Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Louella Dougans on 20 Dec 2014, 08:27
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On one or more of the current threads on the IGS, there is an argument about Amarr Navy ships invading people's space and taking slaves.
This is from a bunch of missions, such as "Human Cattle", an L2 mission series, and "Portal to War", an L3 mission series.
The large imperial fleets in these missions is frequently presented as IC evidence of the Amarr Navy's wrongdoings and much more, in opposition to news stories and evelopedia articles about the Emperor Heideran's proclamations that such things are illegal.
Similarly, there are other missions where the other major power navies are engaged in equally sinister things.
A Federation Navy task force attempts to protect a Gallente pop star who committed statutory rape.
Federation Intelligence gets a capsuleer to destroy Minmatar refugee convoys, so they can use the footage and bodies as propaganda.
Caldari Navy fleets use a war memorial from the 1st Gallente-Caldari war as a staging point.
Then, there are the many agents in opposing faction space, which give you missions that defy all reason. Gallente agents, deep in Amarr space, give you a mission to stop Amarr forces from bombarding an Amarr planet. Amarr agents deep in Minmatar space, tell you to stop the Republic Fleet from dropping virus bombs onto a Minmatar world.
Lots and lots of this sort of thing. You do missions, you get a big amount of things about how bad the opposing powers are.
Except...
The Caldari Navy and Federation Navy fought a battle once, above Caldari Prime, and it was WORLD CHANGING.
Even though the Caldari Navy routinely invades Luminaire with forces thousands of times larger than those that fought in that battle, that never, ever, makes a difference.
Similarly, for say the Blood Raiders, then they routinely invade the Throne Worlds with vast fleets of battleships and supporting cruisers and frigates, a thousand times a day, and this doesn't even register.
A pair of Ashimmus traverse a few systems then get blown up, and this is NEWS.
I feel that the largely static pool of missions, and the anti-enemy faction missions in particular, have an immense detrimental effect on RP, and on the ability of players and CCP to advance the storyline.
What good is ingame news, when it doesn't change the pool of missions ? What good is it, to see a chronicle or news story, where the Empress announces that all the MInmatar are now freed, when as soon as you log in, you can take a mission to stop the slave trade ?
What good is it, to try and argue about how the Gallente/Caldari war should be settled, when every hour, you are presented with evidence of the mutual atrocities ?
All these missions do, to my mind, is cause the same old arguments to be brought up again, and again, and again, with nothing ever changing, and that this has a detrimental effect on RP.
I'd suggest, that anti-faction missions, should either be moved to FW agents, or to the regions of space where FW takes place. So, e.g. in Devoid, the highsec agents might give anti-Minmatar missions, but not the agents in highsec Domain. Because Devoid is part of the FW warzone.
Similarly, you'd only get anti-Caldari missions in the regions which have FW contestable systems.
I think this might help, if complete removal of those missions wasn't possible or desirable.
Also, more ingame news, so players arent confronted by the completely static nature of the game world as blatantly.
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What is more detrimental to RP is the whitewashing of factions. The example that annoys me the most (due to my current position as pretty much the only rawrmatar in New Eden) is "No, the Empire can and does not do no wrong. We don't do slave raiding. We don't do anything bad. We're the victims here." That's fine IC, as it's a good example of propaganda and good face outwards etc, but if you also remove the proof that this is not the case you remove and ruin quite a lot of the driving force for RP between factions.
I honestly don't like the idea of removing the uncomfortable bits that make your own faction a little less than pristine. I really love the fact that there are missions where the Republic are doing horrible things. It means my faction isn't the white to the Amarr's black. It's a faction that is struggling with doing what needs to be done for their own sake, while trying to maintain some moral and ethical high ground, etc etc. This makes a faction interesting.
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EVE suffers from an inherent severe divide between the game world and the lore world, like all MMOs do. Just like in Swords of Guildcraft Online you do the same quest to kill X number of orcs, and a hundred other players are also killing X number of orcs, the orcs will still invade by the millions every day and it's only mentioned in passing one zone away.
Same with EVE. You have to provide content for everybody, and missions were an early form of that content that was implemented with a healthy dosage of suspension of disbelief.
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You claim whitewashing where there is none, Miz. Whitewashing implies intentionally ignoring that they exist. Most people have readily admitted to their existence. What we HAVE said though is that they're illegal, and that Imperial authorites crack down on them, which is directly stated in lore. Now, the authorites do often turn a blind eye, but that is entirely different from it being legal and officially sanctioned.
I don't feel uncomfortable bits should be removed. They can and do happen, by every faction. I DO think there needs to be more options to choose how to handle it. If you are given a mission to do something illegal by your faction, then you should have the option to go through with the mission or expose/sabotage it. Rejecting the mission is an option too, but I think providing branches like with epic arcs is a more engaging method. Caldari already have this in the form of their epic arc, where you have the choice to support the shady SuVee side or the honorable Wyrkomi side. Likewise, it should be possible to get missions from authorities that -do- crack down on internal illegal activity, because, again, it is said that this occurs in lore. Similarly, you could get missions where you work to cover up the activity from said authorities.
Options are always better than none.
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Official or unofficial sanction doesn't really matter. It's done with consent and I'm frankly tired of being painted as the only bad guy in the cluster lore-wise.
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Official or unofficial sanction doesn't really matter. It's done with consent and I'm frankly tired of being painted as the only bad guy in the cluster lore-wise.
I really don't see how that is happening? Minmatar have bad elements, but they're still largely treated as the victim faction and thus in most people's eyes can do no wrong. If you want to be painted as the only bad guy in the cluster, play Amarr.
Like I said, I think that EVERY nation should have BOTH illegal things happening AND attempts to crack down on them. It should be standard that lawful authorities try to do their job while less scrupulous sorts break said laws. I see nothing wrong with giving everyone choices. Every empire should have both good stuff and bad stuff, and there should be opportunity to see and participate in both.
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I just did my first step into the EVE lore and found the early missions against rival powers helpful and important. Until now, I did not stumble over incoherence or contradictions. But even if they exist, I think they are tolerable if you adjust the frame of reference for yourself and give such NPC missions an appropriate importance in regard to your RP and the main storyline (similar to what Samira posted above). So for me, missions and RP somehow fit quiet well. At least for now. :)
About some characters being 'painted bad guys', I can't say anything yet. But I can imagine that 'official' lore at some point contradicts roleplay development, of course.
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If you want to be painted as the only bad guy in the cluster, play Amarr.
*cough* Literally any pirate faction *cough*
Especially Sansha or Angels. The rate RP'ing as one of those two generates hate is relatively spectacular.
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True, Sansha beat out Amarr for worst.
Angels tend to fall beneath Amarr though.
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Official or unofficial sanction doesn't really matter. It's done with consent and I'm frankly tired of being painted as the only bad guy in the cluster lore-wise.
I used to play a very moderate / concord character which happened to have background ties with Amarr and point out the pros and cons of everyone, and got always called filthy slaver and painted as part of the bad guys of the cluster for whatever reason.
So I wouldn't be surprised to see most people painted as the most evil bad guy of the cluster on a whim. It's called dehumanization of the adversary, and it was done on a regular basis on the IGS and elsewhere most of the time. It's cheap and trite, especially in Eve RP, but heh, it's not only about you, that I can assure you.
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Getting back to the OP, I tend to ignore such missions as contradictory to the PF.
