Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Jakiin on 28 Feb 2012, 11:33
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First off, hello again!
To those that know/remember/heard-cautionary-tales-about me: It's good to be back and see you all again. Shame about those I'm not seeing, but I suppose I'm in no position to criticize on that point, eh?
In any case, I've returned! And I am completely lost! On the long list of questions I have...
Where did Ushra'Khan disappear to?
Where did Star Fraction disappear to (And who do I have to thank for it)?
How in the name of the King did the Curatores manage to take back Providence?
Why was SCOPE IC news discontinued, and what petitions can I sign to try and get it back?
And just to do a little give-and-take on the information transaction...
Yes, Drasden is me.
Jakiin isn't posting on the IGS because either A) Drasden made him promise not to as part of several deals struck (IC) or B) My sense of dramatic timing (OOC), take your pick.
I haven't given up on my impossible dream of a pirate-free Khanid, I've just switched tactics to buying my way toward the goal instead of doing the dirty work myself.
I plan on returning to Jakiin's original style: Impish little Amarrian truth-seeker. Due to me becoming CDO of the Vanguard, I'm afraid I rather dropped this in favour of supporting my political allies. While this is all good in terms of practicality it's just not as interesting to play or, it seems, watch.
Yes, I'm here to stay. I previously left due to RL issues that have since been resolved.
In summary: Hello, and what's going on?
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Ooooh, a Jakiin. Very good to see you again!
Where did Ushra'Khan disappear to?
They moved on to other 0.0 after -A- steamrolled Provi. I think they're off in Russian space at the moment.
Where did Star Fraction disappear to (And who do I have to thank for it)?
No clue, actually. Think they're out in Placid? *Pokes Jade.*
How in the name of the King did the Curatores manage to take back Providence?
Short version: The Provi Fight Club (the alliances that followed -A- installed) either decided to move out or weren't the best (at holding sov, or in general).
Long version: The Sanctum Nerf, which returned Providence to its backwater status, meant that with a couple exceptions most of the larger alliances became decidedly uninterested in sticking around and either moved out or sold their space to CVA. The smaller, pseudo-pirate alliances, either got booted by a reformed Providence Holders who had spent the interim period getting their plans sorted, or decided to move/sell out as well. Oh, and TEST alliance decided to boot Chribba from 9UY because they're TEST, and then wandered off to kill Russians.
Why was SCOPE IC news discontinued, and what petitions can I sign to try and get it back?
Because the fiction/content team is tiny compared to their workload, and both ISD volunteers and CCP devs were/are busy with live events, writing the Evelopedia Fiction section, or in Dropbear's case getting married at the moment. To be fair to them, the Evelopedia Fiction Portal is truly a thing of beauty, but yes, the loss of news articles is painful.
Jakiin isn't posting on the IGS because either A) Drasden made him promise not to as part of several deals struck (IC) or B) My sense of dramatic timing (OOC), take your pick.
...probably a good idea. The IGS seems to be in unusually high poor form lately, even for the IGS.
I haven't given up on my impossible dream of a pirate-free Khanid, I've just switched tactics to buying my way toward the goal instead of doing the dirty work myself.
I plan on returning to Jakiin's original style: Impish little Amarrian truth-seeker. Due to me becoming CDO of the Vanguard, I'm afraid I rather dropped this in favour of supporting my political allies. While this is all good in terms of practicality it's just not as interesting to play or, it seems, watch.
Good luck with this! Will be good to have another Amarrian back.
Yes, I'm here to stay. I previously left due to RL issues that have since been resolved.
Very glad this is dealt with. Never fun to be dragged away from something you like by RL issues.
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Where did Ushra'Khan disappear to?
Currently in Geminate, holding joint sov of a few constellations with a particularly bad alliance (going from the one time I met them, where they brought guardians as logi for a blaster Naga fleet. There was also a U'K there in an RR fit armour tempest. :roll: ) named Pinked. At this point, as far as I am able to tell, both U'K and CVA have more or less entirely given up on being mainly RP alliances. I only know of one corp in CVA that is, and none in U'K.
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Herrro :) *acts surprised*
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Yeah, the Pinked guys they're pets of are spectacularly terrible actually. Spent a few days out in their systems this week and blops dropped a couple of them before intentionally springing their ham-handed attempt at a trap to see what would come.
