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Author Topic: RIP - Captain's Quarters  (Read 14570 times)

MakotoPriano

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #45 on: 20 Jan 2018, 00:28 »

(oh, and my headcanon is that he's now 'out of the prison,' essentially, and living in a Sleeper construct with Linda Desktop or whatever her name is, in a simulated life. ;) )
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Mizhara

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #46 on: 20 Jan 2018, 03:53 »

Okay, unpopular opinion time:

Fuck the Dark Elda... Dark Jo... Derp Jove. Right in the bionic eyesocket. We really don't need more abloobloo spoopy "aliens" and more PvE content that'll be solved within weeks and then put on farm, with no actual development in storyline and setting. Aww, Uncle Kuvakei twirled his mustache, hon-hon-hon'd frenchly and tied some baseliners to the railroad aaaaaand the story actually never fucking went anywhere. The four nations remain in a bubble of status quo and all we got out of that crap was a mediocre grindfest for alts. So what was the next thing? Oh, some crap Blooder band-aid for some more really crap PvE and blueprints.

And in the mean time, what has been going on with the Nations of Eve? Oh, absolutely nothing, you say? Every single piece of conflict and strife has been some 'aliens' shoehorned in to gank an Empress and take a giant eraserhead to the embarrassing old lore? Well that's great, maybe we can have some actual development and progress in the storyliooooohkay you had absolutely nothing prepared for this giant void, so you stuffed more dullard placeholders in to maintain the status quo that hasn't actually changed for a fucking decade now. Lovely. We have nothing whatsoever for the old loyalists to use to get out of the ruts, there's nothing to work for or against, and every effort made is towards some completely irrelevant bloody spooky space aliens that also seem to do pretty much fuck all at this point. Oh, wait, there's a Kyonoke plague. Let's get some stuff up in space, let's get some conflict rolling! This gon b gu... oh, what's that? Oh, what you do in space is fucking irrelevant? You only get to be part of it if you can take a week off work and pay huge sums of money to go to Iceland? Gosh.

Being a Minmatar, Amarr, Caldari or Gallente holds zero meaning at this point. Having any of these as an enemy does nothing either.

The lore/story side of things, and the stuff provided for players to do something with/against is an utter and complete shitshow and it has been since the days of Kuvakei twirling mustaches. Drifters are just making it even worse, adding more pointless useless distraction from the actual setting of New Eden, further ensuring that the big conflicts that have been set up by the storyline and setting for so long remains fucking deadlocked and zero progress gets made.

This in turn makes roleplaying in Eve a seriously bizarre experience. The big and huge conflicts and problems of the biggest four nations in New Eden can't be engaged with, can't be used or pushed in any way that hasn't already been done a dozen times each, so in order to be part of anything you have to throw all of these gigantic things out the window and pretend that elephant doesn't exist, and instead go happy hugglefuckery time with all these people who should be enemies, and bang your head against the Derp Jove Menace. Hmm? Slavery? What's that? Reclaiming? Gosh, never heard of it. Manifest destiny and all these things that we've fought over for a fucking millennium? Nah, let's go find some holes to fuck probe. Yaaay.

Okay, that's off my chest now. God that feels good.

tl;dr, fuck CCP and their absolutely shit decisions when it comes to developing this damned game's story and setting. I could pick any five roleplayers out of the game and within a week hammer out a design and story document that'd allow for years of perpetual progress and player involvement.
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Aradina

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #47 on: 20 Jan 2018, 05:58 »

Most of your post is opinion based so I really don't care to try and argue it because well, that's just like your opinion, maan.

Quote
tl;dr, fuck CCP and their absolutely shit decisions when it comes to developing this damned game's story and setting. I could pick any five roleplayers out of the game and within a week hammer out a design and story document that'd allow for years of perpetual progress and player involvement.

This bit though.

I don't doubt that you could do that, anyone could, but writing down how your perfect game would work has roughly nothing to do with actually making a game, which takes a few extra things including but not limited to:

  • Money
  • Time
  • People
  • More Money
  • More time
  • Like a whole bunch of people

I guarantee that any "design and story document" produced would be a long list of things that aren't achievable within a reasonable timeframe that reads like a letter to santa more than an actual design document.

CCP have made some baffling choices that I disagree with greatly, but people have this habit of acting like they're actively trying to ruin the game. They're not slow to release things because they're all busy playing PUBG and not working, they're slow because this kind of thing is(despite popular belief) actually really hard.

