I was a bit sad to see the thread end up the way it did, as well. I feel like weird passive-aggressive IC metafiction arguements happen quite a lot in EVE compared to other games, which I suppose makes sense when you think about the setting - It's extremely large, with huge amounts of undefined, uninspectable space, from everywhere from the inside of a Capsuleers ship (crew size debates) to how technology works, to even large aspects of the makeup of whole cultures and nations.
Putting aspects of the world in the hand of the players is a blessing and a curse. This sort of thing can't really happen (or atleast not without huges streches in the imagination) in a regular MMO where if somebody claims such-and-such is happening in someplace, it's easy to just walk over there and say, "No, it isn't", or "Yes, it is". But in eve, there's no possible way to resolve it beyond the people involved breaking immersion and chatting OOC about what they collectively think it would be cool to fill in the "blanks" of the world with.
It kinda reminds me of the idea of Schrodingers Cat, actually.
You have a box with a cat inside where, due to quantum superposition hypothetically confusing the hell out the universe and human perception, it is paradoxically both alive and dead at the same time. Much in the same way that Mantenault currently exists in both a state of Caldari jackboot oppression and a Federal democratic status quo, and the CEWPA charter exists in both of state of permitting and disallowing militaries to mess a bunch with planetary populations. The only way to bring an end to this state is open the box - To "Observe" the cat and force the cosmos to make a decision.
However, we aren't able to do that, because the ability to interact at all with the box simply isn't in the game. So all we can do is present our own opinions of what probably exists inside the box, what "makes sense" due to outside context, even though they'll never be more then subjective perceptions, just like anything else that we, as players, can't "observe" with our own two eyes while flying around space in the game or reading in the lore.
It's reallty frustrating. For instance, I could make the claim that Gwen's family is so ludicrously wealthy that they actually own an entire continent on Saisio - And there'd be no way to say I'm wrong. Even if you were to plant PI crud all other the entire planet, I could just as easily claim that those facilities don't offer any actual control, and are just peacefully run by the locals, because the game does nothing to say otherwise.
No matter how ludicrous my statement was, there'd be no way to argue with me logically. Because the game does nothing to confirm or deny my opinion.
Hence, since the box can never be "opened" and the truth never "observed", all of the different possible worlds exist indefinitely in parallel to eachother, even though they're inherently contradictory. Which means that the only possible objection to someones perception is to challenge it with your own differing perception. Which by it's very nature, drags things out of character and sours the fun - Since it's a challenge to the both the player and the characters world, not just the character themself.
...Honestly, it almost seems like the only thing to do is for roleplayers to avoid things outside of the context presented by the game altogether. Although, that would create a very limited and kind of abstract world to interface with.
Maybe sandboxes are just bad for roleplay?
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Topic: [Happening Now] Live coverage of the Mantenault Referendum! (Read 5847 times)