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[Kaleigh Doyle]

I find it rather odd how self-proclaimed RPers complain about Drama. Isn't that...I dunno...the point? 

[Kybernetes Moros]

Oh, sure -- conflict and the ensuing drama has catalysed some really damn entertaining RP for me, be it conflict of interests, personalities, ideologies, or whatever.

The problem is, there's that kind of drama, with multiple people coming into conflict and the RP getting somewhere beyond '"I'm right!" "No, I'm right!" "You're both wrong; I'm right!"' and then there's Drama, where it seems like people cause it for the sake thereof and it's more tiring than entertaining. Ofc., YMMV; just my stance on it. (Nola really must get back to Kyber, though. >>)

[Casiella]

I put it in the EVE Vegas thread but was reminded it's more appropriate here:


Dropbear just posted his EVE Vegas preso.

[Maximum Kiely]

Like others have mentioned, it just doesn't jive with my IC persona. I have been trying to follow some of it and sadly have found the whole thing a little tough to follow.

I do admire the RPers who are dedicated to the effort and are trying to work it all out though. Hopefully what is learned through this process will make the next event better and perhaps that one will be more in-line with my IC persona.

[Cmdr Baxter]

I'm having visions of Crierle (sp?) about this project. The drama just grows by leaps and bounds. And then there's those crazy off-the-wall suggestions, such as one about filing a legal motion with the Gallente Supreme Court about releasing a report. I think I saw that and within a minute I had four officers (I was reading it while on duty at work) asking me if I was OK. Just crazy. Simply crazy. 

[Mizhara]

This is very well put.

It's basically the small issue I have with this project. In trying to be 'all inclusive' it's pretty much by default shooing away a lot of characters. The mechanics through which this happens is outlined in the link above. In an ideal fantasy world that doesn't exist, I would have much preferred to see five or six different little projects. Each being less active than Arek'jaalan due to simply not having the manpower to keep them all at Arek'jaalan levels, they would still allow for a far larger sampling of characters to be involved in these 'live' projects by simply saying "This project won't have Blooders, Sansha and Angels pouring out of the woodwork every time you try to poke at it. That's for those four projects over there. That project is an Amarrian haven and that one's something both Federation and Caldari RPers might have interest in. That one's something anti-slavers and Matari RPers can have fun in. Everybody's invited and this time everybody can join in at least one of the projects." instead of inviting  everybody to a project which... well, very far from everybody can join in on.

[Casiella]

After talking to Dropbear about it, I found that he's well aware of the concerns. The impression I had was that he wants to catalyze player conflict, and we already see that with things like the bounty on Tukoss by Caldari loyalists, etc. etc. But given the resource constraints - on CCP's side, A'J basically consists of just that one dude - he can't do much more. Each of those proposed projects might seem smaller than the one we have now, but they'd have significant fixed costs.

So instead of wishing a character could get directly involved, perhaps others could create their own projects. Nothing is stopping, say, Electus Matari from saying "we can do better" and proceeding with their own research project. I know for certain that some of those have already quietly launched.

[Seriphyn]

Ask him about Mannar IV!

[Mizhara]

I know, Casiella. In fact, there's been talk about that already. It's however gimped by the fact that the people who might be interested also goes "... fuck, I don't know how CCP-RP happens. Hell, even if we did run this whole project, what'd happen? Nothing, unless CCP suddenly interferes.". In short, player-made competitor projects aren't really going to do much.

I know what I outlined in the post above is a pipe-dream. It's never going to happen.

It's still a nice dream to have, when by default this style of 'inclusive' RP is more excluding than projects excluding the worst of the worst.

[Casiella]

I don't see any alternative. Imagine the uproar if CCP chose to exclude certain players... but by opening it up to all comers, they're allowing players to decide whether or not to exclude themselves.

"The worst of the worst", in an IC sense, is in the eye of the beholder.

[Casiella]

Ask him about Mannar IV!

