Print

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

[Laurentis Thiesant]

Failure can be fun.
The referendum failed pretty terribly and look at the massive avenue that opened up. Brought in a swath of players to the thread and to the event that would have if it was just a 'weee, clean cut Federate democratic wankfest' and created intra-factional and inter-factional conflict in a deep storyline.

And I didn't get made fun of IC too much (barring by the rascal Pieter).

Let's all fail more often. Shame our adored factions for greater good of EVErp. 

[Lyn Farel]

Tbh Mantenault was a big bet. It was willingly done to portray a bad side of the federal democracy. I think it was executed well enough and probably appreciated for other factions not to fall on it like sharks smelling blood.

But so many things could have gone wrong to begin with... I was more or less expecting it to go down, but eventually I got proven wrong.

[Laurentis Thiesant]

Tbh Mantenault was a big bet. It was willingly done to portray a bad side of the federal democracy. I think it was executed well enough and probably appreciated for other factions not to fall on it like sharks smelling blood.

But so many things could have gone wrong to begin with... I was more or less expecting it to go down, but eventually I got proven wrong.

Never doubt freedom, Lyn.

[Lyn Farel]

Sociokrauts do not believe in freedom 

[Pieter Tuulinen]

Failure can be fun.
The referendum failed pretty terribly and look at the massive avenue that opened up. Brought in a swath of players to the thread and to the event that would have if it was just a 'weee, clean cut Federate democratic wankfest' and created intra-factional and inter-factional conflict in a deep storyline.

And I didn't get made fun of IC too much (barring by the rascal Pieter).

Let's all fail more often. Shame our adored factions for greater good of EVErp. 

I kid, I kid. I love, but I kid.

Seriously Laurent, that was a very nice thread. Did you provide ALL the actors from planetside or was there a team of you?

[Laurentis Thiesant]

Failure can be fun.
The referendum failed pretty terribly and look at the massive avenue that opened up. Brought in a swath of players to the thread and to the event that would have if it was just a 'weee, clean cut Federate democratic wankfest' and created intra-factional and inter-factional conflict in a deep storyline.

And I didn't get made fun of IC too much (barring by the rascal Pieter).

Let's all fail more often. Shame our adored factions for greater good of EVErp. 

I kid, I kid. I love, but I kid.

Seriously Laurent, that was a very nice thread. Did you provide ALL the actors from planetside or was there a team of you?

The only character I controlled throughout the thread was Laurentis. 

[orange]

So, what if your character fails to achieve goals due to the challenges of game mechanics and real-world human motivations?

[Lyn Farel]

Jake Favre is my alt, which might be rather obvious considering the employment history.

To be honest it was pretty much organic and I went with what was given each time. It's best that way imo, you never know how it will turn and it develops organically.

[Etienne Saissore]

This is an interesting issue and I have two related questions.

1) If someone wants to do "serious" military/cyberpunk/space-UN/transhumanist/revenge/etc sci-fi, how much failure can be mixed in before it becomes a parody?

I think this is a problem especially for new players and corps, and the competitive side of EVE RP kind of exacerbates it further. It seems to be a common practice to shame new, unsuspecting loyalist or charity organizations with generous bribes from their natural enemies, or to crush the new combat-oriented start-ups with an overwhelming military power. After the credibility of the original idea has been destroyed, many players just seem to prefer to move on and do something else, instead of wearing the mask of a clown.

Not saying I disapprove these tactics, they are clever and totally in line with the ruthless, hateful and grimdark nature of New Eden. But they have their consequences.

2) What's the right amount of fail?

When I browse the IGS, there seems to have been countless characters who were not afraid of ridicule, failed a lot and eventually got rejected as too silly and trollish. Avoiding all light-hearted interaction is a guarantee against going too far, but is there a better way to determine where the dividing line goes? In an international group with players from all ages and backgrounds, it's not clear that everyone would even draw the line in the same place.

Jake Favre is my alt, which might be rather obvious considering the employment history.

Gasp. It was you! Wasn't obvious at all. Great job

[Makkal]

I agree with Synthia. Without failures, weaknesses and making mistakes (by choice, not accident) rp will become a dull show of egos—and I don't need to play a game for that.

I don't think I've ever had Makkal fail 'by choice.' She attempts to do something and it either works or it doesn't. It's rare that I'm in charge of the consequences.

[Laurentis Thiesant]

This is an interesting issue and I have two related questions.

1) If someone wants to do "serious" military/cyberpunk/space-UN/transhumanist/revenge/etc sci-fi, how much failure can be mixed in before it becomes a parody?

