Print

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

[Esna Pitoojee]

It is also canon by the old Drone Regions arcs that CONCORD can shut down stargates if they judge the territory within to be to dangerous.

The concept I've been operating on for a long time is that CONCORD allows capsuleers free-er reign in nullsec because so long as capsuleers are in a given region they are suppressing the pirate factions from freely operating in that area. This is the point the old chronicle 'Winds of Change' was trying to make.

Capsuleers may be wild guns, but we still operating within CONCORD's framework: No matter how much we wish not to see it, the leash is there.
The pirate factions, by contrast, are not. They can clone, operate their own capsuleers, build what they want where they want, and plan military operations that threaten the existence of CONCORD and its signatories. If we squat on those systems, even if are a violent, unpredictable lot, we are doing CONCORD a massive favor by hampering the pirates' ability to operate freely.

The second we take the step beyond, though? You'd better believe CONCORD yanks the leash.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

I'm with Merdaneth, it's like the bible, take the bits that make sense to you. You can't claim to know everything. I mean, do you guys know what the president does on his lunch break?

Interesting choice of metaphor. The problem with it is that there are something like 40,000 denominations of Christianity and many of them disagree (violently) about which bits of the bible make sense to them and what to do when observable phenomenon disagree with the bible. If we're trying to reach a consensus then agreeing to disagree is a poor solution.

It makes ABSOLUTELY no sense to me that the so-called Nullsec Empires would submit to Concord for ANYTHING by choice. It especially makes no sense to me that the one thing they would agree to be bound by Concord over is sovereignty. Sovereignty and the ability to fly ships.

That's like saying "We're completely independent - except for the ability to project force and hold our own land."

I think Esna and Morwen are right. Capsuleers enjoy the freedoms they have because it suits Concord to grant them. We'll have them so long as the things we hold at bay are a worse threat than we are.

[Morwen Lagann]

Exactly.

Whether we like to admit it or not - none of us is capable of portraying a true loyalist to a faction in EVE (Edit: within the confines of the game mechanics, that is - I'm not trying to make an assessment of individual roleplayers' abilities as roleplayers). If we were, we'd be NPCs or event actors. The very nature of a human player's primary interest in getting the most out of their monthly subscription costs is built into the lore of the player capsuleer in that way: we are fickle creatures who can shift our loyalties at a moment's notice. We are not trustworthy and cannot be depended upon in the long run.

You can say you are loyal to a given faction, and do things that ostensibly support them, but you will never truly be a part of that faction by game mechanics - militias are the closest, but still quite a stretch - because the game itself recognizes that players will do whatever they want to do in the end.

[Veiki]

I think the real issue with CONCORD is that it is essentially the in-game manifestation of CCP rules and the justification or authority responsible for the majority of game mechanics. There's always going to be Fourth Wall issues because of that due to the discrepancies between fundamental mechanics and the lore written about them. They become difficult to reconcile because with CONCORD more than any other organization, their lore is intertwined the most with the meta of the game itself.

If CONCORD worked exactly as it should then honestly Eve would likely not be fun to play. Because yes, I'd love to pay a subscription fee, have CRC act like the NSA and red flag my character saying, "I support Guristas" in some channel and then end up with a DED assault team performing a dynamic entry into my CQ and saying I'm temp-banned for six months while my character is in Space Jail.

[Morwen Lagann]

Except they wouldn't, because you're an unbound capsuleer (aka a player) and are probably going to declare your loyalty to the Republic the week after that.

And then the Serpentis. Then the Amarr. Then... you get the picture.

[Gwen Ikiryo]

I'll reiterate the fact that I think trying to take every game mechanic as completely IC is nuts and makes the setting really boring and internally contradictory. CONCORD doesn't ban every criminal capsuleer because banning probably doesn't exist in the world, just in the metaspace that players occupy.

In every game, concessions have to made in the setting to mechanics to make it work. Logically, since Capsuleers can defect to pirate factions and actively start murdering CONCORD fleets, them having the power to instantly shut anyone down anywhere they want makes absolutely no sense. But banning has to exist for the game to function on a meta level, so the solution is just to accept that the fourth wall is breached a little bit there and not think about it. It is not, I don't think, to create some sort of mythos about CONCORD being an all powerful organization, when anything deliberately written as lore suggests that is not so.

Likewise for space fees. Everything in the actual written PF points to the whole "capsuleers slowly gaining the upper hand" theme, so it makes no sense thematically for them to be nothing but stewards to CONCORD.

