Jita Park Speakers Corner

I brought this up to Seleene on Twitter, but I'd love an update on what's going to happen with Arek'Jaalan, if there's been a decision yet, etc.

And moar live incursions plz, kthxbai

For reference, this was my recollection of the Live Event Round Table at Fanfest (taken from this Freebooted blogpost)

"The Future of Live Events" Round Table

The jolly Scottish giant CCP Goliath led this session enthusiastically, supported by CCP Affinity, CCP Abraxus (aka Hjalti Danielsson, author of The Burning Life) and CCP Gnauton. CCP Goliath explained that the Live Events team comprised individuals from other disciplines who got together on an ad-hoc basis. It was CCP Goliath who was behind the organisation of the CCP Christmas caravan events.

There was an interesting portion of the session where the Live Events team asked for suggestions for future live events. At this point the creativity of the player base shone, with a multitude of suggestions from interwoven multi-event narratives to the idea of a market/industry event to finally get Malkalen station fixed. This was interesting as a precedent has already been set by the donation of 30bn ISK's worth of items which led to the construction of Arek'Jaalan Site One: Antiquus in Eram, Metropolis.

Enquiries about the status of Arek'Jaalan had a curious response. Whilst CCP Goliath pledged to continue A'J in some form, there was a more measured reaction from CCP Gnauton and CCP Abraxus. CCP Gnauton explained that Arek'Jaalan was very much CCP Dropbear's project and his alone, so no-one else was that familiar with what has come to pass thus far. That said, CCP Gnauton mentioned that CCP Dropbear's documentation of the project had been "meticulous" and it would be entirely possible for them to get up to speed if the demand was there. I may be over-analyzing, but I thought I detected a certain amount of reluctance in his statements. I smelt politics.

I had the chance to speak briefly with CCP Goliath after the session ended and I took the opportunity to discuss the possibility of crafting an audio-driven narrative around live events. I explained the concept of Tech4 News and how it was created to provide an alternative means of content delivery to be more inclusive and attract a wider audience to storyline events like Arek'Jaalan. I had a number of portfolio documents prepared and left some of them with CCP Goliath. If nothing else, listening to the Tech4 broadcasts will give him an overview of Arek'Jaalan to assist him in continuing it.

The Sansha Live events, have been one of the best dynamic social events in this game I have seen.

It encouraged alot of people to band together for a cause to either defeat or side with a certain protagonist


Any effort on CCP's part to bring back another live event is most welcome.


Now for what the story will be, there are alot of new things happening in the universe of New Eden.

Maybe it can have something to do with the Jovians investigating the Empires having Immortal foot soldiers.

Arek'jaalan was a failure, it should die and simply cease to be for the time being. It was more trouble than it was worth for many people involved. I'd most welcome more Sansha-esque events relating to the pirate and empire factions going at it together.

Arek'Jaalan was fine, where the people involved understood that it was about documenting obscure things in an In-character fashion, and not "hey dropbear, i've got this idea, please endorse it".


for live events, then with the development of CCP's "thin client", then there are possibilities, especially if you know about Zhek Kromturr, the player that runs some improbable amount of clients at once.

Idea being, One event team member, uses the "thin client" to operate a number of event characters simultaneously (thin client allows this sort of thing without the prodigious hardware requirements that Zhek uses for his fleet).

The event team member can then fly a fleet of ships to do some action or other.

Say: A serpentis patrol of some of the new Incursus ships when they're rebalanced. A group of 20 or so, whoosh through lowsec in the FW area, generally making a nuisance of themselves. Players go "what?" and engage, a good time is had by all.

meanwhile, other event team members, and other CCP staff, are doing this in other parts of the eve game universe, and at other times of the day.

I feel that Live Events should do something akin to what the chronicles did: drive forward stories about life in Eve. The chronicles typically did this with individual characters, but, with live events, CCP has the opportunity to use entire factions and, what's more, to let outcomes be decided by the player community.

The basic outline for a Live Event then should be something like this:

• A faction declares an objective.
• They define under what conditions the object will be considered achieved.
• They outline the outcomes (rewards/consequences) for those who aid them (or resist them).
• The actors for the faction take their actions (be this attacking with a fleet, building a base, stealing technology, hiding a network of probes... the key thing being that players can interact with and influence a part of the story that influences the outcome: ships, base, blueprints, probes, ect...).
• The players "decide" (either by force of arms or by cooperative interaction) upon the outcome.
• An outcome is realized in game that changes the landscape of things, be it political, social, or physical terrain.

The outcome could be something small like new stations, station services, or complexes being added to old systems, something more significant like a change in sovereignty that redraws the borders of empire or pirate space (not unlike faction warfare), or something the devs plan to release like new designs for space ships being "invented". In every case, it should be something everyone can see and appreciate but that no one can take singular credit for.

Most importantly, there should be more than one outcome for every event. Success, failure, or something no one even thought was possible in the beginning: the outcome of every event's should be contingent on the actions of the players involved.

*Edit: May 21, 2012
PS. Here's my Live Event Background to give an idea of where I'm coming from:
Faulx
Arek'Jaalan Site One
Project Compass
Project Atlas

I prefer the RP events, but they don't have to be big. Two dev created RP characters doing something in a system and/or talking to eachother and whoever is interested in some local channel can be an amazing immersion asset if done somewhat often.
Stuff like Arek'Jaalen is cool too.
And I loved this thing: Lost helios full of mystery. Small stuff like that is cool in my book.

I would like to see more events that appeal to more people than just combat pilots though.

What do you think Burn Jita, Hulkageddon and the Gallente Ice Interdiction were?

Oooh, one more thing. I also enjoyed the Malkalen and Pashanai events. Especially the Malkalen one inspired player run events (vigils and memorials) up to several years later. While I am not proposing we should have a major disaster every year, (that gets old and repetitive) an event that will have a similar long term effect would be nice.

Or something like a food shortage somewhere to bring out the more altruistic capsuleers, or a short plot where some diplomat defects to another faction, is escorted out safely by capsuleers, but later recaptured by other capsuleers (hmm, now I think of it, the whole Anvent Enturrer thing would have been great with player involvement (and they may not even have known what they were involved in)).

Quick comment on this - This session was the last one held yesterday and was VERY interesting and a lot of fun. Some of my best memories of FUN in EVE were things like being part of helping the Serpentis steal a Gallente titan. A lot of ~old days~ examples were discussed in this session and I'll be sure to find out exactly what info I can relay in my post summit / pre-minutes blog. Hopefully many of the ideas from this session become reality because it would = fun times for many people.