Live Events Discussion

I hear you. Those limitations should be known by CCP staff and taken into consideration when organizing an event. For the sake of fun and lore. And to avoid a lot of butt hurting . Or the alternative will be for the players to avoid participating since it wasn't a pleasant experience (mmmm, I guess that depends of what side of the gun barrels one was ).

Edit to reply the poster above: Thing with TIDI in a fleet w/o much cohesion is that will make it have no cohesion at all. That plus the lack of leadership transformed the high sec resemblance of fleets in some thousands strong mobs. Meh water under the bridge anyways. Thanks for explaining TIDI I'm looking to get back in game after 2 years of hiatus so I miss info about last developments in EVE.

Verdict from me is outright lies from CCP as to what actually happened on the Event.
CCP, if you are reading the thread, I'm highly disappointed that you couldn't publicly own up to the fact that you didn't allow for most of the high sec players to even get to the target zones before you called the event over.

Instead you are Retconning the event to claim that everyone had a fair go. Simply claiming it was so doesn't make it so. And by doing so you set a terrible stage for future events, where you can just make stuff up however you like after the event to claim it went how you wanted, without a care in the world to the reality.

TLDR. Get your head out of your ass CCP and actually answer the complaints about organisation.

Lol fame!

Regarding the dev blog, I am going to read it a few times.

Bearing in mind this will have been worked on and amended by everyone from marketing to legal it will take some time to see the message contained within it clearly.

I hope to see a commitment to fairness, a place for all, everyone heard and we are all part of the future.

Reading it for a First pass through it is looking good.


Edit: read a few more times and very encouraged, lol it's like being a kremlin watcher!

I completely understand the situation though, this is an extremely good bit of news we have been given.

and having the staging points in non-null but only one jump from the null target would have minimised the massive warp crawl

better still they could have had single ended gates that launch you into the system at a random location (explorer style gates like this are already in the lore I think)

then the empire fleets would have been popping up all over the place and the pirates would have had to track them down. Some empire fleets would have been nice too to show their involvement. As it was it was a pointless mass gank, and had nothing to add to the 'losing control' lore either. I went along thinking their would be some kind of story development, leading players through some things to see before the final engagement. It's a shame as they could have done a lot more with this I feel.

He addressed that important issue:

I'm not sure if this is wishful thinking or if you accidentally drunk your brain while you were toasting CCP in the last two days.



This basically amounts to:
- we did not reinforce the systems along the route we knew we would take;
- we purposedly forced the players to "trickle";
- we did not know where we were going;
- we didn't factor in the time needed for the people to arrive;
- we didn't realize we'd have TIDi.

But my favourite morsel must necessarily be this one:


So you didn't know where you were going, we didn't know where we were going, and you still expected to "pick up people" along the way; because everyone, seeying people "trickling" through a system, would think "hey there's people there, let's join them".
Also since we were trickling, how do you suppose one should've figured out we were moving to an event? And since we were going to null, how would you suppose one managed to clonejump, switch ships and join in? Did you expect us to jump to near-certain death fully equipped?

And you expected the hisec forces to win. That's why you've spawned npcs to help the pirates? Cuz it's known to all that nullsec veterans need help to fight off a bunch of uncoordinated, untested hisec bears coming in trickles to their turf.

Let me say that again. You thought that a bunch of ragtag fleets bunched up in hisec with mostly no clue, utter lack of organization, could've beaten organized nullsec blocs on their own turf after a long route that passed through known chokes and could easily be riddled with lowsec pirate raids - because it's not just nullsec blocs ya know, low sec has its share of "taken" pockets, that have no sov but are known to be hunting grounds for this or that corp/alliance. In fact there was at least one fleet of T3s camping alperaute.



You post the destination on Twitter, but you believe the null blocs needed infiltrators to figure out where we were going. Makes perfect sense...

Also, I'm glad you came out with your own solutions - and that they're much smarter than ours, right?

All this can be summed up with "ya know, we didn't really think about what would happen, just figured out it'd be cool". Which curiously reminds me of most Darwin Award Honourable Mentions.

I can't figure out if you're really that out of touch with the game (and I'm trying hard not to be offensive), or if you think we're drunken idiots.

Well, we've got our answer as we demanded. 'nuff discussing for my stomach.

So, I've read it once and these are my initial thoughts on "Operational Spectacle" as I dub it now:

This Dev Blog provides some of the background thinking into what the Live Event Team – Team Illuminati were trying to accomplish with this Live Event and that is due credit. I like that this was included.

"Leading to Rubicon" and the Lore
The fact that this Live Event leads into the Rubicon expansion is great from a RP or even just a player perspective to be part of that rather than just "Tadaa expansion is here" and that is also to be commended.

