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Author Topic: Results of an experiment into using ingame objects to generate RP  (Read 1112 times)

Synthia

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Over the past few months, CTCS used some ingame objects, to see what, if any, RP occurred as a result of using those objects, as a means of disseminating information, without the use of OOC forums, such as this one.

These objects included mobile depots, bookmarks with notes on them in ship cargoholds, POS towers, and other items.

One of CTCS ships was carrying a bookmark, to the location of a mobile depot. That ship was shot down, by player A, who, gave the bookmark to player B, which generated some RP between A and B. Then B went to the bookmark and interacted with the depot, generating more RP between B and CTCS.

That was a successful use of the bookmarks and depots, without the use of OOC methods to inform player B about things.

A different deployment was less successful. In that instance, player X read about the mobile depot on this OOC forum, and destroyed the depot, while refusing to accept that as an IC act, and declining to RP about the destruction of the depot, which was apparently in breach of their own ROE for their corporation. Zero RP was generated.

That was a disappointing outcome.


Meanwhile, other objects, which were not mentioned IC or OOC by CTCS, were not discovered by RPers, and no RP was generated at all.


This leads myself, and others, to the conclusion that these objects are not very useful at generating RP by themselves, as RPers are seemingly too few in numbers to happen across the objects by chance. It also would appear that it is very difficult to involve other players in your RP activities, without being a colossal self-publicist either IC or OOC. And if you publicise things OOC, then other players may not acknowledge it as IC.


So, it would appear that doing questionable things IC, cannot really be done in a competent fashion, with proper levels of operational security.

Contrast : Nauplius announcing the construction and location of his POS towers and mobile depots, in a somewhat Bond Villain moustache twirling fashion. If he didn't want them to be blown up, he wouldn't have publicised them, right ?

So, what are your thoughts on the use of objects to stimulate RP ?
« Last Edit: 12 Dec 2014, 15:04 by Havohej »
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Saede Riordan

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I'll echo Sila's thoughts from another thread:

For this sort of 'trail of breadcrumbs' things have to be either

1) interesting enough for different RPers to participate
2) some OOC broad outlines among participants or
3) breadcrumbs so obvious as to defeat the purpose

Without knowing that the depots exist, there's little chance to generate RP from them, and if you're blatant about their existence you run into your second scenario.

I understand the desire to use physical items and such for RP, and I definitely applaud the effort, but the implementation tends to be very difficult. I know offhand of an attempt by TS-F to do something similar, but no one actually took the hints they dropped and thus the RP fizzled with a lot of work from Ghost down the drain.

The cluster is just too big and RPers too few and far between, to hope to find something another RPer left as a breadcrumb unless you like, go and specifically set it on a path you know another RPer will travel upon, and then if you do that, then there are the inevitable claims that your character put the Thingie there for the specific character to find as part of...some...plot...thingie.

There may still be ways around this however. If you put the thingie in space in very heavily trafficked areas, or areas that see a disproportionately high RPer presence (Eram comes to mind) it might work, but its still somewhat akin to casting out a lure and hoping someone bites.

Your use of the bookmarks in destroyed ships thing was pretty clever I will admit. That might work if you are in frequent in space conflict with other RPers and are losing ships, but otherwise it might look like you set your ship up to be destroyed on purpose so that the bookmark was found on purpose. That probably sounds like a stupid accusation to make but I've been on the downwind side of it and it does happen.

There probably is some way to make this work, but I haven't yet found one.
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Arista Shahni

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CCP has to acknowledge there is a far smaller (by comparison) RP community than there used to be.

They  have chosen to ignore us due to drama and hope the larger community would magically becoe complacent RPers that would do as they liked.

This is an obious sign of failure.

We may be occasional pains in the asses, but size comparison speaking, I'm sure we cause LESS trouble then the rest of the playerbase.

This is something for THEM to think about, not us.

Are you reading, CCPGuys?

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Morwen Lagann

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A different deployment was less successful. In that instance, player X read about the mobile depot on this OOC forum, and destroyed the depot, while refusing to accept that as an IC act, and declining to RP about the destruction of the depot, which was apparently in breach of their own ROE for their corporation. Zero RP was generated.

That was a disappointing outcome.

Hi.

If you're going to call me out, you can go ahead and stop being vague. But you should also get your facts straight, because you are completely misrepresenting things here.

1) You posted about it in the gossip thread. That counts as IC info for someone who might happen to peruse the sources of said gossip, which Morwen would have because of the location it affected. That's the whole point of the thread. That your post was subsequently catacombed for whatever reason doesn't change that. For that matter, the time between me seeing the thread and going to look was several weeks. I had almost forgotten about it when I hit the dscan button while I was in Amarr (technically IC, because I had to be in space to get there and use dscan in the first place), saw the name of the depot (also IC, because space), and THEN I went to go and find it (again, IC because space) and eventually shoot at it (hey look, IC because space).

2) I never refused to accept it as an IC act. In fact, I've got plenty of IC reasons for it happening:
- CTCS are Sabik heretics, and therefore valid and sponsored targets of the Empire and Kingdom,
- Morwen finds the entire corporation obnoxious enough that the stereotypical capsuleer "tear-generation subroutine" kicked in when she saw an opportunity,
- See above item. IC because space.

3) I never declined to RP about it. You (or your corpmate) declined to RP about it by never bothering to make any attempt at IC interaction in a time, fashion or place that I or Morwen would notice it, so don't try to pin the lack of any RP resulting from it on me. The only contact I've had about it from anyone in CTCS was entirely OOC - it was either you (or your corpmate) did being whiny at me in OOC channels about it OOC (which I ignored because the whining was funnier to not respond to) and then you (or your corpmate) asking about it civilly in another channel. Basically, this accusation amounts to you bitching that a character who doesn't like to crow and screech and brag about their achievements, is not crowing, screeching or bragging about their achievements. Morwen wouldn't discuss it if it didn't come up. It didn't come up, so she didn't.

4) As for it being a violation of my corp's ROE... remind me: who makes the rules in my corp? Oh right. Me. Believe it or not, that rule is there in part to generate RP. Both when violated and when followed.

But again, at no time whatsoever did even one of you try to do anything about this in character. You had plenty of opportunities. But you never took them. That is not my problem, it's yours. So if you're going to turn around and then bitch because YOU couldn't be bothered to make any effort?

Well, I'd tell you to go pod yourself into an alpha clone, but that ceased being an option on Tuesday, didn't it?

tl;dr, zero RP was generated because you and your corp didn't make any attempt at generating RP in response to me shooting it.
« Last Edit: 12 Dec 2014, 14:14 by Morwen Lagann »
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1) The number of capsuleer women who are bisexual is greater than the number who are lesbian.
2) Most of the former group appear lesbian due to a lack of suitable male partners to go around.
3) The lack of suitable male partners can be summed up in most cases thusly: interested, worth the air they breathe, available; pick two.

Arista Shahni

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There isno reason to not "call someone by name".  It wasnt some chastsubo nonsense of so and o is a cunt - it was the details of what happened from one person's POV.
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Havohej

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[admin]Bolded text in OP constitutes flamebait.  Baited flame was caught on hook.  You're (both) bad and you should (both) feel bad.  Shame, too.  The non-baity part of the OP seemed to be generating worthwhile discussion.  Feel free to repost without bait.[/admin]
« Last Edit: 12 Dec 2014, 15:03 by Havohej »
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