Themes>Mechanics, in my opinion.

[Anskek]

+1 to Gwen. TBH this thread is damn well near YDIW :/ kinda sad

[Veiki]

Except they wouldn't, because you're an unbound capsuleer (aka a player) and are probably going to declare your loyalty to the Republic the week after that.

And then the Serpentis. Then the Amarr. Then... you get the picture.

I believe the prevalent thinking among the Inner Sanctum of the Assembly is: You know what, we've got 99 problems these days but what freelance capsuleers say they are loyal to isn't one.

Sure, I think CONCORD does have a degree of soft control over capsuleer technology otherwise there would be a lot of dead planets in low sec due to Titan pilots doomsdaying them for the lulz. The reasons CONCORD does not deal with every single issue or potential legal violation a roleplayer causes is because in the grand scheme of things freelance capsuleers are essentially self-contained among themselves which means more resources to devote to real potential existential threats like Sleepers, Nation incursions, and pirate/criminal cartels in general.

[Lyn Farel]

I'll reiterate the fact that I think trying to take every game mechanic as completely IC is nuts and makes the setting really boring and internally contradictory. CONCORD doesn't ban every criminal capsuleer because banning probably doesn't exist in the world, just in the metaspace that players occupy.

In every game, concessions have to made in the setting to mechanics to make it work. Logically, since Capsuleers can defect to pirate factions and actively start murdering CONCORD fleets, them having the power to instantly shut anyone down anywhere they want makes absolutely no sense. But banning has to exist for the game to function on a meta level, so the solution is just to accept that the fourth wall is breached a little bit there and not think about it. It is not, I don't think, to create some sort of mythos about CONCORD being an all powerful organization, when anything deliberately written as lore suggests that is not so.

Likewise for space fees. Everything in the actual written PF points to the whole "capsuleers slowly gaining the upper hand" theme, so it makes no sense thematically for them to be nothing but stewards to CONCORD.

Themes>Mechanics, in my opinion.

Themes > Mechanics, that's definitely my line of thought and has always been.

The issue with me though is that as the player behind a character, I am completely unable and clueless as to how properly play a role in an universe that doesn't make sense (unless said universe has a comedic premise that nothing makes sense ofc, which is not the the case for Eve, a serious AND Scifi setting). I have to make sense OOCly of something before deciding how my character is going to react to that, even for a character that will be clueless to something. There is of course the case of story hooks and things left unexplained in the aim of making you, as a spectator, wonder what's really going on. It kind of works for Sansha incursions and Sansha Nation as a whole, though i'm rather skeptic as if that's truly intended by CCP and just not another iteration of the stupid unchanging proxy war.

It ofc doesn't work for things like CONCORD letting capsuleers shoot their own NPC battleships and silly things like that. That's why you can perfectly say that your character will shrug it off as a proof of CONCORD stupidity, but 1) that's removing the very ability to be a CONCORD supporter, because supporting morons is stupid, 2) it's not very satisfactory, it makes the universe more stupid than it should. It makes the setting absurd, and as much as it can make Camus proud of it, well...

But all in all, both schools of thoughts are completely nuts. Either you take that concord is all powerful and you have issues, either you take that concord is not all powerful and you get even more issues. I'm ready to accept both premises as valid, but only if they make sense, which they do not. I'm also ready to ignore what doesn't make sense as long as we find a good explanation short circuiting the whole issue, like we often do for casualties of PVE missions (we ignore it, but we say instead evasively that it's probably just patrol duty, few skirmishes and occasional lone battleships or whatnot, so that's an alternative explanation). Just outright ignoring something may work for people, but for me, it doesn't. It just makes me want to quit altogether. I can't accept lore inconsistencies in my RP.

Mechanics can really ruins a Theme if they really want it. If your theme is cloning, and multiple cloning for instance, then the treatment you will bring to that Theme completely depends on what mechanics are involved in said cloning, and what is possible and what is not. What law there is around it, and what law there isn't.

+1 to Gwen. TBH this thread is damn well near YDIW :/ kinda sad

I don't really see the issue with YDIW as long as it's done constructively, especially if both parties are ready to understand and change their mind on the matter, which is clearly not the case here. It is always the individualistic  "I do what I want", and it's sad - yes that's a RL YDIW but who cares ? What's the point to have communities, RP forums and the likes if nobody is ready to talk to each other over such things ? Better for everyone to go play in their corner if that's what they really want. That's what depresses me the most in this community. It's very endemic to western RL mentalities anyway, so can't blame people for thinking that way. 

