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[Gwen Ikiryo]

It's not like I'm not bothered by it. Honestly, I feel vaguely cynical about CCP in such a broad way at this point that it almost puts me off the game - There are some deep seated problems with them I just avoid thinking about. Of course this, as well, puts me off.

I just think... There's no point. The CFC has, what - 40,000 active accounts, they usually say? That's probably close to 1/8th of CCP's income at this point. You'd be naive to think the people in charge of it couldn't poke CCP for a little bit of insider info, even if they aren't in this paticular instance.

That's just how sandboxes are bound to end up working, I suppose.

[Silas Vitalia]

Game Companies have to take particular care when allowing their customers to peek behind the curtain into dev land/incoming game stories/etc.

If players can't -really- effect the outcome and it's just new toys and content for you to play with, then it's generally thought of as not too bad to peak at what's coming down the pipe development wise.  Think almost any other game or MMO that is non-sandbox. 

If you can "sort of" effect the outcome and plot, then they have to be a little more careful.  "Next patch all the npc faction X are getting wiped out, we'll have a contest to see which player clan can get the most kills for a statue in their name on the starting city as 'hero of the realm."

CCP have it difficult both ways, because they have a lot of railroad plot long in the works, but they also have as their chief marketing arm that the sandbox is primacy and we are the masters of all things.  This runs into collective facedesking for Caldari Prime style events, which are great ideas but are hard to wrangle and coordinate to a level where everyone feels worth participating and shaping the outcome.

Any peeks behind the dev curtain that are useful for players or neat to preview are also generally terrible for keeping plotz under wraps.  So it's often lose-lose for them for some players.


EDIT:  I think a best "course" of action for the players is for the devs to just spend resources on forks in the road and player agency getting there.   The writers can easily say we are broad strokes going from A to B to C, but how we get between those things, and what those things look like in detail could be one of several iterations.  In a real sense it matters not if the Fed president is candidate A B or C, why not give it to us to decide? Who cares which Amarr Heir is the Emperor? Why not do fantastic and involved player tournaments of skill to champion the various houses? 

I feel like these things should permeate all of Eve from the ground up.  There's a difference between letting 'lord penisface loln00b' be the emperor, and letting him and his friends win a contest to have house Kor Azor be the emperor.  There's a way for the writers to keep the distance between the more grating player habits and the NPC world, and yet let the players effect the outcomes.

Then they really can push the 'you are effecting the sandbox' marketing. 

Players really, really like it when things they do effect NPCs, and their actions would cause big effects with NPC fleets or system ownership etc.
 


Edit the 2nd:

Just think about all of the different ways players could influence the PF.  Not everything has to be pvp.

Economic resource gathering like the T3 Destroyers (good idea, good execution)
Racing Competitions?
Mining Competitions for public works or to assemble new things (tm) for the factions?
'Gladiator' fights with small teams? 2v2, 3v3, 1v1 to champion various cultures or causes in the PF.
'gladiator' arenas for Dust soldiers
'Voting' for elections?
'Voting' with shares for Caldari CEOs
Scripture writing and debates, voting for new bishops in Amarr?
'Research' coordination like the entosis links on the things

and then all of the standard pew pew here at these times to decide how we're going to continue the plot.

[Graelyn]

That's just how sandboxes are bound to end up working, I suppose.

Ooof. Eve is Real, eh?

[Gwen Ikiryo]

That's just how sandboxes are bound to end up working, I suppose.

Ooof. Eve is Real, eh?

Give players the tools to organize into big groups, and the ability to affect the game world, and they'll use it to put pressure on you. I don't say that to bash the sandbox model, but it's a fact that's been true since the days of UO. Worlds where guilds have a 100 member cap and all the players are split off into a million little instances are a lot easier to handle.

[Ria Nieyli]

.

[Silas Vitalia]

The default prerequisite for a true sandbox would be that players are able to push the walls.

I think you can get around that with different walls in different areas.

Choosing the emperor? Maybe a tournament of 100 of the best solo champions.

Who gets the Lai Dai contract for x system? Corp Warfare

Who gets the sov for the region on behalf of x faction's colonization plan? X alliance.

