Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Korsavius on 24 Dec 2012, 13:30
-
I think this topic has been mentioned somewhere before, but I'll just rekindle it regardless.
So I'm just curious on how valid you guys consider PvE activities in the RP universe. Do you take the fact that thousands of NPC battleships die every day? How about all the people manning those vessels, do you believe the millions of people that die during the destruction of such ships? Personally, I don't like to talk about such things IC as I find it to be rubbish. If someone is out claiming to kill thousands of battleships every day then I just tend to ignore them. But, meh, I'm curious on your thoughts?
-
I don't think so.
-
I tend to stay rather vague or to minimize to more decent amounts. Make it sound more occasionnal. And make the combat part of the missions less central and important, like focusing on the things that are not really put into the spotlight in ingame missions, everything happening around, that kind of things.
I also like to derail the subject to what really matters usually : not the amount (50 battleships x 5000 crew members down) but the action in itself and what it implies (serpentis assets eliminated, people died, that was switf and decisive, or else).
-
I tend to regard that (and quite a few otehr things) as an abstraction - sort of what Lyn is talking about, I think. Even with as many people as there might be in Eve, the number of deaths and the resources destroyed daily don't seem like they'd be sustainable if taken at face value.
I know there are people at the other end of the scale, who take things exactly at face value, and consider whats on the screen to be what is happening exactly IC. It's a valid way to go too, but it would actually break immersion for me personally.
-
You have to treat PvE with fair amounts of hand-wavium to not break the walls of immersion.
That damsel has been rescued 800,000 times (she just will not learn).
I think keeping it 'general' is always a good strategy. You work for x faction and have eliminated targets of y faction on a regular basis, that's usually enough to discuss.
-
Handwavium to not break immersion, really. While you have to keep game mechanics in mind when it comes to the possibilities we have (for example, you can not crash your ship into something, anything) for our capsuleer's action, the mission thing seems to run in the same league as the whole "sleep cycle" thing. "Sorry I couldn't make it to this vital assignment, it didn't align with my sleep cycles so I could not assist you." So, why not, you know, change your sleep cycles then, god damn it. Of course, our activity times as players are much, much harder to change than it would be for our characters. ;)
-
I also tend to treat it as "it happens, but not in the ridiculous numbers that game mechanics tell us it does."
For instance, during the early Incursion events when the Dev actors still only had the old-style NPCs to work with, someone actually ran the numbers and calculated that with players chewing through multiple waves of 20-30 BS at each event, Kuvakei was sometimes loosing more crew than he was abducting.
That pretty much solidified it for me.
-
Do not stare too deeply into the canon, or the canon will also stare into you.
Eve's storyline and how they interact with the mechanics will just break down the more closely you examine them. Its easier to just kind of let it be blurry. Focusing on details I've found causes more problems then it solves. The game mechanics are just not designed to work within the canon. The canon is something else, outside of the mechanical game. So just kinda fudge it. "I rescued some kidnappees" not "damsel rescue number 8,971"
-
To me, quoting the statistics was a rather blatant way of pointing out that for most people, including CCP it seems, null sec alliances seems to have no effect on this game. Here's another question. Aliza is rather wealthy, to the tune of several billions of ISK. How is she supposed to explain her new shiny Thanatos? Margin trading is not going to be the answer. She got it from CONCORD bounties from killing Serps.
-
Well, if I needed to explains omething like that, I'd go with exactly that - bounties - but I would probably imply it was fewer ships with higher bounties. Or 'Hunting Serps for bounties' without specifying #s.
-
And what is wrong with numbers? Reasonably speaking, on a day where I sit down and seriously rat (running a tengu/blaster Naga dual box) I generally say that I will rat to half a billion isk. This means that my little two man fleet, kills maybe 350 Serpentis battleships. That's not an insane number. I never claimed that I personally killed thousands of battleships a day, but that across Fade (a whole region where there are a ton of Serps) 42(ish) thousand ships were killed in a 48 hour period by all the capsuleers living there. How many trillions of people are there in New Eden? The current death rate of the world is roughly 153 thousand a day with a population of 6 billion. That ratio with a population of 50 trillion yields 1.275 billion dead per day. Sooooo, why is killing 5 million people every couple of days across a whole region of space breaking immersion?
-
Because not everyone dies due to :capsuleers:.
Because IRL not everyone dies to one SPECIFIC cause of death. Especially war casualties, which are extremely low compared to a lot of other natural or social factors.
-
Roughly a billion and a quarter people dead per day and capuleers in Fade are only responsible for less than two percent. Extend that out to all regions and you have capsuleers responsible for maybe half the deaths in New Eden. With as :grimdark: as EVE is, that's not totally unreasonable. Eve is worse than, say, Chicago in terms of violence. Factor in that medical technology is highly effective, one is more likely to die in New Eden to violence than heart disease.
-
Try to remember the survival rate of escape pods. Not everyone dies.
-
Factor in that medical technology is highly effective, one is more likely to die in New Eden to violence than heart disease.
With a good chunk of the population, if not the majority, living poor as hell, where every luxury (including healthcare) is reserved to the elite ? We can play the grimdark card both ways.
-
During the average "Andreus needs money" cycle, I - and thusly, Andreus - spend roughly six to eight hours a day missioning in a hi-sec system for a Roden Shipyards agent in Everyshore, killing rats. That time is generally related to the sheer number of rats there are in each level IV mission. If there are less rats, why is each mission taking so much time? What is he doing during that time?
-
I don't think it is something you can handwave. You can argue survival rates and the cost of these ships to those entities that lose the ships.... but raw kill counts are not something you can just say "Didn't happen." It did happen. People ingame actively and purposely took the time to destroy those ships. It's not fluff, or game mechanics... it HAPPENED. It is just as real and noteworthy as a nullsec battle.
I'm sorry if it breaks your immersion that [insert faction] gets stomped by the tens of thousands every day, but it's not something you can just handwave it and expect people who actually took part in these statistics to let you get away with it.
