Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The Live Events team should act as GM's in traditional RP games, providing settings, shared objectives, information to lead players to the GM's goals...but as such players will *allways* surprise GM's and they must be prepared to adapt to changing circumstances. The NPC characters should be focal points to try to lead game dynamics in a certain direction, but I agree completely that this can never be controlled or a fixed outcome assumed.

The 'level' of NPC events that a player can attend could be governed by their sec status and corp standings in empire space or by there criminal connections and corp standings in null/wh. There should also be entry level npc events that allow newer players with low sec status/standings to earn their way into the higher level events by participating in the lower level events first. Thus people get rewarded either for game loyalty (they've been here a while) or by putting the effort in at the time of the events. You have to earn you place in the further up events, or use diplomacy etc to be included into fleets on higher events.

For the record I want more live events :) I also want them spread across all career paths. For instance industrialists could co-op to buils stargates or titans, explo events would be a mass explo fleet going to various areas of high/low/null sec to gather required relics/equipment. Mass goods movements required by the hauler characters, clandestine deliveries once a player has earnt the required trust of the NPC/GM. Of course there should also be combat events...lots and lots of them...

I feel an overall event driven in this way could be far greater in the end than the sum of its parts

For the record I love live events even though not all of them were executed well in the past. I do agree that CCP should take a look on how these events are done.

If you look at it from that perspective only someone in the same calibre of Isaac Asimov can write the story for live events.

What I want to see is that the "live event" story is written by the (roleplaying) players with ISD helping to story along, by posting the New Eden non-immortals reactions to the capsuleers meddling.

For example, because of certain capsuleer aggressive behaviour in a constellation an NPC corporation is moving some of it's assets to a new safer location, but the ISD might make it possible for the players to "hack" through roleplaying / new minigame the flight plan information and the convoy could be attacked for blueprints or items.

If the flight plan isn't hacked the npc corporation route is not known and there for players will have to organise and scout different routes*, however if the flight plan is hacked you got to deal with the meta game or spies inside the fleet.

*The ISD can through devhack can pop up in a system and post in local roleplaying intel, which will make the meta game active so other players might get organised to intercept the first group of capsuleers going after the NPC corporation's assets.

In an open pvp world this will lead to interesting results, and the ISD can decide where to spawn the npc's finally ofc to make it a more dramatic event

In this example, the players will be the main part of the "live event" the ISD will help facilitate the story along and e.g.
CCP Abraxis or some other CCP dev can help the ISD with the logistic side through devhack coding.


Live events is where CCP dropped the ball, badly, and I believe it should be a part of the persistent open universe.

I'm afraid you are misinterpreting what I posted, for example a player driven live event helped along by the ISD to provide options in an open world that players choose to interact with (my view) vs an open-ended live event scripted by some CCP devs with multiple paths (your view).

Hope you can see that normal "events" in eve online where only eve players are involved in the open sandbox game are still set within the borders that CCP created, and sometimes the players even break these borders (here discussions of exploits or geniality are made).

For example the current CFC + Rus vs PL + N3 player driven event that is going on.

And events in eve online where the players are not given sperge/publord leadership reasons to play the game vs eachother,
but instead roleplaying reasons created by the New Eden non-immortal world (empires/pirate corp, etc) made possible with the ISD to help facilitate player conflict / story drivers.

Any claim that CCP does not influence eve online gameplay is a sign of naivety, why create something new and simple as a siphon unit ?

Wait, are you suggesting that players participate in live events instead of just being herded around as an audience of moving props in scripted play?

Sorry, CCP egos would never allow such a thing.

We do not want a return to the Aurora convoys giving out T2 BPO's.

I personally have no problem with the "nothing but an audience" live events. The Sansha live events leading up to the launching of the incursions were completely scripted; there was not a single thing any players could do to alter the outcomes of those episodes. No matter how soon we popped the actors, it would never have been in time to prevent Sansha from finishing whatever missions he was conducting. But I wasn't disappointed in those events; I liked them a lot.

I realize that inasmuch as players control a whole lot of New Eden, they don't control every aspect of it. There's empires, and not everything those empires do will be driven by things capsuleers do. There will be wars and peace treaties declared, planets exploded, stations evacuated, terrorist attacks executed, and so on and so forth - the news feeds are filled with these events, that are scripted completely without our input, and I'm fine with it. If some of those scripted events logically would involve a big space battle, I think it's fun to have the opportunity to have been "part of that", purely for the sake of connection to the overall story and lore of EVE without necessarily being able to change the outcome. The loremakers of this game already tell their own stories with chronicles and such; I consider events like this a way of "using" the players to help tell an interesting story.

