Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Louella Dougans on 23 Jan 2012, 13:13
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sometimes, there's a thing, on the IGS or other places, where a person will do something, and another person will say IC why didn't they do something else, and cite something like a game mechanic, or obscure item.
example, one time, there was a thing with an exchange of prisoners for freed slaves, and the people involved used the "Slaves" ingame item, but at the time, one of them was unaware that more suitable items existed, (kidnapped civilians, Prisoners, refugees, whatever).
unfortunately, many of the items that would be suitable for such rp activities, are mission items, and as such not easy to get a hold of, (or keep hold of), so obtaining items in order to conduct those rp activities, is very hard. Some are very expensive to obtain from contracts, e.g. objects that are ~100m each.
So, what do you do when there's someone using an ingame item, and a more suitable thing exists ? do you challenge them about it, thus possibly embarrassing them about their knowledge of obscure ingame items ? do you play along with their idea that object X is actually object Y ?
to me, it can seem a bit immersion breaking, to comment that since the objects were Y, instead of X, then character A is being deceitful about things. It seems a bit using the game mechanics to say someone is wrong, without necessarily much IC evidence to do so.
Is it reasonable to expect a player to spend much of their ingame time/funds to obtain items just to avoid such comments? does it add anything to enjoyment of rp ?
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Talk it out oocly. And I assume that using the item slaves instead of the item freed slaves wouldn't make too much difference, as long as the intention is clear from the start.
Aside from that, some ingame mechanics would almost certainly have to be used as 'facts', such as inability to ram ships into other things, destroying npc stations, flying into a planet or targeting civilian space travel. Short version: Everything we have on our interface and can interact with from the capsule is chosen and influenced by CONCORD, and there's hardly a way around it.
Also, I don't think that I'm keeping one unit of VIP hostage since 2005 in RP terms.
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Slaves for freed slaves (and vice versa), sure, definitly.
Blue pill for Kameiras, not cool. :P
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RP and using game mechanics to create the worldview of New Eden is quite of an issue.
Basically if you adopt the black and white worldview about the user interface then, I think, you should apply it in every way possible, not just when it suits you.
It would mean you would have nothing planet side, nothing station side, no contact with baseliners, your world would consist of nothing but the things you can affect through the UI.
It is an interesting handicap and it also eliminates most of the Mary Sueisms that the RP in EVE entails.
Personally, I like it.
Also there is the thing with the in game items is that some of them are not even accessible unless you have enough standings to do certain missions, so some hand waving should be kosher.
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It would mean you would have nothing planet side, nothing station side, no contact with baseliners, your world would consist of nothing but the things you can affect through the UI.
I'd disagree. The interface is coming from the capsule. I had that discussion once with someone claiming that CONCORD would be totally in trouble if all capsuleers would come to Yulai and shoot their stuff. In that case I still think that the safeguards of the capsule - our interface - doesn't allow pointing our guns at a station, or in another case, flying a battleship into a planet.
CONCORD is totally keeping us down, man. :psyccp:
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This problem pops up in other spots as well, such as "are damage notifications/reinforcement timers/... IC?" which are open questions if you ask me.
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I think if you can afford it then you should spring for the closest items as a stand-in. If you work it out substitutes ooc that's probably just fine, more about the 'spirit' than the items, yes?
As was said. 'slaves' for 'freed slaves' ok. 'blue pill' for 'vips' probably not.
I'm more of a stickler for that kind of thing since the costs are prohibitive enough to make you mean it. Small shipments of small arms, vaccines, etc, are quite affordable.
Big shipments of lots of items cost a lot, and are reflected.
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I'm extremely hesitent about trying to enforce "standards" of any kind to item-involving RP, with a few exceptions (exotic or rare items, etc).
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Social RP based on a spaceship flying game's mechanics?
IMO RP should never be limited by game mechanics. I like it when the mechanics promote RP though.
RP should only be limited by the storyline and some of that common sense stuff.
I don't see the harm in substituting a cheaper item for something else, unless the item is supposed to be rare/expensive for your RP. Like what Esna said. I also don't see the harm in not using any ingame item at all, it's always cool when you find one that fits though.
If I were to call someone out for using an improper item, I would try to make sure I wasn't being OOC petty, unless of course Kazzzi was blatantly and obviously trying to be petty.
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If you can't afford the time/resources/isk required to get a certain amount of an item... your character can't afford the time/resources/isk required to get a certain amount of an item. If it exists, use the item in question. "The next best thing" just means you're pulling things out of your ass instead of RPing according to the resources, time and availability that's quite apparently right there in your wallet and assets window.