Try some creative reasoning if you can't stomach those numbers. Survival rates could be higher, or the actual cost of those battleships could be lower. Maybe you have to fork over 300 million for a battleship is unique to you being an independent capsuleer. Maybe faction navies pay an order of magnitude LESS to build their own battleships.
Simply saying "Nah. didn't happen." is silly.
-
I don't think it is something you can handwave. You can argue survival rates and the cost of these ships to those entities that lose the ships.... but raw kill counts are not something you can just say "Didn't happen." It did happen. People ingame actively and purposely took the time to destroy those ships. It's not fluff, or game mechanics... it HAPPENED. It is just as real and noteworthy as a nullsec battle.
I'm sorry if it breaks your immersion that [insert faction] gets stomped by the tens of thousands every day, but it's not something you can just handwave it and expect people who actually took part in these statistics to let you get away with it.
Try some creative reasoning if you can't stomach those numbers. Survival rates could be higher, or the actual cost of those battleships could be lower. Maybe you have to fork over 300 million for a battleship is unique to you being an independent capsuleer. Maybe faction navies pay an order of magnitude LESS to build their own battleships.
Simply saying "Nah. didn't happen." is silly.
(http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/8702/blessthispost.jpg)
-
I don't think it is something you can handwave. You can argue survival rates and the cost of these ships to those entities that lose the ships.... but raw kill counts are not something you can just say "Didn't happen." It did happen. People ingame actively and purposely took the time to destroy those ships. It's not fluff, or game mechanics... it HAPPENED. It is just as real and noteworthy as a nullsec battle.
I'm sorry if it breaks your immersion that [insert faction] gets stomped by the tens of thousands every day, but it's not something you can just handwave it and expect people who actually took part in these statistics to let you get away with it.
Try some creative reasoning if you can't stomach those numbers. Survival rates could be higher, or the actual cost of those battleships could be lower. Maybe you have to fork over 300 million for a battleship is unique to you being an independent capsuleer. Maybe faction navies pay an order of magnitude LESS to build their own battleships.
Simply saying "Nah. didn't happen." is silly.
It was probably not the intention but to tell people that their real issue is that "they can't stomach the numbers" where their real issue is the rationale and logic behind them sounds rather arrogant, if I may.
We are not saying that "it didnt happen". We only say it sounds silly, thus trying to be elusive ICly.
My question would rather be firstly why people care so much about exact numbers, and not what is actually around and behind them ? What makes exact numbers so important ? Why this sudden interest for the form instead of the real content ?
That things is like Eve Noah's Ark, it can't be properly explained without sounding silly, and we have to deal with it.
-
I don't think it is something you can handwave. You can argue survival rates and the cost of these ships to those entities that lose the ships.... but raw kill counts are not something you can just say "Didn't happen." It did happen. People ingame actively and purposely took the time to destroy those ships. It's not fluff, or game mechanics... it HAPPENED. It is just as real and noteworthy as a nullsec battle.
I'm sorry if it breaks your immersion that [insert faction] gets stomped by the tens of thousands every day, but it's not something you can just handwave it and expect people who actually took part in these statistics to let you get away with it.
Try some creative reasoning if you can't stomach those numbers. Survival rates could be higher, or the actual cost of those battleships could be lower. Maybe you have to fork over 300 million for a battleship is unique to you being an independent capsuleer. Maybe faction navies pay an order of magnitude LESS to build their own battleships.
Simply saying "Nah. didn't happen." is silly.
This is just farming. There are some things that simply can't happen with real people. For example, yesterday I was trying to kill a cruiser with a frigate, and a couple of other cruisers went in to help him. What we are doing with pirates can't be true: there are lots of ships in other belts, and if they were manned, they'd ambush you like nothing else. Actually, they'd get reinforcements from like several systems around you just to take your farming ship down.
But it didn't happen.
Because they are not peoples, they are bots for farming.
Of course, you are free to tell that you are killing pirates, and have some 'hard' battles against them, that your crew hold heroic when fighting outnumbered, and 'by miracle' you won...
Although daily NPC kill numbers, or even kills for several capsuleers... I mean players, or statistics against NPC are pointless. In real combat it simply can't happen. But still because in game it did happen, there could be explanations, that other forces were 'engaged' in fights against other, non capsuleer forces, and losses due to capsuleer activities are just less than a percent of total losses/victories by a choosen NPC faction.
Thus, from my opinion, posting of NPC kill statistic should be considered either as disinformation or trying to argue with incomplete data and without full awareness of the situation. (as worse than posting killmails)
-
Ignoring the stupidity of NPCs throwing themselves gleefully under the guns of capsuleer ships they have no chance of killing. And ignoring their attempts to call for backup or flee in terror, and ignoring their failing to use even basic combat tactics. It still comes down to a question of numbers.
Would someone be able to write up a very simple program to trawl the database on an average weekend and see the exact numbers of NPC/pirate kills and losses, if so you could use a pretty simple formula to calculate the total deaths, and figure out how many people there would need to be in New Eden for those loses to be sustainable, and see if the math works out with the supposed population.
It'd be something like:
(((NPC Kills on an average day across the cluster - (sansha ships killed+% of survivors from all others))*365 days)
then look at the % of people to die of violent deaths according to the canon (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Death) and (somehow) figure out how much of that is caused by capsuleers alone.
Then you have the following formula:
average yearly deaths to capsuleers (pulled from database)/100=percentage of deaths caused by capsuleers in the canon/total deaths
Thus giving you the total yearly deaths in the cluster. I think there might be a way to back-derive from this to total population required for this to be sustainable using real life as something of a rough metric. Its not great math, but you could see if the figures are ballpark accurate to the canonical population of the cluster. If so, the exact numbers make sense, if not, you have to fudge the numbers if you don't want to have the cluster population drained. CCP could easily do their own math to figure out the required population given these deaths, and retcon the population to make sense with ships killed (maybe someone should ask Falcon to do that)
-
For what it's worth, I know Dropbear was rather unhappy with the crew/NPC death numbers and very much wanted to do something about them, so it's not something that CCP is unaware of.
