Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => CCP Public Library => Topic started by: Laerise [PIE] on 30 Mar 2011, 15:22
-
This is the sort of thing that we need to see.
But TonyG doing it makes me worried.
On the other hand, it could mean someone replaced the broken lightbulb in his head. :s
Glad to see that there's some official PF regarding numbers and survival rates somewhere, and that they'll be released to us soon™.
Could we please stop the c hildish TonyG hatred just right now? :|
All of you have way too high standards in regards to a novel written for an audience of... I don't know, less than a million people? Of course CCP won't be able to hire John Grisham (who sucks anyways) or even someone of O'Brians level of yarn spinning.
-
Could we please stop the c hildish TonyG hatred just right now? :|
All of you have way too high standards in regards to a novel written for an audience of... I don't know, less than a million people? Of course CCP won't be able to hire John Grisham (who sucks anyways) or even someone of O'Brians level of yarn spinning.
At least TonyG actually has some content. Abraxas just does some vague, conspiratorial chin-wagging, and sometimes bothers to mention Amarr/Caldari/Gallente/Minmatar (while completely ignoring the bloodlines). He uses EVE as his personal platform to explore his views on existential/philosopical stuff, not deliver actual canon, PF or content. Does Abraxas even know Minmatar is composed of 7 bloodlines, for example?
-
I actually liked Tony Gonzales and Hjalti Danielsson writing style.
I do agree with Laerise, if you don't like someone's writing, then don't read it, and start submitting your own writing to CCP and get it published in a Short story or Chronical
-
Big fan of Hjalti here, and I think he's trying to explore the themes reflected in EVE more than the specific lore.
This probably deserves its own thread.
-
Could we please stop the c hildish TonyG hatred just right now? :|
NO. Absolutely not.
You badly mistake our (or, at the very least, my) reasons for hating him.
All of you have way too high standards in regards to a novel written for an audience of... I don't know, less than a million people? Of course CCP won't be able to hire John Grisham (who sucks anyways) or even someone of O'Brians level of yarn spinning.
Bad writing is something I can forgive. Bad writers can become good writers with experience and/or education. Few people are born good writers. I do not detest TonyG for being a bad writer (if he even is one, of which I'm not wholly convinced; he's strikes me as the good-ish side of mediocre).
I'm not the world's greatest writer myself. TonyG's novels are undoubtedly better than mine.
No, what I hate about TonyG is what he does to canon. To wit, he skimps on research, or else ignores it entirely, and the result is a pile of inconsistencies that those of us with a taste for worldbuilding, such as myself, can only avoid the hell out of until CCP gets around to clarifying what is REALLY going on!
He has expressed, I am given to understand, active impatience with people who want canon to be coherent. And I, in turn, have no patience for that. This is not just his world he is playing in-- it is all of ours. His understanding of the setting, or lack thereof, has influence and impact far beyond his own scribblings.
And thus far, the result has been canonical chaos.
TonyG is a goddamn liability, and not only am I worried by the fact that he's the one working on this issue, I'm mildly shocked that he's still employed at CCP. CCP has White Wolf at its beck and call. They therefore have access to much better worldbuilders than TonyG, and I would dearly appreciate it if they would use them instead of him.
Perhaps he's gotten better. Perhaps he'll make it all up to us, and I hope to God that's the case. If he does, I'll forgive him quick as a snap.
But my suspicion is that he'll demonstrate once again that he hasn't learned anything about the importance of a coherent roleplaying universe, and that we can look forward to further muddying of the waters.
In general, I'm quicker than many to give CCP the benefit of the doubt. TonyG is a big screaming exception.
-
Could we please stop the c hildish TonyG hatred just right now? :|
NO. Absolutely not.
/me applauds...
I agree with your reasoning, and you said it better than I could have. Over the last year I've been trying to make myself more familiar with the background in the hopes of becoming more consistent with it, and it's actually brought on a malaise which made me feel like the only way to avoid that malaise is to avoid reading anything by TonyG, or pretending it doesn't exist. There's a lower level depression that comes from thinking it will never be possible to build a coherent picture of the Eve universe, so there's no point trying.
Part of that is I think that the lack of concrete information about so much has meant that I've had to fill in the gaps from my imagination in plausible ways, and when CCP then contradicts my plausible imaginings with their own imaginings that seem inconsistent, and less plausible, it just makes me want to tear my hair out.
It also makes me less motivated to bother with getting involved in their universe.
Ohnoez. Am I turning into a bittervet?
-
[mod]Split from the Crews thread. Please keep in mind the rules and guidelines when posting in this thread, as expressing your opinions with respect is a requirement in all discussions.[/mod]
-
it will never be possible to build a coherent picture of the Eve universe, so there's no point trying
While I'd not call myself a fan of TonyG in any way, I am inclined to disagree (http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1478853).
when CCP then contradicts my plausible imaginings with their own imaginings that seem inconsistent, and less plausible, it just makes me want to tear my hair out
I just pretend their contradictions don't count or try to think up plausible imaginings that incorporate PF inconsistencies into my views and thus render them at least consistent enough not to tear my appreciation of the continuity apart.
-
As far as the nuts and bolts writing part - questionable sentence construction, rampant typos, etc. - that is something that better professional editing could help with.
On the level above that, you might say - constructing plots and whatnot - I think that stories can be told with a great deal less contrivance, and I think an important part of being an author is doing your research. I would also suggest that if you are wading into an established setting, it might be a better idea to appear to respect the setting, rather than seemly rearranging it to fit your 'dramatic vision' at a whim. Perhaps he does, and perhaps all the changes he makes are well considered and fit within some overall vision of the setting that he has. I don't know, perhaps if I ever go to Fanfest I could ask.
On a broader level, I think where my idea of what constitutes good Eve fiction diverges from TonyG's is that he seems to write things that are dramatic and large-scale, but not particularly plausible. Things which, at least for me, don't fit the feeling of Eve. I understand that putting one big, noticeable, polarizing face on each faction is easier to market, but I find it far less interesting. Blowing up planets and using superweapons and having a wide variety of secret groups pulling strings may allow for the use of many exciting adjectives, but I feel like it also prevents Eve from feeling like a real place, where real people do things for real, believable reasons.
I don't see Eve as space opera. I see it as a place of high intrigue, political maneuvering and vicious infighting. I see it as a place where there are thousands and millions of competing interests of every scale, and where people don't do stupidly evil things because they are evil, but because they are ambitious, or doing the best they know how, or because they believe it is worth it to further their own interests.
I don't find exploding planets and telepathic empresses interesting. I find corporate maneuvering and palace intrigue and inter-tribal horse-trading interesting. I find stories that don't lean on super-humans and space-illuminati compelling. I like my humans believable, if not always relatable, and my organizations less secret and more subtle.
Anyway. I like me Eve gritty and real-feeling. I'm less worried about bigger, and more worried about people acting in ways that make sense.
-
Is TonyG based in Atlanta or Reykjavik? Does anyone here know?
-
My first reaction to Laerise's post was to say something incredibly snotty, because a causal dismissal followed by what is basically a STFU almost doesn't deserve an intelligent response.
My dislike for TonyG has nothing to do with his writing ability. It has to do with the fact that he completely retconned the history and nature of the Caldari in his book. At that time CAIN had nearly 100 hardcore RPers in it and after TEA most of them quit Eve completely and the rest quit RPing.
You might notice during the interview with CCP Steve SG after the Fanfest tournaments that Svet didn't say "we are Caldari Role-players" when asked what CAIN has been doing over the last seven years. Her answer was "we PvP."
Here is some stuff from the CAIN forum's right after the release of TEA.
I have a feeling no matter which direction we jump, someone is going to feel that resignation is their only option.
CCP has totally painted us into a corner, with no viable way out where we can keep our identity.
I'd offer we drink the kool-aid.
1) New players are not going to know the history of how or why the State has completed it's fascist evolution, only that it has. New Caldari pilots are going to be here because of, not in spite of, this evolution.
2) Since CCP has decided to go this way, it's sure awkward to be "anti-State, pro-Caldari". That's been said, done, and done by people like Omerta. Let's not go down that well-trodden path.
In the end, I don't see us doing ourselves any favors without following the main path.
Hurs, that doesn't address Karl's concern.
If you go with an anti-Heth stance, and Heth essentially becomes the leader of the State, then two months from now, you'll have a tough time convincing new Caldari RPers that you're on the same side. New players won't know what the State was like "before". They'll roll a Caldari and all they'll know is being under Heth.
