My issue isn't fundamentally with the fact that they're using RP characters in Open. FWIW I don't care whether the game is in Open or Solo, though I gladly use both modes where it's most advantageous (dons flamesuit
). As Han_Zen says, it's they're using RP characters in a multiplayer model that fundamentally doesn't work well.
EVE Online has used live RP characters in the past, and I'm cool with that because of several reasons;
- They are less time-bound than their use in ED, which seems to be for a day or less. An event may have an RP character hanging around for up to a week, or if it's only going to be a short period like a day, it's broadcast well in advance.
- Their technical multiplayer model guarantees you'll encounter them in that system. When I participated in The Hunt, when people were on here and saying there were literally dozens of pilots in the system, I only saw one random. This is on account of the fact the whole country of Australia has terrible Internet (god forbid any non-minority nation's ability)
It's a genuinely unreliable system. Now, I can get behind the idea of having a "first in best dressed" approach to content. But that's only a reasonable design choice if your MP model can technically guarantee accessibility to all participants. That is not possible in ED's peer-to-peer sharding model. So live RP characters are always a poor choice in ED.
Frankly, when MetaDrive first hit Galnet in the news looking for investors, I flew there straight away hoping for some
Argent's Quest-style donation mission to invest in the company on the mission boards, but, nothing. Then a few more MetaDrive Galnet articles and nothing. Now this one, and bam, RP content available. A critical part of getting players involved in content is to "train" them like a monkey in a box who hears a dog bark, presses a red button and gets painfully zapped, or hears a cat meow, presses a red button and gets a treat. If you run a series of articles about a topic and don't tie anything to them, you'll start to assume there's going to be nothing tied to the articles. It's the same problem with Barnacles and POI circles; we get trained to look around POI circles for "interesting things", so Barnacles are completely counter-intuitive by making us look where (99% of the time) there's nothing to be found.
Don't get me wrong, I've heard the counter-arguments of "What's wrong with FD giving players who want to put the effort in to RP some content", to which the answer is nothing, but that content needs to be accessible (even to those groups who try to gatecrash this sort of thing with easy pewpew ganks). If it's not, it's either playing favourites with your players, or just poor game design. I prefer to think it's the latter, based on my understanding of the MP model ED uses. I do try to get involved, but I generally can't because:
- My timezone means people aren't online when I am
- My internet connection means peer-to-peer fails
- My interactions and attempts to try and generate content and interactivity generally aren't accepted. I'm 3/3 on not getting CGs in the game (first one was a UA CG which should've been achievable, but wasn't put in, was kinda understandable, other two have been fairly simple trade CGs. Given this was
the bar for CGs at the time, I thought a CG for military goods in response to the Federal victory in the Pleiades would've been a goer) and sporadically get a galnet article accepted at local system level.
All things considered, my participation amounts to:
- Having a CG and player faction in the game
- Submitting CGs and Galnet articles (whether accepted or not, these take time and effort)
- Participate in CGs directly and indirectly (e.g Jacques UA bombing)
- Participated in the Hunt (although, thanks to timezones and the Open RP issues, most things were solved before I got a look-in)
- Participate in this particular forum with findings and other speculation; and
- Most importantly, regularly play the game (Except right now, as I'm OS and don't have the ability)
... so I'm not sure how much more I can "contribute" when I usually swear 15-20 hours a week into the game.
