reason, a lot of players simply ignore the roleplay aspect of EVE and bypass it completely, focusing entirely on the game mechanics to play their own game.
Then, there is the problem of how you as a player interpret the stereotypical depictions of each faction, which have deliberately been painted in very large brush strokes. Amarr are religious, Caldari are Capitalist, etc. There is however, a huge spectrum of personal interpretation about both the positive and negative aspects of both religion and Capitalism. It's easy enough for us to say 'You're doing it wrong!' However, we are judging someone else's personal interpretation about something represented in a science fiction spaceship combat game which isn't exactly a black and white cut and dried issue in the real world.
With that being said, I would argue that roleplay itself is somewhat of a broken game mechanic. Roleplayers in EVE are definitely in the minority, and an arguably persecuted minority at that.
When I was in 1PG, we were the only Amarr roleplaying corporation in Faction war. Occasionally, an enemy would refer to us as 'roleplaying fags'. Presumably, for these people their ships are 'pixels', one faction is better than the other because they have 'cooler looking' ships or better weapons, and faction war is just a way to farm ISK, or a gaming arena like a football field.
As an example of the 'disconnect' in EVE roleplay, I will cite the following example.
Someone that posted in the EVE forums looking for an EVE corporation that was run according to Islamic principles. Obviously, this had nothing to do with the EVE story line.
I told him that anything mentioned in the Qu'ran doesn't really apply to the make believe in world story of EVE. Mining spodumain or manufacturing warp scramblers isn't something that Muhammed makes specific reference to. (Mind you, playing chess is something the Qu'ran considers sinful, and that would likely apply to playing EVE as well.)
My suggestion to him was that he could roleplay a Minmatar loyalist who is tracing the faint and hidden trail of his own religion and culture, which just happens to be the Qu'ran, which is considered Apocrypha by the Amarrian Orthodox religion in the future some 20,000 years from now.
Why would I suggest he roleplay as a Minmatar? Well, my own personal interpretation of the Amarrian religion is that any religion which supports slavery is in itself fundamentally 'evil'. Yes, I would include the three Abrahamic religions in this category as well.
My point here? This guy signed up for EVE, created a character, and wanted to play the game his way, with no intention of even reading into the background story behind it. Yes, it's true that EVE is a 'sandbox'. However, there isn't the option to play Star Trek without at least identifying with your character as a Vulcan, Klingon, Romulan or whatever.
When I started EVE, my impression was that Amarrians as a whole were intended to be the 'bad guys', and this included the Caldari. By playing an Amarrian loyalist, it was my intention to do a little 'mustache twirling'.
Of course, things are not so black and white in the real world, nor are they black and white in EVE. The best villains are rarely 'Snidely Whiplash' caricatures, but most often are well intentioned, powerful yet misguided individuals who cause great harm but mistakenly perceive of themselves as doing the right thing.
The worst slave owners were not the ones who mistreated their slaves, but paradoxically, the ones who treated their slaves with the most kindness. After all, it was the compassionate slave owners who were held up as the prime example, and this made slavery seem like a tolerable institution.
Another (perhaps better) example might be the argument that Purple and I had on the thread 'The state and sexuality'. In my opinion, to see the Caldari state as simply representing 'Capitalism' (particularly only it's beneficial aspects) is somewhat superficial and reductionist. My interpretation of Purple's argument is that the Caldari state for him represents a sort of Capitalist or Libertarian utopia, which offered more personal freedom than any of the other three factions.
In the grander scale of things, I would compare this to the parable of the three blind men and the elephant. One blind man feels the trunk and says than an elephant is like a snake, another blind man feels the elephant's leg and says that an elephant is like a tree. None of them are wrong, but none of them are right either. The elephant is much bigger than any one of them can fully comprehend.
If something were entirely good or entirely bad, it would either be universally implemented or discarded, there would be no room for disagreement or discussion. If something has lots of 'shades of grey', there is room for both personal interpretation and a generator of conflict. Ultimately, it is conflict which creates the story, and drives the economy of EVE.
In actuality, saying that the Caldari are more Capitalist than the other three is Prime fiction and roleplay only. There are no actual game mechanics differences in the economic systems of any of the four empires. The trade hubs of Diodixie or Rens are not significantly any different game mechanics wise than the super trade hub at Jita. The taxes levels are comparable, the products are identical, the trade interface in each station is the exact same template. There is no 'Communist vs. Capitalist vs. Socialist' game mechanic in EVE, except perhaps on a corporate taxes level.
Hopefully I haven't diverted too much from the original topic. My point is that every player brings their own unique personal interpretation and perspectives from the real world, and these perspective influence how their own role-play character interprets and perceives the make believe world of EVE.
