Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE Fiction + Fiction discussion => Topic started by: Major JSilva on 11 Apr 2011, 02:29
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Yes I know many of you have senitments about TonyG's writing and will wanna restate all your problems about TEA. Still I'm gonna post this about the Dust 514 book
http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/guides/politics/gonzales-interview
Thoughts ?
Silva
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Thoughts ?
Nothing comes to my mind.
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Expressing my opinions on this interview would probably get me moderated.
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I'm semi gratified to see he took at least some of the criticism on board. Perhaps Templar One will be...
...no, I won't even let myself think it. No use setting myself up for disappointment. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised if it doesn't totally suck.
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"It'll also explain a lot about the Amarr Empress."
Yeah, we really need more super psychic witch Empress. Yeah, I'm not exactly pre-ordering this shit.
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I'll give my three major concerns this interview raises in brief:
Big reveals vs. progressive reveals -
I'm personally a fan of the latter, as I feal that BIG REVEALS can very, very easily come off as hamfisted and thoughtless without a very, very skilled writer at the helm. Progressive reveals, on the other hand, allow you to feal that subtly increaseing "uh-oh..." feeling you get as things just keep coming to the surface. I'd point to the Sansha revival arc here - it went from "Sansha are in wormholes? This is going to be bad..." to "Sansha can generate wormholes on their own?! Very bad!" to "Sansha are hunkered down around a Jovian station with a massive fleet they ported there through a wormhole! Oh, @I#(#*^$&!!!" If we'd started with Kuvakei doing a broadcast from the Jovian system and THEN explained how he got there, it could easily have felt like an ass-pull (for lack of another way of putting it) - "Hey guys, Kuvakei's in a Jove system! How'd he get there...? Uh, Wormholes!"c
Ancient mysteries 'n' stuff -
This is more a personal sinking feeling, given how CCP's handled this category in the past. Once again, space illuminati can very easily end up looking like (I won't comment on them actually being) an ass-pull substitute for a longer, more interesting storyline development. Walking plot devices, in short.
Disconnection with the community -
This is probably the only concern I'll voice about TonyG directly. He seems rather... out of touch with the EVE community, and especially the RP community, at times. Tony, CVA doesn't fly Amarr-only anymore. In fact, I think that policy was gone before TonyG joined CCP.
One interesting note here is that TonyG admits that character development suffered in the writing of Empyrean Age due to plot demands. Unfortunately, this is juxtaposed with "Ooooh, sleeper reveals!" and "Ooooh, suddenly new technology makes DUST soldiers, big stuff happens!" which seems to read to me as "Well, we've heard your complaints, and acknowledge they're reasonable complaints... and then do the exact same thing." It again shows me a... troubling disconnect with the thoughts of the community.
People will say I'm being hard on CCP and TonyG, and in truth I probably am. I do apologize for that, as realistically it isn't fair to base my raeg solely on the handful of articles, snippets of text from fanfest, and couple of interviews/live dev blogs we've had. Thing is, CCP and TonyG have a track record now, and for better and for worse my thoughts are biased by past performance.
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My bet: immortal soldiers, bioengineered hive mind, potential for cross-cluster planetary control, one man fights against the system, gunfight, gunfight, softcore, everybody dies.
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CVA never was Amarr-ships only.
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CVA never was Amarr-ships only.
I think he has CVA confused with PIE. :lol:
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Or maybe with Imperial Dreams. I was pretty sure at least a part of the CVA was amarr tech only a the beginning.
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So much contradiction in this interview.
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Or maybe with Imperial Dreams. I was pretty sure at least a part of the CVA was amarr tech only a the beginning.
PIE is one of the CVA founders.
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Yes I know but I was not refering to PIE. Or maybe I am confusing them with someone else...
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PIE is Amarr hulls only.
Not sure if Dark Seraph was Amarr hulls only, because they kind of faded out after Doriam became the Emperor and that was the time I joined PIE.
Imperial Dreams was always flying ships from all races.
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"It'll also explain a lot about the Amarr Empress."
Yeah, we really need more super psychic witch Empress. Yeah, I'm not exactly pre-ordering this shit.
