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[Mathra Hiede]

So, I held off posting this a bit in the hopes that the hydrostatic podcast would hold some revelations that would change my opinion. So far, no luck - so here goes.

Issue #1: The cascading negation of storylines.

Simply put, killing Jamyl negates a lot of other ongoing storylines. The clone/not-a-clone debate appears to be at an end for one, but more importantly 4/5 of the heirs are going to have to die. That's a lot of characters to purge at once, and a lot of storylines abruptly dead-ended. Catiz' shenanigans with Khanid? Articio's turnaround? Ardishapur's excellent chessmaster handling? Come tournament completion, 80% of those excellent storylines are going to have to end.

And... for what? Shock value? Getting rid of a character some people didn't like, because they'd been written badly in some cases? That's a lot of collateral damage for what could have been done with a much smaller impact. Worse yet, it was abundantly clear from news stories and chronicles both that Jamyl was not an unsalvageable character - she just needed to be written reasonably well enough.

Understand, this isn't purely an Amarr issue either. It was an issue when CCP dropped a Sansha-themed hammer on Heth's head instead of having the State catch him, and it was an issue when Midular was abruptly killed and seemingly brought an end to the Minmatar cooperate-or-fight divide.


Overuse of 'shock' and 'epic' tropes.

It's been said elsewhere, but I think it bears repeating: If you pound a button long enough, that button becomes broken. CCP's been pounding the 'epic' button for several years now, and it's pretty much shattered into a thousand pieces by now. I can't go 'OMG, the empress is dead' when how I really feel is 'Well, the empress is dead. Again. And the last emperor too. And the guy before him. And a good half-dozen other heads of state in recent times.'

Simply put, SHOCKING BIG DRAMATIC DEVELOPMENTS have become the norm... at which point I can no longer enjoy the shock of them.

You know what would have been truly impressive, but lacked the problematic storyline issues in the first point? Have the Drifters blow up the station. We've been conditioned to accept stations as immovable, indestructable monoliths of EVE topography. CCP's wanting to shake that up with Citadels, so why not have them start off by nuking that station to begin with?


Use of pre-programmed AI as an excuse

This is more of a minor quibble compared to the other stuff, CCP have repeatedly claimed that they "did not control the Drifters" at the event, that they were "entirely run by AI" - and that as a result, Jamyl's death shouldn't be considered "dev intervention". I really don't think that counts as an excuse - if you code it so that they blap and warp off immediately on firing, so you only have to /spawn a huge number of them and sit back, you are still directing the situation.

For that matter, I will be frankly shocked if we ever see the point where Drifters display this same behavior against player-owned titans.

All of this. All of it.

[Morwen Lagann]

You are entirely misunderstanding the situation of how the AI behaved, Esna.

The bit of AI in testing was not "mass spawn and group doomsday", it was "if there's a particularly valuable/threatening target on grid, override the need to wait for the overshield to go down before firing the doomsday, and fire it immediately at that target". If I understood CCP Affinity correctly last night during the lore panel, the only hand that CCP Paradox had in the affair was spawning the Drifters in the first place. He may have also told them to go to the station, but beyond that he shouldn't have needed to do anything. The reason there was a mass doomsday was not because the Drifters were told to "all shoot this one target" by some overseeing AI, but because each individual Drifter made the same decision when looking at the grid as to what was the priority target. There is a BIG difference between the two.

Putting a titan on grid was the only way to ensure that Jamyl would be at the top of that priority list - otherwise one or more of her escorting Aeons would have bitten the dust instead.

As to why the Drifters podded her... I'd be surprised if that wasn't part of a new behavior loop too.

[Silas Vitalia]

1) Glad she's dead, let's not overlook how fantastic that is
2) Killing the empress should probably deserve more of a long battle with high stakes and reinforcements and desperate capsuleers trying to save or harm her.  A 'culmination' of increasingly bleak events. 