It could cause recruiting problems.
Concerning some of the choices here.
If we go with 4 that means that we would operate in Black Rise as an independent anti-heth pro-state group that would target not only Gallente FWers but also Caldari FWers.
Let me make this clear, as Karl has pointed out, we can sugar coat it all we like but if we declare ourselves violently opposed to Heth's government and people and go outside the course of the State to do that - that is the same as the Rabbits, O-SYN, APEX and all that. Once we start to attack pro-hethdari people, we won't be seen attacking Heth we will be attacking the State. Once crossed, that isn't a line you say oops, sorry, just kidding.
That would be like PIE attacking Amarrian assets because they didn't like the Emperor that was picked.
You don't have to start killing until things go way drastic. If we go Caldari Independent Navy Reserve who kills Navy ships we mind as well fold up the corporation because it's such a drastic turn around that what CAIN is and was will be no more.
If I want to be seen as similar to Star Fraction, I'll just go ask Cosmopolite for an invite. So not really interested in playing the rogue Caldari rebel type.
If I want to be a pirate, there's plenty of opportunity. SniggWaffe, Veto, Rabbits, etc. Not really interested in that either.
The situation for us is pretty much bust. I don't see any rational way out of this, short of saying "Ok, if Heth is the boss, we follow the boss". Anything else invalidates our previous positions of "Do your duty, don't ask questions".
I find the situation absolutely abysmal in terms of RP rationale, and I'm pretty disgusted that this is the best they could come up with, but I believe I will either become a Provist, or an ex-patriate. I don't see any way of finessing the RP of the situation and getting away with it.
I don't particularly want to see us reduced to a pretenious version of Black Rabbits, camping low sec gates night after night.
Well, we did not choose the direction. CCP screwed us, big time, and I am still very angry about it. They also leaving us with very few choices, none of them good. Again, I find the inspiration in the story of 47 ronin, especially Oishi Kuranosuke. I guess history will have to judge us, whether we lived up to a true ideal of a warrior.
There is no way in hell we can rationalize option 4. The legality argument doesn't work. It just plain doesn't. I know it's popular with some people here, but you're never going to get it to fly. We'll be plucking at thin air in the same manner that people cry "human rights"!
I'm with Karl. No matter how disgusting this story is, I find it completely unacceptable to play the rogue Caldari, fighting the machine, just like O-SYN, APEX, etc. Just because we are using "legality" (a broken argument) as our excuse won't make us any different from them.
Abel, I'm afraid "making sense" went out the window with the start of the Heth storyline. None of the options available to us, with the possible exceptions of remaining in Pure Blind and "Other," offer any kind of consistency. The question isn't one of choosing a sensible option, it's one of choosing which brand of nonsense we find the least disagreeable.
Option 2 may well be the "most sensible" on its face, but it also means that we're obligated to embrace whatever crazy news item, chronicle, or other piece of PF CCP decides to lob at us next, and a lot of us just aren't comfortable with that. Some of us are uncomfortable with the general direction they want to take the State, and others are uncomfortable with the manner in which CCP has chosen to pursue that direction. Why should we insist on consistency ourselves when we can't count on consistency in the game world?
I personally came to CAIN because the Caldari seemed more complex and interesting than the one-dimensional Amarr/Minmatar conflict, or the "rah rah democracy and porn lolz" Federation. If they're determined to make us into one-dimensional villains, then that holds very little interest to me, and to lots of other people. So yes, for the sake of keeping the largest possible chunk of us happy, and trying to inject a little variety and freshness into the storyline, I'm prepared to embrace a little nonsense, if there's solid support for it.
I voted Kool-aid. I just cannot see breaking away from Heth's state ending well for us. Loyalist RP is too deeply ingrained in us, the inevitable outcast-status that we'll have in the Caldari RP scene wouldn't sit well with me.
Not that I'm thinking of anyone in particular, but they do have those snazzy uniforms...
Karl, I really wish you wouldn't. I should be the last one to argue against it, but the way CCP portrayed Heth and provists, they are worse than cartoon characters, they make Colonel Klink and Sargeant Schultz look complex and nuanced. Also, to have pro-Heth and anti-Heth factions within 4th will just make things even more messy from the outside and will just tear the CAIN from the inside.
Besides, SS had snazzy unifroms. Heth and Provists are more like Ernst Rohm and SA. Those brown shirts were UGLY.
I think we need to suck it up and go with option 2.
As an RP lite person, I'm primarily interested in fun times and action. And I don't think the anti-heth line will provide us with a great deal of fun. It'll be good for those who feel preserving internal character consistency is more important than just having a good time, but I personally just want to be able to zoom around and shoot people.
For many of us, preserving internal character consistency is a major part of the fun. If all we want is to zoom around and shoot people, we should have joined Triumvirate long time ago.
Pro-Heth is a non-starter for me, and it pains me to say that, but if we take option 2, I will resign from CAIN. This is not me being a drama-queen, not a desperate plea for attention, just a sad fact of life.
-
That sounds rough, Hamish, but as an aside, what's the issue with RPing a Heth loyalist? Sure he could be a fascist, but this is EVE, it's own universe, it's own set of morality. Amarrian loyalists support a nation that condones slavery, for example?
I mean, if the majority of Caldari (at the time) supported Heth, then why was it not an option for the in-universe characters of CAIN? OOC sensibilities or...?
-
Hamish while that's a tough position to be wedged in, honestly, your characters would be on just as rocky a ship. Sometimes its good to rock the boat. If CCP came and pulled something really odd out of its hat for the angels, I'd roll with it, because it could make things interesting to be forced into that corner.
Also, I think a lot of the issues with did not do the research and TonyG are being retroactively corrected with the fiction bible. Having to go through all the fiction like that and organize it honestly may be in part because of the fallout from TEA. Because it left so many inconsistencies. CCP might have decided they never wanted to do that again and decided to really push for the fiction bible to get taken care of. Hearing about how in sync the content and design people are gives me a lot of hope for the future.
-
That sounds rough, Hamish, but as an aside, what's the issue with RPing a Heth loyalist? Sure he could be a fascist, but this is EVE, it's own universe, it's own set of morality. Amarrian loyalists support a nation that condones slavery, for example?
Amarr supports slavery because that is what we ARE. We have been such for tens of thousands of years.
Heth's rise was the transformation of a complex society into carbon-copies of the nazis in a matter of days.
-
I mean, if the majority of Caldari (at the time) supported Heth, then why was it not an option for the in-universe characters of CAIN? OOC sensibilities or...?
Because Heth's rise to power represents a very Gallente idea to the old school Caldari. He is a populist. Heth got his position in a way that goes against the very things Heth advocates.
Generally regarded as the most powerful faction, the Patriots are an alliance of Lai Dai, Wiyrkomi, and the mighty Kaalakiota, who between them and their subsidiaries possess capabilities rivaling those of the other two Caldari political factions combined. They are genuinely patriotic and extremely proud.
However, that rather jingoistic pride has been mortally injured by Heth's politically vicious rise. As a result, they generally refuse to admit, even to each other, that many of the things Heth has done are exactly what they themselves have wanted to do all along. While the wounds are still too fresh for them to feel anything but hatred for him, they realize that to defy him openly would harm the State (and their dominant position within it) immeasurably, so for now they play along with him and pretend (as much to themselves as to anyone else) that they're not immensely enjoying giving the Gallente a black eye.
Most people in CAIN, when I left 6 months prior, fell into two camps - Liberal (Ishukone/Hyasyoda) or Patriot (Wirykomi/Lai Dai/KK). I doubt it changed much.
-
Okay, that makes sense.
-
I liked The Empyrean Age. It was a good story, and kept me engaged with characters that I liked. The Minmatar ambassador and Heth were characters that made me want to read through and finish the book.
Was it best seller material? Probably not, but it did a good job of entertaining me.
The Burning Life may have been a EVE-Loremaster's wet dream but the stories were dull, the characters were uninteresting (I didn't identify with them at all), and the writing style was atrocious. It's probably why I can't stand, and will not read most of the new chronicles (assuming its the same person). He may be a new author, but he certainly has a way to go, imo.
Anyway, I can understand people's concerns, but at the same time I can't really identify with all the angst over his work.
-
I often bitch about Abraxas' chronicles yes, and groan when we had to wait two weeks for some vague chronicle that doesn't mention Amarr, Gallente, Caldari or Minmatar, or anything at all. It makes me groan that it might actually be possible for the chronicle to having nothing to do with EVE whatsoever.
