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[Nmaro Makari]

Probaly most of the RP goes on in corps but yeah, everywhere apart from summit seemed to die horribly.

Plus I cant rally comment now having not been on EVE for a while.

[Esna Pitoojee]

So, I was chatting with a friend/corpmate and MSN, and got into a rant about the current state of RP that actually had some good points to it - so, here's the distilled version.

The issue, in my opinion, is that there is no longer much in the way of RP sub-communities/sub-factions. This has largely taken the epic, multi-person feel out of RP and instead broken it down to individual interactions between players.

(DANGER: Much bittervent ranting about "the good old days" ahead.  )

For example, when I got here, the Amarr "faction" was composed of a bunch of different corps and alliances - I can name about a half dozen offhand - but even within that front, there were some differences of opinion that resulted in sub-factions, who again would work together to do stuff^tm., but might collectively get together to pew the Minmatar or Blood Raiders. Another good example of the "sub faction" concept was discussed by Arkady in another thread (CBA to go find it at this second) about the Minmatar faction, when there was much internal disputation about whether it was better to immediately attack the Empire to try to force the release of slaves, or player Midular's game of seeking peace and mutual recognition. Regardless of which side you sat on, you had a group of people you could work with towards that goal, and a group of people you could clash with - and of course, the Amarr, whom you could all get together and shoot at if they provoked you.

But what happened?

I honestly don't know. I really don't. It's nice to lay blame on a topic as painful as this one, but I don't think a single point - or even five individual points - can be blamed for the decline of conflicting factions. I think though, that I can identify three points which may have contributed to this situation:

First, FW, which attempted to artificially create sides with very strict, forced parameters while at the time being inclusive to everyone and not just RPers, which quickly meant that inter- and intra-faction cooperation became difficult at best.

Second, the lack of storyline development - both overall, and in terms of storylines that can create conflict between defined factions; it was nigh-impossible to create inter-faction conflict out of Apocrypha, and only two distinct factions could be formed of Incursion, with both more or less stalling once Incursions became a mechanic and live events were only a chance for actors to appear in shiny ships, yell scary things in local, and then disappear.

Third, the appearance of non-factional, mutual-cooperation style corps - note that this is in NO WAY a strike against FW or "non-denominational" corps as a whole; I'm in FW myself and have had plenty of good interactions with multi- (or non-) factional corps... in fact, I'd say that when distinct, opposing factions begin to crumble, the formation of organizations in the "middle ground" is a natural occurance. Unfortunately, however, if you are specifically looking for and hoping to provoke inter-factional conflict, these are not neccesarily fertile ground.

But what did this mean?

It meant each person had to "carry the flag" personally. With no more factions to naturally create conflict between each other, storyline to bring up new points to RP and conflict on, it fell to each player to create their own storylines to run with. Of course, player-made storylines aren't inherently bad, but when they're all you have to run with, it quickly becomes tiresome and difficult to have to invent your own activity all the time - sometimes, just plain not possible; running a storyline personally is a tiring, difficult process that doesn't work well with RL requirements - not to mention there's a fine line between running a good storyline and being percieved as just starting the dreaded DRAMA. Unable to run their own storylines and with nothing provided for them, people just get bored (or tired) and leave.



tl;dr - factions, which previously conflicted and drove action, broke down while the storyline didn't advance, so people had to make their own stuff all the time. This is tiresome and not everyone can do it. So, people left instead.

Just my 0.02 ISK.

[Merdaneth]

I'm back after quite a long summer break. Which might have aided in the slight overabundance on Amarr related threads. 

In EVE, lack of control or even the presence of a real world beyond internet spaceships makes it so that one cannot really advance storylines much in a practical sense. I also see a fair amount of RP keeps getting stuck as well in the 'prove what you say'. Besides shooting each other, there is not a lot of practical RP that one can do. If the world just runs on barely noticing your interaction with it, you might as well not even bother to affect it.

So most RP focuses on interpersonal relationships and philosophical debates. You might not be able to affect the world much, but you can change another person. Even if the world does not respond much to you, other players will. However, interpersonal relations are difficult to 'get into' by outsiders. Without visible real-world equivalent, one must be introduced by outsiders to these virtual worlds of interpersonal interaction. Or alternatively, get busy with the more open discussion going on in the more visible places, like the IGS.

