Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Streya on 28 Sep 2012, 22:20
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Hello everyone! Today I participated in a Live Event, which was awesome. But something came up that I wanted to ask about (which I did talk extensively about in fleet voice, as Saede will testify).
How does one roleplay live events, outside of space-based actions? For example, the dev actors were RPing events on the ground. Now as makers and writers of PF, I accepted that fine. Then the SYNE fleet came in, and started deploying ground forces themselves. Now, props to Ninavask for actually having Marines aboard his Nemesis. But how do we, as mere players and not worthy of the god-like golden CCP actor text, know what RP we do that isn't mechanical is appropriate? Asked differently: how do we roleplay non-mechanical actions (deploying marines, orbital bombardments, etc) in a way that is recognized by CCP and not god-modey? It would be quite easy to handwave one's own Marines as being somehow better/more trained than the CCP actors' own ground forces. A simple "/me deploys super-advanced ground forces that defecate hand grenades and sweat adaptive shielding" surely wouldn't be appropriate.
So how far do you all think we can take it before CCP just laughs at us and ignores our local roleplay? I typically don't engage in this kind of world-shaping roleplay unless it is 100% mechanical and in-space, but the recent Live Events makes me want to fight for my faction and participate in the EVE universe. How do I do so in a way that doesn't boil down to typing "/me wins"?
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I believe that our task is mere providing security (or insecurity, depending on your side :P) for ground operations. Depending of what CCP doing on a planet, you can guess if they will require some more reinforcements or when they are about to leave, and then, when something appears in space, you do something to protect or attack it.
Or just shoot those, who are waiting together with you, but on opposite side :D
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I've participated in Live Events, particularly during the initial Sansha incursions and before I got heavily entwined in FW. I also noticed the same dilemma you're getting into now. A lot of pilots RPed doing things that wasn't possible using game mechanics, particularly involving 'ground operations' against the Sansha abductions, and wacky things that had to do with the un-targetable wormhole scenery.
Ultimately, I opted to limit my RP to what I did with my ship. That is to say, I helped out fleets in my rinky-dinky interceptors and focused my efforts on debating and bantering with the Sansha actors. That was enough of a contribution for me to enjoy participating. I didn't feel comfortable with going beyond the game mechanics, in large part because I wasn't certain what was feasible and what was pushing boundaries.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't "get creative" in participating in these Live Events. But the ambiguity of the made-up interactions does risk god-moting. As everyday interactions in the Summit and OOC show, people disagree heavily on what is plausible in this setting.
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Right, Shaa, which is partially why I too almost want to only roleplay those things which I can do mechanically. The problem here is it almost feels like this limits my tactics. When I go into these Live Events to do battle, I am there to win. I am there to pit my EVE skills against those of the opposing fleet. This is not to say I limit myself to e-bushido and the like, but rather I recognize the tangible results of roleplay in space: ships are lost, people have to get new ships and a mission critical object is protected. It's great. But then when the ground-forces roleplay starts happening, I literally throw my arms up and don't know what to do. It almost feels like the very existence of such roleplay completely invalidates any actions in space. Let us say one side is completely winning in space. What keeps the other, losing-in-space faction from simply warping an Iteron filled with many thousands of Marines and Small Arms and all kinds of lovely things and dropping it on the Live Event structure? Since there were, mechanically speaking, Marines in the Iteron, the limits of what hard mechanics tells us is valid have been crossed.
It is at this point, this infinitesimal speck of time, that we enter into the political-social aspect of EVE roleplay. It is here where I am least comfortable, where fingers can be pointed and shouts of "god-modding!" can be heard.
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Considering that the ground force stuff is most likely :psyccp:'s way of rp integrating dust it's perfectly allright to feel invalidated in that regard.
If there are event actors ofyour faction around you can always offer up your marines to them for deployment, after all we lack that option and they don't.
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That's along the lines of what I was thinking. If the actors will roleplay certain things that I'm not comfortable doing, then I can just pass the in-game "Marines" items off to them and they'll do as they see fit.
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I've participated in Live Events, particularly during the initial Sansha incursions and before I got heavily entwined in FW. I also noticed the same dilemma you're getting into now. A lot of pilots RPed doing things that wasn't possible using game mechanics, particularly involving 'ground operations' against the Sansha abductions, and wacky things that had to do with the un-targetable wormhole scenery.
Ultimately, I opted to limit my RP to what I did with my ship. That is to say, I helped out fleets in my rinky-dinky interceptors and focused my efforts on debating and bantering with the Sansha actors. That was enough of a contribution for me to enjoy participating. I didn't feel comfortable with going beyond the game mechanics, in large part because I wasn't certain what was feasible and what was pushing boundaries.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't "get creative" in participating in these Live Events. But the ambiguity of the made-up interactions does risk god-moting. As everyday interactions in the Summit and OOC show, people disagree heavily on what is plausible in this setting.