Of course, if you and the other guy work things out OOC, it's between you guys. There's no law saying you can't trade tritanium for slaves for instance, if that's how you and the other guy roll. If you haven't worked it out OoC... bring the real shit.
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If you can't afford the time/resources/isk required to get a certain amount of an item... your character can't afford the time/resources/isk required to get a certain amount of an item.
My character doesn't have to spend 40 hours a week outside the pod at a job to be able to pay for the licence fee. My character can pay other people to do the dishes, cook dinner, tidy the house. My character doesn't have to play skyrim for 20 hours a week.
I think it's a bit unfair to say that if you have limited playtime, your character sits in stasis the entire time you're not online.
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Then it's unfair for people to have more ISK, better ships and pimped fits in PvP then too, perhaps? I frankly don't see it as unfair. It's just how it is. If someone beats me because they had more ISK and thus better/more/pimped ships I don't get to say "nuh uh, I have less playtime and thus less isk than you. Doesn't count.".
I think it'd be more unfair to devalue the effort people have spent in getting the ISK, the position, time, items and so on required to actually use the real deal when RPing.
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I think it'd be more unfair to devalue the effort people have spent in getting the ISK, the position, time, items and so on required to actually use the real deal when RPing.
So the people who spend hundreds of millions on NEX clothing are the only ones allowed to have their character dressed in clothes that didn't come from the Eve equivalent of K-mart? And if you're not prepared to spend that, then tough?
I don't believe that. There are game mechanic issues where you have to spend a lot of game time chasing some miniature slaver hound when if the world had some internal consistency not limited by the game mechanics, you could just get your PA to go order one from Pets-In-Space.
I say this as someone who (most of the time) actually flies to the places I say I am. For instance, the last time I went to the Last Gate I was actually in system. It was a pretty empty system. Have I not seen your characters in the Last gate? Were they in Goinard at the time?
I see the comparisons as pretty similar really. I don't demand other people have the same priorities as me. I understand that maybe they're busy doing something else, but want to get some RP in at the same time, and it seems to me that whether you've sourced actual in game "firearms" or are just RPing as if you had makes not much difference. Although I was quite pleased when I ordered some firearms off one of Verone's alts and they actually got delivered to Pator as a contract, the people who were handing out drinks as actual in game items during a social event seemed to be going a bit far.
So yes, spending the time to track down the appropriate in-game item is worthy of praise, but I don't think that not doing so is always doing it wrong.
(edited for speeling)
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Barring some incredibly canonically rare items, there are some items which are stupidly rare ingame due to the mechanics of how they interact with the players, but would likely not be rare at all in-universe. Sealed cargo containers easily cost anywhere from as much as a couple of frigates to a few cruisers' worth of ISK. Breeder slaves, which there (rather disturbingly) are likely thousands upon thousands of in the Empire, are 25 million ISK - one person, worth as much as 7-8 aircraft-carrier-sized warships. MTACs - common mining equipment, according to lore - top out at over 75m.
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Barring some incredibly canonically rare items, there are some items which are stupidly rare ingame due to the mechanics of how they interact with the players, but would likely not be rare at all in-universe. Sealed cargo containers easily cost anywhere from as much as a couple of frigates to a few cruisers' worth of ISK. Breeder slaves, which there (rather disturbingly) are likely thousands upon thousands of in the Empire, are 25 million ISK - one person, worth as much as 7-8 aircraft-carrier-sized warships. MTACs - common mining equipment, according to lore - top out at over 75m.
I could maybe say that the reason breeder slaves are so expensive for capsuleers is that you have to bribe the right officials to look the other way, to convince the Amarrian clergy to accept your dubious claims youre a Holder, etc.....
the containers....I've got nothing
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You are of course right in that no one can demand that you spend that ISK, effort and time to get the 'correct' items just for RP purposes, Ulf. Still, if you are involved in some sort of RP exchange/business or whatever and suddenly bring a cargohold full of some lesser item instead of the agreed upon item, I'd certainly be dubious unless you'd OoC cleared this stuff beforehand.
Arrangements can of course be made, but unless you have a damn good reason for it, it'd be cheapening the whole thing if you don't at least try for the real stuff. There's exceptions to all rules, but my personal rule is to put my time, effort and ISK where my mouth is, RP-wise. If I can't afford it or don't have the time to get it, neither does my characters. Simply because if I suddenly start pulling things out of my ass and pretend, the people who actually did take the time and spend the resources to get the real deal completely wasted their time.