But that's not to say I think those have to be the only kind of live event that happens; there's actually room for a few different kinds of live events, including open-ended ones. I thought the CCP roam events were awesome - pure explodey fun, no complaints from anyone. Rather than saying that all live events of nature X are bad/wrong/not working, I think it would be more useful to consider the different possible kinds of live events and decide type-by-type how each would best be executed.

I do like the idea of live events that player actions can decide the outcome of on a large scale. I even like the idea of some of these influencing the larger story of EVE. It's important that people not be cut off from being a part of that story just because they choose to play the null sov game; on the other hand, it's also important that involved roleplayers not be cut off from such an opportunity by virtue of being outnumbered by people who just want to shoot up the live events for yucks.

There's also the matter to consider of the time and effort it would take CCP to write storylines - especially branching ones - and what the point of diminishing returns for that effort will be. This isn't a single-player RPG that can be played, beaten, and then replayed with different choices so you can catch all the content you missed.

Consider the suggestion given above, of players having to go to a null or low-sec site to retrieve some information or item, or maybe discover a certain secret item orbiting a planet somewhere in W-space, as part of a live event. EVE being what it is, that goal is going to be camped by people whose sole interest is killing other ships (in some cases, whose interest is literally in disrupting the live event as much as possible). So they shoot everyone who shows up, or they blow up the secret special can or ship or structure object at the site or in the w-space system before anybody trying to actually play the live event can get to it. It's easy to say "no problem, CCP should just plan a story branch for what happens if that information/item is never recovered"; but the problem is, all the content that was planned for if the item or information WAS recovered is now wasted effort, lost, never to see the light of day - ever. On the other hand, if the items are recovered as intended, all of the intricate planning around what would come to pass if it never had been found is likewise wasted, never to be experienced by anyone. I think it's an awful lot to ask CCP to not only provide us with these live events, but to create double the amount of -high quality- content knowing that 50% of it is sacrificial.

Thread has been moved to Features & Ideas Discussion.

Was very tempted, and still am to write up a 'how to run open ended events for sandboxes'


I'll give the basic outline here of the logic but it really is very simple stuff, and anyone that's played mass effect will recognise the pattern.


you provide an event setting, with a defined number of teams and an objective for each, a reason for them being there.


Ghost site event as a basis:

Surgical Strike against covert research facilities.
6 teams in a 4 vs 2 setting.
Ideally in low Security Open PVP space. (due to tool limitations)


this gives you the foundation for defining outcomes by using trees:

for a very broad series of events consequences are planned out prior to the event starting.

"in the event the pirates defend the station"
"in the event the station is heavily contested"
"In the event the empires over run the station"
"In the event no one bothers to fight over the station"

these sequences are the 'potential outcomes of any player action' and will serve to help define acceptable conclusions.

after this you begin to get more specific by factoring in modules and equipment in game players may use that would within reason affect the amount of information learned.

"if the station is attacked outright"
"if the station is hacked"
"if the station is scanned"

these are 'event flags' the GM's will then try to watch for - and incorporate should they appear and will further alter the outcomes
not in the sense that 'they completely change the outcome' but they 'add extra bits you won't get otherwise'

for example: hacking the station reveals the location of several other facilities, scanning it reveals clues to the nature of the research, destroying it leaves rubble.

by defining these very general guidelines before the event it is very possible to incorporate player driven action into the event story
because you have a story arc for 'each general course of action' ready to go should the story turn around - yes it's not truly dynamic but it is a much better implementation than the current railroad.

so a potential outcome of this system for this event would look as:

'the most general event of the pirates defending the station occurred, so the station is to be scuttled - however, we noticed one guy managed to hack/RP hacked the station and so the empires managed to learn of several other facilities they can attack later'



(as i said i have been toying with the idea of doing a full write up on this - along with use of actor fleets etc etc to give ccp a bit of a 'tutorial for scrubs on how to plan events so any dev can do it in their spare time and not cause irrevocable damage to themselves and the player expectations' so take this as the overly generalised description that it is, but it does explain what I think should be happening rather than solid script railroads)