Also the witch hunt against the EA guy(Sean Decker) is just silly. He was hired five years ago, if he planned on adding gold ammo he would have by now.
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Mizhara

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #48 on: 20 Jan 2018, 06:11 »

That bit is taking into account the amount of effort CCP has placed upon storyline development and events over the last five years or so. It would require absolutely minimal effort, time and money from CCP to actually progress the storyline. They have several ISD people that could act as the filter and even generator of the actual articles and story pushing. CCP effort: Read, go yay or nay, then post news article. At opportune moments, pit loyalists etc against each other rather than Dev controlled NancyPCs, and include this in the on-going storyline. CCP efforts: Minimal, would make players feel engaged and involved. Continue the articles/news/worldbuilding until the next opportune moment. CCP efforts: Read, yay or nay, push butan. Repeat.

It'd require like... one actual dev event a year, which we've already seen they're willing to dump on the ISD people. and the rest could be done by letting factions clash in-game.

CCP are slow as fuck to release things because they've stopped giving a shit. There really is no excuse, since the time, money and effort required are absolutely minimal once the initial setup is in place, and even that can be reasonably crowdsourced.

Edit: As for 'opinion based', of course it is. Literally all discussion about these subjects are opinion based. Even CCP's standpoint is ultimately opinion based when it comes to this crap.
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Jocca Quinn

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #49 on: 20 Jan 2018, 06:59 »

Okay, unpopular opinion time:

*LOTS OF GOOD STUFF*

Okay, that's off my chest now. God that feels good.

Reading this I was caught between nodding furiously and giggling wildly. It felt damn good to read as well. Nice to know I am not alone in having these thoughts.

Bravo.
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Muck Raker

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #50 on: 20 Jan 2018, 08:02 »

It would require absolutely minimal effort, time and money from CCP to actually progress the storyline. They have several ISD people that could act as the filter and even generator of the actual articles and story pushing. CCP effort: Read, go yay or nay, then post news article. At opportune moments, pit loyalists etc against each other rather than Dev controlled NancyPCs, and include this in the on-going storyline. CCP efforts: Minimal, would make players feel engaged and involved. Continue the articles/news/worldbuilding until the next opportune moment. CCP efforts: Read, yay or nay, push butan. Repeat.

Disagree.

CCP news articles, are picked up on by rss bots and the like, and posted to things like Reddit.

For every commenter who says "huh, neat" there are more who say "why is this bullshit on the news"

pitting player groups vs other player groups, and having a news article on them, would receive a similarly lukewarm response.

Question: "Why are CCP covering some irrelevant roleplay war when X is attacking Y in Z space?"

Storyline developments that do not lead to new ships, modules, SKINS, boosters, clothes, or other junk, are not popular enough to justify the expense of resources of having CCP staff oversee it.


Consider some scenarios for the ~Internal Conflict~ that used to be a perennial favourite of people wanting storyline development.

House Ardishapur secedes from the Empire, forming the Holy Amarr Empire along with the Ammatar.
Pick a side, fight against players on the other side. OK.
Rewards: ? Outcomes: ?
If the rewards are simply LP to spend in the LP stores, and the outcome is merely a juggling of npc factions, then, what does it actually offer the players ?

Gallente election campaign.
Outcome: the portrait of the President may change, and some ~policies~ are put in place.
consider: what actually changed when President Roden replaced President Foiritan ?


News articles have a high visibility, and due to the nature of the playerbase-at-large there will be plenty of players who will resent the seeming effort going in to create "irrelevant rp fluff", when problems still exist in the sov-war mechanics and so forth.
A news report on a battle between 30 loyalists of faction A and 30 loyalists of faction B, gets on the news. But what about the battle where 500 players turned up to sack some citadel in the campaign of nullsec entity X vs nullsec entity Y ?

Even if it is just one CCP staffer, the public perception would be that it is irrelevant, without there being new ships/modules/skins/clothes or new game mechanics, and they would resent the "dev time being wasted".
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Samira Kernher

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #51 on: 20 Jan 2018, 09:20 »

I echo Mizhara's thoughts.

Some wormhole/drifter/jove stuff is all well and good. But it has been so central for so long, to the point that even most empire changes are related to it in some way (Jamyl death, T3D arms race, new titan superweapons, etc), that it's getting very tiring.

Don't get me wrong, I love the new AI, and I'm happy to see its being used to increase randomized NPC space activity in places other than the drifters. That is fantastic progress. But the empire storylines -- their actual, internal/diplomatic issues -- have fallen by the wayside (except amarr, but as said, that was still built around drifter shenanigans. And the other factions really need more, period).
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kalaratiri

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #52 on: 20 Jan 2018, 10:10 »

wormhole
I mean... kinda?