Most of the time, I participated in these events, I just grab whatever with tachyons to chop bounties and mwd, to stay away from being tackled :twisted: Tried to threaten Sansha, or other usual stoof.
A bit creative I went when we were defending Jita (actually a system one jump from Jita), but still this creativeness was limited with my ship capabilities, and I just went my usual line, defending "my" Jita from enemies of the State. Anyway, local was usually clogged and real conversations were barely possible. So... it was quite limited to screaming and shouting :lol:
Considering, devs goals to blow up as many ships as they can, and my innate inclination to die horribly in big balls of fire, it was a miracle that I lived through :P
But then when the ground-forces roleplay starts happening, I literally throw my arms up and don't know what to do. It almost feels like the very existence of such roleplay completely invalidates any actions in space. Let us say one side is completely winning in space. What keeps the other, losing-in-space faction from simply warping an Iteron filled with many thousands of Marines and Small Arms and all kinds of lovely things and dropping it on the Live Event structure? Since there were, mechanically speaking, Marines in the Iteron, the limits of what hard mechanics tells us is valid have been crossed.
Egg-zactly! Drop a can and go like "hey, guys, there are marines in the can, pick'em up before they freeze to death!"
Or, really.
Just wait and see what happens. If they landed at a planet and do fight on ground, even if enemy wins, they have to take off. And then - your turn!
And I am really against any godmodding or RP-ing actions, that you can't do. TBH, with small exceptions: sometimes I allow myself to do minor actions, that doesn't affect anything, for example "slapping someone with missile", "biting", "put bucket on a head and punch it", "opening window to let fresh... vacuum in", "throw slipper or pillow" , you know, that kind of stuff, just for fun :)
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during the previous events, when sansha forces turned up and started "deploying dropships", there were several people in frigates or even rookieships, that were "deploying countermeasures", including "marines" and other such things.
Sometimes CCP acknowledged it, sometimes they did not. It depended on who was the event actor, I suppose.
same with every other non-mechanical action. It was entirely up to the event actor in control of the event whether the actions were successful or not. E.g. some people used gravimetric ecm on the wormhole. That worked once or twice, did not on other occasions. On yet other occasions, the event actor said something along lines of "deploying wormhole stabiliser", which showed they acknowledged the ecm was happening, but it would not affect the course of the event.
There were also mechanical actions, including setting up PI structures, representing ground bases for defence forces. This was also acknowledged at times, successful or not.
There was also a situation whereby the Sansha command ship would hang around long enough to be destroyed, even if the players weren't managing to achieve much against it.
that is:
20:00:00 Slave Actor > 30 minutes until operation complete.
20:45:00 Slave Actor > 15 minutes until operation complete.
21:15:00 Slave Actor > 5 minutes until escape wormhole opening.
21:45:00 Slave Actor > Escape wormhole collapsing. There is no death in Nation. *explodes*
Ultimately, control of the event is almost entirely in CCP's hands. Unless players bring overwhelming force and wipe the field of actors (and sometimes not even then), then the actors will decide what happens:
Actor> deploying ground force Alpha.
Actor2> go team!
Player 1> I'm dropshipping in marines to fight Alpha
Player 2> deploying air assets to support Alpha
Player 1> Additional AAA units deployed
Player 2> anti-aaa missiles launched
Player 1> missile shield activated
Player 2> activate shield penetrating lasers
Player 1> deploy smoke and mirrors to defeat lasers
Actor> Alpha force commander report
Actor2> I don't know what the hell's going on outside, but we've got what we need. shipping out!
or
Actor2> there's too many of them! aaaaaaaaarrrgggh-
In either case, actor2 decides what the result was. The piling on of measures and countermeasures just gets a bit... weird.
Given that experience, then I'd suggest:
1. Let CCP play the npcs. The event will pan out according to CCP's plan anyway, rping things that cannot be represented by game mechanics that don't get acknowledged will only lead to frustration.
2. If there's something that can be represented by game mechanics, e.g. having your cargohold full of marines, then do so. Recognise that this may not have any effect.
3. Your side will lose sometimes, win other times. Accept this and avoid being frustrated at the apparent incompetence of the event forces.
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Maybe you should at least avoid deploying marines if you do not have any marines. :)
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That could be expanded to 'You should avoid deploying marines if you cannot deploy marines.'
Which of course runs face first into the 'urdoinitwrong' wall.
