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[Mizhara]

Eh, if you have to have the option to win, well... I don't see it as conceivable to have events like this. Some of them, sure, but not direct story-setting events like this one. Why would you need that to join in? You can still go there, have the IC motivation of wanting to stop the Sansha or at the very least make them bleed for every inch of space they gain or whatever. You then have afterwards the chestbeating argument that you were there and you made them pay for what they gained and so on and so forth.

There's hundreds of different ways you can still make a difference without actually winning the grand battle itself.

[Silver Night]

[mod]Thread cleaned. There were a lot of clearly unacceptable posts from people who should know better. Don't insult other players, don't make assumptions about other people's choices when playing, and don't disparage other people's play styles. Also, kindly stay on-topic. Further mod action required in this thread is likely to result in warnings.[/mod]

[Elsebeth Rhiannon]

Disclaimer: Did not read the whole thread before replying.

Of course the Sansha victory was railroaded; this was the event that lead to the release of the Incursion sites. As if CCP would cancel a major content update because players shot down a Sansha titan or something such. And as if the majority of players would want them to.

The event was not intended for players to have a major impact or to be the Hero of the story. It was intended to give players a chance to "be there" when a major thing in the game world decided by GMs happens. Yes, it's railroading. No, not all railroading is bad, some of it is necessary.

Not all events are chances for player/GM interaction and collective story telling. Some events are GMs doing a story you can be part of, but not really influence beyond details. If you don't like either, don't go to those events. In this case, I feel it should have been obvious which one this was going to be... It is not possible to run a 50k-player sandbox game without sometimes having stuff happen in the game world that players cannot stop or change. Events leading to a major content update need to be under GM control.

You don't get to be a hero every time, and not even to OOCly have the chance to be the hero every time. Tough. Feature, not a bug.

[Louella Dougans]

You then have afterwards the chestbeating argument that you were there and you made them pay for what they gained and so on and so forth.

IC: There is no death in Nation. Ships are trivial to replace. Bodies are mere biomass, also trivial.

OOC: Summoned NPCs, spawned carriers, what did they really pay?

This means it was not even an option for Sansha to have a Pyrrhic victory. Can't make them pay for their victory.

[BloodBird]

You then have afterwards the chestbeating argument that you were there and you made them pay for what they gained and so on and so forth.

IC: There is no death in Nation. Ships are trivial to replace. Bodies are mere biomass, also trivial.

OOC: Summoned NPCs, spawned carriers, what did they really pay?

This means it was not even an option for Sansha to have a Pyrrhic victory. Can't make them pay for their victory.

This is sadly true. In most other cases "They really bleed for this" has merit, I will agree. But when the above is totally true costly victories are a no-factor. They either win, or lose. And in this instance, it was a guaranteed win.

If the situation warrants it, say, someone siege my POS, and we know we will lose it, then going out with a band killing as many as possible as alternative to not saving the pos is quite an okay goal. But in this example saving the POS is in fact possible, just very, very hard. Making them bleed for it is the second best option then.

You can't bleed the sansha's dry.

[Mister Screwball]

This is propagated moreso by the fact we have Sansha RPers OOC claiming victory and/or our defeat when it wouldn't go any other way.

If you think this because of what I said in OOC then you seem'd to be confused. I wasn't braging about how we had "won" the event, I was admitidly gloating about the large amount of free kill mails that warped to the Incursion

[Louella Dougans]

It's not about win/lose either.

It's about having an influence on things.

There was 4 or so events where I was there.

There was 1 event where I had an influence, and for a long while, it looked like the event changed from players being overwhelmingly in the advantage, to the Sansha being overwhelming. It was great.

The rest were overwhelmingly one sided. Sometimes the Sansha won, sometimes they didn't. But the outcome was obvious, and my presence was irrelevant. As was any other handful of players. In addition to this, nothing the players were doing was influencing how the event was unfolding.

I didn't care about winning, or about losing. I cared about having an influence on how I won or lost.

Once the events started becoming more and more one sided, I stopped caring altogether.

[Borza]

It's nice just to be part of game history.

If the lead-up to the Empyrean Age had been done via a Live Event Arc it would have been awesome, despite us being unable to determine the ending. Should then pro-CONCORD players have complained about the Thukker fleet being pre-destined to win the first engagements and disabled CONCORD response? Would pro-Matari pilots have complained about Jamyls lolhax weapon? Maybe, but it would have been great to be part of the events regardless and the devs are entitled to make their own plans and stick to them.

[DosTuMai]

I didn't know about it and didn't appear, so meh.
As to railroading... I don't know, maybe? Really, just be glad you got to participate and not have to look over your shoulder to see me jumping in and killing indiscriminately.

[Esna Pitoojee]

Alright...

Was the event railroaded? Of course.

As has been said, the event was not designed for us to win, period. Even if, by some miracle of the servers, we had all functioned perfectly and annihilated every single Revenent in system, would  that have stopped the storyline? I don't believe so. We've even seen it happen before - in Ashab, when the first Revenent was destroyed (thus altering the storyline) a second Revenent was introduced, because at this point Sansha must succeed.

Is this something to act angry about? Well... if you're angry because you expected a chance to stop Sansha here and now, I don't think so. Do you really think CCP is going to push pause on content that's been in development for months, or alter their release date because we managed to pull off a miracle? I don't.

If you're angry because CCP is using this means of linear storytelling in the first place and you don't think it's a good idea... well, I personally think there's merit in that point of view, but that's not the discussion we're having here and I don't want to derail the thread (again).

Edited to clarify something: With respect to the Slave Endoma incident in Ashab, I'm not complaining about the second Revenent being deployed. To simply say "oops, have to tweak that... and go home now, little capsuleers" would have been, as someone told me, anticlimactic in the extreme. What upsets me about that incident is how (aside from a couple lines of text in local) the whole incident was entirely ignored. They could have done something with Vieve Creston coming on IGS or Synepub and talking about a special CONCORD detachment sent to engage the Revenent to search for new technology or something... again, would it have affected the storyline? No. Would it have been nice to have it at least recognized? Yes.

[Shae Tiann]

It was a setup leading up to the incursions themselves, explaining how they're possible. And you expect to have been able to affect that?

Would you rather they simply pulled an extended DT infodump, "This happened while you were away"? I rather like that we're being allowed to experience it. CCP goes to a lot of effort to make this possible, try to appreciate it a little more.

[Borza]

Exactly. I'd take a "railroaded" live event arc over the way they made Empyrean Age changes any day.

[Svetlana Scarlet]

Aren't the incursions ALREADY possible?  They've been going on since this summer, no?

[Rodj Blake]

It doesn't matter that the result was pre-determined - we had the chance to demonstrate our allegiences.

Remember - sometimes the journey is more important than the destination.

[Shae Tiann]

Aren't the incursions ALREADY possible?  They've been going on since this summer, no?

Not the region-wide ones. It's been hit-and-run skirmish events so far.