[Vikarion]

Economic resource gathering like the T3 Destroyers (good idea, good execution)
Racing Competitions?
Mining Competitions for public works or to assemble new things (tm) for the factions?
'Gladiator' fights with small teams? 2v2, 3v3, 1v1 to champion various cultures or causes in the PF.
'gladiator' arenas for Dust soldiers
'Voting' for elections?
'Voting' with shares for Caldari CEOs
Scripture writing and debates, voting for new bishops in Amarr?
'Research' coordination like the entosis links on the things

I like these. 

[Louella Dougans]

Actors who win the Best Supporting Oscar for their portrayal of the antagonist whose schemes are ultimately foiled by the protagonist, generally don't have to supply their own costumes or props, have a stunt double, and know that their character loses in the end, because it's written down in the script that they've been given.

EVE players p.much have to supply their own costumes and props, do their own stunts, and on the rare occasions they are given a script, it only contains their lines.

[Silas Vitalia]

I think what I'm getting at is that with not an exceeding extra amount of input it is very feasible to set up n events where there are A and B possible results that require not a lot of extra work.

N lore event features two different outcomes, players do the work and results are immediately known

Display B result text in local, adjust npc spawns or system security, or publish pre-written result B with names changed/added to the main news feeds.

At the most basic level the difference between capsuleer group A killing the convoy or capsuleer group B saving the convoy is just a bunch of different local and news text after the exploding or not exploding is done.

Secondary event will start with x conditions based on that event, etc.

You all know how it goes.

The best part is CCP doesn't even have to pay people for this.

GRAND CONTEST SUBMISSIONS FOR LOW STAKES NPC EVENTS.

Submit plots privately following those sorts of event chains and spawn ques,  CCP takes the top 50 submissions and you've got player events for two years.

[Sinjin Mokk]

My $.02

I wasn't aware of all the aspects of the CFC/Jamyl thing.

That being said, I'm on the EVE FaceBook group. So what I've seen recently is funny older chap who did some really cool cosplay at a convention get noticed. People jumped on the bandwagon, added to the schtick and ran with it.

The reality is Charles, aka Max Singularity, is quite stunned by his recent in and out of game celebrity in the EVE community. RP is a very new thing for him and he's actually a bit shy of screwing it up. He doesn't have experience with RP, but he doesn't want to kick over anyone's OOC anthill. So CFC ties with CCP or not, I doubt we're in any real danger of an Emperor Max. Next time he's on, drag him into an OOC channel.

Jamyl on the other hand...I can see her reign coming to an end (bwa ha ha). Civil War in Amarr? That would be ultra cool.

And I could be wrong, but I think the Devs are noticing more what we do in IGS. Take a close look at those tickers on the bottom of the SCOPE broadcasts and you can see some threads playing out there (Soter in Black Rise, the Angels in Tamo, Max's words against Jamyl's legitimacy, etc.). In an MMO, that's pretty rare.

So maybe we need to up the storytelling ante a bit? 

[Veiki]

The thread, since you didn't bother to read it, is about people getting unauthorized access to planned developments beforehand and working from this knowledge.

That's....whining about other people getting a spotlight??

Is there anyone else who feels this way? I want all of your names on a handy list.

Sure, I read it, I just thought it was the simpler conclusion was that the CFC decided to do some rebranding under the guise of Imperium (Makes sense, it's a powerful tool to try and forge a cohesive identity that members across their coalition can buy into and so on)  and as part of that initiative they support someone who enjoys Amarr cosplaying, because hey why not it's fun, and it might tie into some hilarious agitprop if they decide to use Providence as a staging region for content farming around the south and west in future.

I fail to see where the evidence exists that they have insider info due to that? Sure, AURORA was corrupt and in the end was used by its volunteers essentially as providing shiny ships and supercaps to their friends or seeking to drive the lore in a direction they wanted, however I'm not playing Eve in the past, so yes when all I read is what to me is what I'd describe as spurious speculation and some pretty serious allegations without a body of proof then yes, my only warranted response would be to take the piss out of it - much like I do with a lot of conspiracy theories.

As for my later commentary well, that's directed not only towards the content of this thread but what I perceive as a general trend both here in this forum and probably in the "community" in general to denigrate the efforts and content generation of others whether it be those who create Drifter medical reports, popular cosplayers like Max Singularity, or groups like Imperium as examples by casting the aspersions that the only reasons for their recognition or success is due to CCP collusion or favouritism as presented in the format of conspiracy theories based on spurious, "evidence".

[Silas Vitalia]

Perhaps talk about the 'general trend' in another thread, as we seem to keep getting derailed. 

