Live Events Discussion

"Clearly out of his depth."

Hyperbole much?


That and the pesky accusations of "favoritism" that could come along with it from people who might remember some of the older events. But yeah like I edited in - it's a reasonable stance.

Seriously, look at this fit. It doesn't have the target spectrum breaker or MJD because EFT is dumb and does not consider a TTI a battleship, so assume that they occupy the two midslots. A ship that's hard to kill, especially with a competent actor. No high-meta mods, anything expensive (the rigs and implants) would be destroyed upon destruction of the ship or pod.

There is a difference between making the event difficult to interfere with and making it outright impossible. This is a player-driven game, and anything that takes place on TQ should be open to player influence.

The (horrible, sorry, just how many former FCs are in CCP and why do these always seem so poorly run?) dev fleets love to head out with stuff like PLEX in their cargoholds. That boat sailed long ago.

Andski, he had those QA shield hardeners. We brought enough DPS to rock through that armor fit, but it wasn't meant to be.

First of all, as a member of the unnecessary defense fleet, I had a good time. We might not have been necessary, but just as the failed attacks added to the atmosphere, the protective supporters also played a big role in making the event feel monumental.

As I see the sandbox, a player should be able to make a significant impact wherever they focus their impacts. So, if a player (or group of players) is determined to carve out their own empire and make use of the tools to do so, they can do it. Likewise, if a player's focus is on high sec ganking, they can manage to do so profitably. These things take commitment and skill.

As I see it, story should be the same way. If someone dedicates their play time to making an impact on the story, that person should have the ability to do so. But just as I as a newer player with few resources could not be expected to orchestrate a high sec freighter gank, a player whose primary focus is freighter ganking should probably not be able to influence the story in a major way. Minilov is not a roleplaying organization, that is not its primary role, and as far as I know they were not partnered with a roleplay organization. Now, if they had, there are creative ways they could impact the story, but that's not their focus and unless they make that their focus they shouldn't be hogging the IC news anymore than I should be hogging their freighter killmails.

If I were in charge of getting the Goons into live events, I would see if I could contact CCP Falcon about creating a situation in which the Goons can be their antagonistic selves. Maybe you could see about striking a deal where if you pull off a certain hard to accomplish feet, you get to make an impact. For example, let's say Tibus Heth is scheduled to be traveling from Point A to Point B. Goonswarm manages to bump his transport off the gate. Do to prior agreement with the Devs (fulfill condition X, scenario Y plays out), you are now holding him hostage and demanding an Executor's Ransom, or perhaps you plan on marching him back to Goon space for a monkey trial, or even handing him over to some Anti-Heth extremists for execution. Then, player capsuleers are given the chance to join a Caldari Naval special ops fleet to save the Executor, and perhaps the goon players are given suspect status to allow a high sec fight. This allows CCP to continue on with their vision of the storyline, a vision in which Heth is not unceremoniously murdered by bat-**** insane capsuleers, while also allowing said crazies a spot in the sun.

The key is that unlike high sec ganking, in roleplay certain constraints have to be built in. Roleplay is a collaborative enterprise, and collaborations require compromise. If the goons want to be a part of live events, which I think they should be, and I think there could be some fun story to be had of largely rational empires dealing with the Reavers on the edge of space, they must also accept that some events will require 'artificial' constraints.

The final thing I'd add on this rambling post of mine is that I'd like to see the possibility of reward for those who do dedicate themselves to roleplay and live events as a play style. And I don't just mean turning up to live events to shoot things, but engaging in the actual story and communicating with those live actors, and so on. I know that the Devs don't approve of Live Events being loot pinatas, but unique rewards with lore-flavor for involved players who are active off the field of battle as well as on would help keep people invested, and would be an all around feel-good.

Take Grideris(sp?) for example. He leads all of these Concord-themed fleets and such, how cool would it be for a CCP Concord Actor to reward him for his services with a Concord Battleship? Of course it shouldn't be one of those OP deathmachines we've all seen fits of, but even if it were just a reskin with the same stats as a Raven, it would still be really cool to see and would add to immersion. Knowing that dedicating time and isk to story development could have at least some reward would I think make Live Events even more exciting. There is to the best of my knowledge no major MMO that rewards roleplay as a play style, and I think doing so could only add to the unique experience that is EVE.

Then why, as a member of the Amarr Empire, was I not able to make any impact on the event? We sent a fleet, including some Amarr roleplayers, to disrupt events only to find out there was literally nothing we could do. You can argue that Miniluv shouldn't be able to impact this event all you want, but the fact is that literally no one in the game could have. As Andski and others have posted, there are much better alternatives to what they did. If the Live Events team is having such trouble coming up with solutions, maybe they should reach out to the players for help. We spend all our time adapting to the different play styles of EVE. It takes a lot of the fun out of it when they just spawn in a GM item and avoid any kind of interaction at all.

And would it have made any difference if an escort was there? No, not with 8mil EHP ships. They didn't NEED an escort, so both the players escorting and those trying to attack the delegation could not and did not make any difference in how this would have played out.

I'll be honest when I say that the decision to use QA Shield Extenders did not come lightly, occurred after much argument and debate, and was done knowing we would make a segment of the population unhappy. I didn't think it would be a very large number of people, because I didn't believe that ganking random actor characters would be of much interest to most people, but I see I was wrong there.

Of course, not all impact on the storyline comes solely from killing the actors involved. Just because they were, for all intents and purposes, unkillable does not mean that your actions were unnoticed or will not affect the storyline going forward. You showing up and being there effects the storyline.

In the end, we did not think that making these guys killable added much to the storyline. If you killed some random NPC who we've never mentioned before and we then replace him with another random NPC we've never mentioned before (or simply say "He cloned!") I'm not sure how that creates interesting interaction beyond "These groups came to disrupt the procession". It's the same for just having them sit in a station the entire time (and that's also far less visually impactful). Either way you cut it, the actions are purely ceremonial.

That being said, I can't promise we'll never ever use QA Shield Extenders again in the future, but there's nothing on our schedule for the next 3 months that would see a conceivable use for them. The feedback from people saying they hated their usage is definitely going to play a role in how we structure future events.

A TTI killmail on the Goonfleet boards would not have been ceremonial. It would have been a strong, concrete example of the determination and power of the group(s) that got the kill. It might not have changed the final outcome, but it would have given people bragging rights.

To use a real life example, if a US Senator or some such dies, they don't close the government; they get a new one. If the delegate had been killed, all involved earned some bragging rights and the Minmatar have to elect a new delegate. The end result is roughly the same.

I don't understand live events :'(