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Yup, they can ack this, but still, from my point of view, we should stay aside from ground operations and do what we are meant to do: provide support as a space force.
Stand by, stand by, stand by, all units FIRE!
*wargasm*
:oops:
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That could be expanded to 'You should avoid deploying marines if you cannot deploy marines.'
Which of course runs face first into the 'urdoinitwrong' wall.
Well, there is that too.
Furthermore, the live events will involve large numbers of what people term "non-rp'ers". Invisible dropship style things will only provoke "lol rp" comments.
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During the sansha events, the idea of using gravitons (:science:) to disrupt the wormholes was entirely player made. People turned up in graviton fit ecm boats and even scripted point hictors to attempt the close the wormholes. CCP ran with it, and when there was an overwhelming amount of ecm/hictors on the field, they would close the wormholes early, trapping actors and npcs all over the place. And it was glorious :3
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I missed this one (again D:)
But we thought after the first, the Angels are likely to turn up again, and they're likely to be just as good if not better. So then one of us had the idea to have a strike team, because the Angels were clearly doing something with ground troops. If CCP ran with it, awesomesauce, if not "Sorry Commander... we couldnt reach them in time/they outflanked us"
That said, we realised its not exactly mechanic supported, so with things like these, its kind of like dancing the tango; let CCP lead.
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During the sansha events, the idea of using gravitons (:science:) to disrupt the wormholes was entirely player made. People turned up in graviton fit ecm boats and even scripted point hictors to attempt the close the wormholes. CCP ran with it, and when there was an overwhelming amount of ecm/hictors on the field, they would close the wormholes early, trapping actors and npcs all over the place. And it was glorious :3
It was glorious.
Louella has the right idea though. Think of it that you're providing hooks that the actors can latch onto.
If someone goes into the whole counter-rp thing to you, depending on what they're doing and what they're flying you can either; run with it (if they're being reasonable and "realistic"; or ignore it (if they're being "unrealistic"). It's hard to work out where the line is, so I would encourage you to stick to the more conservative side of the line.
Remember your own limits - try to set these before you go in, and no matter what, don't go past them. Work out what you can do, and what you can't do before you head in. Again, if you're not quite sure if you would be able to do something, don't.
And with the whole marines and deployment thing, I personally think that anything smaller than a battleship (except industrials) isn't going to be able to deploy anything in any sort of numbers that could make a difference. And further expanding on that, if you don't have an Orca/Carrier/other ship with a SMA, you shouldn't really be able to use dropships and thus, would have to spend time "docked" with the station. But there's a deep rabbit hole with this one, so I'll leave that to another thread.
(Also, first post. Oh god, what have I done? :eek: )
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I suppose that the long and short of it (for me) would be "anything done shouldn't be decisive to the outcome, and it should be clear to the actors what you're trying to do". Saying "marines inbound" or whatever leaves them in the dark; clarifying that you're trying to have them do something against the Cartel forces gives them enough to work with, if they feel like it -- and if not, well, it's easy enough to explain that away as poor timing or poor execution.
The more arcane the purposes become, the more I feel it's less likely that they'll be taken up, both in terms of integrating into the larger plot well and in terms of CCP knowing what they can actually do with a given hook.
The ECM in the Sansha events is a good example, like a few people have said; an interesting sidenote is that CCP ran with it both ways, at times. At some events TS-F / NQM's using ECCM on the wormholes was run with to great effect; if memory serves, Trytedald was particularly hilarious. Something to the effect of "conduit established" and suddenly e-war elite cruisers, everywhere.
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In EvE some frigates can carry more cargo than a battleship. And I would strongly recommend you to avoid dropping a carrier for that, unless you are hiding a batphone in that pretty pocket of your suit :P
In my humble opinion, to make it awesome like with jammers, you have to bring real marines in your cargo and drop them, or insert them into POCO (do you know if you can actually do it?) or station depending on what's being attacked.
I remember when I planned to make some fun with marines like that for some RP reason, but no one showed any interest and I forgot it :|
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The actors tend to tailor the events based on who is winning and who shows up.
IE if you come in force and win in space, the 'script' will reflect your outcome (in many cases).
Focus on blasting people in space is the best way to advance your cause.
It's a tough line during an engagement because it might be difficult as capsuleers to just 'deploy' ground forces onto a sovereign space station run by an Empire faction.
IE: It would make perfect sense for me if say, Ushra'Khan showed up to the battle site ahead of time with cargo haulers to 'reinforce' an area or showed up mid-battle to do so, as they have 'credibility' that their people would reasonably be allowed to assist with defense of a Minmatar station.
If say, Aegis Militia showed up with 'marines' to help I would imagine they would uh, not be allowed to help, make sense?