I tried to make a very thread about those issues but apparently we are more ready to accuse each other of not complying to one's own vision on this thread rather than fixing the issues. I was kind of glad because we - well at least me in my mind, I can't speak for everyone - made important steps to solve a few very unnerving things.

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

Perhaps the pilots that shoot CONCORD for the pirates are getting some technical & clone support in return for it?

Also; consider the missions that are for high-sec groups that involve killing spies that are escaping with information that would compromise them with CONCORD.

[Ché Biko]

I am increasingly unsure what "lore" being tossed around in this thread is canon and what is player lore.
I mean, I can see civilian ships in space. I can even shoot them. So there's lore contradicting that by saying I can't see/shoot them?

Therefor, if someone could point me to official stuff that mentions CONCORD has the ability/jurisdiction to deactivate someones neocom and capsule, I'd be grateful.

[Esna Pitoojee]

I am increasingly unsure what "lore" being tossed around in this thread is canon and what is player lore.
I mean, I can see civilian ships in space. I can even shoot them. So there's lore contradicting that by saying I can't see/shoot them?

Therefor, if someone could point me to official stuff that mentions CONCORD has the ability/jurisdiction to deactivate someones neocom and capsule, I'd be grateful.

A lot of it is sourced from a Q&A conversation with CCP Falcon, where he responded to questions regarding how capsuleers and NPC groups react.

Key points were:
- CONCORD can shut off freelance capsuleers' (i.e., us) capsules if needed.
- Anything that runs through your Neocom can be potentially viewed and tinkered with by CONCORD.
- CONCORD maintains agents whose job is purely to look at capsuleers and make sure aren't wandering to far.
- True pirate-loyalist capsuleers (meaning, event actors) and empire navy capsuleers are not subject to these restrictions.
- A ton (though not all) of NPC infrastructure is hidden from us, including stargates, mining havens, and facilities such as fleet staging areas and shipyards. Sometimes these sites are revealed to us by choice (i.e., in missions so we can help) and sometimes when activity at them makes them noticeable to our sensors (i.e., anomalies  and combat sigs). Most of it stays unnoticed.
- Asked if NPC groups might eventually open their hidden stargates/stations to us, "no, because capsuleers have such a reputation for being violent and unstable, they want a fallback that we can't mess up."
- Nullsec alliances do pay CONCORD fees.
- The production and research slots we use are separate facilities from the lines used by the NPC groups (not sure how this works with the recent industry changes, should ask him).

[Gwen Ikiryo]

In my opinion, unless something is written down, it's not canon - Just the personal interpretation of the developer in question. For something to get in a chronicle or on a evewiki page, it presumably has to go through a few checks with the rest of the staff involved with the setting. Obviously this doesn't apply to an undocumented question and answer section, where the speaker can basically say whatever comes to mind or makes sense to them.

I'll repeat the anedcote I mentioned with Falcon telling me that all females had to have huge boobs and be short because "limited body templates" were on offer by the cloning companies, an idea that grossly contradicts anything written about the subject in the past, and also the fact that a developer at similar one once stated that he didn't see any reason why ships couldn't be run entirely by robots with no crew, which ruins the entire feel of the setting.

Even in cases where it does make it to the wiki it's sometimes not clear cut - See the debacle about soft cloning that took place a while ago, where writers who held different opinions about it were in direct competition.

Being a writer at CCP does not make your word law in regards to the setting unless you are actually, well, writing. With as much respect to him as possible, all of those ideas Falcon presented there sound like tacky low effort bunk focused on justifying things that simply don't need to be justified, and there's probably a good reason there's nothing written of them in the actual fiction. I'm not going to change my perception of the entire setting based on something a dude vaguely involved in it said anecdotally sometime that I can't even look at.

[Lyn Farel]

In my opinion, unless something is written down, it's not canon - Just the personal interpretation of the developer in question. For something to get in a chronicle or on a evewiki page, it presumably has to go through a few checks with the rest of the staff involved with the setting. Obviously this doesn't apply to an undocumented question and answer section, where the speaker can basically say whatever comes to mind or makes sense to them.

I'll repeat the anedcote I mentioned with Falcon telling me that all females had to have huge boobs and be short because "limited body templates" were on offer by the cloning companies, an idea that grossly contradicts anything written about the subject in the past, and also the fact that a developer at similar one once stated that he didn't see any reason why ships couldn't be run entirely by robots with no crew, which ruins the entire feel of the setting.