Having 100 drifters or whatever blast her instantly maybe could have been the end of the fight as a 'lose' result, not the entire fight if that makes sense? Like oh crap we've been fighting waves of drifters for an hour and we failed to save her escort supercarriers, omg wtf they bbqd the titan! I'd want amarr actor supers trying to suicide in front of the doomsdays shouting all sorts of religious martyrdom.   Like it or not remember how much chatter and the duration of the Caldari Titan fight? 

But I think every event in EVE should have an A/B branching plot depending on what people do

Edit:  Mucho kudos to new AI though, if they actually pull out the stops and have these things start engaging player capital ships shit just got real.

[Lyn Farel]

Esna, I really agree with your view and have been putting the emphasis on how boring the surplus of epicness is starting to turn into a bioware "you press a button and it's awesome!".

On Jamyl though, contrary to Midular, it's like Heth to me basically. The character is not ininteresting, but the character is defined by the changes he brought up to the faction. Nobody cried when Heth was sent to the trashbin (I agree with the question as to, why did it have to be Sansha though!). Everyone wanted to get rid of "Hethler". Hethler was bad because he totally redefined what the State was about. It murdered the classic Caldari lore.

I see absolutely no difference with Jamyl myself. The character is ok (though the way she has been portrayed is really different to what she was before her death). The problem is that Jamyl is totally defined by what she is : zombie empress (ok, we got rid of it), the savior of the Empire (that didn't really need to be saved in the first place), the divine intervention, the implication into sleeper tech, etc. She is a litteral walking Deus Ex Machina... Like Heth was a walking Hithler.




Also, the problem with the AI here is that maybe they intended for it to remain on field after or whatever, but it obviously warped out right after. Not sure why.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Honestly, you can't hide behind a 'we didn't do it, they acted on their programming' if you did the programming. Just not possible.

[Alain Colcer]

So, I held off posting this a bit in the hopes that the hydrostatic podcast would hold some revelations that would change my opinion. So far, no luck - so here goes.

Issue #1: The cascading negation of storylines.

Simply put, killing Jamyl negates a lot of other ongoing storylines. The clone/not-a-clone debate appears to be at an end for one, but more importantly 4/5 of the heirs are going to have to die. That's a lot of characters to purge at once, and a lot of storylines abruptly dead-ended. Catiz' shenanigans with Khanid? Articio's turnaround? Ardishapur's excellent chessmaster handling? Come tournament completion, 80% of those excellent storylines are going to have to end.

And... for what? Shock value? Getting rid of a character some people didn't like, because they'd been written badly in some cases? That's a lot of collateral damage for what could have been done with a much smaller impact. Worse yet, it was abundantly clear from news stories and chronicles both that Jamyl was not an unsalvageable character - she just needed to be written reasonably well enough.

Understand, this isn't purely an Amarr issue either. It was an issue when CCP dropped a Sansha-themed hammer on Heth's head instead of having the State catch him, and it was an issue when Midular was abruptly killed and seemingly brought an end to the Minmatar cooperate-or-fight divide.


Overuse of 'shock' and 'epic' tropes.

It's been said elsewhere, but I think it bears repeating: If you pound a button long enough, that button becomes broken. CCP's been pounding the 'epic' button for several years now, and it's pretty much shattered into a thousand pieces by now. I can't go 'OMG, the empress is dead' when how I really feel is 'Well, the empress is dead. Again. And the last emperor too. And the guy before him. And a good half-dozen other heads of state in recent times.'

Simply put, SHOCKING BIG DRAMATIC DEVELOPMENTS have become the norm... at which point I can no longer enjoy the shock of them.

You know what would have been truly impressive, but lacked the problematic storyline issues in the first point? Have the Drifters blow up the station. We've been conditioned to accept stations as immovable, indestructable monoliths of EVE topography. CCP's wanting to shake that up with Citadels, so why not have them start off by nuking that station to begin with?


Use of pre-programmed AI as an excuse

This is more of a minor quibble compared to the other stuff, CCP have repeatedly claimed that they "did not control the Drifters" at the event, that they were "entirely run by AI" - and that as a result, Jamyl's death shouldn't be considered "dev intervention". I really don't think that counts as an excuse - if you code it so that they blap and warp off immediately on firing, so you only have to /spawn a huge number of them and sit back, you are still directing the situation.