They're nice in local at least. v0v
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Where did Ushra'Khan disappear to?
Yeah, they wander about. Like all of the old 'loyalist' powers, they've moved on and away from all that (except EM, oddly enough, who still carry on the cause).
Where did Star Fraction disappear to (And who do I have to thank for it)?
Haven't heard a peep in along time.
How in the name of the King did the Curatores manage to take back Providence?
While the reasons given above are accurate in understanding how it was allowed, CVA got the systems back by paying ISK out the nose for them (at least the first dozen) in a series of facepalm moments wherein many billions were gladly given to the previous tenants who were already moving out anyway. It exists now as the 'place to go shoot doe-eyed carebears if you get bored' for many alliances in the south.
Why was SCOPE IC news discontinued, and what petitions can I sign to try and get it back?
The two guys in the company who care about these things got tasked with other stuff.
Glad to hear you're back.
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Welcome back! Good to see the Vanguard up and running again.
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Ooooh, a Jakiin. Very good to see you again!
Herrro :) *acts surprised*
Glad to hear you're back.
Welcome back! Good to see the Vanguard up and running again.
Thank you, good to be back. Taking an opportunity: The Vanguard is, at the current time, in a coma. I'm currently make preparations for turning Torash Family Holdings from a vanity corp into an actual industrial organization (See: Buying my way to the goal, above).
I wish I could say I'm surprised that it only took a year without his CDO for this one *Points at Silas* to turn the KPV into an NBSI entity that blew up an Amarrian loyalist supercap, then burn down her estate and go heretic, but honestly... I'm only surprised it took that long.
Naturally this means that IC Jakiin is entirely ready to see Vitalia strung up by her ankles over a pit of hungry slaver hounds, but OOC I find the entire thing to be hilarious.
They moved on to other 0.0 after -A- steamrolled Provi. I think they're off in Russian space at the moment.
Currently in Geminate, holding joint sov of a few constellations with a particularly bad alliance ... named Pinked. At this point, as far as I am able to tell, both U'K and CVA have more or less entirely given up on being mainly RP alliances. I only know of one corp in CVA that is, and none in U'K.
Yeah, they wander about. Like all of the old 'loyalist' powers, they've moved on and away from all that (except EM, oddly enough, who still carry on the cause).
Shame. EVE is so much fun to RP, even your ' enemies' ' fading interest is sad to see.
No clue, actually. Think they're out in Placid? *Pokes Jade.*
Haven't heard a peep in along time.
Noted, thank you.
Short version: The Provi Fight Club (the alliances that followed -A- installed) either decided to move out or weren't the best (at holding sov, or in general).
Long version: The Sanctum Nerf, which returned Providence to its backwater status, meant that with a couple exceptions most of the larger alliances became decidedly uninterested in sticking around and either moved out or sold their space to CVA. The smaller, pseudo-pirate alliances, either got booted by a reformed Providence Holders who had spent the interim period getting their plans sorted, or decided to move/sell out as well. Oh, and TEST alliance decided to boot Chribba from 9UY because they're TEST, and then wandered off to kill Russians.
While the reasons given above are accurate in understanding how it was allowed, CVA got the systems back by paying ISK out the nose for them (at least the first dozen) in a series of facepalm moments wherein many billions were gladly given to the previous tenants who were already moving out anyway. It exists now as the 'place to go shoot doe-eyed carebears if you get bored' for many alliances in the south.
Sounds about right.
Because the fiction/content team is tiny compared to their workload, and both ISD volunteers and CCP devs were/are busy with live events, writing the Evelopedia Fiction section, or in Dropbear's case getting married at the moment. To be fair to them, the Evelopedia Fiction Portal is truly a thing of beauty, but yes, the loss of news articles is painful.
The two guys in the company who care about these things got tasked with other stuff.
So does this mean that we have reason to believe that the articles will return at some point when the Fiction Portal has finished 'construction' and will only need to be maintained now and then? Or have we been told that the articles are permanently discontinued?
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Well hi there.
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So does this mean that we have reason to believe that the articles will return at some point when the Fiction Portal has finished 'construction' and will only need to be maintained now and then? Or have we been told that the articles are permanently discontinued?