He explores the themes, yes, as Casiella brought up, but the themes are what? Personally, I only prefer commentary if it actually relates to IRL and has some purpose, not chin-wagging about a fictional, improbable universe and all.
EDIT - Take Extinction Burst (http://www.eveonline.com/background/potw/default.asp?cid=04-05-10). Absolutely no content in it.
-
Hm, that chronicle appears to have some lore about various lifeforms found in the cluster. And not everyone will have the same tastes -- IIRC hellgremlin liked that one, as did I.
-
EDIT - Take Extinction Burst (http://www.eveonline.com/background/potw/default.asp?cid=04-05-10). Absolutely no content in it.
On the contrary, I felt it was quite informative, especially as a "bitter vet". My own extinction bursts (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=1775.msg25217#msg25217) might give me a unique perspective, however. ;)
Not everyone has the same tastes in fiction. CCP has shown a particular brand of storytelling that some do not like. I may not particularly like our friend Tony's particular take on storytelling, but I do understand the constraints placed on him. I can also see where his weaknesses lie, and I don't envy him the task of writing a novel set in EVE. From that perspective, I question his particular view on EVE, though oddly I trust his skills as an IP manager. Hopefully he stays more true to what the IP needs, but let's face it; if the last Fanfest said anything, it is that CCP wants the game to stay around for decades. To do that they need new blood, and perhaps the older players aren't going to particularly agree with the directions taken to draw in that new blood. Like it or not, Tony's got a hand in drawing in that new blood.
Sure, he has a tendency to use "handwavium" quite a bit. In my view he can't write a decent female character. He does have a good sense of the "big picture", even though it is difficult to put that picture into focus on the smaller scales he used in TEA. Tony could also do with reducing his overall amount of exposition. However, look at the CCP "culture" that was apparent at the time of TEA's release. Everything was "EPIC!". EPIC! storylines, EPIC! expansions, EPIC! everything. Similarly, look at the Empires as they stood pre-TEA. Would they have gone to war, save for some EPIC! intervention?
Everything was static, and designed to stay static. The game environment was dynamic from a mechanics perspective, and the universe seemed very, very huge back then. Looking at EVE now, from the perspective of veterans, there's not much we haven't done or couldn't do with proper time. Is a single novel enough to change this? Some complain that the meta story should be shaped by player interaction. Is that not already happening, in it's own way? On the other hand, I myself believe that the meta plot of the franchise should be segregated from player interaction on the levels that some want.
Should players be able to assassinate Heth, for instance? I mean, he's the "big bad" in the eyes of some, but is that a bad thing?
To quote one of my favorite movies, how do you know who the bad guy is? He's the exact opposite of the heroes. You don't get much more opposite from a Capsuleer than a guy that is not a capsuleer, and indeed can't be cloned. He's as mortal as you can get. ;) For better or for worse, he's part of the landscape. He causes conflict. This is good for a story. I mean, you are talking about it, right? You're going on forums to post about it. Is it enough to destroy your game experience? Is it enough to drive you away? :bear: Or are you morbidly drawn to this, wondering just when he's going to kick the bucket, and how big the explosion will be when things finally hit the fan?
Think about it for a minute.
Should there be blind hatred for Tony, or should there be a concerted effort in showing him what we have issues with? Trying to constructively work towards a better EVE is far more likely to get results than burning down the dreams of a man simply trying to make an interesting story. I think he succeeds, even though some of the details get lost in translation.
Like psychic powers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws) for instance. :twisted:
-
Having had a few drinks with tony at FF, he's a good guy, and understands most concerns. The fact of the matter is, he doesn't get to dictate where the storyline goes. Content does. They pick what's they want to focus on in the expansion etc, and he and others have to come up with a way for it all to happen. Sometimes they do better then others.
We are lucky CCP has anyone doing this job, and at least TonyG enjoys it and is willing to respond to criticism.
-
Amann I was halfway through your post before I realized I was hearing it narrated by The Professor. Thats pretty awesome. Also, your post basically sums up my thoughts on it. Simply raging at the guy is not constructive in the slightest.
-
Unless you're claiming Aria Jenneth's post is 'simply raging', then I don't believe anyone here has blind, emotional gripes with the personage of TonyG. Whether's it is because of his mysogonistic portrayal of women, or his failures of character development, or his shattering of EVE canon, there are rational and reasonable arguments for why the person should be unemployed, at this moment, on the curb like every other 2-bit english writter out there.
-
I've read better and far, far worse novels.
The basic storyline was known to me before I read it, since I enjoyed delving through chronicles and articles on evelopedia concerning the rise of the patriot Heth and the following outbreak of hostilities between the State and the Federation.
When I read the book I met an entirely different picture of the two entities than what I gathered from the PF sources. It was extremely polarizing, which isn't automatically bad, and very onesided, which is.
We get the Federation described as "a working utopia", better than everything else in every aspect, without a scratch in the facade, and the State near bancrupted by corrupt, hedonistic and exploiting corporations (hello, financial crisis), on the brink of breakdown.
That is not entirely how I pieced the things together both a few years back and a few months earlier when I returned to EVE. This kind of threw me off.
I'd be more okay with the turn of events without the broker messing around. The visible storyline isn't that bad, even with Heth being too fascistoid for my tastes. Rising to power after a workers' revolution, playing the 'mob' by their patriotic ideals (Malkalen in mind, too) and reclaiming Caldari Prime.
Knowing that his success was bought, all the incidents that fueled the contempt for the completely innocent Federation were staged and even the grand finale was just a mixture of his meddling and dumb luck is just unsatisfying.
Mind you, I wouldn't bother playing 'the bad side', meaning: I'd have Des support the attack on Luminaire even if it wasn't provoked by anything. The conflict could've worked without fishing for reasons that leave the antagonists even more looking like innocent victims.
It's this mixture of retconning the situation of the State in regard of economic and social structure and the senseless villainifying that made me dislike that book. This aforementioned layer of subterfuge mended in through the broker doesn't really work for me. Either both sides are in on it - to quote Blackadder "Because it was too much effort, not to have a war." - or one is the aggressor. I wouldn't have a problem with Heth and therefore the state playing that role at all. I mean, there'd be much to build this upon with the Caldari-Gallente war hundred years back. It would just need the wrong/right man in the right place.
I don't see real problems for the current situation, with Heth being 'kind of a dictator', though. You can still play the liberal role as well as that of a patriot, without having to be a fascist.
-
The DH and I, while watching the Future Vision video (while he doesn't play the game anymore, he still loves the setting), got into a discussion about the differences between TEA and TBL. He hasn't read either, and wanted me to sum them up without spoilering them.
I offered an "If x were a movie, it'd be directed by y..." explanation. I believe TEA would be directed by Michael Bay, and TBL by Terry Gilliam.
And, hey, Casi? I thought of a better way to describe the differences than using an analogical comparison of TEA and TBL to Bay's Transformers and Gilliam's Brazil. TEA to Bay's Armageddon vs. TBL to Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys.*
*Don't misinterpret my comparison as criticism. Both Armageddon and Twelve Monkeys are on my personal favorite movies list. Armageddon also has the dubious distinction of being one of the three movies that makes me cry every time I watch the damn thing.
-
It's I don't wanna miss a thing by Aerosmith isn't it :P
-
CCP approved his work. What more can I say. Is it his fault?
-
My main concern with TEA was not changing the story, or rocking the boat a little. My concern is more about the radical simplification of the setting.
The State was probably the most damaged, with a nazi leader taking the throne above all the megas and the corporate pannel (wtf ? an unique leader for the caldari ?). We have lost at least a part of the complexity and realism in caldari corporate politics, at the exterior level at least : you still have the megas tricking each other in the background, but the cluster relationship is not with this or this mega, now it is with Heth, Heth, Heth and Heth.
The Minmatar Republic encountered the same issue, though Shakor still makes more sense. But yet we lost the subtlety of the tribal ladder that existed in the Republic. Now every tribe worship Shakor, Shakor, Shakor and Shakor.
The Amarr Empire shifted in power. We had a very open emperor with Doriam, but still not a huge liberal, and now we have a weird orthodox conservative empress that has almost supressed the whole idea of the Privy Council, even if it still exists. Every heir has almost the same views, and blindly follow Jamyl, Jamyl, Jamyl and Jamyl.
The only empire that got more or less spared of these simplifications was the Federation, I suppose.
