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[Nissui]

I am limited by my recent participation in the RP world.

You have me beat in that respect.

To use you (sorry) as a stand-in to counterpoint: it seems to me that the push from the devs has been for player-derived (in contrast to player-driven) lore since the Prophecy trailer. Origin, Alexylva, and her associates seem to fit the blueprint that CCP have been drawing. The alliance appearances in the Scope ticker, the player avatars posing in the holoreels, True Stories... the indication of a lore that may be moving away from the empires and toward capsuleer organizations. If so, it would take little effort on their part to make it part of New Eden history; simply let the players generate the story, then have ISD/M develop an adaptation.

The problem with this approach is that the empires form the backdrop for most new players, thus being a key concept in contextualizing what the character is and what the player is doing. A new wave of Alpha Clones can't be expected to absorb 13-odd years of alliance shenanigans into their RP backstory. Perhaps the upcoming changes to the NPE will address the past reliance on the SoE epic arc and COSMOS missions to flesh out the world, instead pointing new pilots to null and J-space. That's an interesting new direction.

...but look at Elmund's recent thread. Does Villore 'Prime', ostensible seat of the Legislative and Judicial branches of government for trillions, have a name, a history, or a capital? Much less individual districts within that capital, neighborhoods, businesses, and local personalities? What is there for the young Gallente FW pilot to know about their probable HQ other than 'replace your ships here'? They likely won't care, but then what reason would they have?

[Xepharious]

I don't disagree with you at all Nis (except that Origin/Alexylva would fit CCP's wants/needs as adaptable cannon; half our shtick is that we are pointedly outside the Empire control.)

But that is also my point. There are written pieces (player-derived) that CAN be adapted into canon. We saw this (speaking to your point I think) with the Goon wars as CCP tried to capture the mad rush of new players to support both sides and be part of something big.

And as to how CCP could get away from reliance on the 4 empires... why not have a mission chain lead them out into a Pirate faction or introduce Pirate FW as someone else mentioned? As far as getting new players into J-space, well we've found that killing them and sending a short mail on how we would be happy to teach them about WH space seems ironically to interest more folks than one would think. (We all just crazy I guess). But why not try to develop more rewards for finding Thera and other special wormholes?

Anyway... I'm actually very impressed and humbled by all of the written RP/PF that comes out this time of year and especially by how much my own corpmates have participated. I see that as a testament to the newer RPers out there. As an example, the attempted eviction of Origin a few weeks back has already spawned no lless than 3 separate published works and many IC bits.

[Ashley]

[...] it would be a real shame if CCP would keep even more people at arm's length from EVE lore.

For that problem to arise, there must first be lore.

This is not a problem for the Amarr, who have a clear-cut set of IC rules, organizations, personalities, and who have gotten well beyond the lion's share of live event actor and dev support. They also have long-standing player infrastructure and institutional milieux, which is great for players new and old, but does fuck all for anyone who isn't in Providence or Amarr FW. That's not to say that there aren't willing and able Amarr players in Forum RP, but that kind of interaction is not for everyone. How many active characters post regularly on IGS? Probably the same people who have been doing it when I joined in 2013.

When CCP forget that the Gallente have elections, or that the Minmatar exist, we take it upon ourselves to fill in the blanks without their help, but it is difficult to tell new players, "no this isn't really lore, we're just circlejerking to our own fanfiction."

I absolutely agree, CCP's obsession with one faction for quite extensive amount of time is not great. My main point was more about 10% of playerbase cares about the lore thing, I find that simply not true from my experience.

Given CCP's definition of moderating the IGS is "punish content creators, ignore habitual rule-breakers," I have zero faith in the idea that CCP should ever be involved beyond continuing to make news and events as they are currently doing.

For the most part CCP is keeping hands off approach when IGS is concerned. What content creator did they punish and how?

[Morwen Lagann]

I'm talking about the forum, not the channel.

But they both suffer for the same reasons: CCP does not enforce the rules that it says it will enforce, and in fact punishes (or threatens to punish) those who report violations of the rules for reporting those violations.