Even the "wormhole" additions to the lore in recent years have actually been Drifter/Jove lore that has been shoehorned in to wormholes as a way of nerfing escalations and using the new AI for something more than the Hive systems. There's been very little specific wormhole lore added, rather they've just muddled the Drifters up into the existing Talocan/Ehenduanidhanidi stuff.
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MakotoPriano

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #53 on: 20 Jan 2018, 10:16 »

So, my personal two cents:

I like being able to play in a way that isn't mandated to be GRRGALLENTEHATGALLENTE. Naturally, there's still plenty of room for it, but purely oppositional play tends to devolve into, 'No, but YOU'RE THE BAD,' which so often ends up shallow and, frankly, boring. At the same time, it's clear that it does still matter what you decide to play as, else, Miz, you wouldn't be waging a war against the Amarr.

So, that said, I would like to see more nuanced intrafactional play, tied with greater events, because as the number of moving parts increases the difficulty in positioning oneself and the need for flexibility increases.

It all comes down to time and resource constraints, though.
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Silas Vitalia

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #54 on: 20 Jan 2018, 10:36 »

The only way to have the playerbase give a shit about the story is to involve the story in a direct way with day-to-day gameplay, both carebears and null folks. Things that will disrupt highsec activity, things that give opportunities for high sec people to be involved, and the same for null.

I still maintain the best way to do this is to use the NPC empires as content generators that effect player sandcastles, breaking the cup into little pieces that the players are so good at putting back together in different ways.  Basically they have to be able and given freedom to effect high sec, trading hubs, and null sandcastle empires. 

Oh no, the Caldari State is having some huge conflict with 'x,' the State has good intel that JITA and a few surrounding systems might soon be under attack and trading will be disrupted during the conflict, go go capsuleers to help or hurt things/whatever. 

The Amarr are getting all uppity again and have decided to annex a few systems in Querious, and capsuleer sandcastles and player owned systems will start seeing NPC gatecamps and capital fleets siege structures.

Omir doesn't like all these heretics in his systems, if your alliance can't pledge your loyalty via x game mechanic blood raider npcs will start shitting on your structures, too. 

A Matari splinter group is starting regular raids in Empire highsec space, prove your loyalty with 'x' mechanic and you'll get temporary concord immunity in these systems during the duration of the 'raid' gameplay targetting amarr NPCs and capsuleers with high Amarr relations.

Devs need to destroy/disrupt the blue donuts and entrenched null power blocs, and entrenched high sec trading hubs. 
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Silas Vitalia

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #55 on: 20 Jan 2018, 11:52 »

Also agree completely with the Drifter/Sleeper nonsense; New Eden did not need another high tech Deus ex machina god tier  race. Jove were enough.
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Ursa Dropsus

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #56 on: 20 Jan 2018, 13:00 »

Also agree completely with the Drifter/Sleeper nonsense; New Eden did not need another high tech Deus ex machina god tier  race. Jove were enough.

I can't speak to the Drifter stuff which I have no clue about but...I'm not sure why you're viewing the Sleepers as "another" race. They're Jovians (the Stasis People faction, specifically). I thought this was a known thing? Or do you mean the storyline as it was originally was fine and didn't need "another" development?
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Ursa Dropsus

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #57 on: 20 Jan 2018, 13:51 »

Anyways, re: Miz's rant and consequent replies, a few thoughts:

I kind of agree with Silas' approach: Storyline should primarily be driven by in-game mechanics and prod/poke/lure people into interaction. Less or non-interactive stuff like news stories / chronicles / etc are good as supplementary material, but they don't drive a lot of wide-scale engagement. So yeah, you can get 5 roleplayers in a room and create a year's worth of articles (or other "fluff" as it's called, no diss intended), but that's about as much as you can do, and it only pleases/engages a fraction of the customer base. Don't get me wrong, I still loved doing that stuff and thought it was important. Before I was in CCP, I was in ISD writing articles and running little events ingame with AURORA (back when ISD did that).

Without wider engagement though, it's hard to justify spending time on "fluff" to the project managers who determine what developers focus on, and the marketing department who want big things to advertise each expansion and drive growth. This is all doubly true when those same developers are also responsible for a range of things that players are vocal about progressing (missions, exploration sites, etc etc). Then there's the issue of how feature development worked. Content Devs were tasked with making the game appear fresh with new PvE features. Our role was never really to advance storyline, it was to bring in customers (if that makes sense - they're not incompatible things, but were often viewed as such). It's difficult to fit much storyline development into a dynamic (and managerial mindset) like that. A large chunk of storyline work was done on a volunteer basis when I was there and driven by passion, not payment.

Those traditional tasks like developing PVE / Theme Park content were to me often too heavily focused upon, to the point it wasted resources. Why? Because they didn't particularly advance the story, and they aren't really amenable to the kind of game world EVE is on a narrative/mechanical level. Take the Epic Arcs for example. That sort of stuff belongs in World of Warcraft more than it does EVE. I wasn't a real fan of them. They have some decent storyline elements in them, but like..it's entirely static. Past a certain point it becomes just a repetetive farm, and in a real sense, actively detracts from immersion and the sense of a living world when nothing ever changes.

