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[Lyn Farel]

Aria, I recommend to have a look at Source before buying it. Opinions differ on Source and I think one can generally agree that they differ in the way that there are two general camps: People who rather like it and people who rather dislike it.

I, personally, fall into the latter category and so I think it's only fair if I give my perspective here, given that Samira is in the former.

Source promised to get the conflicts and inconsistencies of PF solved. Rather than doing that it either retoconned those conflicts out of existence, opting for a solution outside of previously established PF or it simply didn't resolve those conflicts, ignoring them largely. Yes, the majority of Source is stuff we already know: But I don't agree with Samira's assessment that the 'silly parts' are exceptions. Source does, indeed, introduce quite some new PF conflicts and isn't at all consistent itself. If I look purely at what was added in Source, I'm quite disappointed: Source does a lot of entirely unecessary retcons there, in my opinion and adds inconsistency.

I don't want to get into details, but my impression is that the Amarr and Minmatar suffered most fiction wise in Source and that this reflects the factional bias of some of the authors of Source.

I don't think that money really is a way to encourage CCP's executive management to actually (have someone) work on lore: It's a way to have them work on monetizing lore. And people buy stuff if they have to update. Retcons out of the blue are a great measure for that - they are not, though, for great storytelling.

I think monetizing lore just deepens the conflict between the goals of having good lore and making money out of lore.

Problem is, to get them t create more Lore, they need to care more about lore than PvPs, otherwise all focus is on PvPs because that brings in more people

I would love to see the stats of how many players actually pvp. I bet it's not much, like on most games. Probably more than your usual game since it's a pvp game, but still.

Ahh yes the 'only scanner is a burn scanner' thing.

How about we just fix it up like this: I have a high tech technological nation with an interest in ubiquitous cloning, and we have come up with a method for non-invasive clone scans. Thus its tied to the lore of Origin instead of the lore of the rest of Known Space, with all of its inconsistencies and limitations.

Sounds godmoddy to me, but whatever floats your boat... Main issue is that when you will start to bring that up on conferences like Seylin, it might clash with other players. I think it is a bit rude.

However I don't really see the need for a 'only scanner is a burn scanner', since anyway it doesn't invalidate soft clones at all (since you can perfectly transmit to 2 clones instead of one and keeping the second one in artificial coma, or just do it like Zainou and keep the brain pattern somewhere on disk space...). The only thing it changes is the fact that the cloned body systematically dies...

So I am not sure why CCP kept that rule. I think they wanted to make soft cloning kind of impossible but didn't think too much into it before submitting the idea...

[Aria Jenneth]

So I am not sure why CCP kept that rule.

Well, the article may not have been updated since DUST's advent (which makes it all the more embarrassing that I'd forgotten all about it until yesterday). Its contents suggest that it was written in anticipation of DUST-style cloning, but before DUST came out.

As noted, lore these days is sort of a hobby maintained by a couple CCP personnel. It's the epic PvP metagame that is Eve's selling point nowadays, "Most expensive battle in history of multiplayer gaming" and all that.

It's not too surprising if they have some trouble keeping everything tidy.

(Twenty children over their lives?) (Really?)

(As for the "peak of intellect" bit ... heh. Maybe when they ENTER the academy....)

(Although, having been wandering the wilds of online gaming generally for a while now, Eve players as a community are comparatively crazy-sharp. Also plain crazy, but that's everywhere. About the only community I've found that's comparable is Dark Souls, and I'm not sure that's coincidental.)

(As a side note, Dark Souls is surprisingly roleplay friendly. I've easily roleplayed more conversations with people I've murdered as a Darkwraith of Kaathe than with people I've pirated in Eve.)

[Gwen Ikiryo]

(Twenty children over their lives?) (Really?)

It doesn't say it outright, but it gives the Achuran population the absurd (and completely contradictory to the existing demographics article) figure of around 2 trillion in people in the State.

2 trillion. From a medieval period single-continent civilization.

In 200 years.

[Aria Jenneth]

(Twenty children over their lives?) (Really?)

It doesn't say it outright, but it gives the Achuran population the absurd (and completely contradictory to the existing demographics article) figure of around 2 trillion in people in the State.

2 trillion. From a medieval period single-continent civilization.

In 200 years.

Is that the Achura nationality or the Achura ethnicity? I could see the latter, who the demographics article indicates got themselves solidly uplifted. Ergo, they'd have had access to the tube child program, and there's no indication the Caldari would have barred them from using it.

The Achura nationality is still a bit medieval, so I'm really not seeing 2 trillion Achur population of that sort.

[Gwen Ikiryo]

(Twenty children over their lives?) (Really?)

It doesn't say it outright, but it gives the Achuran population the absurd (and completely contradictory to the existing demographics article) figure of around 2 trillion in people in the State.

2 trillion. From a medieval period single-continent civilization.

In 200 years.

Is that the Achura nationality or the Achura ethnicity? I could see the latter, who the demographics article indicates got themselves solidly uplifted. Ergo, they'd have had access to the tube child program, and there's no indication the Caldari would have barred them from using it.

The Achura nationality is still a bit medieval, so I'm really not seeing 2 trillion Achur population of that sort.

Ethnicity, though they specifically say Achura are 25% of the population, sitting very close to Deteis and Civire at a bit over 30% each. To catch up to that extent, the Achur would need to be tubed in far greater numbers then either of the other two bloodlines, something I think we would have heard about. Why would the Caldari even do it?

