i find it odd that in a game with both a swear filter and the ability to turn said filter on and off that a gm should have the right or the obligation to warn a player for swearing in clear text. those who are offended by language will leave their filters on and those who arren't should turn them off. the game has a obvious option to turn the filters on and off. personally i think the gm's should only address swearing on the instances that players use special characters such as @$% or spaces to knowingly bypass the filter.

2) the guards must be required to take the resisting criminal down to less than 1/4 of his health to simulate wounding him enough so that he can be dragged to jail.

and if the criminal recognizes he can't escape and surrenders?

these are general guidelines not rules to be enforced by hard code. what it means is that if challenged to a duel the guard must accept and must be given stats comperable of a player of the same level. if a player surrenders the guard can jail him normally. but the rule is primarily so a player has a right to resist arrest. wether they win or not is dependant on how things turn out in the end

interesting though the idea of a modern type hand grenade would be death to serious rp. however i am all for the idea of potions with negative effects you can throw at people.

you can have a red way potion that lights people on fire. azure way potion that creats a blast of air to knock someone down, could rapidly grow poision vines around them and sap their health, crystal way .... i guess you throw it at an ally and it heals them. dark way could drain the targets mana. and blue way could freeze them in place.

but it is an interesting idea to explore grenade like weaponry. though the did have black powder in the oriant and were expirimenting with it in medival times it wasent widley used

though i would also like to see dual logging with a single account i think it would be fun to play an alt as my main characters brother/sister in real time.

If there is an RP reason for two characters to have the same last name then the GMs can do this, if all parties agree to the name change.

ah ok so it can still be done on a case by case basis. it would be a bit easier to creat families though i think it would be a fun dynamic to have a actual rp family with more than just husband and wife. a few kids and grandparents too.

There's also MANY children who are playing now, constantly leaking smilies and godmodding...

i think we should just abandon the notion of a family orianted game and reqire a state id showing your at least 16 before you can join ps this is a big kids game. i am not being agist here i am just stating the facts it is a complex roleplay based game that a young kid cannot comprehend unless on the rare ocasion he is one of those intelligant prodidge's. i have seen games fail because they try to expand their player base to include all ages. it turns the game into a faimly friendly shithole with all the fun removed in favor of simplicity and enforcement of adult content laws. young children can never understand or apreciate the beauty of planeshift and really the dev team needs to cut their losses and stop catering towards familys and start working on a game that is actually somthing serious Rp'ers will be able to get into again. i mean back in the day we had in character racism and even a whole rp about a group of dermorian slavers subdjucating the enki race. after the rp was over (and it was one of the epic ones) the gm's put a stop to that shortly after and i have a feeling it was a family values issue.

than there was the homosexuality issue it was removed from the game due to the possibility of offending people's religion. but when you think about it if your one of those players that is so inflexable that you see gays as blasphemy against god than why the hell are you playing a video game where the players worship fictious dieties one of whom is moddled after the lead developer of the game

it is impossible to create a entire politically correct game and allow it to keep it's soul. the only way to write a story that is not offensive to anyone is to hand them a blank piece of paper. it cant be done and the serious rp community is the only thing keeping
PS alive and if you alienate them with a kiddy firiendly environment ps will fail and die a slow horrible death if it is luckey. if it is unlucky it will become a hollow shell of idocy like wow and global agenda have fallen into.

so basically i think a wipe will help because all the powerleveling toddlers will go home crying and problem solved. the serious rpers wont really care because they never bothered with the leveling mechanics to begin with prefering socilization to leveling

the only sure fire way to stop a bot is for a gm to engage the player in conversation to see if it responds intellagantly. adding arbitrary detection routines is a recipie for disaster because belive it or not i can stand in the same spot for hours doing the same thing i am patient. a bot detection system could probibally mark me but if someone talks to me i can engage them in conversation or roleplay.

but i really dont like the way everyone uses the term macro for bots there are many harmless macros that can simply make say 100 drag and drop operations from a forge to your inventory and bind it to a single key. no real advandage and the health benifits are that you dont get carple tunnel syndrome. an autohotkey is technically a macro but it is in no way shape or form a bot because it must be executed by a player and monitered by the same player. infact there is a company called razer who makes a mmo mouse that has hardware based macroing in it to set off spells and crafting actions in WOW

