[7.1.3] Okay, we're gonna make some DJs - Syntax - 3/22/07

**cloudwolf**

Hey, maybe Rare should write up a forum sticky for the LE board explaining the nature of live events, how they tie in with the story, how they come about, lesig, the thread posting conventions. All that stuff.

Because they're all kinda vital things for people to know and understand and the more i think about it, they're not actually explained anywhere properly.

And i sure as hell don't have my hopes up for the website *shakes fist at soe web team*

Havocide

Personaly this was a player event, that suddenly got LE status.. totaly wrong in my opinion. But meh

Paperghost · 03/24/2007 11:47:54

FlaminMathew1 wrote:

Personaly this was a player event, that suddenly got LE status.. totaly wrong in my opinion. But meh

i quite liked the idea of a player generated event taking on a live event role. isn't that what people cry out for here? more stuff done by the players themselves that actually has some significance in some way to the game as a whole? the fact that a dev was able to turn up to a player driven party....which, as cool as it would have been, would still ultimately have been (and no offence to the party organiser guys here)....another mxo party....and turned it into a live event on the fly is pretty awesome.

plus, it wasn't entirely "out of the blue". remember, the party organisers mentioned a "special guest" would likely be turning up so they must have had some sort of idea that something was going to go down. i bet they're pretty pleased that their party ended up being one of THE most memorable parties anyone's ever been to AND got turned into a live event at the same time. it simply provides an incentive for the players who organise these things to keep on doing these events / parties / whatever further down the line, and is a nice reward for anyone who spent the time putting this party together in the first place.

i dunno....this event says to me that if someone holds an event, or does something ingame thats player generated yet holds enough pulling power, then a dev might get involved (time willing) and make it into something bigger than it was originally. with the onset of the all new and improved LESIG team, this is an even more interesting development.

aside from all of the above, i quite liked the humour in filling debir court with an army of clones.

Havocide

Papergh0st wrote:

FlaminMathew1 wrote:
Personaly this was a player event, that suddenly got LE status.. totaly wrong in my opinion. But meh

i quite liked the idea of a player generated event taking on a live event role. isn't that what people cry out for here? more stuff done by the players themselves that actually has some significance in some way to the game as a whole? the fact that a dev was able to turn up to a player driven party....which, as cool as it would have been, would still ultimately have been (and no offence to the party organiser guys here)....another mxo party....and turned it into a live event on the fly is pretty awesome.

plus, it wasn't entirely "out of the blue". remember, the party organisers mentioned a "special guest" would likely be turning up so they must have had some sort of idea that something was going to go down. i bet they're pretty pleased that their party ended up being one of THE most memorable parties anyone's ever been to AND got turned into a live event at the same time. it simply provides an incentive for the players who organise these things to keep on doing these events / parties / whatever further down the line, and is a nice reward for anyone who spent the time putting this party together in the first place.

i dunno....this event says to me that if someone holds an event, or does something ingame thats player generated yet holds enough pulling power, then a dev might get involved (time willing) and make it into something bigger than it was originally. with the onset of the all new and improved LESIG team, this is an even more interesting development.

aside from all of the above, i quite liked the humour in filling debir court with an army of clones.

Im not even gonna carry the convo on cos itl just get me in trouble.

**PBlade**

FlaminMathew1 wrote:

Personaly this was a player event, that suddenly got LE status.. totaly wrong in my opinion. But meh

Add this to the list of 'Player/LEs'

I'll stress it again: Anniversary. Anniversary. Anniversary.

Havocide

PBlade wrote:

FlaminMathew1 wrote:
Personaly this was a player event, that suddenly got LE status.. totaly wrong in my opinion. But meh

Add this to the list of 'Player/LEs'

I'll stress it again: Anniversary. Anniversary. Anniversary.

Dont start me off! I know what my opinion is on this!

**Phoenix_Dfire**

Well Folks,

I gotta say that I throughly enjoyed that party. Thanks to the guys for organising it.

Best laugh I've had since I met the Oracle!

Cheers

**-Mercidos-**

I always miss the cool parties where people get turned into inanimate objects like HLs and katanas.