It is logical to get some new leaders in times of war. It is logical to have a single face in dictatorships, but the point was in Eve that even the Amarr Empire was not a monolithic political bloc.
Nothing is wasted yet, but they really should review the whole political balance and roster in each of the factions. They have to bring back a little more of the shades of greys we had at the beginning, because we still see them, but less, very less.
-
It's I don't wanna miss a thing by Aerosmith isn't it :P
No. That song makes me wince, not cry. It's the scene where Liv Tyler says goodbye to Bruce Willis. I tear up every damn time, and kick myself for doing it.
'Cause seriously, it's almost as much over-the-top-heartstring-yanking as a Hallmark movie*, and I should know better.
*Disclaimer: I don't watch Hallmark movies, so I'm just guessing at this.
-
CCP approved his work. What more can I say. Is it his fault?
If you see his title, then you see that the "approval" may not mean as much as it otherwise might.
-
No. That song makes me wince, not cry.
Well, I like it.
-
No. That song makes me wince, not cry.
Well, I like it.
I like Aerosmith in general. Just not that song. Maybe it's because of the movie. :P
-
Beyond saying that I don't mind TonyG's stuff I still don't really get what the deal is with a large vocal group hating him in EvE, and I don't think I ever will. But this whole thing keeps reminding me of the Jar-Jar effect. Then again, I never hated Jar-Jar either. I think that in the end, people don't like things changing, and I would bet that if anyone else had written TEA with the same basic plotline of all the empires must go to war, whoever it was would have been hated just as much. But that is my opinion.
PS. Having watched that movie far too many times in high school chem and phsyics, I can't really feel emotional about it anymore, and can only mock it, and sing along off-key when that song comes on. It is only surpassed by whatever that song was that was from Titanic. But this is getting to be another topic, sorry.
-
Um -- I'm tempted to ask why they showed that movie in HS science classes, but yeah, another topic.
-
But this whole thing keeps reminding me of the Jar-Jar effect. Then again, I never hated Jar-Jar either.
Jar-Jar....*clinches fists*......Jar-Jar :bash: Lucas needs to remove comic relief from his mind. In fact, he needs to never direct or produce another SW flick again. Hand the gauntlet to someone else that can handle the New Jedi era saga and put out some seriously dark stuff. No more 4 year kid fluff. If your going to make movies about the end of a era and dark times coming, Jar-Jar has no place in that story.
-
And I take full responsibility for starting Invelious into a rage. But I think that proves my point.
BTW Casiella, for why please see here. (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=1990.0)
-
Personnally I do not hate TonyG either. I just hope they will re complexify a little the politics and who holds the power in each Empire. And detail stuff, detail, detail, detail. Re affirm the shades of grey that have always made New Eden wonderful.
Anyway for Star Wars, I think this is a bad analogy. The prelogy is a total disaster in many points, and maybe some will agree while some others won't, but there is still a good part of movie critics and professionnals pointing that out. For those who don't know it, this is hilarious, and still very true and well analyzed : http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/ (http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/)
-
In fact, he needs to never direct or produce another SW flick again. Hand the gauntlet to someone else that can handle the New Jedi era saga and put out some seriously dark stuff.
My mind yelled "IRVIN KERSHNER!" but then I remembered he passed away late last year and was quite elderly anyway. RIP Irvin Kershner, you did the best one.
Anyway, I don't have any opinion on TonyG because I haven't read TEA and am unaware of which chronicles he's written that I've actually read, but now I want to go buy it so I can formulate some sort of point to bitch about to validate my off topic post.
Err... proceed with the topic.
-
I'm not sure he's written any of the chronicles, but he did write one or two of the novellas ("Theodicy").
-
I actually really Enjoyed both Books, and I am looking forward to the Next one as well. Yes some parts don't Jive with the exisitng PF from before hand, but really, with the way that Heth and the Unstable Clone guy (his name escapes me right now) its possible. Underhanded but possible. And considering how the Mega corps have acted in the past it's not excatly off the road map either.
I do feel bad for Outro (Probably misspelt) though - I liked him, he was cool.
-
And I take full responsibility for starting Invelious into a rage. But I think that proves my point.
Not hardly. George Lucas managed to lay the blight that is his prequels on the Star Wars series without violating his own canon much at all.
Plotting? Shallow. Acting? Horrible. Comic relief? Abysmal. Metaphor for the American political climate at the time? Subtle as an anvil between the ears. "Only a Sith would speak in absolutes" is, by the way, Obi Wan speaking in absolutes.
Canon? Pretty freaking intact, though it does leave some question open about why later stormtroopers are apparently not clones.
No, I have no problem to speak of with TonyG in the ways I have a problem with Lucas (I might if I had less of a problem with him for other reasons, of course). Lucas may have put the Jar (-Jar) in "jarring," but he did NOT do the SW universe equivalent of getting confused about which was the old warhorse, the Scorpion or the Raven, thereby screwing up what appears to otherwise make perfect sense as the Scorpion's backstory.
-
No, I have no problem to speak of with TonyG in the ways I have a problem with Lucas (I might if I had less of a problem with him for other reasons, of course). Lucas may have put the Jar (-Jar) in "jarring," but he did NOT do the SW universe equivalent of getting confused about which was the old warhorse, the Scorpion or the Raven, thereby screwing up what appears to otherwise make perfect sense as the Scorpion's backstory.
If nothing else that annoys me more than anything.
The Scorpion SHOULD be the old warhorse, the Dominix is the old horse, so are the Armageddon and the Typhoon if memory serves me correctly.
I don't.... classify myself as a TonyG fan, I disliked the mumbo-jumbo psychic thing Jamyl has going on and as much as I dislike Heth, he is a character with dynamic and interesting aspects - but he was implemented wrong but he was the creater of Otro Garushi, who was by far my favourite person in EVE... untill they keeeled him.
I just hope that this PF revamp comes through and works.
Oh, and as a minor PF Sidenote - If King Khanid is changed to a Khanid, I will scream and quite possibly rage-quit.
-
That's already happening, I think.
Everything Khanid (Bloodline) and Khanid (Kingdom) seems to be getting the retcon merge.
-
The Scorpion SHOULD be the old warhorse, the Dominix is the old horse, so are the Armageddon and the Typhoon if memory serves me correctly.
That would make for a certain pleasant symmetry, but makes comparatively little sense from a strategic standpoint. The Geddon, Typhoon, and Domi can all serve pretty well as direct combat ships. The Scorpion's primary role is ECM (unless you're talking about the new Navy variant), which makes it very useful but likely not the world's greatest mainstay of the fleet, particularly when the "enemy" loves drones so much.
The Raven, at least, is much with the kaboom.
-
The navy disagrees with you Aria http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Scorpion_Navy_Issue
-
Read Aria's post again, Laerise:
That would make for a certain pleasant symmetry, but makes comparatively little sense from a strategic standpoint. The Geddon, Typhoon, and Domi can all serve pretty well as direct combat ships. The Scorpion's primary role is ECM (unless you're talking about the new Navy variant), which makes it very useful but likely not the world's greatest mainstay of the fleet, particularly when the "enemy" loves drones so much.
The Raven, at least, is much with the kaboom.
Also read the ship descriptions:
The Raven is the powerhouse of the Caldari Navy. With its myriad launcher slots and powerful shields, few ships can rival it in strength or majesty.
The first Scorpion-class battleship was launched only a couple of years ago, and those that have been built are considered to be prototypes. Little is known of its capabilities, but what has been garnered suggests that the Scorpion is crammed to the brink with sophisticated hi-tech equipment that few can match.
TonyG claims in TEA that the Raven is the new ship that is only a couple years old. The Scorpion's description ingame has not been changed since I started playing EVE in late 2007, and presumably hasn't been changed since it was put in the game in the first place. TEA came out in mid 2008. The math says something's wrong here, and it isn't the ingame description.
[spoiler]It's TonyG's claim that the Raven is the newer ship.[/spoiler]
-
The Raven is a new ship, not in TEA, but in Ruthless. (Edit: Actually, if TEA claims somewhere it's new, then it's referring to Ruthless, where only one prototype existed. I wasn't around back then, so no idea if there were any built by capsuleers by that time.)
-
That's already happening, I think.
Everything Khanid (Bloodline) and Khanid (Kingdom) seems to be getting the retcon merge.
And for those of us who saw the writing on the wall when Bloodlines came out, it'll be a sad vindication of sorts if that retcon goes through.
