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[Utari Onzo]

To be fair, as much as I’ve used it as a weapon in RP argumentation, I’m finding it ever harder go suspend my disbelief that pirate forces would send the sheer amount of ships and personel at us as they currently do. Millions upon millions of ships destroyed in a single year by a single egger against pirates just doesn’t add up, so given that again it’s not a simple thing to impose hard numbers and stats and stuff to make the Empires seem more scawwy to us. We’ve collectively just got too good at the game for that.

That said we do need a shake up somewhere with how the Empires interact because honestly no one really takes inter factional rivalry too seriously if we’re all still maxing, relaxing all cool in the same channels discussing niceties, or drinking in the same venues. We all know each other too well, the conflicts when they do occur are too binary and there’s just not much left unexplored or expanded upon so instead it fets left to new blood (like myself some 2 odd years ago) to walk the same paths. Seriously, I’ll take even peaceful sheenanigans to keyboard warrior over to the stagnation we have.

[Silas Vitalia]

Yea this used to be a topic quite a bit 'back in the day' but as with most IP, you just can't look too closely under the hood or inspect too deeply before it all falls apart.   Game designers thought it would be more fun to blow up a bunch of different ships each mission than kill one ship, etc.

One of you nerds did some of the math a few years ago and the independent capsuleer death toll upon baseliners per year wiped out the population of the cluster pretty quickly if we were actually chewing through that many thousands of ships with thousands of crews each, each and every day.  Your average level 4 mission spammer in high sec is Hitler on the daily basically if we take those numbers literally.

Part of the kung-fu of RP with all of the mostly silly eve IP was figuring out a tasteful/quasi realistic way to weave in and out of the nonsense parts of the lore and try (and often fail) to make something workable out of it.

My main 'lore' issue was never being able to quite logically get around the basics of the CONCORD/Empire/Independent capsuleer shit show of trying to make all that not sound ridiculous and implausible, especially with security status, docking, all of that stuff.

The problem with the non-rp playerbase as 'lore' is that although some of the events are interesting, the general shitposting and wanker nature of ooc eve players mean turning those things into IC lore is ice skating uphill.  It's a damned antimatter explosion whenever you have to railroad the IC empires into some null bear's new 0.0 station called 'penis mansion' or whatever.   Our RP nerds, while most of us not doing so many big 'in game' things, at least tried to work within the game world for our doings.

[Utari Onzo]

Yeah I did some back-of-a-napkin calculations based on average ship crew sizes by hull and went with Havens as a general average site. Arrendis then came in with what a real full on player could achieve when not half arsing it like me.

[Mizhara]

I don't think anyone's arguing that the sheer numbers of sites run by the turbobears are 'canon'. The power disparity however is pretty well set in stone as far as I'm concerned. What that turbobear can do in terms of horrible murder in a single site, and how fast and destructive it is, remains 'true'.

I don't know how we got over onto the subject of just how much a bear can grind any given day, and I don't really see the relevance either.

Outside of CONCORD's killswitches and system overrides, independent capsuleers remain the top of the foodchain in space, as far as one to one murderpower goes.

[Silas Vitalia]

Couple of points we'd need to establish to determine 'relative' strengths, but the way they are setting up the table with CONCORD rules and their wtfbbqgodpower in the lore it makes no sense for the empires to lose even a tiny grip to the playerbase (at least old lore wise): 

What % of empire capsuleer school graduates are released to 'independent' concord status (IE all eve human players)? How many of their graduating classes are they letting go and why would they let any go at all?

I'd argue there's probably some language in the Yulai accords that mandates all 4 empires send a small % of their trainees out into the cluster as independents, for uh, 'reasons' let's say.  It would have to be a low number; the empires aren't going to spend billions on training what is already a tiny % of their population that even qualifies for the training and then let them go.  They'll let concord get their token capsuleers and they will keep the lion's share, probably their best, to themselves running their navies.  The independents, the null blocs, just don't have the numbers or manpower if this is how they operate the system.   