I can appreciate that some amount of it is required, and some amount of it needs ongoing development - players need stuff to do other than PvP, it attracts a broader customer base, plays a role in developing player skills before they dive more fully into PvP sandboxes, and so on. Also, of course, CCP needs new shiny features to advertise and promote customer growth. Etc etc. The PvE has its role to play, of course.

Yet I also think there's this fallacious thinking that if we don't provide theme park content en masse in each dev cycle that it will create retention issues. I'm not so sure about that, and I wish CCP experimented (if only for a single developmental cycle) with fully allocating the same amount of resources they normally would to a feature like Epic Arcs instead to live-event-style interactive narratives like Silas describes, where factions respond dynamically to events. The Faction Warfare feature, I feel, demonstrates that you can't really create a standalone "hands off" system that is sufficiently dynamic. It needs a more committed, hands-on development team to truly be pulled off, and it that team needs to operate freely of the 6-12 month feature-release cycle. It was frustrating how CCP would praise agile / SCRUM development and yet deny us this kind of experiment using that exact model~

Of course, an approach like that requires programmers, artists, UX designers...the whole kit. These teams were busy either being committed to the PvP sandbox features (Sovereignty mechanics, for example), or PvE sandbox features, stuff like Epic Arcs (ugh). It was a difficult task trying to sell the concept of "rolling development" (sandbox PvE that is interactive, dynamic, and responsive to player inputs) to the upper management who, for all their praise of sandbox gameplay, were still quite fond of theme park approaches to developing some parts of the game. EVE is a very odd mix of the two, and that does create a bizarre roleplaying experience / world setting, where Player-to-Player interactions are dynamic and fascinating, and Player-to-Environment interactions are anything but.

Storyline in my time there was rarely valued, and when it was, its value was mostly for marketing purposes. The entire Sansha Invasion event was started and greenlight by the Marketing Dept to "generate buzz", not out of any desire to progress or otherwise enhance the storyline (that was seen as an incidental benefit, if that). The resources we were given to advance the feature were virtually non-existent (most of it was done in our free time honestly - not that I'm complaining, it was fun as fuck to work on and I volunteered that time freely). Even with just a single programmer and artist dedicated for 6 months, we could've achieved a lot more and showcased the idea of a different kind of "Sandbox PvE" to the powers that be. We couldn't get that for even a day, though, let alone months~

Maybe part of the issue was the fact the Content Team was separated from the rest of the crew (90% of CCP in Iceland, and the content team in Atlanta). Yet that didn't stop inter-office collaboration on PvE features, so I dunno about that, ultimately. Another issue for sure was that the ATL Content Team was originally a bunch of White Wolf folk, who despite being brilliant storytellers, didn't fully grasp the unique dynamics of EVE and the potential a single-server world offers for a new kind of narrative design.

Also, I can tell you that in my time there as both ISD and CCP, that approving news articles and other fluff was not as simple as push butan. If only! The politics and work processess of the storyline team were often a bit of a hindrance to this kind of streamlined process. Typically, approval was a far more arduous process that involves way too much distrust in people's ability to do a good job (I include ISD article writers here), too much oversight, and too many "little kingdoms". Of course there needs to be someone ensuring consistency and quality, but it all went too far at times, to the point that even fluff development was a lengthy and time-consuming process.
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Ursa Dropsus

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #58 on: 20 Jan 2018, 13:56 »

T-T-Triple post!

Shit like this is why I quit, by the way. It was increasingly frustrating seeing the potential for us to pioneer a new kind of approach to narrative / worldbuilding / PvE design, the kind that if successfull would've potentially blazed trails in the industry...and instead, to be treated like I'm working on World of Warcraft. Other reasons too, but boy that was a big one.

 :bash: :bash: :psyccp:
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Uriel Anteovnuecci

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Re: RIP - Captain's Quarters
« Reply #59 on: 20 Jan 2018, 14:01 »

Looks like I've missed a lot, what a thread~~

Weighing in, the Jove/Sleeper/Drifter storyline is all one and the same, it's not like the Drifters were an amendment just tossed in. The progression from Sleepers "sleeping" to having them finally progress into something more seemed only natural, regardless of whether the Drifters are Sleepers, Others, or Enheduanni.

They're also my personal favorite part of the game lore - that said, it's also pretty obvious that a lot of the "empire" story progression has become really staggered. I wouldn't pin that all on the lore choices by CCP though, more on the fact that the current progression of new mechanics and structures (with the next milestone in the Drifter arc likely coinciding with player stargates), and as a result of that progression slowing down, ALL main lore has been going much more slowly.
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