I want to do a thing for the EVE RP Community

Communications Center General Discussion
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So… I want to make a home for people who want to Role-Play in EVE. Right now when anyone wants to branch into EVE RP we send them to the Summit or IGS. These are the absolute worst experiences for new, curious, or inexperienced EVE role-players. Most of both entities are lurkers. The few that do tend to speak are generally hostile, vicious, demanding, bigoted, crazy, or only offer insincere platitudes. Please don’t misunderstand me; I recognize that every person I am thinking of as I write these things down has a 9000% perfectly legitimate in character reason for being that way, but even so this is a terrible experience for people wanting to join us. I have gone out of my way to steward good role-play, collaboration, support, and education wherever I can, but I cannot do it alone.

I already tried this. I hijacked the idea of Divinity Social and tried to make it a neutral, friendly, and inviting alternative for ALL role-players, especially new ones. I made mistakes and took my licks. I want to get serious about my next attempt.

Here is the pitch: I want to make a place for the RP community to replace the summit as the entry point into EVE RP for new players. Let summit and IGS be what they are now and stay that way, but we need a place less hostile and intimidating for new role-players/characters.

What I think I need:

  • Help. I cannot do it alone.
  • Buy-in on a social contract: People there are there to tell their story, but anyone choosing to participate is implicitly stating that they can look past political, religious, or racial matters and socialize equally well with anyone and not break their character integrity.
  • Carry the torch: Recognize that our community is dwindling and needs new blood. Dedicate some effort to fostering that goal.

Some Goals:

  • At least one public room where people come to socialize IC and not to lurk. Espouse a dedication that you are there to actively RP with other people in the room. Lurking should be discouraged.
  • I want to connect with EVE U and have them shunt those graduates interested in RP our way, where we can supplement their gameplay by offering them a place to develop their characters in a place they are likely to make friends and get help, not be berated, judged, or shamed off the platform.
  • I want to solicit help in managing the project in both EU and US TZ if not around the clock.
  • Active recruitment to Role-Play. Many I’ve spoken to have approached me saying they find EVE RP too intimidating. For the health of our community I feel we have a duty to correct this.

I submit this out to the community for your judgement, but this has been my goal since I created this character, and I intend to see it through. As I play more, stay longer, and meet others, I am convinced that the need for a positive productive shake-up is very necessary and long overdue.

Sincerely and openly,
~Yvane Aselin-Duvaul / The player and the character

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Blacklace, Ltd. supports this endeavor!

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I used to want to roleplay in EVE at first but the depth of the lore is supplanted by EVE’s main activities: get isk to get ships to get them blown up in PvP, wash rinse repeat. Roleplay is kind of stale in that general environment of destruction for the sake of destruction.
Now that I’ve understood what EVE is all about, the idea of role-playing in that universe is kind of meh

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@Han_Zealot
There is much more to roleplaying in any game than the in depth lore. Don’t let that put you off roleplaying.

That depth does allow you roleplay deeper than that just destruction for the sake of destruction.

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The difficult part in this, here, particularly, I think Yvanne, is that it gets a bit difficult to have a ‘centralized’ low barrier starting point for ‘everyone’ due to the factional nature of majority of RP. Not to say its impossible, but very difficult, especially in ways to get people engaged with the faction they want to RP as. And that’s where most RPers start, as factional RPers, because the factions are what catches most people initially and gets them interested.

Its an issue I’ve run into quite regularly. I’ve tried to be fairly neutral ground with most of my RP venues and points of contact, and its great for making connections, but it doesn’t catch people. It doesn’t retain their interest, because what I do and always have done doesn’t tie in directly to an established faction. And that’s aimed primarily at new players. When a new player wants to get into RP, they don’t usually want to start with an independent group, they ask ‘who is a part of X community for X faction?’ More often than not.

I’m hoping with one of my own newer ventures with AIR being a thing now, to hopefully have some common ground for newer RPers, but they will, naturally, gravitate to established lore and factions they like, so always needs considered.

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This universe is excellent for roleplaying precisely for those reasons. The destruction is real. Everything you do in this game is real. The gameplay and roleplay intersect beautifully, meaning you can actually do something meaningful in-character, play the game in-character, actually carry out the things you RP about, make actual meaningful relations and enemies IC. It’s frankly unique in this regard.

What you’re seeing isn’t just general hostility, viciousness, bigotry and so on. It’s targeted such. This setting is New Eden and pretty much the very instant you pick any kind of loyalty or standpoint, you’re making enemies beyond the default set who got you targeted on account of the circumstances of your birth.

I wish you luck and all, but the setting is simply such that you’ll never not have enemies and hostility. It’s just baked right into the very fabric of the setting. Finding your own people and simply dealing with the fact that others will be opposed to you in philosophy, loyalty, principle, economics and actual spaceship violence is part and parcel of New Eden, whether you’re a roleplayer or not.

Good luck… I suspect you may need it.

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Have you thought of first pointing people to the Out of Character and OOC channels? I mean, IC, EVE basically runs on conflict, and the characters in the Summit and the IGS have long histories of conflict with one another. OOCly… players tend to be fairly welcoming and happy to see new people and work to help them get settled if they know the new person needs that help.

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I like EVE’s lore and I’m not intimidated by it. Science-fiction has always been big facet of my hobbies like reading, writing and movie-going and I know there’s more to RP than what the lore gives us.