In theory, yes - news stories will return SOON(tm). In practicality, however, this won't be anywhere in the near future unless DUST514 gives CCP the cash to expand their fiction team. At current, the fiction/content team(s) are responsible for:
- writing all the fluff, item descriptions, and any 'mission' content for Dust.
- doing live events, though they've more or less put these at the back since the 20% cuts put even more pressure on them.
- Writing the EVElopedia fiction articles. This is, frankly, their largest task; given that they are describing additions to the wiki in terms of expansions, I don't think we're going to see it end any time in the near future.
One thing to note is that Abraxas recently suggested that they would start publishing 'micro chronicles', as the old bi-weekly chronicles had also been nuked by the EVElopedia project.
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Well hi there.
07
n theory, yes - news stories will return SOON(tm). In practicality, however, this won't be anywhere in the near future unless DUST514 gives CCP the cash to expand their fiction team. At current, the fiction/content team(s) are responsible for:
- writing all the fluff, item descriptions, and any 'mission' content for Dust.
- doing live events, though they've more or less put these at the back since the 20% cuts put even more pressure on them.
- Writing the EVElopedia fiction articles. This is, frankly, their largest task; given that they are describing additions to the wiki in terms of expansions, I don't think we're going to see it end any time in the near future.
One thing to note is that Abraxas recently suggested that they would start publishing 'micro chronicles', as the old bi-weekly chronicles had also been nuked by the EVElopedia project.
You know the funny part is that CCP could probably get a good number of volunteers for helping them expand the backstory if they sent out a few casting calls to the player base. By the sounds of it, even if only a couple people pumped out articles/concepts that the PF team liked on a regular basis it would still remove a lot of their workload - or at least keep the rest of us feeling a little less worried about the future of EVE's in-character dimension.
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If you look at the EVElopedia fiction portal credits, the ISDers are already doing a great deal. The issue is, I think, that volunteer-produced stuff has to be factchecked by a dev (insert obligatory opinion about some players having a better grasp of the canon that a certain ex-dev here).
So, you can have multiple people writing stuff, but it bottlenecks up around having the devs check it over and possibly send it back for revision.
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Where did Star Fraction disappear to (And who do I have to thank for it)?
I think that at least some of them are mainly playing World of Tanks these days.
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If you look at the EVElopedia fiction portal credits, the ISDers are already doing a great deal. The issue is, I think, that volunteer-produced stuff has to be factchecked by a dev (insert obligatory opinion about some players having a better grasp of the canon that a certain ex-dev here).
So, you can have multiple people writing stuff, but it bottlenecks up around having the devs check it over and possibly send it back for revision.
Hmm, I didn't actually know about the ISDers to be honest. Ah well: knowledge, the accumulation of, cue natural light refraction, etc.
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Regarding ISD, Mercury did put out a casting call about a month ago for applications. I'd suggest anyone interested find the devblog and send information declaring interest in applying. :)
Also Jakiin, they've written a -ton- of new PF regarding Khanid on the wiki page. He has a name now, and they even have a huge article on his evil brother's whole life ;)
Go read!
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Been a bad year for eve really. Incarna was terrible for people's interest level and multiple years of CCP failing to provide new content or gameplay for the game came home to roost. This eroded some of our (SF) veteran players desire to play the game. Speaking personally I've been pretty sidetracked the last six months with working on my new fixer-upper house so haven't had as much time as I used to for Eve - but it would be false to say thats the only reason - I too am pretty bored with the current state of Eve and there is a real problem within a roleplay alliance that doesn't really have any more RP targets to involve ourselves with.
We spent last summer in Placid where we had a war with Moira and blew up their HQ.
And then wintered in Otou around Gal/Minmatar lowsec where we established a load of zero tax customs offices and played diplomatic political fixers amongst a wide group of anti pirate interests who had ended up inexplicably shooting each other.
Been okay I guess but the problem is we don't really know what to do with Eve at the moment. All Eve RP seems either forum based or FW and we've done our attempts to intervene with the latter over the last few years and its gotten a bit old.
So currently most SF are training skills - making passive income and playing other games.
It would be the ideal time for somebody to wardec and hound us into oblivion to be honest.
World of Tanks
Wargames European Escalation
Crusader Kings II
Are currently being played a lot.