So what would make it believable that the 'independents' are gaining the upper hand? A few simple lore tweaks could do it:

CONCORD doesn't have as tight a grip on capsuleers as we have always understood? maybe there's all sorts of capsuleers reproducing their tech and training others on their own, outside of concord watch? This would mean some retconning but it's the only way to explain the nul groups being able to start matching the empires.  It wouldn't represent any of the playerbase as currently structured or character created so it'd be 'lore only' so to speak but i could see it.

Now CCP never really fixed power creep or inflation and what were supposed to be rare and game changing ships or tech are now being printed on assembly lines and nothing means anything with the broken $$ system.  So much of the old events or plots or lore revolving around a few big ships fighting are just plain silly when any small null group can field dozens of titans without really breaking a sweat.  The whole battle for Caldari prime or even the Elder invasion look damned silly now when you look at the current hundreds of titans and supercarriers fielded on the larger null battles.

So either it's all 'true' as seen and concord and the empires allow the independent capsuleers to outpace them in every category and yet keep sending them graduates, or we need a bit of handwavium applied to the poor caldari navy and empire, etc to keep them remotely relevant.

Thoughts?

[Mizhara]

I don't think there's much point in trying to finagle any specifics out of it. The one thing that needs to be pretty iron-clad in Eve RP is "What you see in this moment is very much what is going on" when you're undocked. It's the only way to keep the playing field level. If we can just start making shit up as we go, it goes from that level playing field to kids going "I shot you!!"   "Nuh uh! You missed!"   "Okay fine, I shoot a nuke bazooka!"   "I dodged." levels of herpaderp. Starting to make shit up that is demonstrably not within our capabilities, or almost worse, making up limitations we demonstrably don't have will eventually make it nigh impossible to interact with each other reasonably.

If something happens in space, it happens by the mechanics and game logs, because that's the only common and equal playing field we've got when undocked. If it happens outside of the game-mechanics and rather in fiction, it can't overrule or affect the actual game-mechanics we are limited by, because that just opens up the most horrific cans of worms. "I board your station, unload a bunch of marines and they do X and Y and Z to Insert Facility Here."   "Wait, shit. That's an option? I mean if it was, I'd have been dropping countless thousands of Marines in every enemy citadel and station in New Eden a thousand times over. When did we become able to do this?" as an example. And we didn't. Actual game mechanics trumps all, because they're the only commonality between all players. The closest we can reasonably get to doing otherwise is having our characters disbelieve something. Which is a bit of a stroke of good luck Miz being too old for the NPE, because having to acknowledge that fucking retarded shit show would completely break any semblance of reason in New Eden, heh. But I digress.

So, to return to your subject, are the outer region groups mightier than the Empires? Well, in my opinion, hell no. They're not numerous enough, don't have the baseliner industry/economy required and still need to sustain themselves on Empire populations in order to feed the sheer baseliner requirements of their infrastructure as far as I'm concerned. Military wise, it'd probably take the entirety of null working together to be a match for one highsec nation. It'd be a mistake to consider the Elder Fleet as 'the bulk of Minmatar strength' and any of the other shows of force over the years as respective such. Look at the videos of Jamyls coronation as an example. Start counting Titans and capitals. For a local parade/ceremony. Think the Empire which is supposedly beset on all sides by internal and external enemies would weaken its defenses across its realm for that shit? That was their freakin' reserves/ceremonial guard. The Elder Fleet? Surgical Strike. Successful only through surprise and speed, and paying the price when that is turned on them and so on and so forth. The Empires in all likelihood have unfathomable military strength we never get to see.

However... none of this matters. It doesn't matter, at all, what we think IC or OOC about the relative strengths of Empires and Freelancers. Characters (and even players) can believe whatever the hell they wish about their relative strengths, because it's completely fucking irrelevant thanks to a few simple things: Freelancer capsuleers are neutered entirely by CONCORD and sec mechanics run by CONCORD. They can killswitch any one of us if they so choose, and even if all they could do was maintain our current status quo, that would be more than enough to keep us neutered. As long as this "lol no" forcefield of invulnerability exists, the relative strengths of outer region groups, freelancer capsuleers, Empires etc are all moot and irrelevant.

Gameplay trumps fiction and fantasy. The Empires win by walk over and default.

