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[Streya]

Otherwise titled "Actually aligning my roleplay with my gameplay."

Hey everyone. When I first started this game I would have considered myself a "light roleplayer" in that I didn't interact much with the RP community, but rather was a huge fan of the fiction surrounding the EVE universe and would nerd out about it with other players. I had silently thought up traits and characteristics of my toon at the time, and though the character was never shared with anyone else it definitely had an impact on how I played the game.

From day one I was inspired by the immense scale of the EVE Online universe. The very first T2 ship I could ever fly was a Cheetah, and from the moment I could step into the hull I slapped a probe launcher onto the thing and started exploring. I was getting bored with FW and wanted to try nullsec missioning out, so I sneaked my way down to Stain since Sansha standings conflicted least with my high Minmatar standings. My first real interaction with any big-name roleplayer was when I encountered Ghost Hunter in Stain (RV5-DW, if I recall correctly!).

Fast forward some time and I've burnt that character out through countless faction-swaps, corp-hops, and with needlessly dramatic roleplay. So I started a new one and wanted to return to the roots of what got me hooked to EVE: exploration. So I made an exploration character that would match my RP with how I want to play the game.

And then a wardec happened.

Wat? Didn't I just stop playing a character specifically to get away from FW frigate combat and derpy character antics, which I found frustrating? I certainly did, but due to unfortunate circumstances Streya had to be the character to make the big IGS announcement, which has probably burnt up any reputation she has as a character permanently. I warned against the making of the IGS post, but at the end of the day I'm not the one running my corporation. Where OOCly the wardec is a celebration of conflict in EVE and will hopefully result in some gudfites, it has ICly been made out to be this huge goal that is quite frankly untenable. So I'm going to call this character's reputation and validity burnt and simply go back to non-interaction with the greater roleplay community, at least IC. My outlet for roleplay will be what it was before: creative writing, blogs, chronicles, and resultant nerding out about those things with other players OOC.



More this:
[spoiler][/spoiler]


And hopefully less this:
[spoiler][/spoiler]

Of course I'll still be hanging out on Backstage and in various OOC channels, but I see no reason to interact with people's characters IC if it begins to negatively impact the image I had of my character and shift it away from aligning with my actual gameplay. I'll also stay in my current corporation since I've already invested a lot of time and resources into it, and like the people and environment it provides.

I was silently competent at what I did before I began explicitly roleplaying, and I'd really rather go back to being viewed as such than not simply because of an IGS post I didn't particularly agree with making in the first place.

[Anslol]

Streya, PM me on eve-mail.

[Natalcya Katla]

Pity.

Personally I thought it was a well-written post, and I was pleased to see someone finally posting about actual corp-to-corp warfare on the IGS again. Traditional wardecs seem to have become a sadly neglected mechanism between RPers of various stripes, largely discarded in favor of FW or even just simple piracy.

Is it an overly ambitious war with an overly ambitious stated goal? Quite possibly, I wouldn't know. I see nothing at all "derpy" about it, though. You essentially seem to have issued a challenge committing you to an action that may result in some embarrassment if you fail to meet your objectives.

So maybe you'll get to eat some crow afterwards, and maybe there'll be some gloating, but trying and failing at an ambitious endeavor does not (or at least should not) break a character, or a corp for that matter. As long as you guys back up the IGS announcement with action and give it your best, I for one will respect you for that, even if you fail.

And if it's the people sneering at your character for being "the new Jade" or somesuch that get to you, don't tear yourself up about that. Feel smug about it instead.

[Saede Riordan]

And if it's the people sneering at your character for being "the new Jade" or somesuch that get to you, don't tear yourself up about that. Feel smug about it instead.

Oh I do.

[Desiderya]

Of course I'll still be hanging out on Backstage and in various OOC channels, but I see no reason to interact with people's characters IC if it begins to negatively impact the image I had of my character and shift it away from aligning with my actual gameplay. I'll also stay in my current corporation since I've already invested a lot of time and resources into it, and like the people and environment it provides.

I was silently competent at what I did before I began explicitly roleplaying, and I'd really rather go back to being viewed as such than not simply because of an IGS post I didn't particularly agree with making in the first place.

I'd like to point out that the person responsible for negatively impacting the image of your character in this affair would solely be you. If someone dragged Streya in a situation where she looks bad you should take that beef - IC - up with the responsible person. It can actually lead to character development and immersive RP, because mistakes, misjudgements and a lack of success actually belongs to consequent roleplaying as much as positive achievements and successes. But it's your game, and if you decide to ignore what has happened genuine good luck with trying to make people forget it.