And we had Skyrim over christmas of course and Mass Effect 3 next week.
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Realistically at this point I think CCP need to manage something pretty amazing with the summer expansion that revitalizes long neglected parts of the game to get our interest back.
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I'm not exactly holding my breath on that one, Jade.
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Bounty hunting is coming... one day.... no really it is....
*twitch*
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Oh hey it's that guy.
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Yeah yeah yeah let's blame Incarna one more time. T_T
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Incarna may have got the killmail but it was Empyrean Age that alpha'd it into 10% structure.
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Apocrypha got a few repair cycles off
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Tyrannis burnt out the hardeners tbh :)
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And players have throughout all the expansions done their best to kill off everything. Let's not put the blame squarely on CCP. The RP community has never stood nor fallen on their words alone.
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Let's not put the blame squarely on CCP.
Since you clearly have the authority to dictate were we can and cannot put the blame, I guess we have to choice but to obey you.
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You read a lot into a very simple statement. If you wish to take it as an order, I'm not going to stop you. I do like having minions. If you grow up and read things without running it through some dickification filter however, I'm sure you'll figure out what the post means.
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Well you can certainly blame rp'ers for making mistakes and not dealing with adversity as well as they should perhaps - but on the other hand, CCP do have some significant responsibility for failing to provide an environment conducive to creative RP themselves. The implementation of faction warfare that came to dominate the RP community for multiple years without plot devolopment or iteration has certainly played a major role in strangling creativity and innovation across the player base.
Put simply if you wanted to RP conflict you were expected to sign up to a loyalist group and get involved in FW otherwise you found yourselves in an environment with dwindling numbers of opponents and opportunities for interaction. And of course if you did take the plunge into FW you got to play identikit loyalist stereotypes of the "good soliders" for your respective faction.
Problem is twofold really. FW became everything for the RP community because the free wardec and justification for your RP loyalites was impossible to turn down at the same time it became a straightjacket for RP as you were locked into an endless war that even CCP lost interest in after the first year.
Sure, people do RP outside of Factionwarfare (a bit) but it tends to forum-based or extremely incidental to players who are simply pirates or whatnot on the side.
So @ Mizhara - I don't believe you can really excuse CCP from the blame of what Empyrean Age did to the game from the implementation and abandonment of FW that would ultimately suck in and strip away individuality from loyalist RP while removing credible antagonists from the sights of non-loyalists.
Of course as players we kinda have some responsiblility of our own - fuck, I was head of the CSM when they demo'ed Empyrean age and I got seduced as much as anyone by the idea of roleplay with consequences and the cold war hotting up between empires. But to be quite honest I expected Faction Warfare to be so much more than it ended up being - I believed in iterations back then, I genuinely expected pirate factions to be involved, borders to shift, involvement from opposition forces and occupation to mean something. If CCP had said to us then "this is all it will be for the next five years" then I'd like to hope my younger self would have told them to fuck right off.
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The problem is, JC, that CCP isn't doing any of this for RPers. We make up a small fraction of the overall community. For reference, I decided to check two chat channels: The Summit (Probably the single largest in-game gathering place of EVE players that RP), and EVE Radio (Probably the single largest in-game gathering place of EVE players that prefer schizophrenic-genre music hosted by people with bad accents over their own music libraries).
The Summit [35]
EVE Radio [414]
Now, let's be extraordinarily generous and say this indicates we make up 10% of the player base. So that means that 10% of the population RPs while they make things, pew pew, grind missions, or play corp/alliance politics, as opposed to the 90% who don't care at all.
Now, when you look at Faction Warfare, don't look at it from the perspective of an RPer, look at it from the perspective of a 'straight' PvPer. It's an excellent introduction to fleet PvP for new players, and allows corps to pew pew without the many and varied risks associated with it before. Faction Warfare, for straight PvPers, works. Adding consequences would only be applying shades of nullsec warfare to something that's right now a beautiful bit of Red versus Blue PvP you just can't get anywhere else. It would be a lot of extra work for CCP to do something that most people aren't really interested in and and goodly portion would be actively against.
