Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Kybernetes Moros on 27 Aug 2012, 09:24
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Caveat lector: I am not much of a PvPer. I enjoy it for RP reasons, but not so much for its own sake; this obviously colours my perspective. Similarly, this is by no means 'urdoinitrong' (or indeed directed at anyone in particular): it's just something that confuses me.
Over the couple of years I've spent playing EVE and RPing, there has been a weird trend that I've noticed. RP corps with a PvP focus, or element, that are similarly matched in space and of opposing IC ideologies often seem extremely averse to attacking one another. There've been instances I can name when this trend has been bucked, but in my experience the more common outcome is "eh, we'll leave them be and RP at them in channels".
The "words, not action" approach can make sense and provide some decent RP, but it baffles me in some regards -- especially since I've usually felt actual conflict to be the better driver for RP than vague ideological disagreement. The fear of loss is something I've sometimes seen cited as a reason, but isn't there a risk of losing your ship inherent in just undocking?
I suppose the question is "Why is there this intermittent preference for hunting non-RPers in a corp's comfort zone, rather than leaving it to fight RPers?".
(For clarity, this isn't a thread about trying to organise OOC fights or anything: I'd be more in favour of "suddenly, wardec!" or a corp turning up in another's home area, personally, but ultimately how it's arranged isn't tremendously important to me.)
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If a self-admitted RP entity fights a non-RP entity and lose, the non-RP'ers will likely just go 'well, you know, RP'ers, shitty PVP'ers, all that' and remain quiet.
If a RP entity fights another RP entity one of them will lose and the winner will brag in public places like the IGS. The losing side loses credit and 'public face'. The preference seem to be to avoid this scenario at all costs.
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If a self-admitted RP entity fights a non-RP entity and lose, the non-RP'ers will likely just go 'well, you know, RP'ers, shitty PVP'ers, all that' and remain quiet.
If a RP entity fights another RP entity one of them will lose and the winner will brag in public places like the IGS. The losing side loses credit and 'public face'. The preference seem to be to avoid this scenario at all costs.
Pretty much my take on it as well. Risk adversity seems to be rampant everywhere in Eve. On the other hand the factional warfare RP pvp groups have done a pretty good job of fighting against other RP opponents without causing too much loss of face to the opposing team. I think another thing that plays into this is that there are a lot of things that have to be "Met" in order to successfully pvp at a rp target.
1. Most RP corps are not universally active, and only a select few have a 24/7 presence.
2. Because of 1, it doesn't make sense to fight cross-timezone "at" someone who will likely not be online at the same time as your member base.
I wish there were more active RP "wars" though, would make for a more exciting summit, in space and well, pretty much everything.
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That's the gist of it. Losing OOC is generally no big deal to most RPers...however losing IC to other RPers causes many ooc tears due to the public crowing they will be on the receiving end of, and some supposed loss of "status."
This usually stems from a lot of RPers talking big 'elite killer' status IC and then avoiding having to back it up at all costs and have their reputations sullied by having a few ships blown up, when if they actually DID fight, their reputations would only improve. Winning or losing isn't what matters, it's putting it on the line that gets you respect.
It's easy to tell the difference, though. There's a lot of very good sports and constant RP pvpers out there who kill and are killed with regularity, and their IC reputations are better for it. (Ava Starfire, Math'r'a, True Slave Foundations, IRED, etc). There are plenty of others (not going to sling mud) who wouldn't get into a fight with other RPers if their subscriptions depended on it.
A few years ago Silas lost a whole null region, 0.0 stations, hundreds of pilots to failcascade, and an entire fail alliance all in the span of about two weeks.
It was super crappy but I had to suck it up IC and take my lumps. I got to hear no end of this from IC enemies and they go to have fun ripping on me for a good while after. Them's the breaks, but good character development for me and fun for other RPers to laugh at me IC.
No matter who loses, when two RPers fight we all win.
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Also frankly there was more going on 'plot' wise for RPers to branch-off of and have dynamic issues to fight over.
The occasional scope news bone thrown at the RP base was enough to launch many a war.
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My experience with the fusion of RP/PVP is limited to the last several months, but fwiw, I think the biggest challenge to engaging in RPer-on-RPer PVP is proximity and simultaneous play times, as Logan mentioned. RPers are a small percentage of the player base, and PVPing RPers smaller still. This is more of a hurdle than anything else, and I disagree entirely with the notion that RPers prefer to shoot at non-RPers for fear of "losing face" or whatever from an IC standpoint. WHG has no preference for non-RP targets over RPers. We shoot at non-RPing militia war targets daily but are more than happy to shoot at the Serpentis gentlemens of Anshar, who happen to be active, live close enough to us, and represent an opposing IC force.
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I disagree entirely with the notion that RPers prefer to shoot at non-RPers for fear of "losing face" or whatever from an IC standpoint.
Sorry Ken but many many years of watching RP corps and individuals go through Herculean contortions of logic, excuses, rants, tears, and outright lies related to RP on RP pvp have shown me otherwise.
Your group is in the vast minority.
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The most frequent occurance of this is RP corp A pvping RP corp B, beating the hell out of them, and then OOC shitstorm from the hen circle regarding fairness, who went too far, ooc grudges, 'going after one of our own' , etc etc rinse wash repeat.
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From my experience in I-RED we pick our fights carefully on all sides of the spectrum. While we fight often and have often enough lost serious face for it (think Wolfsbrigade war), we don't go around shaking a stick at everyone who happens to oppose us IC. We're smart about who we fight whether or not they roleplay.
Most of our bigger threats are not roleplayers around Syndicate (formerly Placid). We're often enough caught up in rather brutal protracted turf wars with non-roleplayers so much that we can't afford taking on many serious RP PvP groups too. I-RED has a lot of IC enemies, but we have even more enemies OOC. Most of our biggest haters aren't even around where we operate, so travelling halfway across the cluster just to beat on Electus Matari for example isn't something we want to do, especially since we have plenty of fighting to do in Syndicate.
On the other hand, we also don't go picking fights with much smaller RP groups who hate on us IC, because we don't want to pour water on their tough-guy attitude they are roleplaying. I can name several instances where people slander and spit at I-RED on the IGS and elsewhere, but we've not acted on it because they probably either wouldn't fight or simply wouldn't win. We're not out to roflstomp anyone who has a gripe with us.
That said, the best way to get our attention is to start smashing Ishukone assets and brag about it. John will take notice of that.
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I'm more of an attitude of 'what's the point?'
If people start losing, they dock up or avoid you. In any case, they make it so that your opportunity cost rises to a level that it is not efficient (let alone fun) to wage war.
Besides that, most objectives do not allow me to express them in terms of random PvP kills. If I beat a RP entity in PvP it only proves that I'm better at PvP, and not a lot more.
PvP between RP entities is most fun when both entities are relatively new to EVE and don't yet know or aren't spoiled by all the tricks the vets know and have to endure.
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I hope it doesn't sound like I'm trying to take credit or brag, but when I founded WHG as Malcolm, I specifically set out to bring RP into space in the form of PvP and set up RP-enemies and friends alike that WHG could engage against and with in all sorts of engagements. They seem to still be holding to this trend even without me.
I'm trying to do the same with HOLR but I admit that I suspect it will not be quite as successful.
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Merdaneth comments on something that I've run up against often as well: While an attempt to PvP at an IC enemy would often result in them docking up (or returning with a blob), interacting with them by text actually results in progress in our (hostile) relationship.
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Please come shoot at us.
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Please come shoot at us.
Maybe we'll try it again when we have more active pilots :)
Man, Mitty was so pissed when Tiberious joined TS-F, unfortunately didn't have much manpower to throw at you guys :(
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Merdaneth comments on something that I've run up against often as well: While an attempt to PvP at an IC enemy would often result in them docking up (or returning with a blob), interacting with them by text actually results in progress in our (hostile) relationship.
I struggle with this because, for me, talking directly and constructively to someone that my character thinks is worth shooting at and killing knocks a little too loudly on the 4th wall.
If people start losing, they dock up or avoid you. In any case, they make it so that your opportunity cost rises to a level that it is not efficient (let alone fun) to wage war.
Besides that, most objectives do not allow me to express them in terms of random PvP kills. If I beat a RP entity in PvP it only proves that I'm better at PvP, and not a lot more.
PvP between RP entities is most fun when both entities are relatively new to EVE and don't yet know or aren't spoiled by all the tricks the vets know and have to endure.
It is fair to say the element that makes or breaks any engagement of this sort, regardless of player experience or available assets, is sportsmanship. EVE, unfortunately, strongly discourages sportsmanlike conduct and it takes two mature parties mutually agreeing OOC on rules of engagement in order for this sort of thing to happen without OOC tears and resentment.
WHG has a gentleman's agreement of sorts with Milo wherein we tip each other to the approximate times and rough composition of our roams to facilitate meeting and combat in space using generally well-matched forces without having to set up artificial pitched battles. This has worked very well, leads to enjoyable fights, and strengthens the OOC trust between us while allowing IC enmity to burn on. I dare say that if the leadership of either WHG or Anshar were comprised of assholes, this arrangement would fall apart quickly.
When I am told of cases wherein RP Corp A roflstomped RP Corp B and saw nothing wrong with it OOC, I must conclude one of two things. Either the leadership of RP Corp A genuinely fails to understand that using excessive force robs RP Corp B of their entertainment value or that they are assholes. There is a gradient here. Large, powerful, and experienced organizations should be expected to defeat smaller, younger ones. They can, however, do so without griefing the losing party. It's called sportsmanship.
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Please come shoot at us.
Maybe we'll try it again when we have more active pilots :)
Man, Mitty was so pissed when Tiberious joined TS-F, unfortunately didn't have much manpower to throw at you guys :(
We were so fucking excited when we got decced by you.. and then Mitty was the only one we saw in space, and it became several months of us sending our noobs to camp some of your guys in stations while we ran mining ops. We were sad.
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I struggle with this because, for me, talking directly and constructively to someone that my character thinks is worth shooting at and killing knocks a little too loudly on the 4th wall.
Actually exactly opposite for me. Trying to kill someone who is immortal is rather dense. Best thing you can do is inflict inconvenience or monetary loss. If your inconvenience or the opportunity cost of trying to kill him is higher than your target's monetary loss, no real sense in trying to kill him.
It's like waiting all day outside someone else's appartment so that when he finally comes out to play you have a chance to tip over his box of crayons and go 'there you bad man, got you!'
However, an immortal that switches allegiance, that is a worthy investment of your time.
My sadness is that while many capsuleers do switch sides (and often too), major motivations for doing so seem to be based in OOC concerns. And you cannot out-RP OOC motivations.
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Possible reasons in my opinion :
1) As said above, might come sometimes from the fear of losing face on the IGS after a defeat. However, I do not think it is the majority of the cases, far from it. Even if some people may miss that point, as Silas said above, there is much more to gain from standing and fight instead of actually avoiding the fight. In a testosterone ruled world like Eve, trying to avoid a fight is being a pussy. Pussies are usually despised, even ICly. Losing on the other hand, can cause a lot various consequences, support or delusions from supporters, giving the enemy an edge IC or actually providing them a lot more unexpected enemies if you manage to turn yourself into martyrdom, etc.
