BB #48 : Lore-in it up!

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 48th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.
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This month's topic is a request from CCP Sisyphus who wants to know how important is Lore in EVE Online? 

"How important is “fluff” in Eve online? Would eve online be the same if it were purely numbers and mechanics, or are the fictional elements important to the enjoyment of the game? Would a pure text, no reference to sci-fi or fancy names still be an engaging game? Should CCP put more or less emphasis on immersion?"

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From an on-again, off-again roleplayers angle, Eve online lore, for me, is sometimes very important, and other times nothing at all.

Let me explain. When I start roaming the interwebs for games to play, lore built up around a game is one of the deciding factors. If the game developers can't, don't, or won't come up with a convincing or at least semi-good reason for their game universe it speaks a lot to their dedication as a company towards that title.

In short, if there is no backstory, then I usually won't play the game. Besides, what am I going to be reading while the game downloads and installs. This goes back to the olden days for me where I would pour over every word in a game's manual, looking for insights into the game while it installed. Then I may or may not have never looked at that manual again.

Once in Eve the lore becomes less important, UNLESS you end up RPing at all. Not just troll RP people. If you choose a character you have to submerge yourself in the lore for a while to get to a point where every other statement you make is either wrong or everyone ignores you.

Otherwise I think that Lore pretty much falls under the "nice to have" but not required to play category.

On the other hand, what would Eve lose if there was no Lore? I think it would lose a lot of the allure that attracted me to the game. But on top of that, I think it's important to have a good story. If, as some others have said, it was just "+5 damage to blasters" or something more generic in skills and descriptions of ships, well then it'd be pretty boring. I do spend time in game, almost every time a new ship is released, or new modules, like a huge nerd, reading the information about the new item. Both in game and in the wiki. It's fun to read all the quasi-science output by CCP.

Additionally the sci-fi names, and fancy backstories for nearly everything in the game adds quite a lot of interest because of the sci-fi background it adds. For instance, if this was just space game one and not called Eve online, and all it was ended up being the spreadsheets in space and a combat game, do you think it would have lasted as long as it has? Would it have developed the same backstory that it has? I don't think so.

BB#41 - "Yesterday"

Blog Banter 41: Director's Cut
The universe of EVE is not without its drama and epic stories, both in and out of game. Imagine a publisher, movie studio or television network asked you to prepare a pitch for a new brand of EVE-flavoured entertainment. This could be your big break, what would be your synopsis to deliver New Eden to a wider audience?

My campaign would be two fold, first I would lead into a movie with a tri-weekly published webcomic. The webcomic would focus around the antics of a single main protagonist and their life in Eve. The protagonist would be female and modeled after the same actress who would later play in the movie.

It would cover in more specific terms the life of a up and coming capsuleer. Capsuleer training would be for once covered in more detail, the first death of jumping into a clone, becoming a freelance capsuleer and the dangerous, steep path that leads towards becoming a mercenary capsuleer for hire.

Movie Synopsis

Hook : Half a Gallente mining station hangs in view, obviously looking out a window of the staion, the camera pans back, revealing the bald head of (Patrick Stewart), hands behind his back, dressed in a power suit, standing in front of a glass desk. The camera continues to pull back, a wet cough  echoing in the room from a half seen bleeding woman. The back of her mow-hawked head just barely comes on screen, light glinting off silver implants up her spine and blood leaking from the side of her red lips. A thug's fist comes from the opposite side, twisting the head of the capsuleer with the force of the punch.

Patrick S. : (looking at, speaking to the window, Traffic is flowing in and out of the mining station, with a Megathron and Obelisk prominently moving free of the station.) "It's a shame you don't have what we want. You let us all down girl. In the long term of things I suppose this won't even matter... I suppose I will have to teach proper manners to your clone."

The camera pans out as the thug levels an impressive gun at the temple of the bloodied woman. the gun takes up more and more of the screen, and then the camera pans down, leaving just her hand in view, struggling against the tape holding her to the chair... CRACK, fade to black.

Synopsis : Capsuleers are a breed apart from humanity, raised to godhood, and some beyond godhood. Put in command of ships capable of killing, saving, or harvesting. It is with them that the future lies, but the ties of old society aren't so easily cut. In the darkness of space there is always room for a little more greed.

This story is about a capsuleer, proud, and brave, but dead in more ways and times than she can remember. After the hook she awakens, coughing, choking, the camera behind her eyes as she reaches up to be released, the same hand that just died on that chair pushing against the glass. The med techs open her bay, causing her to, ungracefully, spill out on the floor, coughing, reborn.

She asks the techs how old her memories are, she is missing 24 hours. The last 24 hours. She backtracks her steps, finding the remnants of a job, and a betrayal a bare 24 hours cold.

She makes her way to her capsuleer quarters, once there she is attacked by Sansha drones and Assasins.  A short but brutal fight breaks out in her small quarters, she makes her escape by diving into her pod and undocking in the first ship she could find, a Talos class Battlecruiser. From there she is alternatively pursued and assisted by friends and enemies while she discovers her last 24 hours.

The mission that caused her death was given to her by her  benefactor turned sponsor, turned arch-nemesis. She was sent to recover a data disk deep in nullsec, a mission she had failed at, but worse, had been captured and discovered.

The assassins that had been dogging her the duration of the movie were both from the Sasha, the true owners of the disk as well as her former friend and benefactor. In her flight she discovers the data on the disk is worth a fortune, and rests not with her enemies but with an ex-lover, a pirate.

Wagering it all, she attempts to persuade the lover to part his way with the disk, promising him a cut. Disk in hand she finds herself in posession of information that could forever change the cluster...  Information about generating stable, cheap, directional wormholes large enough to pass any traffic. Stolen Sansha technology.