And yes, the majority of the times when I went to TLG, I had my characters in Goinard. The same applies to when I had characters go to the Chained Amarrian or whatever it was called, and the rest of those places.
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I agree but on the part where it is supposed to be better to be in local (Goinard for TLG, etc), why should my character be there in local when she actually came via the interbus and not with her own capsule ? That would not make any sense at all.
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I agree but on the part where it is supposed to be better to be in local (Goinard for TLG, etc), why should my character be there in local when she actually came via the interbus and not with her own capsule ? That would not make any sense at all.
Not everyone accepts the idea that InterBus runs a taxi service for podders.
That's why Mata holos in there, and one of the reasons I'm fond of virtual spaces.
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Okay.
Out of curiosity, how do you deal with the fact that some people use it still ?
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Okay.
Out of curiosity, how do you deal with the fact that some people use it still ?
I take them at their word that they're actually at the place they say they are. I don't usually ask people how they got there.
There's not much to be gained by saying "But I don't see you in local". From a game perspective, that they can claim to have interbussed to Goinard and then undock in Rens or wherever 10 seconds after something interesting happening does seem to stretch the Interbus metaphor a bit, but again, it's not really hurting me.
A more complicated question is how do you deal with people who are roleplaying their character in two locations at once. I have seen that (while watching from different characters).
Again, I take them at their word. There's still not much to be gained by trying to call them on it.
Ciarente once made an argument comparing her limited play time with her characters amount of time in the world which was fairly convincing to me, and if she or anyone else is not using the ability to be in more than one place for I-Win-RP then it's not doing me any harm.
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For the record, The Last Gate has been in TXW, not Goinard, for the last half-year or so. :)
As for double-timing, playing two things at once while saying they're not happening at the same time is madly confusing for my sense of causality. What happened before what? I've known someone to lose a pod while also playing a scene where it mattered which body they were in.
One of the advantages of virtual venues is that you can quite legitimately be hunting or building or whatever at the same time, and talking in the virtual world about the things that are happening for each of you in the "real" world.
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For the record, The Last Gate has been in TXW, not Goinard, for the last half-year or so. :)
I'm still Ok, I haven't been there in more than that long. :)
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I suspect if anyone gets around to changing it it'll be in Tasti in the near future instead.
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For the record, The Last Gate has been in TXW, not Goinard, for the last half-year or so. :)
As for double-timing, playing two things at once while saying they're not happening at the same time is madly confusing for my sense of causality. What happened before what? I've known someone to lose a pod while also playing a scene where it mattered which body they were in.
One of the advantages of virtual venues is that you can quite legitimately be hunting or building or whatever at the same time, and talking in the virtual world about the things that are happening for each of you in the "real" world.
I was not especially refering to playing in several physical places at the same time. I do not like it more than you do, actually.
I did that only one time because the 2nd RP was something we did not had the time to finish properly the day before, which was obviously supposed to have happened the previous day (had to disconnect in the middle of something where leaving was just absurd).
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Barring some incredibly canonically rare items, there are some items which are stupidly rare ingame due to the mechanics of how they interact with the players, but would likely not be rare at all in-universe.
Yes. There are some items, which would be useful in rp scenarios, which are only obtainable if you fail a once-per-character mission.
this naturally makes them, very, very expensive isk wise.
For some things, you can do a substitute, in that cargo containers can be renamed.
a box labelled "Proof of Things" could be useful for various things, for example.
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Barring some incredibly canonically rare items, there are some items which are stupidly rare ingame due to the mechanics of how they interact with the players, but would likely not be rare at all in-universe.
Yes. There are some items, which would be useful in rp scenarios, which are only obtainable if you fail a once-per-character mission.
this naturally makes them, very, very expensive isk wise.
For some things, you can do a substitute, in that cargo containers can be renamed.
a box labelled "Proof of Things" could be useful for various things, for example.
Agreed. With a prior OOC agreement, this could be quite helpful for dealing with cases where the actual ingame item is stupidly expensive due to mechanical issues (usually, its some sort of blinkin' mission completion item *sigh*).