Forget big battles for a second: Even small intrusions across national lines have long been written as ~serious business~. Two battleships crossing the Caldari-Gallente border was an international scandal; a handful of Minmatar intruding into Gallente space provoked a massive Fed Navy response. In this context, it makes little sense that the empires regularly go raiding each other - especially for reasons that they officially deny, such as slave capturing or rescue missions - and none of them are mentioning it whatsoever.
And then we get into the even derpier missions: There's one that has a high-level Khanid official conspiring for peace with the Minmatar, long after the Khanid made their choice of alliance. Agents still warn of a buildup of conflict with the enemy factions, long after FW became a thing. You can be sent to protect Amarr slave pens... inside of Republic space.
In-character, Esna's response can be summed up as "well, obviously SOMEONE is out there flying ships with [Faction] Navy insignia, but that does not automatically prove [Faction] Navy is actually doing it. The idea that these actions are sanctioned at the command level and performed by active navy units is very silly."
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I don't remember which mission this was, but it's from a Level 2 mission offered from the Caldari mission pool. Seemed relevant.
Iyen-Oursta Loopholes
Gallente Navy ships are not often allowed inside State borders – at least not officially. Conditions determined in the Iyen-Oursta Treaty at the end of the war place strict conditions on the manner in which each nation's fleets enter the other's sovereign space.
One of the current laws allows such deployments, though, if they are hired by a third party as part of usual trade business. Additionally, they must meet stringent size and composition requirements that greatly limit any damage they could potentially cause. Since official search and rescue missions are, by treaty, conducted exclusively by the nation that owns the space, further "hostile" forces cannot legally be sent to recover hired navy forces that go missing.
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I don't remember which mission this was, but it's from a Level 2 mission offered from the Caldari mission pool. Seemed relevant.
Iyen-Oursta Loopholes
Gallente Navy ships are not often allowed inside State borders – at least not officially. Conditions determined in the Iyen-Oursta Treaty at the end of the war place strict conditions on the manner in which each nation's fleets enter the other's sovereign space.
One of the current laws allows such deployments, though, if they are hired by a third party as part of usual trade business. Additionally, they must meet stringent size and composition requirements that greatly limit any damage they could potentially cause. Since official search and rescue missions are, by treaty, conducted exclusively by the nation that owns the space, further "hostile" forces cannot legally be sent to recover hired navy forces that go missing.
And there we have it, the IC PF element that explains everything.
EDIT: To clarify - Huge Amarr fleet in Republic Space with slave pens and the whole nine yards? How'd they get there!?!? Well, somebody hired them, clearly. And once they were in, they started doing whatever they felt like doing. Now go blow them up and sell the tags.
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...actually, I take that the exact opposite way: IF the navy is doing anything across the border, they're being monitored inside and out and will be annihilated the second they make a remotely shifty move. The linked PF does more to explain how all those stations in nominally "hostile" faction territory are being resupplied.
For that matter, it hardly seems likely that the navies would continue to be allowed to engage in cross-border operations - no matter how tightly regulated - if they are regularly engaging in violations of the treaties that allow them to be there in the first place.
"Hey, the last [faction] battlegroup we let in decided to kill a bunch of people."
"Okay, we won't mention it to anyone. At all. Even though this would be the PR coup of our dreams."
"Well, uh, what about this other battlegroup that wants to come in?"
"Oh, well let them in of course!"
"But what about the people the last one killed? Shouldn't we, I dunno, put a security hold on until we can be sure they won't do the same?"
"Of course not, don't be silly!"
See? It just sounds silly if we assume regular hostile incursions are a thing.
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We live in a world, right now, you and me, here on Earth, where exactly what you just described is a regular occurrence. I mean, you can't prove a negative, so without entering into the realm of logical fallacies let me ask you: do you believe for one moment that the only US operators in the Ukraine are the ones openly publicized on the news, or that Russia doesn't know about the US operators that are there?
The Iyen-Oursta loophole described in the PF Morwen quoted provides the explanation for how/why [Faction] ships come to be inside enemy territory. Quafe hired Fed Navy to escort the supply convoy to that Quafe outpost in Lonetrek. Great! Now that they're inside State borders, they set up whatever they set up, or they start undermining whatever they start undermining. Or whatever they decide to do. Are they tightly monitored? Of course they are - how else could Agent X at Lonetrek L4 Mission Hub Y send Capsuleer Z to go fuck them up?
Why do they continue to allow Fed Navy ships into their space under the Iyen-Oursta loopholes? I can think of a variety of reasons:
1. It's more trouble than it's worth to violate the treaty by refusing to let them cross the border. This would require either pulling the leaders of the 4 Empire Powers to the table to renegotiate, crippling economic sanctions or outright war for breaking the treaty.
2. It's much easier to just send one of the thousands of capsuleers available to go fuck them up.
3. Not only is it easier to send a capsuleer to fuck them up, it's also cheaper than sending their own Navy taskforce to fight the "rogue" elements of the enemy Navy and cheaper than renegotiating, suffering economic sanctions or outright war - which, by the way, would likely be sparked by sending their own Navy to eliminate the hostile force to begin with. Sending a capsuleer costs them a couple million ISK and a few loyalty points. Sending a Navy taskforce and replacing the losses incurred thereby would cost hundreds of millions, possibly billions if it goes poorly.
4. What's not to love about watching a capsuleer fuck up an entire enemy Navy taskforce? Especially when you know that:
5. The enemy Navy would absolutely not dare doing anything that would break the CONCORD treaty itself and escalate to full-scale war.
Seems silly not to maintain the status quo, I'd say.
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It only explains small detachments for specific purposes in Caldari and Gallente space, under certain circumstances. Also, re-read it very carefully. I think you are completely ignoring that the vast majority of missions where you shoot Caldari or Gallente NPCs involve groups of ships so large they could never, ever be allowed under the implied terms of that treaty.
It also says NOTHING about the Amarr or Minmatar. It's specifically about Iyen-Oursta. Not to mention, the idea that either of those two groups would let the other put military ships inside their border for any reason at all is ridiculous at best.
The only part of that that I see everyone having in common is the search and rescue restrictions.
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How on earth would you really enforce borders in the modern day sense as a huge space empire, anyway? I mean, it's not an option for us because of the mechanics, but what's to stop a "civilian" construction force coming in, going out into deadspace past scan radius, and setting up a stargate to get the actual forces in?
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How on earth would you really enforce borders in the modern day sense as a huge space empire, anyway? I mean, it's not an option for us because of the mechanics, but what's to stop a "civilian" construction force coming in, going out into deadspace past scan radius, and setting up a stargate to get the actual forces in?
That's actually the plot of a mission series with Gallente elements.
"Roden Shipyards" ships, building a stargate, in a wibbly nebula, to allow Gallente Navy ships in.
There are other similar missions, where the Gallente have constructed a settlement, declared it to be part of the Federation, and are sending forces to "protect Federation civilians", which is the same scheme as is being played out in a couple of places in RL.
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It only explains small detachments for specific purposes in Caldari and Gallente space, under certain circumstances. Also, re-read it very carefully. I think you are completely ignoring that the vast majority of missions where you shoot Caldari or Gallente NPCs involve groups of ships so large they could never, ever be allowed under the implied terms of that treaty.
It also says NOTHING about the Amarr or Minmatar. It's specifically about Iyen-Oursta. Not to mention, the idea that either of those two groups would let the other put military ships inside their border for any reason at all is ridiculous at best.
The only part of that that I see everyone having in common is the search and rescue restrictions.
Five ships here, ten ships there, suddenly you have enough ships for an L4 mission \o/
As to Min-Amarr... good point. =/
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It would be quite the achievement if CCP redesigned every PvE mission with 2 goals in mind:
1) better simulation of pvp engagements using less ships but better AI
2) rewrite and organize better the NPC missions texts and goals against "other" factions to fit better with the lore.