Does it suck for us? Hoo boy, does it ever. I see your point about FW's affect on RP, and I do remember the good ol' days where PvP loyalists would do more than just keep fighting an everwar. But at the same time, my individualist friend, that's their call. FW is no longer a shiny, new thing full of promise: we know exactly what it is. If the Pew Pew RPers are wasting their time with it, then at this point that's on them. We can't keep blaming CCP for it, because A) it was never really intended for us and B) it's really up to us, as a whole, to accept that and move on.
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It is easy to put all the blame on CCP. Sure something went wrong with EA, but who honestly would have expected that ? I mean, sure, I am not a big fan of them still doing nothing to keep up with the sparse news we had the first year of factionnal warfare, and not improving upon it over the time. But they are a game company with limited means that have a lot to do. Look at mining. It has not really changed since the very beginning of Eve, and we are still waiting for it to get a little more love, and miners are definitly more numerous than us, RPers. A lot of sides in the game are in the same situation, including now... FW. After all, they at least partially developped FW for us, the RP playerbase.
I still remember vividly how almost every RPer was happy when they finally announced that the factionnal warfare they had been planning since 2005 was eventually going to be released. Nobody expected the flaws of the plot we know of now that followed after. Nobody expected things to get dull. Or maybe someone did, I dont know. Not me, at least, and a lot of people too. I was not really attracted by FW (the gameplay itself) when it was released and it got me several months before deciding to try it (I had nothing else to do at the time). Weirdly enough, before its release I was very eager to taste the new fresh RP it was supposed to bring (added to that epic ton of breaking news we had the day it got released, I was like a child in heaven refreshing my browser every minute), but I was also not really interested in its gameplay. After, I got disanchanted by all the can of worms the plot brought and that we have already spoken about countless times, and weirdly enough as I said, I found the gameplay damn good and fitting for me, even in its unpolished state it has always been.
So yes I do think that with detachement and now that we have seen what went wrong, it is easy to blame. But when I put myself back that year, I still feel that nobody really expected that. Now then, of course, we can still blame CCP for not having taken the time to make it evolve, but nullsec put aside, everything is rarely put up to date, or very slowly. They eventually did it with exploration, and some other examples, and I still hope that FW and lowsec turn will come someday too, if they stop being so obsessed about nullsec that day.
That is the same thing for Incarna too. They decided to more or less cancel its developpement and it is now in a very unfinished and not really usefull/interesting state that reminds me FW, lowsec, and all these things that need some love. And in that case, I think that CCP screwed 100 times more than the time they implemented EA : at least they did not do the mistake to go for what pissed off most of the playerbase about microtransactions, etc, and all we already know about the Incarna fiasco. Here I blame them happily for btuchering all the efforts of their devellopment team (especially as I am part of that minority that still hope to see Incarna fully implemented and meaningful someday), but the time EA got here, I do not know at all how I could blame them. What they did was pretty cool.
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Slight Derail:
The funny thing is, they don't need to re-write the entire code for FW to improve it -vastly-. A few small tweaks and you add some real dynamism, and hence interest.
1. Sort out capture/control mechanics (easy as changing the variables for timers / location spawns / ship restrictions / HP for 'objectives' to be destroyed, etc' A few iterations on sisi to find the right numbers and tweak after revisions.
2. CHANGABLE security status for systems, on all border areas. That .5 system you use to stage out of should not always be .5 If the enemy captures the system next door, it should drop to .4, etc. The 'front' should actually -mean- something, as far as rewards and perils for spending your time there.
You want to encourage people to pvp in contested areas by offering x rewards, instead of farming sites, etc. There should be tangible ISK rewards for owning an area.
Maybe faction control of an area boosts agent rewards by 300% or something, and only accessible to certain pilots, that sort of thing. Get the PVPers to secure areas for the carebears to make money, and you'd add some dynamics for cooperation and funding of conflicts. This should apply all over the galaxy actually.
Do an expansion where you add facwar/lowec attention to nearly all the border regions. Don't bother with all the mission writing, etc. Just add the gameplay and expand the fronts.
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But at the same time, my individualist friend, that's their call. FW is no longer a shiny, new thing full of promise: we know exactly what it is. If the Pew Pew RPers are wasting their time with it, then at this point that's on them. We can't keep blaming CCP for it, because A) it was never really intended for us and B) it's really up to us, as a whole, to accept that and move on.
Move on to what though is the question?
