For years there has been the on-going debate of RP vs game mechanics or leveling. It's become clear to me that a lot of you do not know how to use the one aspect without compromising the other. Let's take a quick look at how most people would play planeshift.
A new player creates a character, explores a bit, sees high level characters running about and says "I wish I was that good at fighting" and promptly goes of to level their skills. But after being in the game for a while, they begin to find RPing to be a little fun, so they start roleplaying, they enjoy it a lot, start neglecting their leveling and eventually become frustrated because they want to level their character but if they do they don't have time to roleplay. Eventually they decide to do one or the other, but get bored with the monotony of grinding or with the same old "Greetings, lovely day we're having" type RPs and stop playing altogether. (Note: I'm not saying this how we all play, some of us never PL, some of us never RP, and some of us never get bored with either
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Now lets look at some facts. Roleplaying is, in essence, living your characters life. Leveling is increasing your character skills. But here's where the trouble lies, because the speed at which time runs when RPing is a lot slower than when we level. Let me explain. If you think about real life, we as human being also would like to increase our skills, but we also have to live life while doing that, and that is why it takes most our lives to master our skills, and sometimes we never even get to that point. Now you come to planeshift, which is a roleplaying game, which means, as I said, you live your characters life. You want to increase you characters skills, but now instead of living life as you do that, you try to level your skills all at once in the shortest space of time. I mean if you're roleplaying an 18 years old, she will certainly take a lot longer to master sword fighting, for example, than a couple of months.
This is why we can't have a balance of leveling and rping, because both aspects run at completely different speeds of time, if you know I mean. So, how should we play planeshift? Bare in mind, this is my opinion, which is completely theoretical, because I can't see people doing it this way on a scale that would make it realistic. What you should do, is roleplay as normal. Now lets say for example you wanted to become a mage, if you were really learning those skills it would take years, so don't rush your leveling, it's really not necessary. Now I'm not saying that it must also take years, that would be silly, but it certainly doesn't have to take a couple of months. I've been playing for two years and my characters have still not leveled anywhere close to what others have, yet I'm still enjoying and playing both aspects of the game, when my character has time to level, she will level, if she has a family crisis, she'll deal with that first, if there's a friend in need, she'll cancel her training to help.
The problem is that most players who start planeshift are used to normal pvp mmorpgs, in which it is quite normal and indeed necessary to max your character quickly so that you can actually compete with other players. PlaneShift is a completely different type of game, it is really not necessary to level your skills as quickly. Sure it's impressive to take on ulbers and pwn other players in a duel, but its even more impressive if you have a realistic, unique and interesting character with an equally unique roleplaying style. Your skills make a part of your character, and only a part. In this game your character's personality and history make up an even bigger part, and which will determine whether or not your character is fun to roleplay with.
This is completely open to discussion though, since everyone I'm sure will have an opinion about it. Please, tell me what you think, maybe tell us your way of balancing the two aspects of the game.