That said, I have to point out something about this quote (bolding mine):
And what is wrong with numbers? Reasonably speaking, on a day where I sit down and seriously rat (running a tengu/blaster Naga dual box) I generally say that I will rat to half a billion isk. This means that my little two man fleet, kills maybe 350 Serpentis battleships. That's not an insane number. I never claimed that I personally killed thousands of battleships a day, but that across Fade (a whole region where there are a ton of Serps) 42(ish) thousand ships were killed in a 48 hour period by all the capsuleers living there. How many trillions of people are there in New Eden? The current death rate of the world is roughly 153 thousand a day with a population of 6 billion. That ratio with a population of 50 trillion yields 1.275 billion dead per day. Sooooo, why is killing 5 million people every couple of days across a whole region of space breaking immersion?
I think the math is a bit off here: Assuming a roughly 38% survivor rate - towards the high end of what EVElopedia tells us will survive a battleship - from the very lowest possible crew aboard each Vindicator hull, 2,500 people are dieing from each kill.
Let's be conservative here and, from the above post, say you only kill 200 BS. That's 500,000 people from you, alone, in a single day. Now, I asked Alizabeth last night how many people ratted in Fade; her answer was 2-300, maybe more. Again, let's be conservative and say it's only 200. So,
2500 * 200 * 200 = One hundred million. Admittedly, these are very rough and very simplified mathematics, but still - one hundred million dead every single day from battleship NPC kills alone in a single region, not counting losses of any other type of NPC rat, with conservative estimates.
It could easily be far, far higher, assuming that number of crew don't always escape or there are more people ratting harder.
-
The number of rats being farmed in nullsec regions is probably ridiculous compared to the number of rats daily farmed by mission runners in high sec anyway. The numbers are proably mind boggling.
-
Ah, missuns... So, Back to damsels!
Anyone dare to estimate how many damsels are kidnapped daily in a single system, say, Motsu? :lol:
-
I think the math is a bit off here: Assuming a roughly 38% survivor rate - towards the high end of what EVElopedia tells us will survive a battleship - from the very lowest possible crew aboard each Vindicator hull, 2,500 people are dieing from each kill.
actually Esna according to this (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/New_Eden_crew_guidelines) article, the minimum NPC crew for a battleship is 500-700 people, so it might be a bit more reasonable.
Redoing the rest of your math with that page taken into account
assuming your own 38% survival rate on a 700 man battleship crew, 434 people die from an average battleship kill, so:
434*200*200=17,360,000 that's still a lot of people for a single region in a day, and Lyn is correct in saying the number of rats being farmed in nullsec is probably rather low compared to the amount farmed by mission runners in highsec, it might not be unreasonable, given the number of people in New Eden. I'm really not sure.
-
Read the top of the page - minimum crew is essentially a skeleton crew needed to undock a hull without any further functionality - i.e., no defenses, no enhanced navigation, no guns, probably no targeting...
I was working with the lowest possible numbers from the "Maximum crew" stat; I've noted elsewhere my unhappiness that CCP didn't provide a "minimum fully operational crew" statistic on that page, so using the bare lowest edge of "max crew" seemed to be the likely closest possible.
-
Eeeesh. Okay, hrm. Yeah. I see where you're coming from there.
The math really just doesn't seem to work out.
I wish CCP would just make NPCs not be derpy, and cut all the missions to a very few ships with much more abilities and higher bounties. A single BS rat should pose a good bit of trouble to a single capsuleer ship. We'd still be demigods and all powerful, because a competent pilot could still win without a huge amount of trouble, and we could still just respawn and try again if we were destroyed, but it'd at least make running missions a bit more interesting then 'warp to a mission and shoot 3 dozen harmless red pluses.' Not to mention correcting the crazy numbers.
-
When I posted on the IGS, I said with a crew of 250, at the very low end of the scale. I assumed that were they at full crew they would be much more difficult (reserved for the elite and faction ships). Also, I posted that Alizabeth In Character kills escape pods. She doesn't have any sense of e-honour and likes to not have to fight the same people twice. Other people, I'm sure let the escape pods go.
As for saying that the rats are stupid, speaking from personal combat experience actions are dictated by orders. Sure, if you're in a belt and a patrol gets attacked from another belt, you might be tempted to go and help out (which is what happened to me once, our section moved to assist Marines on the Euphrates) but then the location you were assigned is now uncovered (which is what happened again, our SSgt was chewed out by the LT for uncovering the ASR.).
I don't think it is something you can handwave. You can argue survival rates and the cost of these ships to those entities that lose the ships.... but raw kill counts are not something you can just say "Didn't happen." It did happen. People ingame actively and purposely took the time to destroy those ships. It's not fluff, or game mechanics... it HAPPENED. It is just as real and noteworthy as a nullsec battle.
I'm sorry if it breaks your immersion that [insert faction] gets stomped by the tens of thousands every day, but it's not something you can just handwave it and expect people who actually took part in these statistics to let you get away with it.
Try some creative reasoning if you can't stomach those numbers. Survival rates could be higher, or the actual cost of those battleships could be lower. Maybe you have to fork over 300 million for a battleship is unique to you being an independent capsuleer. Maybe faction navies pay an order of magnitude LESS to build their own battleships.
Simply saying "Nah. didn't happen." is silly.
Katrina, can I have your babies?
On an aside, most governments, large entities can get things in bulk for much cheaper than individuals. Also, capsuleer ships, due to the pod/ship interface might be crazily expensive. They might be the deluxe model, since capsuleers can and will pay for the best. The standard rats are probably something akin to the basic US soldier in terms of equipment; elite and faction rats are probably akin to the Seals or MarSOC in terms of equipment, all the coolest toys, all the high tech gizmos. Capsuleers, well, we're like Tony Stark.
-
For what it's worth, I know Dropbear was rather unhappy with the crew/NPC death numbers and very much wanted to do something about them, so it's not something that CCP is unaware of.