The movie ends in a cliff hangar, and rightly so, as if Eve could be shown in a single movie.

BB #33 Left Adrift in Space

Blog Banter 33: The Capsuleer Experience

Like mana from Valhalla (yes I know I'm mixing my religious metaphors), the latest Dev Blog by CCP Legion asks questions which make for perfect Blog Bantering. To quote him "...we want to make the first days, weeks and months in EVE enjoyable and not just something ‘you have to plough through in order to get to the good stuff’" and the newly formed Player Experience team will focus on "...where and why people lose interest in EVE...".

"We invite you to pour your heart (or guts) out and tell us what you think is good or bad with the current new player experience and what you think could be done about the problems."

Blargle, yeah that's how this post started. I know I want to write stuff in here, but that was the first thing that came out.

Are those Lasers on your Merlin?

Now more on topic;

I think that we could add the following to greatly improve the new player experience and leave them less "in-the-wind" after the tutorials are completed.

1. The first good step a player should take is to get out of the damn NPC corp as fast as possible. Even if the players end up in corps that aren't really what they want to do, they will make friends, gain confidence and have an audience, a mostly captive audience, to ask each of the one million questions they have about the game. Perhaps what is needed to facilitate this is for CCP to add Corp recruitment tutorial IE "This is how you find your first corp" Making it optional, or have them join to their first corp through the tutorial just to get a taste of the corp recruitment interface, and get them exposed to other active corps and people quickly. This would be a whole new tutorial as it is not covered in the NPE at all.

2. Provide further guidance at the end of the second line tutorial missions, perhaps something like "If you enjoyed this type of this go talk to XXX security agent, or XXX distribution agent or whatever for the appropriate agent type. I think this would be pretty straight forward and send players towards other "like" and nearby agents. For that matter provide more tutorials for game features, ie exact scanning tutorials, not the really basic stuff they have out there now. Or maybe d-scanner tutorials or instructions. This is really just a logical extension of the current tutorials, linking them back into "regular" missions and gameplay by giving the player a next step to take into Eve.

3. Skill tree suggestions in conjunction with #2. IE: If they liked scanning and WH, link the skills they should look at getting, what level they should get those skills to, and warn them about sleeper damage. Just overall provide a basic guideline of skills they should try to focus on to head down the path that interests them, be it PvP or PvE combat, mining, exploration, hauling, or WHATEVER. Give some guidelines in game so that the new player isn't just dropped off at that point and expected to know or learn the ideal skills all for themselves. This would be brand new content, but not terribly difficult to drum up, in fact a ton of blogs already have suggested skills posts that would be great templates to start generating from.

4. Give an advanced PvP tutorial, create a special NPC just for this tutorial. Make it similar to a sleeper frigate, give it sleeper frigate AI, and a 100% chance to web and scram. Teach things in video form like transversal, tackle, optimal range vs falloff. make the advanced PvP tutorial difficult, force new players to die, provide a fully fit high-end frigate just for the mission. Give the player that ship at the outset of the mission and take it back afterwards. Eve if it is a "close, but not quite" simulation of PvP, at least introduce the basics. The would be the truly new and probably difficult addition, it would require a new type of NPC, using of sleeper AI in regular space, and a high difficulty and loss of ships for the player just to get them started in PvP. Even if that start is PvE in nature.

5. Auto-populate the "saved" fittings of new pilots with some "decent" starter fits. name them appropriately, IE for the Caldari line, give a merlin PvE fit, and PvP fit pre-saved, also the same for the Kestrel and Condor, even if they are jus tthe idea of basic tackle, use all tech one, unnamed mods, but have it there ready for the new player. So they can go use these basic setups as a baseline to build new fits off of. They don't even have to be 100 percent correct, but at least something close would be nice. Mining fits for the Bantam, etc etc. Just having some examples is key to letting new players focus on other things at the get go instead of "how do I fit this ship." Instead they can look at the skills suggested in #3 and the baseline fits and be able to try the things they want to. This would just be adding some fits to the tool already in place, just an extra thing that gets initially installed. Easy to remove in game if you are done with/past the starter fits, but it ties in well with #3 to help point players in the right direction initially.

Other bantererz:
Blog Banter: The Capsuleer Experience by Gilbert Hamilton @ Diary of a Garbageman

Improved Mini - BWAHAHAHAH Just Kidding PvP Tutorial by Corelin @ Haberdashers Run Amok

Blog Banter 33 - NPE by Lockefox @ Hell's Librarians

The First Five Minutes by Marc Scaurus @ MALEFACTOR

I Heart Newbies Too by Shalee Lianne @ Living a Lie

"The Capsuleer Experience" by Evehermit @ Evehermit's Blog

Pain by blastradius1 @ Blastrad's Tales

Blog Banter 33 by Drackarn @ Sand, Cider and Spaceships

The Capsuleer Experience by Kody Gloval @ Electronics Evangelist

The Capsuleer Experience by Ender Black @ Pod Goo

That Universe is Mine? by Emergent Patroller

Keeping the (New) Newbies by Ugleb @ Ugleb's Journal

Capsuleer is the Key Word by Mabrick @ Mabrick's Mumblings

Give the new guy a friend by Jac @ Dying in Lowsec (One Hauler at a Time)

More Options by Grimmash @ Warp to Zero

Needs More Cut Scenes by Orea at Notes from New Eden

The Capsuleer Experience by Urziel99 @ Urziel's EVE Chronicle

"So How Was it For you?" by TurAmarth ElRandir @ A CARBON Based Life

The Capsuleer Experience by The Scientist @ A Scientist's Life in Eve

The Capsuleer Experience by Crash @ Obfuscated Reality

How I Became a Capsuleer by Kat Robspierre @ Chasing ISK

Left Adrift in Space by Logan Fyerite @ Eve Opportunist