I mean, we can always run the famous damsel in distress mission because it was all mercenaries involved...but against the empires? or the pirates? rewriting those would bring a major change in the quality of game inmersion if you ask me.
Mordu's NPCs have bounties in missions, but in reality they are not really outlaws....they are hired guns...to me all these little details detract from the inmersion part of the lore.....i do understand they fulfill a role in the game....just think it could be done better.
The funny part is PvE is probably the game mechanic with the largest audience today.....and its such a shame the stagnation on the theme so far.
just to point to another part of PvE that i think could need a facelift, my recent suggestion on the LP store on FHP:
http://failheap-challenge.com/showthread.php?18379-LPstore-%96-Revisiting-the-idea
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I don't post on FHC because it's FHC, but some feedback that hasn't shown in that thread yet: I don't think you're correctly taking drop rate into account for tags in that post if you're suggesting pirate tags be used for anything.
Navy tags are a guaranteed drop on their carrying NPCs - they are intended to be a replacement for bounties. Pirate tags on the other hand? Those have an incredibly low drop rate, even when you're grinding through NPCs hour after hour after hour. I just recently ran the Minmatar and Gallente epic arcs (lots of Angels and a mixture of Merc/Angel/Serp/Independent ships respectively), and I salvaged everything for the extra ISK. I got a grand total of TWO Angel tags over the course of both arcs - TWO!
That's not bad luck, that's a really low drop rate.
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I know they have a low drop rate....its one of the things ot adjust.
But also LP items that require navy tags request 20+ of certain types....and 10+ of admiral/vice-admiral (or equivalent)...which just makes it absurd....5-6 im okay with.
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Havo, I feel like a lot of your points are built on the idea that borders in EVE are porous and that allowing massive naval battlegroups in and out is an easy, everyday occurrence... even though they have to come through specific, easily-monitorable stargates, and that the operators will be to stupid to recognize easily noticeable trends
We live in a world, right now, you and me, here on Earth, where exactly what you just described is a regular occurrence. I mean, you can't prove a negative, so without entering into the realm of logical fallacies let me ask you: do you believe for one moment that the only US operators in the Ukraine are the ones openly publicized on the news, or that Russia doesn't know about the US operators that are there?
"Operators" and "a huge naval battlegroup" are two quite different things. We aren't talking about a few stealth bombers and covert recon ships penetrating borders, which is something I am absolutely certain happens all the time, but significantly-sized military forces that couldn't be missed entering. Keep in mind, the Gallente Tripwire system was designed specifically to detect and handle intrusions.
The Iyen-Oursta loophole described in the PF Morwen quoted provides the explanation for how/why [Faction] ships come to be inside enemy territory. Quafe hired Fed Navy to escort the supply convoy to that Quafe outpost in Lonetrek. Great! Now that they're inside State borders, they set up whatever they set up, or they start undermining whatever they start undermining. Or whatever they decide to do. Are they tightly monitored? Of course they are - how else could Agent X at Lonetrek L4 Mission Hub Y send Capsuleer Z to go fuck them up?
It brings a perfectly good example of what it could have happened once, but still puts the response and the fact that it is allowed to repeat firmly in the realm of lore-gameplay segregation.
Why do they continue to allow Fed Navy ships into their space under the Iyen-Oursta loopholes? I can think of a variety of reasons:
1. It's more trouble than it's worth to violate the treaty by refusing to let them cross the border. This would require either pulling the leaders of the 4 Empire Powers to the table to renegotiate, crippling economic sanctions or outright war for breaking the treaty.
So, uh, it's less crippling to have multiple hostile battlegroups repeatedly go rogue within your territory? Not to mention that even a few ships intruding across borders have been treated as a major violation of various treaties; why would even larger forces not be treated as a violation of other treaties?
2. It's much easier to just send one of the thousands of capsuleers available to go fuck them up.
Another instance of lore-gamplay segregation: Capsuleers are not, by lore, all-ending gods who can singlehandedly wipe out naval flotillas. That is a product of the player ship power-creep over the years. Moreover, by lore, the navies have their own capsuleers in even greater numbers: Why not just send a couple of navy capsuleers to handle it if we are so good at it?
3. Not only is it easier to send a capsuleer to fuck them up, it's also cheaper than sending their own Navy taskforce to fight the "rogue" elements of the enemy Navy and cheaper than renegotiating, suffering economic sanctions or outright war - which, by the way, would likely be sparked by sending their own Navy to eliminate the hostile force to begin with. Sending a capsuleer costs them a couple million ISK and a few loyalty points. Sending a Navy taskforce and replacing the losses incurred thereby would cost hundreds of millions, possibly billions if it goes poorly.
See above about navy capsuleers, but I also have to question the idea of not responding to cross-border incursions because they might be bad PR: Not wanting to immediately jump to open warfare I can understand, but not mentioning it whatsoever? That doesn't seem very logical, and stands as another point of lore-gameplay segregation.
4. What's not to love about watching a capsuleer fuck up an entire enemy Navy taskforce? Especially when you know that:
See above about navy capsuleers again.
5. The enemy Navy would absolutely not dare doing anything that would break the CONCORD treaty itself and escalate to full-scale war.
Like, uh, engaging in hostile cross-border violations with significant fleet assets in a direct violation of the treaties? Remember, two battleships crossing the Caldari-Gallente border was a huge deal - and they didn't even shoot anyone. If two battleships is an international incident that was widely recognized and treated with appropriate weight, why not these other incidents?
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The idea of "Navy Capsuleers" seems to be a pretty recent invention, in PF terms. I haven't been able to find any references to the concept other than a few dev comments and passing mentions in lore, all from within the last 3 years.
Anyway, I think it's probably a much bigger deal when a Capsuleer crosses over the border then when a regular run-of-the-mill battleship does. While the one-sidedness of capsuleer/npc ship conflicts lean a bit on the absurd side, they're obviously bucketloads more dangerous.
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Esna, I'd say the lack of news reports is far more likely to be a failure on CCPs part than the over abundance of fleets. You don't see a ton of news reports on anything these days so it's just as fair to assume these things are reported but we don't see it.
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The idea of "Navy Capsuleers" seems to be a pretty recent invention, in PF terms. I haven't been able to find any references to the concept other than a few dev comments and passing mentions in lore, all from within the last 3 years.
The first reference I can think of are the Tech 2 ships being explicitly capsuleer-only usage, and the Navies very definitely using those ships. I don't know exactly when elite NPCs were added to the game, but Tech 2 ships go back to 2003. Possibly that the introduction of those hull was what drove the navies to begin recruiting capsuleers in large numbers, compared to a handful here and there?
Esna, I'd say the lack of news reports is far more likely to be a failure on CCPs part than the over abundance of fleets. You don't see a ton of news reports on anything these days so it's just as fair to assume these things are reported but we don't see it.
Then that shifts the logic problem to another point: These things are happening and being reported on, we just aren't seeing them... but, nobody cares? Given again that even a couple of ships peacefully transiting the border was a huge deal, why would there not be any political reaction to far larger and far more common incursions you suggest are occurring?
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Who says there aren't? Trade and negotiations going tits over arse, heavy issues with diplomatic works etc. We didn't even see anything on the gallente election until a huge stink was made about it by players, and it's largely been abandoned since the announcement. We don't see those reactions any more than why we're not seeing the reports. In this case, I'd rather go with what I see in space than what I don't see in the news.
