Live Events Discussion

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2611282#post2611282



bolded the important bit.

I think people would like to know which arcs have been cut short, because many players may be expecting something to happen, which is no longer going to happen, because the arc has been cut short. The players may have people and ships held in expectation that they would be of use, but if a particular arc has effectively finished, then those things would be better used elsewhere.

Players are not NPCs, which makes waiting around for things to happen quite frustrating.

Players on standby to do stuff in support of a CCP-run thing, are losing opportunities to develop their own things which could themselves spawn interactions, and create other storylines.

I guess that, what I would like, is that in the event of a storyline arc being cut short, the relevant event actor would give a "stand down" instruction, via the relevant mailing list perhaps, which would allow involved players freedom to develop other things, which could then later serve as inspiration to other players and the live events team themselves.

That make sense ?

The Guristas Arc when Ohminen Sin's transport ship was ganked could have potentially gone on further if those on board has escaped. As well as that, the Blood Raider whitewash in Sahtogas kind of slowed things down in that respect, but no doubt we'll revisit it in future.

The Serpentis attacks on Evaulon played out nicely, but got a bit ganky toward the end when we deployed capitals. We also have one arc that's still ongoing due to player interaction, but a little bit behind the current events for now. An Angel Cartel pilot by the name of Erdrin Sostold killed himself and took out an entire battle station by sacrificing himself and blowing the whole structure up after a player roleplayed flooding it with troops during one of our Live Events.

His good friend and fellow angel Haltz Krisbrid, who's very bitter about the whole thing, swore revenge on said capsuleer and has been chasing him around occasionally, and watching him for the last few months. Hopefully in the near future he'll get to enact his revenge, he's already learning his local haunts and patterns of movement.

Then there was the arc over Christmas about the DED Investigation into the lack of CONCORD response to the Serpentis bombardment of Rilnais. We thought that arc was over, then a member of the RP Community just happened to petition the Federal Senate to pressure CONCORD to investigate. That spawned a three week chain of events over christmas that resulted in two small scale live events that took the shape of packs of DED Battleships patrolling the Caldari-Gallente border, and a chain of news articles that saw the Federation Navy Courts-Martial two senior Tripwire officers and dishonorably discharge them.

Then there's the I-RED news regarding the attack on the protest, plus a player created arc we assisted with that saw the disbandment of Wiyrkomi Honor Guard and the formation of Pyre Falcon Defence Combine.

It's been an interesting few months, and it's going to get far more intense over the next few

Now about that...

Well, I don't really see that as a practical way to look at things, because not every player is going to be able to be involved in every aspect of every event, even for their own faction.

Timezone constraints, work constrains, all kinds of things factor in. If a loyalist isn't available at a particular time to be involved in a particular event on a given day, then it's not like we're realistically going to hold it against them for it. We accept the fact that life has to be lived and that sometimes people can't make it.

I have a question: To what extend is CCP willing to alter game mechanics inside an event "bubble?"

For example, during the Tribal Delegates event, not only were the NPC ships given godmode modules but CONCORD came in and attacked the would-be raiders as well. I take it this has not always been the case? But other than moving an event through low/null, how can such events be made more... interesting?

Plus there is always the issue of random jerkoids who hate all RP mucking things up with their trolling. That, too, happened if you remember.

As an idea, I propose that CCP creates "live event tickets." Here is how it would go:

1) A live event is announced plenty of time in advance and a NPC contact is listed for those wishing to join in.

2) The live event is given a "code" and anyone interested in joining sends an automail to the NPC contract with this code in the title. This allows you to automate it and not get bogged down processing hundreds of requests manually.

3) On the day of the event all registered participants are given "tickets" to the event in their hanger. These would be items.

4) When the item is used at the proper location(s) and within the correct time frame, the player enters a different rules set as defined by the Live Event and until CCP declares the event concluded.

Examples:

An event requires the players to escort or attack a VIP ship during an hour long event. Depending on which side they picked when they signed up, they would enter into a pseudo-FW type mode with the players on the opposing team. CONCORD would not get involved and non-participants would still see them all as relatively neutral.

An event takes place inside of unique wormhole that was created just for this event. Ticket holders are e-mailed it's coordinates and only ticket holders can enter it. At the end of the event everyone is automatically dumped back out of the WH.

An entirely RP event takes place with players and NPC major characters debating some political issue. Only ticket holders can see the NPCs or their communications, which are moved to a special channel that only the NPCs (played by CCP) and the ticket holders can access. See "non-RP trolls" above.

Acceleration gates that can only be used by ticket holders can create the perfect conflict bubble zones for an event.

A live event taking place in a remote system in deep null can come with a ticket that, when used, teleports the player's ship into that particular system and then sends it back (assuming they survive) when the event ends. All normal gates in and out of the system are locked down for the duration of the event (if it's remote enough, no one will notice).

Using any of the above methods, live events could actually take place in Jovian (read: CCP) space as needed.

During an event transports on one side will be required to drop DUST troops onto a target planet while the other side tries to stop them. Participating DUST players will have their supply and numbers directly effected by how successful these assault transports are. Thus, a two phase event (three if you count extraction) that uses both EvE and DUST together in a completely new way.

As above, but the target is a NPC capital ship (Titan, Dread, etc) that one side is trying to capture. DUST forces play the marines attacking or defending the ship (Yes, make some new maps, dammit). Whether the ship is captured or not again depends on the results of both the EvE and DUST players together.

And, as always, these things would only exist to the ticket holders. Non-participants would not be able to interact with the planet or the capital ship. In fact, if you're really sick of clowns butting into the events you can actually make the participants & non-participants unable to target or damage each other during the event.

Yes, this would take some coding, but not to much: Most of it already exists in the FW mechanics and is really just a copy & paste with some editing added. The rewards, however, in terms of having top quality events, are more than worth it in my opinion.

That's all well and good, and I do agree that live event "wormholes", are a bad idea. However what about the other part of the idea?

If you don't want us killing NPCs all the time and cutting short story arcs, then why not give live event participants FW-esque tags so we can shoot each other instead?

New to the discussion, but after a quick glance.

Could you not set up a limited engagement between fleets, or perhaps set the NPC controlled fleet as valid targets in high sec (same as a belt/mission rat) so they could be shot at without fear of concord appearing. Or automagically generate a suspect flag on all the NPCs involved. Anyone that attacks them would get a limited engagement with the NPC.

I think you need to kick somebody over at crimewatch to get them to fix that above the law flag!

But as the new system is already in place, and is effectively tried and tested at this point, how much work would it actually be to add a new flag. Its not as if they are having to redo the entire feature from scratch.

Here's an interesting question.... why isn't there something like a revenge live event? :p Like, say there is a large number of goons or another corp that come to an event and trash it? Well, it turns out, they had some pretty powerful friends that are ticked off now, so after finding out who did it, a warning is sent out to them that someone is coming to screw with them as a consequence for their actions. They can ask for help, but also word could spread and bring their enemies into the picture. Now, it may seem a little mean to do, but hey, it'd be a consequence to their actions. Perhaps make people a little worried about interfering. Granted, you don't want to go overkill... like you wouldn't want to set it up on purpose to wipe out all of a power bloc's holdings, but hey, such revenge events would be fun. Hell, could be on the other side too, if its an event someone needed to be protected, the attackers could react in a similar way as well.