Live Events Discussion

Blah, I wasn't shooting for "drama".

I don't think think LE are a waste of time by any means. They could, however, certainly benefit from some programmer time. Controlling faction assets in a convincing way for instance (i.e. not shooting actors in their own faction during events) is clearly a difficultly. Dropships that are referenced by the actors but never seen, and, thus, cannot be shot down are another example. Logistics and suspect flagging can be problematic in some cases. W-space transportation logistics are, obviously, another issue. The list goes on...

From the various remarks it sounds like, the Illuminati team means to proceed without placing much (or any) programming burden on the rest of the company. I think it would be a mistake for CCP to allow this. Live Events have a lot of potential in giving players access to the fictional lore of Eve (in-game access to which is increasingly lacking), and, as long as it is constrained by clunky game mechanics, this potential will remain severely limited. On top of this LE has a long tradition of acting as an incubator for emergent game play: a spawning ground for new ideas about how (and why) to play the game. More and better tools can only help in this role.

If CCP wants to increase its player base, it should not be swayed by selfish arguments like the one that killed Incarna: "Why are you wasting Dev resources (that I payed for) on content that doesn't matter to me?" What this argument fails to consider is that there are others paying for those Dev resources as well and others still who might pay if they like what they see. Frankly, the last 1.5 years of development (paid for in part by my PLEX) have been spent on "content that doesn't matter to me". This doesn't mean that development of those things should stop, but it would surely be nice if at least something I want was built upon. Certainly, no-one who doesn't like the endless tactical abstraction of zoomed out space ship combat is going to bother paying for a subscription. Ultimately, if CCP wants to develop a wider audience, the first step is to have wider content. Dust is a great start to that.... Eve can be so much more than just the destruction of ships in space. CCP knew that once.

Live Events are a grand doorway promising creative access to influence the rich world of lore beneath the often shallow facade of the game. Right now that door is stuck open just a crack. It will stay that way only as long as the LE team is held back by a lack of appropriate tools. Whether it opens wide or shuts completely is up to CCP. Come-on, let them have a pry-bar.

I didnt manage to read through all the finer details of this thread and live event in W-space, but it seems to me that this could be done with a much easier and simpler solution than people are thinking about!!!

1. The best live events i've been to in recent times was the CCP fleets forming and roaming around low and null sec, this was awesome! Base the event on this!

2. Wh's have mass limitations, but CCP must be able to make wh's at whim, so choose a system thats uninhabited and has no people logged off in it, and with no system effect, this can be the host system just not a C1 for BS reasons.

3. Make some cool story about sansha going in to fight the sleepers for their technology or some Jove ships re-awakening after being held by the sleepers for eternity, or w/e.

4. Make a wh, just make it so when it collapses it re-opens again in the same spot, im pretty sure this can be done?

5. Tag the wh - You will enter but you may not leave!!! Let people enter and fight a CCP roaming fleet called w/e u want slavenations or sleeper elite's w/e.

6. Let people go in and fight and have to scan their own exits out causing mass mayhem after the event!!!

WIN

Just wanted to say that I'm overjoyed at how much attention, support, and participation live events are getting. Hats off to the devs running them and to all the players that make them possible.

CCP doesn't necessarily have to do massive events. They could do smaller random encounter type stuff that just happens whenever to random groups in various parts of space in ALL regions. Stuff like maybe somone is on a roam in null and they run into a Gurustas convoy, or people running sites in W-space and meet some unexpected sleepers who don't act normally and possibly even try to communicate.

It could be interesting for the people involved, and makes the universe seem less static.

I was just thinking about how to make wormhole events a success and was thinking the following:

If CCP selected a specific wormhole for the event to be in, that'd severely affect the current residents of the wormhole, which may well be seen as unfair.
But if the selection of the wormhole in which some event is to take place depends on the players in some way, that could be considered 'fair game'.
So what would the condition be?
Well, as an example, I'll use the theme of the current events: The empires are slowly becoming enemies even if before they where allies.
So what if the 4 empires asked the capsuleers that support those empires to establish a 'beachhead' in wormhole space for those empires, anywhere they like, and then after about a month, the Amarr will do some event in the strongest capsuleer beachhead wormhole system that pro-Amarr capsuleers could establish, and the same goes for the other 3 empires.
This stimulates player interaction, is player driven, and it means that the player participants of the events will have started gathering there a month prior.