As to the Interbus: I treat it as something Tarunik has to dock his ship at a station to be able to catch. Then again, actually flying IG over to places such as TXW-EI isn't always practical (don't want to be the poor sap going "Who the F*** is camping the undock here with a #$!#$! dictor", after all). (Also: I consider the act of Tarunik "trashing" people to be "I'll give you some cash and an Interbus ticket to wherever you wish, good luck!", otherwise absurdities result O.o)
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http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=6152.0
For the past three months, civilian populations across several major planets in the Amarr Empire have been subject to anti-Theology Council propaganda beamed at their planets from hidden transmitters.
The Imperial Navy and Ministry of Internal Order have been unable to locate these transmitters, causing consternation at the highest level of Imperial politics.
Why would someone say it's impossible? I distinctly remember the show info for some mission structures that says the satellite dish type things you find in missions can be used to beam propaganda across a system. Communications Telescope I think they're called.
Because a mobile depot, containing the ingame items hydrogen batteries, miniature electronics and transmitters, is not one of those structures you mentioned, regardless of what it's called. It's just a mobile depot with a stupid name.
It's just a mobile depot. with a stupid name, and some inert objects in it.
the populations (what populations?) of the planets are oblivious to its presence.
The MIO or Navy haven't located it because they haven't been looking for it, because it is just another pile of capsuleer debris, that isn't blocking traffic, so is irrelevant.
So, why would it be legitimate to say that it is a thing that does stuff ? when by all game mechanics, it clearly isn't.
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Roleplay requires a suspension of disbelief, on the part of all involved parties, to work. If a player chooses to do a thing in a game, and finds themselves restricted by existing game mechanics and so discovers that they must 'make do' with what the game mechanics provide as an available means of representing their intent, then it is subsequently up to every other player to decide for themselves whether they wish to suspend their own disbelief in the same fashion as the player who did the thing to begin with and interact with that thing on an IC basis - or not.
Electus Matari freed slaves. There is no method supported by game mechanics for doing so. One does not simply right click on the ingame item "Slave" and generate through the menu a new item "Freed Slave". Electus Matari made do. The rest of the playerbase decided for themselves to suspend their own disbelief and interact with this. They were not required to do so. I'm sure there was at least one person who decided not to do so.
It is fractious of one to demand that their own 'thing' be acknowledged and interacted with by persons who have no desire to do so. If I have someone blocked ingame (and I do), and that person's character sees Havohej in a bar and approaches him and starts RPing at him, and I don't respond because I never even see it (because :blocked:), I'm not doing anything wrong. I've chosen not to interact with that person or their characters. For whatever reason or no reason at all, according to my own whims. My subscription, my prerogative.
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Like it was said in the channel yesterday, people will accept and reject different RP to suit their own view of New Eden. This is perfectly okay and is easily dealt with. I really don't see why it's so important for people to demand acceptance of their every whim when it comes to RP when you can just do your own thing and play nice with those who like that thing. If you don't like that thing, ignore it and play with those who like your thing.
Someone's IC reaction to your thing is frankly rather irrelevant as you can just write that off as someone being crazy, cranky, lying or just overall not worth your time. The OOC reactions can be dealt with in pretty much the same manner. It's our own subscription money and we get to decide which parts of Eve we are willing to engage with. It's as simple as that.
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I think the confusion with this whole thing has been people misinterpreting rejection of their RP actions as a claim that the mechanics somehow don't line up. That might be part of it, but might not be. There are many reasons to ignore what someone is doing or dismiss it. Nobody is obligated to recognize anything.
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"It's your subscription and your money, do whatever you want".
What a sad view of (multiplayer) gaming, and society. :|
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"It's your subscription and your money, do whatever you want".
What a sad view of (multiplayer) gaming, and society. :|
Yes, because those two things can be reasonably extrapolated from the current discussion.
Oh. Wait.
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You took a comment in a conversation about a specific topic and randomly applied it to not just 'multiplayer gaming' but fucking 'society.' That has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
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It has actually. It is the perfect reflection of something that plagues current society as a whole.
I am not sure to understand why do you need to be so aggressive and/or defensive about it.
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Yes, because a subset of a subset of a subset of society has anything relevant to say about society as a whole. Take off your theory hat, it doesn't fit properly.
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I'm occasionally a bit of a cynic but I have to go with Jace on this one. I really don't see how that'd fit anything but MMOs at the moment.
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Take away the bit on society if you must, but that doesn't change the point the slightest...
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I'm actually not sure what your point is. You just sort of implied "dis bads". Mind elaborating?