It's obviously a typo or an oversight, though, because not two pages later they describe them as a tiny minority again. Which is almost a pity, because the concept of Saisio as some sort of nightmarish lustrealm where 90% of the population at any time are children or young adults and everyone is perpetually having sex is sort of hilarious. I only really mentioned it because it's funny.

On the topic of Achur lore in the book in general, there basically is none. There is an extremely vague remark about Achura being allowed to have a seperate culture in the State in regard to their bloodline in general that could be taken as completely contradictory to the cultural implications the demographics article suggested. Oh, and they brought the "desecrated homeplanet" thing back. I think that's been retconned and un retconned twice now. Other then that the bloodline is completely ignored.

[Louella Dougans]

2 trillion from what? 100million or less starting population ? in 200 years ?

so population is 20000 times larger ? so a sustained 5% increase in population every year ? That's higher than anywhere on Earth right now. Liberia has a 4.5% growth rate.

to get that, the State must have really put in the investment into life prolonging technologies for the Achura, while doing next to nothing about contraception or anything else that might slow the population growth rate.

Might even be a handful of Achura still living, from the pre-State era.

 

[Ché Biko]

Source...
I plan to ask it for my birthday, but I'm scared of what I'll read.
I mean, from the public pages I already gleamed that my char, in an effort to not create a special snowflake, IS actually a special snowflake because only special snowflakes can become capsuleer, and my char wasn't before becoming egger, so he is one now.
 
I'll just pretend that student capsuleer requirements weren't as strict(ly enforced) when he signed up, and try to avoid bringing related stuff up.

[Aria Jenneth]

Right. I'll just be sticking with the demographics article on that score, then.

(Ever get the feeling that not all of CCP's writers read all of CCP's writing?)

[Aria Jenneth]

(Never mind. Posted in wrong spot.)

[Louella Dougans]

(Ever get the feeling that not all of CCP's writers read all of CCP's writing?)

So what you're telling me, is that you think there's another one like me, but different, a mirror image? And it calls itself CCP's Right Hand? Well, that's a bit American soap opera Evil twin level shenaniganery if you ask me.

[Veiki]

In building up the background of trying to explain fiction-wise how two past characters, Mjalnar and Calliste Gessenier were in fact two current characters, Hevaima and Veikitamo Gesakaarin I created a system where they had shot out facilities into the interstellar void using technology based on colony ship warp drives. They were a combination of fluid-router hubs and mainframes made out of what is a combination of clone brain gel matrix and synthetic neuron wetware.

If they wanted to do an identity theft as they did they would kidnap the required targets and kill/hardscan for storage in a facility. They could then become the people they have killed or store versions of themselves by hard-scanning to a storage facility, copying the data into the gel-matrix and then sending off another copy into a fresh clone and brain elsewhere.

For CONCORD though it would probably just look like they had just jumped between jumpclones because the carrier signals are amended to appear as if it was a transmission between A to B, not A to C then B.

For myself though, I think I've just preferred to maintain the illusion IC that the characters using such technology are of course, "normal and typical", and not some kind of strange gestalt infomorph consciousness.

Addendum: Something ate my point.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that lore-wise it's always been possible to do lots of things regarding clones and such that are PF/lore viable. However, I suppose it's always a question of what the purpose is to do so. For myself it was not only just as IC explanation for myself to ensure a degree of internal consistency, but because I found it interesting to explore things like consciousness, identity, and psychology from a post/trans-human POV.

It has lead to some engaging insights for me as far as a character being a capsuleer infomorph goes, and has created the potential for some fiction-writing ideas which would be a mindfuck. However as far as roleplay goes, most of what I see done with clones seems to just get thrown into other people's faces as nothing more than a device to garner attention and nothing more, mostly.

[Esna Pitoojee]

Right. I'll just be sticking with the demographics article on that score, then.

(Ever get the feeling that not all of CCP's writers read all of CCP's writing?)

All the time. The 'Death' article is kind of dumb to begin with, what with the whole 'we can safely dig the implants out and put them in a new clone for no additional cost!' line. It feels like it was written by someone who wanted to drive up the grimdarkness of the universe (YOUR BODY MEANS NOTHING!!111!) but had never actually played the game or looked at existing cloning PF.

[Silas Vitalia]

This is why game companies do well to include their nerd populations as fact-checkers and clearing houses for lore dumps.

As if sales of Source would have been one iota impacted if they shared some articles with a bunch of backstage or similar lore geeks for proofreading and debate.

[Veiki]

This is why game companies do well to include their nerd populations as fact-checkers and clearing houses for lore dumps.

As if sales of Source would have been one iota impacted if they shared some articles with a bunch of backstage or similar lore geeks for proofreading and debate.

To be fair it's hard to fact-check when if you take cloning and its related lore it has been retconned, amended and contradicted itself a few times prior to Source being written and released.

[Silas Vitalia]

This is why game companies do well to include their nerd populations as fact-checkers and clearing houses for lore dumps.

As if sales of Source would have been one iota impacted if they shared some articles with a bunch of backstage or similar lore geeks for proofreading and debate.

To be fair it's hard to fact-check when if you take cloning and its related lore it has been retconned, amended and contradicted itself a few times prior to Source being written and released.

exactly my point. Use your free nerd army to find the discrepancies and help facilitate the appropriate retcon situation to end the conflicts.