I’m not a RP snob, but even my suspension of disbelief potion runs out sometimes.
And this is precisely the point I was trying to make. I could easily justify “being a Klingon” using EVE’s lore. It’s quite diverse and expansive. But clearly defies the in-game mechanics and certainly pushes the boundaries of established lore… not to mention being downright derivative and apocryphal.
Does that make the in-game mechanics restrictive? It does. But at the time it also provides a common ground for all players. A level playing field to guide RP and help prevent people’s suspension of disbelief being overloaded.
To simply disregard those people because it breaks their immersion is what I’d call being an “RP Snob”…
I don’t give a ■■■■ what you think I said. I stand by what I actually said. This conversation is over, for my part, at least…I have said what needed to be said.
What you exactly and actually said is still wrong. It is the same in any MMORPG, not just EVE, like you said.
And while we’re at it, like I said, I agree with you, mostly. But MMORPGs are different than pen-and-paper RPG’s, because the medium simply eliminates some of the imagination. Computer games restrict roleplay by creating an established relatively rigid framework that all the players need to some extent follow. The framework can be bent a little, but not out of shape. It’s not just MMO’s, single player RPG’s are the same, you can rarely create exactly the type of character you want, or react to events exactly how you want, but you roll with it.
From my perspective you’re advocating for a RP anarchy where anyone can claim to be whatever they want to be, and other people are just supposed to swallow it with no objections.
I don’t think it is too much to ask that people don’t pretend to be the leader of armed forces of established in-universe nations, if they can’t actually back it up in-game, which they most likely can’t. Or something similar, where they try to impose authority they don’t actually have over other players in RP.
I’m not saying people can’t claim positions of authority or outlandish character types / races you can’t actually play - but it needs to be portrayed well, at least so that it is believable from in-universe standpoint. And they should not try to godmod over other players through this.
People can accept a lot of “unconventional RP”; we have, what, at least 3 community accepted AI characters that I know of (probably more) even though AIs are illegal in the lore. I don’t personally agree with this, but I try to minimze my IC interaction with them. Don’t like someone or something? Don’t interact with them, it’s that simple.
TL;DR: If you don’t like something, don’t participate in it. Don’t try to smear an entire community just because it won’t bend over backwards to your whims.
If I can make one contribution to this topic it would be to remember that if you are a capsuleer you are extremely powerful, special, and chained down by the laws of the system. So when it comes to RP as long as you stick to the basics of being a capsuleer no one will get on your case. Look to the in universe rules of a character, and go from there. Things like Capslueers using a pod to fly there ships. The fact that the shops we fly are not the entire gambit of ships in the universe but only the ones that are able to accept the pod. EVE RP is at its best, and you will get the most out of it when you are creative within the rule set. The small set of rules the lore has made, not what players would prefer. (And I certainly don’t mean any of this to be derogatory to any amazing player made content out there.)
“TL;DR: If you don’t like something, don’t participate in it. Don’t try to smear an entire community just because it won’t bend over backwards to your whims.”
I have no idea what the ■■■■ you are talking about or addressing. That whole post is responding to who???
If a player claims they are A BLOOD RAIDER, I accept it.
If a player claims to be Sansha, and to have met kuvakei (many peoples players HAVE due to gm run events) I accept it. Secret gm events are commonplace in eve.
Whatever you’re going on about has nothing to do with what I was talking about, it sounds like you’re literally talking to no one in this thread. Completely incomprehensible.
Same as above. You can claim to belong to a faction or at least be their groupie, no problem. Probably meeting a very lore relevant character too, ok.
However, I’ve never heard of these “secret GM events” in all my years in this game, and I don’t believe I’m that hated that I’ve just never been told, even by accident. If CCP does events they’re always public, because of the decrying of exclusion of other people that would follow if something like that came to light. Unless you mean somekind of private correspondence between NPC contacts, but you have to be relatively deep to even know they exist.
So you were talking about those two specific examples above of declaring oneself to be a blooder or a sansha, and nothing else, at all? Ok then. I just took a broader scope to the reply because there are tons of other things to consider as well. Sorry if it confused you. Though honestly at this point I’m not sure which of us is more confused.