EVE Vegas is over and... well, the Mannar are pretty dang low on my priority list, personally.

[Arkady Sadik]

I don't see any alternative. Imagine the uproar if CCP chose to exclude certain players... but by opening it up to all comers, they're allowing players to decide whether or not to exclude themselves.

The decision to exclude yourself or not is made by the character, not the player. I'm not sure if asking players to override their characters out of OOC concerns is a good way to stimulate roleplaying.

"I want to be part of CCP's storyline, so I have to accept cooperating with the enemies of all my character stands for - but hey, they're all roleplayers, nice people OOC, so I should totally do that" does not work for everyone's RP, and telling those people that their RP is wrong is not making the situation better. :-)

On the other hand, I'm very happy that Drake Arson seems to be playing the Sansha loyalist very well there. Means the whole thing gets at least some realism.


I'm mostly enjoying myself with the current situation. It's a bit meh realizing that there is much more pro-A'J interest going on because of OOC reasons (as Casiella said people should), but I can deal with that.

My main issue right now is actually that EM won't do anything against the will of the Republic, the Republic's last statement was "carefully accepting" the project, and the dear admiral is not replying to mails regarding recent developments. So our RP is a bit stuck there. But well, "them Republic types dun talk with us" works IC as well, so I'm rolling with that.

[Kaleigh Doyle]

How about, 'if my enemies are allowed to participate and I don't,  my beloved Republic may be at a disadvantage'? It's not that hard to devise some reasoning to participate if so inclined.

[Arkady Sadik]

How about, 'if my enemies are allowed to participate and I don't,  my beloved Republic may be at a disadvantage'? It's not that hard to devise some reasoning to participate if so inclined.

Sure. That means our participation is limited to not contributing at all, but only taking out anything we get. Which limits our "participation" quite a bit. Do you think that's a good thing for the storyline in general? :-)


Maybe I should expand on the above, it seems I did not quite get across what I wanted to say.

I totally like the Arek'Jaalan storyline. The way I see it, it's a Caldari scientist who fled from the State to be able to conduct his research. He seems either very naive or very unscrupulous, which causes quite a few problems to the people he moved to.

There is a lot of RP opportunity for everyone there: You can support the project as is, or you can oppose it. You can argue in favor of having "Evil People"[tm] (everyone in EVE is "evil" in some way, so this is actually "the OTHER Evil People[tm]") around, or you can argue against. You can take up arms for or against it. You can draw lines of what is or is not acceptable to your character. And not only about the members, but also about the research conducted. The whole "let's build a doomsday device" thing was an awesome story hook (very Battlestar Galactica in a way - "I just need two nuclear warheads").

What makes me very much un-eager to participate in the story surrounding the A'J project (which is different from "participating in the A'J project") is that it appears to me that the other ways of interacting with the project is not supported by the GM, and actually frowned upon by the players. Basically any way of interacting with the project other than participation gets you to a wall in the game world very quickly (as an example, but not the only case, the problem of no reply from Balginia, while I easily get replies from Tukoss).

Players seem to imply this, too: Well, this is the way CCP wants us to role-play, it's only one CCP dev, so take a backseat and just accept that we have to bend our characters to just play together, at least we get CCP RP out of it. "Any other RP is wrong, you know."

And basically that's ok. I'm happy for the people who enjoy that, but it's not the kind of RP *I* enjoy.

And in the end, that means that the A'J story arc is an RP even for a subset of roleplayers, not for all. If you make your IC entity "open to everyone", you are not creating an RP environment for everyone. Period.

I have no problem with having story arcs that are not for me. There have been a few in the past like that, and I'm sure there will be future story arcs that work better for my character.

But saying, as has been done above, that this is the way to involve lots of players, is simply wrong.

[Morwen Lagann]

Dropbear is watching this thread, Arkady, and I did prod him on Twitter earlier about your concerns with Balginia, so hopefully some progress will come on that front. Just gotta be patient (even more than you already have been).