There's no denying there are significant inconsistencies between what we see and what is reasonable, but given the size of the cluster and the comparatively tiny amount of RPers seeing and reporting things, it's quite reasonable to take these sightings at face value.
Embrace it. The Empire conducts slave raids and incursions in the Republic, while smiling pleasantly in public saying no no no, that's "illegal". We don't do that. The Republic says "No no no, we have signed treaties and shit. We don't do incursions except that one time to save two of our tribes from extinction, yanno?" while happily sending in attacks in Empire space. Expecting anything less from two such enemies would be ridiculous. They've been in a state of war since the Day of Darkness. The only thing differing throughout the years is how official it's been.
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I was always under the impression that the Navies would have had capsuleers even before the public licences were made.
I think the reason PF only talks about Navy Capsuleers later is that the idea that you need to specify that yes the navies have capsuleers only comes about after someone has tried to argue that players are the only capsuleers.
That is: In 2003 things were nebulous, but by 2005-6 groups like Star Fraction (among many others) really got the pod pilot immortality rhetoric off the ground. Part of this rhetoric is about the superiority of player pod pilots over Empire forces. CCP marketing also ran this route in videos and such for a while.
So once you have that idea around, then you need to start specifying in news reports that the NPCs do in fact also have pod pilots working for them. The argument about relative power of the empire vs new capsuleer types in effect forces people making new PF to be more specific than they had to be before said argument.
Regarding missions: The numbers in missions vs numbers in reported news events just don't work in the same world. I chose to take reported news as PF over the game mechanic sides of the missions, because there isn't a way to reconcile them. You could probably come up with a theory of incorporating missions into RP that would work, something like each mission represents an event that happened maybe once or twice, ever. I have similar feelings about the belt rats, they just don't make much sense as implemented.
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You could probably come up with a theory of incorporating missions into RP that would work, something like each mission represents an event that happened maybe once or twice, ever. I have similar feelings about the belt rats, they just don't make much sense as implemented.
This I could see, yeah. The idea that regular massive incursions just happen regularly just doesn't jive with a reasonable universe to me.
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The idea that the Republic and Empire who has been at each other's throats since the Republic was first founded (and in reality since the Day of Darkness) aren't hitting each other with everything they can spare while keeping up appearances for the sake of CONCORD shielding doesn't really seem reasonable either.
In a reasonable universe, they're at war and have been since it first started. Like I said earlier, what is the official line touted to maintain CONCORD up and avoid a full-scale war with the opponents' allies as well, and what is actually being done and wholly approved of behind the public view is likely to be two different things.
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They have been at war since TEA, and a limited war. I can understand the point behind it to a certain degree, but before it was a cold war, at best.
And I don't see America and Soviet Russia shrugging off an incursion of a naval or aerial fleet of unidentified military assets over their territory. They already almost got into nuclear war several time for almost trivial matters (a covops submarine lost in enemy territorial waters, a wrong blip on a borked missile strike radar, etc) compared to such dramatic incursions we are talking about.
So, a whole enemy incursion like that ? Completely silly in my book.
I always assumed that slave raids in Republic space (or its equivalents in other empires) were conducted through very small private groups paid by their respective governments (or more evidently, private interested parties). You know, the little slaver gang with a few frigates and a bestower scooping slaves here and there...
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the whole idea of slave raids is fundamentally ludicrous to begin with.
and when you add in the expense of deep space facilities, transport ships, sentry guns, warships and so on, it becomes turboludicrous.
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You could probably come up with a theory of incorporating missions into RP that would work, something like each mission represents an event that happened maybe once or twice, ever. I have similar feelings about the belt rats, they just don't make much sense as implemented.
This I could see, yeah. The idea that regular massive incursions just happen regularly just doesn't jive with a reasonable universe to me.
>reasonable
In MY Eve????
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They have been at war since TEA, and a limited war. I can understand the point behind it to a certain degree, but before it was a cold war, at best.
And I don't see America and Soviet Russia shrugging off an incursion of a naval or aerial fleet of unidentified military assets over their territory. They already almost got into nuclear war several time for almost trivial matters (a covops submarine lost in enemy territorial waters, a wrong blip on a borked missile strike radar, etc) compared to such dramatic incursions we are talking about.
So, a whole enemy incursion like that ? Completely silly in my book.
I always assumed that slave raids in Republic space (or its equivalents in other empires) were conducted through very small private groups paid by their respective governments (or more evidently, private interested parties). You know, the little slaver gang with a few frigates and a bestower scooping slaves here and there...
Mmm-hmm. What's being suggested here is the equivalent of there being some kind of naval agreement that allows Soviet ships to dock up in American ports, except they keep deciding to shoot up everything in range until someone blows them up and nobody says anything because it might disrupt some trade treaties.
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I'm going to make someone mad by saying it, but I honestly don't care:
If you are taking missions - especially L4 missions - at face value as a representation of daily goings-on in the EVE universe, you are fucking doing it wrong, just as you would be if you did the same for any other similar, endlessly repeatable PVE content in any other MMO.
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I'm going to make someone mad by saying it, but I honestly don't care:
If you are taking missions - especially L4 missions - at face value as a representation of daily goings-on in the EVE universe, you are fucking doing it wrong, just as you would be if you did the same for any other similar, endlessly repeatable PVE content in any other MMO.
Yeah, this.
I don't see any point in even trying to represent missions IC. If I'm asked, I'm simply "doing work" for the Thukker Tribe and I leave it as that.
For me, missions provide RP content by scanning down a runner and informing them that Katanga is enforcing salvage and reclaimation ops in their area. MTU's are smashed and loots are swiped. Much fun is had!
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I'm going to make someone mad by saying it, but I honestly don't care:
If you are taking missions - especially L4 missions - at face value as a representation of daily goings-on in the EVE universe, you are fucking doing it wrong, just as you would be if you did the same for any other similar, endlessly repeatable PVE content in any other MMO.
Taking them at face value does seem a little bit much. But the anti-faction missions do have the eventual effect of making a pilot KOS in the target faction's space. That does tend to puncture the "not officially approved" line.
Most of the Imperials in the Republic missions tend to follow a pattern of Caldari raiding for slaves, and then dropping them off at Imperial guarded depots. I am currently running a series that has Imperials working with the Angels. There is also a Caldari version of the building-an-invasion-stargate-in-enemy-space job.
Getting these missions inside the faction's own space gets a bit odd though. I've had Imperial slave raider jobs from the SoE level four in the State.
It's just all very odd. I don't take them too literally (unless I invite an Imperial pilot to come see their navy being naughty. Which I did once.). But I do take them as evidence for large scale covert aggression by the opposition. And I figure I have the tags to prove it.
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Getting these missions inside the faction's own space gets a bit odd though. I've had Imperial slave raider jobs from the SoE level four in the State.
It gets even weirder: Under the correct circumstances, you can get a mission to defend slave pens in "Amarr territory"... in the Republic.
If you believe L5 missions, the navies are regularly misplacing entire capital fleets in hostile territory.
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While I definitely see all of the valid points against the taking seriously of anything PvE in this game, and while my 90% serious attempt at playing devil's advocate for CCP was soundly defeated by Esna (gg m8 o7), I still prefer to think of it as illustrating the absurdly large scale of the Empires and their Navies.
As in, for them, 10 battleships, 10 BCs, 15 cruisers and 20 frigates (typical L4 mission NPC makeup), is small potatoes. L5 you say? Regularly misplacing capital ship fleets in enemy territory, you say? Why the hell not? Supposedly the Caldari Navy is the smallest of the 4 Empires in terms of number of ships, and yet they're supposed to eclipse the largest fleet any player alliance/coalition could ever assemble, aren't they?
