Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Bureeiku]

I'm using Bloodbird's assessment of the difficulties surrounding roleplaying a pirate or vigilante type character to start a new topic.  Below are his comments from the thread "What other RP corps and areas interest you?".  I have attempted to remove sections related to his specific situation in Veto and that line of discussion, since I would prefer to take the subject out of that specific context, as well as, hopefully avoid flames.

There are two major 'game-styles' in EVE currently that are broken; FW and piracy/vigilantism. The problem here is that the latter part of the P/V side hardly exist and poorly at that. Anyone of us who have tried to keep it to the straight an narrow as vigilantes know that to have any level of effectiveness you eventually end up little more than a slightly more discriminating pirate yourself, as far as targets are concerned.

Ergo, due to this besides the random trips by random corps/alliances pirates can hardly be opposed or 'stopped' as such, and several other factors maintain the image for many that piracy is 'where it's at'.

That's not really a terribly bad thing; the image that is, as more pirates = more potential enemies for everyone else.

But in the realms of RP, most RP'ers like to have stories behind our toons. We try to play to live the lives of our toons not just being yourself in a game where your toon represents you. Ergo, where a non-RP'er might go, ' time to try piracy instead of what I'm doing' RP'ers end up with 'why would my toon go pirate, how do I work this out?'

...

And I would not have had a problem with any of this, if only there were good options to going pirate at all, and possibly the game-fun to go with this. But there are no good alternatives for vigilantism or even, dare I say it... bounty hunting.

...

What matters to me is that piracy has no good 'opponent' other than perhaps, other pirates, and many RP'ers who wish to go pirate and still RP thus ends up in predictably few places, with some exceptions. I wish there were a realistic option to piracy in this regard, so as to get a more even playing-field, in a way, and thus (hopefully) more action and fun for all participants.

I'm not sure I agree that piracy has no good 'opponent', since you could make it your business to prey on any number of the characters at the 'lawful' end of the spectrum.  And it would be interesting to explore the concept of an 'honourable pirate'.  From what I've seen mostly, there are many 'outlaw' characters who like the freedom of the non-empire factions, but the disillusionment aspect seems to dominate as their uniting factor.

Also, I'd like hear thoughts on how FW fits into this.  Not sure I caught in BB's comments how that was part of this line of roleplaying.

[Esna Pitoojee]

As an FW pilot, I can confirm that FW is broken, both in terms of game mechanics and RP perspectives. That's another thread, however. 

As for pirates...

I agree that there are very few options with regards to "going rogue" aside from pirates. My reasoning is that:
- As Andy said, we like to have stories and thus a good reason our character would go "rogue". Pirates have an established backstory and purpose; several of the pirate factions have a purpose of "we do it for us because we can" (I'm looking at the Angels, Serps, and to a lesser degree the Guristas). So, the framework for purpose is already there, and even better if our character has just lost their desire to care for anyone but themselves - they have ready-made factions saying the same thing.
- RP (and EVE itself) is a social environment; for the most part, we enjoy having people to play with. Because of the above factors, there will always be some RPers associating with the "pirate" factions. So, not only do we have a ready-made backstory and such, we also have a pre-prepared RP environment with friends to play in.
- The other factions out there with an "I-don't-give-a-shit-'bout-anyone-but-me" ethos - namely, the capsuleer empires - aren't exactly RP friendly. I'm not saying you can't RP as a member of a 0.0 alliance - hell, I did so myself for a while - but it's much, much harder when you don't have anyone else there to work with, or when your alliance may do things that contradict your RP (I'm thinking about those alliance leaders declaring for Sansha Kuvakei in the "I have returned, my children" IGS thread).
- RPing as a law-man of some kind can be very, very hard in EVE because - uniquely - EVE both demands you be able to take action on your words to be recognized, and offers significant incentives to NOT engage an enemy you can't win against. Moreover, protecting your own alliances' operations in an area is hard enough (again, trust me - I've tried) but protecting everyone elses' operations too can be outright impossible. Once again, EVE's requirement for demonstratable actions means that claiming you cleared an area of pirates when you in fact haven't... isn't going to be taken well.

So, all in all, players get funneled toward factions which have an existing RPer population because we're lazy and don't like the risk of striking out on our own to pour hours and hours into something which may not work in the end anyhow. I'd like to note, however, that this does NOT mean that people's IC reasons for "going pirate" are wrong. In fact, the reasoning I've layed out above could work just as well IC - pirates are there, they have capsuleers your character may know and be friends with already, and unlike the highly unstable 0.0 alliances, they seem to be composed of people who for the most part understand cooperation.

[Kaleigh Doyle]

Verone and Veto are about as "honorable pirate" as you can get.

[Ulphus]

Once again, EVE's requirement for demonstratable actions means that claiming you cleared an area of pirates when you in fact haven't... isn't going to be taken well.

So claim what you have done. In Eve, it's extremely difficult to eradicate pirates from an area - even Concord can't get rid of all the pirates in highsec! So clearing an area completely is not a good goal. You need to pick realistic goals, that would both make sense for your character and be measurable, and achievable.