Because it seems the options available right now are either roll up an empire loyalist who fancies the neverending faction war or go play something else entirely. Its not coincidence that the rp community and many of the old alliances and corporations involved with such a thing are in a state of low activity and miniscule enthusiasm for the game. I mean, you could say "well tough, eve ain't for you!" but that doesn't really do much constructively.
Bottom line, lots of people are bored stupid about the game at the moment. Myself amongst them. There is obviously some partizan RP schadenfreude to be had at old enemies losing the will to play (like I said now is the time for somebody to finally humble the fraction!) but the fact there is nobody who cares or has the ability to do that should sound its own warning signals really :)
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Move on to what though is the question?
Because it seems the options available right now are either roll up an empire loyalist who fancies the neverending faction war or go play something else entirely. Its not coincidence that the rp community and many of the old alliances and corporations involved with such a thing are in a state of low activity and miniscule enthusiasm for the game. I mean, you could say "well tough, eve ain't for you!" but that doesn't really do much constructively.
Bottom line, lots of people are bored stupid about the game at the moment. Myself amongst them. There is obviously some partizan RP schadenfreude to be had at old enemies losing the will to play (like I said now is the time for somebody to finally humble the fraction!) but the fact there is nobody who cares or has the ability to do that should sound its own warning signals really :)
Why does an empire loyalist need to play in FW? The Vanguard was a loyalist PvP corp, and while we were Kingdom rather than Empire aligned, there was plenty of justification for us to go join the Amarrian militia if we wanted to.
But we didn't. So we didn't.
We did join the Protectorate, but that wasn't an RP thing so much as it was to try and train some of those wetter behind the ears in the fine arts of PvP* in an arena where it didn't matter and spent most of our resources on hisec wars and lowsec roams targeting pirate corps, because that was what we did, and if anyone had an issue with it they could go straight to hell. I never saw the problem with that, and the bossman certainly never did.
We as a community don't need to travel to some bold, new horizon to get the old days back. We need to - and I know this might sound a little radical - do what we did in the old days. You want to be a Minmatar RPPvPer without doing FW? Fine, go wardec an Amarrian corp. Skulk around Armi or some other lowsec constellation and blow up miners. The advent of Faction Warfare didn't suddenly close all other RPPvP options, it just made them seem less convenient. But I don't plan on being bored just because it's more convenient than having fun.
*I never did get the hang of it, myself.
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Slight Derail:
The funny thing is, they don't need to re-write the entire code for FW to improve it -vastly-. A few small tweaks and you add some real dynamism, and hence interest.
1. Sort out capture/control mechanics (easy as changing the variables for timers / location spawns / ship restrictions / HP for 'objectives' to be destroyed, etc' A few iterations on sisi to find the right numbers and tweak after revisions.
2. CHANGABLE security status for systems, on all border areas. That .5 system you use to stage out of should not always be .5 If the enemy captures the system next door, it should drop to .4, etc. The 'front' should actually -mean- something, as far as rewards and perils for spending your time there.
You want to encourage people to pvp in contested areas by offering x rewards, instead of farming sites, etc. There should be tangible ISK rewards for owning an area.
Maybe faction control of an area boosts agent rewards by 300% or something, and only accessible to certain pilots, that sort of thing. Get the PVPers to secure areas for the carebears to make money, and you'd add some dynamics for cooperation and funding of conflicts. This should apply all over the galaxy actually.
Do an expansion where you add facwar/lowec attention to nearly all the border regions. Don't bother with all the mission writing, etc. Just add the gameplay and expand the fronts.
These are cool ideas of course, but I can already imagine how the winning faction would get all the players just because it pays more than the losing one...
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Move on to what though is the question?
Because it seems the options available right now are either roll up an empire loyalist who fancies the neverending faction war or go play something else entirely. Its not coincidence that the rp community and many of the old alliances and corporations involved with such a thing are in a state of low activity and miniscule enthusiasm for the game. I mean, you could say "well tough, eve ain't for you!" but that doesn't really do much constructively.