2) As said above, which happens much more often, technical issues : either timezone problems, and/or just regional issues where the enemy is actually located at the other end of New Eden, which can cause a various amount of problems for some entities that are not very nomadic in nature or have a lot of assets to move depending on the scale.
3) What happens most of the time in people's head imo : the fear of the possible OOC/IC bleedovers and dramas that happen in a lot of wars. A war is not just shooting happily at each other. Eve implies material losses. A war in Eve implies consequences on morale, internal cohesion and synergy (<- not everybody can summon business cat to prevent that issue from arising), and more usually general OOC drama between RPers that get to know each other through other medias like The Summit or other RP related channels.
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Please come shoot at us. I promise we wont hate you OOC. Most of my best friends in this game have little red squares next to their names. \o/
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Please come shoot at us. I promise we wont hate you OOC. Most of my best friends in this game have little red squares next to their names. \o/
I've barely met you
And this is crazy
But here's our jump coordinates
Come shoot us maybe?
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Large, powerful, and experienced organizations should be expected to defeat smaller, younger ones. They can, however, do so without griefing the losing party. It's called sportsmanship.
And they can also lose to smaller, unexperienced ones. I learned that the hard way when we were leading Aegis Militia in Solitude. Worked perfectly as intended the first week, and then our newest members started to come and got beaten repeatedly (between noobs... happy world) while our oldest members were suddenly all "away" for some reason, even if we were still 5 to 10 times bigger than they were (alliance vs corp). The fact that we had to move from Providence to Solitude did not help.
I take that as a funny example because the RP corp we wardecced (which was a remnant of the old Acheron Federation) was more or less dying at the time and the roflstomp was actually expected. But the poorly managed campaign on our side made it for their members to actually undock and start to fight back happily. The consequence is that the target corp suddenly revived through that and started to be a major player in anti piracy policies in Solitude for quite a time before leaving for nullsec.
Of course I know that this counter example is part of exceptions and minorities of cases, but I thought interesting to share it, since it basically supports your view on that and made the engagement fairer for them.
My sadness is that while many capsuleers do switch sides (and often too), major motivations for doing so seem to be based in OOC concerns. And you cannot out-RP OOC motivations.
And when it can also be ICly motivated, most of them just go minmatar or piwate. :P
Or Nation... dun dun dun
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Except you Jev, I now hate you OOC.
I hate that song... :mad:
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3) What happens most of the time in people's head imo : the fear of the possible OOC/IC bleedovers and dramas that happen in a lot of wars. A war is not just shooting happily at each other. Eve implies material losses. A war in Eve implies consequences on morale, internal cohesion and synergy (<- not everybody can summon business cat to prevent that issue from arising), and more usually general OOC drama between RPers that get to know each other through other medias like The Summit or other RP related channels.
Sportmanship plays a role in this as well.
In my PIE times the people from MAAK were by far the people with the best sportmanship. They switched ship types to match what we would have, and even avoided (largely) flying purely anti-Amarr fits (yeah, all Amarr ECM was a nightmare to fight against in an otherwise evenly matched fleet).
But Electus Matari pointed out to us that by playing as immersively as possible, they simple couldn't offer us real sportmanship. If they could take us out without risking any losses on their part, they would try to do so. They would take risks if IC concerns (defending the Republic) warranted it, but not otherwise.
Star Fraction where simply out to crush their opponents ship-wise as well as morale-wise. It was war, and sportmanship didn't have much a role in it.
But I've had plenty of wars were I simply never or rarely seen the enemy. Use three locator agents, jump 30 systems after your target and then find out you have a ship mismatch and one of the parties won't commit because the outcome is clear in advance.
Sportmanship aside. What I miss most is actual achievable meaningful goals in conflict. Goals that feel nice IC and you can actually make progress towards. Goals that allow all parties in the conflict to have fun.
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Please come shoot at us. I promise we wont hate you OOC. Most of my best friends in this game have little red squares next to their names. \o/
I've barely met you
And this is crazy
But here's our jump coordinates
Come shoot us maybe?
As clever as this was....
(http://i.imgur.com/ir1ez.jpg)
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The losing side loses credit and 'public face'.
However losing IC to other RPers causes many ooc tears due to the public crowing they will be on the receiving end of, and some supposed loss of "status."
1) As said above, might come sometimes from the fear of losing face on the IGS after a defeat.
I... really don't understand this. Most in-space fights will have a clear-cut winner and loser, and it's in the interest of each side to discredit their opponents -- or, as Merdaneth said, sway those same opponents away from the cause. Why should the loss of IC face be a big deal? You lost a fight, and your enemy exploited that; wahey. Learn from it, either make a cogent counterargument or get back in your ships and hit them back harder, IMO.
EVE advertises itself as a conflict-based game. While I don't think the IGS is a great medium for it, trying to make your opponents look bad happens there because that's a natural part of having an enemy.
My experience with the fusion of RP/PVP is limited to the last several months, but fwiw, I think the biggest challenge to engaging in RPer-on-RPer PVP is proximity...
2) As said above, which happens much more often, technical issues [...] just regional issues where the enemy is actually located at the other end of New Eden, which can cause a various amount of problems for some entities that are not very nomadic in nature or have a lot of assets to move depending on the scale.
The time zone issue mentioned along this I can understand and there's little to be done about that; it's negatively impacted my own RP, but such is life. The question of proximity is something I don't feel should always stand in the way, but that might be a function of me being more of an RPer than a PvPer.
Sometimes, it doesn't make any sense to go to a different constellation, region, or whatever, and that's fair enough. In the case of those a corporation finds especially odious, though, it's not unreasonable to go and move away for a bit to try and smack them down, whether that be because they're harming the supported faction directly or are just doing things that the corporation feels shouldn't at all be done.
Please come shoot at us.
I've seen this kind of thing a lot, from different people. My counter would be "Why not go and shoot them?".
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Fucksake. Quote is not edit, and I don't know how to delete.
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Cause in this story, man, we're the dragon. Dragon doesn't go hunt down the hobbits, the hobbits come to the dragon and beat him up and take his treasure.
SMAUG4LYF
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Please come shoot at us. I promise we wont hate you OOC. Most of my best friends in this game have little red squares next to their names. \o/
THIS THIS THIS
Come shoot at us, we like it.
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In my PIE times the people from MAAK were by far the people with the best sportmanship. They switched ship types to match what we would have, and even avoided (largely) flying purely anti-Amarr fits (yeah, all Amarr ECM was a nightmare to fight against in an otherwise evenly matched fleet).
But Electus Matari pointed out to us that by playing as immersively as possible, they simple couldn't offer us real sportmanship. If they could take us out without risking any losses on their part, they would try to do so. They would take risks if IC concerns (defending the Republic) warranted it, but not otherwise.
Star Fraction where simply out to crush their opponents ship-wise as well as morale-wise. It was war, and sportmanship didn't have much a role in it.
But I've had plenty of wars were I simply never or rarely seen the enemy. Use three locator agents, jump 30 systems after your target and then find out you have a ship mismatch and one of the parties won't commit because the outcome is clear in advance.
Sportmanship aside. What I miss most is actual achievable meaningful goals in conflict. Goals that feel nice IC and you can actually make progress towards. Goals that allow all parties in the conflict to have fun.
I used to know a lot of MAAK people quite well (since they were all RL froggies like me) and MAAK was probably closer to what I would call "RP light". They were less focused on their characters or in IC interactions than most of us here. What mattered most for them was the IC policies of their corp, the image/atmosphere of their corp, and the pvp evenings they could get out of it.
It is slightly different from other views on RP, more serious, like for example believing that OOC restraining, sportmanship, or just overall artificial OOC agreements or talks feel unatural.
Both views have their strenghts and their cons, unfortunately.
Fucksake. Quote is not edit, and I don't know how to delete.
You can't
(http://pinkie.ponychan.net/chan/files/src/134499825167.jpg)
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Don't wake the dragon!
It's rather amusing that I look at this, because it reminds me of The Star Fraction's troubles with starting wars with big nationalist pvp alliances and getting all sorts of shit about it because their goal was (or seemed) to make sure the entity was destroyed (ie. everyone left the corporation). Everyone told them to go fight some 0.0 alliance if they wanted a challenge. At the time, I found the act rather distasteful as it made lots of tears and angst on the forums, but looking back it wasn't a terrible idea. Ideological wars between immortals is somewhat of an obsolete concept unless you're somehow preventing them from doing something, like gathering resources or building bases, but otherwise it's just an endless loop of murder. I mean, it's not to say you can't have a fun, gentlemanly bout of pvp, but it strikes me that RPers would stand to gain more if the fight actually meant something.
Mind you, this is my personal opinion...I'm not trying to criticize anyone's behavior or reopen old wounds, but as an admirer of political intrigue and random solo pvp I find these things fascinating.
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When I am told of cases wherein RP Corp A roflstomped RP Corp B and saw nothing wrong with it OOC, I must conclude one of two things. Either the leadership of RP Corp A genuinely fails to understand that using excessive force robs RP Corp B of their entertainment value or that they are assholes. There is a gradient here. Large, powerful, and experienced organizations should be expected to defeat smaller, younger ones. They can, however, do so without griefing the losing party. It's called sportsmanship.
Good points Merdaneth.
This is a good discussion to have.
There are a ton of different opinions as to what constitutes 'sportsmanship,' especially for an internet computer game. Especially in a sandbox, emergent gameplay internet computer game with no set teams or win conditions.
Especially considering the different emotional value some of us place on seeing our internet pixels change color and explode.
The more 'rule setting' I've come across between RPers, the more upset people become for presumed affronts or 'cheating' etc and undesired outcomes. It's an extremely gray and nebulous and anger-filled topic that hasn't gone away.
For RPers I think it's generally a good idea to scale the level of stakes depending on participant age and resources, so younger players can have a more rewarding experience.
Conversely the older you are, the less we should be worried about you losing your in-game stuff or a place to hang your coat safely. If you are a couple-year vet I'm generally going to try and kill your grandmother and I'm going to assume you have a contract out on mine.
I've had good and bad examples of 'pre-made' RP PVP rules.
Mathra's aborted arc with our 'point limit' skirmishes is a good example of pre-made pvp limits still leading to unintended consequences. My point being is -REALLY- hard to set up 'fair' and 'fun' with eve gameplay ahead of time.
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Tiberius is also a class-act with just this sort of thing.
We shoots each other now and then and then shoots other people together.
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To be fair, that was an unusual situation, and planned out beforehand. 99% of the time if I see you in space I will shoot you or at least let other people know you are there so as to shoot at you.
(Im pretty sure I couldnt take Silas in a 1v1)
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The problem with the "give no quarter, grind them into the dust, destroy their will to fight" kind of conflict is that said will to fight happens to be mostly between the players' ears.
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To be fair, that was an unusual situation, and planned out beforehand. 99% of the time if I see you in space I will shoot you or at least let other people know you are there so as to shoot at you.
(Im pretty sure I couldnt take Silas in a 1v1)
Anyone can take anyone on any given day with the right fitting permutations.
Merdaneth has handed my ass to me on several occasions with off the wall fits before they became popular :P
"WTF I'm dead?! I barely scratched him!"
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Yes, but see, Merdaneth is actually good at PvP, where I am just very good at following orders and am okay with that.
