Live Events Discussion

Hi,

I participated in the live events leading up to Incursions and recently decided to try and relive the glory days and participate in events again. However, I've found that there are some fundamental differences between the events back then and the events now, which makes the current events much less 'sandbox-friendly'.

I'd like to explain how.

The Incursion events, possibly most importantly, where easy to predict. Not in terms of when and where, but in terms of what Sansha was going to be doing; opening wormholes over populated planets to extract civilians.
The reason this is so important is that by being able to predict it, players where given time to create their own place within the narrative.

The current events are much more diverse in nature, and show a much less clear progression over the course of multiple events. This means it's harder for players to plan ahead of an upcoming event and create narrative of their own that fits within what CCP is doing.

I can see how CCP is trying to create a list of which players support which faction, allowing them to group together, which is an important step, but it's missing something related to the point of anticipation and prediction I brought up earlier: motivation.

If you want these groups of people to move on their own and create something within the sandbox that is Eve, you cannot count on them caring about your story. They are much more likely to care about the stories they create for themselves.
I saw this happen during the Incursion live events, and it worked beautifully. CCP didn't even know that player-created story had caused a battle at Maut involving hundreds of players, until after the fact. But it was the CCP events that sparked it, and the player sandbox that carried it.

During the current events, it seems players are allowed to pick a side, but aren't doing much on their own to forge their own narratives within those factions that have an easily discernible impact on what CCP is doing. I've seen Grideris attempt to force peace through special tactics during live events, only to find out that CCP blocked him by using ships that where immune to this tactic, rendering his interaction null and void. The opposite of what the Incursion events did.

It reminds me of a problem that Dungeons and Dragons dungeonmasters can encounter if they want the players to go one way but the players want to go another way. A beginning dungeon master might say that you cannot go the way they want because something blocks their path, where an experienced dungeon master would let them go the way they chose and adapt his story to take place in the direction of the player's choosing.