"Admiral, we've lost contact with the 7th Fleet."
"The 7th... isn't that the Carrier battlegroup we had in Sinq Laison?"
"Yes, Admiral."
"Damnit... oh, well."
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Obviously every L4 isn't reasonable to assume is real, but these events in those missions quite clearly happened, at a minimum once. Now add all those invading fleets across L1s, L2s, L3s, L4s even if they only ever happened once and you have a metric fuckton of invasions with a metric fuckton of ships and slave raids, and that's just what was caught redhanded. How many operations from the other side was never caught and dealt with by player characters?
Again, it's ridiculously unreasonable to assume these things don't happen in a quite significant number, especially when you consider the ginormous sizes of these Empires.
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I can't agree. These missions are clearly rump gameplay left over from the early years of Eve. They haven't been updated, they're clearly suffering from precisely the same problems that beset missions in every single MMO. They're filler. Fluff.
They might well contain interesting and useful lore - but the idea that every empire is massively infiltrated by huge battlefleets from every other empire PLUS every pirate organisation in clear contravention of established lore is ridiculous. It is no harder to stretch credibility to believe that these represent sample crimes than it is to believe that missioners are simply delusional.
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I do want to say that there needs to be a stop to this game mechanics wrangling. Like everything in EVE, the missions are IC. While one can assume they don't happen as often or perhaps as large as they are in-game, no one can or should deny that they happen at all. "It's just game mechanics" is an argument that goes on in other MMOs, I for one would prefer that it doesn't happen in EVE.
The things happen. What is left up in the air is how sanctioned they are. To which I again go to what lore says, "they happen, they are illegal, and authorities often but not always turn a blind eye to it."
EVE as a game is full-time IC. When people start picking and choosing what does and does not happen based on how they personally prefer to regard individual mechanics, that can only lead to messy RP.
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But we're stuck with that anyway, Sami. Either the missions are useful samples of things that actually happened ONCE (which involves retconning) or they never happened (which involves slightly more retconning, but not much).
Either that or we have to tot up every scragged NPC ship in every mission forever and accept that the Empires have been involved in Total War levels of casualties every day since Eve started.
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Or they're an example of a general grouping of similar events that happens semi-regularly that capsuleers are hired to put a stop to.
What should be avoided is -specifics- of the missions. Exact ship counts and so on. But the generalities absolutely should be considered true and proper. "A mission involving X happened", rather than "Angel Extravaganza with # deadspace rooms and Y number of ships divided into A B and C types".
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I'm another who always kinda assumed missions were something that happened once or twice, an example of the kind of missions that capsuleers are hired to preform...just...not 20 a day or so.
Maybe we should just retcon it that all the supposed fleets killed are just capsuleer over-exaggeration to earn more ISK on bounties, or simply drinking stories embellished over time.
"Oh yeah?!? Well I shot down....20 Angel battleships....and a capital ship...a carrier! Yeah...in low sec! Thats it!"
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Hmm... Well, I guess I'll wait to see how the rest of the community leans.
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The thing is, we're not randomly deciding "this gameplay shouldn't count, because we don't like it".
We're saying, "this gameplay massively violates the years of lore and in-character information (in some cases in-space interaction) we have had which clearly establishes that even smaller incursions by navy elements are treated as ~serious business~."
Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but I don't think this is really about missions, even. I think what this comes down to is a division between people who prefer to say "everything I see in space is IC, regardless of what inconsistencies it may cause" and those who prefer to say "everything I see in space is IC, except if it violates pre-existing lore, in which case I prefer to ignore the inconsistent in-space activity to preserve the rationality of the universe."
And, that's not a division that is going to be resolved any time soon.
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The disparity between news reports and reality seems bigger then the supposed disparity between missions and reality to me, to be honest. Every time someone shoots off the old "Capsuleer fleets are catching up to the Empires!" line, everyone is always quick to jump at them and remind that they all have thirty bazillion titans or whatever lying under the sofa. But at the same time, a sighting of a couple battleships is a international security risk, and an incursion of 20 or so is an invasion?
It makes no sense. There's no way to reconcile the two ideas without radically warping your understanding of the game world to accommodate it.
As for the canonity of missions, I'll echo what everyone else says: While it's silly to say that hundreds of Capsuleers are literally foiling the exact same Gallente gate construction plot every day, and citing close specifics is kinda akin to being one of those people who talk about personally killing Arthas in WoW, I think it's equally silly to act like that whole part of the game just plain isn't canon. You can't just dismiss actual (written) content as completely nonexistent on every level simply because it's a bit contrived. If we did that, we'd be considering half the game nonexistant.
I think it's also kind of crappy to push this line on other players. I've seen people who don't really like to PvP much and do a lot of PvE to support their faction be brutally dismissed in character as being just ~crazy~ when they bring it up in public, and, without even taking it OOC, being simply told that the stuff the game they do just doesn't happen. That's not cool.
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I'm another who always kinda assumed missions were something that happened once or twice, an example of the kind of missions that capsuleers are hired to preform...just...not 20 a day or so.
Maybe we should just retcon it that all the supposed fleets killed are just capsuleer over-exaggeration to earn more ISK on bounties, or simply drinking stories embellished over time.
"Oh yeah?!? Well I shot down....20 Angel battleships....and a capital ship...a carrier! Yeah...in low sec! Thats it!"
This.
The missions do happen, just not with the sheer scale of frequency that the game-world demands.
A perfect example would be anomalies and other scannables in highsec. They happen with or without our intervention at a fairly predictable rate. Finish them all and the system will be empty for a good while. One should take the frequency (and scale) of those sites as a guide for how often and how big the "Mission Events" happen.
For example, in a 1.0 system, one would imagine only Level 1 sized missions would be happening IC and at a fairly infrequent rate. Scale upwards with decreasing security status.
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The disparity between news reports and reality seems bigger then the supposed disparity between missions and reality to me, to be honest. Every time someone shoots off the old "Capsuleer fleets are catching up to the Empires!" line, everyone is always quick to jump at them and remind that they all have thirty bazillion titans or whatever lying under the sofa. But at the same time, a sighting of a couple battleships is a international security risk, and an incursion of 20 or so is an invasion?
It makes no sense. There's no way to reconcile the two ideas without radically warping your understanding of the game world to accommodate it.
As for the canonity of missions, I'll echo what everyone else says: While it's silly to say that hundreds of Capsuleers are literally foiling the exact same Gallente gate construction plot every day, and citing close specifics is kinda akin to being one of those people who talk about personally killing Arthas in WoW, I think it's equally silly to act like that whole part of the game just plain isn't canon. You can't just dismiss actual (written) content as completely nonexistent on every level simply because it's a bit contrived. If we did that, we'd be considering half the game nonexistant.
I think it's also kind of crappy to push this line on other players. I've seen people who don't really like to PvP much and do a lot of PvE to support their faction be brutally dismissed in character as being just ~crazy~ when they bring it up in public, and, without even taking it OOC, being simply told that the stuff the game they do just doesn't happen. That's not cool.
Very much this. Well said.
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The disparity between news reports and reality seems bigger then the supposed disparity between missions and reality to me, to be honest. Every time someone shoots off the old "Capsuleer fleets are catching up to the Empires!" line, everyone is always quick to jump at them and remind that they all have thirty bazillion titans or whatever lying under the sofa. But at the same time, a sighting of a couple battleships is a international security risk, and an incursion of 20 or so is an invasion?