This. CCP is aware of the realism issue of crew survival rates. It's not sustainable even if you just count player ship deaths, completely ignoring the wholly ridiculous number of NPC deaths.
Anyways, my point still stands. The numbers CCP has given us might still be a bit unreasonable, and you're all completely legitimized to argue survival rates or material costs. But I stand by what I said. You cannot discount actual kill counts that happen ingame thanks to player action. It doesn't set a good precedent.
I'll set an example. Let's say I killed 100 Angel Cartel ships in a day. A Cartel roleplayer doesn't like that I've been farming their people, and thus denies that I've been killing off so many of their associates because the numbers are too extreme. How is that fair to me?
How is that different from me killing 100 player ships in a day (a good solid nullsec blob battle), and you saying it never happened? I took the action. I have ingame data to prove it. Wallet transaction logs, LP transaction logs, and updates to the world map visible to everyone.
But, oh just 100 NPC ships is okay, you say. That's not too bad.... except you're only counting one person. Me. If it's okay for me to make that claim, why is it suddenly not okay to also include the claims of thousands of other EVE players who killed 100 NPCs?
Denying an event that not only happened due to purposeful action by a player character, but also has multiple sources of proof to back up the claim is not acceptable. Denying actions when counted in bulk, or twisting the numbers to suit your fancy is equally unacceptable.
Katrina, can I have your babies?
Wat. :eek:
-
Anyways, my point still stands. The numbers CCP has given us might still be a bit unreasonable, and you're all completely legitimized to argue survival rates or material costs. But I stand by what I said. You cannot discount actual kill counts that happen ingame thanks to player action. It doesn't set a good precedent.
I'll set an example. Let's say I killed 100 Angel Cartel ships in a day. A Cartel roleplayer doesn't like that I've been farming their people, and thus denies that I've been killing off so many of their associates because the numbers are too extreme. How is that fair to me?
On the other hand I think you would be perfectly justified not to claim to have killed those 100 ships, but maybe fewer or not to focus on the exact numbers at all. If someone feels it breakes their immersion, to talk about how they again killed xxx ships today again, it's a perfectly valid choice for them to talk as if it were fewer ship they themselves have shot out of their skies.
-
Katrina, can I have your babies?
Wat. :eek:
You're so damn sexy when you're right. :P
All joking aside, Katrina sums up the arguments better than I can. Someone saying that my eight hours of gametime doesn't count because they don't like what I did is :not cool:.
-
I don't think that's what is being said. I think most of what is being said is that for some people, it is more useful from an immersion or RP standpoint for them to view (for example) those 8 hours differently than the literal IG representation of them. For them. Noone (I think) is saying that you would have to view them the same way (although admittedly things get awkward when the discussion comes up IG).
Edit: I view it in the same way as, for example, folks who find that it serves their immersion best if they regard what their character sees as exactly what's on-screen at all times. It isn't the way I do it, but there is plenty of room for a wide variety of interpretations of the way that game mechanics and RP interact - and as long as noone decides to force theirs on other people, things generally work out fine with only the occasional rough patch.
-
There's a mission, called "Ritualist Raids", where the player is tasked with attacking a blood raider complex, and destroying the cathedral, the central holy place of the complex.
Opposing forces are a pair of battleships, with supporting battlecruisers, destroyers and frigates.
The agent recommends you do not go alone.
It is however, completable by a single player in a battleship. This may just be because of skillpoint growth of the player, as a lot of missions are completable (slowly) in a battleship fitted with plain tech1 modules (otherwise, what are meta modules for?).
The mission though, is I feel, a more "realistic" situation, in that if you follow the agent's recommendation, then you'd have a battleship plus support. An actual task force, against an enemy force that makes sense.
Unlike other missions, such as "Blockade", where there are waves and waves of battleship npcs.
Or "Damsel in Distress" for that matter. It's just a bit silly.
-
This whole debate is why if I feel the need to discuss PVE actions IC, I tend to avoid bringing numbers of any sort into it aside from the occasional sole exception of how long I've been out doing it. Instead I refer to "patrols" (exploration/probing), "contract work for <corp>" (missions), etc.
The actual numbers of (lost) ships and crew involved are mostly immaterial or irrelevant to RP in the long run, in my opinion. The numbers will add up over time just the same, so your name is going to end up on one or more factions' shitlist one way or another - it merely becomes a question of how many gold star stickers the peons get for wrecking your hull in the end. ;)
We also have the problem that many of our characters actively don't want to think or talk about the numbers involved -or give that impression. Unless of course, it's complaining about our own crews...
-
I can shoot any attempt to rationalize belt NPCs, missions and the like full of holes without any problem. You need to have a seriously warped sense of logic or be immune to things like internal consistency to even attempt to take NPC ships and everything that is associated with at them at face value.
Everybody handwaves stuff, only everyone handwaves different stuff. People will adamantly maintain that they've killed 300 battleships, but when asked what they think about missions, nobody ever says: 'well hey, you know, these guys always send me on the same type of missions, the mission briefings are 100% similar, and the hostiles inside the missions always have *exactly* the same amount and type of ships. In fact, I do not know where Kruul gets his funding or his clones, but I alone have killed him a 100 times. Sometimes I talk to others, and it turns out there are hundreds of people trying to rescue exactly the same damsel from the same bad guy, but only in a slightly different location. Isn't that odd?"
Players conveniently ignore lots of stuff while they should have them speaking out in amazement.
It is much easier to rationalize everything by having an Ender's Game like explanation: "you know, these ships aren't really there, but Concord just projects them into your pod, and provides you with an incentive to shoot them. Concord is training you for a battle against a horrible enemy by letting you shoot at computer generated opponents"
-
Personally speaking I think the answer is to increase the toughness and capabilities of the NPC ships in much the same way as they did in the recent FW update whilst reducing the numbers required.
-
I would also really like to have some "bosses" like Kruul and Tiago Kargaz being actual factionned capsuleers with stats (more or less) matching your own, facing them alone (or in few numbers) like you do with Dagan.
