[netburnr]

There was far more forum and ingame RP than the GMs ever picked up on.

A lot of the RP that they generated was just "news storys" about some random made up politician doing something stupid, but it had not real in game effects, it was all purely fluff.

What I want to see are reports based on actual gameplay, and the ability to affect the gameplay based on those RPs.

An example was the one time that I remember the game being affected with the FF blockade.

I want a hell of a lot more of that level of interaction between the RPing players and the actual game.

[Solo]

Yes, connecting the actual gameplay and the story together so they cross influence each other would be a great thing. I guess quite some 'lived story' will be different for me anyway with having played on the Europe server. That made me finally stopping playing Jumpgate that some things just didn't fit in anymore.

Wondering if maybe ND could get connected with Alchemic Dreams, they have some nice and RP dedicated GMs there.

[Jonboy]

A lot of the 'official' RPs involving squads was written by the players. Which is good in that the players are involved. But it does mean that to have a story about Balrog's activities... Balrog has to stop acting and start writing.

[ELPIRATA]

Easier to kill a miner than to write an RP story.

ELP

[GrimGriz]

Originally Posted by Jonboy

A lot of the 'official' RPs involving squads was written by the players. Which is good in that the players are involved. But it does mean that to have a story about Balrog's activities... Balrog has to stop acting and start writing.

That was kind of my point. I mean, everyone is RPing a pilot already. They shouldn't have to be a writer too. If the GMs could use data mining and figure out a way to generate news articles about what's actually going on and/or have RPCs respond to what actually happens on the server...we wouldn't need some artificial 'story'. They'd just need a separate person/team to decide what the conflux were up to.

For example, if a sol squad flew to Ring View and attacked any civilian AI it saw for 7 days in a row...that's what really going on in the Galaxy, and therefore is news. The server should know what's happening 1 way or another, but I don't think they've been collecting that data before. They should...and they should do something with it.

Of course, they'll probably just redo the mission computer and add in NPC quests instead

[netburnr]

Originally Posted by GrimGriz

For example, if a sol squad flew to Ring View and attacked any civilian AI it saw for 7 days in a row...that's what really going on in the Galaxy, and therefore is news. The server should know what's happening 1 way or another, but I don't think they've been collecting that data before. They should...and they should do something with it.

Exactly. The data is there, they just have to build a reporting system in to generate the news and then have their RP writers use that news and data to influence the RP of the overall game.

[Solo]

Originally Posted by netburnrol

Exactly. The data is there, they just have to build a reporting system in to generate the news and then have their RP writers use that news and data to influence the RP of the overall game.

Fully agree.

What I would like to see again somewhere was the way things were handled in Seed. There the GMs had 'spy accounts' in major rings (another version of squads/guilds), means they played members to collect news what's going on and to nudge things into motion, mostly their real identity unknown by the other ringmembers. And it was planned to expand and change the game according to the progress of the players, though that never really had much chance to happen because the result of launching unfinished (about half a year before(!) schedule) had the to be expected result.
Progress was like this: Player has an idea (for example speedgrowing a tree out of a branch to enhance some living area), collected some supporters among the players, the idea may be accepted by GM and devs (here that player was secretly promoted to GM status in meantime and 'only' a local reedit of a gamearea was needed) and it will be decided what actions ingame is needed to make the idea reality (here a machine specially equiped and some materials provided over some weeks), the player/GM approaches other players to gather the needed equipment and material (here players managing suitable machines with finally me agreeing to provide and reequip the machine for the task) and finally if all is met the idea will become reality ingame (some weeks later with the next patch an area in the game was remodelled with a large tree).

[Badger]

I don't think it can be new to the extent of disrupting continuity. I hope it's not so entwined with the old that a newbie like me won't be able to hook into it. But the game should definitely take advantage of the extensive RP already existing to enrich the new game and give incoming players a real feeling of participating in a large, living, evolving universe