Live Events Discussion

Supposedly CCP dropped some Gurista's ships somewhere that didn't really do anything, and died after taunting the local alliance who then dropped dreads on their heads or something.
There is supposedly a long term story playing out, but it all seems to have died and just become 'Story to explain the next expansion mechanics we want' rather than any actual story.
There are players doing their own events, but scope for your own events is limited without CCP involvement, since you can't get heavily into the lore without CCP Devs approving things, but people are doing club fight nights, I think I heard of a race recently and a few other things.
And yes, a CCP run event has more appeal, since it means it's 'official'. In the sense that they have made sure it is solid in the lore (or supposedly have anyway) and if we achieve something unexpected, the consequences from it will be real.
A player run event simply doesn't have that punch that a CCP Dev does, since a player has to Godmode to claim any NPC reactions at all, and that really doesn't work.

This, there was some talking in the Out of Charatcer channel (ingame) about events (both 'official' ones and player-run) and the Source book came up as number 1 reason for the silence on both fronts.
Reason being, the Source book will contain alot of new/solid info for various RP factions and it consumes alot of time from devs to collect it all & verify against conflicts.

So hardly anyone runs a player event atm that involves a story, as none want to see it cut short by the Source Book release.

Only player events that are run atm are either non-RP ones (the holiday celebrations drew in large crowds, including CCP employees in official capaicty) and the player run RP events are generally more meetingparties like: reveal of the newest flagship, charity-balls or events to announce a new project.

Latest CCP live RP event was the Gurista one (mid january), but that one was only noticed after it was over: Gurista Capsuleers Spotted! It's not even mentioned in the Live Events forum! That obscure!

Latest CCP run event was not a lore live event (early february), but a fleet training battle for new players: Concord organizes Fleet Training This is also the latest CCP event discussed on the Live event forums (Yulai Battle)

I do my best to keep track of all CCP events/actions in EvE & publish about it in my (in character) blog

"LIVE" Events, are scripted... which is to say they lack the possibility of players actually changing the course of events.

Ergo, "Live" = "Scripted" = "Pointless" in a game that ironically promotes itself as the ulimate sandbox where players make the story.

Just saying.

To add to above, the Caldari Prime groundbattle outcome is a perfect example of players affecting (scripted) live events. Gallente were supposed to win, but caldari would have none of it, hence the situation we have now, an strange eerie peace between caldari/gallente as both have won the battle for Caldari Prime.

Gallente won, as they have removed the single greatest threat to their homeworld, the Titan.

Caldari won, as they managed to hold on to the planet, despite overwhelming odds and no spacebound logistics, Caldari Prime remained Caldari.

For a course of peace, this was the best outcome, but for a story driven over conflict, it's kinda bad (it made the FW between Caldari/Gallente less sensible, no major conflict to drive it now)

several persons have said that the faction contacts don't seem to answer evemails anymore.

At least one of them, is no longer reachable by evemail, and is mentioned in news stories as having been removed from office.

But this hasn't been updated in the "Faction Contacts" thread, so it just looks like that particular contact is unreachable.

It kind of creates the impression that Live Events are a much lower priority now than they were. And that the Live Events staff have been allocated other duties that take priority over Live Events.

I can't speak for the Titan itself, I believe it was engaging the dreads mainly from what I could see but it was very confusing trying to keep track of everything, even with TiDi to help. Also given how badly titans track on sub caps it shouldn't really have tried to engage sub caps over dreads. But I know the Caldari Dreads engaged our fleet at one point, trying to target a BS. We were able to tank the BS through the fire though, as well Phoenix's are terrible at hitting sub caps. Just not 'quite' as bad as Titans are normally from what I've seen.

There were also player fleets operating on the Caldari side that were engaging any capsuleers that seemed to be against the titan, and certain caldari RP groups that made it into system that were being more discriminating in their targeting. So it wasn't a free ride for players to shoot the titan.

Not "implying" anything, I'm flat out stating a script exists to ensure a specific outcome. It made no difference at all, to the end result, that the players shot at the titan. The players were merely a crowd of "extras", their actions of no consequence aside from the obvious amusement.

C+ for effort.

Player activities, from the basic 1v1 right up to fleet fights of various numerical sizes, happen every day in EvE.

They aren't scripted, and they don't need some half-baked "Live Event" to give them a reason to happen.

No "live event" needed to get most people out of bed in the morning, fleet up and go blow crap out of the sky.

Funny how that works, all by itself.

I think that when an event is held by CCP, regardless of past experiences, we expect something significant to occur, a kind of 'quality assurance'. Even the mere chance of something significant occurring, or better; the chance of us making some kind of 'dent' in the world is what brings people into a live event hosted by CCP.
I think a lot of players don't believe that a player-hosted event can do that. Although some of the major 0.0 battles have told us otherwise, yet most event players I've known are focusing on Empire space.
And they're a large group of people, empire dwellers, who want to make their 'dent' just as much as the 0.0 players do.
On top of that, there is something that event makers and dungeon masters in dungeons and dragons have in common:
A lot of them focus on combat, and aren't that good at the other things one could do to tell an interactive story.
This creates the 'arena' feel that Nevyn is talking about. And I think that we can, and should, expect more than the combat oriented mediocrity from a CCP-run event.
My advice to CCP would be this:

Get a professional D&D dungeon master to design your events, hire him as your events creative director.