-
Personally, I take kill numbers at face value. What I don't take at face value is the flavor text. I assume, as a matter of course, that every agent is lying their tits off in regards to what you're actually being sent out to do - and they don't even bother to hide that they're lying, or they'd be more careful about not recycling their stories so much. You get just enough information to be able to find and kill what they want you to kill, but every piece of context in a mission is a bald-faced lie. It doesn't have to be believable, it just has to generate enough white noise that digging through the bullshit becomes a pain for whoever tries to look closer.
The damsel, whoever she actually is, is not in distress. Who'd send someone to blow up the place where their daughter is being held captive, anyway? The pleasure gardens where she's presumably held captive are probably not pleasure gardens at all. The only thing that indicates to us that they are is the old Simon the Sorcerer rationale of "when I move my mouse pointer over you, it says wizards". "Kruul" is probably a bunch of different people, and if "his" DNA actually matches other samples of itself, it's probably from someone who'd never even been aboard the ship.
I've had agents asking me to thwart Amarrian incursions into Amarrian-owned systems (flying missions from a station that's located inside "enemy territory" can yield some interesting objectives, let me tell you). I've had agents sending me out to recover their stolen lunch. If an agent sent me out to destroy the lair of an evil space unicorn, I wouldn't blink an eye, IC or OOC.
-
Personally, I take kill numbers at face value. What I don't take at face value is the flavor text. I assume, as a matter of course, that every agent is lying their tits off in regards to what you're actually being sent out to do - and they don't even bother to hide that they're lying, or they'd be more careful about not recycling their stories so much. You get just enough information to be able to find and kill what they want you to kill, but every piece of context in a mission is a bald-faced lie. It doesn't have to be believable, it just has to generate enough white noise that digging through the bullshit becomes a pain for whoever tries to look closer.
So, by the same token, you wouldn't care if another capsuleer called you a liar if you say you killed X NPC ships, because you are assuming lying is the norm?
And, why would you not trust the agents, but would completely trust in your Concord-controlled instruments?
-
My personal take on mission briefs is that they are representative of a whole class of missions. Named NPC's I take as representative of Pirate capsuleers (granted, very bad ones). The number of kills I take as actual however. Is it possible we are having a problem of scale here? Is it possible that the number of settled planets and habitats in the cluster actually could support this huge loss of life?
I do get a tad confused at NPC industrials riding to the attack in intercept missions (and not warping off leaving their escort to cover for them). I have actually seen belt rats run away, long before Incursion, so there is that.
-
So, by the same token, you wouldn't care if another capsuleer called you a liar if you say you killed X NPC ships, because you are assuming lying is the norm?
And, why would you not trust the agents, but would completely trust in your Concord-controlled instruments?
I don't see how it's by the same token at all, but capsuleers calling other capsuleers liars is the norm. So that's all par for the course, too.
As for the "CONCORD-controlled instruments", I thought my argument implied I don't trust them completely, at least as far as accurate target identification in missions go. Although it's specifically the information packages uploaded by agents I don't trust. As for the simple fact of there being targets, if that's what you're getting at, and of the targets shooting back, yes, I do trust that. I expend real ammunition taking them down, they drop real, salvageable loot, and if I screw up bad enough, they destroy my ship. So they pretty much have to be real, unless you assume a Matrix-style reality - which basically amounts to simply dismantling the 4th wall.
-
(flying missions from a station that's located inside "enemy territory" can yield some interesting objectives, let me tell you). I've had agents sending me out to recover their stolen lunch. If an agent sent me out to destroy the lair of an evil space unicorn, I wouldn't blink an eye, IC or OOC.
I've been entertained by missions where I've had to transport Kamieras from Caldari stations to Minmatar ones for mental health evaluations.
-
In the Amarr cosmos missions, it is revealed that the Blood Raiders are working on mass cloning techniques.
These could be used to clone up legions of replacement ship crews.
Sansha's Nation appears to have similar technologies.
Guristas would probably have something derived from the Tube children technology.
Serpentis are also heavily into biotechnologies.
Angel Cartel recruit from Minmatar, who would appear to reproduce quickly.
They might be able to replace the huge amount of losses apparently suffered daily.
However, there is the question of if what is visible is all that exists.
Example. Backstory mentions much about clone facilities, and people clambering out of cloning chambers, or clone reanimation units and so on.
Yet, if you are podded, you will reappear in your captains quarters, seemingly without having gone anywhere near any such cloning service facility on the station.
There are many such things like that, where the backstory and the visible ingame reality vary considerably. Backstory has Minmatar planets occupied by Amarr forces, none of which were visible ingame, and indeed, went against the ingame reality where the Amarr militia had never captured the system mentioned.
In any case, it does make you wonder.
If say, the Guristas, have the industrial capacity to build all those ships, and the human resources to recruit&train or clone&replace sufficient crews for them, then... why do they need to pirate at all ?
-
Player Vs Environment. A series of Game Mechanics. From an IC-POW, here is no logic behind it, there is no explanation or idea that will suffice to hand-wave it.
There are several problems, I'll high-light 3 just to serve as examples.
1. The seemingly endless resources.
How many tons of materials do any single Empire, let alone the pirate factions produce on a daily basis?
The average price, in Tritanium, needed to build your average battleship is 7 million units. Let's ignore all other materials needed for now and go with this. A well-skilled player in a T2 fitted, bonus'ed Hulk using specialized implants still use hours to mine the Veldspar needed to aquire 7 million units of Tritanium, even with perfect refining and no tax. On any given day in the MMORPG EVE-Online, thousands of NPC Battleships are blown up in high-sec alone, let alone ratted in low-sec and null-space. How many thousands of NPC Hulks are needed to mine how long to keep up with that strain, ignoring for now the need to build new Battlecruisers, Cruisers, Destroyers and Frigates?
Let's go with infinite resources and near non-existent build times for now.
