I am under the impression that role-play in EVE and what actually happens 'in-space' is growing further apart. Judging from the Intergalactic Summit forum, but also the IC channels, role-players seem to play and exist largely in their own little RP-bubble. A bubble were important galaxy-spanning events like the Goonswarm LP scam, Hulkageddon or even the Goonswarm-Star Fraction mutual ally war-dec don't exist or are simply ignored and hardly mentioned in-character.
I'm guessing people find it a bit immersion-breaking to some degree to refer to how relatively powerful and influential one particular player block has gotten. I mean, its tricky - it doesn't help that Goonswarm is so profoundly anti-roleplay by its nature - and that anyone attempting to bring this stuff up publicly in an roleplay manner will inevitably be OOC demeaned and trolled etc. That kind of thing does get old and many roleplayers seem not to like that kind of argument.
I tried to post as meaningfully as I could in your FW scam post Merdaneth, but it is pretty hard work putting all CCP's collective bad decisions through an RP lens sometimes. Then we ended up having to sideways consider the confiscation of the illicit gains part of cannon as well - which in RP turns still allows Goons to screw over the Republic into near bankruptcy then get magically saved again by Concord.
Similar thing with our mutual wardec scheme against Goons really - we did everything by the number according to the Inferno 1.0 devblogs and laid the groundwork for a plan to draw the largest alliance in the game into a truly vast network of hisec defensive allies that they could not escape from then ... well, next week CCP changed the rules and turned the whole system on its head. Even I'm not sure of the value of making an RP post out of that because its ultimately going to sound like "CCP/CONCORD caved to Goons" (again) and will just attract the goon trolls to come and mess up IGS.
I guess my point is yes, these are galaxy spanning significant events to Eve the OOC metagame etc. But they don't have much actual credibility to the cannon background. And that probably reflect a change in focus from CCP itself last couple of years, where they have stopped really loving and promoting the Eve storyline of space empires and technological development and started praising metagaming and pure OOC shenanigans.
How can people talk about their hairstyles, the latest relationships and not mention such things at all unless they consciously choose to not make such events part of their RP. Does it mean that such events simply don't exist within their RP-bubble? Are they discarded as to 'gamist' and therefore having no place in their RP world?
Well I don't think people ignore them. Certainly in TLF chat when the FW scam debate was raging it was mostly "So Goons helped us win FW then? / :shrug: its a storm in a teacup CCP will take all the LP back and we'll still have our tier 5 purchased fleet stabbers." How to turn that into appropriate RP rationale - I dunno, "nullsec confidence tricksters used the Amarr and Matari militias as patsies while destroying billions of their own assets to be awarded trillions of Loyalty points to fix galactic markets and gain access to the republican assembly plants - hundreds of TLF fighters randomly benefit from the con by cashing out their own stocks at tier 5, concord then confiscated all the illicit LPs."
Is that better than simply ignoring it - probably - but it is a bit of a jarring impact to the sensibilities of those loyalists who have ever claimed their empires could not be threatened by capsuleer alliances. (and to make matters worse, its concord that has to play the magic reset switch and undo the damage further portraying Amarr and Minmatar states as pretty pathetic patsies in the whole thing.)
Goons vs SF war is similar really - in character it would be "Goonswarm leans on Concord to price large scale defensive alliances out of viability following upsets in hisec wars. Star Fraction to be charged ten trillion ISK to continue the war with their current roster of allies (every two weeks!)."
I mean, you can't really put this kind of thing on paper without it sounding like one long allegation of developer corruption rather than actual roleplay material. Its pretty dodgy stuff.
And of course, that does really partially explain why CCP themselves have stopped RP'ing game decisions in the news. This kind of thing is proving extremely difficult to introduce to the IC reality of New Eden. Years ago CCP did produce RP news articles to cover important events and game changes - so perhaps we could ask what really changed?
I got the feeling that more and more players separate their play in 'EVE the game' from their play in 'EVE world', and and can happily play a Amarr loyalist who's gameplay is supported by regular donations of isk from an alt enrolled in the TLF.
Well I read your email on the subject Merdaneth but IC on that one I'm afraid Merdaneth (the character) probably made his bed years ago as far as Jade is concerned. Yes from a certain angle its corrupt as all hell, especially from the Amarrian side - but then you have to remember as an anarchist opposed to all governments Jade is hardly going to dislike seeing imperialist memetics corroded by personal interest and loyalty given to comrades in space rather than politicians back on the homeworld. Of course if this kind of corruption led to an Amarrian conquest of the warzone you'd see Jade pretty pointed in her criticisms but then its fortunate most slave populations only need to be liberated once. (ie once RAA flipped Minmatar for the first time we'd expect to have gotten the population out from under the yoke and back to free space). Still if it makes you feel any better, rest assured the people Jade flies with in the Minmatar Militia do want to conquer the whole of the warzone and reduce Amarr to zero systems (and then invade providence again). I think that's a pretty honest ambition.
Still, I do agree its something you can get your teeth into Merdaneth - actual loyalist Amarrians running Minmatar alts to farm LPs probably would be seen pretty as pretty dodgy practice by the theology council - though I'd guess they'd justify it as guerrilla economics to fund their continued war.
If this was something we ever needed to do the other way around "running amarr alts for LP income" it would be fairly easy to call it sponsoring corruption in the 24th Crusade with double agents and infiltrators to draw income from the other side.
Perhaps the real issue here is that the FW engine has become something profoundly corrupt in comparison to the way old school loyalists used to run their wars and conduct their roleplay?
But that maybe reflects also the degree to which IC roleplay as a whole is no longer particularly valued by CCP?
Author
Topic: The growing dichotomy between role-play and real-play (Read 9868 times)