EVE is not like other MMOs. Other MMOs are built with a very clear line between ‘this is the game’s lore, and this is out-of-character gameplay’. EVE was not built that way. It was built in a way that everything in-game is IC. When you die and respawn, that’s IC. When ships change models and stats, that’s an in-universe retrofit. Third-person view is camera drones. When a bug like the Bright Star happens, it’s remarked on as an IC event and has news posted about it (talking about the original Bright Star here; Caroline’s Star was a separate thing and not a bug). OOCers and their names and activities are regarded as real in-universe characters doing in-universe things, and our employment histories are ergo IC things.
This is one of the biggest appeals of the game, to me. The fact that everything you do is IC. Complete immersion. It’s different, and there’s absolutely some drawbacks to it (limitations on what people can play and what stories they can tell), but it is in my eyes a positive, as it makes this the only game that I feel lives up to being a real alternate reality. Well, mostly. It’s been getting less and less as the years go on and it creeps further from simulation and more to game.
There is certainly some stuff you can make up. Typically anything that occurs on a planet, because that doesn’t affect what happens in-game. But anything with regards to space is limited with what’s there in-game, because every other player can see what you do in space and call you out on it. What you do in space, is IC. You’re not a big bad pilot ace unless you actually go out and pvp. You shouldn’t say you’re an explorer if you’re not exploring. You shouldn’t claim to be delivering supplies unless you actually go buy those items, stuff them in a transport, and ferry them through space. And you shouldn’t claim to be a military officer when player characters are defined in the game’s lore explicitly as independent capsuleers. The closest option for player characters are the militias. But these aren’t military; a private militia is not military. We’re privateers: mercenaries and pirates handed space letters-of-marque granting us license to prey on enemy vessels (within limits). A player character could be a former military officer, who is now retired and living out their life as an independent capsuleer but still occasionally choosing to answer the call as a private citizen, but they are not active duty.
Similar with Sansha and Blood Raider characters. They are certainly aligned with those groups, they support them when the chances occur, but they are ultimately independent operatives, not formal members. Sansha-supporting player characters are not hooked up to the hive mind. They can be recognized and approved of by the NPC powers-that-be, but they are independent, deniable agents.
They are absolutely Serpentis loyalists, but not formal Serpentis members. It is the same thing in PIE. We’re the oldest Amarr-loyal organization, but we are considered exactly that: independent loyalists. We are not Imperial military. The closest thing we have to a true military officer is Ascentior as he was given an honorary Fabricator General rank by NPC actors for our work in the T3D research race.
Well there’s a difference between being a sworn vassal (where you are bound by your own oath to serve and it is by your honor that you uphold that oath), or being a citizen of a nation, and being a formal member of an NPC organization. If I claimed to be, say, a member of the Ardishapur Navy, then I would expect people to call me out for it.
To use an example of this topic from my actual experience, I developed Samira’s backstory to have her live a decade in the Republic purely because the game limits schools by race. I had to come up with a viable backstory for why an Amarr-born-raised-and-loyal Minmatar got her capsuleer schooling from a Republic institution. Trying to claim that my character studied in an Amarr school when her public record said otherwise would have broken my immersion, and the immersion of others.
Raised and educated by them–an alumni–certainly. Publicly supporting them, absolutely. But an official card-carrying member of the Society’s operational structure? No. By lore, we’re independent capsuleers.
But independent capsuleers can still be many things. We can still come from many places, hold many loyalties, and choose to act as we will. We can be recognized for our efforts, or chided for our interference. We’re just not part the formal hierarchy of those organizations.
… Now, all of the above being said, I do wish the game still operated like it did in the early days. In the early days, you could join any available NPC corporation. This vastly opened up the amounts of character stories possible (we’re still independent capsuleers, but there’d be more support for closer ties to NPC organizations). Unfortunately, this was removed in the name of condensing players so they could have better social experiences. An early case of the simulation being reduced in favor of game-oriented choices.
Before I post this out - Let me just point out that my main, Avio Yaken, claims no membership of any NPC faction.
And before I put out my arguement that people should be allowed to claim membership - Let me put my credentials on the table and say that I do in fact own a character that does have lore membership to an NPC faction.
Fendisteel is the callsign of my EVE:Vallyrie persona. A immortal fighterpilot that’s a member of Schism. While the game itself pushes to say your a member of the Valkyrie. I cut my way out through by writting a book worth of short stories, and evolving player Invovled storyline called the “wormhole conflicts” using the game’s weekend “wormhole” events.