2. The endless supply of new crew.
Let's go with any of the ideas presented so far to explain this one. Or just say that any Empire or Pirate faction mass-produce legions of clones from well-trained crew well-versed in their individual jobs and that this is 'installed' into the clones as theoretical skills upon birth as fully grown adult Humans, and that within days hours of development, they are crewing yet another finished vessel from the endless resources and non-existent production times.
You now have an endless source or ships and personell to man them. What to do with it?
3. The endless stupidity.
This is the biggest problem of them all IMHO. The Pirate factions and the Empires never seem to learn. Endless waves of NPC vessels are daily out doing whatever it is your agent(s) want you to stop, or endlessly patrolling the resources they never seem to bother touching, using the same technology, fleet compositions, tactics and strategy. They never learn. Despite the inevitable result being utter failure and destruction of their assets in nearly 100% of all cases, no alteration of tactics, no change of strategy, no variation in possible actions are observed.
Even the most stubborn commander *will* alter his or her strategy when confronted by the very same result every single time, no matter how expendable and endlessly repacable your assets are. There is no logical or even remotely reasonable way to explain why places like Dodixie and any other missioning 'hub' is assaulted every day using the very same means as the day before, with the same predictable results.
---
These are but a few of the reasons why, for us as Role-Players, trying to have our characters (who we pretend lives in a real universe comprised of Humans, Nations and their realistic behaviour and interaction with each other) go in detail about what is at it's core a few very unrealistic but needed Game Mechanics is a horrible idea. It punches huge holes in immersion and shows the game's limitations for all to see. Ratting, missioning, un-depletable resources and so on, it can't be detailed in any IC conversation or context, because it forces us to try to explain utterly unrealistic things in an IC manner.
---
I'm hoping this won't come off as too YDIW, but I'll have to leave this here anyway - frankly, none of my toons will ever buy any kind of far-fetched explanation for the above factors, and I *will* try my best to smooth over any of these things if anything like it comes up IC. I honestly think it's for the best that we don't try to explain this away, because in the interest of good RP and immersion, we can't.
-
For what it's worth, I think you've very accurately layed out the same problems I have with taking NPC kills at face value, although I'd add that the "never changing NPCs" issue is in fact even more stark in FW, where you are often sent after field commanders described as highly dangerous and capable... who then proceed to use the exact same AI-limited tactics and actions as any other NPC in the game.
-
I really agree with 1 and 2, but I am somewhat mitigated with point 3. Similar cases are not unheared of.
Why criminals continue to appear and do their stuff on a continual basis ? Because they are stupid ? Maybe, but mostly because it can pay off, or either because they actually are stupid and rarely think rationaly. Ok, we can argue that they are not organized entities like the pirate and empire factions.
Then why do sovereign states IRL continue to send their infiltrated agents in other countries, at the risk for them being found out ? We still continue to hear here and there of blunders.
Of course, that is completely out of proportion considering the actual number of such cases ingame, but that mostly refers to point 1 and 2.
-
It's a problem with lots of games, not just EVE or MMOs in general. Most games that have non-dynamic, repeatable content will run into the issue of sustainability sooner or later.
Even a game like Skyrim (yes, I finally picked it up in November; yes, I'm enjoying the shit out of it; shut up, I know I should've gotten it a year ago :P) has it with enemies that respawn in dungeons after some number of ingame days - it can be explained away a few times with certain types of enemies (regular living enemies like bandits, Imperials/Stormcloaks, etc.) but one has to wonder how that huge barrow I cleaned out suddenly respawns all of the Draugr inside it... including the leveled 'boss'... over and over again.
-
@ LYn Farel:
Well, in RL, you may hear of one bad op every few years, give or take. If the ratio in EVE was reflected IRL, then if even one in a thousand bad ops were reported, you would hear of one to a dozen failed ops every week at the least. If, say, the US government was met with a situation where they lost thousands of agents every day, constantly trying the same things in the same exact ways and meetings with near 100% failure ratio, they would change tactics and/or try something else at the very least, and they would also run out of agents very, very fast. NPC factions in EVE do neither. They have nedless forces and keep trying the same things over and over again in the same ways, with the same results.
It's a problem with lots of games, not just EVE or MMOs in general. Most games that have non-dynamic, repeatable content will run into the issue of sustainability sooner or later.
Even a game like Skyrim (yes, I finally picked it up in November; yes, I'm enjoying the shit out of it; shut up, I know I should've gotten it a year ago :P) has it with enemies that respawn in dungeons after some number of ingame days - it can be explained away a few times with certain types of enemies (regular living enemies like bandits, Imperials/Stormcloaks, etc.) but one has to wonder how that huge barrow I cleaned out suddenly respawns all of the Draugr inside it... including the leveled 'boss'... over and over again.
And this is the gist of my point; All the things you mention here and all the things mentioned in my post, things like missions, ratting and so on, it's GAME content, farmable mobs, it's the same as trying to explain why all those asteroids that was strip-mined yesterday has respawned today.
What I'm saying is, that it's a completely futile effort to try and rationalize IC the mechanics in the game that allows for endless numbers of farm mobs and resources because the only logical explanation is that it's a game-design to keep the player's floating with resources, standings, ISK and entertainment. It's the infinite supply of rats and resources coupled with the finite number of mission variety and variety of rat AI moves that limits the game. Don't matter how many there is, there are only so many.
So in the interest in maintaining our IC belief that the universe is a real place and things are done due to realistic reasons we simply can't go into detail about the game's mechanics, such as the missioning, resourcing and ratting systems, because there are no acceptable IC explanations available.
BTW, gratz with getting Skyrim. I should return to it and finish it one of these days...
-
BTW, gratz with getting Skyrim. I should return to it and finish it one of these days...
"Skyrim" "finish it"
... Good thing I read this post after I got home, I might've gotten fired for how much laughing I'd have been doing. :P
-
BTW, gratz with getting Skyrim. I should return to it and finish it one of these days...