90% of my solo kills are of cyno frigates. :)
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Yes, but see, Merdaneth is actually good at PvP, where I am just very good at following orders and am okay with that.
90% of my solo kills are of cyno frigates. :)
Following orders and everyone shooting at the same person will take you places in EVE :P
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the minimum 50m isk wardec fee may also have an effect, particularly on smaller groups.
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Merdaneth comments on something that I've run up against often as well: While an attempt to PvP at an IC enemy would often result in them docking up (or returning with a blob), interacting with them by text actually results in progress in our (hostile) relationship.
I struggle with this because, for me, talking directly and constructively to someone that my character thinks is worth shooting at and killing knocks a little too loudly on the 4th wall.
I didn't say talking nicely to them.
This could mean suborning one of their members to spy for you. It could mean finding out who they work with and putting IC pressure on them. It could mean publicly spreading propoganda (truth or lies) about their organization.
I was actually thinking about a situation in which all attempts to PvP-engage an enemy RP corp came to naught; however, through the use of "text RP", Esna was able to get hard evidence of their dirty dealings and use this to place pressure on those who might otherwise sympathise with his target.
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I think this is fairly easy, actually. If you get the sense that an opponent is not having fun (through either direct or indirect communication) and you continue to attempt to "kill their grandmother" or whatever, that is unsportsmanlike AKA being an asshole. Silas is certainly right in that the point-of-no-more-fun is subjective and different for all of us. Some folks may lose one expensive ship or pod and be ready to throw in the towel. Others may happily reship again and again for more combat until their wallets run dry.
As roleplayers, I think it does us all a great service if we act with our opponent's OOC interests in mind when fighting one another IC and, as Silas said, scale the stakes to match the participants. In my example of the WHG-Anshar conflict, we do this very informally. Nothing is pre-arranged. We simply let the other group know that we're going out and where they might find us. For RP corps living close to one another, this may be all you need to get more RP-on-RP combat started.
I disagree that we should accept the only viable goal of a conflict between immortals being the destruction of the opponents' will to fight. While logical, this translates very poorly into the realty of playing EVE. Specifically, the people who (role)play these immortal characters are mortal, have limited time on their hands, and ultimately play the game for entertainment. Curb stomping them into a failure cascade and pretending it's justified because that's the only way capsuleers would be able to defeat each other is crap. It's perfectly viable within the rules of the EVE sandbox, but it's awfully bad manners.
I didn't say talking nicely to them.
This could mean suborning one of their members to spy for you. It could mean finding out who they work with and putting IC pressure on them. It could mean publicly spreading propoganda (truth or lies) about their organization.
I was actually thinking about a situation in which all attempts to PvP-engage an enemy RP corp came to naught; however, through the use of "text RP", Esna was able to get hard evidence of their dirty dealings and use this to place pressure on those who might otherwise sympathise with his target.
Ah, ok. Misunderstood then. Yea, +1 to all that.
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The New Eden cluster is a huge place and while the loud mouths of the IGS may have been a personal irritant to Hamish - in a list of the most threatening to least threatening entities to Caldari State and Caldari Culture there are literally thousands of other things/people/groups before them. Opportunity cost applies in target selection too.
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That said, the best way to get our attention is to start smashing Ishukone assets and brag about it. John will take notice of that.
Noted and added to to-do list. Would love to smash face with you Ired peeps more often.
1. you're active in our TZ, most times
2. We're active in yours
3. I'm the only active RPer in my alliance (damn)
Ah well, maybe next time Miss Oniseki :bash: I guess we already shoot at each other pretty actively. You guys could just do a better job of it IC =P
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I've heard of these arranged play wars, where you didn't roam on Mondays so both sides could mine, and you didn't take battleships, and you didn't respond with more than was brought against you. I've also heard of the issues with them: having to stand some keen pilots down to maintain the appropriate balance, and the apparently-inevitable situation where each side came to think the other side wasn't playing fair when the "teams" got out of whack.
That is not the game I play when I play EVE. If you want "nice" training exercises make arrangements with your friends. Otherwise use one of the very many ways of whipping your people into shape with real live-fire work. That's much more likely to teach them the things they need to know about real combat.
My inner immersionist needed to get that out.
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I've heard of these arranged play wars, where you didn't roam on Mondays so both sides could mine, and you didn't take battleships, and you didn't respond with more than was brought against you. I've also heard of the issues with them: having to stand some keen pilots down to maintain the appropriate balance, and the apparently-inevitable situation where each side came to think the other side wasn't playing fair when the "teams" got out of whack.
I'm weird in that way. I always ask pilots to stand down, or rather refuse new ones in fleet if we are going to outmatch the hostiles. Clearly outmatching the hostiles is the best way of not getting any fight.
This goes for immersionists too. They can also see that if you bring twice the number, you will likely only be chasing them around fruitlessly. If that is your goal, fine, but in my eyes, having a fleet of twice the amount of pilots chasing around a fleet half their number will mean the opportunity cost for the chase fleet is twice as high, so you are actually losing isk. Unless you have something specific to defend (which you usually don't have), it is disadvantageous to do so.
The best way to strike at the enemy's morale and their wallet is meet them with a roughly equal fleet and beat them. (additionally, this is likely good for OOC morale for both parties to)
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I'm weird in that way. I always ask pilots to stand down, or rather refuse new ones in fleet if we are going to outmatch the hostiles. Clearly outmatching the hostiles is the best way of not getting any fight.
Merd, that's where you split your force and bait with enough of it to look tempting.
This goes for immersionists too. They can also see that if you bring twice the number, you will likely only be chasing them around fruitlessly. If that is your goal, fine, but in my eyes, having a fleet of twice the amount of pilots chasing around a fleet half their number will mean the opportunity cost for the chase fleet is twice as high, so you are actually losing isk. Unless you have something specific to defend (which you usually don't have), it is disadvantageous to do so.
I don't do much combat these days myself, but my corp very definitely does. When I'm in space with them I expect to have something specific to attack, defend, hunt, scare off or disrupt. If you don't have that, I suggest looking to your corp or alliance strategy and making sure it includes things you can do that align with real in-game actions.
The best way to strike at the enemy's morale and their wallet is meet them with a roughly equal fleet and beat them. (additionally, this is likely good for OOC morale for both parties to)
I hadn't realised what a fundamental difference in approach we have. That's useful to know, although it does limit our ability to interact.
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I've heard of these arranged play wars, where you didn't roam on Mondays so both sides could mine, and you didn't take battleships, and you didn't respond with more than was brought against you. I've also heard of the issues with them: having to stand some keen pilots down to maintain the appropriate balance, and the apparently-inevitable situation where each side came to think the other side wasn't playing fair when the "teams" got out of whack.
That is not the game I play when I play EVE. If you want "nice" training exercises make arrangements with your friends. Otherwise use one of the very many ways of whipping your people into shape with real live-fire work. That's much more likely to teach them the things they need to know about real combat.
My inner immersionist needed to get that out.
I don't have experience with "play wars" of the sort you describe, but I can imagine asking any willing participant to remain in station while the rest of you go looking for a fight would be deleterious to morale.
Let me reinforce that when I'm talking about striking a sportsmanlike attitude with another RP group for PVP, I'm not talking about setting up a tidy schedule of pre-planned fights a la the tournament or doing anything that would artificially break IC logic. I am talking about both sides respecting one another as players and acting in a way that encourages fun-having in order to enrich and continue IC interaction and PVP without either party growing to resent the other OOC.
Clearly outmatching the hostiles is the best way of not getting any fight.
In agreement with this.
I'm weird in that way. I always ask pilots to stand down, or rather refuse new ones in fleet if we are going to outmatch the hostiles. Clearly outmatching the hostiles is the best way of not getting any fight.
Merd, that's where you split your force and bait with enough of it to look tempting.
By making your force appear matched or weak compared to an opponent's, you goad him into engaging before springing the trap. Fwiw I think you've defended the logic of Merd's point, but I personally agree with your way of handling it (bait and switch) versus just leaving forces at home.
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the attitude I've taken with things is to fight all out and expect my opponents to do the same. This is made easier when there is a 'reason' either ICly or mechanically to go after someone "so and so is harbouring slaves" or "so and so is performing dangerous research" or "So and so is encroaching on our turf"
I think that the problem is that people try to PvP as an ends. PvP should really just be a means to an ends. If your goal is PvP, as counter-intuitive as it sounds, you should make your goal something other then pvp, but that pursuing would produce PvP as a natural side effect of trying to achieve that goal.
For example: Amarrian corporation sets up secret pos in minmatar highsec, launches 'slave raids' to nearby minmatar worlds and boasts about it on the IGS, this spurs anti-slaver groups to try and find and destroy the pos and rescue the slaves, and also gives the slavers something to do in their attempts to defend the pos. There is a clear victory condition besides breaking the enemy's will to fight, which means both groups can come back again to fight another day.
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Cause in this story, man, we're the dragon. Dragon doesn't go hunt down the hobbits, the hobbits come to the dragon and beat him up and take his treasure.
SMAUG4LYF
lol right.
I think it's also that RP corps are generally so spread out across the cluster it isn't that often you bump into them, unless both corporations are in lolFW that is. At least that's what it feels like to me. I've only bumped into WHG semi-regularly in and around Black Rise with ANSH. Related to Tibs' comment also; Maybe many corps thing they are this 'dragon' and think they enemy should come to them rather than the other way round.
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Cause in this story, man, we're the dragon. Dragon doesn't go hunt down the hobbits, the hobbits come to the dragon and beat him up and take his treasure.
SMAUG4LYF
lol right.
I think it's also that RP corps are generally so spread out across the cluster it isn't that often you bump into them, unless both corporations are in lolFW that is. At least that's what it feels like to me. I've only bumped into WHG semi-regularly in and around Black Rise with ANSH. Related to Tibs' comment also; Maybe many corps thing they are this 'dragon' and think they enemy should come to them rather than the other way round.
Thing with this particular dragon is that it awoke about 18 months ago. Incursions are hot. Sitting and waiting is not.
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Let me reinforce that when I'm talking about striking a sportsmanlike attitude with another RP group for PVP, I'm not talking about setting up a tidy schedule of pre-planned fights a la the tournament or doing anything that would artificially break IC logic. I am talking about both sides respecting one another as players and acting in a way that encourages fun-having in order to enrich and continue IC interaction and PVP without either party growing to resent the other OOC.
Example: When someone in ANSH scouts a WHG frigate gang, we don't reach for the NanoHACs, Thrashers and Antifrigate cruisers. We pick up a frigate fleet that will get us a good fight over a curbstomp.
Sure, both sides have escalated fights, but not, as I can recall, to the point of trashing the other side so utterly that people come out feeling bitter. Most of our engagements with WHG have involved both sides trying to get the jump on one another simultaneously, and it tends to result in a lot of careful timing and buildup before a fight where there's actually time to call targets before everything blows up.
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I'm weird in that way. I always ask pilots to stand down, or rather refuse new ones in fleet if we are going to outmatch the hostiles. Clearly outmatching the hostiles is the best way of not getting any fight.
Merd, that's where you split your force and bait with enough of it to look tempting.