When i started going around the Valkyrie community saying I was with Schism - never saying once that was a sympathizer but out right claimed membership of Schism. Devs didn’t ignore me - they encouraged me and promoted my writing in news articles and dropping links on their official Twitter account. Even devs like the narrative designer played along with my allegiance.
Eventaully… They drop that video when they brought the V.A for Fatal to do more work for the most recent expansion. They acknowledge all the RP I did without confirmation that I was with Schism until this moment where the leader of the fa tion himself name drops me.
I even took bold risks with my writting and RP. I made several characters in my work that were apart of this faction including a figure of authority called @Clance_Gogne - say what you want about the character, but I ■■■■■■■ love him and will never pass over an opportunity to write or RP as him.
But Clance was a character that never got confirmation of being with Schism. But had more center stage role than Fendisteel had. He was made so I never had to evoke Fatal. Who recruited Fendisteel? Clance. Who gives Fendisteel orders ? Clance. This character was relevant of day 1 of all my work and I kept reusing him in future content. I made him so I didn’t have to use Fatal - who I never once wrote a line of dialogue for. I made people of authority out of respect to offical characters.
So I beat this nonsense where I can’t claim membership of an NPC faction. I just did it and they eventually adopted at least one of my characters.
Now to argue why some players should be able to claim membership…How does any NPC Capsuleer claim membership? Like, you wanna talk shoehorning your character into a faction? Where did all these invisible capsuleers coa from and how come they get to be in the faction? How is the alpha project funded by navies but no PC can be apart of the navy despite them having entire squadrons of Capsuleers?
NPC Capsuleers that never once in a player corp somehow get the privilege of being a member of a NPC corp? Why? Who are they? What have THEY done to deserve an invite? Theres plenty of line members that are Capsuleers apart of the pirate factions and navies but we never see them until a live event.
I didn’t let fear of not actually being a member in game stop me from playing characters and telling stories I wanted to write. If tomorrow I want to make a Guristas alt? I will make a Guristas alt.
P.S - When Fatal says “In fatal we trust” at the end of that video? I coined that first as a slogan for pilots of Schism.
Let me preface this in order to make sure that I don’t intend to devalue anyone’s hard work, player, dev, communities, volunteers. Absolutely not. My venting is always towards the upper management of CCP who seems to think cutting from community management and story development is the best way to save money.
The key difference here is that you put up a stupendous amount of work for it. Most people can’t or won’t. CCP’s lore devs just about always reward hard work, and while I know nothing about Valkyrie’s community team I don’t think it’s too much to assume it was smaller than EVE’s, which is already small. So namedropping someone and incorporating some of the stuff they did by contributing a lot to the games lore is the least they could do.
I’d like to point out that you, by your own words, did a lot of background work to establish your character and made sure you didn’t use established major lore characters to “fast track” your character to legitimacy. That is a great! job! I don’t see why people would have a problem with that. That’s what I meant with well portrayed believable characters.
Now imagine you told everyone you “just are” in the Schism and Fatal-senpai is your BFF, I’m fairly sure people wouldn’t have been as accepting and Valk devs might’ve ignored you.
Again, the key thing here is perhaps character development. A lot of things that aren’t exactly in the EVE Prime Fiction can be worked around with, but it requires some extra work so that people will accept it more readily. Is that fair? Maybe not. But from my experience this is how it’s always been in MMO’s, if you want to bend the rulesets of the game, you need to put in a little extra bit of work, if not, you’re making everyone else do the bending for you.
Long and short is it’s a lot stickier than that. Like, most of the time I personally won’t have issue? It’s when people start using their backstory as a cudgel. Like, sometimes, you get people who RP CONCORD and demand you obey their whims because they’re CONCORD. At which point, I think it’s fair to just shrug and go do your own thing.
RP is a cooperative, gestalt exploration of a fictional universe. Honestly, as an individual, the objective is never to tear others down, but to build a world those one plays with. vOv
And usually, hey, whatever folk want to RP, it’s no skin off my back until they attempt to impose something on me unasked or unwanted.
