I really just intended to use it as an example, not derail us onto a WoW discussion, it's just that everyone knows a lot about it. Being that, I should disclose that I've been pretty knee-deep in Warcraft since OaH and I edited on WoWwiki for a while. There's a LOT of it out there, and not just blurbs in buried sentences, but fairly useful lore. A lot of it, to be fair, EVE can't replicate because you can see it happening in-game. For example, we know the Church of Light's ranking system because those characters are present and order each other around in the game. We know how the church relates to the rest of the Alliance, what they worship, what their rituals are, we know where its purview ends, what they believe, where they draw their power from, what they draw their power from, und so weider. It's not too many articles you'd need to read to go through the meat and potatoes.
The Amarr religion, despite being more intimately tied to Amarrian culture, we don't have nearly as much information on. Unfortunately we, desperately need it, as per the last thing I was talking about. Is Constantin doing something heretical? That's a pretty hard question to answer because we don't know, presently, what constitutes heresy. We know being a member of a terrorist/blood drinking organization can get you on the list, but that's probably going to get you in trouble anywhere. Would the events that got Hamzi killed get him killed today? That's the problem. You get a decent story, and they write a lot of stories, but not much actual lore so you can understand modern life and what it's supposed to be about. Most of it is conjecture.
Can't say I agree here. I think there is far more substance for the Amarr religion than there was for the Church of Light in WoW. We have the Scriptures (which I consider far more important than pretty much everything there is on the Church of Light, as the CoL has almost zero direct scripture to draw from), a few rituals, multiple examples of historically meaningful religious incidents, and multiple chronicles and stories showing the religion in use, and so on. It may not all be in one easy place, but it is there.
Religion is something that I found Blizzard had no idea what to do with, and was echoed just as much in the RPers. I at least find it far easier to RP a religious character in EVE than I did in WoW, since it feels like EVE has more to work with than WoW did.
I'm not sure us having a hand in lore is that much of a good thing, then. Imagine if CCP decided to roll with Constantin's interpretation of Scriptures because it fits better with their universe. That would justly piss a lot of you off OOCly for good reason.
If it's canon it's canon. That's my stance for RPing. I have a huge dislike for people who pick and choose what they like and don't like in lore. I may not like something but if it's canon then I respect it and try to find a way to use it. I even acknowledge Tony G stuff... the horror!
They went over when resurrection was possible and impossible a few times in WoW. The most recent one I can think of was during the new Troll starter quests when Vol'jin asks his shaman healer to res a fallen novice, and she says his soul has been blasted out of his body and cannot be recovered. It's not as reliable as EVE cloning.
EVE's normally isn't, either. It's reliable in the pod and nowhere else (and even then, it's ICly stated to not be a 100% of succeeding. Cloning accidents can occur. Plus the cloning facility itself can be sabotaged or destroyed, as seen in some missions and the Malkalen disaster). You do of course get all the soft-cloning people but that's primarily a player thing because people want an IC out for their planetside excursions, even though capsuleers are supposed to be vulnerable outside the pod. That's why CCP has gone back and forth on the soft cloning issue, I think, as it removes one of the key weaknesses capsuleers are supposed to have.
One of the reasons you don't see WoW characters running from fights, even though there are better lore examples of the consequences of death in them, is partially because you know OOCly there aren't many lopsided fights. Aside from world PVP (which, for the record, if you're severely outnumbered, you do run from if you're smart, I can't remember ever having defended Southshore on my 25s leveling back in the guard-grinding days), you are either evenly matched to your opponents in numbers or, in the case of PVE, they've taken your gear into account. Blobbing is of limited effectiveness, it's just not something that translates well because you're generally matched to your opponents in whatever you're doing; you can't just go get more people if your team sucks at WSG.
I was talking about RP, not PvP. In PvP, you will get people running from lopsided fights (usually after zerging into them a few times)... but most PvP fights are not viewed as IC unless they've been pre-arranged (often between event leaders who OOCly balance out the numbers to get even fights, something I've always hated). But in emote fights, which is where the majority of IC fights are found (you can't duel in cities, afterall), people will refuse to acknowledge that they're outnumbered and fight anyway, shrugging off wounds and injury so they can be a badass. Which is, admittedly, fitting for the type of characters that WoW ones are supposed to be, but bravery is taken for granted in that universe. I at least find it easier to RP a coward in EVE than I did in WoW, because there's a lot more to actually be afraid of even on an OOC level. I've OOCly instinctively run from fights before, not just out of IC behavior but actually OOC because EVE's full-time RP world makes me OOCly share in the same feelings as my character. In other games it feels like you have to force fear into your characters because there's very little to
actually be afraid of. In EVE I'm OOCly trembling half the time I'm in PvP.
Again, how do we view cloning in the era of Jamyl Sarum? They say things are changing, but how much? Is the Doctrine of Sacred Flesh even a thing anymore? Does a capsuleer death even count, thus be applicable to that idea that death is irrelevant? It'd be nice to have the lore on that instead of the sort of vague idea that the Sacred Flesh is a thing, especially when they violated it so loudly in their own lore.