For your first two paragraphs:

I understand where you are coming from, but also please understand where Graelyn is coming from.  I think your point of view makes absolute sense if the Aurora/Bob thing was an isolated incident.  Unfortunately every few years another couple of devs get fired for doing the same thing

I think that loose lips talking about upcoming things is not up for debate; it happens and it will always happen, in this game or any other.  The thing is weather we care that much, and what the effect is. 

It could be as simple as a Dev over drinks mentioning to a player friend that Jamyl is about to go, in which case the CFC Amarr thing is all tongue in cheeck and for a bit of laughs, not really a big deal.  It's not my shtick but it doesn't rustle any of my jimmies.

Slightly more rustled jimmies if more of the dev firing sorts of shenanigans are happening, but in the end that's just giving certain groups intel or looking up player locations and fits.  Not the end of the world.


My point is that although you have every reason to be skeptical of his theories, perhaps acknowledge that devs keep getting fired for this thing over many years and it just might be a thing as well.

The sky isn't falling though we should all agree on that, even if the Dev gives his best friend the super titan, it just means one guy or one group got special treatment and not automatically that everyone else suffers. If that makes sense.

[Lunarisse Aspenstar]

My $.02

I wasn't aware of all the aspects of the CFC/Jamyl thing.

That being said, I'm on the EVE FaceBook group. So what I've seen recently is funny older chap who did some really cool cosplay at a convention get noticed. People jumped on the bandwagon, added to the schtick and ran with it.

The reality is Charles, aka Max Singularity, is quite stunned by his recent in and out of game celebrity in the EVE community. RP is a very new thing for him and he's actually a bit shy of screwing it up. He doesn't have experience with RP, but he doesn't want to kick over anyone's OOC anthill. So CFC ties with CCP or not, I doubt we're in any real danger of an Emperor Max. Next time he's on, drag him into an OOC channel.

Jamyl on the other hand...I can see her reign coming to an end (bwa ha ha). Civil War in Amarr? That would be ultra cool.

And I could be wrong, but I think the Devs are noticing more what we do in IGS. Take a close look at those tickers on the bottom of the SCOPE broadcasts and you can see some threads playing out there (Soter in Black Rise, the Angels in Tamo, Max's words against Jamyl's legitimacy, etc.). In an MMO, that's pretty rare.

So maybe we need to up the storytelling ante a bit?

(1) Yes, I agree Sinjinn, that's why I stepped in and invited him to "The Good Word" in the first place  for RP and it was good fun.  We'll see if he responds to Luna's mail for a private dinner.

(2) I do agree we need to up the storytelling ante

[Elmund Egivand]

My $.02

I wasn't aware of all the aspects of the CFC/Jamyl thing.

That being said, I'm on the EVE FaceBook group. So what I've seen recently is funny older chap who did some really cool cosplay at a convention get noticed. People jumped on the bandwagon, added to the schtick and ran with it.

The reality is Charles, aka Max Singularity, is quite stunned by his recent in and out of game celebrity in the EVE community. RP is a very new thing for him and he's actually a bit shy of screwing it up. He doesn't have experience with RP, but he doesn't want to kick over anyone's OOC anthill. So CFC ties with CCP or not, I doubt we're in any real danger of an Emperor Max. Next time he's on, drag him into an OOC channel.

Jamyl on the other hand...I can see her reign coming to an end (bwa ha ha). Civil War in Amarr? That would be ultra cool.

And I could be wrong, but I think the Devs are noticing more what we do in IGS. Take a close look at those tickers on the bottom of the SCOPE broadcasts and you can see some threads playing out there (Soter in Black Rise, the Angels in Tamo, Max's words against Jamyl's legitimacy, etc.). In an MMO, that's pretty rare.

So maybe we need to up the storytelling ante a bit?

(1) Yes, I agree Sinjinn, that's why I stepped in and invited him to "The Good Word" in the first place  for RP and it was good fun.  We'll see if he responds to Luna's mail for a private dinner.

(2) I do agree we need to up the storytelling ante

I saw his cosplay pic and it was very good. Exceptional even.

[Ayallah]

Having spoken to max singularity since I posted I now no longer am paranoid about this.

I don't think there is an unfair distribution of information being taken advantage of (at least in regards to imperium/max,)  It seems like it is just legitimately happening