[Ava Starfire]

The inactivity of the summer does seem to be coming to an end, which is awesome. Hopefully some old faces, and a bunch of new ones, will peep into the RP "world" of EVE and decide they like what they see; I will be honest, I only play anymore because of the friends, both inside and outside the RP community, that Ive made.

RP seems to have stagnated, but it is very interesting to watch people's characters "shift" over spans of weeks or months, or even years, ie, Malcom. Its great to see people move beyond "argh Amarr! Die!" and "Argh! Heathens! Know your place!". Its great to see characters with desires, failings, hopes, fears, strengths and weaknesses.

Still feels pretty slow though; I mean, very slow. I left EM because I grew tired of being the only member of my corp online for much of the afternoon and evening. Hey, people have lives, people live in different time zones (And most of Gradient live outside the US, TZ issue here was quite pronounced) people take extended summer vacations. No one did anything "wrong", it is no one's "fault", it just happened. Lately, my choice seems to be boiling down to RPing in the Summit (With an overwhelmingly nonminmatar crowd) and/or going to a non-Minmatar corp. RP is only fun if you have people to RP WITH.

This also has much to do with the fact that Minmatar "RP", what there is of it outside EM, consists of "GAH DIE BURN DEATH AMARR!"

[Jade Constantine]

General situation with Eve Roleplay

I think its undoubtedly the case that Eve itself has slowed down a lot this summer post monocle-gate and the realization that the pay off for 18 months of no significant new content was not actually very good (CQ). Across the game there has been a general wave of lassitude, unsubbing and only logging in to changeover skills etc and I don't think its in any way specific to the RP community. Now of course, it doesn't help that there isn't really any background or plot development going on for RP'ers to latch onto. I think the research project thing was an interesting idea perhaps, but lack of anything real to do in-space meant that people's enthusiasm for it died out relatively quickly. Sansha plotline has become humdrum (after all, people are "farming it"). FW empire fights - well, we all know the story there, its content that has suffered years of neglect and stasis. So it leaves people needing to make their own content and RP story from whatever corp and alliance mates they have left. For many that is difficult.

How my alliance has been impacted with this

In our alliance (star fraction) we've had our routine summer drama llama-ding-dong with people declaring the movement dead and going pirate. (happens every summer) combined with the low activity and general angst at CCP's perceived abandonment of the game universe. In practical terms the impact its had on us is twofold:

Firstly, our maximum fleet size for patrolling and intervention dropped from low to mid twenties to half a dozen to low teens. Most people who were on the fence about activity in Eve seem to have dropped off the fence (on the wrong side) and we're looking an alliance of a few dozen actives total from the 60-70 we had a couple of years ago.

Secondly, our potential target availability has dropped significantly. Earlier in the year placid was full of pirate groups roaming with 10-20 man fleets and bite-sized gate camps were oppressing travellers at all the hisec/lowsec junctions. It was a target rich environment that we often struggled to win against and in away that was a good thing because it made us evolve our tactics and try to find ways to fight outnumbered and often out-blinged. These days the pirates are relatively scarce and potential RP territorialist/enclosurist organizations to wardec rarer still. So that does have the danger of spiralling to a mutually-reinforcing decline.

Well gotta see the upside

That said, it has been a positive thing to see we can actually have fun with the smaller fleets at the half a dozen man vs half a dozen target level and it does make the organization feel more personal and camaraderie amongst the hardcore idealists that stick it out is improved. I think if Eve in general does survive the current doldrums and recover and begin appealing to people's broader interests again the veteran's who toughed it out and kept to their principles in the Fraction will have forged a bond that will empower us for years to come.

All organizations have their ups and downs - but I think Eve at the moment is seeing an awful lot of organizations having their downs simultaneously with only a couple of pseudo-rp outfits on the verges keeping their activity on non-rp focus.