Even in cases where it does make it to the wiki it's sometimes not clear cut - See the debacle about soft cloning that took place a while ago, where writers who held different opinions about it were in direct competition.

Being a writer at CCP does not make your word law in regards to the setting unless you are actually, well, writing. With as much respect to him as possible, all of those ideas Falcon presented there sound like tacky low effort bunk focused on justifying things that simply don't need to be justified, and there's probably a good reason there's nothing written of them in the actual fiction. I'm not going to change my perception of the entire setting based on something a dude vaguely involved in it said anecdotally sometime that I can't even look at.

You are right, I never took Falcon's word or any other dev remark as Canon, especially since half of them were completely silly. It would maybe take Abraxas himself to state something for me to consider it since well... Isn't he the Godfather of all the Eve lore ?

The problem though with things that do not need to be justified is... well, how do you deal with it ? I am not sure to understand. If someone asks you an IC question about something directly involved in a plot hole,  how do you answer ? How do you react ?

I am increasingly unsure what "lore" being tossed around in this thread is canon and what is player lore.
I mean, I can see civilian ships in space. I can even shoot them. So there's lore contradicting that by saying I can't see/shoot them?

Therefor, if someone could point me to official stuff that mentions CONCORD has the ability/jurisdiction to deactivate someones neocom and capsule, I'd be grateful.

A lot of it is sourced from a Q&A conversation with CCP Falcon, where he responded to questions regarding how capsuleers and NPC groups react.

Key points were:
- CONCORD can shut off freelance capsuleers' (i.e., us) capsules if needed.
- Anything that runs through your Neocom can be potentially viewed and tinkered with by CONCORD.
- CONCORD maintains agents whose job is purely to look at capsuleers and make sure aren't wandering to far.
- True pirate-loyalist capsuleers (meaning, event actors) and empire navy capsuleers are not subject to these restrictions.
- A ton (though not all) of NPC infrastructure is hidden from us, including stargates, mining havens, and facilities such as fleet staging areas and shipyards. Sometimes these sites are revealed to us by choice (i.e., in missions so we can help) and sometimes when activity at them makes them noticeable to our sensors (i.e., anomalies  and combat sigs). Most of it stays unnoticed.
- Asked if NPC groups might eventually open their hidden stargates/stations to us, "no, because capsuleers have such a reputation for being violent and unstable, they want a fallback that we can't mess up."
- Nullsec alliances do pay CONCORD fees.
- The production and research slots we use are separate facilities from the lines used by the NPC groups (not sure how this works with the recent industry changes, should ask him).

Ok, so that goes in the direction that I thought. CONCORD when it comes to freelance capsuleers (us) regulates them so that they keep with each other in their own bubbles, and can occasionally be let loose on baseliners violating things in the NPC world (like, NPC missions that are trespassing in empire territory, doing various wrongs...). If capsuleers get too hostile and violent, sec status is here to make sure that it limits their destructive power into safe heavens that are industrious areas where other capsuleers create economic value so that it doesn't turn too counterproductive : it actually is productive since they will blow up stuff out of those industrious areas, making said industrious areas even more dynamic and active to replace lost value and make the economy run.

Still a lot of inconsistencies on why shooting CONCORD BS is suddenly ok in nullsec, or whatever, but well.

[Gwen Ikiryo]

The problem though with things that do not need to be justified is... well, how do you deal with it ? I am not sure to understand. If someone asks you an IC question about something directly involved in a plot hole,  how do you answer ? How do you react ?

For me, I just disengage from it. The only time I've ever seen people bring up mechanic justifications in roleplay is to spoil peoples fun. For instance, I saw two people in the Summit roleplaying together once, with one of them saying he was going after the others family who was in a interbus transport and the other guy saying he was gonna stop him. Then some third party basically said, "You're both dumb! You can't attack interbus transports, they're invisible because CONCORD!", which sort of killed the mood.

It reminds me of when people used to get mad at people doing roleplay events in cities in WoW who had been acting as the guards, saying, "You can't be the town guard! Only NPCs can be guards, that's how the game works!" except ICly. I don't see why EVE should be any inherently different. It's arbitrary creative bankruptcy that only serves to foster a dull and lifelessly static environment where people are afraid to explore any ideas at all that aren't directly involved with the raw mechanics of the game.

I assume there are exceptions to this, though, where the person might just have a different understanding of the setting that bumps into yours slightly during roleplay. In which case, I wouldn't see the harm in just sending them a quick OOC side note about it to avoid going in-depth about the issue.