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[Alizabeth]

Katrina, can I have your babies?

Wat. 

You're so damn sexy when you're right. 

All joking aside, Katrina sums up the arguments better than I can.  Someone saying that my eight hours of gametime doesn't count because they don't like what I did is :not cool:.

[Silver Night]

I don't think that's what is being said. I think most of what is being said is that for some people, it is more useful from an immersion or RP standpoint for them to view (for example) those 8 hours differently than the literal IG representation of them. For them. Noone (I think) is saying that you would have to view them the same way (although admittedly things get awkward when the discussion comes up IG).

Edit: I view it in the same way as, for example, folks who find that it serves their immersion best if they regard what their character sees as exactly what's on-screen at all times. It isn't the way I do it, but there is plenty of room for a wide variety of interpretations of the way that game mechanics and RP interact - and as long as noone decides to force theirs on other people, things generally work out fine with only the occasional rough patch.

[Louella Dougans]

There's a mission, called "Ritualist Raids", where the player is tasked with attacking a blood raider complex, and destroying the cathedral, the central holy place of the complex.

Opposing forces are a pair of battleships, with supporting battlecruisers, destroyers and frigates.

The agent recommends you do not go alone.

It is however, completable by a single player in a battleship. This may just be because of skillpoint growth of the player, as a lot of missions are completable (slowly) in a battleship fitted with plain tech1 modules (otherwise, what are meta modules for?).

The mission though, is I feel, a more "realistic" situation, in that if you follow the agent's recommendation, then you'd have a battleship plus support. An actual task force, against an enemy force that makes sense.

Unlike other missions, such as "Blockade", where there are waves and waves of battleship npcs.


Or "Damsel in Distress" for that matter. It's just a bit silly.

[Morwen Lagann]

This whole debate is why if I feel the need to discuss PVE actions IC, I tend to avoid bringing numbers of any sort into it aside from the occasional sole exception of how long I've been out doing it. Instead I refer to "patrols" (exploration/probing), "contract work for <corp>" (missions), etc.

The actual numbers of (lost) ships and crew involved are mostly immaterial or irrelevant to RP in the long run, in my opinion. The numbers will add up over time just the same, so your name is going to end up on one or more factions' shitlist one way or another - it merely becomes a question of how many gold star stickers the peons get for wrecking your hull in the end.

We also have the problem that many of our characters actively don't want to think or talk about the numbers involved -or give that impression. Unless of course, it's complaining about our own crews...

[Merdaneth]

I can shoot any attempt to rationalize belt NPCs, missions and the like full of holes without any problem. You need to have a seriously warped sense of logic or be immune to things like internal consistency to even attempt to take NPC ships and everything that is associated with at them at face value.

Everybody handwaves stuff, only everyone handwaves different stuff. People will adamantly maintain that they've killed 300 battleships, but when asked what they think about missions, nobody ever says: 'well hey, you know, these guys always send me on the same type of missions, the mission briefings are 100% similar, and the hostiles inside the missions always have *exactly* the same amount and type of ships. In fact, I do not know where Kruul gets his funding or his clones, but I alone have killed him a 100 times. Sometimes I talk to others, and it turns out there are hundreds of people trying to rescue exactly the same damsel from the same bad guy, but only in a slightly different location. Isn't that odd?"

Players conveniently ignore lots of stuff while they should have them speaking out in amazement.

It is much easier to rationalize everything by having an Ender's Game like explanation: "you know, these ships aren't really there, but Concord just projects them into your pod, and provides you with an incentive to shoot them. Concord is training you for a battle against a horrible enemy by letting you shoot at computer generated opponents"

[Pieter Tuulinen]

Personally speaking I think the answer is to increase the toughness and capabilities of the NPC ships in much the same way as they did in the recent FW update whilst reducing the numbers required.

 

[Lyn Farel]

I would also really like to have some "bosses" like Kruul and Tiago Kargaz being actual factionned capsuleers with stats (more or less) matching your own, facing them alone (or in few numbers) like you do with Dagan.