Hi! Well this topic certainly went places, with no shortage of wisdom to bear in mind when portraying a capsuleer I’m sure. Thanks to everyone for their points of discussion. What Samira said about joining NPC corps is kind of intriguing - shame they don’t let us do that now, since that would seemingly diffuse the disbelief surrounding certain characters.
There isn’t a single NPC corp in the game that would have a reason to refuse a capsuleer’s loyalty and service. You’re basically trying to prop up your argument by assuming two things.
All capsuleers want to be independent.
All corporations and factions in Eve would refuse capsuleers as one of their own.
The GM’s, thankfully are not that stupid. They are, however, limited by their resources. They do not have the ability to give us everything that would be nice to have. And yes, there are private invitations sent to groups by gm’s, all you need to do is join with a RP corp corresponding to the organization you want a personal invitation to.
"As a RP Lite corporation we try and build an interesting storyline around our ingame actions but unlike regular roleplaying corps we generally do not actively roleplay outside of CCP events. Members are of course welcome to do so if they want to buy all corporation and alliance channels are ‘out of character’. One of the advantages of being an RP corp is that we get called in by Serpentis & Angel Cartel commanders to join events related to them."
I don’t call that exclusionary, I call that GOOD DM/GMing. I want my fellow roleplayers to be singled out for their dedication to a certain faction. IT makes the whole RP scene healthier and happier.
And yeah, Eve may not be like any other MMO but roleplay is roleplay is roleplay is improv theatre…those who try to drag the extremely diverse nature of reality down to the limitations of the game don’t understand even the most fundamental reason why we do improv theatre…to expand the boundaries of the technology’s limited mechanics into the realm of the human mind itself. To try to make RP fit the limited game mechanics is putting the cart before the horse, quite frankly.
There is no difference between claiming to be a sworn vassal to Ardishapur and claiming to be a rank and file Sansha…
You just admitted to making up all kinds of ■■■■ to make the roleplay better and more engaging.
In a game where half of the dedicated roleplayers put extremely OOC ■■■■ in their profiles, tons of real life references in silly threads on the IGS (Sansha Claus during Xmas, famously) and the rest either don’t RP at all, or RP within such narrow parameters they don’t even come across as real people, I would much rather people just broke away from the user interface and treated it more as a stage. As for the old Earth stuff I’m sure there’s plenty of Iphone X-1000’s that were filled to the brim with media for bored space people. With the amount of stuff we have on primitive cultures like Sumer, I have no doubt that tons of Earth period content existed - 20,000 years, but 20,000 years followed by a wake of massively impressive technology means - lots of archaeological resources. Plus, it’s fun and silly and and you know what a game is supposed to be?
■■■■■■■ fun.
For my own part I really don’t give a ■■■■, since I can always ignore the pinched types, but if someone wants to claim they are a Sansha, I will give them the benefit of the doubt to see where it leads.
At least people stopped accusing me personally of defending myself…I have never actually had any of these problems but I see our complex and innovative villains constantly being shoved out of the IGS for RP’ing non-mechanics villains (individuals who claim to be Blood Raiders or Sansha) and it sucks…without an enemy our RP is pointless hurfblurfing - like Robin Hood without the Sheriff of Nottingham or something.
Maybe I should have clarified better. When I say ‘independent’, I don’t mean ‘you can’t be a loyalist’. I mean, legally independent. Player capsuleers are considered sovereign independent entities by CONCORD and the four nations. We are basically each an individual nation state. The policy that enacted this state is, if I recall correctly from EVE Source, the same date as EVE’s launch, as it was the creation of that policy, along with the merging of the capsule and clone, that lead to the explosion of the capsuleer class and the setting of the game world. We, the players, are those capsuleers. Further policies, coinciding with early major patches and expansions, granted independent capsuleers even more rights… such as the right to colonize null security space and set up outposts, planetary industries, and so on. Such basic things as our ability to move unrestricted throughout all of New Eden space is a policy enacted specifically for independent capsuleers. We are not just characters in New Eden, we are specific class of people.
The various corporations don’t refuse capsuleers, yeah. But ones officially part of those corporations are NPCs, not players. They are the NPC dev actors, along with the thousands of other corporate/military capsuleers. While player characters can and do still provide voluntary support, players can still be patriots and actors in achieving that group’s goals, we’re legally independent. We can choose to serve (in the form of missions and the like) everyone equally or to restrict our service to just one group or collection of groups. What player characters do not have is a corporate contract or military commission… if we did, very basic aspects of our interaction with New Eden would be different because of the restrictions such a thing would impose.