Time for CCP to pull their fat out of the fire

Still. There is always hope. CCP may well listen to the climate of protests and unhappiness across the player base at the moment and may realize that they need to fund and properly resource their core game and start making things happen again. I personally hope we hear less of "there is no resource/it can't be done" and a bit more acceptance that unless they start making these things happen there might actually be "no game at all".

Its clear Eve does need a lot of attention and new enthusiasm and passion to make things happen. Something as simple (albeit time consuming and manpower intensive) as renewed Live events with genuine in-space interaction could help. Renewing and repairing Faction Warfare would definitely help. Even looking at enhanced lowsec, mercenaries and bounty-hunters, new faction ships, new anything really can help because it makes people want to log into the game again and prepare to fight for things!

Anyways, to summarize for the op I think while Eve RP did not actually "die" it has gone to sleep now for quite a while. We will need CCP's help to help wake it up, but of course we can help too.

Looking Forward

From SF's perspective we really have gone back to our roots moving to this autumn and we're making war on regressive road-blockers and would-be imperialist pirate outfits that have the temerity to charge people "rent" for occupation of lowsec Placid systems. The beginning of our "loops" campaign was basically a statement of intent that we would fight people who dared restrict the movement of our ships in placid but it revealed a hidden criminal network in the "loops" that charge people to live there. We've now advanced our wardec to the landlords and would-be rent-barons and in return got wardecced by some mercenaries paid by the slumlords to defend their business. Its a pretty good angle and looks to be providing some nice mixed fighting of the scale we can currently enjoy and its nicely absent of any traditional "rp community" needle and angst.

So it is possible to enjoy the game even in the current situation. But like everyone else I'm definitely hoping CCP throw us a bone to make it easier to engage people's interest again and recover from the long summer doldrums.

A closing point on the way people use the IGS

I think one big problem with the IGS is people simply use the "RP excuse" to troll their OOC feuds there and it does become corrosive and poisonous. I'd definitely like to see a bit more discipline from old school rp'ers and less internicine bitterness masquerading as "rp". Nobody wants to see talking heads being purely negative about anything anybody else has to say. If a topic doesn't interest you then ignore it. Don't feel obliged to troll and sneer just because its a post made by somebody you don't like. IGS would be a far superior environment if people competed for interest against each other with positive and progressive thread/topic posting representing in-character play rather than used it simply as a way of insulting and demeaning each other with veiled ooc insults all the time.

For my money I'm happy to see virtually anything presented as IC from the single rifter shooting a wartarget punisher if its presented in nice and evocative language. I want to read about people's first wars, their ideals, their principles and their schemes. I want to read about what people are doing and what they stand for. This is all positive. (One great thing about the new forums is that I can "like" all positive posts while ignoring the terrible ones).

I don't want to see put-downs and purely negative posting pretending to be "characterization".
If you want to flame somebody IC then send them an evemail - please don't drag the rest of the community through your personal issues and grudges.

This simple bit of self-discipline on the part of the community would massively improve the atmosphere on the summit.

[Katrina Oniseki]

On which point I would close on saying:

I think one big problem with the IGS is people simply use the "RP excuse" to troll their OOC feuds there and it does become corrosive and poisonous. I'd definitely like to see a bit more discipline from old school rp'ers and less internicine bitterness masquerading as "rp". Nobody wants to see talking heads being purely negative about anything anybody else has to say. If a topic doesn't interest you then ignore it. Don't feel obliged to troll and sneer just because its a post made by somebody you don't like. IGS would be a far superior environment if people competed for interest against each other with positive and progressive thread/topic posting representing in-character play rather than used it simply as a way of insulting and demeaning each other with veiled ooc insults all the time.

For my money I'm happy to see virtually anything presented as IC from the single rifter shooting a wartarget punisher if its presented in nice and evocative language. I want to read about people's first wars, their ideals, their principles and their schemes. I want to read about what people are doing and what they stand for. This is all positive. (One great thing about the new forums is that I can "like" all positive posts while ignoring the terrible ones).

I don't want to see put-downs and purely negative posting pretending to be "characterization".
If you want to flame somebody IC then send them an evemail - please don't drag the rest of the community through your personal issues and grudges.