The Raven is a new ship, not in TEA, but in Ruthless. (Edit: Actually, if TEA claims somewhere it's new, then it's referring to Ruthless, where only one prototype existed. I wasn't around back then, so no idea if there were any built by capsuleers by that time.)
Both Ruthless and TEA are written by TonyG. Regardless of which one says the Raven is new, he is still wrong.
-
How does that disagree with what Aria said?
-
Everything about the Empyrean Age - novel, supporting fiction, game expansion - felt wrong. Like it was written totally backwards. So many opportunities for good, involving stories were utterly ruined by it, in fact, that I see it almost as the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy of EVE. Almost everything felt like it was asspulled.
You take a look at the Gallente-Caldari conflict, and this is an example of what I mean when I say EA is "written backwards". For the five or so years before EA, it looked like elements within the Federation were building up a repertoire of pretexts to invade the State - protein delicacies, border disputes, the Kassigainen incident, etc. - and we were given a distinct impression from prime fiction that the State, given that it's a gestalt entity, was far from monolithic, with its various corps and megacorps quietly squabbling among themselves. State Factionalism (http://www.eveonline.com/background/potw/default.asp?cid=03-dec-01) implied that the mere existence of factions showed how the State was fraying a little at the edges.
It should have been built up far more slowly, possibly over the course of a year or two, with Foiritan slowly losing his political duel with Blaque, who, as head of the senate, still wields a great deal of clout. Blaque would exaggerate issues with the State or outright invent them and use Foiritan's inability (real or imagined) to deal with them to portray him as weak. He keeps playing this - slowly, carefully - until he's built up enough of a position to call a vote of no confidence and force a new presidential election, which he, of course, wins. He then agitates at the border, carefully and patiently baiting the Caldari Navy into a series of ever more serious indescretions to justify his ever-increasing defence budget. This would also have been an excellent opportunity to increase military presence in the Intaki and Mannar systems (i.e. change them to hi-sec security status) and thus his control over the Federation's member states under the pretext of protecting them from the ever-increasing Caldari threat.
Black Rise appearing out of nowhere was an utter wallbanger as well. The notion that the State would, just after the outbreak of war, having in utter secrecy just colonised a region almost everyone else believed was unreachable, suddenly not only reveal to the world that they've done it, but connect it to the territories of their greatest adversary with high-throughput stargates is utterly preposterous.
Heth... just shouldn't exist. At all. He's a singular unifying force that should not exist within an entity such as the State. He ruins the whole idea of the Caldari State for me.
Gigantic asspull superweapon aside, Jamyl Sarum arriving and taking power uncontested was dreadful. It just did not fit with the picture CCP had painted of the Amarr Empire, in which the Great Houses (besides Sarum, of course) would all have their own very specific reasons not to just let her walk in and take what they all saw as rightfully theirs.
The Elder Fleet appearing out of nowhere was atrocious. At the very least it should have been hinted at beforehand. Fundamentally their attack did nothing measureable besides actually starting the Empyrean wars and provide a suitable exclamation mark for the entire problem with Empyrean Age:
The concept itself.
Empyrean Age as its own entity - expansion, novel, fiction - is so shackled to the concept of implementing something - factional warfare - that it in some cases leaves itself unable to avoid making mistakes. Looking back, we had to ask ourselves - what has factional warfare added to the game, and have those additions been positive or negative? In reality, all it's really done is add a (very, very, very, very, very buggy) mechanic that changes a couple of variables in a system if you orbit something for roughly 6 hours and a free wardec. The changes it's made to PF are overwhelmingly negative, and have destroyed many much better routes the story could have taken. I'll elaborate on those later, but I want to keep mainly on topic here.
In essence, yes, TonyG's writing is subpar, but TonyG's writing is only part of the problem. In the grand scheme of things EVE didn't need factional warfare. We know the empires distrust and hate each other. We know they're working to undermine each other's power. We know that they all have agendas and ulterior motives, even for co-operating with their allies. We don't need either ourselves or the story to be shackled to an endless, unwinnable war to know all of this.
The war is three years old this June and it's destroyed friendships, ruined lives, uprooted perfectly good RP corporations and it's not even any more entertaining or meaningful than the Red vs Blue war.
To me, Incursion, despite having better mechanics, is an example of CCP just making the same mistakes over again.
-
The Elder Fleet appearing out of nowhere was atrocious. At the very least it should have been hinted at beforehand. Fundamentally their attack did nothing measureable besides actually starting the Empyrean wars and provide a suitable exclamation mark for the entire problem with Empyrean Age
Well the preparations were secret but in retrospect I think there was some subtle hints of the Thukkers being Up To Something years before, e.g...
[spoiler]After much deliberation, the Thukker Tribe Council has decided that our resources at this time will allow us to take in all 40,000 of these people, feed them, clothe them and house them - provided that you are willing and able to give them transport to our facilities. We are currently in the midst of a large-scale undertaking, one which I cannot go into greater detail about here, but one which will give these downtrodden souls an opportunity to fashion new lives for themselves among their own people, undertaking meaningful work in the pursuit of new horizons.
[/spoiler]
The invasion did manage to retrieve the Starkmanir tribe...
-
Everything about the Empyrean Age - novel, supporting fiction, game expansion - felt wrong. Like it was written totally backwards. So many opportunities for good, involving stories were utterly ruined by it, in fact, that I see it almost as the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy of EVE. Almost everything felt like it was asspulled.
You take a look at the Gallente-Caldari conflict, and this is an example of what I mean when I say EA is "written backwards". For the five or so years before EA, it looked like elements within the Federation were building up a repertoire of pretexts to invade the State - protein delicacies, border disputes, the Kassigainen incident, etc. - and we were given a distinct impression from prime fiction that the State, given that it's a gestalt entity, was far from monolithic, with its various corps and megacorps quietly squabbling among themselves. State Factionalism (http://www.eveonline.com/background/potw/default.asp?cid=03-dec-01) implied that the mere existence of factions showed how the State was fraying a little at the edges.
It should have been built up far more slowly, possibly over the course of a year or two, with Foiritan slowly losing his political duel with Blaque, who, as head of the senate, still wields a great deal of clout. Blaque would exaggerate issues with the State or outright invent them and use Foiritan's inability (real or imagined) to deal with them to portray him as weak. He keeps playing this - slowly, carefully - until he's built up enough of a position to call a vote of no confidence and force a new presidential election, which he, of course, wins. He then agitates at the border, carefully and patiently baiting the Caldari Navy into a series of ever more serious indescretions to justify his ever-increasing defence budget. This would also have been an excellent opportunity to increase military presence in the Intaki and Mannar systems (i.e. change them to hi-sec security status) and thus his control over the Federation's member states under the pretext of protecting them from the ever-increasing Caldari threat.
Black Rise appearing out of nowhere was an utter wallbanger as well. The notion that the State would, just after the outbreak of war, having in utter secrecy just colonised a region almost everyone else believed was unreachable, suddenly not only reveal to the world that they've done it, but connect it to the territories of their greatest adversary with high-throughput stargates is utterly preposterous.
Heth... just shouldn't exist. At all. He's a singular unifying force that should not exist within an entity such as the State. He ruins the whole idea of the Caldari State for me.
Gigantic asspull superweapon aside, Jamyl Sarum arriving and taking power uncontested was dreadful. It just did not fit with the picture CCP had painted of the Amarr Empire, in which the Great Houses (besides Sarum, of course) would all have their own very specific reasons not to just let her walk in and take what they all saw as rightfully theirs.
The Elder Fleet appearing out of nowhere was atrocious. At the very least it should have been hinted at beforehand. Fundamentally their attack did nothing measureable besides actually starting the Empyrean wars and provide a suitable exclamation mark for the entire problem with Empyrean Age:
The concept itself.
Empyrean Age as its own entity - expansion, novel, fiction - is so shackled to the concept of implementing something - factional warfare - that it in some cases leaves itself unable to avoid making mistakes. Looking back, we had to ask ourselves - what has factional warfare added to the game, and have those additions been positive or negative? In reality, all it's really done is add a (very, very, very, very, very buggy) mechanic that changes a couple of variables in a system if you orbit something for roughly 6 hours and a free wardec. The changes it's made to PF are overwhelmingly negative, and have destroyed many much better routes the story could have taken. I'll elaborate on those later, but I want to keep mainly on topic here.