Gets old fast. Very fast. Nothing works better to discourage fights than a couple of Titan bridged hotdrops and the like. Do it once, you'll get away with it, do it twice, and I'll be assuming reinforcements and we're back to non-engagements (or the classic no-risk engagements). Especially if you bring*overpowering* reinforcements, which is usually the case with those who often use the bait and switch method.
The number of times that someone has done a succesfull bait and switch on me over the last two years I can count on one hand.
Some things are more fun when you're a PvP noob, you''ll get surprised a lot more :)
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By making your force appear matched or weak compared to an opponent's, you goad him into engaging before springing the trap. Fwiw I think you've defended the logic of Merd's point, but I personally agree with your way of handling it (bait and switch) versus just leaving forces at home.
Well, look at it this way. My bait and switch includes the switch within the bait. This causes a situation where both parties want to engage. That's ideal for me.
Also, it causes me to rarely have trouble with people accusing me of unsportsmanlike behaviour, since I have rarely have a (surprise) backup fleet up my sleeves. What you saw is what you wanted and what you got. You just underestimated what you saw.
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Gets old fast. Very fast. Nothing works better to discourage fights than a couple of Titan bridged hotdrops and the like.
Agreed, there's been PVP corps running around Matari lowsec trying to pick fights where I oversaw several different fleets tell them "Not interested, because you'll just titan bridge a fleet onto us. Bored already."
That's different from having a bait fleet with backup a couple of jumps away that will try to move in conventionally, in a way that could be scouted.
In fact, one of the things I hated about hot-drops is the difficulty in scouting them. If you're in a fleet keeping scouts out, then you get some warning about incoming conventional reinforcements, or potentially you spot them first and can avoid them. It meant that scouting was important and useful.
Hotdrops are difficult to scout, and thus difficult to adjust to except to run around in smaller stuff and bail as soon as a cyno goes up. They also degrade the usefulness in having scouts instead of just more firepower.
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Gets old fast. Very fast. Nothing works better to discourage fights than a couple of Titan bridged hotdrops and the like.
Agreed, there's been PVP corps running around Matari lowsec trying to pick fights where I oversaw several different fleets tell them "Not interested, because you'll just titan bridge a fleet onto us. Bored already."
That's different from having a bait fleet with backup a couple of jumps away that will try to move in conventionally, in a way that could be scouted.
In fact, one of the things I hated about hot-drops is the difficulty in scouting them. If you're in a fleet keeping scouts out, then you get some warning about incoming conventional reinforcements, or potentially you spot them first and can avoid them. It meant that scouting was important and useful.
Hotdrops are difficult to scout, and thus difficult to adjust to except to run around in smaller stuff and bail as soon as a cyno goes up. They also degrade the usefulness in having scouts instead of just more firepower.
This goes back to our standard discussion of gameplay design fail with regards to bridging, cyno spooling, and the like.
So long as the devs are hesitant to put hard gameplay brakes on certain types of play these issues will not go away.
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By making your force appear matched or weak compared to an opponent's, you goad him into engaging before springing the trap. Fwiw I think you've defended the logic of Merd's point, but I personally agree with your way of handling it (bait and switch) versus just leaving forces at home.
Well, look at it this way. My bait and switch includes the switch within the bait. This causes a situation where both parties want to engage. That's ideal for me.
Also, it causes me to rarely have trouble with people accusing me of unsportsmanlike behaviour, since I have rarely have a (surprise) backup fleet up my sleeves. What you saw is what you wanted and what you got. You just underestimated what you saw.
Ok, I understand. Suppose I sympathized with Mata's point about preferring not to leave pilots behind in the name of bringing a more attackable fleet.
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By making your force appear matched or weak compared to an opponent's, you goad him into engaging before springing the trap. Fwiw I think you've defended the logic of Merd's point, but I personally agree with your way of handling it (bait and switch) versus just leaving forces at home.
Well, look at it this way. My bait and switch includes the switch within the bait. This causes a situation where both parties want to engage. That's ideal for me.
Also, it causes me to rarely have trouble with people accusing me of unsportsmanlike behaviour, since I have rarely have a (surprise) backup fleet up my sleeves. What you saw is what you wanted and what you got. You just underestimated what you saw.
Ok, I understand. Suppose I sympathized with Mata's point about preferring not to leave pilots behind in the name of bringing a more attackable fleet.
Reapers. Many reapers.
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For example: Amarrian corporation sets up secret pos in minmatar highsec, launches 'slave raids' to nearby minmatar worlds and boasts about it on the IGS, this spurs anti-slaver groups to try and find and destroy the pos and rescue the slaves, and also gives the slavers something to do in their attempts to defend the pos. There is a clear victory condition besides breaking the enemy's will to fight, which means both groups can come back again to fight another day.
Of course, this would be absolutely wonderful! However, most people rarely make themselves vulnerable willingly.
I've visibly and publicly setup myself as target in the past by announcing certain actions or operations in advance on the IGS (which is incidentally stupid to do before you've concluded operations), but haven't really had any takers yet (other than people wanting to help me :).
I could launch slave raids out of Minmatar highsec all day long, and ship the raided slaves back towards Amarr without effective opposition if I go about it with a bit of smarts. However, I don't even do slave raids. :)
Ushra Khan did a fun thing once by attacking convoys in Amarr. That was a nice touch. But that only worked if they went about it stupidly. Once people start warping around in alpha ships, and simply warping to the next convoy target if the first target seems somehow risky, tnen you'll be twiddling thumbs again as defender. And of course, you'll get the boast on the IGS how the Amarr are helpless to defend their convoys in high-sec. Sigh....
I've been around. People have vulnerable stuff protected in alt/npc corps and people are told to haul stuff with alts or contract it out in times of war. Most players try to minimize risk, and there are a lot of ways to do it.
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I think that the problem is that people try to PvP as an ends. PvP should really just be a means to an ends. If your goal is PvP, as counter-intuitive as it sounds, you should make your goal something other then pvp, but that pursuing would produce PvP as a natural side effect of trying to achieve that goal.
Merdaneth's post above highlights some of the reasons that I find that this to be difficult. A properly coordinated and well-kept-secret campaign can achieve its goal with a minimum of interference, which while completing the nominal objective isn't very PvP generating. Conversely, it can be even more un-fun to be a defender trying to fight off an opponent who is trying to do everything but fight.
For example: Amarrian corporation sets up secret pos in minmatar highsec, launches 'slave raids' to nearby minmatar worlds and boasts about it on the IGS, this spurs anti-slaver groups to try and find and destroy the pos and rescue the slaves, and also gives the slavers something to do in their attempts to defend the pos. There is a clear victory condition besides breaking the enemy's will to fight, which means both groups can come back again to fight another day.
Touches on another issue I've heard of - the fact that many of these "RPvP" hooks will result in a far larger force attacking you than you can defend against. In the above example, for instance, the person doing the "hook" could expect to be attacked not only by Minmatar defenders, but Amarr upset about someone breaking the Empire's law.
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I think that the problem is that people try to PvP as an ends. PvP should really just be a means to an ends. If your goal is PvP, as counter-intuitive as it sounds, you should make your goal something other then pvp, but that pursuing would produce PvP as a natural side effect of trying to achieve that goal.
This.
There are various ways to do it. They attract different sorts of people, and have their own typical types of internal conflict.
EM's approach to this is well known (I think?) and seems pretty tested: loyalty to (the underlying needs of) a faction (as we interpret them) which has live targets AND active vigilante policing of piracy within a particular area. When one area is quiet you focus on the other. Your internal hawks and doves sometimes slog it out, as do your want-my-fights-NOW types and your taking-the-long-view types. There's the occasional framing issue when a member or ally gets upset at you prioritising political crimes (which are mostly made-up crimes about slavery) over capsuleer crimes (which are where players are jerks to other real people).
When I (player) was with Rote Kapelle and throwing ideas at how we could frame what was, essentially, a desire for "All PvP; all the time" we touched base with Rote's rich (and sadly neglected) background as a hardline transhumanist breakaway group with strands of ethical egoism and anarchist illegalism. It's about cultivating strength, excellence and joy through competition, and applying selective pressure to other capsuleers who might therefore grow into their transhumanist nature. That's the nearest I've seen to an RP framework to wrap around PvP-for-its-own-sake. While it has the potential for RP, in reality it's been more of an RP-very-lite nostalgia thing, with newer pilots not having an interest in RP.
Let me reinforce that when I'm talking about striking a sportsmanlike attitude with another RP group for PVP, I'm not talking about setting up a tidy schedule of pre-planned fights a la the tournament or doing anything that would artificially break IC logic. I am talking about both sides respecting one another as players and acting in a way that encourages fun-having in order to enrich and continue IC interaction and PVP without either party growing to resent the other OOC.
I don't think it needs to be said, but do also PvP against the many non-RP groups around you. You'll end up with some "usual suspects", and may even develop RP or semi-RP hunter relationships with them which can be a lot of fun. But... have a hard think about why you fight, what you want from it, and what it means IC for you. There are ways to make the pursuit of ~goodfights~ make sense, but they require thought above and beyond normal framing. We have some relationships where we're essentially trying to stop some people from pirating too much in our neighbourhood, but we're pretty sure they'd help defend it if the second Day of Darkness came. Those are quite different from the people who simply need to be made to see the error of their ways and be somewhere else, or doing something else, whatever tools in the EVE diplomacy toolkit that takes.
And Merd, I was thinking in terms of sub-cap split-and-bait, but yeah, our version of that was that PL's tendency to hotdrop when bored in Amamake did kinda suck. It was a real in-game thing, though, and a reminder that even in the Republic we weren't immune to what was going on in null throughout the cluster. For us the main strategy was to warn people, work around the hazard, and wait it out.
(Also, to be frank, if we manage to evacuate Sahtogas Mata wouldn't particularly object to using FW simply as live-fire training from then on. We don't "believe" idealistically the way some people seem to think we should, but we have our reasons in the Long Game for what we do.)
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I've been trying to plan out some RPvP hooks and the attitude I've taken is to go in with the intention of losing and fleeing to fight again like a Saturday morning cartoon villain. The other issue is that it seems like people have gotten so used to things like that not happening mechanically, that they assume when someone boasts about taking slaves or somesuch, its in a way they can't mechanically do anything about. There's been too many people who are a lot of talk.
I think it might be a good idea though to come up with a bunch of varyingly difficult to execute RPvP hooks that a bunch of different corps could start adding in, and if we sort of as a whole make a conscious effort to try and do stuff like that, we could probably do a lot of good for RP as a whole, and probably pull in a bunch more people. It'd sorta be set up something akin to player live events if managed properly.
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RP PvP to me is all about creating potential shenanigans by seeking to frame blowing things up in an IC context and proceeding to set objectives that others are more then welcome to seek to upset and foil. It's just method acting and improvisation to me at the end of the day and I could care less about, "Winning" or "Losing" so long as the events that lead up to that point were engaging and interesting. You just need a mindset that's relaxed enough to just go with the flow and rationalize things as they come when doing RP and PvP as well as realize that they aren't separate and distinct concepts.
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Just caught this thread.
I'm in a RP PVP corp (KISEC) in a PVP alliance (I-RED). We are occasionally not terrible at what we do.
From my perspective, I prefer killing RPers over anyone else. If there were a Rote gang behind one gate and a Masquerade gate behind the other, I'd try to encourage John to go after the Rote gang on the off chance I get to shoot Bacch. My favourite kills of all time are the times I've killed Damar Rocarion (who I suppose isn't really a RPer).
If I get to kill Diana Kim one day I would have won Eve.
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Um, yes. I confess to a tiny bit of lust for "celebrity" kills, too. Although so far, it's been mostly me appearing on their killmails.
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Interaction between different RP entities, be they conversations, meetings, joined ops, conflict in space, with words or whatever, is something I've wanted and miss now that I'm as inactive as I am.
This tread has been ab interesting read; a great deal of things have been mentioned and talked about, touching on, among other things, the 'value' of RP entities that fight, or not, with others, and have no fear of doing so. RP is a very broad term however and while it's been interesting to read this I recall two issues, of a kind, that may well be related. When talking about RP and the different view-points around it it would be useful to keep these in mind.
Not everyone's expectations or understandings of RP are the same. (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=1561.0)
Some people might find it rather alien to even fight with other RP entities or might even understand the idea behind such a conflict to start with. As much as many here believe conflict between RP entities enriches the experience (I certainly do) others may very well just want to be alone in their corner doing their thing, hoping/expecting that others will leave them be. So if pressed, these are more likely to just curl up and not 'interact' with even an IC-fueled deck or actions in space. Some might even take major offense OOC for the actions made.
Some endeavors in RP can be seen as rather unfair and ways to work this out should likely be considered. (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=1992.0)
EVE is a huge place, RP-wise, and there are countless options for your ideas and desires. While some people (like me, as seen in the example linked inside the tread I linked to) engage in open, 'public' RP like this occasionally hoping someone might 'opt-in' and join the fun in some way, others might be stumped a bit and not know exactly how this can be even done.
I think it might be smart to engage in a sort of 'compromise' between the mentioned ideals in this tread; in between having the RP interaction or conflict non-consensual and in the 'no rules, no honorable deals' manner, and the 'civilized conflict' with fair numbers and so on, any major interaction between RP'ers should have at least some level of OOC unison. While I think it would be more important with a far tighter OOC agreement regarding fluff-RP and stories and non-space activities, and having this relaxed considerably in the in-space PVP part, the ultimate goal was for everyone to be entertained, right? If so, it likely goes without saying that ensuring everyone involved are cool about it OOC is mandatory, IMHO.
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Um, yes. I confess to a tiny bit of lust for "celebrity" kills, too. Although so far, it's been mostly me appearing on their killmails.
Hm. I don't think I've ever achieved "celebrity" status but there's something intriguing about people gunning for you just because you're well known and they hate your character (or oppose them without hate) in-character. To me, that means you're doing RP correctly.
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Um, yes. I confess to a tiny bit of lust for "celebrity" kills, too. Although so far, it's been mostly me appearing on their killmails.
Koronakesh went so far as to use an alt in my alliance to ninja steal one of my corpses from a botched operation battlefield to add to his IC corpse library.
Bastard 8)
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I like that man. Has goals, gets things done.
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I like that man. Has goals, gets things done.
I don't know if you were around when he blasted a dev IC actor at abig live-event and derailed the whole thing, it was one of my favorite eve RP unscripted moments ever.
Koro knew a little-known fact that you can actually shoot dev actors in highsec with no CONCORD interference. The Republic Fleet commander was rallying the RP troops for a Sansha incursion and Koro sent him straight to hell in front of everyone. Was glorious.
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I like that man. Has goals, gets things done.
I don't know if you were around when he blasted a dev IC actor at abig live-event and derailed the whole thing, it was one of my favorite eve RP unscripted moments ever.
Koro knew a little-known fact that you can actually shoot dev actors in highsec with no CONCORD interference. The Republic Fleet commander was rallying the RP troops for a Sansha incursion and Koro sent him straight to hell in front of everyone. Was glorious.
You're forgetting the best part: the actor then cockslapped his, Boma's and one other person's sec status and Republic standings (might've only been just one, I forget) well into outlaw range.
A Nation actor then offered to "fix" the changes for them later on.
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I agreed with the sec status hit as it was IC consistant, but god it was glorious.
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Silloneri Balginia, who I seriously wish I had talked to more :s RSS4lyfe
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A few points:
Someone mentioned a POS. However, there are a number of problems with this sort of thing.
1. Highsec POS require standings. An "Evil Amarr Slaver" corporation cannot put up a Highsec POS in Minmatar space, without a whole lot of meta fiddling. An Alliance could, afaik, but that's a whole different thing. There is still the question of why someone who is held in reasonable standing by the Republic is working actively with "Evil Amarr Slaver" corporations. Iirc, alliances can also move the POS holding corporation out of the alliance when the tower enters reinforced mode, allowing it to be refuelled before a war can become active again. Shenanigans.
2. Lowsec POS are unsuitable for groups of smaller size, it would, quite rightly, attract the attention of the Electus Matari dreadnoughts.
Anchorable containers, with an Orca hanging around, and other things would be far simpler to set up and play about with, however, there is another, bigger issue.
We've talked about this before, I think, the RP Hats (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=1557.0) problem.
To get RP-in-space things happening, a lot of things seem to require RP characters to act in such a way that places them in the most naive sector of the capsuleer populace.
Examples: The general population uses alt corporations to avoid things being easily traced to them. The exception are the naive people that haven't thought of this, or have not yet had it shown to them why alt corporations are a good idea.
The general population uses neutral transport ships to move items around.
Characters would see this sort of thing happening in the news articles, and would thus be aware of it.
A thing that is set up as a slave holding depot, would be done by most people with alt corporations and neutral transports. Instead, to get some rp-in-space going on, there's a requirement for the RP characters to disregard thing that the chars would have seen on the news, disregard any of their own experiences, and act in a foolhardy and naive fashion.
it just seems a bit weird to me, to expect RP characters to act in a way that is contrary to the way every other entity acts.
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Ok, just to have people throw a few ideas out there.
What would an appropriate trigger for your (RP) PvP corp be to engage in a conflict with clear reachable objectives, and with which the triggering entity can fire the trigger without appearing naive, dense or stupid?
Because honestly, I sometimes have difficulty in imagining what I could convincingly do to pull another RP party into a nice (OOC mutually desirable) conflict that is about more than KB-stats or IGS braggery.
Let us brainstorm a couple of ideas!
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This war will not cease until we have driven those Goddamn (Group X) out of our sovreign space!
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Perhaps a split thread would be desirable for Merdaneth's ideas post?
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Regarding the POS suggestion.
Who needs them? Just use a suitable NPC station as your base. Then when you are inevitably camped into it you can get all sorts of fun sending a force to break the camp and let out your industrials full of whatever macguffin it is you are fighting over. As I recall EM once had a lol-Blooder antagonist (Darth Sage) who used to do this sort of thing using homeless-type passengers as his tokens. Unfortunately Darth Sage (& Onion) lacked the numbers to be a decent challenge. That said I think he was executing an extended parody of Revan rather than actually trying to be a threat.
Come to that I remember CAIN getting pissed at us & coming to play. We had a lot of fun with that. We also had a lot of fun stocking their base station with munitions & making a profit off their campaign on us. :lol:
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Regarding the POS suggestion.
Who needs them? Just use a suitable NPC station as your base.
Using a Republic Fleet station for a campaign that involves kidnapping slaves from the Republic does seem a bit, if not illogical very immersion breaking.
Again, this is another good example of Louella's RP hats point from previous page.
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Regarding the POS suggestion.
Who needs them? Just use a suitable NPC station as your base.
Using a Republic Fleet station for a campaign that involves kidnapping slaves from the Republic does seem a bit, if not illogical very immersion breaking.
Again, this is another good example of Louella's RP hats point from previous page.
So use an Amarrian station. Imperial Armements has stations in the Republic amongst others.
Or, if you want to be consistent with the related missions, use a Caldari station. That way you could even stay Imperial legal as the Amarrians aren't actually capturing the slaves.
Or find another macguffin to fight over. As long as it can be put in a cargo hold and moved it is usable.
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There's another thing which I thought of while writing my reply to the offshoot thread ("Macguffins and Magnets"):
Since a lot of the most PvP-oriented RP corps and RPers have gone through FW at some point, they are now saddled with standings which prevent them from even entering another factions' highsec (or at least, not without hordes of NPC Navy spawning). This presents a huge discouragement into making noise in other peoples' space - you're not only fighting them, you're fighting endlessly respawning waves of NPCs as well. Neutral space exists, but represents a fraction of the available regions (and may be difficult for some parties to reach).
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I think the basic issue with that is that CCP likes to keep its story and game mechanics as separated as possible, probably out of fear they'll somehow damage the fine tuned balancing system they've been working on for the last year or so.
Whilst the sandbox mechanics are flexible and all, they still have their own set of rules which are not followed to pace with the story and vice versa, the gameplay taking priority; this is why you can't go and improvise much outside of given frames without making a lot of compromise on either side, which eventually leaves one with a somewhat bitter aftertaste.
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Since a lot of the most PvP-oriented RP corps and RPers have gone through FW at some point, they are now saddled with standings which prevent them from even entering another factions' highsec (or at least, not without hordes of NPC Navy spawning). This presents a huge discouragement into making noise in other peoples' space - you're not only fighting them, you're fighting endlessly respawning waves of NPCs as well. Neutral space exists, but represents a fraction of the available regions (and may be difficult for some parties to reach).
Very true. Which is why at some point I stopped doing missions or shooting NPCs in FW. I don't want that option taken away from me.
If I'm legally enlisted in the militia, then I'm not breaking any laws by attacking the opponent, the why treat my as an outlaw after I leave the militia? Just doesn't make sense.
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Since a lot of the most PvP-oriented RP corps and RPers have gone through FW at some point, they are now saddled with standings which prevent them from even entering another factions' highsec (or at least, not without hordes of NPC Navy spawning). This presents a huge discouragement into making noise in other peoples' space - you're not only fighting them, you're fighting endlessly respawning waves of NPCs as well. Neutral space exists, but represents a fraction of the available regions (and may be difficult for some parties to reach).
I have been in FW for more than 3 years and have plexed quite a lot. Not as much as the crazy plexers like 1PG or some PIE pilots in the first days or some others, but enough to be in the top VP tier on 1PG killboards for a while.
I have also run since I started eve a shitload of standard L4s before that and even during FW, most of them for Amarr. Even when I was in Providence (2007) my only income came from L4s and the new LP system that was very profitable. Most of the time I also ran the missions against gallente, minmatar, or even caldari NPCs, which was not very good for my standings. I have stopped now, ofc, but I still used to do it until I left FW and started to change my mind regarding my standings.
So, in the end, I still have never been barred from any other faction territory, except through FW mechanisms. The worst I got was with the Republic (around -8.2 raw) mostly due to FW consequences, which obliged me to skill up diplomacy V. But after 3 years of plexing I have always been surprised not to be lower. In any case, when I left FW I was still able to go in Republic space with my -8 standings and diplomacy V, putting me slightly above -5 (-4.7 effective).
However I know some people that have terrible standings for any reason and can't really fix that easily, even through missions, because running L1 missions until you get a positive standing with the faction is a nightmare. Same for me, I did not choose to do that, it is just silly or masochist.
But you have several good options left :
- Running missions for a secondary faction to gain indirect faction standings with the factions whose standings you want to fix. SOE, for example. Works not bad since fixing very bad standings goes A LOT quicker than upping positive standings.
- Running COSMOS ? Not tried yet, and requires standings for some.
- Running epic arcs. This is the win solution imo. I recently ran again the SOE noob arc and choose the republic agent at the end. It gives you +8% standings. It is something like 0.25 or 0.50 when you are at 0 iirc. Here, it gave me above +1.0 standings. Now, keep in mind that's just the noob epic arc that gives 8%. The L4 epic arcs give +12%. I ran the gallente one and got incredible standing boosts, to the point with doing it twice + running SOE + running the SOE noob arc in the first place made me go from -6 (raw) to +1.0. All of this, without any opposite factions standing losses.
So yeah, I would say that once out of FW, it is not very hard to fix standing issues really.
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Avoiding lock-out from specific High-Sec factions is absurdly easy, even if you run missions - decline any and all missions that involve killing/opposing the other Empires. As long as you only mission against pirate factions (their space is 0.0 anyway) your fine.
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Avoiding lock-out from specific High-Sec factions is absurdly easy, even if you run missions - decline any and all missions that involve killing/opposing the other Empires. As long as you only mission against pirate factions (their space is 0.0 anyway) your fine.
I've found it absurdly hard. After only a few months in EVE I started doing what you say, but if your Amarr faction standing climbs higher the other standings will go lower and lower. At some point I had to avoid all storyline missions (this was years ago), had to train diplomacy to V and had to grind for SoE to raise my Republic standing to above -5 adjusted.
Honestly: no opposing missions after a few months of EVE, no storyline missions shortly after I joined PIE (5 years ago), no FW missions for over 2 years, and no more shooting NPCs in plexes if I can help it, and I'm still hovering near the abyss and needing to grind SoE.
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"Why is there this intermittent preference for hunting non-RPers in a corp's comfort zone, rather than leaving it to fight RPers?".
Unless you pick your associates and enemies carefully, using their ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality as your main criterion, most of the time will go to dealing with IC/OOC bleed over and OOC drama, either internally, externally or both. If the war targets are chosen using only IC motivations, it might be possible to push it through with enough OOC assurances that it is all role-playing and your purpose is just to have fun, but since this should be self-evident and for the grand majority it is not, I'm not convinced that any amount of meta gaming really helps with this issue.
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"Why is there this intermittent preference for hunting non-RPers in a corp's comfort zone, rather than leaving it to fight RPers?".
... because in most cases it makes more sense for our immersive RP to do that.
I don't see the problem. (I suspect that that might be part of what you'd see as the problem. :) )
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... because in most cases it makes more sense for our immersive RP to do that.
I don't see the problem. (I suspect that that might be part of what you'd see as the problem. :) )
Mm, my question was more geared towards when there are solid reasons to go after the RPers beyond "lol let's make RP" when I wrote it, but granted I didn't actually make that plain.
Something I've been wondering recently is if wholly immersive RP is always the best approach. People have complained of "RP feeling like a lot of closed circles all muttering to each other, with a sea of public derp between them" in the past.
Edit: Realised that I should make that second sentence "...the best approach for me". Ultimately, if others enjoy themselves, cool, let them carry on.
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... because in most cases it makes more sense for our immersive RP to do that.
I don't see the problem. (I suspect that that might be part of what you'd see as the problem. :) )
Mm, my question was more geared towards when there are solid reasons to go after the RPers beyond "lol let's make RP" when I wrote it, but granted I didn't actually make that plain.
Something I've been wondering recently is if wholly immersive RP is always the best approach. People have complained of "RP feeling like a lot of closed circles all muttering to each other, with a sea of public derp between them" in the past.
Yeah, I can agree with this, I feel like I've been enjoying the game more since I started doing RP-lite
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Something I've been wondering recently is if wholly immersive RP is always the best approach.
It's a fair question to ask, although I wonder about the motivation for asking. How many people actually do wholly immersive RP? Would those people still play and contribute in more flourishy ways to EVE RP if they didn't do immersive RP?
My impression has always been that there's very little wholly immersive RP in EVE, so it doesn't move the "centre" of things much. It's possible that that's just because I see it through Evanda Char's position document for EM. As she expressed it, there were plenty of places in EVE for RP-lite, and very few alliances (possibly down to only one) for immersive RP, so protecting the immersive RP environment of EM did take priority over most other things.
People have complained of "RP feeling like a lot of closed circles all muttering to each other, with a sea of public derp between them" in the past.
Y'know, my impression is that some of the closed circles have really interesting characters (and players) in them, and that there are often immersive reasons why they can't play together much.
Which is why I'm a bit sadfaec about Aldrith leaving, since Mata was just starting to build bridges through teasing and nicknaming there. (Yes, sometimes hair-pulling really is a sign of interest.)
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Immersionnist RP often makes people leave, but I couldnt think of another way to RP.
It just feels a little tasteless or often artificial/made up otherwise.
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It's a fair question to ask, although I wonder about the motivation for asking. How many people actually do wholly immersive RP? Would those people still play and contribute in more flourishy ways to EVE RP if they didn't do immersive RP?
My impression has always been that there's very little wholly immersive RP in EVE, so it doesn't move the "centre" of things much. It's possible that that's just because I see it through Evanda Char's position document for EM. As she expressed it, there were plenty of places in EVE for RP-lite, and very few alliances (possibly down to only one) for immersive RP, so protecting the immersive RP environment of EM did take priority over most other things.
The motivation would be that I'm not sure whether I feel the issue is there's too little immersion (and the RP that does happen gets cheapened for everyone socialising with everybody else) or too much (and this impression of needing to throw in which an existing group arises).
Historically, perhaps as a function of me first RPing, both in EVE and ever, with RE-AW, I've preferred immersive RP. My experience with Vaun has been that without sidling up to an established group, the RP he gets goes between "difficult to find" and "nonexistent", though, so perhaps now I'm questioning that.
Immersion-with-concessions-within-reason might be a decent summary of what I'm starting to feel, having watched RP corps without being actively involved: do the usual stuff, but if attacking an RP group is only a little out of the way, as opposed to the other end of the cluster, if they're a target the reasoning to go for them can be concocted. I don't know; it just seems slightly sad, from afar, that RP groups who are reasonably matched with every justification to attack each other don't. That might just be me being too little (or too much) of a purist, mind.
Y'know, my impression is that some of the closed circles have really interesting characters (and players) in them, and that there are often immersive reasons why they can't play together much.
Therein lies my issue. There exist interesting characters -- but because they're so insular, approaching them often ranges from difficult to impossible without extensive handwaving.
(Although this is interesting, if there's further interest in it it might be best split into another thread, since it seems to be going down a slightly different route to the OP.)
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Y'know, my impression is that some of the closed circles have really interesting characters (and players) in them, and that there are often immersive reasons why they can't play together much.
Therein lies my issue. There exist interesting characters -- but because they're so insular, approaching them often ranges from difficult to impossible without extensive handwaving.
Or secret alt making. Speaking from the perspective of personal shenanigans, anyway.
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Y'know, my impression is that some of the closed circles have really interesting characters (and players) in them, and that there are often immersive reasons why they can't play together much.
Therein lies my issue. There exist interesting characters -- but because they're so insular, approaching them often ranges from difficult to impossible without extensive handwaving.
Or secret alt making. Speaking from the perspective of personal shenanigans, anyway.
Something tells me that having an alt in each camp is not the way to go about bridging connections.
Its all connected though. The desire for immersion, the RP camps, the nature of pvp in eve, its all knotted together and covered in bubblegum for good measure. But I do think there is a way to untangle it all and get things into a sort of more pure state.
I'm going to ask the older players this: Do you think the RP environment, both PvP wise and interaction wise, as improved or deteriorated, or stayed the same? If it has gotten worse, then what sort of things did people do before to spark conflicts and create fun and dynamic pvp environments?
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Something I've been wondering recently is if wholly immersive RP is always the best approach. People have complained of "RP feeling like a lot of closed circles all muttering to each other, with a sea of public derp between them" in the past.
To be fair, sometimes real life feels like a lot of closed circles all muttering about each other, with a sea of public derp between them.
What is good about the immersive thing is that it feels like it's more true to life, and I value that a lot.
The problem is that in the real world, I have a few hundred thousand people living in my city that I can share different interests with, and if I don't talk to a lot of them because they have fundamentally different world views to me, that's not a big problem. Especially since a lot of people living in the same city will have very similar interests compared with say, someone living on the other side of the pacific from me.
In Eve, the community of RPers is quite a lot smaller, and if you rule out (for good and proper IC reasons) socialising with large chunks of it, then the number of people you have left to talk to can get quite small indeed.
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I'm going to ask the older players this: Do you think the RP environment, both PvP wise and interaction wise, as improved or deteriorated, or stayed the same? If it has gotten worse, then what sort of things did people do before to spark conflicts and create fun and dynamic pvp environments?
I'm no PVP hound, but having been invested in the game for most of its lifespan and watched the evolution of the RP community, that the interaction has changed considerably over time. I am hesitant to say whether the change has been better or worse, because I think some of the changes have been an improvement while others have been a detriment.
Early into EVE, early roleplayers were wide-eyed pioneers, creating character concepts, corporate goals, and project ideas that have been replicated many many times since. Every idea was fresh, every enemy and friend was a welcome opportunity/challenge, and there was a general trust level between players. It was also a relatively 'young' period for MMOs as well, and the community was small, so it was easy to stand out in a crowd. There was no faction warfare, but most of the RP-PVP corps fought for the same reasons; factional nationalist conflicts were common affairs. Pirate sub-factions tackling with trying to handle being a presence in mostly empire-based RP clans while simultaneously sticking to their roots in 0.0. Not much has changed with the pirate sub-factions, really, which I think is why they still remain creatively strong.
Eight years later, we have an established RP community here on backstage, with an established faction warfare mechanic for the RP-PVP corps to mingle. The number of players have skyrocketed ten to twentyfold from it used to be back when the game started and every character concept, every corporation, every idea has been repeated so many times ad nauseum that it's very difficult to truly stand out these days. All the really OOC nastiness is gone because there is no longer any implied trust between players; the behavior is largely accepted, and whether that is maturity or just low expectations is a matter for debate. I think a lot of the creativity that existed prior to faction warfare has been lost; Famous RP-PVP corporations had to take big risks to keep their ranks full and maintain their notoriety/infamy/presence, but I don't see so much of the public display these days beyond individual character personalities.
But that's just my opinion.
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I'm going to ask the older players this: Do you think the RP environment, both PvP wise and interaction wise, as improved or deteriorated, or stayed the same? If it has gotten worse, then what sort of things did people do before to spark conflicts and create fun and dynamic pvp environments?
I'd say prior to FW RP corps/alliances were the visible fronts of their chosen factions and organizations. Particular interests were well defined and there was more scope for creativity because there so much less information available and it was up to players to delve in and try and piece together what made their factions tick. This created a sense of involvement in what was being done because you weren't just handed things on a plate and it was engaging and created emotional and intellectual investment because in a sense it felt like you were also defending the products of your own particular thoughts and creativity against others. RP in many respects was much more a sandbox then, than it is today because even as the background fiction has become more defined it has also restricted the creative scope that a lot of RP groups thrived upon.