I'm just kind of amazed that this was caused by and over, well, nothing actually.

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

As one of the receivers of said war, I don't really see it as any sort of derpy war from an IC point of view. I recognize that it's a frustrating war for you, both because you prefer to fight in larger ships while we are pretty exclusively a frigate combat corp and because you feel you were pressed into this position of appearing as the "new Jade". I can't really speak to the former, but I'm a little curious why you let yourself get put into the position of being the spokesperson for a position that you don't really care about.

As far as that position goes, and the war in general, I think it's all good. Speaking as a former Jericho Fraction director, I loved the crazy posthumanist screeds that Jade would post as justifications for our wars - which is realistically what they were: justifications. As a corporation, Jericho Fraction discovered that it was a huge pile of fun to fight scrappy wars while engaging in IC agitprop, so that's what we did. It polarized a lot of people with regard to JF, and it gave us a nice pool of both allies and enemies. If that's not something that sounds fun to you, though, then that's a good reason to avoid those sorts of posts in the future. I don't know. That's only something that you, yourself, can say.

From a strategic and tactical point of view, this has got to be a really tough war for you guys. Your stated goal is to remove us from the Minmatar war zone. The only way to do that is to make it so difficult for us to go about our daily business that we pack it in. However, we are frigate specialists, and frigates have an unprecedented ability to dictate the choice of engagement. If I were in your shoes, I would give some serious thought to whether or not that goal is feasible. I'm not saying it's not, but I am saying that it's tricky. We win, after all, by simply ignoring you and going about our business. JF found itself in your position many times. Sometimes we were able to achieve our stated goals anyways, but that always required unconventional thinking.

What happens if you can't win this war? That's also something that JF faced many times. Sometimes you have to simply admit "we didn't win this one" and move on. In a war like this with an existing agitprop campaign, you're going to have to eat some crow (as Natalcya says) if you drop the wardec. So what? Shrug it off and move on. Lots of people love underdogs. Hold a post-mortem for the war - what went right, what went wrong, what should you have done instead. Regroup, learn, get stronger, and come back to win your next war.

In any case, I don't think anyone of consequence views you as incompetent because of any of this. I certainly don't.

[Desiderya]

Aside from getting kills I don't think [DUTY] has achieved any stunning victories in its career. We've, however, not set us up to any grand goals. But in the end we weren't able to hold Galmil at bay in Enaluri (For Des that includes the WHG deployments, too), we didn't win the Caldari Prime thing.. I don't think this makes one's character look bad. It was, however, overall a lot of fun and we've learned a lot.
So you could also use this as a tool to get cooperation up in the corp and try to make the best out of the situation, try out tactics and fits, etc.

[Ché Biko]

Really? Now people on my contact list stop RP-ing before I even started to properly interact with them?  What will be The Community's next move?

In all seriousness: 

[Karmilla Strife]

Granted I haven't had to yet, but if I started a RP war I'd state and objective and a deadline. That would keep a conflict from dragging out forever with little point. If the war doesn't go as well as you'd like you back out at the deadline and concede that your goals were not met by the desired date.

I have to say that the return of IGS wars is an exciting thing and I approve. 

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

I have to say that the return of IGS wars is an exciting thing and I approve. 

Oh, I couldn't agree more!

I was going back through history looking for an example of a fairly public war loss, and I found this one from my own history. For me, the war was a loss as I was unable to stop the Lame Ducks from suicide ganking miners (the grand total of the war was something like 3 frigates destroyed on both sides, plus a damaged BB). It was a gigantic pile of fun writing it up, though, and it ended up introducing me to some really great folks who made my next couple of years in Eve a total blast.

One thing I did notice, however, comparing that thread to yours, Streya: There seems to be much more of a culture of humiliation nowadays in Eve. All the ribbing in my thread was pretty gentle "ha ha, only serious" stuff. In yours, people are just steamrollering you - not Pyre folks so much, but uninvolved people. I don't particularly approve.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

It certainly hasn't made me respect anybody less OOC. IC, of course, there will be words with Saede later - you're my friend and you wardecced my corporation when you KNEW I was stranded out in space and they were looking for me?!