[Natalcya Katla]

Personally, I take kill numbers at face value. What I don't take at face value is the flavor text. I assume, as a matter of course, that every agent is lying their tits off in regards to what you're actually being sent out to do - and they don't even bother to hide that they're lying, or they'd be more careful about not recycling their stories so much. You get just enough information to be able to find and kill what they want you to kill, but every piece of context in a mission is a bald-faced lie. It doesn't have to be believable, it just has to generate enough white noise that digging through the bullshit becomes a pain for whoever tries to look closer.

The damsel, whoever she actually is, is not in distress. Who'd send someone to blow up the place where their daughter is being held captive, anyway? The pleasure gardens where she's presumably held captive are probably not pleasure gardens at all. The only thing that indicates to us that they are is the old Simon the Sorcerer rationale of "when I move my mouse pointer over you, it says wizards". "Kruul" is probably a bunch of different people, and if "his" DNA actually matches other samples of itself, it's probably from someone who'd never even been aboard the ship.

I've had agents asking me to thwart Amarrian incursions into Amarrian-owned systems (flying missions from a station that's located inside "enemy territory" can yield some interesting objectives, let me tell you). I've had agents sending me out to recover their stolen lunch. If an agent sent me out to destroy the lair of an evil space unicorn, I wouldn't blink an eye, IC or OOC.

[Merdaneth]

Personally, I take kill numbers at face value. What I don't take at face value is the flavor text. I assume, as a matter of course, that every agent is lying their tits off in regards to what you're actually being sent out to do - and they don't even bother to hide that they're lying, or they'd be more careful about not recycling their stories so much. You get just enough information to be able to find and kill what they want you to kill, but every piece of context in a mission is a bald-faced lie. It doesn't have to be believable, it just has to generate enough white noise that digging through the bullshit becomes a pain for whoever tries to look closer.

So, by the same token, you wouldn't care if another capsuleer called you a liar if you say you killed X NPC ships, because you are assuming lying is the norm?

And, why would you not trust the agents, but would completely trust in your Concord-controlled instruments?

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

My personal take on mission briefs is that they are representative of a whole class of missions. Named NPC's I take as representative of Pirate capsuleers (granted, very bad ones). The number of kills I take as actual however. Is it possible we are having a problem of scale here? Is it possible that the number of settled planets and habitats in the cluster actually could support this huge loss of life?

I do get a tad confused at NPC industrials riding to the attack in intercept missions (and not warping off leaving their escort to cover for them). I have actually seen belt rats run away, long before Incursion, so there is that.

[Natalcya Katla]

So, by the same token, you wouldn't care if another capsuleer called you a liar if you say you killed X NPC ships, because you are assuming lying is the norm?

And, why would you not trust the agents, but would completely trust in your Concord-controlled instruments?

I don't see how it's by the same token at all, but capsuleers calling other capsuleers liars is the norm. So that's all par for the course, too.

As for the "CONCORD-controlled instruments", I thought my argument implied I don't trust them completely, at least as far as accurate target identification in missions go. Although it's specifically the information packages uploaded by agents I don't trust. As for the simple fact of there being targets, if that's what you're getting at, and of the targets shooting back, yes, I do trust that. I expend real ammunition taking them down, they drop real, salvageable loot, and if I screw up bad enough, they destroy my ship. So they pretty much have to be real, unless you assume a Matrix-style reality - which basically amounts to simply dismantling the 4th wall.

[Vieve]

(flying missions from a station that's located inside "enemy territory" can yield some interesting objectives, let me tell you). I've had agents sending me out to recover their stolen lunch. If an agent sent me out to destroy the lair of an evil space unicorn, I wouldn't blink an eye, IC or OOC.

I've been entertained by missions where I've had to transport Kamieras from Caldari stations to Minmatar ones for mental health evaluations.

[Synthia]

In the Amarr cosmos missions, it is revealed that the Blood Raiders are working on mass cloning techniques.

These could be used to clone up legions of replacement ship crews.
Sansha's Nation appears to have similar technologies.
Guristas would probably have something derived from the Tube children technology.
Serpentis are also heavily into biotechnologies.
Angel Cartel recruit from Minmatar, who would appear to reproduce quickly.

They might be able to replace the huge amount of losses apparently suffered daily.