Jamyl Sarum is ICly claimed to be a miracle from God. The question of if she's a clone or not isn't even touched on because it's a subject Amarr doesn't want to talk about (even critics of her like Ardishapur only attack it subtly, setting up tours and schools designed to better educate people so that they can realize for themselves that Jamyl is breaking religious law). Her existence doesn't retcon Sacred Flesh, it's a direct IC contradiction of it that characters can and should be concerned about ICly. IC hypocrisy is a good thing.
So yes, it's still a thing. As for it applying to capsuleers, well even though Sacred Flesh doesn't apply to them (beyond the fact that many non-heirs abide by Sacred Flesh voluntarily) there is still the nature of the soul and what happens to it after death to account for. As the article linked says, the rise of capsuleers has encouraged the view of cloning causing the soul to migrate, but it's made clear that this is only a recent argument that challenges the more traditional viewpoint of the soul being lost upon cloning. Again, that's a good thing. That's the kind of thing that drives RP conflict, creating issues like that in which players can feasibly support one side or the other and have conflict about. As a traditional Ardishapurite, Samira is believes that capsuleers are soulless shells. And all this is ignoring
the other, non-religious argument about whether a clone is even the same person or just a copy.
Cloning as an IC out might exist, but it's hardly something that immediately renders death (and thus bravery) pointless. There's both IC and OOC reasons why death still means something. As far as Samira is concerned, cloning doesn't nullify death at all, and she only has clones because it's mandated by CONCORD. Then throw in the rut about actually being a clone into the mix, and how that means she no longer has a soul, and there's a lot of neat RP stuff to play with.
See, here's where I can see what you're getting at, but I kind of don't think EITHER is accomplishing what you're saying. I think you're right that they're trying. Unfortunately, WoW tries so damn hard to get you involved in heroic thrashing that you get stuck in mundacity. Daily quests are horrible for that; necessary game mechanics, but the death knell of that idea ICly that WoW is an over-the-top Tolkein-ish world. It essentially makes going out to combat a daily, boring task. "Oh alright, I'll go kill another ten people. Sheesh... work." Which just isn't what they're going for. I think Pandaria made that a bit better by first of all adding a lot of daily quests that DID seem like boring work, but also by making things feel more suitably epic. Cataclysm raiding was so horribly underwhelming.
EVE has another problem, and I agree that they're trying to make spacetravel and space combat seem less about heroism and more about the daily intrigue and grind of nations. The problem is, they don't make daily living that hard. Players do (finally getting back to the original subject matter), but the game doesn't. So... is the daily life of a capsuleer boring without other capsuleers? By definition, it gets you involved in exciting fighting that's supposed to have an edge of danger.
To me, the games meet in the middle, which isn't a good thing because I don't think either is trying to be. EVE's biggest problem is that I don't feel like it's a challenge to do anything in space except for other capsuleers (not technically all RPers doing things for IC reasons, of course). Which, oddly, doesn't make me feel like a member of the herd, it makes me part of the only group of people that matter. I can blitz 20-30 NPC ships in a single sitting on my own in matched ships and fly from station to station without a care in the world until I hit another capsuleer. I don't think that's what they were going for, but we have all the baggage of the special-chicken concept with none of the benefits (as opposed to having the benefits and pitfalls of special-chicken syndrome).
I think that's not a terribly difficult idea to manage, my simple suggestion would be to make the universe more hostile and hard to survive in. With the movement towards nullsec corps as a driver for the game, it seems they're going in the opposite direction and saying we few, genetically predisposed, superior-piloting capsuleers are now growing more powerful than the actual empires themselves that govern the large center of the cluster.
The universe is hostile. You just seem to equate 'universe' and 'other players' as two separate things, when in fact other players are part of the universe. The players are supposed to be the ones that make the EVE universe threatening. I find the EVE universe far, far more hostile than anything in WoW, and I played on an RP-PvP server. In EVE, I get OOC jitters while in PvP, even after a year in FW, because there are real OOC and IC consequences for doing poorly.
That being said, I agree that PvE should be made more difficult (or at least fun to fight). IMO, beyond the rookie levels, mission NPCs should be almost as difficult as players, and fly with similar tactics and damages. A player battleship vs NPC battleship fight should have the same damage projection as a PC vs PC battleship fight. IMO missions should lower numbers of opponents and heighten the ability of individual opponents. Make it an actual challenge to fly rather than a curbstomp where winning is dependent purely on building an appropriately tanked "mission fit" that lets you practically AFK the fight.
I also think that there should be more penalties for people of low sec/standing status. Among other things, IMO, criminals should be barred from all high-security stations and militia should be barred from all enemy stations (they are in low sec, but not in high sec, which doesn't make a wad of sense). High security and enemy space should be a downright hostile place for you if you're on the wrong side of the law/war.
I'm just going to step in here and say that I absolutely love what Constantin's been doing. He's taken the relatively sparse information we have about Amarr missionary-style efforts and really written something great out of them; it's rare we get to see an Amarr missionary character who actually puts in serious missionary-esque work.
This is why I've defended Constantin before and want him to succeed. It is something nice to see. I just worry about him doing too much Christian preaching rather than Amarrian. Though I prefer discussing these kind of differences IC rather than OOC, and would like an opportunity for Samira and Constantin to have a chat sometime. They're both Ardishapurites, but one is strongly traditional and the other very liberal.
Author
Topic: How do you feel about the current state and direction of the EVE IP (Read 21528 times)