It makes no sense. There's no way to reconcile the two ideas without radically warping your understanding of the game world to accommodate it.
Well, the way I look at it is that an incursion by a small part of, say, the US Pacific fleet into Cuban waters would be a big deal. The fact that the incursion was a single Aegis cruiser and a couple of destroyers in size in NO way detracts from the fact that the Pacific Fleet is ENORMOUS with multiple Carrier battlegroups.
As for the canonity of missions, I'll echo what everyone else says: While it's silly to say that hundreds of Capsuleers are literally foiling the exact same Gallente gate construction plot every day, and citing close specifics is kinda akin to being one of those people who talk about personally killing Arthas in WoW, I think it's equally silly to act like that whole part of the game just plain isn't canon. You can't just dismiss actual (written) content as completely nonexistent on every level simply because it's a bit contrived. If we did that, we'd be considering half the game nonexistant.
I think it's also kind of crappy to push this line on other players. I've seen people who don't really like to PvP much and do a lot of PvE to support their faction be brutally dismissed in character as being just ~crazy~ when they bring it up in public, and, without even taking it OOC, being simply told that the stuff the game they do just doesn't happen. That's not cool.
So, you say that you run missions for Agents on behalf of whatever organisations you mission for. You don't have to get into the exact nature of the missions or how many kills are involved. There's a reason why PvE kills don't get added to your combat log, you know.
I have actually spoken to Mission Runners who, IC, expect me to bow down before them because I only have a measly 1400 kills to point to on my combat record, whereas they kill upwards of a hundred battleship class vessels per day!
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The quantity of NPC's destroyed is a little off scale, at least from what I have seen in past lore. However I suspect "off the grid" incursions would be a thing, missions do in a sense layout various lore for us players. As for IC interactions, the only thing of real use for quoting missions is your standing toward said corporation/faction.
I surely wouldn't be going around boasting about killing NPC vessels. Makes no sense.
Also who cares about people quoting kills ICly. It just enforces their inferiority complex and never justifies a response other then.. congrats you like being a psychopathic killer.
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Adding two things real fast:
1, this isn't in any way meant to disparage PvEers or promote some kind of 'PVP only!' environment. I've seen plenty of story arcs run on the basis of PvP or not even any in-space activity at all; one of the best arcs I was in, a huge cross-faction project involving Amarr, Minmatar, and several other faction RPers, was actually based on the idea of a cross-border raid.
2, nobody is denying that cross-border intrusions happen. The Legion and Loki covert reconfiguration subsystem descriptions both acknowledge Amarr raids into the Republic, and the Leopard description acknowledges that the Republic is returning the favor. However, all also point to such raids being carried out by covert ops, rapid hit-and-run style operations, leaving only suspicions - not the in-the-open intrusions seen in missions.
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Well, the way I look at it is that an incursion by a small part of, say, the US Pacific fleet into Cuban waters would be a big deal. The fact that the incursion was a single Aegis cruiser and a couple of destroyers in size in NO way detracts from the fact that the Pacific Fleet is ENORMOUS with multiple Carrier battlegroups.
This is space, though, where logistics and defense are much closer to equal with offense. In our world, even a single cruiser could cause a ton of damage on it's own at best and destroy the whole world at worst, but in EVE, anything larger then a proper full scale fleet would be torn to pieces by the presumably absolutely massive stationed fleets (like what happens to you if you try and go into a system with negative enough standings and attempt to accomplish anything other than run like hell), or shot out of the sky with planetary defense cannons. The two can't be likened to one another in severity.
I have actually spoken to Mission Runners who, IC, expect me to bow down before them because I only have a measly 1400 kills to point to on my combat record, whereas they kill upwards of a hundred battleship class vessels per day!
I think both extremes are bad. It's dumb to literally brag about numbers if you're a PvE player since they're obviously totally absurd (and just because that's obnoxious anyway), but at the same time, they are mostly fighting baseliner ships, which about the same as going after infantrymen in a tank. It makes sense for their raw figures to be a big higher then a PvP player - But that doesn't mean that's impressive. You can knock them down a peg without literally saying, "Nuh uh, nothing you've done is real!" like I've seen a few people do.
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Kat is scolding me about my attitude as we speak. You (and he) are right, actually. I need to do a little better than putting my fingers in my ears.
I'm just a little unsure as to what the best policy is.
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I'm just a little unsure as to what the best policy is.
If it was easy for us to know what the best policy was, then we wouldn't all be having this argument. :)
It's a complicated situation.
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I am not scolding you, sheesh!
I just think creative thinking and a bit of cooperative problem-solving is a better response than abject rejection (or unquestioning acceptance) of something that doesn't initially make sense.
People keep saying "There's no way to reconcile the two ideas without radically warping your understanding of the game world to accommodate it.", and that's exactly what needs to be done. Together.
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Maybe I missed it while scanning the thread, but whatever happened to the notion that of course missions occur - just ignore the specific names in the missions. The same is true in other games - no, you did not kill Captain Shitpaints IV, you killed [insert name here] of the hodunk clan. You can have just as meaningful PvE content that way, you can do it ICly with people that way, you just don't use lore names.
I see this work very well in many MMOs, including EVE. Why has this method suddenly been called into question? As for the sheer amount, it is a big cluster in an IP obsessed with death. I do not see the problem.
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Kat is scolding me about my attitude as we speak. You (and he) are right, actually. I need to do a little better than putting my fingers in my ears.
I'm just a little unsure as to what the best policy is.
No matter how well thought out the world is (and Eves world is mostly certainly not the best thought out), roleplay is always based on 25% content, and 75% inference. You can never "work out" stuff like this completely. If someones percieved understanding about the game world obviously appears to differ from yours in a regard that comes up IC, the best thing to do is always discuss it OOCly with them, or just disengage quietly.
Not everything can be dealt with totally IC, and that's okay.
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Again. It seems odd to have people literally shitting their pants about very modest scale incursions on one hand and ignoring that millions of capital ships (because fucking Battleships ought to be capital ships!) seem to get destroyed daily.
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Maybe I missed it while scanning the thread, but whatever happened to the notion that of course missions occur - just ignore the specific names in the missions. The same is true in other games - no, you did not kill Captain Shitpaints IV, you killed [insert name here] of the hodunk clan. You can have just as meaningful PvE content that way, you can do it ICly with people that way, you just don't use lore names.
I see this work very well in many MMOs, including EVE. Why has this method suddenly been called into question? As for the sheer amount, it is a big cluster in an IP obsessed with death. I do not see the problem.
Someone tried to crunch the numbers for the amount of people who would die based on the totality of the efforts of mission runners every year. It came to something in the trillions.
If every instance was objectively happening, everyone in the cluster would have to be 1) A ship crewman, and 2) Dead.
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Maybe I missed it while scanning the thread, but whatever happened to the notion that of course missions occur - just ignore the specific names in the missions. The same is true in other games - no, you did not kill Captain Shitpaints IV, you killed [insert name here] of the hodunk clan. You can have just as meaningful PvE content that way, you can do it ICly with people that way, you just don't use lore names.
I see this work very well in many MMOs, including EVE. Why has this method suddenly been called into question? As for the sheer amount, it is a big cluster in an IP obsessed with death. I do not see the problem.
Someone tried to crunch the numbers for the amount of people who would die based on the totality of the efforts of mission runners every year. It came to something in the trillions.
If every instance was objectively happening, everyone in the cluster would have to be 1) A ship crewman, and 2) Dead.