For that matter, I will be frankly shocked if we ever see the point where Drifters display this same behavior against player-owned titans.

Have to agree, however it bears the question

How to make drastic changes, or cleanup without big epic tropes?

How can you change the status quo of the Amarr Empire without killing some of the heads?? or change the Political landscape in the Federation without introducing an epic turnaround?.

I understand the button has been smashed too much lately, but i have to say, that in order to return to some form of slow-pace changes, you need to put some brakes or make u-turns first....and i think CCP has given falcon some liberty to do just that.

If he is able to adjust everything so it becomes a drip-irrigated field...with lore making small steps and with multiple small-ish storylines...then i'm all for it.

[Silas Vitalia]

How to make drastic changes, or cleanup without big epic tropes?

I think you can do so quite well by having actual structured events and longer campaigns that -eventually- lead to different scenarios, determined by the players.

The difference is the way they do it now, you have a few tiny events with relatively predetermined outcomes, and you are on a plot freight train towards 'x' 'epic' event.  Epic event shows up regardless of what players are doing and there are no stakes, no one cares because no one has spent time supporting alternative outcomes or stakes. 

Whether 50 people showed up or 5000 people showed up Jamyl was going to be instagibbed by those drifters. 

Why the hell should anyone show up or care about that instead of just watching a news report the next day?


As far as lore and IC plots go, CCP is treating the game and the playerbase more like a plot dissemination device rather than an interactive fiction/choose your fate experience. 

It's the fundamental difference in having a good DM and having a guided adventure experience, or a quicktime event cutscene in most games today. 

This isn't a stab at the writers or the people doing these events, they have their jobs to do and they do what they are paid to do, I question the underlying approach to the design of the interactive experience is all.

[Silas Vitalia]

Remember how when the Shadows (Drifters) showed up in Babylon 5 they were strategically attacking one race in order to destabilize the empires and plunge everyone into war so they could pick off what would be left?

I would have loved some sort of give and take with a few NPC minor factions thinking they are pulling the strings of the Drifters and eventually it being the other way around.

Maybe player events where capsuleers somehow after 'winning' an event get to request of the drifters to secretly destroy from among several NPC targets. (An amarr border station? A federation Outpost? A republic mining colony?)

Use the drifters to systematically blow up border outposts on the Republic border, use the drifters to explode the Federation's Tripwire system.  Sow chaos, get the Empires at each other's throats, leave a breadcrumb of clues and missions for the capsuleers to try and stop or support what is happening.  Have the drifters accepting and rewarding capsuleer supporters with equipment and tech.  Make it a Mass Effect Reaper situation, if we are going to go the Drifter route?

I guess maybe I had imagined in my head more of an 'ultimate sacrifice Jamyl martyr' sort of space battle to stop the drifters instead of lol alpha'd?

No terran superweapon? Would have been neat if she used it and blew up 100 drifters only to have 100 more come in while she was recharging 

[Esna Pitoojee]

You are entirely misunderstanding the situation of how the AI behaved, Esna.

The bit of AI in testing was not "mass spawn and group doomsday", it was "if there's a particularly valuable/threatening target on grid, override the need to wait for the overshield to go down before firing the doomsday, and fire it immediately at that target". If I understood CCP Affinity correctly last night during the lore panel, the only hand that CCP Paradox had in the affair was spawning the Drifters in the first place. He may have also told them to go to the station, but beyond that he shouldn't have needed to do anything. The reason there was a mass doomsday was not because the Drifters were told to "all shoot this one target" by some overseeing AI, but because each individual Drifter made the same decision when looking at the grid as to what was the priority target. There is a BIG difference between the two.

Putting a titan on grid was the only way to ensure that Jamyl would be at the top of that priority list - otherwise one or more of her escorting Aeons would have bitten the dust instead.

As to why the Drifters podded her... I'd be surprised if that wasn't part of a new behavior loop too.