What I’m trying to say is:
I used to see EVE Online as a whole universe where I could be Amarrian and play as a capsuleer beholden to an empire with things to do like missions and Mining and manufacturing and all the other stuff… until some people have proven to me that all EVE was is a game where ships blow up and to not undock unless I could afford to lose the ship.
To me now this game is just a PvP game where my ship is pitted against another, usually stronger better equipped more experienced player and that is all.
I get ships, equip them and look for a fight. Period.

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meh

Get ship.
Equip ship.
Look for a fight.
Get ship blown up.
No need to roleplay to do that.

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The point is more that this basically is roleplay in Eve. There’s very little you can do in Eve that doesn’t work just fine IC.

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I don’t think I understand your post but if I do, then roleplay in EVE sucks.

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What you do in space, with inly some exceptions, can be just as valid RP as what you might do in a chat room or a forum post, is what they’re saying @Han_Zealot , its not often I agree with Mizhara, but this is a pretty accurate way of looking at it.

That in mind, IT IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO RP. Chat room and forum RP are very much valid and where the real fun of it can be, especially if you do it in tandem with some things in space, in my opinion.

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Yea I know what you mean. But the more I play EVE Online the less I want to roleplay. It just doesn’t feel right as EVE has become, to me, just another online game.
I also play World of Warships online. I cannot deferenciate those two games now except one happens at sea and the other happens in space.
It’s just about ships blowing up. One has warships and the other has spaceships… woopty-do.

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I want to address this notion that the Universe is and can only run on conflict. I think that is an extremely narrowminded notion and not conducive to Role-Play at all. The game of EVE sure does. The Role-Play of eve doesn’t have to and in my opinion shouldn’t be expected to. I think with a dose of creativity and some adherence to the guidance in the opening chapter of every single RPG book I have ever read or owned, that there is a huge amount of leeway to create divergent stories in this world, and it is that which offers the interest in RP. I think that some people may neglect that in a venue such as this, that this RP is improv, not a TTRPG. In improve, we should strive to add, not to subtract, and I see a lot of subtracting all over.

I do not entirely disagree with you, but I do reject the notion that it has to be that way. I’m not saying that is what you said, just elaborating. Even real life is full of stories of combatants that leave their grudges to only the battlefield. While the hostility is surly thematically appropriate, it doesn’t have to govern every single thing we do in role-play.

Yeah… I think people are making a couple of assumptions about the idea, it being IC only, and that the end goal is anything other than shunting people off the the more tailored RP hubs. Right now we shunt everyone into The Summit and IGS, and I have seen 5 or 6 people abandon RP for everyone 1 I have seen stick it out while I was prototyping this idea as Divinity Social (IC).

Yes, but I hope we are reasonable people and can see that that is a very hostile entry point for a new role-player. I think an alternative approach is warranted.

Thanks. You’re probably right, but I have to try. I don’t want to see others go through what I went through.

I would be behind this if we stopped feeding into the Summits, which are the real problem in my opinion. I want to see if it is possible to provide the where.

With respect @Han_Zealot, while I appreciate your enthusiasm, it is evident you have decided to not role-play in eve so perhaps the thrust of this thread isn’t directed with you in mind. We have heard you, but continuing down the RP sucks trajectory is completely unproductive to this conversation. I would like to appeal to your sense of prudence and implore you to keep the feedback on topic, or having decided that you won’t role-play in EVE, consider excusing yourself from the conversation with grace.

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I’m aware of that.

All I’m doing is replying to the forum members who have replied to me, am I still allowed to do that?
Thank you.

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There are quite a few people, me included (back when I played), that would spend far more time logged in to EVE doing various things than we actually spend roleplaying. Not to say I didn’t roleplay, I did. Hours at a time, sometimes. But that’s often in addition to, after, before, or during other activities that EVE has to offer.

So what I would do is maybe I would chat a bit (in the Summit or other places), or maybe not, while I fly about EVE doing my thing. But I would always keep an eye out. For the channel flashing. For certain people joining. Listening to what other people were saying, using their public conversations in that open/neutral channel as a way to keep up to date on at least some of the scuttlebutt of the cluster.

If you’re wanting to make something that’s Not the Summit (first of all good luck, you’ll neither be the first nor the last) then it sounds like you’re going to want far more active participation from people or else…what…have them leave the channel while not actively roleplaying? I don’t get what you mean and I would be interested in clarification.

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Personally, I just consider chat RP “valid” if it align with what you do in space. Otherwise you are just a poser.
Of course, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with RPing a poser. :crazy_face:

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“RPers need a home away from the rest of us.”

“The existing home is full of loners who hate the rest of us, whats up with that??”

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Irony is something that I really appreciate. Thanks for this gem.

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Well, frankly, if you’re going to claim you’re a big shot ace, of course you should be able to back that up in space, but the point I was making was more specific toward, you don’t have to line up everything you do in RP with the game mechanics of the sim.

There’s people who don’t do a whole lot in space compared to what they write and RP out, and are excellent contributors to the background and player fiction side of RP, some parts of which have even become elevated to prime fiction in some instances.

Trying to say its just posers if it doesn’t directly align with what’s viable in the game is going a bit far with that in mind honey.