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The point wasn't relevant to the discussion at hand - that's what I was saying. Trying to interject into a discussion with a broad melodramatic comment about how certain viewpoints are somehow a sign of greater malaise in the world does nothing to contribute to the discussion at hand nor is it relevant. The topic came up for a reason.
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I'm actually not sure what your point is. You just sort of implied "dis bads". Mind elaborating?
"This is bad" ?
The point is that this kind of thinking is rather detrimental to RP communities, group activities, and social gaming, because it turns everything to selfishness and mass consumption mentalities, where it is all about the individualistic RPer player and his precious needs and whims, and not about what makes the group faring better overall and producing a better quality of outcomes.
Put more simply, thinking that you are paying so it allows you to do whatever you want as long as you are having fun, as much as very true and possible, doesn't make it the necessary desirable thing to do on the long run. Cf the current state of the community, fragmented, full of bitter and petty griefs towards each other.
Edit : in answer to Synthia's necroing of this thread, Synthia got directly told back that RP involves a decent lot of making stuff up, which sounds perfectly reasonable, and discussing at what scale it could be done was the original purpose of the OP. Synthia got also told something in the vein of "and if people are not happy with something [meaning, if you are not happy with it], they can shove it right up you know where, because i'm a paying customer and I do what I please to have fun". That is what I am reacting to, basically. I am sorry if it wasn't clear from the beginning.
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...where it is all about the individualistic RPer player and his precious needs and whims, and not about what makes the group faring better overall and producing a better quality of outcomes.
On the contrary, people demanding that their RP and their characters be taken seriously by everyone is what causes what you are talking about. That is where the 'precious needs and whims' are located, not those of us who take a live and let live attitude.
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Well I beg to disagree. You attitude is the very root of several issues to my opinion.
I do not disagree on the first part of your sentence, mind you. Some people are asking their characters to be taken seriously by everyone when their characters are just barking everywhere without anyone even having heard of them, and without any history behind them.
However I am struggling to see what this has to do with "how far can game mechanics used to make up RP stuff" ?
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Well I beg to disagree. You attitude is the very root of several issues to my opinion.
I do not disagree on the first part of your sentence, mind you. Some people are asking their characters to be taken seriously by everyone when their characters are just barking everywhere without anyone even having heard of them, and without any history behind them.
However I am struggling to see what this has to do with "how far can game mechanics used to make up RP stuff" ?
That's because you weren't in-game for the discussion that spawned a resurgence in this topic. Hence me saying your original comment was off-topic as to what everyone else was talking about.
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I don't really see how "Do your thing, it's cool. You might not get everyone to go along with the thing, but that's okay." is somehow a bad thing. I really don't.
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So, what did I miss ?
I understand that someone (Miz, as per the rumors and gossip thread ?) put up some mobile depots and said they were broadcasting propaganda as antennas or something. Synthia seems to be denying that because it's too far off from being actual broadcast tools and just mobile depots filled with stuff inside.
So we are indeed at the root of the OP question.
Did I miss something else ?
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I don't really see how "Do your thing, it's cool. You might not get everyone to go along with the thing, but that's okay." is somehow a bad thing. I really don't.
Simply because it's the kind of answer you get every time you try to discuss something in the lines of the OP, for example, among many others. You have an immersion/suspension of disbelief issue with what someone else is doing, you try to work something out, you try to have a discussion about it, and you only get told to shove it off.
I find that mentality detrimental to the community as a whole.
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To interject real fast, I have two rather more practical questions about the "propaganda beacons" thing:
1: If they're powerful enough to beam a coherent signal through millions of kilometers of space, through natural background radiation, random interfering signals, and any ECM counter-broadcast back at them - why can't they be found? Signal triangulation is not a hard business; we have probes capable of getting a bearing on electromagnetic signals in under ten seconds.
2: They're "causing consternation at the highest level of Imperial politics"? Says who? I mean, it sounds like you're saying the heirs or even Empress are getting involved, which is a fairly major claim being made. I've no issue with people putting up something to get a response, nor pretending that one item is doing something in space (Nauplius' Blood Cathedrals, anyone?) but writing that you are receiving a high-level response from an NPC faction seems a bit much.
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So, what did I miss ?
I understand that someone (Miz, as per the rumors and gossip thread ?) put up some mobile depots and said they were broadcasting propaganda as antennas or something. Synthia seems to be denying that because it's too far off from being actual broadcast tools and just mobile depots filled with stuff inside.
So we are indeed at the root of the OP question.
Did I miss something else ?