In essence, yes, TonyG's writing is subpar, but TonyG's writing is only part of the problem. In the grand scheme of things EVE didn't need factional warfare. We know the empires distrust and hate each other. We know they're working to undermine each other's power. We know that they all have agendas and ulterior motives, even for co-operating with their allies. We don't need either ourselves or the story to be shackled to an endless, unwinnable war to know all of this.
The war is three years old this June and it's destroyed friendships, ruined lives, uprooted perfectly good RP corporations and it's not even any more entertaining or meaningful than the Red vs Blue war.
To me, Incursion, despite having better mechanics, is an example of CCP just making the same mistakes over again.
^This, definitly.
Except for the end. I quite enjoy myself in FW, still here since almost his beginning just after I left Solitude. There are some good idea in the FW, like the complexes (<- anti blob stuff, skirmish++). It is just broken (but everyone knows that), though the gameplay is cool.
RP wise... it is mostly shaky yes.
-
Never thought I would ever agree completely with Andreus. A sign of the end times, I'm certain.
-
The Elder Fleet appearing out of nowhere was atrocious. At the very least it should have been hinted at beforehand. Fundamentally their attack did nothing measureable besides actually starting the Empyrean wars and provide a suitable exclamation mark for the entire problem with Empyrean Age
Well the preparations were secret but in retrospect I think there was some subtle hints of the Thukkers being Up To Something years before, e.g...
[spoiler]After much deliberation, the Thukker Tribe Council has decided that our resources at this time will allow us to take in all 40,000 of these people, feed them, clothe them and house them - provided that you are willing and able to give them transport to our facilities. We are currently in the midst of a large-scale undertaking, one which I cannot go into greater detail about here, but one which will give these downtrodden souls an opportunity to fashion new lives for themselves among their own people, undertaking meaningful work in the pursuit of new horizons.
[/spoiler]
The invasion did manage to retrieve the Starkmanir tribe...
Which, by previous PF was a dead tribe and what was left had been absorbed into the Ammatar, but suddenly the Ammatar are the 'good guys' shielding the Starkmanir from the Imperial oversight.
Which somehow happened beneath the gaze of people like "The Speakers of Truth" and the ruthless Theology council.
So, yes - it was a fabricated reason.
-
So, yes - it was a fabricated reason.
Maybe, maybe not. Just because it was sprung upon us suddenly doesn't mean CCP didn't plan it all along.
I agree with many U'K members however that FW has been bad for RP and RP conflict.
-
Everything about the Empyrean Age - novel, supporting fiction, game expansion - felt wrong. Like it was written totally backwards. So many opportunities for good, involving stories were utterly ruined by it, in fact, that I see it almost as the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy of EVE. Almost everything felt like it was asspulled.
You take a look at the Gallente-Caldari conflict, and this is an example of what I mean when I say EA is "written backwards". For the five or so years before EA, it looked like elements within the Federation were building up a repertoire of pretexts to invade the State - protein delicacies, border disputes, the Kassigainen incident, etc. - and we were given a distinct impression from prime fiction that the State, given that it's a gestalt entity, was far from monolithic, with its various corps and megacorps quietly squabbling among themselves. State Factionalism (http://www.eveonline.com/background/potw/default.asp?cid=03-dec-01) implied that the mere existence of factions showed how the State was fraying a little at the edges.
It should have been built up far more slowly, possibly over the course of a year or two, with Foiritan slowly losing his political duel with Blaque, who, as head of the senate, still wields a great deal of clout. Blaque would exaggerate issues with the State or outright invent them and use Foiritan's inability (real or imagined) to deal with them to portray him as weak. He keeps playing this - slowly, carefully - until he's built up enough of a position to call a vote of no confidence and force a new presidential election, which he, of course, wins. He then agitates at the border, carefully and patiently baiting the Caldari Navy into a series of ever more serious indescretions to justify his ever-increasing defence budget. This would also have been an excellent opportunity to increase military presence in the Intaki and Mannar systems (i.e. change them to hi-sec security status) and thus his control over the Federation's member states under the pretext of protecting them from the ever-increasing Caldari threat.
Black Rise appearing out of nowhere was an utter wallbanger as well. The notion that the State would, just after the outbreak of war, having in utter secrecy just colonised a region almost everyone else believed was unreachable, suddenly not only reveal to the world that they've done it, but connect it to the territories of their greatest adversary with high-throughput stargates is utterly preposterous.
Heth... just shouldn't exist. At all. He's a singular unifying force that should not exist within an entity such as the State. He ruins the whole idea of the Caldari State for me.
Gigantic asspull superweapon aside, Jamyl Sarum arriving and taking power uncontested was dreadful. It just did not fit with the picture CCP had painted of the Amarr Empire, in which the Great Houses (besides Sarum, of course) would all have their own very specific reasons not to just let her walk in and take what they all saw as rightfully theirs.
The Elder Fleet appearing out of nowhere was atrocious. At the very least it should have been hinted at beforehand. Fundamentally their attack did nothing measureable besides actually starting the Empyrean wars and provide a suitable exclamation mark for the entire problem with Empyrean Age:
The concept itself.
Empyrean Age as its own entity - expansion, novel, fiction - is so shackled to the concept of implementing something - factional warfare - that it in some cases leaves itself unable to avoid making mistakes. Looking back, we had to ask ourselves - what has factional warfare added to the game, and have those additions been positive or negative? In reality, all it's really done is add a (very, very, very, very, very buggy) mechanic that changes a couple of variables in a system if you orbit something for roughly 6 hours and a free wardec. The changes it's made to PF are overwhelmingly negative, and have destroyed many much better routes the story could have taken. I'll elaborate on those later, but I want to keep mainly on topic here.
In essence, yes, TonyG's writing is subpar, but TonyG's writing is only part of the problem. In the grand scheme of things EVE didn't need factional warfare. We know the empires distrust and hate each other. We know they're working to undermine each other's power. We know that they all have agendas and ulterior motives, even for co-operating with their allies. We don't need either ourselves or the story to be shackled to an endless, unwinnable war to know all of this.
The war is three years old this June and it's destroyed friendships, ruined lives, uprooted perfectly good RP corporations and it's not even any more entertaining or meaningful than the Red vs Blue war.
To me, Incursion, despite having better mechanics, is an example of CCP just making the same mistakes over again.
damn, that summed it up perfectly. I may quote you on my blog for that.
-
Casiella quoted me on her blog, but she gave it the title "Andreus Ixiris on TonyG", which I think, with due respect, is missing the point slightly.
TonyG is not the problem, Empyrean Age is the problem.
Sure, his writing wasn't the best but I think we judge him way, way too harshly given that he had to write a story explaining how events that should at the very least have been spread over two or more years occured in the single month before a major expansion came out.
-
Maybe, maybe not. Just because it was sprung upon us suddenly doesn't mean CCP didn't plan it all along.
I don't care if they planned this from the very moment they started selling Hættuspil. The way they executed it was still awful.
-
Actually, I just linked your post on my tumblelog (casiella.tumblr.com, not eclipticrift.com).
That said, I think the worldbuilding is at fault here more than the game design, though I agree with your assessment otherwise.
And that still doesn't excuse the other problems with the writing. As I frequently note, Gonzales never met a breathless superlative he didn't like.
-
Well said Andreus Ixiris.
-
Maybe, maybe not. Just because it was sprung upon us suddenly doesn't mean CCP didn't plan it all along.
I don't care if they planned this from the very moment they started selling Hættuspil. The way they executed it was still awful.
I neither said nor implied otherwise.
-
A lot of opportunities were missed by the Empyrean Age story, some of which would have genuinely made for a better story.
One example I thought up which Rodj Blake of all people seemed to like was the idea that, during the Elder invasion, no-one turns up to save the day. The Elder Armada is eventually forced back by a concerted, desperate effort by the various Imperial fleets, but for the first time in decades, the Minmatar have actually won. The Empire is in very serious disarray. At this point, two possibilities present themselves, either of which I'd find infinitely more exciting and interesting than the Jamyl Sarum arc:
Option #1: Blaming the Heirs for "creating the strife and disunity that allowed this atrocity to occur", Karsoth uses the confusion to attempt to further consolidate his increasingly illegitimate control over the Empire, working to pervert its people towards the teachings of the Blood Raiders. The Heirs, of course, turn against him, inciting an internal conflict between those loyal to Karsoth (aware or unaware of his true intentions) and those loyal to the Heirs (and the true spirit of the Empire, such as it is).