This simple bit of self-discipline on the part of the community would massively improve the atmosphere on the summit.

While I understand you're referencing the greater problem as a whole, I'm going to use you as an example to agree.

I for one am sick of seeing people troll the crap out of your threads just because they see it is written by 'Jade Constantine'. I see your name passed around as a sort of inside joke on the IGS or something, and it's kinda annoying. It's annoying because it's a visible example of how worthless the IGS is. Everyone I speak to considers the IGS even worse than the ingame Summit channel (which I don't think is that bad, actually). It's the cesspool of EVE RP, according to some, and this is why. It's a place where people drag other people's names in the mud for craps and giggles, because trolling them OOC isn't as fun as making their character look bad too. The IGS is just another troll forum, as far as I think.

Point in case:

Jade Constantine and Star Fraction are one of the most vocal anti-establishment and anti-territorial organizations.
Someone posts on IGS about freeing all of Delve from territorial claim, inviting help for the campaign from outsiders.
They specifically say Jade Constantine is not invited.

... what? Stuff like that makes no sense to me.

[Merdaneth]

Jade Constantine and Star Fraction are one of the most vocal anti-establishment and anti-territorial organizations.
Someone posts on IGS about freeing all of Delve from territorial claim, inviting help for the campaign from outsiders.
They specifically say Jade Constantine is not invited.

... what? Stuff like that makes no sense to me.

Jade's character tends to be pretty vocal in a way that triggers a lot of other people.

I can understand the specific non-invitation from an in-character standpoint though.

Understand that Merdaneth sees himself as a vocal humanitarian too. However, I don't have any problem from some humanitarian organization specifically not inviting him, although Merdaneth might have a problem with it.

I enjoyed Jade IC posts, but he convinced me he didn't like mine, so a little over a year ago I made the (one-sided) offer not to respond to him or post in his threads anymore, which I still don't.

This remains at the core of some of the issues, some people don't like other people's RP. I'd like to lose myself in nonsense debates and try love to invent odd arguments. I can certainly imagine some other people growing tired of it at times. 

[Kaleigh Doyle]

The IGS is what you make of it. If you go to the summit to win arguments and convert the masses, you're in for a rude awakening. It's a tool, and when properly utilized, can serve a greater function in achieving your corporate/character goals.

[Jade Constantine]

I’m not that surprised to not be invited to the Goon version of fight-arena-freespace in Delve, they also pointed out they will be giving nobody any standings either so *shrug* that’s a bit of a non-event really. Interesting gesture but as I said on the IGS this afternoon its a bit of a trust issue to anyone taking up that offer because the goons could simply change their mind at any time and remove docking and hanger rights.

With regard to the constant trolling though – it does get very old and it is supremely anti-RP in basis so yes, it’s very annoying and does suit some agendas of ruining IGS for everyone really.

@ Merdaneth, this isn’t really about characters – its more about ooc trolling using an flimsy mask of “ic” to hide the nastiness.
With regard to our resolution the thing was I was finding your posting very monotonous and had the effect of turning every thread into the same argument. Basically the moment you started to critique my stuff we were rehashing the same debate we’d had hundreds of times before. I found this rather sterile and because we weren’t in corporations/alliances that were able to fight each other in a meaningful way it wasn’t going anywhere. I do however appreciate you respecting my wishes and desisting from the forum stuff. And as I said at the time, if we do ever end up being in organizations that can interact meaningfully in space I will be happy to debate on IC forums again about those specific interactions.

But this is actually the problem with the IGS trolling now, it does tend to make all threads the same. Some people have decided that the only way they can “fight” Jade and Star Fraction is to sabotage our IGS threads by trying to make them all the same argument and froth as those that have gone before. It is very destructive from a metagaming perspective and it does make people switch off – so from a practical-perspective I guess it works. But its not really anything to do with roleplay in Eve, more about the progression of ooc feuds and ancient grudges.

Of course it goes broader than us - when this stuff is perceived to be okay against one target it gets into common usage against all and suddently its the norm.