EM has done metrics like "Number of kills by Pirates in a given area per week" to see whether it's rising or falling. One campaign which had a kill ratio of 70:1 in our favour was considered a marginal failure because we couldn't significantly reduce the number of piracy kills the pirates got. Another campaign with a much more even kill-loss ratio but that caused the pirates to stop piracy operations to concentrate on us, and eventually leave the republic would be considered a huge success.

That's not the only metric, and each campaign might have a different goal, but we try to choose goals that would a) make sense to our characters b) seem achievable to our characters and c) be achievable in game.

[Saede Riordan]

everything to do with the criminal side of the game needs work tbh, this is largely just symptomatic of that.  Piracy, bounty hunting, smuggling, police, drugs...it all needs an overhaul. ALL OF IT.

[Chowda]

Well, they are going to redo contraband.  It won't be stopped by customs anymore, players scan other ships and "tag" the illegal goods.  Blow them up, get reward I guess.  Oh, and it won't be detectable in stations.  Maybe people will start role playing law enforcement.

A quick tweak to the bounty system allowing for a percentage of isk to only be claimable by corpmates, with a certain base amount that must go towards the public bounty, could liven up the anti-pirate scene.       

[Casiella]

Or so they say. I imagine the final result of the new smuggling/booster stuff will be considerably less interactive and exciting than we were first promised.

CCP does a great job keeping us/me believing though!

[Saede Riordan]

Or so they say. I imagine the final result of the new smuggling/booster stuff will be considerably less interactive and exciting than we were first promised.

CCP does a great job keeping us/me believing though!

Unfortunately this.

We need whole whole huge criminal restructuring/expansion, like what Dominion did with nullsec except actually good.

[Casiella]

I was thinking more of the initial peek at planetary management (districts), plus all the gameplay they'd already shown years ago for Incarna... there's more, of course, but those stick out.

[Hamish Grayson]

COSMOS.  Atmospheric flight.  The corruption expansion.

[Casiella]

Epic arcs?

...this is getting depressing.

[BloodBird]

Me being bitter-Vet about this and agonizing over people's general cowardice and spine-lacking tendencies on a weekly, nearly daily, basis, I've spent quite some time trying to think of a 'fix' to piracy, something that promotes more 'real' anti-piracy without actively going outlaw to be effective.

The sad fact about it is that it's effectively impossible to avoid 'it will be exploited to hell and back' because, let's be honest. People WILL find ways to exploit anything, that, or skimp the edges to avoid consequences for their actions. It is an inevitable part of human nature to want to win, as decicively as able.

So, after alot of thinking, I've come to the conclusion that one of the few ways they could do it would be to introduce freelancer-type mechanics to the entire system. This however, will demand a total re-vamp of the entire consepts of high/low sec and would likely also require far more - and persistent - NPC traffic, than we see today. And honestly, at this rate a major overhaul of how the game works and/or addition of far more resource-demanding and lagg-making NPC's is unlikely.

For those who have not played Freelancer or other/older games that it's based on or with simmilar consepts, I'll get back to this when I'm not this sleepy/tired and elaborate alot more. I'm just not entierly sure there is much point to it because the needs to 'balance' the pirate/vigilante consept is likely way, way to demanding to be worth it, no matter how much I'd love to see it.

[Mizhara]

EVE IS DYING!!!

No seriously... DYING!

...

Good Gods, I never get all the bitching about Eve. It's all good to have constructive criticism and so on, but the fact remains Eve has always been only as fun as you make it. The mechanics and features have never been the sticking point of Eve. It's been what you make of them. It's always been the players choosing to do something and having fun doing it that created the gameplay in Eve and CCP has provided the biggest and most complex sandbox ever conceived by MMO devs in the history of multiplayer gaming to do it in.

I'll happily point out flaws and things that could need work, but at the end of the day I'm playing the game and I'm loving it. If you don't... well, maybe you need a serious attitude adjustment because there's a nigh infinite amount of options ahead of you. You can do whatever the hell you want in this game, pretty much, and that is fucking unique.

Take a few steps back and then take a few steps to the left or to the right... get a new perspective, and maybe the inescapable truth will become apparent to you. It's not Eve that needs to change... it's you.

Here's another truism of Eve: HTFU or GTFO.

[Casiella]

I'll just say this, then if anyone wants to continue we should move to another thread.

Mechanics aren't the point of EVE, at least for me. The community and social structures that we've built provide far more entertainment than any of the gameplay I've enjoyed (which covers just about everything except nullsec sov warfare).

Part of that is due to neglect, but part of that is because that's what CCP did right: create a sandbox where the players matter more than the dev-provided content. Tools like the proposal here add value insofar as they promote player interaction and activity rather than totally solo play.

[Lyn Farel]

I disagree, while it is true that in a sandbox its players that create their own game, it is also true that you need good mechanisms for it to work (just look at SWG and you will understand). Ofc, Eve has awesome mechanics. Not perfect though.

Anyway, we all agree on the fact Eve is not dying and I don"t think thats what bloodbird was saying. Or at least, I am not reading it between the lines.