Live Events Discussion

Often mentions (indirect or direct) in news game artickes helps alot. By example *capsuleers intervened in this operation, or helped with gathering that*

In this research race by example, a mention that a group of capsuleers under the lead of Guillome Renard tried to start an independant research program, to claim the spoils of new technology for themselves.

Due to financial activity in my wallet getting too complicated to work with (I shouldn't have done this on my main), I had to close my positions in relations to this campaign early. I have returned all outstanding donations as ISK. Everyone who donated blue loot received 50k per NNA and 200k per SDL (50k per point), except for two donors who requested blue loot back, ahead of time.

Thank you to all who supported this campaign. Watch this space after the EVE Vegas keynote for analysis, stats, etc.

No, we did not pull out. We successfully completed our campaign. The polls closed, the votes have been tallied. CCP was never - and they made this clear from day 1 - going to incorporate my drive as a legitimate contender in the race. This was a protest movement, a show of support for player-driven stuff, and a statement against the same old 'four empires' choices.

Since CCP was never going to do anything with your donations to me, I had planned from the get-go to return the donations to you all. I was going to wait until after the announcement, but I have records of who donated what and there wasn't any additional reason to delay (plus I had a nice kspace exit from my wormhole chain to work with, strike while the iron's hot).

Congratulations in getting mentioned on the Las Vegas stream, giving the result of the research race! Here's the image, showing all 5 contestants for the research race & the total points collected: Eve Vegas research race keynote image

I also like to thank the CCP devs who honored Guillome Renard's effort & that of his supporters by including their tally into the final result!

With all that is said: it's unveiled what we were donating for: Tech 3 destroyers! The winning faction (Amarr) releases theirs first, followed by Minmatar, Caldari and then finally the Gallente (who never seemed to be able to keep up with the others...)

You can read more about it here: 'The result of the YC116 Sleeper data research race!' where I give an overview of the final research tally & all we know about the Tech 3 destroyers for now, released on the Vegas Stream.

So, some analysis:

The Campaign:

We got stomped. Not really a surprise. As I've said before, this campaign had basically the entire deck stacked against it:

1. We started 12 hours after CCP's;
2. We had no universal channel of communication;
3. We had no guaranteed broker (NPCs to take contracts);
4. We had nothing to offer in either tech or fame;
5. etc.

Despite these challenges, our campaign showed very well until the final moments, when the Smart Money(tm) poured in. This is perfectly in line with my expectations. The way this race was constructed, the smartest move was to hold all of your donations until the last second and then pour them in all at once. This gives your enemies zero warning about your donation and you don't have to worry about a "holy crap, look at the Caldari, we better get our act together" bump showing you up.

Congratulations to the Amarr, enjoy your Tech 3 dessies in December.

This campaign was the first time I tried to organize anything on a global scale within EVE online and the experience was both rewarding and interesting to me. I will definitely be pulling shenanigans like this in the future.

For those who suggested (and there were a lot of you) that I look up Chribba, he did finally get back to me! Four hours after the donation window closed. I will definitely be looking him up for support of future events where security of your donations is a concern, but if he's traveling again or what have you I will do it myself if needed.

I was repeatedly called a scammer, lots of people rolled their eyes at and variously criticized my campaign as glory hounding, and worse. This did not surprise me in the slightest. What DID surprise me is just how little of this there was. I received ONE scam contract trying to steal blue loot from me (Newbie please, I've been playing this game since Exodus: Cold War), despite managing to reach some 50,000+ people through various channels of communication. Clearly I'm not important enough to troll.

How CCP Used This Campaign

CCP Fozzie was up front that they couldn't really offer a legitimate non-empire option and now in hindsight the motivation for that is obvious: New ships means new skills, those skills rely on the racial skills template laid down during EVE's inception, and so obviously they're not going to release a 5th-faction (pirate T3?) ship just because someone else wanted to make trouble.

Instead, CCP Fozzie and Falcon recognized the impulse that drove this campaign and gave us a tip of the hat mention during EVE Vegas - which I profoundly appreciate. It's not the interactivity that we saw during the height of A'J, but it's far from the cold shoulder that bittervet me anticipated.

But still...

How CCP Could Have Used This Campaign

The major objection I have to CCP Fozzie saying that we couldn't roll an independent option is a simple one: There are so many ways to tweak and tune a narrative, to introduce twists that do NOT change the material outcome that you've decided upon, but give room for minor actors (and I make no claims to being anything but) to make their dent in the thing. "Yes but..." is the sandbox GM's credo.

I give this whole live event a B+. It was a non-ti-di, indeed non-combat, decentralized effort and it has tangible (in the short run) impacts on the world. So kudos to them for that.