I do think the war, as it stands, is unwinnable for AP - I could write a dissertation about why the WarDec was unneccessary and doomed to failure. On the other hand if the War was more about making a moral statement than inflicting a crushing defeat, then that should be fine.

[Shiori]

I don't think you've lost quite as much RP cred as you seem to feel you have. Don't lose heart. Whether you win or lose the war, the IGS mud-slinging or the in-space parts of it, is far less important than your conduct during it. In the very worst case, eating crow with some measure of dignity is a very useful skill to learn.

[Saede Riordan]

As far as that position goes, and the war in general, I think it's all good. Speaking as a former Jericho Fraction director, I loved the crazy posthumanist screeds that Jade would post as justifications for our wars - which is realistically what they were: justifications. As a corporation, Jericho Fraction discovered that it was a huge pile of fun to fight scrappy wars while engaging in IC agitprop, so that's what we did. It polarized a lot of people with regard to JF, and it gave us a nice pool of both allies and enemies. If that's not something that sounds fun to you, though, then that's a good reason to avoid those sorts of posts in the future. I don't know. That's only something that you, yourself, can say.

See, this is totally what I want. I love running wardecs. They were what I did before I started RPing, and there haven't been any big IGS RP wars in aaaages, and its something I really want to see more of. Our justifications OOCly for this war were basically that Veik was begging for someone to decc them, we thought it'd be fun (I still think it's great fun), and we wanted to see a return to the ideological wars of days past. So our point to posting to the IGS was less to say anything specific and more just for the purpose of making a post at all. I've been told Anslol's been taking bets in the war, which I find awesome, I find less awesome rumours of blues betting against us, but wahey its their money. I feel like, Streya's issue is to feel like the IC flak being received in the thread will somehow translate into our characters being 'ruined for all time' or result in us being disrespected as players, which I don't see at all.

From a strategic and tactical point of view, this has got to be a really tough war for you guys. Your stated goal is to remove us from the Minmatar war zone. The only way to do that is to make it so difficult for us to go about our daily business that we pack it in. However, we are frigate specialists, and frigates have an unprecedented ability to dictate the choice of engagement. If I were in your shoes, I would give some serious thought to whether or not that goal is feasible. I'm not saying it's not, but I am saying that it's tricky. We win, after all, by simply ignoring you and going about our business. JF found itself in your position many times. Sometimes we were able to achieve our stated goals anyways, but that always required unconventional thinking.

What happens if you can't win this war? That's also something that JF faced many times. Sometimes you have to simply admit "we didn't win this one" and move on. In a war like this with an existing agitprop campaign, you're going to have to eat some crow (as Natalcya says) if you drop the wardec. So what? Shrug it off and move on. Lots of people love underdogs. Hold a post-mortem for the war - what went right, what went wrong, what should you have done instead. Regroup, learn, get stronger, and come back to win your next war.

This is really my thoughts on things as well. I think there's been a good deal too much emotional backlash IRL for what has been said about our characters, and fears that we won't be able to recruit, or enjoy RPing because of it, and I definitely want to try to bring it back to being about our characters and not about us. If Saede can't pull a victory out of her ass, then she admits she lost, and we lurk back into our wormhole to plan our next move. The fear seems to be that if we can't win, it will make no one want to fly with us, because we will appear incompetent. I'm not too worried about that, and think it won't be an issue as long as we bring the fights. I only regret being as busy as I have been, and not been able to put more time to chasing you guys down.

Overall, I think this has been decently fun, I think me and Streya both kind of freaked out OOC when we got told off OOC for doing what we did and called derpy and drama starting and attention whoring. And there were a few IC attacks on the IGS thread that seemed very much to be in the vein of veiled attacks on us as players. I'm trying to just roll with the punches. My only worry at this point is that it might somehow make it impossible to grow the corporation, but I think that fear is likely baseless.

[Makkal]

Your character isn't perfect and might have to publicly eat crow.

I don't think that's a bad thing.

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

Overall, I think this has been decently fun, I think me and Streya both kind of freaked out OOC when we got told off OOC for doing what we did and called derpy and drama starting and attention whoring. And there were a few IC attacks on the IGS thread that seemed very much to be in the vein of veiled attacks on us as players. I'm trying to just roll with the punches. My only worry at this point is that it might somehow make it impossible to grow the corporation, but I think that fear is likely baseless.

That's a good attitude to take, and I don't think you really have anything to worry about in terms of corp reputation.