These unique interpretations and perspectives cause violent disagreements and conflicts in the real world, even in instances where there is agreement upon the truth of one standard and widely available text, such as Sunni vs. Shi'ite or Catholic vs. Protestant. So why shouldn't this be expected in an environment which allows anyone on the planet, each with widely varying experiences, perspectives, and beliefs, to connect and interact with one another in a simulated fictional environment?
In game items:
Yes, I think this is a huge missed opportunity for CCP to give EVE roleplaying the shot in the arm that it so desperately needs. When I look at the items available in the market, ninety nine percent of them are weapons, modules, ships, and other devices of war. Items such as 'livestock' (a.k.a. people), are trade items with little or no effect in game. I hauled around some hydrogen batteries for a while in my short lived, rather dull career as a hauler. There didn't seem to be much point in doing this, except for the marginal profit I could make.
On another thread, someone asked for livestock items such as 'Gallente VIP, exotic dancers, scientists, slaves' etc. Someone else remarked "This sounds like good roleplay, or something very kinky." I looked at the post, and I had to agree. Just the list of livestock requested looked like the characters in some sort of story.
In another spaceship game I played, you could actually make a living taking passenger transport missions from one station to another. Not only did each passenger have an interesting story, but it was a nice way to increase your income on an otherwise boring hauling mission. It was also possible to jettison passengers into space, thus lowering your security rating and enabling you to join the pirate faction.
Presumably Interbus handles all passenger flights in EVE, but have we ever seen an Interbus NPC ship in space? Would it be possible for Interbus to sub-contract passenger flights, so as to pad the income of haulers, and make the currently overpriced hauling contracts more profitable/ accessible to newer players flying industrials?
I had also suggested that slaves/ freed slaves should have an in game mechanism to allow conversion. Slavery seems like the most controversial aspect of the game, providing enough of a role-play incentive to keep the Amarrian lasers firing and the Minmatar guns a-blazing. What if they were a vital component in Faction warfare? Instead of circling the button in a plex for points, you would do it to 'produce' either a slave or a freed slave. This slave or freed slave could then be brought to a customs office of a planet where you are running your PI, and 'deposited' on the planet to create some game effect. Perhaps the current Faction war points system would be a reflection of the population enslaved or released from slavery.
For the Caldari and Gallente? Perhaps it would be homeless converted into janitors, or something.
Another suggestion I had was to make the 'livestock conversion mechanism' into another node available through Planetary interaction. You could call this 'personnel', or Compound or Academy or something. This would allow you to 'produce' people in the same way that primary resources are processed into secondary resources and so on. Slaves + holoreel = Freed slaves, or Freed slaves + Slaver = Slaves for example. It would be possible to transform primary human resources into secondary, or tertiary resources as well, such as Slaves into Elite slaves, Janitors into Scientists, and so on.
I would also like it if the role-play trade item devices (or 'chits' as I call them), were customizable to a degree. True, this leaves a lot of room for abuse, but it also encourages greater player creativity and interaction as well. If there were a device in game for crafting/ inventing/ labeling your own trade good items, perhaps from a list of available pictures/ blueprints, it might encourage both the quantity and quality of role-play.
More consumables other than drugs, such as food, tobacco, and alcoholic drinks, might also help increase role play immersion. Granted, no one wants their character to get hungry in the middle of a battle in low sec. However, food and drink might be something available to your character while docked. This might even be useful as an in station timer of sorts, so that your hunger bar starts ticking as soon as you dock.
Hunger could be avoided by keeping food items in your hangar, which are consumed when your hunger bar runs out. The consumption of alcohol might temporarily increase your charisma, and thus enhance station trading, but over consumption would have a negative effect such as slurred speech, vomiting and such.
These suggestions might involve too much of a hard change to the game mechanics. However, one thing I can suggest which would add to the roleplay immersion without the need for in game mechanics would be the addition of a MIRC-bot into the in game IRC channels.
This would be easy enough to do. The coding for these bots already exists, all that would be required would be for CCP to implement them, then for the channel owner to familiarize themselves with the MIRC-bot code. Once that is done, you can have a slave, bouncer, Priest, host, announcer, bartender, or other NPC to respond with a scripted statement to certain trigger words.
For example, if you wanted long legged roe, you would simply type !roe, and the mirc-bot would respond with "The slave bows obediently and makes their way to the kitchen, returning with a plate of long legged roe." Or, if you type !Slaver, the mirc-bot would respond "Benny the bouncer rushes to the bar, grabbing the Amarrian and picking him up by the collar, tossing him out the door. "No Slavers allowed! he barks."
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Topic: game mechanics and rp involving them (Read 9472 times)