I'm aware of how the AI works. I put two and two together pretty quickly after the event, between Jamyl and the guy who unexpectedly got his Thanatos blapped on a station undock a few days earlier.

However, I don't think that invalidates my point - if you have an AI which behaves in a very specific manner (target largest thing, blap it, kill pod, warp off) and then you set the conditions such that - given the ships on field, the number of Drifters you are spawning, etc - there is only one possible outcome to the encounter, you do not get to then claim that you had no part in the outcome of the event because it was "just the AI".

[Silas Vitalia]

Actually if they are going to go the 'elder race returning' trope I would have maybe liked a new Jove (drifters) vs Old Jove with New Eden races and factions as the puppets and caught in middle?  Player events eventually assigning loyalties or support for either Jove faction (or none), commence with cluster wide pew pew and border shuffling before one defeats the other and then who knows what.

Would have made for some very pretty jove v jove space events

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Epic event shows up regardless of what players are doing and there are no stakes, no one cares because no one has spent time supporting alternative outcomes or stakes.

And in this case some people weren't quite aware that there were no alternative outcomes, no stakes, not even minor deviations in how the same outcome would come to pass. So they prepared as if they had a stake in it, just to find out that they hadn't.

It has been pointed out to me that you shouldn't treat CCP like that. It's not like a GM and players who work together for a joint and mutually enjoyable story. CCP acts more like an opponent in a PvP situation and the playing field is not level (just as it shouldn't be when you do PvP in EVE). For that to be enjoyable you need to approach it with a different mindset. - If you want to enjoy it. There's always that choice.

[Silas Vitalia]

Epic event shows up regardless of what players are doing and there are no stakes, no one cares because no one has spent time supporting alternative outcomes or stakes.

And in this case some people weren't quite aware that there were no alternative outcomes, no stakes, not even minor deviations in how the same outcome would come to pass. So they prepared as if they had a stake in it, just to find out that they hadn't.

It has been pointed out to me that you shouldn't treat CCP like that. It's not like a GM and players who work together for a joint and mutually enjoyable story. CCP acts more like an opponent in a PvP situation and the playing field is not level (just as it shouldn't be when you do PvP in EVE). For that to be enjoyable you need to approach it with a different mindset. - If you want to enjoy it. There's always that choice.

The interesting/occasionally baffling thing for me is that EVE has some wonderful, wonderful sandbox selling points that could be leveraged into some extremely meaningful storytelling, steered by the players. Other games can't sell that.

There's a magical place that could live somewhere between the 00 sov stories and the railroad plotting of the lore where they combine the NPCs and the players in an amazing way. 

[Pieter Tuulinen]

Epic event shows up regardless of what players are doing and there are no stakes, no one cares because no one has spent time supporting alternative outcomes or stakes.

And in this case some people weren't quite aware that there were no alternative outcomes, no stakes, not even minor deviations in how the same outcome would come to pass. So they prepared as if they had a stake in it, just to find out that they hadn't.

It has been pointed out to me that you shouldn't treat CCP like that. It's not like a GM and players who work together for a joint and mutually enjoyable story. CCP acts more like an opponent in a PvP situation and the playing field is not level (just as it shouldn't be when you do PvP in EVE). For that to be enjoyable you need to approach it with a different mindset. - If you want to enjoy it. There's always that choice.

At least this time they didn't pretend that it WAS open to question. I'm still bitter about the Caldari Prime event, where they had clearly pre-determined the outcome, and I wonder how many of the people that worked so hard to turn up and stock the place with reships would have done it if they'd known it was a fait accompli?

[Silas Vitalia]

I imagine it's a combination of lack of staff and resources and management interest in the sorts of events some people might want to see.

I imagine the people doing the lore and events would love for things to be bigger, more involved, and more intricate.

[Louella Dougans]

my prediction is that DRIFTER INVASION OF THRONE WORLDS SUCCESSFUL

constellation changes to Drifter sovereignty, Everyone dies. Stations destroyed.

Because

EPIC