I'm really looking forward to IGS being filled with even more characters having knowledge that simply wouldn't be available to them.
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"It'll also explain a lot about the Amarr Empress."
Yeah, we really need more super psychic witch Empress. Yeah, I'm not exactly pre-ordering this shit.
I'm really looking forward to IGS being filled with even more characters having knowledge that simply wouldn't be available to them.
This so much^
Which is partly the reason for not reading Empyrean Age. Burning life had nothing it that was off-limits to in-character knowledge. But sekrit funding by Federation for Minmatar supercapitalship fleet led by mystical tribal leaders? Our characters don't have a clue about that.
Which is why we're all confused by TonyG. The short and sweet of it: He's not writing the book for us. We best get over it, lest we get our blood pressure worked up over something so obvious.
The book is for the 99% of eve players that don't roleplay and want their fill of dramatic plot development in flash-bang sci fi battle formats.
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He isn't a full-time novelist. The decks are stacked against him writing a great scifi novel. Maybe one day, EVE will have a Black Library (http://www.blacklibrary.com/). Until then, set your expectations low. He could surprise us, though.
So if the tie-in novel is getting done now, does this mean DUST 514 will be out sooner rather than later?
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So if the tie-in novel is getting done now, does this mean DUST 514 will be out sooner rather than later?
The game already has a community manager (http://twitter.com/CCP_Shadow)... so I'd say signs point to, "WHY DON'T THEY PROMOTE THIS MORE!?" When I talk to my friends that play FPS games they don't seem interested at all.
It's a great idea on paper, but I'm not sold that CCP can sell the game to hardcore FPS gamers.
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It's a great idea on paper, but I'm not sold that CCP can sell the game to hardcore FPS gamers.
Not against the A+ shooter du jour, no. That takes millions thrown into ads saturating every commercial break for 2-3 weeks and the game to back it up. Is there anything that points to CCP's willingness or ability to do that?
CCP's only shot is to make the first successful MMOFPS for the console. That will require a few things in my opinion:
1. At least an A- shooter at launch, and still be B+/B level a few years in when all the main MMO features are implemented and tweaked appropriately based on experience. We really don't know what to expect from CCP Shanghai at this time in this regard.
2. Marketing tie-ins with the PSN and XBOX Live. They need people subscribing for the long-term. It needs to be marketed through the game industry as something special.
3. Cool skill advancement unique to the FPS genre. This is actually something I'm expecting.
4. The link with EVE to be something that gets the FPS "pros" interested on succeeding at (i.e. being the most sought-after mercs to have contracts with).
There's probably a few more, but they do indeed have a tall hill to climb. The thing is, DUST sort of has to succeed or it will signal the slow death of EVE. I mean, how would they recover from launching a game like DUST and then abandoning it. How would you play that off in the EVE world?
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You could assume that they got tired of orbital strikes from the guys hiring them...
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In my opinion, this is why CCP are not planning for, but are not writing off a PC release.
If the console market fails them, or if after a few years the console players move on to something new, then and only then will a PC version of the game be made available.
CCP will never pit PC vs Console gamers while DUST is in it's prime. Many experiments on this have been done in the past, and it unerringly drives away the consolers. A PC version could be possible only if that console market is already gone.
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Well, I have moved from being a TonyG pessimist after reading 'Theodicy' to just being generally sceptic about his work.
I have come to understand that the goals set for his work is not entirely up to him and I have sort of learned to appreciate his idea about trying to strengthen EVE as an IP.
I am proberly only going to read it once (like TEA and TBL) I will buy the new book and read it. Though, personally I would have loved to learn more about the Jove and Sleepers from in game sources instead of a book.
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"It'll also explain a lot about the Amarr Empress."
Yeah, we really need more super psychic witch Empress. Yeah, I'm not exactly pre-ordering this shit.
I'm really looking forward to IGS being filled with even more characters having knowledge that simply wouldn't be available to them.
She talks to me in my sleep......in RL :eek:
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CVA got mention!
I liked the formatting of the website, and the pretty pictures.
/positive