EVE Information Portal

For an earlier question, I am fine handpicked FCs being read in ahead of time to actually run player fleets for live events. Have them fax you an NDA or whatever to cover not giving anything away, and then bring them in early in the process of setting the live event up. You don't really need a "Live Events CSM" or whatever, but you do need someone who knows fleet mechanics so they can head off problems early in the planning stages.

As it currently sits, you had a trickle effect into systems which really only showed how bad tidi is for moving people around by gates, and why it's bad to attack a heavily fortified gate camp in null. But, had every single person hit the target system all at once as planned, I think you would have run into problems as bad or worse than the movement problem itself.

I appreciate the thought and resources that went into this event and I am a great supporter of the lore-based Live Event initiative in general, but I think events on this scale do more to expose EVE's flaws and limitations than to create a good gameplay experience.

Given that many players will investigate a live event out of curiosity, they need to be showcasing EVE at its best, not at its worst.

Lag is Still Lag, However Pretty You Make It

Time Dilation, as clever as it is, is a necessary evil in order to make a struggling, overloaded system struggle in a fairer way. It is still sub-optimal and encouraging situations that cause it should be avoided. I appreciate that this is arguably counter-intuitive as popularity=TiDi, but there has to be another way or the same problems will remain.

Hamstrung by the UI

The text chat interface as a means of co-ordination is archaic and clumsy. Even roleplaying or having a conversation is frustrating with large groups. With multiple contributors, a conversation is impossible to follow in the screen real-estate reasonably available for a chat window (and it will likely be one of many!). The decision to mute everyone will alleviate some of this, but will create a sterile non-interactive environment. Better, but still not great. All the cool kids use voice, you know.

Good Use of the Sandbox?

Null-sec is dominated by a particular playstyle. The residents are very good at it, they've been doing it for years. Unless the intent was to instigate a slaughter, planning an event in null-sec was naive. The majority of high-sec participants were unable to enjoy any kind a coherent story or a satisfactory conclusion. The null-sec blob had a successful evening, but isn't that what the Dev Caravan-type events are for? Some playstyles and demographics are never going to be happy bedfellows and whilst Live Story Events are finding their feet, I wouldn't consider it a priority to attempt to change that.

What Next?
In retrospect, the story will make for a good read: Empires Powerless to Stop the Empyrean-Supported Pirate Technology Revolution as CONCORD-Led Fleet is Slaughtered. But I really think that without better tools, better delivery and less ambitious planning, the big Live Events will continue to struggle to provide a positive gaming experience.

Team Illuminati has proven that player interest is there but that more tools and resources are needed. I hope the people with their hand on the CCP purse-strings are paying attention. Without those tools, this kind of event will damage the player perception of the concept and interest will wane. Grand live events should be avoided until they can be delivered more effectively.

Until then, I think the Live Event team should do something less ambitious with the existing toolset that can be done well and shown in a more positive light.

To quote Ripard Teg over at Jesters Trek, "a few more live events like this one will kill live events"

Thanks for the blog. Unfortunately, It doesnt really adress the fundamental question in organizing events like these, namely, how do you organize events involving hundreds of random highsec dwellers pitted against very organized nullsec alliances and make sure the event is fun and meaningful for all?

From a highsec point of view, players:
• were left by the event organizers to fend for themselves;
• were not given adequate instructions on what to do;
• were not organized into effective fleets;
• were not led by trustworthy FCs; and,
• in essence were led into a deathtrap from which there was no escape.

And then to add insult to injury, CCP subjected them to 23 jumps of 10% TiDi.

To comment on the last point first, not reinforcing the staging system is not an "oversight". Sorry for beeing so harsh on you Goliath, but it is only one word to describe that particular move, and that is incompetence. Dont fool yourself, TiDi alone would have killed the entire event even if the highsec fleets hadnt been slaughtered before even reaching the destination systems.

Now, I enjoy the slaughtering of hundreds of EVE online players as much as the next guy, and participating on the highsec side I fullly expected to lose both my Damnation and my Armageddon to more organized nullsec fleets (I barely made it to Ihal though, before the event was over). However, i think you need to implement a few changes on how you run these things.

1) Make it clear whether fleets need to be organized by the players OR CCP NPC actors. Your news items left the impression that this would be a CCP led event (at least for the highsec side), while in reality you expected the same level of player organization in highsec as in nullsec.

2) The organized entities in this game WILL infiltrate the pickup fleets in such events, to the point were fleets may be led by awoxing FCs, while the pickup fleets will have ZERO penetration in the organized entities. This will provide the organized entities with perfect intelligence while leaving the pickup fleets essentially blind. This stacks the advantages far too high on the nullsec side, so in future events I suggest finding methods for CCP to provide intelligence to both sides. That is, NPC actors could have told both sides what the other side was up to.