However, there is the question of if what is visible is all that exists.
Example. Backstory mentions much about clone facilities, and people clambering out of cloning chambers, or clone reanimation units and so on.
Yet, if you are podded, you will reappear in your captains quarters, seemingly without having gone anywhere near any such cloning service facility on the station.
There are many such things like that, where the backstory and the visible ingame reality vary considerably. Backstory has Minmatar planets occupied by Amarr forces, none of which were visible ingame, and indeed, went against the ingame reality where the Amarr militia had never captured the system mentioned.

In any case, it does make you wonder.

If say, the Guristas, have the industrial capacity to build all those ships, and the human resources to recruit&train or clone&replace sufficient crews for them, then... why do they need to pirate at all ?

[BloodBird]

Player Vs Environment. A series of Game Mechanics. From an IC-POW, here is no logic behind it, there is no explanation or idea that will suffice to hand-wave it.

There are several problems, I'll high-light 3 just to serve as examples.

1. The seemingly endless resources.

How many tons of materials do any single Empire, let alone the pirate factions produce on a daily basis?

The average price, in Tritanium, needed to build your average battleship is 7 million units. Let's ignore all other materials needed for now and go with this. A well-skilled player in a T2 fitted, bonus'ed Hulk using specialized implants still use hours to mine the Veldspar needed to aquire 7 million units of Tritanium, even with perfect refining and no tax. On any given day in the MMORPG EVE-Online, thousands of NPC Battleships are blown up in high-sec alone, let alone ratted in low-sec and null-space. How many thousands of NPC Hulks are needed to mine how long to keep up with that strain, ignoring for now the need to build new Battlecruisers, Cruisers, Destroyers and Frigates?

Let's go with infinite resources and near non-existent build times for now.

2. The endless supply of new crew.

Let's go with any of the ideas presented so far to explain this one. Or just say that any Empire or Pirate faction mass-produce legions of clones from well-trained crew well-versed in their individual jobs and that this is 'installed' into the clones as theoretical skills upon birth as fully grown adult Humans, and that within days hours of development, they are crewing yet another finished vessel from the endless resources and non-existent production times.

You now have an endless source or ships and personell to man them. What to do with it?

3. The endless stupidity.

This is the biggest problem of them all IMHO. The Pirate factions and the Empires never seem to learn. Endless waves of NPC vessels are daily out doing whatever it is your agent(s) want you to stop, or endlessly patrolling the resources they never seem to bother touching, using the same technology, fleet compositions, tactics and strategy. They never learn. Despite the inevitable result being utter failure and destruction of their assets in nearly 100% of all cases, no alteration of tactics, no change of strategy, no variation in possible actions are observed.

Even the most stubborn commander *will* alter his or her strategy when confronted by the very same result every single time, no matter how expendable and endlessly repacable your assets are. There is no logical or even remotely reasonable way to explain why places like Dodixie and any other missioning 'hub' is assaulted every day using the very same means as the day before, with the same predictable results.

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These are but a few of the reasons why, for us as Role-Players, trying to have our characters (who we pretend lives in a real universe comprised of Humans, Nations and their realistic behaviour and interaction with each other) go in detail about what is at it's core a few very unrealistic but needed Game Mechanics is a horrible idea. It punches huge holes in immersion and shows the game's limitations for all to see. Ratting, missioning, un-depletable resources and so on, it can't be detailed in any IC conversation or context, because it forces us to try to explain utterly unrealistic things in an IC manner.

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I'm hoping this won't come off as too YDIW, but I'll have to leave this here anyway - frankly, none of my toons will ever buy any kind of far-fetched explanation for the above factors, and I *will* try my best to smooth over any of these things if anything like it comes up IC. I honestly think it's for the best that we don't try to explain this away, because in the interest of good RP and immersion, we can't.

[Esna Pitoojee]

For what it's worth, I think you've very accurately layed out the same problems I have with taking NPC kills at face value, although I'd add that the "never changing NPCs" issue is in fact even more stark in FW, where you are often sent after field commanders described as highly dangerous and capable... who then proceed to use the exact same AI-limited tactics and actions as any other NPC in the game.