Moral of the story I think with these sorts of events is to give the loyalist and antagonist RPers associated with the events a bit more leeway than the rest of us.
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Focus on blasting people in space is the best way to advance your cause.
With this I agree completely, and that's what I prefer doing during events. I have a feeling that CCP's goals in events are to stimulate players to blow up each other and to stimulate them to work together against common enemy.
However, on the other hand, imagine a situation, when everyone brings a hauler with marines instead of combat ship. Even pirates, who are supposed to blow them up, appear in same haulers. They clog around devs, debating who brought the most marines. Haulers of opposing factions bump each other to prevent deployment of troops.
It would be so ridiculously funny on all levels! :D
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As long as they do not start again to interact with only a handful of RP entities, like they did with Syne in the Sansha events... vOv
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I suppose the entire scenario does become irrelevant if every ship able to carry Marines is blasted out of the sky. The SYNE people were smart and brought two stealth bombers to deploy Marines, so while I managed to blap one out of existence they still had the other.
SYNE takes live events very seriously, and I look forward to fighting them in the future.
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As long as they do not start again to interact with only a handful of RP entities, like they did with Syne in the Sansha events... vOv
There was a whole bunch of other people there. Soter was just vocal and first to pull gun, for better or worse. Plus, old Haeldone Dorgiers seemed to respond with some consistency, a la Nikiru et Grideris. But as a disclaimer, I've not actually been there, just spent hours trawling the logs, reports and articles.
But in case you were worried, believe me they havn't been giving anyone treatment they havnt earned (as of yet). People who got stuck in, talked to the actors and put ships on the line, like the angel pilots that were there have definitely recieved boons for their work. Though as usual they wont tell anyone what... cheeky buggers ;)
I suppose the entire scenario does become irrelevant if every ship able to carry Marines is blasted out of the sky. The SYNE people were smart and brought two stealth bombers to deploy Marines, so while I managed to blap one out of existence they still had the other.
SYNE takes live events very seriously, and I look forward to fighting them in the future.
It is one of our strong suits :D
We aim to be a fun and interesting bunch to RP with (and to take better care of our precious stealth bombers! D': ) so its nice to hear some feedback, positive or negative :)
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As long as they do not start again to interact with only a handful of RP entities, like they did with Syne in the Sansha events... vOv
There was a whole bunch of other people there. Soter was just vocal and first to pull gun, for better or worse. Plus, old Haeldone Dorgiers seemed to respond with some consistency, a la Nikiru et Grideris. But as a disclaimer, I've not actually been there, just spent hours trawling the logs, reports and articles.
But in case you were worried, believe me they havn't been giving anyone treatment they havnt earned (as of yet). People who got stuck in, talked to the actors and put ships on the line, like the angel pilots that were there have definitely recieved boons for their work. Though as usual they wont tell anyone what... cheeky buggers ;)
Ah ok, I guess I had a wrong impression with this.
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My thought on it is throw what you can at them and see what they stick to.
And honestly... wasn't that smart. I had 500 some marines nearby and when I decloaked to grab a corpse, because I am a corpse chaser I admit it, I got popped by actors and you loyalist peoples XD. So I lost the ten marines that were there. When I went and grabbed my next ship, I realized ten marines weren't worth much so crammed as many as I could into the ship on the way back.
Here's hoping some day they link live events with Dust 514 live story arcs...?
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My thought on it is throw what you can at them and see what they stick to.
And honestly... wasn't that smart. I had 500 some marines nearby and when I decloaked to grab a corpse, because I am a corpse chaser I admit it, I got popped by actors and you loyalist peoples XD. So I lost the ten marines that were there. When I went and grabbed my next ship, I realized ten marines weren't worth much so crammed as many as I could into the ship on the way back.
Here's hoping some day they link live events with Dust 514 live story arcs...?
personally, I think you should have had to be decloaked at zero on the station to deploy those marines. When we started deploying attack drones, we were at zero on the Occupied Transfer Facility. If I can just do that while cloaked, it sort of puts a meh on things.
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I did. well not at zero. I warped in to 10 off station then approached it to 2 k before launching torp, then quickly burst away so I didn't go pop.
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I did. well not at zero. I warped in to 10 off station then approached it to 2 k before launching torp, then quickly burst away so I didn't go pop.
Oh okay, so you actually did decloak to deploy them? I didn't notice that. Objection rescinded.
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Yeah, he decloaked both times. First time got popped, second time he succeeded.
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I'm not very sneaky XD
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Y'all don't even know how many Kamieras I have in my hangar. Angels are going to be in trouble if they come down by my hood!
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Kameiras. Great idea Aldy! :twisted: