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[Lyn Farel]

Speaking from a new RPer's perspective, I've found public RP (hell, any Eve RP, by this point) difficult to start up because frequently someone will enter a quiet channel other than the Summit and there will be no response. I am guilty of not noticing such instances until it was too late and the other person had logged (most recently Nmaro. My apologies, I was afk). On other occasions, people are active in a channel but not interacting with each other.

Silence breeds silence. God forbid we should have to interact with each other again in order to resurrect the RP in-game

I don't think blame can be pinned on CCP. I always figured that the world plot line moves around the players and that we move our own plot lines because we have minimal influence on the world. We can't just wait for the company to throw us another bone to gnaw and fight over; we need to bring our own stories to share, too. The best RP I've had in any MMO has always been as part of player-created events, and it would be great to see more of these in Eve.

This is not only concerning newcomers. I have tried several times to get in other channels than the summit, launch something, say "hey im there" by introducing the character in the place, but nothing. Even in the Keep, damnit. @_@

[lallara zhuul]

You can use the EVE mail for role-playing purposes as well, especially if you want to have RP with specific people. Just send a non-creepy EVE mail and set a time and a place for interaction.
It does not have to be in public, but this way you can get very good RP sessions that can go on for hours if the stars are right.

Besides, if a person walks in to a bar and makes his/her presence known, how likely is it that he/she, a total stranger, would be approached by anyone?

That is one of the reasons most of the locations would need a 'barkeep', someone to talk to, whose job is to talk to people, then people could join in through natural means.

Instead of a person walking to a channel, putting down his/her soap box, standing on it and starting to talk by him/herself.

It's even creepier when two people do it.

Yes, your soap box can be cybering/dramallamaing.

[Merdaneth]

This is not only concerning newcomers. I have tried several times to get in other channels than the summit, launch something, say "hey im there" by introducing the character in the place, but nothing. Even in the Keep, damnit. @_@

Lot of channels, lot of lurkers, lots of afk people, not enough RPers.

I find it tends to work better if you actually ask a specific question or invite people for something specific. Or of course, dangle in delicious rumor in front of them. People will be people.

[Wanoah]

Did everything die? From this outsider's perspective, it does look a bit that way. I could be wrong, but across the board, there seems to be a lot less player creativity now than there used to be. I'm not talking about RP specifically here: in-game interactions are an unknown quantity to me, in any case. I'm talking more about Eve-related sites, services, etc. There always seemed to be a stream of people setting up new services and tools related to Eve, new blogs springing up, and forums busy talking about events past present and future in-game. I don't get the sense that is really happening now, but of course, the imperfection could be my own. I remain unsubbed, after all.

In terms of forums, I see that Chatsubo is now entirely dead. RIP. Failheap (RIP Scrapheap) is largely not about Eve, IMO, and the Eve discussion that does occur is so overwhelmed by the bittervets that it paints a pretty dismal portrait of the game in 2011. This place seems somewhat quiet too. I find many of the threads here are quite self-centred in any case: there are lots of [character] threads and not so many actually discussing issues, politics, fiction, or events. There's little to tempt me in my occasional drive-by posting. It seems a far cry from the sort of activity (drama notwithstanding) that we used to see on Chatsubo back in the day. Maybe there is another lively forum somewhere full of enthusiastic RPers and fictioneers that I haven't come across?

My gut feeling tells me that a lot of people, even those that continue to pay subs, are no longer investing in Eve.

[Seriphyn]

A lot of stuff is self-centered Wanoah, yeah. Through IC/OOC discussions, I found that, ultimately, no one gives a shit about how each of the four faction's societies are stratified, how they dress, how they speak to one another, what subjects they consider taboo, their attitudes to different concepts etc. etc.

IC-worldbuilding roleplaying in places like the Summit receives very little interest. I'm not sure what people are actually interested in RPing, or what elements of the EVE fictional universe they are actually interested in other than slaves v slaver.

[Arkady Sadik]

A lot of stuff is self-centered Wanoah, yeah. Through IC/OOC discussions, I found that, ultimately, no one gives a shit about how each of the four faction's societies are stratified, how they dress, how they speak to one another, what subjects they consider taboo, their attitudes to different concepts etc. etc.

For me, it's a difficult line between "world-building" and "godmoding" - I am happy to invent some stuff for a clan or for a small group of people, but I'm very reluctant to define how "this faction dresses", for example. (I happen to prefer the small-scale RP, too.)

IC-worldbuilding roleplaying in places like the Summit receives very little interest. I'm not sure what people are actually interested in RPing, or what elements of the EVE fictional universe they are actually interested in other than slaves v slaver.

Things that I have RPed about recently:

- Clan politics (of a handful of specific clans)
- Said clan politics affecting my corp
- Minor inter-service bickering (RSS vs. Republic Fleet)
- The Republic's situation in the war against the Amarr
- The Republic's situation regarding piracy
- Corporate industrial development
- Corporate combat development

And I'd guess a bunch of other stuff I can't think of right now. The "slaves" topic comes up regularly in my RP, but mostly regarding the backstory of the various people I interact with and how they deal with that past.

Now, public RP (IGS, Summit) is a bit more problematic. I am not on The Summit because that channel gives me a headache. But in general, a lot of things my character does he would not simply talk about in public - too easy to interfere with, too easy to misunderstand as bragging, not really suited for public consumption.

The public RP attempts I have seen recently were mostly by a blood raider trying to get support for some kind of (not game-supported) project, and it took a lot of goodwill for my character to even reply to a bloodraider. Noticing that that just made the discussion more and more weird, I quickly ceased.


As for the general "dead-ness": Yeah, I think EVE has been very quiet the last months - which is normal this time of the year, but it seemed a bit worse than before. This seems to be slowly getting better right now, though.

[Lyn Farel]

A lot of stuff is self-centered Wanoah, yeah. Through IC/OOC discussions, I found that, ultimately, no one gives a shit about how each of the four faction's societies are stratified, how they dress, how they speak to one another, what subjects they consider taboo, their attitudes to different concepts etc. etc.

IC-worldbuilding roleplaying in places like the Summit receives very little interest. I'm not sure what people are actually interested in RPing, or what elements of the EVE fictional universe they are actually interested in other than slaves v slaver.

This. Except that I still see 2 or 3 minmatar people (that will recognize themselves, Ava, Kikia, Kala...) continuously trying to develop or put the emphasis on the tribal culture on the summit. But yeah, basically... I have tried several times to do this for several factions, especially the Mandate, but I admit that I could do better.

Though of course I agree with Arkady, I prefer to remain on a "local" size/scale when doing that sort of stuff. For example when I said ammatar people of Lyn's domain spoke an ammatar dialect (mostly amarrian with minmatar roots), I specified that it was concerning this local region. How could have I said that it is the case for the whole Mandate ? I am not CCP...

But then Scagga used it too (on this forum), and so on be inventing something like this at a local scale, you can sometimes see people using it too and expanding it to a bigger scale, however without expanding it to generalities (except for very famous stuff like Amarr Victor, etc).

Things that I have RPed about recently:

- Clan politics (of a handful of specific clans)
- Said clan politics affecting my corp
- Minor inter-service bickering (RSS vs. Republic Fleet)
- The Republic's situation in the war against the Amarr
- The Republic's situation regarding piracy
- Corporate industrial development
- Corporate combat development

Well, tell me where you are able to find such interesting RP, because everything is dead where I am.

And well, the summit is 95% of the time "cantina RP", for which I dont really care much.

[Vieve]

IC-worldbuilding roleplaying in places like the Summit receives very little interest. I'm not sure what people are actually interested in RPing, or what elements of the EVE fictional universe they are actually interested in other than slaves v slaver.

I'm pretty sure I don't have any characters who are overwhelmingly interested in the conflict of slaves vs. slavers.  (And come to think of it, Arkady?  "Things that I have RPed About Recently" sounds like a good title for a separate thread.)

[Arkady Sadik]

Things that I have RPed about recently:

- Clan politics (of a handful of specific clans)
- Said clan politics affecting my corp
- Minor inter-service bickering (RSS vs. Republic Fleet)
- The Republic's situation in the war against the Amarr
- The Republic's situation regarding piracy
- Corporate industrial development
- Corporate combat development

Well, tell me where you are able to find such interesting RP, because everything is dead where I am.

You won't like this much, but: Corp and alliance, mostly. Though the last months have been a strong lull for us as well. Corp and alliance chat are much less active than they used to be. :-( But it's slowly improving again.

I have been trying for a while to expand our RP to be a bit more publically accessible, but it's difficult. A lot of my RP at least is about security-sensitive topics (corp development) which my character will not discuss in public due to the way the game works.

As a sideline of the topic of this thread, I'd be quite interested in a discussion on what kind of "RP venue" would actually promote interesting RP.

But well, what RP is actually "interesting" is very subjective, and the line between "I do not really enjoy that kind of RP" and "your RP is wrong" is very thin so that I'm not sure such a discussion is really possible in this forum.

And well, the summit is 95% of the time "cantina RP", for which I dont really care much.