Sure, but it's a game. CCP did not provide answers to that sort of concern in the universe they created. So your options are: tell PvE folks what they do does not happen or ignore the numbers. One of these is easy and not shafting the majority of players. I choose that one.
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Maybe I missed it while scanning the thread, but whatever happened to the notion that of course missions occur - just ignore the specific names in the missions. The same is true in other games - no, you did not kill Captain Shitpaints IV, you killed [insert name here] of the hodunk clan. You can have just as meaningful PvE content that way, you can do it ICly with people that way, you just don't use lore names.
I see this work very well in many MMOs, including EVE. Why has this method suddenly been called into question? As for the sheer amount, it is a big cluster in an IP obsessed with death. I do not see the problem.
Someone tried to crunch the numbers for the amount of people who would die based on the totality of the efforts of mission runners every year. It came to something in the trillions.
If every instance was objectively happening, everyone in the cluster would have to be 1) A ship crewman, and 2) Dead.
Sure, but it's a game. CCP did not provide answers to that sort of concern in the universe they created. So your options are: tell PvE folks what they do does not happen or ignore the numbers. One of these is easy and not shafting the majority of players. I choose that one.
I sorta agree with you, but I think it's better to keep that to individuals and specific occurances, but still suspend disbelief ICly when it comes to the idea in a more universal sense.
For instance, if someone says, "I shot down 30 battleships today", that's okay, and we should accept that.
But people probably shouldn't say stuff like, "Capsuleers kill hundreds of billions of people for the Empires every day", and individuals shouldn't say, "I've killed a total of 8000 battleships this month", because that breaks the setting, even though it might be true. We should dismiss impossible trends, but not individually anomalous experiences.
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Lets keep in mind that people don't regularly cite missions in "slice of life" conversation. They use them as the crux or context of a point they are making in debate.
When somebody uses missioning stats against someone else in a debate, it necessitates either a counterpoint or a fold. You can't just ignore it when it's being shoved in your face as 'proof' of something.
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I sorta agree with you, but I think it's better to keep that to individuals and specific occurances, but still suspend disbelief ICly when it comes to the idea in a more universal sense.
For instance, if someone says, "I shot down 30 battleships today", that's okay, and we should accept that.
But people probably shouldn't say stuff like, "Capsuleers kill hundreds of billions of people for the Empires every day", and individuals shouldn't say, "I've killed a total of 8000 battleships this month", because that breaks the setting, even though it might be true. We should dismiss impossible trends, but not individually anomalous experiences.
The only time I see those two things come up is either bragging or reminding someone that playing an altruistic/innocent capsuleer is nearly impossible to do if you enter combat. The former is as pathetic as any kind of bragging and easily ignored - either A) yes, they did kill that many but so did every other PvE character and it is not something to brag about, or B) no they did not and they are idiots. Both make the claim meaningless and idiotic.
The latter option is the most contentious, because braggart characters are as easy to ignore and laugh at ICly as braggart players are OOCly. For the innocent thing, well, given what we know about crew - if your character does combat you have killed at minimum thousands. The moral contextuality of that killing can be manipulated in any way your character wishes, same as any other morality.
The only other time I see this sort of issue come up is when people discuss the universe itself. Whether it is millions or billions killed by capsuleers on a regular basis, the EVE universe worships death and always has. There is nothing special about that. The specific number is meaningless from my perspective. Does that sort of detail promote a general meaninglessness to the IC universe itself? Of course, but only because that killing has no real impact on the universe. It will always be a relatively static universe where the killing on behalf of empires does not actually have an impact on the state of said universe. So, in my opinion, it is not the absurd number of deaths that is bothersome - it is that those deaths do not have and never will have an impact on the cluster that is bothersome.
There's a reason why so many characters and/or players end up with a weird EVE-form of ennui. All of these actions are taken without meaningful impact or relevancy. But as far as IC interactions go where you run into folks that discuss these details from the character perspective, it is very easy to ignore and avoid. When in doubt, walk away.
@Kat, of course you can ignore it. Either literally by avoiding them or ending the conversation (datapad beeps), or by having your character literally tell them are wrong. They start OOC linking to try to force you, you say you disregard those numbers for reasons X, Y, and Z. Either you move on or you get ridiculed. Either way, problem solved.
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Well, the way I look at it is that an incursion by a small part of, say, the US Pacific fleet into Cuban waters would be a big deal. The fact that the incursion was a single Aegis cruiser and a couple of destroyers in size in NO way detracts from the fact that the Pacific Fleet is ENORMOUS with multiple Carrier battlegroups.
You've got the wrong sense of scale for this comparison, I think. I likened it to small teams of covert operators being a routine thing in today's world for this reason. We're on one planet. Eve takes place in a galaxy of thousands of star systems. One L4 mission's battle group is proportionate to one special forces team - maybe even less than one special forces team. I don't know if the entire Pacific Fleet is even as large as one set of L4 mission ships (in the common L4 with 2 or 3 pockets, each with its own fairly large fleet in it).
As for mission runners trying to epeen and compare kill stats... lol @ comparing thousands of NPC kills vs. a thousand PC kills. :psyccp:
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I have to wonder, can "we" as a community who very much holds Lore and RP as its dearest content within eve, formulate some kind of essay to bring up to CSMs attentions about missions in general?
I mean, missions are a relic of the game, but its content about 80% of the player base use....wouldn't be nice to do a facelift to the whole thing and tackle the lore issue at the same time?.
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Is Abraxis still at CCP?
Summer 2013 CSM minutes have a great snapshot from him ..
Abraxis raised the possibility of having the missions themed based on what is going on
in the wider universe (ie: the political situation), and perhaps even using the statistics on
what players are doing to guide how the lore evolves -- so that there is a feedback
effect. He called this his personal "future vision".
The Holy Grail for missions in Eve I guess.
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Maybe I missed it while scanning the thread, but whatever happened to the notion that of course missions occur - just ignore the specific names in the missions. The same is true in other games - no, you did not kill Captain Shitpaints IV, you killed [insert name here] of the hodunk clan. You can have just as meaningful PvE content that way, you can do it ICly with people that way, you just don't use lore names.
I see this work very well in many MMOs, including EVE. Why has this method suddenly been called into question? As for the sheer amount, it is a big cluster in an IP obsessed with death. I do not see the problem.
Someone tried to crunch the numbers for the amount of people who would die based on the totality of the efforts of mission runners every year. It came to something in the trillions.
If every instance was objectively happening, everyone in the cluster would have to be 1) A ship crewman, and 2) Dead.
I just did the math out for four different well-known L4 missions. Three variations of The Blockade - Angel, Blooder and Serpentis - and Angel Extravaganza. The only assumptions I made in my calculations are:
- That pirate faction crew sizes are analogous to their empire counterpart with the exception of the Sansha, and
- That the person running the mission is not blitzing and is completely clearing the field.
(http://i.imgur.com/v2cSzyk.png)
Partial people in the survivor/loss columns are not rounded because not everyone survives completely intact. Also because I'm a little lazy and we are talking averages anyway.
Also, since we're talking about capsuleers vs. traditional crews here, odds are the actual average casualty counts will trend higher because capsuleers are very good at killing things quickly, and the faster something dies, the smaller the number of survivors, according to the crew guidelines page on the wiki.
Edit: The person who did the whole math out thing did so in late 2010 (http://freebooted.blogspot.com/2010/09/end-of-new-eden-is-nigh.html) so his numbers are way out of date - and I don't know if he made an updated version after Source came out.