3) Use Navy titans (at least one from each empire) from reinforced staging systems to bridge into nullsec (not neccessarily into the target system but at least to avoid the chokepoints along the route) and use CCP cynos to avoid an avox at this stage.

Highsec fleets will STILL die gloriously to better organized and better led nullsec fleets, but at least there will be a fight, not a slaughter.

Not ignoring this, but Falcon and Eterne are way better placed to give an answer to it, so will leave it for them.

So, I've read it once and these are my initial thoughts on "Operational Spectacle" as I dub it now:

This Dev Blog provides some of the background thinking into what the Live Event Team – Team Illuminati were trying to accomplish with this Live Event and that is due credit. I like that this was included.

"Leading to Rubicon" and the Lore
The fact that this Live Event leads into the Rubicon expansion is great from a RP or even just a player perspective to be part of that rather than just "Tadaa expansion is here" and that is also to be commended.

"Final Destination and Movement"

Deployment to Null Sec and Inclusion
Inclusion of both Hi-Sec, Low and Null type of play styles is always good but you have to bear in mind that going into Null with a "Kitchen Sink" fleet is always going to end the way that this event did and by that I mean you are handing essentially risk free kills and CONCORD Bounty Payments to those in Null (unless they are countered by another Null Entity who chose that time to attack them which would lead to some very interesting developments). These Live Events will always be in favour of the Null Blocs insofar as they can Titan Bridge and be set-up (as was experienced) in less time than I can jump one system at 10% TiDi. I am extremely interested to read that Titan Bridging for these events will be considered as that would be something unique that some of us have never seen except on a stream (I've been playing for 10 years and never Titan Bridged or even seen one!). Further on this point this would not remove the Null Blocs interaction or interdiction of players once they were in the target system but would ensure that fleets could get there without the grind through TiDI that was experienced on "Operational Spectacle".

TiDi Hell

I have to give some respect to CCP Goliath (and Team Illuminati) admitted that they fubared on reinforcing the systems:

"That said, it would have been unnecessary if we had reinforced the staging systems correctly," which does raise questions of the below quotes from the same Dev Blog:

1) "Unfortunately we did not account for time dilation in this calculation and they ended up being too long. This is something we will improve on in future."

Relay Communications

This is linked in the Dev Blog and was the message I got through backchannels of comms from Twitter "Attention mass of people in Sarum Prime. We kindly ask you start trickling over to Ihal for the event. #eveonline #tweetfleet". Now, rightly or wrongly, I assumed that this meant that Sarum was now closed due to numbers (I had already had to relog and had to elect to be moved to Irnal due to numbers in system) and that if you wanted in then a new staging area was being setup in Ihal. I still tried to verify the contents of this message as I was in Irnal trying to secure Fleet Members with my FC and WC. Clarity of communications should be as important as the communication itself.

"This trickle effect worked well and helped deal with server load." While this may have been the desired result from an infrastructure perspective from a customer experience it was both confusing and a bit in favour of those hooked into those streams at the time. I'm lucky to have two monitors but some are not (or play on a laptop) and some might not even know that Twitter and Facebook are available on the IGB (YouTube certainly isn't ) and I can include myself in that crowd. Thus it favours those who do know and gives them an advantage over those who don't on getting ahead of the pack so to speak. But then again...who wants to be first to jump into Null.

This information, while I appreciate you wanted this effect, serves to only confuse and exclude some people who may be turned off in future if this is how communication will come through. I personally had 3 extra channels open that day (Live Event, Out of Character and Intergalactic Summit along with the usual Corp, Local, Constellation and in addition to those I had Fleet and TS3 chatter. Now that's a lot of communication channels and now I have to add Twitter and Facebook and whosay and whatever other social media you may use? Twitter is bad as it's restricted to 140 characters and that is not a lot of space to get clear and concise information into (believe me, I've tried!) and clear, concise communications are required.[/i] A possible solution to Sarum Prime being over populated may have been to "spawn" a new staging system in an RP perspective such as "Capsuleers, Fleet Commander 'Xtreme Prejudice' has declared an auxiliary force is forming in Ihal and you are hereby requested to volunteer your services". This would've gotten people to trickle over while maintaining the fleet in Sarum Prime. The Twitter communication only delayed what you were trying to prevent and only for a very short time frame. Excited people were forwarding it (after they had got in warp I imagine) and so it spread like wildfire.