**SolidRevolver**

That was a cool party, I was a DJ, in the dress.

**zeroone506**

@Paperghost

Such obsession is certainly funny, but I don't like how you use these extremes to mock a serious attitude to a fictional universe.
"Just a game", "just disposable entertainment" - nice, really. I mean, that's nice, if so.

But I also think serious fiction and people's perception of fiction as some sort of alternate reality they take seriously shouldn't be dismissed as "fanboy obsession".

Immersion into fictional universes/stories is serious business. If you have some fiction that is written seriously and perceived seriously, like dunno, Tolkien or something, and someone messes with it (and I don't mean an innocent parody), I totally understand if fans get disgusted, and I find it right.

The Matrix is one of the more serious franchises out there, don't you think? Why shouldn't fans be aggravated if someone messes with it? Geez.

I haven't read the comics, and I haven't played PoN. I've always wanted to catch up on it, but now I've started doubting. I really thought PoN was a serious extension of the Matrix universe, with alternate storylines and stuff. I had heard of an alternate ending, and thought it would really be something impressive and revealing.
But hey, if the Wachowskis just wanted to fool about a little, then it wasn't.
Funny.
But hey, now I have more pocket money for a double bass machine SMILEY

Zampano wrote:
"Reloaded had a Cave Rave scene, why is this any different?"

Great introduction line to my next point. When seeing that scene for the first time, I was really quite shocked to the degree that I hoped it would be edited out for the DVD. No, seriously. I so didn't want to have it in the Matrix series.

I don't think this is a question of "canon", it's a question of style. You don't like something stylistically, and want to remove it from canon.
But I think this doesn't make sense.

It's more logical to decide not to like something about this game or its story rather than trying to delete it from canon - although I understand you, I think this isn't rational.

From a rational point of view, there's nothing wrong about this. The only question is style and taste, because some people can't stand funny parties in the Matrix. But people couldn't and can't stand lots of other stuff, aswell. In the movies, and the game.

Personally, I don't find this event so awful. I've never had problems with the Assassin breed or Unlimit powers, but a part of me doesn't like the overkill of "funny" humor, or certain types of it, aswell. A part of me has certain problems with the Effectuator, aswell.
Basically, I agree with the arguments of this event's defenders, what happened here is nothing especially bad. I also think people overreacted at the Pace dueling event, by the way.

Bluepills seeing dancing cars - yea. Since when does the game seriously deal with this? Bluepills are client-side NPCs, it's so hard to consider them all the time. Even if it's wrong, that's how serious and truly official events have been since launch.
This might be an argument against the whole event system, but not this particular event.

Rarebit wrote:
1) Bit of trivia. Do you know how many times I remember hearing Paul or any of our past writers or designers mention the word "canon"? Exactly none. Zero. Never. As far as I can tell, that is not a word used by people who are actually involved in the creative process; it is used by observers who come along later and want to categorize things into neat little boxes for themselves. You will not find me referring to things as "canon" or "non-canon," because I don't acknowledge such conveniences as relevant.

Ok, I disagree with this. A fictional universe becomes real, in our mindz. It totally makes sense to decide what belongs in it and what doesn't, if you take it seriously - for the writer, not the audience. Unless you decide everything does, then it becomes nonsensical to put things into categories, you're right.

As I said, labelling stuff as canon and non-canon because of disliking is wrong imo.

But do you consider all redpills running all organizations' missions, or player movies on big screens to be "part of the universe/story"? This is the question of canon. It's an existent, relevant question.

Rarebit wrote:
This is not a movie, it is a game, and except for cinematics and missions, the story is to a large degree unscripted.

Unscripted? Scripted? You and Chadwick write cinematics for a year ahead. You write subchapter missions and plan some events for a subchapter ahead. You organize some events for a day ahead. You improvize things at place.
So yea, you have an outline and certain story elements for some time ahead, and other elements or details for a smaller time, or more spontanous.