"Skyrim" "finish it"
... Good thing I read this post after I got home, I might've gotten fired for how much laughing I'd have been doing. :P
Oh come on, it's not an impossible prospect to finish all quests and story-lines :oops:
-
I'm of the mind that the "same fleet comp, same formations" thing actually DOES work out for the NPC factions...most of the time. When they're not detected and a capsuleer isn't sicked after them, tried-and-true tactics are what the NPCs would stick with. The capsuleer doing contract work and popping up on their overviews is most likely an outside-context problem for them. So if the majority of these clandestine ops using the same predictable tactics and the like are succesful when a capsuleer doesn't show up, it would make sense to surprise the hell out of them when you do show up and they're massively unprepared.
But then, the above explanation contains much handwavium.
-
I'd like to see the scale of NPC slaughter reduced, without changing the reward system or difficulty of each mission.
For example, instead of slogging through thirty-six Serpentis battleships on a given mission, you instead fight through thirty-six frigates and dessies with lots of remote drones. They'll have much higher EHP and DPS than before (still quite less than capsuleer standard), and offer the same kind of bounty and salvage.
NPC battleships would be quite rare, reserved for end arc bosses or rare plexes or whatever.
This would reduce the damage done to immersion while still keeping the economy more-or-less intact. Aside from reducing the daily body count to possibly believable levels, it also helps explain the incompetent nature of your opponents. After all, you're only facing mooks in frigates and dessies. The masterminds of the criminal cartels, and the admiralty of the four great nations aren't sitting around in easy-to-kill battleships using the same tactics over and over again. Just their lesser peons.
There are some pitfalls, however.
- Killing heavily tanked frigs and dessies is a lot different from killing heavily tanked battleships. Assuming you want existing mission-runner fits to still be viable, some balance will have to be done regarding EHP ratios to sig radius, etc.
- This would require a LOT of work. Designing new NPCS, modifying existing mission scripts, editing text where appropriate, etc. I'm not sure it's worth the effort, especially if it gets in the way of an expansion or iteration. And I don't think CCP will put out that kind of effort just for immersion's sake.
-
Neither do I. I'd love it see something like that indeed, but as stated, the likelyhood it will happen is just... really low.
Well, until it happens, the de-facto 'never detail me your mission/ratting efforts' simply need to be kept up. The only problem with that is the very idea to do so is not universally agreed on or even known. Oh well, what can you do?
(Other than remind anyone that don't hold to this, that is :D)
Actually, I would not mind if missions were changed like this and I had to run a little min-maxing to figure out the new 'optimal' missioning/ratting boat. Something tells me it would be something akin to a T3 crusier or HAC, and I rat null-space in HAC's allready anyway, so that wouldn't bother me at all. (Ishtar's and Zealot's make nice, agile, powerful ratting-boats indeed.)
-
So what would be the point to have battleships ? What's the use for maraudeurs ?
No, really, I would just prefer to see them make rats a lot tougher for very few of them, with increased bounties to compensate. Easier to do.
-
So what would be the point to have battleships ? What's the use for maraudeurs ?
No, really, I would just prefer to see them make rats a lot tougher for very few of them, with increased bounties to compensate. Easier to do.
Wow, totally forgot to add my toughts around Marauders to the last post, sorry about that.
... and now ofc I don't recall even half of it. Figures. Anyhow, it basically went along the idea that if anything like the above went through Marauders would need to be adjusted, perhaps to bonus a large number of smaller weapons (assuming they want to treat Marauders like the glorified mission-boats they are and not the 'leet pvp boats' their descriptions try to push them as) like say, 8 numbers of whatever weapon-systems your ship favors. 8 heavy missile launchers for the Golem that all get double DPS bonus or whatever. So long as they were brought in line with the new way missions work it would be fine, null/low ratting could still be done in HAC's as mentioned.
-
Not very impressive for a tech 2 battleship though.
A Paladin without tachyons ? :/
-
Give them a ridiculous tracking bonus that takes a module to work that can only be used on rats.
-
Wouldn't that look a little silly ?
You have seen what it looks like when firing on fast moving bugs with Large guns, especially lasers ? :|
-
Battleships would have use in Incursions, which is nominally high-level PvE. The progression will still be there.
Also, we've yet to see tiericide hit ships battlecruiser and larger.
-
This thread was really interesting to me for all the different viewpoints expressed.
I have sat on the side of the fence that says "every kill counts literally". I've written a few pieces of fiction for Sakaane where she contemplates the literal numbers of pirate ships, and thus human lives, she has killed as a mechanism to explore how in touch with her humanity she still is, where her "badness level" might be, and so on, so this means at times I've used actual numbers of mission ships killed in my fiction.
But I also agree that we have to take certain aspects of mission running with a pretty big grain of salt to maintain immersion. I don't think the amount of NPC ships killed can be sustainable ICly. Even if ships can be salvaged and/or recycled, the materials have to be a finite resource. In real life, asteroids and moons don't grow back.
I've also tried to find ways to explain repeatedly offered missions ICly in attempt to keep my brain from oozing out through my nose. The damsel doesn't have to be the same chick every time; there are, after all, a lot of irresponsible young women in New Eden. There's another mission out there that bugs me too: Stolen Arms. The flavor text for that mission is ridiculous (9x crates totalling 5400m3 is a private gun collection? Do I look stupid to you?). But EVE being a :grimdark: universe, and the empires all having a certain level of corruption in them, I like to think that stupid missions like that one must be cover stories for Other Stuff (like someone else mentioend).
You can choose ICly to sometimes "read between the lines". We do have the option to decline the mission. Sakaane always declines Stolen Arms; in her world the agent admitted it's a bluff and she just doesn't want to be anybody's potential scapegoat (or whatever). The agent told her that cover story works on pilots more often than might be expected because a certain portion of pilots just don't care enough to dig more deeply or are too busy to look closely. And why should they? They're demigods. So long as it pays well, maybe they just don't care what "the little people" get up to.
Anyway, for someone like me, I think missioning serves a purpose in my RP but how I portray it (specific or vague) depends on the subject matter and what I'm trying to achieve with the RP at the time.