Yes, but considering the bringing of it onto Backstage already got one thread catacombed, I'll refrain.
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I haven't put up any transmitters of anything, which is why that thread confused me so much. It seemed like Synthia was doing something and denying themselves the ability to do so in the same post or something.
And nothing in what we're saying is stopping anyone from working things out. It's when it's not liable to be worked out that the only remaining options are raging the fuck out in OOC channels or just dealing with it / ignoring it. I think you're reading too much into this, Lyn.
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Any approach to these issues besides 'live and let live' just leads to OOC drama that generates permanent grudges and schism.
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Did I miss something else ?
More than one character, talks in the Summit, is something that is not strictly supported by direct game mechanics - an Ammatar, a Kamiera, a non-capsuleer pilot, or indeed, what Synthia is (a remote controlled human), or a number of other things.
More than one player does not like those characters, as they don't fit into their interpretation of the game world, and Loudly and Repeatedly comment on it in the summit.
Discussing that with the player in the OOC channel goes nowhere. The player says "deal with it". And then continues to Loudly and Repeatedly declare that those characters are not what they say they are.
World of difference between saying in an OOC channel "I think your character is insane" and saying "your character IS insane". One is an opinion, one is claiming something as an indisputable fact of the game world. Discussing that goes nowhere either.
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Oh jesus we're back to that thing, are we? I'd have to check the logs, but I'm reasonably sure Miz dismissed The Blonde Horde in... what, two sentences? Three maybe? I didn't even mention it in OOC until you started to pester me about it and again I'd have to check the logs but I said quite clearly that The Blonde Horde simply does not fit into how I view New Eden IC or OOC, so when the subject comes up it'll be dealt with as "just some more crazies". New Eden's got enough of them around.
Some RP will not be accepted by everyone else, it's that bloody simple. You're not going to change your stuff and no one is asking you to. What you can't expect is to have everyone else just blithely assimilate your stuff into their own perception of New Eden because you want them to.
So yeah... I guess we can sum it up as deal with it.
I'm not incorporating that stuff into my Eve. Simple as. I'm not asking you to change your sci-fi weird shit to suit my view of Eve, so I'm going to have to ask you not to demand the same from me.
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And nothing in what we're saying is stopping anyone from working things out. It's when it's not liable to be worked out that the only remaining options are raging the fuck out in OOC channels or just dealing with it / ignoring it. I think you're reading too much into this, Lyn.
Perhaps not here then. Maybe I have become a bit too much paranoid considering the number of times I have read that excuse in the past months...
Probably the wrong case then, my apologies.
I think that people using that excuse in my experience where actually on the other side of the fence. The ones screaming "I don't care what your concerns are about my debatable RP, I do what I want !" /ostrich
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To interject real fast, I have two rather more practical questions about the "propaganda beacons" thing:
1: If they're powerful enough to beam a coherent signal through millions of kilometers of space, through natural background radiation, random interfering signals, and any ECM counter-broadcast back at them - why can't they be found? Signal triangulation is not a hard business; we have probes capable of getting a bearing on electromagnetic signals in under ten seconds.
2: They're "causing consternation at the highest level of Imperial politics"? Says who? I mean, it sounds like you're saying the heirs or even Empress are getting involved, which is a fairly major claim being made. I've no issue with people putting up something to get a response, nor pretending that one item is doing something in space (Nauplius' Blood Cathedrals, anyone?) but writing that you are receiving a high-level response from an NPC faction seems a bit much.
They're 1000km above significant Imperial worlds. 1000, not millions. Spent time burning to those distances to deploy them.
Why can't they be found ? because players won't put in the effort to find them, because lol.
Well, they might, if the event actors replied regularly enough that communicating with them would receive a response. I don't think that's the case any more.
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To interject real fast, I have two rather more practical questions about the "propaganda beacons" thing:
1: If they're powerful enough to beam a coherent signal through millions of kilometers of space, through natural background radiation, random interfering signals, and any ECM counter-broadcast back at them - why can't they be found? Signal triangulation is not a hard business; we have probes capable of getting a bearing on electromagnetic signals in under ten seconds.
2: They're "causing consternation at the highest level of Imperial politics"? Says who? I mean, it sounds like you're saying the heirs or even Empress are getting involved, which is a fairly major claim being made. I've no issue with people putting up something to get a response, nor pretending that one item is doing something in space (Nauplius' Blood Cathedrals, anyone?) but writing that you are receiving a high-level response from an NPC faction seems a bit much.