Edit 2: It might not be clear how I determined the average crew size. Basically I took the "maximum capacity" range and divided it into three equal sections, then used the center of those sections. So the "crew size" value is effectively the lower bound of the maximum capacity range, plus 1/6, 1/2 or 5/6 the size of the range itself.
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http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
herpaderp
Yes. Genocidal maniacs, even if we do round down, loves. Even if we do round down.
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doing some digging finds that
the three mission series that feature the amarr fleet apparently abducting people are "Human Cattle", a L2 mission chain, "Portal to War", a L3 mission chain, and "In the Midst of Deadspace", a L4 mission chain.
all of them predate the empyrean age, and were made in the time that Chamberlain Karsoth was in charge of the Empire.
so that may be important.
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It is. It proves that the invasions were going on before the "treaties were broken".
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On the other hand, it really makes them less relevant in the post-Karsoth Empire, no?
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Why? The invasions quite demonstrably happened. Nothing much has changed in that regard, particularly regarding the treaties that get trotted out all the time.
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You might be seeing a bit too much into it. Post TEA missions often had the noticeable quality to have a little background description explaining the pros and cons, and the context around.
All the old ones, though, not so much. Those ones directly contradict PF, and even the PF that was already there before TEA, especially since before TEA it was full of treaties and a liberal on the throne with clear edicts against that kind of things. And they do not contradict it because there is a mere edict, as said above, nobody ever claimed that no slave raids happen. They contradict it by the simple facts, numbers and flags involved.
Occam's razor might point in the direction that Abraxas and the storyteam wrote PF at some point, and people busy creating missions (probably levelbuilders and leveldesigners) wrote things that went according to the basics of the lore (Amarr = slavers, etc), while completely ignoring the real intricacies that most people simply do not know, except lore aficionados like us. That added to the fact that even the storyteam and RPers at that time had probably never thought of it yet anyway.
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the missions where minmatar fleets are dropping bio weapons onto slave populations also predate the emyprean age.
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I miss those missions. I should make an Amarrian missioning alt just to do them again.
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also predating the empyrean age, and still in the mission pool, are the missions that are all "tensions between X and Y factions are high, and there is a possibility that war may break out".
X and Y being say Caldari and Gallente. They've been at war for 6 years, and those missions have never been edited or pulled.
pve content consistency is hard. Missions don't get updated.
Not least because, apparently, according to some devposts and devquotes, until very, very recently, mission deadspace complexes were constructed by hand, one at a time, using devspawning tools, in a version of the client, using the POS structure placement code.
:psyccp:
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POS CODE?!
/me evacuates the thread.
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Not least because, apparently, according to some devposts and devquotes, until very, very recently, mission deadspace complexes were constructed by hand, one at a time, using devspawning tools, in a version of the client, using the POS structure placement code.
This was also the general feeling at the PVE roundtable last Fanfest and some nightly discussions with Devs, they cant make new content easily as they need to make new NPC one by on, so the lack of tools is what stops them to make new content. They are however working on it to change the tools used, when that is implemented we might see some new changes.
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what it does mean though, is that that one mission, where there's a wrecked Apocalypse, in pieces, with the bow and stern sections separated by a short distance, and there are a few dozen frozen corpses in the gap, was created by someone who placed those frozen corpses one by one, by hand.
:o
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The missions that predate FW really do have some interesting things.
It is pretty clear, for example, that the original plan for FW was going to be an escalation in Ammatar space over a whole set of issues surrounding the Kenobanala system. They had everything set up for a proxy war between the Matari, supported by the Gallente, and the Ammatar, supported by Amarr and Caldari.
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The missions that predate FW really do have some interesting things.
It is pretty clear, for example, that the original plan for FW was going to be an escalation in Ammatar space over a whole set of issues surrounding the Kenobanala system. They had everything set up for a proxy war between the Matari, supported by the Gallente, and the Ammatar, supported by Amarr and Caldari.
Pity they didn't go with that option. It would've been far more interesting. Mind you with things as they are Mandate space is available for a bit of unrestricted high-sec skirmishing between the militias. Not to mention being a logical place for any prisoner exchanges & suchlike.
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3 out of the 4 factions had enormous interests in the Mandate : the Empire because it's its protectorate and a big symbol in itself, the Minmatar because it's the exact contrary for them and other obvious reasons, and the Caldari because they were renting to the Ammatar the rich ore deposits on the border zone to make huge profits, thus directly having to defend themselves against freedom fighters and Matari border raids while aggressively expanding their assets on contested blurred areas that were claimed by republic forces.
For the Gallente, it would have needed a bit more story weaving to make them come here too, but nothing too difficult since it's the gallente anyway.
Then they decided to turn the Nefantar leaders into Minmatar saints and thus pretty much spoiling the whole plot here.
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Then they decided to turn the Nefantar leaders into Minmatar saints and thus pretty much spoiling the whole plot here.
They backtracked quite a bit on that in Source, thankfully, though unfortunately most of the damage has already been done.
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What does Source says out of curiosity ? I don't have it (I hate them for selling exclusive lore, what's the point of their public wiki ?)..
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What does Source says out of curiosity ? I don't have it (I hate them for selling exclusive lore, what's the point of their public wiki ?)..
It focuses back on the original idea that the Nefantar sold out the Minmatar to save their own hides. The Starkmanir thing only happened after the events of Arzad convinced a relative few to have a change of heart.
[spoiler]As one of the largest tribes, the Nefantar had been hit hard by the raids, and their leadership debated leaving Matar for their colony world of Hjoramold. In the end, the Nefantar chief decided against the move, despite strong support for it among influential families and clan leaders. The debate's aftermath left bitter divisions within the tribe, and the acrimony would lead many of the most powerful members of the Nefantar tribe to look to the protection of their own families at the expense of others. The next time Amarr raiders came to Matar, they encountered no resistance in areas controlled by certain Nefantar families. The Amarr quickly understood that these members of the Nefantar elite were willing to work with them in exchange for immunity from the raids for their own families. Over time the collaboration of the Nefantar with the Amarr became widespread across Matar, as the benefits of betrayal of their fellow Matari became clear.
After a century of Amarr raiding, the Nefantar had become the effective rulers of what remained of the Minmatar people. Any open challengers to their control would quickly find themselves in the next quota of slaves handed over to the raiding parties. The Nefantar had already begun to ape their Amarr masters, abandoning many tribal ways and adopting an aristocratic hierarchy.
...
The Nefantar, as the Ammatar, enjoyed a very privileged relationship with their Amarr rulers and considerable autonomy. Many high-ranking Ammatar became slaveholders, and the use of space vessels was granted them. Even so, the Nefantar were as shocked as anyone by the annihilation of Starkman Prime. Perhaps even more so. The Starkmanir, afterall, had been almost as privileged as the Nefantar, and the two tribes had maintained links even after their respective migrations away from Matar. Some of the Nefantar elites became convinced that a great crime had been carried out and were determined to save what was left of the Starkmanir. From this time on, these Nefantar families covertly gathered to them as many Starkmanir as they could and, under the guides of establishing slave colonies, placed them in areas controlled by the Nefantar.
[/spoiler]
So the largescale betrayal happened and the Mandate was established long before the Starkmanir issue. The Nefantar were certifiably collaborators. The Mandate wasn't created to protect the Starkmanir, just a few Mandate leaders later decided to go rogue after Arzad.
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That sure sounds better that way.
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That sure sounds better that way.
Certainly more believable. I guess they must have been very canny political operators to have one of their own as governor at the time of the Elder Fleet raid.
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What happens in game you can't ignore in RP.