You said that capsuleers are special. And we are. That special status is encapsulated in our legal status as independent capsuleers. It is that status that gives the player characters such huge freedom to do as they will. If anything, it is this very status that makes us more valuable to the NPC corporations than their own corporate capsuleers, because, while we’re less reliable, we have absolute freedom of movement and are practically above the law. Plus, we are able to make tons of money from running our own economy, and the NPC corporations make bank off of the taxing of that.
Roleplay is roleplay, and roleplay is immersion, to me. EVE is built to have nearly everything you see in-game be part of the in-character universe. That when you are online you are not imagining your character’s experience, you are living it. As mentioned above, EVE Source ties virtually ever major feature to an in-universe policy addition. Your Neocom interface is an IC device… you can get the physical hardware as an item from planetary industry, and the various functions players have with it are described in one of the chronicles. The game’s wonky space physics have all been explained, even the way a big ship sometimes slides sideways while entering warp, with the PEGs. In other words, EVE is a game, that to me, has always been one where what you see is what you get. Even if what you see is kind of derpy (like non-RP names or joke religions like Bob), they exist within the world and are thus an IC part of it.
So when I see something that asks me to ignore what I see (like someone wanting to, say, claim they are not a combat pilot but are clearly in space running combat missions), I can’t.
To a point, yes, but again, holding citizenship is completely different from being a member of a corporate or military structure. There is no issue with someone playing a citizen of Amarr, or a citizen of the Angel Cartel. There is also absolutely no issue in someone playing a patriot of that group and engaging in actions in their name. A person could fly the colors of the Cartel, run a Cartel-loyal corporation, and claim their acts of piracy are done in the Cartel’s name. They can be considered, in all intents, a Cartel member. What they are not, though, is a member of the Salvation Angels or one of the other NPC Cartel corps. Just as my character is not a member of the Ardishapur Family corporation (the immediate family and its support staff).
Rank and file Sansha is a bit more difficult, though. Rank and file Sansha are controlled by a TCMC that breaks their will and turns them into mindless drones. I could see a sleeper agent kind of Sansha though, who masquerades as an independent capsuleer but does have an implant and does report to the Nation. Or even one that publicly declares their loyalty, as True Slave Foundations do (though I wouldn’t call them rank-and-file).
There’s plenty of room for creativity in this. I am not against people doing that at all! All I’m against is people claiming things that are counteracting against the game’s setting, in the name of preserving the immersive nature of that setting. I’m not saying people can’t be part of these groups. No, you can, you just have to account for the fact that you are not a direct corporate employee/officer… because if you were, you’d be part of the corporate structure, listed in your employment history as belonging to the corporation, and subjected to the various restrictions that non-independent capsuleers face (such as the lack of open travel and other legal amenities that are given to independent capsuleers).
And those are IC things. Sansha Claus is an IC thing. The wormhole deity Bob is an IC thing (mentioned directly in the first Scope News video CCP put out). Hell, even ‘the Russians’ are an IC thing. That is the environment EVE has created. All of these things are accepted and considered part of the lore, because their actions affect the people inhabiting this universe (the players).
That is the charm of this game. Everything you do is IC.
I have fun? These are the things that attracted me to EVE, making it unique compared to the other MMO RP communities out there. The fact that everyone, everywhere, doing anything, is part of the universe. That everyone is a roleplayer, whether they know it or not, and that everything I witness in space was IC. That everything I want to do with my character I have to back up in space.
So do I. I just treat them as a supporter of Sansha, with no official Sansha authority. Just as I am a supporter of Amarr, with no authority in the Amarr government, military, or any of the NPC corporations.
I have not seen much of that, in my experience. Perhaps you have seen differently, though.