There isn't really an enforcement solution because the worst perpetrators are good at putting an "ic sheen" on the feuding and only way it can be resolved longterm would be for people to grow up a bit and realize that for everyone's good competing on positives and progressive stuff would be better than doing down others the moment they try to do their own thing.

[Sakaane Eionell]

Three pages of posts since my last! :O I had to copy/paste this all out and write it during my lunch break at work then carry it home.

It's hard to ignore a genuinely friendly person who often has fully worded opinions and comments to a discussion at hand. You have to speak up to stand out.

I agree, though sometimes finding something "unique" to contribute that doesn't sound like something someone else already said can be a challenge too. I've experienced this myself. I'd post on IGS more often if I didn't feel like my particular position has already been "spoken for" by the time I'm able to have a look. This doesn't mean my opinion or comments wouldn't be fully worded or developed--but perceived "copy cats" are rarely forgiven. I'm new to RP too. Finding ways to say the same thing without saying the same thing is tough.

This sort of ties into what Julianus said, about IGS being "overrun". I don't know that it's overrun with alts per se (and "alt posts" are easier to ignore now), but the higher number of people present does mean if you're not fast (or in the "right" timezone), everyone seemingly gets their $.02 ISK in before you. I often remark to my corpmates that all the fun stuff happens while I'm at work!

But, like Katrina, I'm also not sure where else to go. I RP on my corp forums and in game to a certain extent, but IGS is really the only arena (that I know of) where anyone from any corner of the game can easily and freely interact. I won't be exposed to a lot of the stuff in IGS by sitting in the "FreeIntaki" channel in game, for example. On the other hand, I can't sit in all kinds of other channels in game either. ("Where's my ship? I'm sure it's buried under all these windows somewhere...")

Having some kind of "hook" for newbies to enter would be nice, but then those who like to have spotlights on them and jump for such hooks the fastest often are not the ... most interesting people to have around.

So the challenge becomes filtering out the non-interesting people from the interesting ones. I can see how vets would get burned out on this--only so much energy to go around "giving the benefit of the doubt". Though, I would expect the non-interesting people would make themselves obvious pretty fast?

but you do have to start somewhere. The real problem is finding those "somewheres", which you often can't do until you shove your foot in the door. Same with "under the radar" stuff. It's an annoying catch-22.

Yep. I played EVE for three and a half years or something before I ever really started thinking about RP. The "thinking" was a year ago now and even then, I still didn't really get going on anything until this past spring, when I suddenly did a whole spurt of stuff at once: IGS, corp forums, my website. Just makes me go "Doh!" when I see an opportunity on IGS that I missed because of whatever reason, or tried to take advantage of but was subsequently "passed over" or missed by others.

(On that note, I think I might need to poke my head into FreeIntaki sometime soon - got a few OOC friends that I've not really interacted with IC yet, and need to fix that. Plus, after poking through your blog, and some other IC stuff going on, might be some interesting things to talk about. )

More faces in FreeIntaki are always welcome. And the rest sounds awesome too.

Besides, the best way to help a newb who really wants to learn how to RP, is to direct them, not bash them and ignore them. Even if you have to pull them aside OOC and give them some resources and help them flesh out their character and make them feel more comfortable as a player, you're going to make them a better RPer and transform them from an ignorant newb to a contributing member of the RP community. And we can never have too many of those.

This is one of the best suggestions I've seen of late. Respect, sir!

And why a new alt?  'Cause most of the existing characters have substantial baggage.  Some are also kind of creepy.  But that said, good grief, even the creepiest among them are generally open to being contacted out of the blue by a complete stranger.  Just ask Seriphyn.

I think my personal preference as a new RPer would be to interact with other established characters rather than someone's new alt, even if there is a certain level of "intimidation" that might come with talking to said established character (but if I don't know any better, then there wouldn't be any of that anyway). One new character talking to another new character...? Hmm. Might be kinda like strangers standing in line at the theater who happen to exchange pleasantries.

respond to the lesser known entities in a thread.  It is easy to engage with the powerhouse characters, but it is unspoken encouragement when you acknowledge them, even if you aren't nice, IC.