Option #2: The Heirs pin the blame for the tragedy on Karsoth, and are able to depose him in favour of a new chamberlain. Hasty succession trials are held. From this point, depending on which Heir successfully completes the trials, any number of things could happen. The ascendancy of Catiz Tash-Murkon would be particularly interesting - she would surely strengthen the Empire's industrial and economic bases, but both her ascendancy itself and some of her reforms would likely utterly outrage traditionalists and hardliners like the Ardishapur and Sarum families.
Either way, the Empire would be fighting both an external and an internal war - with the Minmatar, and with dissenting elements within itself.
Also, the Elder Fleet, as ass-pulled as it was, represented an utterly criminal missed opportunity - to rid the world of CONCORD completely, or at least relegate it to a vestigial, mostly-powerless organisation. Have hi-sec rapid-response handled by faction navies instead. Free the Empires from the shackles of CONCORD oversight and have an ACTUAL war.
-
Yeah I agree with Andy, the whole thing reeked of pushing a huge feature for the sake of pushing a huge feature. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't mean anything.
-
I actually joined EVE in 2007 largely due to the expectations for FW (also WiS, but that's another story). Before it launched, I formed a corp expressly for Matari FW and we (17TW) joined it Day 1.
Some of you know the ignominious downfall of the corp, its resurgence in new form thanks to Neu and Eran, and later quiet death. I attribute large chunks of that to the fact that CCP has essentially abandoned it, even after all the huge promotion it got in form of the book, lots of IC news, etc.
FW had the potential to turn into one of the cornerstones of EVE: make occupation worth something, allow the loyalist alliances to join in some fashion, link the payoff activity (missions) and the warfare activity (plexing) , etc etc.
So not only do we have a poorly-written book, we have ham-fisted worldbuilding (per Andreus's post) and a broken/abandoned feature that has bitterly disappointed many, many people.
Bleh, I'm reverting to :bittervet: status and I'd rather not. I need to go dig back up my EVE plans for this quarter and re-energize myself.
-
EA is "written backwards".
...
To me, Incursion, despite having better mechanics, is an example of CCP just making the same mistakes over again.
Absolutely right, Andreus. Excellent summation of the failures. Ultimately, it's not the elements of the story or even the writers (whatever our opinions of their skill or vision) that drive the development of EVE's fictional universe. It's the video game.
A: "We want to do new low-level PvP content for the next expansion."
B: "What if the empires, like, invaded each other and you could fight for them? That'd be awesome."
C: "How about having the Thukkers start it all? They're the least likely faction out there. That'd be cool."
A: "Sure, sounds good. Make it happen."
...
A: "We want to do new high-level PvE content for the next expansion."
B: "What if the pirates, like, invaded hi-sec and you could fight against them? That'd be awesome."
C: "How about having Sansha come through w-space? They're the scariest faction out there. That'd be cool."
A: "Sure, sounds good. Make it happen."
-
I mean, once they add a story-based mechanic - factional warfare, Incursions - they are either going to have to keep it that way forever or at some point they're going to have to remove or change them. Are the empires really going to be fighting the same war over the same territory forever, until CCP finally shuts the game down? Are the Sansha going to be invading hi-sec and low-sec using precisely the same strategies forever, until CCP finally shuts the game down?
And there's always the danger that Incursions will become as stale and broken as FW. My god, CCP, what the fuck have you done?
-
FWIW, in the case of the Incursions, I seem to recall hearing in some Fanfest session that the Sansha incursion would eventually end in some way, to be "replaced" by another. Not to say they'll ever, you know, do it.
-
FWIW, in the case of the Incursions, I seem to recall hearing in some Fanfest session that the Sansha incursion would eventually end in some way, to be "replaced" by another. Not to say they'll ever, you know, do it.
Oh thank God. If this is true then it's the best news I've read all day.
-
Okay...no one is going to be more surprised than me about what I'm about to post here, but the amount of bile I'm seeing spewed is really starting to be a little excessive, even to me.
I'm certainly no fan of TEA -- I still get people coming up to me at FanFest to talk to me about my review of the book (http://www.wraithwerks.net/blog/2008/07/the-empyrean-age.html), and I still stand by most of the criticism I put in that blog post, despite the fact that I have mellowed somewhat on the vitriol that permeates much of the review. I am still not particularly happy with what that book did to the Caldari, nor do I particularly like the simplification of the factions that it did overall. Tony saying "who remembered anything about tube children?" in his presentation in 2008 is still something that causes me to grind my teeth into dust to this day.
However, that very same presentation shed a lot of light on a great many of the problems with that book which were technical and process-oriented, which I suspect severely impacted the quality of that book overall. The problems Tony talked about with the publisher -- having to edit his own work and do it on a very short timetable, to start with -- as well as the fact that it sounds like CCP did not really have any sort of storyline planning process at that point, with much of the events being dictated by other departments within the company, whether it was content, or game design, or marketing, or whoever, is not conducive to the creation of a great work of literature.
That does not excuse some of the creative decisions, but I think people would be surprised what a good editor can do to your writing. Having someone who can say to you "hey, don't you think this is a little over the top" or "I don't know, what if instead of X you had Y happen, because I think that would make character Z stronger", especially someone who has done this with many other writers, makes a huge difference. A good editor does a lot more than correct typos. When you don't have that editor there, and when you're doing everything on a very tight schedule, especially for a first time author (of a novel at least), you are bound to get something that feels very rough and uneven. And that's compounded when you don't have as much flexibility as you'd like because of external demands. I have talked to Tony a number of times at FanFest and elsewhere, when I've been lucky enough to get a few minutes of his time, and frankly, the first time I did so it was extremely embarrassing for me, personally and professionally, because I was thinking of the book purely as a creative endeavor and made the same mistake most of you seem to be -- TEA was, in large part, a marketing tool more than anything else, and I suspect, considering what CCP has said about the sales and a lot of the responses I heard at FanFest 2008, it was largely successful in that respect. I ended up berating him in a way that he did not particularly deserve and I still regret that -- well, I suppose loosely it could be called a conversation -- to this day.
For his part, whatever you may think of TEA or his other work, I have found Tony to be extremely willing to listen and respond to criticism when it is presented cogently and not with the insane hysterics of a wounded fangirl. Frankly, no one is more surprised than I am that he has actually been willing to talk to me after that first encounter and engage me on a topic that clearly I am very passionate about, and has been one of the most gracious people I've met when it comes to taking criticism without getting defensive, which I think it is fair to say is something I could work on myself.
I understand how many of you (especially on the Caldari side) may feel about what he's written. However, I would caution you against making this some sort of personal beef with Tony himself, because a great deal of what you probably have a problem with is not entirely his fault, and I don't think he is particularly deserving of the kind of bile I've seen some people throw around. Three years ago at FanFest, Tony was also the person who told me they really needed to do something like what the "immersion project" the content panel this year talked about seems to be doing (and is definitely necessary) -- there's no real central repository for most of that Eve canon right now, and when you are just one person that does make it hard to keep track of some of those more esoteric details. I know the Caldari like the back of my hand, but there's still some stuff with them that escapes me at times, and when it comes to the other factions I definitely have holes in my knowledge -- can anyone else here say differently? That another reason why a good editor or a researcher might have been good when TEA was written, but that just wasn't there at the time.
I've not really had the chance to talk to Abraxas (and after what I subjected Tony to, maybe that's for the best), and I admit I don't really like the style of his chrons at all, but I suspect the same pressures Tony had when he wrote his novel are there when Abraxas is doing his writing, so try to keep that in mind before you start throwing stones. You guys can be as upset as you want about what they've written, but it is a little painful to me to see people personalizing the problem so much because I made the same mistake all those years ago, and I don't like reliving that memory. If you really want to encourage the storyline of Eve to be better, you need to encourage CCP to make the storyline a bigger part of what goes into Eve's development -- personally, that's what I've been most disappointed by the last year or two, that the storyline seems to have slowly been pushed more and more to the wayside. That may be a business decision, but I'd like to think that an encompassing storyline that evolves over the course of months and years is one of the things that really makes Eve different from other MMOs, and is something else that is only possible because of CCP's unique commitment to the single-shard nature of the game. If you want storyline to be an important and integral part of the game, rather than an afterthought, the people who feel that way at CCP -- which I think Tony, Abraxas, and all the other writers at CCP are included in -- are your best advocates. However, you need to help them show that there is a business case for making storyline a strong aspect of Eve, and making it seem like nothing they do will ever be right or enough for you is not a good way to make the case.