Overall first impression: A lot of information to go through and over again as I don't want to jump on the "CCP Bashing" wagon but I will say that there is no apology of substance in this thread apart from the "sorry you didn't make it" comment and that is a bit of a smack in the face for those that have posted for 7 days in this thread and across the forums and social media to get the IG and IRL concerns, complaints and opinions put across.

Forum ate my post. C&P 4TW. This is very much TBC and a WiP feedback

I like this idea. I have flown with a community group for the past 6 months who have some very capable FC's and some, I believe, are alts of Null Sec FC's, and could they not be secured with an NDA before the LE? Or some kind of Confidentiality Agreement. Talk and you are out of helping with another LE ever again or a black mark system? OFC this mught be open to abuse but you could include a "You are an independent FC on contract to LE Team and have a duty of care to the LE blah blah blah.

MotD in these Fleet Chats could also display "You fly at your own risk" to indemnify the FC from any repercussions (thinking legal wrangles etc)?

Just my thoughts.

Many of the points in that blog are some of the ones I pointed out on the other thread. I have no issues with titan bridging to event destinations; however, with that being said if you intend on bridging in the future it would be helpful to disclose that fact in the event details so that those countering the event can have adequate intel to do just that. It wouldn't make sense to keep the opposing forces in the dark, jump the attacking forces in, and win easily.

I suspect many players were expecting this event to be very much scripted like Caldari Prime was. I think the sudden turn around without much warning coupled with what to expect led more toward the disorganized chaos rather than TiDi or FC incompetence. Perhaps it would be a better idea to give a few more days notice in the future as well as a bit more detail in the notice. Going with a majority non-scripted approach after the last event was scripted only serves to instill uncertainty because the players expected to hear play by play situational information. Once it became clear they were not going to hear such, uncertainty kicked in. The dangerous part of uncertainty is being separated from the fleet as you can not see what the primary fleet is doing and thus adapt your play toward that goal.

I think at one point someone stated in the Caldari/Amarr Fleet, "FC, gates aren't letting a lot of people through." To which he replied, "I know" and then said jump into Doril. I believe had the FC waited he may have got a good 80-85% of those who were traveling slowly to catch up. I know from being there that there was the coordinator fleet and RVB fleet on the doril gate into low sec. So waiting wouldn't have been a huge problem as we had quite a lot of us there to handle most situations. Except hot drops :P

In all honesty I think that would have given most people a chance to get there and travel with the primary fleet and at least get a shot at participating. The larger issue is that although twitter did work in the trickle effect to ihal, those who chose to remain in ihal were 23 jumps before the navy NPCs confirmed that they needed to move. Once they begun to move and got halfway there, the primary fleet moved out. This created a unique issue because when the straggler fleets finally made it to Ihal, the primary fleet had already been moving toward the destination system and were halfway there. Of course they also triggered TiDi in every system they went through from Ihal all the way to RMOC. So the straggler fleets were stuck going through the TiDi systems and had no chance in hell to ever get caught up. I know this is in many respects their own stubbornness to mobilize once they seen that Sarum was emptying. However, I think waiting a bit longer to really start the event would have given them at least a chance to catch back up with the fleets. Also, it would have given the NPC nay guys time to perhaps rethink the situation and call in a titan to bridge :)

The destination was a fine idea and having the staging system in the heart of empire space was at the core of RP which I loved, but the logistics of mobilizing that many people through so many jumps is indeed a strain on the cluster. Perhaps the bridging idea would work better for future events of this type.

When we arrived in Ihal from Sarum Prime, we hadn't given up and where not dead. Wile leaving at the same time as the CCP actor, we where just to late, it was declared over....

And to CCP Goliath: If Ihal was chosen ad-hoc to put an ease on Tidi, how come Tidi was at 14% when we arived there? And had been at 10-15% for several jumps? In the end it only made the journey longer (in time), not shorter.

You know, Arek'Jaalan never caused any TiDi. Also, it had the added benefit of being an event requiring some mental capacity, thereby cutting away much of the rabble on both sides of the gate.

Anyhow, I once heard that one of the goals for Live Events was to increase player interest between expansions, and reduce account cancellations. I am pretty sure this event failed in that regard.

Better luck next time.

My only feedback is please don't call the end of an event while half of the fleet you had form up at the beginning was still 2 jumps out.

We had CSM member and such and informed the actors we were on our way, but you destroyed the structure with us being 4 jumps out, not 5 minutes after one of the actors acknowledged we were still on our way and said that was fine.

I thought it was interesting, but it did seem specifically designed to disrupt any attempt of coordination on behalf of the Empire forces. (I was on the Gallente side FYI)