Ok, so trying to summarize and synthesize a bit... Keep in mind I am only trying to find logical and reasonable explanations that could make sense out of something that doesn't. There isn't necessarily only ONE explanation. The idea could be to actually offer several of them to players, because it's very frustrating when someone comes ICly with "do you know how MANY baseliners die in a day of missions in empire ?" and you have nothing to answer except taking it OOCly. Even when idealistically it is better to often just ignore it and handwave it ICly, I know it still bothers me a lot OOCly because I just hate playing in an universe that doesn't make sense with plot holes big enough to swallow the entirety of Karsoth vices. It can also create issues in the reasoning of our own characters since they can base their very opinions on those important points of the lore.
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So for the scale of destruction in pve missions, recalling what we already found in various older discussions on that particular issue (feel free to add other ways to deal with it if I forget something), there was a group of players that chose the adaptation of the setting and actions, meaning that they actually went evasive each time that was brought up, telling that yes, the amount of death must still be staggering, but no, they do not kill hundred of battleships in a single hour. The idea was to instead try to circumvent it by just telling it is duty that sometimes involves a little combat and action, leading at times to a battleship engagement, or just more genuine skirmishes. Another group was in favour of completely ignoring it. In any case, it is clearly part of the classical lore inconsistencies found in pve in most MMOs. You have to either ignore it or transform it to make it fit the lore itself.
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For FW, Veik idea seems to tend to the empires using capsuleers as a way of generating money, profit and resources while using them for political/populist agendas. It is obvious that empires make colossal amounts of money through their LP stores and also make capsuleers basically fight their wars for them (but not entirely at all considering they still use conventional navy as well as ground troops besides capsuleers and dusters). This at least, explains what they have to gain out of it. The remaining issue, though, could be that they have no goal. My main gripe is that while at times Caldari Prime for example could have been at stake, there was outside of that very little incentive or goal to actually wage a war. Even if profit and purely pragmatic agendas push them to continue in that direction with that joke of proxy war, my main gripe is how the hell do they explain it to their citizens ? It is easy enough to find propaganda ideals, reasons, casus belli and so on. However they do not really tell what is the goal. Crush the enemy ? Nope, it's a limited proxy war. Bore the enemy to no end ? The issue is that as much as it is obvious OOCly, ICly it also should be for most citizens. What the hell are we fighting for ? Because the enemy are the devil ? Then why that stupid proxy war ? Makes little sense. Half of the cluster should be able to see through and double guess their empire agendas.
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Which brings us to CONCORD. CONCORD could also be doing the exact same thing actually : using capsuleers to fuel their organization and bring and uphold peace in New Eden while developing infrastructure and so on. Seen that way, it is possible to find justifications for their core policies to make them fit with their actual purpose and ideals, here, again, in a grimdark and pragmatic way. Issues arise when gameplay conflicts directly with logic though, like why CONCORD is ready to shut down someone if his plex is not payed, but unable to do so when they support a pirate entity, or when they just start to kill hundred of CONCORD stuff in nullsec, which costs them more than a lot of plex (cf Gwen post in mutliple cloning thread) ? All in all, what can be explained, like for FW, with CONCORD, is why they stand for and what is the idea and goal behind. What causes trouble, even more than for FW, is the way they do it, which makes zero sense in a lot of cases.
There is also the point of CONCORD bribery and widespread corruption whereas it is said to be incorruptible. Corps and alliance pay fees to go to war so that they can shoot each other in empire space. Some players favor to explain that by the fact that it is bribing CONCORD so that CONCORD closes their eyes. That sounds a bit silly to me personally since everyone does it to a scale where it's not corruption anymore... Here it looks more like a mechanism than anything else. It would make sense to me that considering the universe we play in, CONCORD actually allows wars to be fought over capsuleers issues where it mostly involves capsuleers and them (and their crews) only so that they can solve those issues, while CONCORD is again making profit from it (the war dec fees and the general destruction that stimulates the economy).
On CONCORD powers, the issue stems from the fact that CONCORD is almost in godmode for gameplay purposes in high sec, but like anyone in other case scenarios, like in pve nullsec. How can that be explained ? Do they have full control over capsules to begin with (where to the contrary empires probably keep full control on nation capsules rather than CONCORD) ? If so, why do they not shut down anyone that goes full pirate ? Maybe because they actually just threaten other capsuleers and nothing else ? Maybe the whole system is just made to keep the whole freelance capsuleer milieu at least a bit sane and healthy to avoid a full no mans land, especially in civilized space as well as to allow a bit of industry and development to occur to accompany the general mayhem found outside ? You did something bad ? Then work a bit more for us than usual and get your sec status and your toys back !
All in all in participates to actually make capsuleers the puppets of the empires and CONCORD that fuel their economy and take all the risks for them.
So, if they have full control over capsules (don't pay your plex ? shut down !), then why bothering to scram/web people to death with advanced weapons of doom ? They could just press the button and... I am not sure that they actually have control over capsules like that. Why would they need it anyway ? They are already tweaked not to show anything else than capsuleer world to capsuleers. But why are they so powerful technically in empire space and not in nullsec, while they still seem to control territorial control units and nullsec infrastructure development ? That in itself is a good question and probably can be explained by a technical idea, but most of the ones I have hear were rather stretched tbh... Open to suggestions or disagreement for that one.
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Incursions ? I have no clue right now how to explain Kuvakei strategy. In any case, it makes capsuleers fat and happy and CONCORD as an investment to run the economy even more I guess ? The good thing is that it isn't necessarily an inconsistency in itself, or at least not seem like it, since Kuvakei's grand plan remains a mystery for everyone, either OOCly or ICly. It leads to a lot of speculation, but it is not harmful to logic in itself as long as it is not explained... Even if it seems silly. Maybe it's actually fucking brilliant, who knows...
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Capsuleers now. We could have dealt with a possible explanation as to why the empires keep training them eagerly, either for independent ones or nation ones, all endorsed by CONCORD. But can we leave our CQs' ? Lore seems to suggest so. Can we soft clone ? Lore is evasive and contradictory. Here we seem to have a group of people that endorse them as a caution against true death outside of capsule to allow them to do dangerous things with their characters. They also support the idea that since a hardscan is possible, then any kind of brainscan and infomorph storage is possible (as for Zainou's CEO). However this doesn't tackle the fact that in PF now, the only scans that exist are lethal (even Zainou killed himself for that). We also have people that disagree with it for the simple reason that it opens a whole can of worms and difficulties, like multiple cloning (that is suggested in PF through jump clones but could also be possible in implanting the hardscan transmission into not a single one body, but multiple bodies at once).
The fact is that we do not have enough info on that to say that one of the other are right or wrong. The sent hardscan could also contain a series of imprinted unique IDs that prevent any cheating for example, but that's only one counter explanation among many. Space magic (aka advanced tech) can be used to explain anything the way we want, and so the way CCP wants it.
Would strongly advice to continue harassing CCP to get a clear answer on that important matter.
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Adding a new potential inconsistency to the bullet points :
- Why CONCORD doesn't shut down pirate loyalists or clone trespassers and the likes ? Because they actually are not part of a pirate organization but freelances like anyone else and that they actually just make a lot of noise about supporting them, but actually are irrelevant and still fit to the greater CONCORD scheme ?
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Topic: What is wrong with the lore : inconsistencies, plot holes, how to deal with them (Read 7856 times)