Anyway, I'm reasonably sure we've been talking about different things here. I have been talking about the strengths of the individual. I am saying the individual freelancer capsuleer is the strongest combat entity in New Eden, since it's both supported by the gameplay of Eve Online and because it simply makes sense. They will be the ones with the most resources behind them on an individual level, with the most combat experience on an individual level, the ones riding the bleeding edge of strategy and tactics, perpetually iterating upon what we can call the 'meta' OOC and 'doctrine/fitting theory/tactics/whatever' IC. Knowledge and capability gained with every win and every loss, multi-billionaires who can fill every hangar from here to Cobalt Edge with reships, and so on and so forth. This is supported by the gameplay, simply because CCP are absolutely never going to be able to create NPCs that can't be beaten unless using "omfg bullshit!" mechanics that are tantamount to cheating (CONCORD and their system overrides, ridiculous limitations in ship choices and so on) and it quite simply makes sense as I mentioned before.

That's why 'outsider' threats will never feel like actual relevant threats, whether you subscribe to Empires' Superiority or the hurfblurf "gewnz are the new Empire!" nonsense. Either way, weird 'aliens', trilbyhats and doriftos are never a believable threat. The Capsuleer remains the Apex Predator, and if the "enemy" isn't bolstered by other players then they will always be one-to-one weaker than you. Imagine that moment when there's an actual fucking existential threat from any of these enemies. Insert any one of them into a "Oh shit, New Eden! We're fuckered! Plz, players, halp!" from whoever is the questgiver dejour. "Yeh, cool. How many Titans you want? Actually, we'll just bring all of them. We've all got Fax alts anyway."

Now replace that with Empire nation A threatening all out war against Empire Nation C. "... well shit, this is a problem. Those guys got freelancer loyalist capsuleers too." Suddenly that is a credible threat, because you're no longer up against NancyPCs, but other players too. The only real credible threat to freelancer capsuleers. Other freelancer capsuleers.

By ignoring this facet of Eve Online, not only are CCP telling worse stories and making the universe unimmersive as fuck... they're losing focus on what made Eve such a great fucking setting in the first place. Conflict that can matter. It's not the 'epic scale' and 'omfg hueg scary enemy' that is important. It's credible threats and challenges along the entire spectrum of scale.

Right, that's... at least three different subjects rolled into one. I think I'll leave it at that for now.

[kalaratiri]

The one thing that needs to be pretty iron-clad in Eve RP is "What you see in this moment is very much what is going on" when you're undocked. It's the only way to keep the playing field level. If we can just start making shit up as we go, it goes from that level playing field to kids going "I shot you!!"   "Nuh uh! You missed!"   "Okay fine, I shoot a nuke bazooka!"   "I dodged." levels of herpaderp. Starting to make shit up that is demonstrably not within our capabilities, or almost worse, making up limitations we demonstrably don't have will eventually make it nigh impossible to interact with each other reasonably.

If something happens in space, it happens by the mechanics and game logs, because that's the only common and equal playing field we've got when undocked. If it happens outside of the game-mechanics and rather in fiction, it can't overrule or affect the actual game-mechanics we are limited by, because that just opens up the most horrific cans of worms. "I board your station, unload a bunch of marines and they do X and Y and Z to Insert Facility Here."   "Wait, shit. That's an option? I mean if it was, I'd have been dropping countless thousands of Marines in every enemy citadel and station in New Eden a thousand times over. When did we become able to do this?" as an example. And we didn't. Actual game mechanics trumps all, because they're the only commonality between all players. The closest we can reasonably get to doing otherwise is having our characters disbelieve something. Which is a bit of a stroke of good luck Miz being too old for the NPE, because having to acknowledge that fucking retarded shit show would completely break any semblance of reason in New Eden, heh. But I digress.

While I don't immediately disagree with this, I think it doesn't have to be quite so hardline as you make out. If agreed upon beforehand by the parties involved, there's absolutely no reason that people can't RP things like marine boarding operations (to run with your example).
The key factor is obviously that any non-in-space activities are talked about and discussed by the parties involved to stop it being a "he said, she said" of escalating ridiculousness.