They're 1000km above significant Imperial worlds. 1000, not millions. Spent time burning to those distances to deploy them.
Why can't they be found ? because players won't put in the effort to find them, because lol.
Well, they might, if the event actors replied regularly enough that communicating with them would receive a response. I don't think that's the case any more.
You deployed 1000 Mobile Depots? That's a lot of :effort: to put in, gj Edit: misread. If it were pro-Amarr Empire propaganda in Minmatar space, you'd best believe Havo and Miz would be flying around Metro, Heimatar and the Heath spamming d-scan looking for these things. They don't have that much hp.
Regarding your parade of alts affectionately dubbed "The Blonde Horde", you've taken one person's lack of desire to interact with your story entirely too personally. The best response, I think, would be more along the lines of "Yeah, well, that's just, like... your opinion, man." You've created these characters. Plenty of people interact with them. What does it matter that this one person doesn't?
Get over it.
@Lyn: you get over it, too. I'm not paying a monthly subscription or buying PLEXes with ISK I grinded up myself so that I can make sure someone else is having a good time. I don't give a shit if anyone's having a good time or not. If I suicide gank a miner, I don't care that he had a good time - I enjoyed it. If I wardec a corporation and their activity level drops so low from their players simply emo-quitting the game until the corporation is effectively dead (Du'uma Fiisi did this twice), I don't care that they had a good time - I enjoyed it. I don't care if other RPers choose not to interact with the concept of baseliner youth buying Mizhara and Havohej t-shirts in the same way that modern youth wear Che Guevara t-shirts on the basis of "it's not ingame items, u cant do dis". Fuck them and their opinion, I'm having fun and they don't have to play with me if they don't want to - it's their money/ISK spent on their subscription time and they can do whatever they bloody well please with that time! Plenty of other people are playing with me and enjoying themselves right along with me.
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Havo's just cranky because I'm the one that bought his last Plex and now I have him wandering around Down Below in a loincloth doing squats. My subscription, my fun.
/me skedaddles........ \o)
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You deployed 1000 Mobile Depots? That's a lot of :effort: to put in, gj. If it were pro-Amarr Empire propaganda in Minmatar space, you'd best believe Havo and Miz would be flying around Metro, Heimatar and the Heath spamming d-scan looking for these things. They don't have that much hp.
The depots are anchored 1,000 km above the surfaces of the planets in question. There aren't a thousand of the things anchored.
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OH! I misread. My bad, it may have seemed I was being a smartass because of that. I was not.
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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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the mirc bot would be cool as fuck.
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I just have to be that asshat that pipes in about how difficult Star Trek RP actually is. I 100% realize you were just using it as an example, and for that it was effective - but sheezus, the contradictions between shows and the arguments over what is considered canon actually makes it a bitch of a universe to RP in.
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I just have to be that asshat that pipes in about how difficult Star Trek RP actually is. I 100% realize you were just using it as an example, and for that it was effective - but sheezus, the contradictions between shows and the arguments over what is considered canon actually makes it a bitch of a universe to RP in.
I can see that.
"Your Vulcan is freaking out! Vulcans are logical, they wouldn't act that way!"
"They would too! Pon Phar!"
"No! Pon Phar only takes place within ten light years of the Vulcan home planet!"
"Not true! Remember when Spock was crying on the planet of the Ancient Romans?"
"That doesn't count! He was under hypnosis!"
Maybe the problem is 'human nature'.
'Bang Bang! I shot you! You are dead!'
'Nuh uh! You didn't shoot me!"
I remember the 'rule book lawyers' back in the day of paper and dice Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying. These players would argue at every turn that their characters/ the monsters/ the rock formations of caverns of Chaos wouldn't 'really' do those things, because of reasons X, Y, and Z. The only game mechanics at the time were the dice and the rulebooks. If you didn't like what happened to your character, well, maybe there was something in the rulebooks to get you out of it.
Roleplay in EVE is a different kettle of fish, since my character can do something you don't agree with, and it only affects you if you acknowledge it. In 1PG, we had a policy of "Only those of pure Amarrian blood, or Ni-Kunni or Khanid ancestry may join." I took this to mean "Space Nazis", which for me, was a fast track to mustache twirling villainry.
One member of our corp started roleplaying as having a Gallente father, and the rest of the corp just....pretended she never said that.