I'm glad you said this, because I was going to if no one else did. This happens OOC too, even here on Backstage (shock!). When someone unknown tries to contribute to a conversation but nobody picks up on their contribution at all, they'll probably think less about trying again.

Second, the lack of storyline development - both overall, and in terms of storylines that can create conflict between defined factions; it was nigh-impossible to create inter-faction conflict out of Apocrypha, and only two distinct factions could be formed of Incursion, with both more or less stalling once Incursions became a mechanic and live events were only a chance for actors to appear in shiny ships, yell scary things in local, and then disappear.

I can appreciate this point as one part of RP decline. But (and I realize I'm probably hanging myself out to dry by saying this), I also think, knowing CCP and Mercury are lately trying to do something they (yes) should have done a long time ago in filling in the holes and whatnot, we as players should probably be thankful they're doing it at all rather than continuing to blunder on with the PF in the state it is. Consider how vast the PF is already and how much Swiss cheese it really is. We can't have it both ways--there are either people to fill in holes or people to produce new storyline. Splitting the resources might sound logical to us but is probably inherently inefficient. Although, filling in holes is kinda the same as producing new storyline, since there will be more information than we had before. We just don't have access to it yet. Yep, it's up to us to "make do" in the meantime.

not to mention there's a fine line between running a good storyline and being percieved as just starting the dreaded DRAMA. Unable to run their own storylines and with nothing provided for them, people just get bored (or tired) and leave.

I think newbies fear this especially. In a game like EVE, everyone needs at least a "little" bit of DRAMA, and you generally always have to start with your own storyline because it'd be hard to start anywhere else. Nobody wants to RP or learn about Sarah Jane "girl next door" capsuleer who never has any adventures or gets into any trouble but always does her agent work on time, never shoots anybody she shouldn't, and is generally everybody's BFF. That's just as terribad. The challenge is doing DRAMA right--enough to inject some excitement or surprise without going overboard. When someone is new they might worry their attempt is not taken seriously right from the get-go. Maybe they don't know any better (inexperience) or just happen to come in after someone else's last go-round of it and other people think "Oh here's another one". Again it's a case of the community striking a balance with the newbie--tolerance/patience vs degrees of the aforementioned 'strong-arming'.

[Valdezi]

All the above is just further reason why I love you to bits, Sakaane.

[lallara zhuul]

Just one thing.

CCP started to 'make sense of' the PF four years ago.
Mercury is basically doing the same thing all over again.

Why?

I have no idea, but from my experience the answer is pretty obvious.

[Lyn Farel]

@ Merdaneth, this isn’t really about characters – its more about ooc trolling using an flimsy mask of “ic” to hide the nastiness.

Definitly.

I have to admit that the only time I had to face that was... How to say it, from SF members, which may explain several things (but definitly not excuse them !). :/

[Lyn Farel]

respond to the lesser known entities in a thread.  It is easy to engage with the powerhouse characters, but it is unspoken encouragement when you acknowledge them, even if you aren't nice, IC.

I'm glad you said this, because I was going to if no one else did. This happens OOC too, even here on Backstage (shock!). When someone unknown tries to contribute to a conversation but nobody picks up on their contribution at all, they'll probably think less about trying again.

Yeah, I definitly agree with that.

[Myyona]

He, I thought role players thrived on drama. As a main driver to define their character and so. It takes little skimming of IGS to discover only threads that provides drama gets a lot of attention even when topic has been discussed a million times already. All the corporate propaganda about who they fought last week is similarly only good for drama or gets no response at all.

The only times I have ever managed to get major response on any of my doings is when I accidently hit the drama button. Accidently, because I have no interest in drama but favor the small common every day things and define my characters based on what I learn about the EVE universe setting on those subjects (through my lore hunt),  instead of how I would like EVE universe setting to be. There is a very good reason why, in the eight years I have played EVE, I have kept myself in the outskirts of the RP community.

On the topic of RP dying? No, I think it is a general state of the game as Jade mentioned. Captain Quarters failed to provide the immersive experience as it was hyped to be. CCP is still promising this and that is "just around the corner but is still failing to deliver. Their stated goal 'delivery' goes the same way as their previous one of 'excellence'.