FW is perhaps an example of this. In many respects RP groups were something akin to the standard bearers of their factions, you did things not just for the killmails, the LP, or the ISK but because you were invested in the fiction and the world and did things like start wars and conflicts with each other due to well defined conflicts of interests that you and your group had created. FW in some ways removed that important aspect of RP-PVP and shifted creative control from the RP'ers into a pre-made and canned conflict that if it was a pure old school type of RP conflict would have created all sorts of interesting character interactions, conflicts and most importantly: stories to tell.
So it's a bit of a catch-22 now. If you're loyal to your faction there's pressure to get into FW and fight on behalf of it and at the same time CCP has practically dropped development on it and in particular the storyline and narrative of FW, that an entry into it provides very little real potential for actual RP interaction and storytelling that was previously what made RP-PVP so engaging to be involved in. That's the heart of the issue I think, players have a far higher cycle in moving their own fiction and interactions with each other when it comes to RP that CCP and FW lacks so it has a tendency to create a feeling that you're just spinning ships because all the effort and initiative a character and player may put into the conflict is relatively pointless all things considered.
There's ways around it of course and I think the solution comes in accepting that FacWar is an eternal stalemate and shift the focus of RP and player fiction from the core mechanics of it and instead build around FW in areas where there still exists some degree of scope and creative control of RP. Basically, learn to stop worrying and trying to win the war because you can't.
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In the times of yore there was no RP PVP.
There was just immersion and the wars that it brought.
You immersed yourself into New Eden, based your decisions on what happened in New Eden (not in someones head/blog or self-narrated story on IGS) and it was as simple as that.
Emotes were very rare in channel RP, I believe it was because of the immersionist aspect of the roleplayers.
IC the channels were perceived as what they were, not as something that someone wished them to be, so that the baseline of interaction was exactly the same for everyone.
Yes, it was easier to single someone out, hurt them in space and make them shut up on IGS.
Yes, there was OOC camaraderie towards the enemy, not because you chatted with them OOC, it was because there was an underlying trust that even the enemy is a person on the other side of the trenches.
Most of the people of the Minmatar/Amarr conflict never talked to each other OOC but there was this underlying brotherhood of fighting the good fight.
One of the unspoken agreements was that all drama and underhandedness perceived by the enemy (which made you lose face) would be dealt with in house.
During that time the most vocal and numerous parts of the roleplaying community were taking part in the Minmatar/Amarr conflict.
So that meant that the RP community seemed to be working on that level of interaction all the time.
Newer roleplayers picked up their cues from the older ones and the ball kept rolling.
Then a lot of stuff happened, most of it is documented in Chatsubo, which broke that old 'circlejerk'.
RP community turned into cliques that insulated each other from each other in game and out of the game.
Now everything goes.
Most of the histrionics that happen in EVE nowadays sadly are silently approved of because of that fragmentation, mainly for the reason that if you raise your voice against a perceived wrong you get swarmed by those who perceive themselves as someone that has something to lose if any kind of homogenization or baseline rules are introduced into the community.
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I'm going to ask the older players this: Do you think the RP environment, both PvP wise and interaction wise, as improved or deteriorated, or stayed the same? If it has gotten worse, then what sort of things did people do before to spark conflicts and create fun and dynamic pvp environments?
Stagnated I would say, but I can echo Gyra's comments on the matter.
It is also hard to compare both periods for me since the first half of my life on eve (2006 - 2009) has been mostly driven by the gameplay itself and the RP came in as the thing that made me carry on and prevented me to get bored.
The second half is where things start to change : when you already have played 3 years to a game (which is quite a lot) no matter what happens, you might start to be a little less enthusiast about the game, the gameplay, the mechanics, and you start to delve deeper into the lore and your RP to compensate. That second half of my presence on eve lasted 95% due to RP, nothing else. Ofc I still enjoyed pvp and fortunately I got FW to find a good and enjoyable disposable pvp, but that was very secondary.
What Lallara call immersionnist, I define it myself as "RP light". That's a different of taste and appreciation, really. Unfortunately my immersionnism or EM's immersionnism does not help at all to fix the RP cliques issue. That's why I wanted so much to see the NEA channel be used again as a public summit between RP leaders.
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Its pretty well known I run an RP/PVP corp, and it seems a lot of people are reluctant to join for that reason. When people do, theyre reluctant to risk ships or go out and roam. I have no idea where this mindset comes from; fly cheap, have fun? If you play any other PvP game, you run back into the fight and try again. EVE should be no different. So you lost a fight that has IC repercussions? Cool! Your character is not perfect, congratulations! I have had way more fun playing Ava when she loses, and must accept her loss, than when she wins. Ava has never won an IC "RP fight" (Quick edit; she did win one once, with a lucky pop to the nose in a "first blood" honor duel). She hasnt won every in space fight. Both make her appeal to me more, make her feel more real.
Its just pixels, and most BC and down pixels are pretty damn cheap. I dont understand the aversion.
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I understand some roleplayers are squeamish about squandering a few of those "crew" animated slugs of carbohydrates and water. Pah!
Actually, that's sort of legitimate; part of the fun of RP is pretending it's more than pixels.
On the third hand, that's truth, right up there. Try PvP; you have nothing to lose but your ship. And your pod. And your reputation.. although, what good is a reputation when it's not grown on a good, hard diet of space-murder?
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Malcolm lost nothing short of fifty frigates in a matter of two weeks because of fights with Anshar and the Gallente, half of which were based on some level of RP.
Azdan has lost a couple of ships to RP situations.
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Its pretty well known I run an RP/PVP corp, and it seems a lot of people are reluctant to join for that reason. When people do, theyre reluctant to risk ships or go out and roam. I have no idea where this mindset comes from; fly cheap, have fun? If you play any other PvP game, you run back into the fight and try again. EVE should be no different. So you lost a fight that has IC repercussions? Cool! Your character is not perfect, congratulations! I have had way more fun playing Ava when she loses, and must accept her loss, than when she wins. Ava has never won an IC "RP fight" (Quick edit; she did win one once, with a lucky pop to the nose in a "first blood" honor duel). She hasnt won every in space fight. Both make her appeal to me more, make her feel more real.
Its just pixels, and most BC and down pixels are pretty damn cheap. I dont understand the aversion.
:cube: this post
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Hmmmm.... think Lallara is making a good point.
I think there are more RP-ers in EVE than there were in the past, but they've become isolated. There is no common base or common ground from which to operate.
I believe that unless RP-ers make an (OOC) effort to seek each other out, then they will just drift each other mostly. Merdaneth honestly couldn't care less about what EM (for example) is doing mostly because I don't notice them. They probably don't notice me too. Or if they notice me, they likely notice stuff doesn't have much of an impact on them and therefore doesn't require any further interaction.
Same for allies. Once I'm in Providence, I don't really notice what PIE's doing, they don't notice what I'm doing, and neither has much impact on the play of the other. That's just factual. EVE is a big place, so big that unless you actively seek each other out, you likely won't impact each other much.
Being immersionist gives lots of reasons to avoid many other RPers and a lot fewer reasons to seek them out, so it certainly doesn't help in that regard.
Honestly, I think the growth of EVE is the biggest issue here. We had more of a village mentality before, it was nearly impossible not to notice one another. Now we are living in the RP equivalent of a big city and in relative anonimity. If we want to meet up and play together, we just can't keep doing or own thing.
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Its pretty well known I run an RP/PVP corp, and it seems a lot of people are reluctant to join for that reason. When people do, theyre reluctant to risk ships or go out and roam. I have no idea where this mindset comes from; fly cheap, have fun? If you play any other PvP game, you run back into the fight and try again. EVE should be no different. So you lost a fight that has IC repercussions? Cool! Your character is not perfect, congratulations! I have had way more fun playing Ava when she loses, and must accept her loss, than when she wins. Ava has never won an IC "RP fight" (Quick edit; she did win one once, with a lucky pop to the nose in a "first blood" honor duel). She hasnt won every in space fight. Both make her appeal to me more, make her feel more real.
Its just pixels, and most BC and down pixels are pretty damn cheap. I dont understand the aversion.
It still costs money. Not that I have always been reluctant to engage any kind of ship in a fight (except maybe shinies ofc, but I even fielded the dread several times so...). But it costs money, be it a T1 frigate or a T2 cruiser. One costs more than the other, a lot more, yes. But both cost money.
And money = time spent in boring farming most of the time, since eve is more or less a second job when it comes to these issues. Maybe one of the things I agreed on with Ank before she got expelled from the CSM. The fact that you can spend 30min, or even days, to earn the necessary money, then to see your ship disappear in glorious flames 5 min after the undock because you got into a gatecamp or anything... can be quite frustrating.
So no, even if some ships are quite affordable, they still ask for you to farm them, which is not quite like in other MMOs when you can go back into pvp freely without any material loss. Ofc, what you find in other MMOs removes the material consequences that make eve great in its way. Pros ans cons...
Note : I am not speaking about T1 fitted ships. They cost nothing, but they are under efficient or just loleffective in pvp. These days you need most of the time rigs, faction ammo, and T2 (and sometimes even a few complex mods) to remain competitive, especially in solo. And I am not even speaking about the price of clones and implants when you start to get clones at 30-50M isk each.
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I make ok isk simply from PvPing, but yes, farming is boring.
This does not explain some who are super rich being reluctant to "just do it" though. Hell, a T1 frig with a solid T2 fit costs 7-8m isk. You can make this in 5 minutes ratting in nullsec, and an average mission will buy you 2 or 3 of them. A single hour of FW plexing? 20 or 30.
So no, the "I have to farm forever!" thing is part of it, but far from all.
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I think part of it might relate to the fact that every RP corp is the master of its own domain. Most seem to be focused on the defense of their nation. When was the last time an Amarrian corp stuck its neck out and actually wardecced a minmatar corp? Or the reverse for that matter? Everyone is waiting for someone to come to them, and if no one does, they simply stay in their areas. Part of this is timezone differences, not wanting to spend all day playing station games and the like, and the lack of any real tangible benefits of winning, and the only victory conditions currently achievable mechanically being total corp destruction. I think the new POS system will alieviate that a bit. Give players new things to shoot at, and wreck, and blow up. But I think part of it can be solved if a few corps are simply willing to stick their necks out and drop decs on people. Once I get ALXVP into combat worthy shape, I'll probably be dropping declarations left and right, just to try and get something interesting to happen.
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I started RP and PVP at the same time. It was a side project to distract me from nullsec industrial grind. Lo and behold it collectively was so fun that years later I'm out of null and now Eve for me is RP and pvp. I won't claim to be a master of pew-pew but I get by and enjoy it as a highlight that compliments my gameplay. That said my favorite PVP moments have also had RP significance. EM had a series of wars against Amarr corps for their birthday. My first day in KotMC was fighting past that blockade in Amarr to go fight the FW war. Also my favorite kill isn't my first, my most expensive, or my best solo. My favorite is when i happened to run into an ex-corp member (traitor!) in a fw plex. The fight was fun, the local smack was tasteful and meaningful, executing the pod was pure bliss. I dont think RP makes pvp necessary (I'm still a carebear on the side) but PVP with RP background is a delicious gaming experience.