CCP is a business, and they have to make business decisions, and hiring writers, editors, and people to fact check stuff, like I think we all want to see, all takes money. That's also money they could spend on game designers, programmers, and marketing guys. All of those things are stuff CCP thinks will help them make money. If you really want to help make Eve's storyline better, you should try to come up with ways it can be used to strengthen the rest of the game and show CCP that it helps get and retain customers. And quite frankly, from what I understand, that is exactly what Tony's job description is.
I haven't read Abraxas' book yet (though the CAIN crew at FanFest bought it for me this year, in the hopes that I would review it -- which I will after I finish the second Song of Ice and Fire novel) but I can tell you that when I do it will be with a much different eye than I read TEA, and I am actually very curious to read Tony's new book -- I know that I may not like it, but I also want to see how he has developed as a writer and (hopefully) what a better process for writing has done to his work.
I also want to say that the storyline CCP has had over the course of the last few years since TEA, despite maybe not being paced the best, has been pretty good, and it's clear that a lot of the nuance some people may think was lost in TEA is not completely gone.
</soapbox>
-
Sooo... Svetlana for CSM7! Sersiously, you should run. You'll need three to four thousand votes to make it on which I'm certain you could get on a RP platform.
After CSM6, I have a sliver of hope that CCP might care what the players have to say again.
-
Sooo... Svetlana for CSM7! Sersiously, you should run. You'll need three to four thousand votes to make it on which I'm certain you could get on a RP platform.
After CSM6, I have a sliver of hope that CCP might care what the players have to say again.
I don't think so, not right now. Maybe I'll change my mind in a year, but right now, I can't see myself doing that. Despite what some people on the forums seem to think, I'm sure it's a heck of a lot of work, and to be quite honest my Eve time has been nonexistent for the most part this last year.
I just wanted to post because Tony and the other folks who really do care about the storyline at CCP don't deserve the kind of bile I was seeing thrown at them here. After meeting them in real life and acting the way I did, I feel like I owe it to them to make sure people give them a fair shake. Honestly, I feel pretty grateful to Tony in particular for being willing to talk to me, despite knowing how I felt about his book, and for the insight he gave me into the business end of storyline development, such as it is. I was really disappointed to miss both the content panel and his presentation on Friday at FanFest, even if the reason I did was because we were on our way to winning the tournament.
It's really easy to hurl invectives at some amorphous boogeyman -- it's a lot harder when you've met the guy in person and he's still willing to talk to you about the same sorts of things year after year.
-
I'm glad you posted that and I'll have a more substantial response later...
...after lunch. ;)
-
I will also say that I have issues with the way factional warfare was done from a game design/worldbuilding standpoint -- I am certainly disappointed with the way it turned out, and while I don't know if I'd go as far as Andreus and say it wasn't necessary at all, I do think the wrong approach might have been taken. Were I in charge, I would have kept the state of war much quieter and simply made players able to sign up as privateers for the various empires, and slowly worked in the capture mechanics in a contained "disputed territory." I think that would have been a simpler engineering task and a better storyline choice. However, the problem with that is that from a marketing point of view, it's much harder to sell slowly evolving mechanics than entirely new systems straight out of the box.
When I reviewed TEA, I was reviewing it in a vacuum, however, and trying to judge it like I would a piece of tie-in fiction I might read for a pen and paper RPG, where the book really doesn't necessarily tie in to some huge new part of the game -- marketing for a pen and paper game tends to focus on broadening the world of the game, not the depth of the game system itself (because generally, people can only handle so much complexity -- less of an issue when it comes to a multi-faceted massively multiplayer computer game). And, if I understand right, that's where most people here are going with their criticism -- TEA is a failure to them because it wasn't up to the standards they set for a standalone work of fiction.
Tony has said in his presentations that he wishes he had been given more time and that there's a lot he wishes he had done better with TEA. However, you have to understand that for CCP, TEA seems to have been a success from a sales and marketing standpoint, at least from what I understand. And quite honestly, when I was at FanFest that first year, there were a lot of people who were saying they really liked the book. That doesn't make it a great book (lots of people like lots of really crappy books, after all) but it does mean that for CCP, it probably achieved the goals they set out for it.
That is a good thing. Why? Because if the storyline can be used to help get people interested in Eve, and keep them interested, that's a business reason to devote resources to the storyline. If even a book that you might think was a mediocre read did that much for the game, then there's that much more reason to make sure the next one is even better. So, instead of condemning Tony for writing TEA, you should be trying to suggest ways to improve the way the storyline is used in the game and ways to make sure the kinds of elaborate, nuanced stories I think we all want to see are possible. You should be trying to show that the storyline is something that you and your friends -- your valuable paying customer friends -- consider to be a strength of the game as much as the market or 0.0 warfare. You need to show that the a good storyline gives CCP as much good press as the Mittani's machinations. If Tony or whoever can sit down at some executive meeting and say "hey, we really want to hire two more writers to do this kind of fiction stuff" and then they can pull out Kyoko's movies or Istvaan's stories and say "look, these got X number of views and we can correlate this to this jump in subscribers, and we got this for free just because we had this strong a story that inspired players to make these things," that's evidence even someone who thinks story in Eve is about as valuable as story in Battleship will find hard to dismiss.
That doesn't mean you have to grovel and thank CCP for tossing you whatever scraps of a story they are willing to give you, and you can certainly criticize them, but telling them that stuff that worked out well for the company is a bunch of shit and they should fire all their writers is not going to get you taken seriously -- it just means that when you do make a good suggestion, you're likely to just be ignored as a crazy RP nerd.
-
I will also say that I have issues with the way factional warfare was done from a game design/worldbuilding standpoint -- I am certainly disappointed with the way it turned out, and while I don't know if I'd go as far as Andreus and say it wasn't necessary at all
Why not? What has it really added to the story or the game?
-
I will also say that I have issues with the way factional warfare was done from a game design/worldbuilding standpoint -- I am certainly disappointed with the way it turned out, and while I don't know if I'd go as far as Andreus and say it wasn't necessary at all
Why not? What has it really added to the story or the game?
Not a lot. It was just a good (broken) addition to the gameplay. :/
Though there is something I have been thinking recently : it looks like to me we had in the past a lot more conservatives and radicals very close to the original litteral understanding of every race, and now we have more liberals. Maybe it is tied to it, maybe it is not, but I feel that passing from a state of peace to a state of war has changed the mentalities. I mean, people tended to push to the conflict before, now they are more enclined to try to cover the gap (not all, mind you, fortunately).
-
There is a video from Fanfest on CCP Youtube where TonyG is reading a fragment from the new book about young Roden.
-
Aggressive hegemonising swarms?
-
Why not? What has it really added to the story or the game?
I really like the idea of being able to be aligned, officially, some way with the faction powers; that's something CAIN wanted since we started (or at least, since I joined), so the opportunity to do so was welcome. I also think the idea of a war -- in and of itself -- was not a bad one, but the way it was kicked off, storywise, and the actually gameplay mechanics of faction warfare were lackluster (to say the least). I can think of a lot of ways I would have done it better, but the fundamental idea -- allowing characters to declare for the factions, and a way for players to jump into PvP in a low-investment way -- was a good one. I think the idea that there would be some sort of global conflict eventually was something most people expected eventually in Eve, from the start of the game. That's originally why a lot of the roleplaying corps/alliances were founded, after all.
-
I won't add anything to the general vitriol other than to say that I think some of us could think of one or two people we'd rather have seen take up the role that Tony Gonzales took on. There were several people with great ideas, talent, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of Eve derived from many hours of gameplay, reading and debating with their peers: prerequisites for producing something pretty memorable I think. Maybe they couldn't have delivered anything better. We'll never know.
There was always a sense that TonyG blithely networked his way into a position while others were wasting their time writing good stuff and, well, getting Eve. Perhaps I am being unfair, but that's my perception of how things went down. The community of actively creative people playing Eve was pretty small. The reaction to the news that some guy writing an Eve novel was mostly: "Who?" It was a decision from left field.
Sure, I feel pretty resentful on a personal level. I loved Eve, and its background and writing bits and pieces of fiction set in that background maintained my interest long after I'd tired of the actual gameplay. Someone waltzing in and bollocksing stuff up was a deciding factor in me not bothering with it any more. It's purely the double whammy of nostalgia and the lack of any credible alternative to Eve that makes me pop back occasionally to see what is happening.