Pet peeve time! I have never understood why RPers in a sci-fi game insist on turning every channel into a physical place. :-) It's logical in a fantasy game, but a sci-fi game allows you to treat chat channels as ... er ... chat channels, which pretty much removes all sorts of confusion ("why isn't he actually in the station where this bar is", "why is he not reacting when I jump up and down in front of him - oh, he's afk", etc.).

[Kaleigh Doyle]

The difficulty with non-physical chat channels like the Summit is that there's no reason to be there other than bullshit. As others have stated before, diplomacy is carried out between corporations and alliances; public venues are not great places to discuss inter-corporate activity. At least with a physical location like a bar, people have a two-fold purpose: to unwind and chat/mingle with other people. In the Summit, people join to yawn and complain about how quiet it is, find new fuck-buddies, and/or pick a fight.

In my opinion, I think not only is it sapping player creativity but also presenting a poor first-glance at what roleplay has to offer to new players interested in getting involved. The Summit is supposed to be the first place characters go when they are new to RP, and most of you HATE the channel; That doesn't exactly send a good signal, does it?

In my eyes, the biggest hit to creativity was the creation of militias in faction warfare. Since a bulk of roleplayers were invested in inter-cultural wars, and because a mechanic did not exist, the player base had to be creative in its ways to entice conflict. Now, you just join a militia, go kill some people and take a system, and toot about it on the IGS. That got pretty stale after the first six months the mechanic came out, and now the scene is a dead husk of its former self. There's no more PIE announcements, no more Ushra'Khans, and State Ultranationalists doing crazy shit to rile up the Gallenteans. Some of you are wondering why outlaws factions are so prevalent in places like the Summit, and active on the IGS, it's cause they don't have faction warfare to keep them busy- they still have to be creative to represent themselves and stir conflict.

So guys want to talk about apathy, unfortunately you have no one to blame but yourselves. The biggest thing to happen amongst roleplayers in the past couple of years has been the Sansha conflict and Revan events. EVE is and always has been about making your own fun, not only for yourselves (in your own corp chat, private dens) but everyone else. You need projects to bring people together, interact, and entice fresh blood, otherwise the scene gets stale.

If you want my advice, it's this:

• Give the Summit some purpose. If it's supposed to be an extension of the Intergalactic Summit, give some topic starters from current threads for people to mull over.
• Make some events and projects that pull people together. Get creative!

[Arkady Sadik]

The difficulty with non-physical chat channels like the Summit is that there's no reason to be there other than bullshit.

How's that different from IGS? :-)

[Kaleigh Doyle]

The difficulty with non-physical chat channels like the Summit is that there's no reason to be there other than bullshit.

How's that different from IGS? :-)

I'm not sure why people are so down on the IGS. It serves an important function: Announcements for new projects, wars, and stuff that's actually going on around New Eden.

[Victoria Stecker]

If you want my advice, it's this:

• Give the Summit some purpose. If it's supposed to be an extension of the Intergalactic Summit, give some topic starters from current threads for people to mull over.
• Make some events and projects that pull people together. Get creative!

IIRC, that's what the Summit used to be. It was used to talk about important stuff going on.

Then came the Sansha. And The Summit was used to host a major conference by Ashar and Soter and a few other key folks. And it was pretty awesome, but it had an unintended side effect: It introduced a horde of newbie RPers to the channel (I was one of them) who slowly morphed it into what it is now.

The New Eden Assembly arrived and kinda took its place as a place to talk politics rather than socialize and ride dramallamas. However, there hasn't been a lot going on lately to talk about in there. I'm not sure who even runs it anymore to put together an event or discussion on a subject.

[Kaleigh Doyle]

That's because the Sansha event was the only thing of interest that galvanized the entire community of roleplayers. You can blame the conflict for changing the dynamic of the channel (ie chasing off certain people), but there's nothing stopping them from coming back. I've been around a while, and I've seen the same shit there as long as I've been there; I don't really think this is the problem, otherwise it would have been fixed by now.

[Louella Dougans]

teh dust chronicles might help with things for people to talk about or do stuff about, but then again, they're not exactly publicised on the eve site, and even if they were, it runs into the problems with existing chronicles - e.g. not everyone reads them, the information in some of them is a schrodinger's cat thing - unless you were in the box with them, how would you know that the things that the chronicle say happened really happened ?

Like, the latest dust chronicle, doubles the number of passages from the Apocryphon that exist. DOUBLES!

The public RP attempts I have seen recently were mostly by a blood raider trying to get support for some kind of (not game-supported) project, and it took a lot of goodwill for my character to even reply to a bloodraider. Noticing that that just made the discussion more and more weird, I quickly ceased.

blood raiders D:

Was this in the summit ?