-
assuming they want to treat Marauders like the glorified mission-boats they are and not the 'leet pvp boats' their descriptions try to push them as
Or they could push to make high-level missioning more "team focused" and make Marauders all about mutual support (whether for PvE or PvP)...
Maybe that is dangerous, but a few straightforward weaknesses/drawbacks (cap stability, sensor strength, signature radius). The clear counter to the Marauders would be T2 Recons.
-
assuming they want to treat Marauders like the glorified mission-boats they are and not the 'leet pvp boats' their descriptions try to push them as
Or they could push to make high-level missioning more "team focused" and make Marauders all about mutual support (whether for PvE or PvP)...
Maybe that is dangerous, but a few straightforward weaknesses/drawbacks (cap stability, sensor strength, signature radius). The clear counter to the Marauders would be T2 Recons.
Yes, without making them logis it would be quite cool to have group pve for once (high level, maybe L5 in high sec ?).
Though that would require intelligent design not to eventually see people pimping their ship to the point they could compensate the lack of teamates by officer shinies.
-
Plemty Neuting, tracking-disrupting, consentrating defender missiles on one target at a time, etc.
Basically, make doing it solo a near suicidal prospect, regardless of pimp-level on your boat.
-
Plemty Neuting, tracking-disrupting, consentrating defender missiles on one target at a time, etc.
Basically, make doing it solo a near suicidal prospect, regardless of pimp-level on your boat.
Which should be straight-forward in terms of mission design - build balanced NPC fleets with DPS, EW, and Logi! Make the NPCs appear "smart."
-
Plemty Neuting, tracking-disrupting, consentrating defender missiles on one target at a time, etc.
Basically, make doing it solo a near suicidal prospect, regardless of pimp-level on your boat.
Which should be straight-forward in terms of mission design - build balanced NPC fleets with DPS, EW, and Logi! Make the NPCs appear "smart."
I'm not sure CCP is willing to take such drastic steps against solo play.
-
1: The factions can afford these losses, there is a whole lot going on in the universe that can't be seen by the players. (only thing that can explain the amounts of npc ships exploded by players)
cannot be reconciled with:
2: Capsuleers are the definitive power in modern space combat, what capsuleers do is vastly more important than anything any faction can do. (justifications for the empyrean war, nullsec capsuleer empires being of importance, etc)
The news stories about the militia occupying somewhere, e.g. the caldari occupying all of the contestable space leading to Foiritain's resignation etc., and other stories, create the idea that what capsuleers do is significantly relevant to the wider universe.
So then, given the level of warfare in places like Delve, or Fountain, why then, do the Blood Raiders and Serpentis still exist ? They'd surely have been wiped out by capsuleer efforts long ago, if capsuleers were powerful and relevant.
Since the Blood Raiders and Serpentis still exist and are powerful and relevant (evidenced by their live event things), then capsuleer efforts are irrelevant and insignificant to the factions as a whole.
So then, given that capsuleers are irrelevant, why then did the caldari militia occupation by capsuleer elements matter for the Federation elections ?
-
Plemty Neuting, tracking-disrupting, consentrating defender missiles on one target at a time, etc.
Basically, make doing it solo a near suicidal prospect, regardless of pimp-level on your boat.
Which should be straight-forward in terms of mission design - build balanced NPC fleets with DPS, EW, and Logi! Make the NPCs appear "smart."
I'm not sure CCP is willing to take such drastic steps against solo play.
Only speaking about hypothetical high tier missions for small groups of player, not the usual solo missions.
-
The two posts by CCP Eterne here: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2426134#post2426134
I think these are significant, when it comes to trying to think about the disparity between what you see ingame and what things say in the background.
-
Plemty Neuting, tracking-disrupting, consentrating defender missiles on one target at a time, etc.
Basically, make doing it solo a near suicidal prospect, regardless of pimp-level on your boat.
Which should be straight-forward in terms of mission design - build balanced NPC fleets with DPS, EW, and Logi! Make the NPCs appear "smart."
I'm not sure CCP is willing to take such drastic steps against solo play.
Only speaking about hypothetical high tier missions for small groups of player, not the usual solo missions.
There is nothing stopping players from taking on most current missions* as a group, other than it spreads the ISK around (but can generally be completed faster).
*It has been forever since I actually ran missions. I have lived in null for the past year managing industry stuff and before that focused on industry in low-sec. Maybe I don't know what I am talking about.
-
Plemty Neuting, tracking-disrupting, consentrating defender missiles on one target at a time, etc.
Basically, make doing it solo a near suicidal prospect, regardless of pimp-level on your boat.
Which should be straight-forward in terms of mission design - build balanced NPC fleets with DPS, EW, and Logi! Make the NPCs appear "smart."
I'm not sure CCP is willing to take such drastic steps against solo play.
Only speaking about hypothetical high tier missions for small groups of player, not the usual solo missions.
There is nothing stopping players from taking on most current missions* as a group, other than it spreads the ISK around (but can generally be completed faster).
*It has been forever since I actually ran missions. I have lived in null for the past year managing industry stuff and before that focused on industry in low-sec. Maybe I don't know what I am talking about.
It's more efficient to have 1 person running their own missions and providing to a pool, than multiple people in the same mission. So, 5 people running level 4s separately would net more money than 5 people in the same mission. That is not group PVE.
Level 5s are perfect for group PVE in my experience, but due to their lowsec restricted nature it's content 90% of mission runners will not experience.
-
The fact that it becomes not financially sensible is what stops most people.
Mission payouts themselves are already abysmal in highsec compared to most other sources of income - which means the only actual pay is in bounties/tags and loot, and that usually isn't too amazing either. Standings get split horribad too ("equally") for everyone in the fleet whether or not they're actually in the mission.
Pretty much what Ghost said. The efficient (money-wise) way to do it doesn't really qualify as group PVE, and the only other options are L5s or Incursions.
-
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2462718#post2462718
relevant? CCP considering reduction in npc numbers.
-
\o/