I don’t understand what you mean by ‘non-mechanics villains’ though. They’re not ‘non-mechanics’. Every person claiming to be a Sansha or Blood Raider is still a Sansha or Blood Raider. None of them that I’ve seen have been told they’re not blooder or sansha. But neither have any of these groups that I’ve seen claim to be members of the actual corporate structure. True Slave Foundations for example, the foremost Sansha RP group, don’t claim to have an actual direct link to Kuvakei’s hive mind (they do have their own internal one within the TSF corp, though), nor do they claim membership in one of the Sansha NPC corps. They are also not prosecuted by CONCORD as actual Sansha members, they are given all the rights given to any other independent capsuleer: Freedom to move about in anyone’s space without being fired upon so long as their personal/corporate security status is not in the negatives. Does all of this make them not Sansha loyalists? No. They’re absolutely Sansha loyalists. They are patriots and supporters of the Sansha cause. They just do so from their independent position. (The exception is one guy who got multicloned, with the NPC clone joining the NPC corporation while the PC one remained an independent capsuleer doing Sansha’s work from the outside)
For my part I’ve never intentionally gone after someone for not RPing as I feel appropriate. I just have my own viewpoints on this subject, which I put forward when it comes up in discussion (like here). I do try to suggest alternative methods of achieving what people want without doing such in a way that runs counter to the game world (such as I did in the Ammatar thread), but attacking someone and driving from RP is the last thing I’d want to do.
I hope you understand that this is just my approach to RPing in EVE. I’m not trying to condemn anyone, and I apologize if I’ve given that impression.
The only woman in eve who can match me in the wall of text roleplay chat competition.
I was going to say person but Ashlar gave me a run for my money the other day for 2.5 hours straight trying to convince me Varrinox the character was a good guy…
Anyways good glad we agree. Iffy on the “everything we do is ic bit”
If someone starts talking about the most recent Superbowl, I’m not going to regard that as eve universe content whatsoever. Also, what about imperial ooc?
Yes I know I’m on my other character now but it’s a pain to switch on my tablet…
Well, 100% everything IC might be going too far. Chat channels and so on obviously declared as OOC can be considered such. But even this has to be considered to a point, because there’s always the risk that someone starts taking something that was expressly OOC and allowing it to influence their in-game behavior, making it become IC even if its origin is… suspect. Somewhat common among RPers with IC reactions to OOC drama. So while I personally try to uphold IC/OOC separation here, if it starts coming up in any meaningful way IC it ends up having to be addressed regardless. Essentially: the nature EVE makes it hard to really keep two distinct arenas. Tthings on, for example, reddit or twitter can turn into major issues in-game, mostly among non-RPers who don’t naturally hold to IC/OOC separation but as these issues affect the EVE universe it is still in-character in some way. For my part, I try to stay flexible. I’ll treat something obviously OOC as OOC, but I’m always ready to have to figure out a way to rationalize its IC existence. In the case of the superbowl for example, that’s easily just viewed as some in-universe sporting event, but for OOC channels it gets harder. For this reason I consider anything I say, IC or OOC, to be liable to be used against me in-character, and to try to not allow myself to get too worked up over it.
In short, it’s complicated. Interesting, but complicated.
Sorry for slow replies, I just got out of surgery a few days ago.
The igs thread about a weird black box is an example of the kind of ooc nitpicking that sucks away the enjoyment from the game. Yes we all know that game mechanics mean that only players can kill off characters, and because the thread doenst have CCP actor tags, then it’s a player made thing that probably doesn’t really mean that much in the grand scheme of things, but what good does it do to keep pointing that out and calling everyone delusional that takes it credibly.
Playing along to see where it goes might be fun.
Pointing out it’s not possible goes nowhere and is no fun for anyone.
My response on this is a six of one half a dozen of the other thing.
Creating an agency powerful enough to get into independent capsuleer cloning bays and shut them down is really realm of the Devs. Because that sort of thing is Emperyean Age ruler level and even they couldn’t do it perfectly.
However… The story about the video is simply building on the same sort of video the Devs have already said existed in the news articles on Myrskaa. And have clearly hinted repeatedly at corporate brutality all through the Caldari Lore.
This is where I believe some people ‘go wrong’. In terms of they try and create too much of an epic NPC side to the story, rather focusing on developing from the player stuff. However the core of the story itself here is currently the video, and that’s a good story to focus on. Now that said I’m staying out of that thread because IC none of my characters are surprised by it, or see any point to trying to make a big fuss about it. And I’m not going to jump on them for ‘it’s not possible’.
But people should think about the level of NPC ability they are creating in these stories. As it does help immersion to keep things at the lower levels unless Dev created.