There's still a million questions pertaining to lore that are unanswered: How, exactly, have sleeper behaviors changed? Why can't those of us who interact with sleepers every damned day see this? How do these behavioral changes lead to the development of Veritech fighters^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Tech 3 Destroyers??

The players who donated to this campaign were looking to nudge the Lore more than to nudge the development of specific game mechanics.

I busted CCP Falcon's chops earlier in the thread to indirectly point out that he was too-narrowly viewing A'J and what it represented to EVE, to EVE's players, and what it could represent to CCP. Now I'm going to come out and directly say it:

A'J always was about more than wormholes; It was about players interacting DIRECTLY with the lore. CCP Falcon seems to miss the point, viewing it narrowly as a tool for releasing more wormhole-related content. This is better than not viewing it at all, but A'J is actually a model for dev/player interaction, it is a way to give players unique content and yes that can serve to introduce new mechanics, new toys, and other changes in game - but those are side benefits to its role as a way to engage players directly. That direct engagement is a draw.

CCP Seagull says you're challenging the things you thought you knew about EVE and how things had to be. I encourage CCP to expand this to their Live Events. Let the players be the stars of Live Events (which this one did a better job at than some in the past have) and be ready, once you open it to player interaction, for someone to take a wild left turn on you.

Parting Thoughts

Thank you, to all who participated. I will look into getting a page on the EVE wiki, and I will link to that page from my bio for all eternity. I will post the list of donors in this thread shortly.

I don't see why they can't make an SoE/capsuleer/other factionT3 destroyer because of this.

I wouldn't say you busted my chops at all, I'd more say you put words in my mouth, which you're doing again this time around. If you simply asked for my opinion rather than always assuming it, I'd be happy to give it.

I fully understand what A'J was about. I interacted with it directly as a player before I came to CCP, and have been a roleplayer in EVE since 2003. I know exactly what it means to the community.

The bottom line is that we simply do not have the manpower or resources to resurrect events on the scale that they were running in the lead up to Incursion. It's simply not possible, and the tools that were built at the time were constructed purely for the purpose of incursion related events.

We've had questions over and over about letting ISD volunteers run events again - this isn't possible for a multitude of reasons. We've had questions about repurposing the tools that were created for incursions - this isn't possible with our current resources, and furthermore any tools that were used would require significant work to even function again given the changes that have happened since the incursion events were running.

Caldari Prime alone took three months of planning, timetabling and execution by myself and CCP Eterne, including all the news and chronicles that were included. That was the two of us working full time, then CCP Affinity (who gives events a hell of a lot of support), Goliath, Delegate Zero, Abraxas and Gnauton pitching in wherever they could spare the time from their development duties.

A lot of people are under the assumption that it's super simple to run events in EVE. It really isn't. Events run now because they're a labor of love for the staff involved, and for the best part they're planned and ran in our spare time and have been for as long as I've been with CCP.

Thanks for the great post Falcon! And it does confirm what I mentioned in the Sansha live event thread, that currently CCP is unable to launch major events due to the absence of the Live Event team.

I do appreciate the effort you guys put in the recent events. Considering CCP staff has to prioritize and for obvious reasons running Live Events can't be high on the priority list, you still do great work. The Provist Manhunt & the Research race were neat events.
On the Research race, it was a great event to make players have an effect on the game, and for lorefolks/RP it does matter who came out with tech 3 destroyers the first.

On running events, I used to organize large scale events in another MMO, and yes, can confirm it's hard to do, alot of preparation, being ready for whatever shenigans people throw at you. Iin Eve it's double important due to it's open nature, with people insisting on finding ways to intervene in a matter you didn't originally intend.
Also stress in making sure people enjoy the actual event & co-ordinating your 'staff' during the events. Only once the event is over, organizers can relax (or not, when people are vocal about it)
Hence, I won't expect anything on the scale of the Sansha incursions, Arek'Jaalan or Caldari Prime Battle for a good long time. Instead, I'm happy to see events like this research race pop up.
Only thing I'd enjoy to see improved is additional ingame news articles, even fluff ones would be neat. Then again, writing isn't so easy either, especially not with lore you got to take in account & that ingame news articles are always canon.

In this case by example, I'm sure CCP had discussions internally wether to include the Independant's research into the Las Vegas stream or not, as it might create unrealistic expectations of people in the future, who all want to start up little things of their own, just to be able to efature in an offical CCP representation.
To cut it short, don't expect it, if you really want to get featured, find a way to rally the community behind you. The independents, in my opnion, got rightfully featured because it was a community effort.