An ongoing example of this would be the Mantel/Silver discussion happening on the IGS at the moment. I think your "fanfic" post is actually pushing too hard. Mantel and Silver have discussed the events, and if they want to say that it happened then it is nobody else's place to come in and stamp on their RP by saying "that can't happen so it didn't". Creating an interesting story sometimes requires a bit of suspension of disbelief either IC or OOC (or both), and personally I don't think it's fair to try and deny this for others.

If we push too much into the "only in-space events actually happen or matter" then Eve RP collapses entirely.

[Lasairiona]

Creating an interesting story sometimes requires a bit of suspension of disbelief either IC or OOC (or both), and personally I don't think it's fair to try and deny this for others.

If we push too much into the "only in-space events actually happen or matter" then Eve RP collapses entirely.

This.

[MakotoPriano]

Small addition: whatever one thinks of it, the NPE is canon. Like all mission-style activity, a little bit of squinting may be needed to reconcile it with the world sensibly, but we don't get to pick and choose canon. vOv

[Mizhara]

The problem there then becomes "If he can, then I can, and everyone else can" and then suddenly I should theoretically be able to crash Amarr Trade Station onto the damn planet by just dumping enough Marines in there. Or take on other people's citadels in ways we really bloody can't. An even playing field is a necessity not just to maintain the immersion etc, but to avoid breaking everyone's RP. Yeah sure I can agree with Samira that we do X and Y with Citadel Z and then what happens when that goes public?

Why wouldn't PIE then be able to do that with my Citadels? Why wouldn't I be able to do it to theirs? Or SFRIMs? Or completely unrelated people having read the IGS?



The problem and blessing of Eve is that it's one shared universe. There isn't just "involved parties", it's everyone. What we do is done within the exact same setting and under the exact same ruleset, and when someone starts pretending it doesn't apply to them and their particular thing, while publicly claiming this is how the universe now works, other characters then either have that exact same capability or you start fragmenting everything into house-ruled camps.

House rules are awesome. House rules which in this kind of game then would have to propagate across every house the game comes onto the table... less awesome.

This is why I am a proponent of 'gameplay trumps all'. That still leaves immense amounts of wiggleroom to do all kinds of shit with your characters, but if it happened in space? Do it in space, under the exact same ruleset everyone else plays by, or it just makes interaction nonsensical in the end.

You can do damn near anything in Eve as it is. If you push for breaking the rules we all play under, RP collapses entirely.

Small addition: whatever one thinks of it, the NPE is canon. Like all mission-style activity, a little bit of squinting may be needed to reconcile it with the world sensibly, but we don't get to pick and choose canon. vOv

Yup, we can all go kill faxes in shitfit frigates, and practically solo Drifter hives. This also happens regularly in every newbie system we have, with SSoE having supar secrit research stations in all of them, each 'sploding on a daily basis.

I think I'll keep having my character ignore those far-fetched stories. They may be canon OOC, but it's so unfuckingbelievably retarded that accepting it IC would be stupid beyond compare.

[Utari Onzo]

[mod]There is no need to launch personal attacks in this discussion. Agree to disagree civilly or have your posting priviledges revoked for a week. Consider this fair warning to everyone involved there[/mod]

Carry on but keep it clean.

[Mizhara]

This is where generally accepted standards and people not intentionally being shit to each other comes in.

"Being able to crash the Emperor Family Station into the planet" is beyond the parameters of what's reasonable or realistic to even try and claim, so nobody is going to try and declare that they've done that.

If you and Samira RP'd the capture of a citadel through marines, then when it went public I'd imagine most people would be happy to accept that as it is reasonable, pre-agreed, and doesn't break anything in the established game world.

... yeah, except that's never been true. People are not that reasonable. When people very publicly does stuff that affects everyone, i.e. demonstrate an ability to seed covert monitoring stations etc, then this is setting a precedent that this is now how the world works. If I could do that stuff, it'd have tremendous impact on Miz's ability in New Eden and damn straight I'd do this all day long if I could. I'd have those fucking everywhere there'd been enemy activity or where locator agents have indicated such. I'd be getting those set up everywhere.