I think this is a problem especially for new players and corps, and the competitive side of EVE RP kind of exacerbates it further. It seems to be a common practice to shame new, unsuspecting loyalist or charity organizations with generous bribes from their natural enemies, or to crush the new combat-oriented start-ups with an overwhelming military power. After the credibility of the original idea has been destroyed, many players just seem to prefer to move on and do something else, instead of wearing the mask of a clown.

Not saying I disapprove these tactics, they are clever and totally in line with the ruthless, hateful and grimdark nature of New Eden. But they have their consequences.

2) What's the right amount of fail?

When I browse the IGS, there seems to have been countless characters who were not afraid of ridicule, failed a lot and eventually got rejected as too silly and trollish. Avoiding all light-hearted interaction is a guarantee against going too far, but is there a better way to determine where the dividing line goes? In an international group with players from all ages and backgrounds, it's not clear that everyone would even draw the line in the same place.

Jake Favre is my alt, which might be rather obvious considering the employment history.

Gasp. It was you! Wasn't obvious at all. Great job

I believe, from my perspective, that the right amount of fail is what is simply 'within reason'. What we are doing in the EVE universe as roleplayers is telling a story. If I remember the English lessons where they covered short story writing, you're supposed to have a 'complication' or 'conflict' in the story to keep it interesting. Otherwise you'd be telling a story about nothing.

While that's certainly possible for expositions sake as part of a character's backstory, it isn't going to bring people into an event as such.

Don't fail every time, but expect there to be an obstacle. What happens then is, whether or not it is solved, how it is solved, and what that means. There is an option on each of those levels for it to be considered a 'victory' or a 'failure' for your character, and to varying degrees. That can be worked out through game-mechanics or through discussion with other participants.

Anything can be worked out, provided everyone is reasonable and respectful to the original idea and to the wish of every player to maintain a certain level of integrity.

[Ayallah]

The majority of my RP is my failures.  I never connect to the summit to throw my solo kills or what my fleet I lead did.  Always fuck, I died to a gatecamp.  I was too drunk to turn on my reps.  Etc...

Personally I thrive on adversity, non-public failure doesn't teach me like making it public.  Plus I love to RP Aya as impulsive and angry. Remind people there is a Kameira under the trained politeness. 

I agree with OP, embrace failure.  It shows more about your character how you act in defeat, failure, loss, and adversity.  Get back up or lay there and take it.

[Hong WeiLoh]

The majority of my RP is my failures.  I never connect to the summit to throw my solo kills or what my fleet I lead did.  Always fuck, I died to a gatecamp.  I was too drunk to turn on my reps.  Etc...

Personally I thrive on adversity, non-public failure doesn't teach me like making it public.  Plus I love to RP Aya as impulsive and angry. Remind people there is a Kameira under the trained politeness. 

I agree with OP, embrace failure.  It shows more about your character how you act in defeat, failure, loss, and adversity.  Get back up or lay there and take it.

I can +1 this, having been privy to her posting in the Bringing Solo Back channel. No, it's not IGS, but I think it's a lil more entertaining than the serious "pontifications" and oratorial ejaculations that seem to plague IGS (yes, I understand that :PvPWithWords: is just as supersrsbizness as :l337SpaceshipPvP:, but it's not really my cup of tea).

On the subject of failure, I fail all the time. Look at me on BC. I fail, I re-ship, and I try a different approach, "get right back on the horse", so to speak. I disagree with the assertion that the only two true approaches to failure are "sour grapes" or "quiet/histrionic acceptance, followed by quitting". In truth, neither approach is very helpful if your goal is to actually learn from the failure and improve.
How much would you learn if after every loss or failure, you go "Meh, didn't really want that ship anyway," or "I'm great, just (insert random excuse here), I'll get em next time!"?? Obviously you'd learn nothing at all if you emotionally internalize the failure, go "I quit, never doing that again," and storm off -- well, you'd learn Quitting V pretty goddamned fast. That's about it, though.

It takes a degree of emotional and mental maturity to accept the loss/failure, see what you did wrong (and actually see what you did wrong, not just heap a load of blame on yourself), and figure out a way to correct it for future endeavors.
That's why you see so many shitty people on the RL planet nowadays: an excess of self-esteem coupled with the "sour grapes" or "do it perfectly the first time, or not at all" mentality as a self-preservation mechanism for that vain image of what they think they are, vice what they actually are.