[Silas Vitalia]

From what I've seen catching up on the last year or two the Amarr are getting more storylines, but don't forget to take the long view....the eye of Sauron CCP Plot focus will often change towards another faction for just as long.   The Amarr had droughts on any number of 'big' plots that were simply dropped for years at a time for shinier stories.  I think the Caldari were the last faction to get a extended lore love with all of the Titan-ing / Heth toppling public events a few years back.   Matari/Fed getting short end of stick lately.

Also been my experience that for whatever reason the Amarr RPers often have more 'institutional' memory, that is a few long-running corps that keep a certain culture going and don't fold after a decade or so.  Just not as many RPers in the Fed/Republic focused groups.

Two quick points re: Ashley:

1) Regarding channels/IGS/events CCP modding, there are hardly enough pages on the interwebs to cover more than a decade of inconsistencies, favoritisms, locked threads, questionable bans, questionable non-bans, and herp derping from a stupidly high number of both RPers and a good number of CCP staff. Heroes and villains on both sides. There lay dragons in those caves, trust us.

2) Regarding how much of the playerbase are actualy doing RP stuffs on the reg, I think it was like 1% of subs?  Highly dedicated handful of people, as it's always been.  'Arm's Length' is perhaps not the term I would use, but sometimes events have to stay small and focused and off the big radar before mobs of people show up specifically to troll.  There's a continuum of events they should push, with Caldari Prime Titan bbq on the one end and dev actors hiring a small mining corp to build a capital ship or haul around some VIP's on the other end.   

Good convo though, nice to hear from all of you
 



 

[Veiki]

Basically you can troll, use racial discrimination, be sexist, gender stereotype, harass, and write hate speech on the IGS so long as it's just RP ayyyy.

You don't even have to be respectful to others at all times.

But then it's CCP and they've got a long history of arbitrary and non-equivalent application of their own rules.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

From what I've seen catching up on the last year or two the Amarr are getting more storylines, but don't forget to take the long view....the eye of Sauron CCP Plot focus will often change towards another faction for just as long.   The Amarr had droughts on any number of 'big' plots that were simply dropped for years at a time for shinier stories.  I think the Caldari were the last faction to get a extended lore love with all of the Titan-ing / Heth toppling public events a few years back. Matari/Fed getting short end of stick lately.

And don't let us forget: While it might be the point of the Federation that you have regular elections, the Empire is supposed to be ruled by one and the same Emperor for centuries. How did that turn out?

Yes, I know people who're rather pleased with what CCP had in store for the Amarr. Some seem more happy that CCP is doing anything at all, lorewise. I personally think that their writing is piecemeal work, mainly catering towards the changes in game-mechanics, largely inconsistent and forgetting of chunks of previous lore and all around not that great at all.

This certainly is a result of CCP putting little stock in consistency there, beginning with the people hired for the lore department. One saw that when CCP lay off Eterne. And while CCP Falcon has been putting some work into Lore/PF, it's no secret that he has strong feelings in which factions are the guys he likes and which he really dislikes. I personally think that's something showing in recent Lore/PF as well.

All that is on top of

CCP's definition of moderating the IGS is "punish content creators, ignore habitual rule-breakers"

What CCP would need is a dedicated Lore/PF team which they keep, develop and into which they put people with the skills to write good fiction, keeping a story consistent and for proper world-building. It's possible, there are traditional RPGs who've done it much, much better.

But for CCP there is no money in this, so I highly doubt that they will ever consider something like that. They'll rather continue the route that lead to taking down the EVElopedia and monetizing lore through publication of EVE Source. (It's kind'a saying 'I told you so.', I know, but when they published Source I predicted that they will take down the EVElopedia, rather then aligning it with that book - which imho has the prime goal of making money from those interested in the lore or just collecting EVE merchandise - as others predicted.)

No, I have zero faith in CCP there. Nor do I think that having Lore/PF in the hands of players. As Morwen says: I can't imagine without abuse of that power and responsibility happening.

