That's a lot of assumptions that you make.
Yes. Fortunately, I'm rarely wrong.
I'll bite. Try these on for size:
Alright, fuck it.
If you know your devs, you'll know that one of the devs in the EVE Illuminati is in charge of "Amarrian" event actors and PF - which is a wide net which also includes Khanid, Ammatar, SoE and the Blood Raiders.
Did anyone think to ask why PIE's event got an actual Amarrian actor visiting it, but the Federation Day event only got an SoE actor? Esna's suggestion that we got a FedNav actor is misinformed - I was there for the entire length of Federation Day (I had to be - I was DJing) and the only reason we got a visit from an event actor at all is because we began making noise in various channels about the fact that PIE had got a visit from an event actor and we hadn't. You could call this "manufactured outrage" on our part, and to be fair it probably was, but it worked - yellow text appeared in Dodixie local for all of, what, five minutes, if that? The funny thing was, when the event actor turned up, it was SoE, which are a group which has basically nothing to do with the Federation. This makes absolutely no sense unless you consider that the event actors for SoE are controlled by the same dev who does the event actors for Amarr and the Blood Raiders. The dev who does the event actors for the Federation is an entirely different person.
When you look at event actor attendance at player-run events, a distinct pattern emerges.
So I'm just going to come right out and say it - Amarrians were the ones benefiting almost exclusively off event actors attending their events and hanging out in their channels. Why are Minmatar, Caldari and in particular Gallente roleplayers collectively less upset about the event actors not coming to our events or channels anymore? Well shit, how would we even know something had changed? It'll basically be exactly the same for us as it was before. The only visible change that's occured from our perspective is that players are no longer able to gate access to the channels where the event actors usually hang out, which is a benefit to everyone equally.
Well, of course, except for the gatekeepers. But you don't know any of them, do you?
First off, Esna's not misinformed. He was referring to a previous Federation Day, just like others have several times before him in this thread.
Second: The reason there was an SOE actor at the Federation Day event is
because the person who organized the event explicitly asked for an SOE actor. Furthermore, the Live Events team has more people on it than are able to participate with proper speaking roles. If someone who is responsible for one or more actors is not available at the time of the event you're planning, that's
your problem, not theirs. The person responsible for the Fed actors likely wasn't available that day due to having a real life outside of the office, and the person(s) responsible for the Amarr and SOE ones were.
It should be noted that for the PIE anniversary event we had sent out direct invites to the developer actors at least a month in advance. I don't know if the Federation Day crew did the same, but if they hadn't then this would be a factor to consider.
We did. The dev running the Federation event actors apparently follows the rules a bit more closely than the one running the Amarrian event actors, because we got a polite "sorry, appreciate the invite, but can't." This is precisely the same response that the PIE ball and its attendees should have received. In point of fact, the surprise to me was not that the PIE ball got an event actor and we initially didn't, it was that our campaign of somewhat-phony outrage actually managed to cause the dev enough concern that they actually bothered to send us an actor at all.
Again, the reason there was an SOE actor at the Federation Day event, is
because the person who organized the event explicitly asked for an SOE actor. And for the absence of a Fed actor, it clearly couldn't possibly have been a schedule conflict on their part, nope,
not at all.
I also find it interesting for you to say that Amarr get more. We haven't even had a single Amarr live event this year
Live events aren't relevant to this discussion. Those are not player events. This entire conversation we're having revolves around event actor attendance at player events, which to the (thankfully) limited extent that it happened favoured Amarrians. The entire reason for the rule about not showing up at player events or in player channels to begin with was CCP's desire to not appear to show favouritism. It should not have happened and no longer will.
As stated before, if only one of the people who is authorized to 'play' the part of an actor in answering mails or showing up to events - CCP-hosted or not - is available, then the onus is on your end to try and find a time that works for the actor(s) you want to appear, not to throw a fit when the people who are available show up to events scheduled when they're available just because they're not your event.
Now, I can't speak for past years, mind, but for this one we've certainly been on the backburner compared to everyone else.
In past years? In past years there was a live events team called AURORA, which was infamously shut down for disproportionately favouring Amarrians - it was to the point where it was actually discouraging roleplayers in other factions. If you want to know why there was an almost year-long period where I was literally the only active Federal roleplayer in the entire game, this was one of many contributing factors.
I would wager good money that the AURORA debacle is a major contributing factor in - if not the sole reason for - the "don't involve live event actors in player channels or events" rule.
AURORA's problem was not favoritism toward a specific faction based on story arcs or events. It was people inside it
cheating and giving information about the events to other parties that allowed them to be 'pushed' to those volunteers' player-characters' benefit.
Furthermore, your apparent position that live events and player events are (or should be) wholly separate from one another is not a good precedent to set in a world where we're supposed to be able to cause ripples, not just react to ones caused by CCP.
Live events very frequently spawn or influence player events. Sometimes these player events influence the world and are reflected in the news - Federation Day has had a number of articles over the years, my "Hearth and Home" relief project got a mention in a news article, SYNE's Seyllin Conference has had a few articles about it, etc. - and sometimes they even spawn events and story arcs, as Soter (and probably others in GMVA) did with their petition for an explanation after the events in Evaulon.
The Amarrians have had absolutely NO live events since last year, and that's questionable at best considering that the only event I can think of actually involved Blood Raiders faffing about in highsec and then moving on to Oyonata where they got smashed in (there was a minor thing for people collecting Navy tags for the Blood Raider actors as well, but no actual 'event' behind it afaik). On the other hand, the Caldari have had this huge arc with the destabilization of Heth's Provist regime and its fall to the CEP, they also shared the Caldari Prime arc with the Gallente, who shared the Midular/Colelie arc with the Minmatar, who finally had the Tribal Council (or whatever it is) set back up after 5 years. Even several of the pirate factions have had small arcs as part of the Dust 514 connection.
So the Amarrians have had basically no attention from the Events team since it got put back together again, and somehow it's not cool for them to have a couple actors show up for about half an hour at an event put on by one of the oldest corporations in the game for their 10th anniversary, which, by the way, they left so that the person (or persons) playing them could go show up to the Federation Day event that was scheduled
at the same time?
I'm not even really a member of the Amarrian RP subcommunity and I think that's a crock of shit.