Of course, I can't do that. If I am to find out what other players are up to, I have to go look. If I have to take on a Citadel, I have to get together something eminently shooty and go apply horrific violence, and hope I have enough guns to do it without getting blown out of space. Or hire someone to do it. Or you know... not be able to do it. That's okay too! Miz can't do a lot of things in New Eden and that isn't detracting from the RP. It reinforces and strengthens it. Incapability is just as important as capability in RP.

I mean, if we start setting precedents that you can, again using the marines/citadel example, do certain things my character most definitely would if she could... and then it turns out we can't... that breaks RP. "Oh we TOTALLY can raid other people's citadels with Marines."   "... yeah, I can afford a bajillion marines, but see those SFRIM citadels? Yeah, turns out, this is not a thing we can do."   "Oh but we can!"    "... nope. See? It just shoots at me."   

Again, I don't disagree with this in essence.

The bit I have a problem with is if two (or more) people get together and agree that "x is going to happen in their arc", and it's not something that the game allows to be played through, it is not up to uninvolved people to jump in and shit on them for it.

It doesn't actually harm anyone if people decide to play something "impossible" as long as they keep the impact of said event within those involved, and the community in general recognise that what might be "allowed" for one person isn't automatically "allowed" for someone else.

A tiny bit of communication literally solves all your issues.

Yeah, the problem is that once the impact goes public, you change the rules of the game. "We can do X, as demonstrated in thread Y on the IGS."   "Awesome, I'm going to do it to Corp Z."    "You can't do that!"    "... oh."

The playing field becomes completely uneven.

Except I can't go to any of those incredible sci-fi settings because the game won't let me out of my ship.

Sure you can. Same way you go to the Summit, same way you go to bars etc. Of course, you can't squeeze your Machariel or whatever into the bar, but that's what docking is for. I think you got it backwards here: What you can do outside of the game mechanics is damn near unlimited. My problem is that when the game mechanics are in place for something, then the game mechanics trump the fiction. Would you believe me if I said I anchored a few Keepstars solo? Of course not, it'd be ludicrous. Would you believe me if I said I boarded a Titan? Of course not, it's ludicrous. If I'm to anchor cities in space, I damn well better actually do it in space. If I'm to take on one of your ships, I don't get to just say "I launch boarders" in local and wait for you to self-destruct. I'll have to damn well shoot you.

It's really not that difficult. Where the game mechanics are in place, they should trump everything else. They're already staggeringly liberal in terms of what we can do as capsuleers, so there really is never a need to start breaking those limitations. Want to have some space installation for whatever purpose? Drop a cheap EC or Citadel. Voila, problem solved. You can do damn near everything. Add a little communication and cooperation and you can even easily add unintentional stuff like "want to loot something specific from the citadel when you attack it? Okay, asset safety says nope but hey. I can undock a transport and try to get away as you fight me! Try to catch me." etc etc.

We're pretty much the least limited players of an MMO ever, when it comes to what we can do RP wise.

Thanks for the ad hominem at the end there, but you've missed my point.

The game, as it is, is spaceships. It is entirely spaceships. It is 100% spaceships.

Every single thing I write about Kalaratiri is "outside the game mechanics". Every bar she goes to, every planet she walks on, every cigarette she smokes, is "outside the game".

The setting is not the game. The setting allows for incredible stories.

The game does too, but in a very different way. The game lets me talk about surviving a fight in 1% structure, or that bombing run that killed 130 battleships, or killing my first titan, or mining for a supercapital.

The setting lets me talk about Kala, and it's almost all outside the game.

Now if creating backstories for our characters can be accepted, why not other things that don't directly exist within the game, but do in the setting?

See above. Basically what I'm saying here is "don't break the game." Some things would. If I could have freakin' spy installations dropped around space, it'd make me a fucking God in Eve. It really isn't difficult to have amazing RP without writing in abilities and capabilities that would fucking break the game power wise. It doesn't really matter what game you're playing in, when you start breaking the rules to the point where you're breaking gameplay, it's for all intents and purposes godmoding.

[Mizhara]

Hrm, looks like some of what I quoted got pruned?

[kalaratiri]

Hrm, looks like some of what I quoted got pruned?

Yeah, idk what in my posts counted as personal attacks. Oh well.

[Mizhara]

He might just be snipping the entire thing for review and returning your stuff later. I saw no personal attacks there either.