(Not sure why this was posted in Newbie Help, but I'll roll with it.)
It may not seem so, but there are more players around than you think. Chances are you haven't come across them. I've been roleplaying with mostly Americans during evenings/nights almost every day. However, roleplay tends to become cloistered away the further it progresses. Due to the lack of players, roleplay may seem to be gone, but some of us have stuck around.
We're not here for the game, though. The roleplayers are still around because there are other roleplayers. The game doesn't fully support roleplay, so many have migrated to other games that actually do support roleplay. (And I was saying this years ago when I didn't even know anything about game design: "PS fills a niche that other games/mods will soon take over if it doesn't improve.")
Not to mention, there's a huge amount of toxicity in this game. I see it from players, GMs, and some developers. I've heard way too many stories from other roleplayers of being told "You roleplay things I don't like," "Your roleplay isn't appropriate for this game," or "Your character is too rude." None of the roleplayers I've heard this from do anything close to what is considered inappropriate on other roleplay-oriented games, so the issue isn't with them. It's the attitude of restricting what roleplayers are allowed to do in this game.
In regards to mechanics. They just
do not make sense. This is supposed to be a roleplay-oriented game and yet the grind is so ridiculous that most players who have played have never been able to OOCly match the IC capabilities that their characters should have. Grinding takes away from time spent roleplaying. What is the point, to make non-roleplayers or light-roleplayers grind long enough that it seems like the playerbase of roleplayers is larger than it is?
Talad said himself that he wants training to be realistic, and yet skills seem to grant exponential effectiveness the higher rank they are. At the dev meeting, it's stated (something along the lines of), "The higher the skill cap the less likely you are to have OP characters because who wants to spend all that time grinding?" Sure, you might have
some less maxed characters, but now you've created characters that are more OP than before, and everyone spends
even less time roleplaying. Never underestimate what a gamer would go through to become powerful in a game.
This leads me to believe that the issue with the
game is its design. The obvious solution to the example from the previous paragraph is to make skill effectiveness as a function of rank be logarithmic. And to do away with every skill having the same max of 200, but that's for another discussion.
The points is, the game's design does the opposite of support roleplay. It actively hinders it. And then, in response to lack of player interaction, the developers have the idea of making some questlines only complete-able if other players are involved. The Way Circle quests, for example. You have to show NPCs items from other players to progress. Now, let's put that in context. There are so few players that have those items once you progress far enough. Doing it through roleplay without metagaming is
very difficult at this point. This is just frustrating for the player trying to complete the questline. You can't fix a gaping wound with a band-aid.
And now we have so few players that the GMs feel compelled to hold event after event in the hope that it will keep players around, even if those players aren't actual roleplayers. Good on them for trying, but they've already hit the point at which quantity subsumes quality. Lore and immersion have been thrown out the window for numerous events. Not to offend (that I am worried I'm going to face consequences for saying this is absurd), but in the last event I participated in, a GM was roleplaying as an old man with a cane and jumped from a platform 60 feet in the air and landed on a set of stairs without injury. What?
Machine gunning now, but the skills haven't been changed to reflect lore (for example, a player should not be able to max Crystal Way and Dark Way) even though there has been plenty time to do so. Canon lore is contradicted in several older parts of the game (old books saying a Ynnwn can be the child of a dwarf and a Diaboli, as example). There is no guide on commonly accepted roleplay etiquette in the game for new players, so they come in not fully understanding what IC or OOC is and no concept of what godmoding is. And why is the full lore not included on the main website? Being familiar with lore is a priority for roleplaying.
In short, the game's design doesn't fully support roleplay, the mechanics hinder roleplay, and the GMs and mechanics neglect lore and players' immersion. I've honestly, seriously thought several times that developers and GMs may be trying to reduce the number of roleplayers on PlaneShift. Maybe it was a mistake to say it would be a game focused on roleplaying during its conception?
Back to the design of the thing. I know for a fact that development has been snailing along without the usual design documents that any other game has. Even the tiny mobile games I've worked on have had art bibles (references and concepts for artists), custom texture resources, and base meshes that were available for anyone on the team to use. Organizationally, PS is a mess.
As for the lack of roleplay that would most likely be remedied by having more roleplayers online at one time, so you need more players to play Planeshift.
The
developers need more players to play PlaneShift. This is not on the players. If you don't design a game to attract and retain a certain kind of player, it's your own fault if you don't have the playerbase you want.
The reality is that we can also sit on our behind and talk how things need to change before doing nothing or just continue playing the game we enjoy, even if it isn't as good as we want it to be.
This is how you kill a game. Acceptance of mediocrity leads to incompetence and failure. The team that the game has right now needs to seriously consider what mistakes may have been made. The team needs new members who are familiar with game design.
Planeshift is quite unique, it's a 3d RPing mmorpg with a large part of its community dedicated to rp or atleast enjoying it. One of Planeshifts strengths is that it is spatial, you can put down your harp because someone approached you, a kran can come up to you and tower over you to intimidate you.
I know that you're new to the game, so I'll explain why this is not necessarily true: other games and mods have begun to fill its niche. I won't share what those games are, but they do exist, and they do not have the plethora of issues plaguing PlaneShift. Also, it doesn't matter if "a large part of its community" is dedicated to roleplay if the community consists of less than 30-40 unique players.
Strip the game to what it needs, stop development on things that are 'nice to have', and focus on supporting RolePlay to the highest extent. Advertise the game as such, make sure the lore is ROCK solid, and find a way to bring player population up into a developed, albeit small, world that already exists and can be fleshed by the imagination.
The gist of this is good. The game needs a huge overhaul when it comes to roleplay and mechanics. Fix up the lore and make it accessible. Support the roleplayers.
To be honest, the dev team needs new blood. It is stagnant, and there are many questionable decisions being made. I'll probably try to apply in the future, as that's all I can do besides criticize the direction of the game. But it doesn't need people who haven't worked on or studied games before. What it needs are people who understand the development process and real game design. You can't just let someone on your team because he's your friend or because he's willing to do it. You need competence and some experience.
To the current team and GMs: please, don't take this as bashing or complaining. This is criticism that I've thought long about before making, and these are ideas that I've bounced off other players. We see that this game has potential, but, at this rate, the game will be dead before then.