[Xepharious]

But for CCP there is no money in this, so I highly doubt that they will ever consider something like that. They'll rather continue the route that lead to taking down the EVElopedia and monetizing lore through publication of EVE Source. (It's kind'a saying 'I told you so.', I know, but when they published Source I predicted that they will take down the EVElopedia, rather then aligning it with that book - which imho has the prime goal of making money from those interested in the lore or just collecting EVE merchandise - as others predicted.)

And thus we have the crux of it. The cynical part of me as well as the me who went into business has to then ask, what other model could they use? The Source will be purchased by some of us (or as gifts for some of us *crosses fingers*) but could CCP moke money off of a publication (I know they used to have one before my time)? Say, Subscription gains you access to an archive of CCP written and Player-written/CCP accepted Lore? In this way there is no additional fee but it's one more thing they can list as an advantage of Omega grade.

As I said, I went into business because it was the practical choice, but to me it seems that there has to be a way that both sides could benefit, maybe it just hasn't been tried yet.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Say, Subscription gains you access to an archive of CCP written and Player-written/CCP accepted Lore? In this way there is no additional fee but it's one more thing they can list as an advantage of Omega grade.

Certainly a better option. If I pay a subscription fee to play a game, I don't want to pay extra money to access the PF of that game.

But it's also always a question of interests. I don't want to condemn CCP for wanting to make money with their IP. The problem is that they - at least that's my impression - are so overwhelmingly interested in making money, that one has to wonder if they have any interest in presenting a good, well-tought-out background story for that game, or is the interest not merely to put up enough window dressing to keep the majority of the more lore-interested part of the player base hooked?

The interests of making money and producing quality aren't mutually exclusive in my opinion. But CCP simply doesn't care for quality that much, there, I think.

[Utari Onzo]

Just gonna chime in with the following:

The idea of an RP focused Council is a non-starter, along with a reboot of Mercury. CCP are pretty reluctant at this point to hand over the keys for lore development to anyone else, but are instead taking an approach that big player content becomes lore through Scope reports and ISD articles.

'Selling lore' is not a unique thing and not something I'm surprised about as other companies do it both in video game formats (DLC artbooks anyone?) and even Games Workshop. The latter example however is supported by masses of player owned/run wikis, and in due time I'm hopeful private wikis for Eve including Backstage's will grow.

In regards to the 'State of Eve' yeah, it's a cycle. I'm burned out of RP myself and just looking to try to enjoy the game again, but from my own personal experiences it does feel we're entering a bit of a famine period for interesting content that's open to large numbers of people. By that I mean arcs.

That said, social events are a pain to run and do require set up time, so the idea of faction on faction arc events is something I don't even want to think about. It makes sense that if those with the patience and capacity to do this are burned up, then we're not going to get them till someone else comes along with the bright ideas to do it.

I'm also going to stake my flag in the ground with a big fat no to empowering any players with extra gizmos or tools as there are, and likely always will be, RPers that will abuse said positions or play to 'win'. IGS is a shitshow of various types all playing to 'win' an argument to the point I've thrown my arms up in the air and just join in with the jabbing and pointless arguing for the sake of a tea break's entertainment, but with it seeming to spread into the ingame RP I'm out.

[Ayallah]

So about the same really for the past 3+ years.

Past decade, easily.

To be honest, in the past 10 years it feels like an inverse has happened. Roleplay was active and diverse with a lot of different groups and personalities but the lore was thin, events few, game news practically non-existent when I started out.

Now the lore is fleshed out, there's a few official events a year, and world/game news coming out regularly but it's the RP that's thin, social events few, and public RP beyond competitions to see who can scrape the bottom of the barrel first practically non-existent.

Imagine what the pvp meta would look like right now if about 3 years ago 80% of the people involved in building ships, making doctrines, and FC'ing fleets all faded away around the same time.

[Ayallah]

Given CCP's definition of moderating the IGS is "punish content creators, ignore habitual rule-breakers," I have zero faith in the idea that CCP should ever be involved beyond continuing to make news and events as they are currently doing.

A rarely mentioned but glaring problem is the IGS moderation.   This kills the roleplayer.

[Casiella]

So I wasn't the only one who got bored and quietly faded away for a while?