Want to know why in-game RP doesn't work in EVE? Someone already hit that nail on the head: you can't just say "Look at me, I'm an awesome space pilot," because then you have to back it up with actions. If you can't, then yes, you do end up looking like a fool, and rightfully so.
If you're a 5'5" waif of a guy with no martial arts training and walk into a biker bar, pick out the biggest, meanest-looking dude in the bunch, and go "Hey bubba, Im'ma kick your ass," ... well, after everyone finishes laughing at you, Bubba is probably gonna kick your ass and toss you out face-first on the sidewalk. Call me an elitist dick, but that sounds about right to me.

[Elmund Egivand]

So, what if your character fails to achieve goals due to the challenges of game mechanics and real-world human motivations?

If failure to achieve goals is due to game mechanics, I just have Elmund go get a stiff drink, talk about the failure, troubleshoot, reship and try again. Not all that different from what I'm already doing.

Capsuleer Elmund may be, but he isn't exactly an omniscient deity and he recognised that. He did, after all, join the capsuleer society without knowing anything about what capsuleering is about other than fly ship and shoot people. It took him a while, with some guidance to figure it all out, but the experience did open his eyes that he is but a child, naive and impressionable and knowing absolutely jack all about anything but flying a ship. Making mistakes and learning from said mistake is an essential part of his life journey.

And this is why he is open to suggestion (though he won't follow suggestions blindly) and he is eager to know more about other societies and everything else. He did grow up in 'the frontier' and his experiences taught him that being an ignoramus is not a good way to survive and prosper.

[Morwen Lagann]

(Edit - I'm responding to Hong, for the record, though this post could also fit in over in the IGS claims/make-shit-up thread.)

The problem I see here is twofold.

First: It's one thing to do a lot of worldbuilding, and use it in your RP and reflect it in your ingame activities. It's another to put yourself/your character up on a giant pedestal set on a flimsy foundation of cards that you either cannot or will not back up with ingame action.

Second: I think a lot of people are getting confused about, or are disagreeing with each other over, what counts as the former, and what counts as the latter.

For example:

Morwen has lived in highsec for the last two years, after a semi-forced retirement from piracy. I have spent a lot of that time doing PVE - mostly exploration, but some missions and incursions too - and occasionally went hunting stupid people who go suspect/criminal in highsec while flying flimsy shit. But I've also taken various things about the corporation and the people running it, and then adapted what I do ingame to match (sometimes taking it a little too far, like how I've organized some of the corp hangars to represent planetside assets - Reppy has occasionally referred to it sarcastically as "playing house with the corp hangar").

I also have a fairly solid, if old, combat record in PVP. I know what I'm doing for the most part. I try to keep up on the fitting meta and what ships are being used and how. But I don't actively PVP anymore. I got tired of the blob-or-be-blobbed, nobody-wants-to-risk-anything metagame going on. Bluntly: I'm rusty. But Morwen doesn't pretend to be a hotshot combat pilot (she didn't really when I was actively PVPing, to be fair); she just lets her combat record speak for itself: It's a two-year-long record that shows a lot about what her flying and combat habits were back then, both good and bad, and also clearly shows that she hasn't been doing a lot of combat against other capsuleers lately, and is probably out of practice. Which is exactly how she plays it.

Now, I know people would call me on it if I went on and on about being an awesomesauce PVPer when I'm actually rusty as fuck and can't back it up. But what about for the other stuff? Most of the stuff I do ingame that contributes to my RP is entirely hidden from the rest of the community - if only because they're not standing behind me watching over my shoulder as I do it.

I can't prove that Morwen's rescued a sizable number of people from deadspace complexes belonging to the Blooders. Nor that she provides medical care for them before sending as many of them home (wherever that happens to be) as possible. Conversely, nobody can prove the opposite.

Due to the removal of standings visibility, I can't prove that Tyrathlion Interstellar provides, among other things, military contracting services (ie, mission-running) to a variety of (NPC) corporations around the cluster. Likewise, nobody can prove we don't.

How about a situation that doesn't relate to TYRIN and has nothing to do with me? There's an Amarrian RPer who doesn't frequent these forums (to my knowledge, anyway) whose character has holdings that have manufacturing plants and the like according to their RP. They set down a PI command center on the planet their holdings were supposed to be on (they might have even placed it in a specific spot to match the holdings as well, I don't recall), and use it to make PI goods that match their holdings' supposed exports. They can't prove that they actually do that. We don't get logs of who pushes what through customs offices. For the same reason, nobody can prove they don't.

I could go on, but I think the examples are sufficient as it stands: they all have to be taken at face value.

What I'm seeing here, is that some people take these scenarios, which in my mind are the former of the two cases posed above, and go "well, you can't prove it, therefore it absolutely, positively cannot be true in any way, shape or form", then treat it as if the second case is what actually applies.

And that, imo, is the root of the problem.