Ghost Hunter
True Slave Foundations
Shaktipat Revelators
62
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Posted - 2012.12.29 06:21:00 -
[1] - Quote
Saede Riordan wrote:Recently though, I feel as if that's changed. First with Incursions, with Nation losing a lot of the interesting moral questions and interesting ambiguity that was present in that faction, Sansha and His Nation went from being seen as a fairly tragic figure by some, to a fairly one dimensional cartoon villain. He was bad, concord was good. That was all there was to it.
I feel inclined to provide my experience in this area as it'll help explain the over all picture from the Sansha angle.
Naqam was the first Sansha corporation I joined and the biggest Sansha entity I knew of for its time Their established story and public relations focused on the tragedy of the Nation's downfall, the 'true slave mistake', and public appeasement with our truly humane utopian goals. This was not the entirety of Naqam's senior memberships' intention, but as a foot soldier it was the one I went with.
For the duration of Naqam, this approach gave character and color to the otherwise 'Borg' Sansha's Nation. Izzychan, Silver Night, Carcosa Hali, and others in the corporation added flavor to the Nation with their different focuses on the Nation as an entity. This was the general state of affairs until the resurgence of the Live Events.
When the Live Events rolled around, rumors of activity from Sansha's Nation drew my attention immediately. I was very quick to jump onto their boat by getting in touch with the actor characters as I could, and re-activating the True Slave Foundations. Independent of Naqam, I wanted to see what the Nation's activity now meant and what I would have to do to fall in line with what ever their mission statement was.
The revival of the Nation threw out years of political conservatism and illusionary appeasement that Naqam had built up. The Nation made it very clear it survived, it rebuilt, and it was pissed. I was quite happy to follow this new line of the story for it fell into what I originally envisioned for my first draft of Sansha roleplay : survivors that wanted revenge. Yet as things unfolded, the intellectual intrigue of the Nation's character came through. It really wasn't that simple as I thought.
While it is easy to say the Nation is simply hell-bent on revenge, those who delve into its intrigue can discover a much more complicated driving force. Sansha Kuvakei isn't simply a scorned dictator in charge of a mindless, hyper-advanced drone army. He's a radically deranged intellectual whose bought into his own messianic propaganda. He genuinely believes in the goals he has set forth and he genuinely involves himself in them. He wants to reshape the world into his perfect Nation for a human utopia.
His methods can be argued of course, but I digress...
The Live Events and the precursor to Incursion all brought this forth, and it helped shine light into the murky abyss of Sansha's Nation. The Nation can easily be considered a one dimensional villain, and I do think presentation of its entire self is ... lacking. Those without experience in the area or an ability to study the history of the Sansha have a great deal of trouble finding its 'redeeming' aspects. For new players and even many regulars, it is still 'The Borg', and the work of those who tried to make it otherwise isn't seen or heard.
Yet the Nation was always this to these people anyway. Those who didn't delve into the intrigue still see the Nation as they always have. The Borg, The Weekly Big Bad, and so forth. Incursion merely brings this problem into clarity - the average consumer has no accessible means of finding out more of the pirate factions. It is always presented as the one dimensional villain on the big screen.
The nature of game mechanics furthers this problem, because the integrity of the story must be bent to satisfying game mechanics. The Nation has any number of tools at its disposal to make Incursions truly horrifying and dangerous. It can even do something as simple as copying player hot-drops with devastating results. That isn't followed through because it isn't balanced. The feature doesn't sell, and it becomes very bad for game health. There are many tears as it is when Live Event actors do this, let alone an automated feature.
The result of course is the very common communal perception the Nation is a moronic entity. It isn't scary, there isn't any danger to it. "Oh look the Sansha have come around again to line my pockets". It's bent over and broken in half by game balancing. Does anyone see high sec Incursion gate camps that actually, you know, murder all the freighters and rag-tag fleets that come through?
This is my issue with the nature of the story in the game, particularly around Sansha's Nation. Live events and the storyline of Incursion have done tremendous to developing it, yet its presentation is neither wholly complete nor logically obeyed. The only avenues of exploring outside the Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain aspects are not well developed and 'Big Bad Power Houses' are the neighborhood weenie. One can argue the hype of Incursion further complicated the latter problem, but conversely can also protest that Incursions were not designed threateningly at all...
As a whole, the story development is good - the juicy fat is in the little details hidden by the screen. The bad is how difficult it can be to find for the average consumer, and the cognitive dissonance that exists between story and game world. Faction loyalty, 'strong NPCs', threatening villains; they're all laughed at because the game doesn't give them teeth. As an analogy, if this were a D&D game: the GM has players fighting each other. Strangely, the world the GM has built is afraid of doing anything to the players.
tl;dr - Sansha's Nation got good development. Poorly demonstrated/conveyed. Crystallizes dissonance between public selling and story integrity.
lol huge post
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