Since the beginning of plane shift people have been saddled with a clunky and inefficient user interface that requires allot of mouse movement and keystrokes resulting in far more abuse to your hands than should be necessary. The main reason people cannot do anything about it is an archaic rule that lumps bots and attended macroing into the same category under hacking/cheating.
There are primary differences between the two systems and while an autonomous bot does indeed fall under the definition of cheating. I do not believe that a user created macro should be criminalized in the same manner.
For starters let’s define the two different items in question as well as an excerpt from the ps rules on cheating.
The plane shift rules on cheating can be found here please read them prior to reading the rest of this post
http://www.planeshift.it/cheating.html

A bot client also known as botting is a complex program that is designed to perform one or more tasks with 0 user input. and more often than not utalizes a non authorized client to directly communicate with the server. A bot client is essentially a personal npc server that allows you to program your player character and walk away from the computer while it tirelessly spends the rest of the night mining fishing farming xp or generally advancing your level without having to play the game.
A bot client falls under the category of “tools that the game designer didn't create for him, basically spoiling the original creation of the designers.”
A bot client breaks realism because the character in question will act similarly to an npc monster with jerky movement’s unrealistic actions. Complete inability to communicate with anyone or anything.
A bot client breaks balance because it advances your character to a skill level that you did not take the time and effort to reach
BOTS ARE CHEATS

There may be several definitions of a macro but the one I am referring to consists of a simple input program that sits between the keyboard driver and the operating system and allows a single key to trigger a complex series of mouse paths clicks and keystrokes.
Macros are used for a process called attended macroing. This involves a player who is actively engaged in the game but who through use of the program has taken a long tedious process of clicking and keystrokes and turned them into a single button.
 
For example, taking ore out of a furnace. Say you have 8 stacks of ore you wish to make into a stock without a macro you could easily end up with carpel tunnel syndrome because to move each stack you have to first open your inventory one by one drag the stacks while holding down the stack key. After that you than have to open the stock casting and drag the stacks in one by one yet again. Once your finished you may have even send the stocks back to the furnace for further purification.  

Now because a macro program directly inputs the mouse movements and keystrokes it in no way alters the game or effects the game play its self. So a macro does not fall under the category of a tool that destroys the creation of the developers. If anything it improves the gaming experience by fixing flaws in the ui that result in an overly complicated task and inordinate amount of clicking.

Now back to the ore smelting example. A macro is not a bot and cannot do everything for you. But you can program the macro to click on each square while holding the control key and when you press your hotkey trigger the mouse will move from slot to slot transferring the items automatically.

Due to limitations in the engine of the game and the fact that it is direct input the process will take more or less the same time as it takes a human to perform the action.

In essence attended macroing is balanced because you advance at roughly the same rate as normal while you yourself are actually taking part in the leveling process and are using your mind and skills to guide the program to your ultimate goal.

Once the macro runs its course control of the computer is returned to the user who will then proceed to his next step. Macros are dumb scripts they cannot execute themselves without user input and they cannot handle environmental variables such as say window or npc moved. The script would start clicking in the middle of the screen and do absolutely nothing without the human readjusting the window.

This also makes the macro balanced because it forces the human to stay in the seat and interact with the game. It also keeps realism intact because your character will continue to walk and act with human input and aside from the few macro assisted tasks (durring which you would be standing still anyway) you will be more than capable of staying in character and replying to any question asked.

So the only thing a macro does is cut down on the sheer number of mouse clicks. Now I am sure some brilliant person out there could find some way to modify a macro program to work autonomously but in doing so he would have turned the system into a bot anyway.

But as stated a properly assembled keyboard macro does not give players any sort of advantage and additionally allows people with physical injuries or disabilities to play the game where they formerly could not. In all macroing in my opinion does not classify as cheating and should be exempted from the list at least until the crafting system is fixed to the point where the ui is more intuitive and easier to navigate.

aside from all of my arguments planeshift actually has a macro program built into it in the form of the programable shortcuts. however since the input from these macros is limited to the console it is of little use for crafting or other tasks that require constant babysitting.