I suppose it could have made for an interesting sub-plot, examining the in-game racist hiring policies of an Amarrian loyalist corporation. On the other hand, it just seemed like 'work' and 'drama' in the chat channels. There was no reward or risk involved, and it was something which distracted from the main objective, which was the almost entirely mechanical aspects of Factional warfare.
It's also hard to roleplay as a villain when you fly solo and suck at combat.
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It's also hard to roleplay as a villain when you fly solo and suck at combat.
I know, right?
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Hard to roleplay as a hero when you fly solo and are fairly good at it, too. No worries.
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Hard to roleplay as a hero when you fly solo and are fairly good at it, too. No worries.
Which is why I play as neither.
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To be honest, it is hard to role-play a hero or a villain or anyone of note at all in EVE. Roleplaying a person is easy, but roleplaying a person that people need to actually care about is much much harder.
Personally, I have the problem that I personally prefer solo these days (frig and dessie fights solo are massive stress dumps for me, which I need right now), but Gaven as a character really should be taking charge of things and running fleets (Which is fun, but a stressor, which I can't have right now). It makes for a semi-nasty contrast between IC desires and OOC ability to commit time/energy to a character. Means that Gaven, somewhat out of character, is going and playing the lone hero a *lot.* I end up working some of that absurd bravado that my solo fighting style has into his character, to try and move Gaven more towards how I actually operate in game, but it has never quite fit.
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The primary problem with having a character that others need to care about is that, well, they don't. And the players take great pleasure in demonstrating that continually.
Granted, that is a bit different for the CEO of an active corp. But in all other circumstances, it is quite a barrier.
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Even for a CEO, if you try to force people in EVE to care about you without having a ridiculous amount of muscle to back it up, you end up causing people to ignore you instead. Even with muscle, you have to have an ability to apply that muscle to hurt them if you want to force them to pay attention.
Hence it is usually better not to explicitly play heroes or villains in my experience, but rather to play individuals with specific goals and motivations. The motivation to be a hero is a totally valid one IC, as is the fear that you might in fact be a villain, but the only way to really be a hero or villain in EVE is if other people acclaim you as such. IE, you are only either in relation to other character's reactions to you. And since you can't control those reactions, it is easier just to pick positions and stances and roll with what follows.
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And even for muscle, there is very little of consequence you can actually do to someone in EVE. It is one of those games where the acquired egos never, ever match up with actual influence.
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To be honest, it is hard to role-play a hero or a villain or anyone of note at all in EVE. Roleplaying a person is easy, but roleplaying a person that people need to actually care about is much much harder.
Personally, I have the problem that I personally prefer solo these days (frig and dessie fights solo are massive stress dumps for me, which I need right now), but Gaven as a character really should be taking charge of things and running fleets (Which is fun, but a stressor, which I can't have right now). It makes for a semi-nasty contrast between IC desires and OOC ability to commit time/energy to a character. Means that Gaven, somewhat out of character, is going and playing the lone hero a *lot.* I end up working some of that absurd bravado that my solo fighting style has into his character, to try and move Gaven more towards how I actually operate in game, but it has never quite fit.
Mark Hammil said that being the star in Star Wars was kind of like being the raisin in a fruit salad. The characters were all upstaged by the background. The spaceships, weapons and robots were the real stars.
EVE is a little like that too, except we are a little more like the single raisin that someone dropped somewhere in the middle of a field while watching fireworks, and now winter has come and covered the all the fields under deep snow.
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I think ash. Snow is pretty, at least.
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Volcanic ash then.
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Volcanic ash then.
Nu. Pipe ash from a giant bearded lady emptying her pipe. Yus.
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Crossposted from Mizhara's IC/OOC thread, since a new thread seemed unnecessary:
It's an interesting debate for future discussin', IC in game actions.
Talking about in general x character selling slaves due to needin' isk, is it the kind of thing to be hand-waved?
I think it can go both waves. Say they were freed, get the cash because it was a lot of money, got no issues with that.
I debated about a similar issue when Slow Burn first began. The objective was to stymie Roden ship construction, and since we cannot control existing alliance manufacturing apparati, our only viable target was the public market. In addition to the other steps to make building Roden ships less profitable, we also purchased 47 Roden blueprints available on contract over the first 10 days, then trashed them. I wondered at the time if I should create a video capture in case I needed to prove that they were destroyed, but opted to let only in-game actions and speech determine the veracity of my claim.
I still wonder if I made the wrong choice, since I might have been able to handwave away a video capture of inventory destruction as SOP for 'Hangar Administration' personnel or somesuch.