"Final Destination and Movement"

Deployment to Null Sec and Inclusion
Inclusion of both Hi-Sec, Low and Null type of play styles is always good but you have to bear in mind that going into Null with a "Kitchen Sink" fleet is always going to end the way that this event did and by that I mean you are handing essentially risk free kills and CONCORD Bounty Payments to those in Null (unless they are countered by another Null Entity who chose that time to attack them which would lead to some very interesting developments). These Live Events will always be in favour of the Null Blocs insofar as they can Titan Bridge and be set-up (as was experienced) in less time than I can jump one system at 10% TiDi. I am extremely interested to read that Titan Bridging for these events will be considered as that would be something unique that some of us have never seen except on a stream (I've been playing for 10 years and never Titan Bridged or even seen one!). Further on this point this would not remove the Null Blocs interaction or interdiction of players once they were in the target system but would ensure that fleets could get there without the grind through TiDI that was experienced on "Operational Spectacle".

TiDi Hell

I have to give some respect to CCP Goliath (and Team Illuminati) admitted that they fubared on reinforcing the systems:

"That said, it would have been unnecessary if we had reinforced the staging systems correctly," which does raise questions of the below quotes from the same Dev Blog:

1) "Unfortunately we did not account for time dilation in this calculation and they ended up being too long. This is something we will improve on in future."

Relay Communications

This is linked in the Dev Blog and was the message I got through backchannels of comms from Twitter "Attention mass of people in Sarum Prime. We kindly ask you start trickling over to Ihal for the event. #eveonline #tweetfleet". Now, rightly or wrongly, I assumed that this meant that Sarum was now closed due to numbers (I had already had to relog and had to elect to be moved to Irnal due to numbers in system) and that if you wanted in then a new staging area was being setup in Ihal. I still tried to verify the contents of this message as I was in Irnal trying to secure Fleet Members with my FC and WC. Clarity of communications should be as important as the communication itself.

"This trickle effect worked well and helped deal with server load." While this may have been the desired result from an infrastructure perspective from a customer experience it was both confusing and a bit in favour of those hooked into those streams at the time. I'm lucky to have two monitors but some are not (or play on a laptop) and some might not even know that Twitter and Facebook are available on the IGB (YouTube certainly isn't ) and I can include myself in that crowd. Thus it favours those who do know and gives them an advantage over those who don't on getting ahead of the pack so to speak. But then again...who wants to be first to jump into Null.

This information, while I appreciate you wanted this effect, serves to only confuse and exclude some people who may be turned off in future if this is how communication will come through. I personally had 3 extra channels open that day (Live Event, Out of Character and Intergalactic Summit along with the usual Corp, Local, Constellation and in addition to those I had Fleet and TS3 chatter. Now that's a lot of communication channels and now I have to add Twitter and Facebook and whosay and whatever other social media you may use? Twitter is bad as it's restricted to 140 characters and that is not a lot of space to get clear and concise information into (believe me, I've tried!) and clear, concise communications are required.[/i] A possible solution to Sarum Prime being over populated may have been to "spawn" a new staging system in an RP perspective such as "Capsuleers, Fleet Commander 'Xtreme Prejudice' has declared an auxiliary force is forming in Ihal and you are hereby requested to volunteer your services". This would've gotten people to trickle over while maintaining the fleet in Sarum Prime. The Twitter communication only delayed what you were trying to prevent and only for a very short time frame. Excited people were forwarding it (after they had got in warp I imagine) and so it spread like wildfire.

Overall first impression: A lot of information to go through and over again as I don't want to jump on the "CCP Bashing" wagon but I will say that there is no apology of substance in this thread apart from the "sorry you didn't make it" comment and that is a bit of a smack in the face for those that have posted for 7 days in this thread and across the forums and social media to get the IG and IRL concerns, complaints and opinions put across.

Forum ate my post. C&P 4TW. This is very much TBC and a WiP feedback (lack of space).

Anything compared to the stonewalling that we had is an improvement I agree but if you were abused everyday and then suddenly you got one day of not being abused would you give thanks to your abuser for that day off? No, well now look at this from a different perspective.

I do share the 'where we are going' philosophy but we cannot and should not forget the past: Not T20, nor Incarna, nor ToS, nor SomerBlink, nor the IWS or the other incidents that have hit CCP and EVE Online in it's time and neither should CCP. We remember so that it doesn't happen again or so that we can engage, resolve and return to the journey we are on.

I am still reviewing the Dev Blog but I'll give credit and appreciation where I think it's due as you should but I am by no means completely satisfied that this Dev Blog answers all my questions, concerns, grievances or complaints but I will post in a constructive manner.

Ummm not quite the response I was expecting.
All I will say after reading that is next time you do a live event
Don't do it half assed and put more time in to planning it.