Of course all the story elements of this example are just placeholder, and could be anything, but the principles are that there's a lot of advance notice, the players determine the place through playing the game, and a strong element of sandbox is present.

Why would anyone in their right mind leave CCP? Would you? :)

While I'd love help out with live events again, I'm busy over here in the States building a city for vampires to jump around in. Team Illuminati is doing a fantastic job, though; you should continue to experience and expect tons of fun live events out of them!

After months of all day and months of all night, I'm guessing its pretty easy to lose your mind in Iceland.

There should be a single C7 wormhole, with zero available moons, abundant connections to other wormholes (which spawn as end-of-life) and SLEEPER CAPS.

I had a few ideas regarding getting people through a WH. Likely they aren't so good, but with a little luck it might push things into the right direction.

As with most things, we have to look at who, what, where, when, how and why.

WHO:
Everyone. Events have to be open to everyone.

WHAT:
Wormholes. Involved would be a k-space hisec or lowsec system to make it available to the largest portion of the playerbase.

WHERE:
An entry point in low sec or hi sec, to a w-space system that isn't too inhabited.

WHEN:
After the current focus on the empire story arc.

HOW:
The tricky part. You would need access to a wormhole. As these pop up outside the control of the events team, they can't just be whisked up from nowhere. However, once a wormhole is found and if (this is a very big IF) the actors or a GM have the tools, the mass allowance and lifespan of the wormhole can be modified to allow it to remain open, so that actors can gather in a system in k-space, jump through and still ensure that players can follow after setup. The wormhole stats can be constantly modified to allow transit.

HOW... EVER! If this is not the case, then there is another way of doing it.

The Sansha events that were held included an LCO violent wormhole. Now, you can't magically turn an LCO into a real wormhole, but you can still use it after a fashion.

Think of it this way. An LCO violent wormhole is set up in a system where an event is to be held, say... Ashab planet 3 for the sake of simplicity (and to provide a warp-in point for players). Another LCO violent wormhole also appears in another system, like... J123456. We have two LCOs mimicking the appearance of an ordinary wormhole, but alas, they do not work as such.

Cloaked, 100km off of the LCO is a GM or an actor with the Godlike powers of a GM to move players.

Players approach the LCO and use a module against it. This should be something with an effect that connects the player's ship and the LCO, like an energy neutraliser, warp disruptor or something similar. This way, a player is interacting with the 'wormhole' and whichever GM is hanging around can see quite clearly that a player wishes to 'use' the 'wormhole' and can so move players from Ashab to J123456 (where they spawn at some random point IIRC). Naturally, limits must be applied, as a GM can't spend all their time moving players around, so perhaps the first 30 or so players to turn up get moved before the LCO is removed under the guise of the hole collapsing. You could quite happily say that energy neuts 'calm' a wormhole for safe-ish passage for the sake of lore, even though it didn't during the Sansha events.

Now you have players in WH space.

After the event ends, the process can be repeated (I found a wormhole back home! Warp to me!) to return players back to k-space afterwards.

WHY:
Currently, the Arek'Jaalan story has fallen over. An event like this could be used as a way of completing it (though I'm sure that there is no documentation on where AJ was heading prior to the AJ project lead leaving CCP, but an email to him might solve that) / stalling for time by staging an event to let the playerbase know that AJ hasn't been forgotten and will be looked at again in the future / or outright killing it by killing off Hilen Tukoss and stranding him somewhere or making him disappear.

There we go. One half-baked, likely pointless idea I thought of in five minutes.

This is a really good format for conveying an idea. Thanks for taking the time to break it down like this. You've also tackled it from an interesting perspective and I like where you're going with it. Will be filing this. Just a quick note - neither Headfirst nor Dropbear have left CCP.