Also re Ava: next time you won't be lucky with those cheap shots to the nose! :cube:
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The farming aspect...
Making ISK in the beginning was fun, you were learning, the world was your oyster kind of stuff.
After years of that shit it all turns into a grind, even if you optimize your passive income, even if you get your adrenaline fix from running a gate camp, it is still a soul killing grind. Even PVP, infiltrating 'enemy' corporations with alts, RPing in a static universe, it is pretty much all the same.
The problem with growing up and having a job, career and a family means that your time gets more and more precious.
Its easy to waffle 20-40 hours a week to a game when your main priorities is getting laid and drunk.
It is quite hard to manage the same thing when you have REAL real life responsibilities breathing down your neck or when somebody that is dependent on you for his/her life crying his/her lungs out in the next room.
Any risk, any waste of ISK, anything that takes away from the measure that you have set yourself for being successful in EVE becomes a complete and utter waste of your most precious resource, time.
I think the fact that the player base has matured and moved on in their lives has affected EVE more than any war, CCP fuckup or corp heist.
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Also re Ava: next time you won't be lucky with those cheap shots to the nose! :cube:
Ava, a tactical tip: go for the boob instead next time. *flees*
Honestly, if there were a reason for me to go shooting someone, I would.
Unfortunately, I'm not in a corp with enough PVP-capable characters (let alone active players) to be quite capable of taking care of anything outside of opportunistic attacks in low/null, and certainly not one that is about to go around throwing wardecs with lawl-allies ready to counter, so chances of me enacting pew-pew on anything that isn't an outlaw in highsec (or aggressed to me) are reasonably slim at the moment. There's also the whole issue of neutral logi, etc. ...
So, I'm kinda stuck with other methods of warfare should I need them - fortunately, what little I do have has seemed to work, mostly. :ugh:
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As a former PVP addict, I can say that making billions trading was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
I really enjoyed trading, a lot. (market wars are the most ruthless type of EVE PvP, bar none, and often incredibly expensive. People are utterly cuttthroat) But eventually it got dull.
That said, once I made more than I could reasonably spend without going to a super-cap or two, I totally lost that fear of losing your ship, and suddenly PVP lost a bit of its emotional edge and impact. I kept upping the ante, more implants, only flying faction ships, but nothing really got me that rush I had when I knew the Vagabond I was flying was almost all of the ISK to my name.
That said, earning ISK to arm yourself is as much a part of PVP as pressing "F1". EVE is a game about money and power. Having ISK and having the skills to earn lots of ISK should give you an advantage in combat in a grimdark world like EVE. I just wish it was a little more nuanced and balaned and less "oh look, 20 bored PL Nyx pilots in Amamake".
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When I am told of cases wherein RP Corp A roflstomped RP Corp B and saw nothing wrong with it OOC, I must conclude one of two things. Either the leadership of RP Corp A genuinely fails to understand that using excessive force robs RP Corp B of their entertainment value or that they are assholes. There is a gradient here. Large, powerful, and experienced organizations should be expected to defeat smaller, younger ones. They can, however, do so without griefing the losing party. It's called sportsmanship.
That is an excellent idea. It never occurred to me that parties could agree on rules of engagement...e.g.
5-10 man gang, cruiser and below. Or, battleship only fleet. etc.
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That said, once I made more than I could reasonably spend without going to a super-cap or two, I totally lost that fear of losing your ship, and suddenly PVP lost a bit of its emotional edge and impact. I kept upping the ante, more implants, only flying faction ships, but nothing really got me that rush I had when I knew the Vagabond I was flying was almost all of the ISK to my name.
You need to stop when you got 'sufficient' isk. Never got much above 6-7 billion isk myself, just stopped earning at that point. Between 1-5 billion isk I can fly ships into combat without worrying if I can pay for a replacement, but not have enough that it doesn't feel as a loss.
But, going back to the RP-PvP, when PvP is more than an interesting gameplay challenge, when it has actual meaning because of the relationships between the particpants, it also has much more emotional edge and impact. You don't need actual RP opponents to it, you can have a special history with others as well, but it does add to the meaning and the enjoyment of the PvP.
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Loving this discussion, by the way. Thanks for starting it Kyber!
I fear that the more I get serious about PVP, the less I get serious about RP. I wonder if this is common elsewhere, and if some of the issues mentioned here stem from a similar root.
This might come somewhat from the amount of metagaming that goes into honing the PVP craft. When my enemy (friendemy in many cases) shares his fit with me in an OOC channel we both occupy, this is very much an OOC exchange, but I'd find it awfully hard not to use that knowledge when fighting them later, even if I consider every shot fired to be fired in character.
Watching livestreams, pvp videos, listening to podcasts, and trawling failheap/teamliquid/reddit for battle reports, AARs, intel, fits, and tactics discussion all feel very much like out of character behaviors, and have led to out of character "kinship" with people Altaen should despise. Altaen has also used so much OOC obtained information in the field, that it all kind of feels silly.
That said, on the subject of choosing to fight IC enemies over OOC enemies...my attempts at immersion kind of keep me from being able to differentiate them. If anything, the IC enemies seem sane, well-spoken and reasonable, and therefore less threatening than the batshit insane and clearly brain damaged/drug addled average podder.
The few roleplaying enemies I do encounter will always be treated in the exact same tactical consideration as the rest of the present hostiles. So if Shalee Lianne, Almity and 6 Agony Empire are plexing in Kamela, Altaen only really sees 8 war targets, and sets about dealing with them only based on the in-space situation.
I might be really confused as to what the hell the Agony dudes are on about when they scream "bAmarr victor," and refer to their CEO as Empress, but I am equally motivated to make their things explode as any other Amarr militia.
I really do wish there were more opportunities to deal with roleplaying "consequences" of victory or failure versus other roleplayers. I miss our old permawar with PIE, and their presence in the warzone in general. One of my favorite fights to date was when PIE brought a nice battleship gang to the Teon gate in Bosena, two jumps from RE-AW's main offices.
I am however completely against placing artificial or OOCly motivated restrictions on combat to make these sorts of conflicts more fair or sporting.
And I very much welcome the opportunity to be publicly shamed on IGS for losing to my fellow roleplayers. I would never deliberately avoid fighting roleplayers to prevent this from happening.
(Psssst. Don't tell anyone I told you this, but EM are all carebears and lolRPers, so you should war dec us for easy kills and killboard padding. Promise. Just think of the mocking you'll be able to do on IGS! It'll be GLORIOUS!)
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I fear that the more I get serious about PVP, the less I get serious about RP. I wonder if this is common elsewhere, and if some of the issues mentioned here stem from a similar root.
In the past I've found it ridiculously difficult trying to both FC/PvP whilst at the same time being in an RP discussion in corp in addition to maybe one or more IC convos at the same time. PvP and in particular the command and hunting aspects require a lot of focus to do properly as a player and trying to RP at the same time can be distracting. Generally, when you're thinking of things like where you're going to move a fleet, managing intel from scouts, spamming d-scan, and coming up with tactics it's hard to summon up the mental bandwidth to RP with any semblance of thought at the same time.
Well, for me anyway.
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I fear that the more I get serious about PVP, the less I get serious about RP. I wonder if this is common elsewhere, and if some of the issues mentioned here stem from a similar root.
In the past I've found it ridiculously difficult trying to both FC/PvP whilst at the same time being in an RP discussion in corp in addition to maybe one or more IC convos at the same time. PvP and in particular the command and hunting aspects require a lot of focus to do properly as a player and trying to RP at the same time can be distracting. Generally, when you're thinking of things like where you're going to move a fleet, managing intel from scouts, spamming d-scan, and coming up with tactics it's hard to summon up the mental bandwidth to RP with any semblance of thought at the same time.
Well, for me anyway.
Well yeah. When I'm PVPing at all, and FCing especially, the only RP I'm doing is in fleet chat and in local and with my guns. When people want to know why you aren't free to socialize, just tell them you're in a fleet and are busy.
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(Psssst. Don't tell anyone I told you this, but EM are all carebears and lolRPers, so you should war dec us for easy kills and killboard padding. Promise. Just think of the mocking you'll be able to do on IGS! It'll be GLORIOUS!)
Seconding this! Honest. Its a goodplan.
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(Psssst. Don't tell anyone I told you this, but EM are all carebears and lolRPers, so you should war dec us for easy kills and killboard padding. Promise. Just think of the mocking you'll be able to do on IGS! It'll be GLORIOUS!)
Seconding this! Honest. Its a goodplan.
Confirming. I have an actual quote from Arkady that states: "EM is an industrial alliance. No one here is good at pvp"
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Looking at something Saede said, is it actually possible here that one reason for the lack of RPvP is that there are very few people interested in taking the initiative to attack someone else first?
If so, why? Is it an OOC fear of being perceived as "the bad guy", or have times actually changed IC to the point that nobody is interested in escalating things anymore?
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Looking at something Saede said, is it actually possible here that one reason for the lack of RPvP is that there are very few people interested in taking the initiative to attack someone else first?
If so, why? Is it an OOC fear of being perceived as "the bad guy", or have times actually changed IC to the point that nobody is interested in escalating things anymore?
This came up earlier in the thread. Aside from some mention of "the dragons have people come to hunt them" that made zero sense to me, I really have no idea why "Please, come shoot us!" is dominant over "well, we'll just come shoot you".
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I enjoy PvP. I also enjoy RP. But, I enjoy them for different reasons.
EVE PvP is appealing (for me) because of the sandbox combination of sponteneity, unpredictability and skill/planning. When you roam the pipes, you really don't know what's going to happen. Some of my most enjoyable engagements were chaotic three-way battles and completely unexpected encounters.
RP is another matter entirely, and is often the joint effort by two or more players to tell a story. Combining the two, for me, leads to contrived conflict that takes away from the fluid, emergent nature of EVE PvP. This isn't to say I don't enjoy shooting RPers when the opportunity presents itself; only that I won't go out of my way to fashion RP'ed wars with other RPers.
For more insight into why sandbox PvP is unique, listen to Kil2's podcast concerning 'a good fight.' See episode 18 (https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=42133&find=unread)
Besides, the RP population is so small compared to the general populace that focusing on RP conflict limits your target selection. For someone that honestly enjoys PvP in EVE, that's far too constricting.
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Looking at something Saede said, is it actually possible here that one reason for the lack of RPvP is that there are very few people interested in taking the initiative to attack someone else first?
If so, why? Is it an OOC fear of being perceived as "the bad guy", or have times actually changed IC to the point that nobody is interested in escalating things anymore?
This came up earlier in the thread. Aside from some mention of "the dragons have people come to hunt them" that made zero sense to me, I really have no idea why "Please, come shoot us!" is dominant over "well, we'll just come shoot you".
ISK cost of wardec, 50m minimum for the 1st one, and available play time. Large issue for smaller corporations
I have free time on the weekends, but not really during the week. If I declared on a corporation, I would have a few hours over 2 days, to attempt to inflict more than 50m isk damage on them, otherwise I'd be losing ISK.
opposing corp may be able to claim they're thus, winning the isk war.