Bottom line, lots of people are bored stupid about the game at the moment. Myself amongst them. There is obviously some partizan RP schadenfreude to be had at old enemies losing the will to play (like I said now is the time for somebody to finally humble the fraction!) but the fact there is nobody who cares or has the ability to do that should sound its own warning signals really :)
Why does an empire loyalist need to play in FW? The Vanguard was a loyalist PvP corp, and while we were Kingdom rather than Empire aligned, there was plenty of justification for us to go join the Amarrian militia if we wanted to.
But we didn't. So we didn't.
We did join the Protectorate, but that wasn't an RP thing so much as it was to try and train some of those wetter behind the ears in the fine arts of PvP* in an arena where it didn't matter and spent most of our resources on hisec wars and lowsec roams targeting pirate corps, because that was what we did, and if anyone had an issue with it they could go straight to hell. I never saw the problem with that, and the bossman certainly never did.
We as a community don't need to travel to some bold, new horizon to get the old days back. We need to - and I know this might sound a little radical - do what we did in the old days. You want to be a Minmatar RPPvPer without doing FW? Fine, go wardec an Amarrian corp. Skulk around Armi or some other lowsec constellation and blow up miners. The advent of Faction Warfare didn't suddenly close all other RPPvP options, it just made them seem less convenient. But I don't plan on being bored just because it's more convenient than having fun.
*I never did get the hang of it, myself.
This, pretty much. The most impact RP-PvP wise I've had was when we exchanged a thousand Amarrians for a million Matari slaves. We didn't even glance at the FW. It was all done through wardecs and normal interaction, not orbiting buttons. There were less than five of us online at any given moment, but we could easily keep up a couple of wardecs and terrorized several corps into submission while striking at the heart of Empire capsuleer infrastructure.
Got PvP, RP and actually having an effect (disbanded enemy corps even). No FW needed for that.
Sure, CCP haven't added much in these areas but it's not like they've removed any of it either.
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Mainly because CCP - unfortunately - made it quite clear that occupied systems are having their planets invaded. With the possible exceptions of some of the old inroads to 0.0 made by RP alliances of yore, nothing the playerbase has done on its own - meaning, without Live Events/AURORA assistance - even remotely approaches the scale of that.
So, in my opinion trying to say "We're doing other things!" ends up looking like this (using a stereotypical Amarr as an example):
"In the past months I have set up indoctrination facilities and brought one hundred thousand new persons into the faith! I have also crushed heretic Blood Raider outposts trying to establish themselves in our space!"
"That's great. By the way, the Minmatar are occupying [X number] of our systems. You know there's probably at least [X times 2,000,000] Amarrian citizens down there, right?"
This isn't to say I personally disagree with players running stuff unrelated to FW. In fact, I very much approve of people getting up and putting in the time to make their own stuff - hell, 90% of my RP occurs well outside the framework of FW - but it feels like any time anyone attempts to accomplish something, the storyline CCP has laid out turns around and whacks them on the head, then waves furiously going "NO! I'm important! Look at meeeeeeeeeee!"
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Mainly because CCP - unfortunately - made it quite clear that occupied systems are having their planets invaded. With the possible exceptions of some of the old inroads to 0.0 made by RP alliances of yore, nothing the playerbase has done on its own - meaning, without Live Events/AURORA assistance - even remotely approaches the scale of that.
So, in my opinion trying to say "We're doing other things!" ends up looking like this (using a stereotypical Amarr as an example):
"In the past months I have set up indoctrination facilities and brought one hundred thousand new persons into the faith! I have also crushed heretic Blood Raider outposts trying to establish themselves in our space!"
"That's great. By the way, the Minmatar are occupying [X number] of our systems. You know there's probably at least [X times 2,000,000] Amarrian citizens down there, right?"
This isn't to say I personally disagree with players running stuff unrelated to FW. In fact, I very much approve of people getting up and putting in the time to make their own stuff - hell, 90% of my RP occurs well outside the framework of FW - but it feels like any time anyone attempts to accomplish something, the storyline CCP has laid out turns around and whacks them on the head, then waves furiously going "NO! I'm important! Look at meeeeeeeeeee!"
Esna is also no doubt intrigued by the variety offered by an entire planet of potential harem wimmez...
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As long as RP concerns itself mostly with (non-existent) NPCs and the (non-interactive) PF backstory, this is never going to change.
As long as significant in-game events concern itself with things that are mostly outside the realm of RP (CSM elections) this is never going to change.