Live Events Discussion

While this thread started out pretty negatively, CCP's response at this point seems pretty encouraging in saying that similar 'Godhacks' measures are unlikely to be used again and that they are more willing to work within the sandbox rather than against it in future.

I'm glad our comments have seemingly been taken on board and I hope that we have made a positive contribution to how future events transpire.

Additionally, writing out your entire storyline and trying to play it out in a sandbox game notorious for player intervention is ludicrous.

If you want to be able to run these events while still letting the community interact in a way that's more meaningful than simply posting in-character and actually translate it into the game environment, you'll have to take the D&D GM's approach; plan out a single session, have a general idea of where you want the story to go, and think on your feet.

If you want to use Aurora implants, fine. It turns suicideganking into a little bit of an unreasonable feat for most groups. If you want to use Slaves to beef up your buffer instead, keeping the character within the realm of reasonable play, even better. Using pseudo-invlunerability modules to ensure that your entire event goes off without a hitch, however, doesn't amount to much more than self-masturbatory writer behaviour in a sandbox environment like EVE.

The thing about EVE is that the hitch is usually what's most interesting; alliances collapsing because of director spies, huge thefts, scams and people skirting the lines of reasonable play is what make EVE the game it is.

If you wanted, you could've thrown your playbook out the window and thrown the Minmatar tribes into a civil war because of it, or you could have weaved an assassination into the story. As you stated in your devblog, the representatives were capsuleers, so the character dying wouldn't have removed them from the game universe to begin with. You could have just had them ship up and make another go at getting there in time for the conference and possibly incorporate them not arriving in time and being spurned.

You could have done any number of things with player intervention causing the death of one of the delegates. Don't use pseudo-invulnerability modules to facilitate creative laziness when it comes to live events.

Damn it all, now I'm agreeing with a Goon. What's the world come to?

+1

I love that CCP is doing live events, but we should at least be able to interact!

Instead of writing the story, write a scenario with any number of outcomes, depending on what players do.

Though that's how I approach my pnp RP, it is largely useless in an environment with as many players as this. The only place it'll take you to improvise everything on the march on such a massive thing as is EVE is to poor quality storylines.



Sure, it wouldn't be perfect, but it would even out the table between attackers and defenders as the second would have a chance to scout, analyze and look for targets like we all do when we are in combat with other capsuleer corporations. It could appear as a single "orange star" on the hud, like the enemy militia, and then in Local pilots would be flagged and people who defend could organize themselves to defend effectively.

I agree with what you say, and I don't think the idea of the flag was it to be a system to be used by itself alone, but one more tool with which to balance the strengths of both parties or, at least, give them a chance. Other options would have to be added, such as the route being possible to change on the fly, or escorts of NPCs, or whatever.

And, in any case, it is indeed very difficult to stop someone who has nothing to lose. The key, then, would be in consequences after combat, such as standings modifications, impossibility to dock in certain stations, higher prices on the market, etc.

There is another issue concerning the use of Devhax. The Tempest Tribal Issue ships themselves were created via Dev powers. They could have simply let them explode, warp the pod back to the starting station (or use a med clone if needed, after buying a new one with dev created ISK), hop in another Dev created TTI and started out again. Eventually the gankers will run out of ships. The Devs will never run out of ships.

How many Dev created ships can they use before its "Blocking players from having an effect"? Twenty? Ten? Two?

That's a good point. And it doesn't only concern the TTI. Pretty much every ship the dev actors would use would be either spawned or bought from spawned money.

The extreme alternative would be to completely rely on donations from loyalists. Which is actually an interesting idea, but I kind of doubt it's feasible, for example because the wealth/number of loyalist is unrelated to the empires lorewise economical and military power.

That's not what rulesets are in this context *snipped*. If that was part of the ruleset in the context I'm using it in (a D&D campaign) it would have been pre-emptively told to the players as part of the pre-story dialogue you invariably get when you have any homebrewed rules.

The ruleset in this context is the set of rules as defined by EVE's mechanics. Those are essentially the same as the D&D 3.5 rulebook. If it came up that in internal discussions the TTIs 100% had to make it there and the PCs threw a wrench in it, it's the job of a good DM to come up with a clever way to get his objective completed, despite the players' intervention, within the realm of reasonable play. Otherwise it's not much more than masturbatory storytelling as opposed to a live roleplaying event in a sandbox environment.

*please keep things civil* - CCP Eterne