What does that have to do with everything? Events tell the story, missions do, cinematics do. Why is any of them less serious than the other? By the way, the Effectuator mentioned one of his parties in a mission. =ppp

2) If a story was so weak that it couldn't withstand an innocent party possibly involving dancing subway cars, would it really be worth defending? Note that I will be very defensive of our story. :ppp

The point (not necessarily my point, but one I can understand) is that this very stuff damages the story quality. If the rest is so strong, which is currently my opinion, the better for the whole I guess.

3) Seeing as how you have made it clear that you aren't fond of the flame virus effect, or of mixing critical missions/events with the relatively unscheduled insanity of the large annual events, you may just want to kind of look away during the whole ten days or whatever it is exactly of the upcoming Anniversary event...

Flame virus - just a chapter reward that didn't perfectly fit to the chapter. Nothing serious, and off-topic anyway.

Why look away in these ten days if you get similar Effy parties at other times, within chapters? I mean, helicopter anyone? I guess I'll now look away from all Seraph/General events for the ten days? I don't get it.

**zeroone506**

Oh, and yea - the chapter tags.

A totally different question. To emphasize once more, the question of how relevant something is to the current storyline is not the question of "canon".

When the Sculptress appeared some time ago, it was canon, and in this sense, not less than this one. It didn't progress anything, yet it had a chapter tag. Made sense to me.

**phaydren**

Desc1ple wrote:

I always miss the cool parties where people get turned into inanimate objects like HLs and katanas.

and computer termianls ..cant forgeth the terminals :p

Paperghost · 03/24/2007 16:22:00

zeroone506 wrote:

@Paperghost

Such obsession is certainly funny, but I don't like how you use these extremes to mock a serious attitude to a fictional universe.
"Just a game", "just disposable entertainment" - nice, really. I mean, that's nice, if so.

But I also think serious fiction and people's perception of fiction as some sort of alternate reality they take seriously shouldn't be dismissed as "fanboy obsession".

Immersion into fictional universes/stories is serious business. If you have some fiction that is written seriously and perceived seriously, like dunno, Tolkien or something, and someone messes with it (and I don't mean an innocent parody), I totally understand if fans get disgusted, and I find it right.

The Matrix is one of the more serious franchises out there, don't you think? Why shouldn't fans be aggravated if someone messes with it? Geez.

I haven't read the comics, and I haven't played PoN. I've always wanted to catch up on it, but now I've started doubting. I really thought PoN was a serious extension of the Matrix universe, with alternate storylines and stuff. I had heard of an alternate ending, and thought it would really be something impressive and revealing.
But hey, if the Wachowskis just wanted to fool about a little, then it wasn't.
Funny.
But hey, now I have more pocket money for a double bass machine

its the obsession with it having to be "serious" - how many times to do you mention "serious" above? - like that adds any additional weight or meaning, through being "serious" in and of itself - that I will continue to relentlessly mock when it manifests itself in the most ludicrous forms. does it make something more useful, or worthy, or important, if we treat it more "seriously" and make sagely noises around it while rubbing our chins and putting on our best "serious face" because we think the object in question deserves our serious face?

meh, forget that. i had enough of that kind of thing in art school and you know what it produced? bad, pretentious art that sucked. if someone wants to mess with something, and not in a parody fashion, but in a "let's see what kind of damage we can do to this one" fashion then great. go nuts, smash it down, tear it up and come up with whatever you come up with. it might be great, or it might suck, but if you hold back because you don't want to treat the source material "irreverently" or fast and loose, you're probably limiting the scope of whatever it was you were attempting to come up with in the first place.

"The Matrix is one of the more serious franchises out there, don't you think?"

why? serious how?

the films seem fairly laced with parody and humour themselves. are those moments of humour, parody and wit - some of the best moments in the films - to be lost in the more worthy sea of seriousness because thats more important?

theres a huge difference between someone who appreciates a work of art on all its different levels, its flaws, its strengths and everything that makes it what it is, and those who will stab you in the face because you pronounced Jar Jar Binks name wrong. the endless, rolling flames of hell await those people. i will be there to jab them with pitchforks.

its not some worthy, self righteous, second coming we're discussing here anyway. we're discussing a bunch of films - the first of which is awesome, yet still full of problems - the second two, less so and i fear the years will not be kind to the third.

a bunch of films that the creators themselves happily reserve the right to mock as and when necessary - if they can do it, why can't we? it doesn't diminish the film in question. in fact, if it survives the beating it comes out stronger. but really, i've dealt with hardcore matrix nerds, and hardcore comic nerds - now THERE'S a challenge - who will rant and rave over THE most ludicrous details that ultimately just dont matter one bit.

" But hey, if the Wachowskis just wanted to fool about a little, then it wasn't.
Funny."

why? how can you base a judgement on how it "wasn't funny" (in the context of what you're playing, and how it relates to the fanboy explosion of rage that became evident in many places once people started to complete the game) when you haven't even played it other than what you've read about it? sorry man, if you played it through when it came out, while aware of the crazed levels of fanboy excitement surrounding what could possibly be in the ending, then you will have got it, and you will have laughed.

it seems to me to be a case of, oh my! how DARE those horrible W bros do this to their own film! how dare they insult it in this manner!!

......i mean, whatever. if the creators can razz their film in any way they see fit, why can't I? if they wish to poke fun at the dangerous levels of fanboyism regarding their product, why can't I?

my example about the PoN game isn't some sweeping statement about anybody and everybody anyway - its a specific reference based on actual experience revolving around a specific group of people that took things way, way too far with regards what they thought the ending of that game would entail. if they happen to look upon these posts now and don't like my attitude towards them and how I laughed my socks off at that ending, well, its too bad for them. they pretty much wandered into a self fulfilling prophecy.

you...or I....or especially the creators....can do whatever they feel like with it. nothing is above poking fun of, and we shouldn't treat any sort of art as any sort of "holy relic". Its funny you mention Tolkien, because thats one of the best examples of rampant, laughable fanboyism I could think of. How badly did many of the obsessives want to hate peter jacksons interpretation of the books before they'd even seen it? how sweet was their begrudging admissions across forums worldwide that, actually, he'd done a pretty *CENSORED* fine job of it overall?

its the same idiocy that springs up surrounding comic films (omg xmen in some black leather stuff!! i want yellow and blue NOW!) or endlessly arguing over "who shot first" in star wars or writing a philosophical treatise on the origins of Hawkman and how the numerous chronological inconsistencies and continuity flaws can be explained away by mathematical equations.

ultimately, life rumbles on and nobody much cares for their mathematical equations of hawkman and their model diaromas of han solo shooting greedo. especially when those things are then jammed down your throat a mile a minute, every single time discussion of said products containing those things springs up. jammed down your throat, i might add, with the most stinkingly poor attitude available based on no logic but lots of "passion" - SMILEY

- that you could imagine, and no reason will be listened to.

a fictional universe is nice, but thats all it is and once i'm doing doing whatever i'm doing it with, bam, i'm back in this one and i don't care about it anymore. all art is entirely disposable, and nobody should take it so seriously...especially when it was created by someone else...that they can't step back and laugh at the absurdity of attempting to treat it as something more than it is and become obsessed with the smallest, irrelevant details to the point of pointlessness.

i think it was phillip k d_ck, or maybe another writer, who (at a convention) had someone come up and engage him in an hour long conversation about how some piece of technology couldn't ever work in the 25th century to power some device as part of a larger scheme in one of his books (or something), because the power source he cited wouldn't work with the materials he mentioned in the story.

eventually, he turned to him and said, "we make it all up out of our heads, you know".

someone should make a hundred mile-high sculpture of that moment, encase it in solid gold and stick it on a satellite orbiting the earth so i can point to it every time the situation calls for it.

**Yasamuu**

Hmm, just as a side note before we all go back to watching this ever intreguing "Canon" debate...the people who constantly spammed area chat with "zomg turn me into *insert model*" obviously didn't realise the only changing Rarebit was going was changing people into things he was dropping hints and questions about that he was thinking of.

**Yasamuu**

FlaminMathew1 wrote:

I got to be the only Effy clone!! Woot!!

Wouldn't have happend if it was a player event, can't have it both ways.