So, from what I understand, the game currently has a whole bunch of locked chests but no way to unlock them.  So, if lockpicking is a long way off, it would be cool if there was some other way for people to open their chests.

I know GMs sometimes show up as merchants to sell or auction items that can't normally be purchased by players.  What about an outlaw GM hiding out in the sewers or in Oja or something, who will unlock a player's locked chests for a fee?  There could be a limit of one chest per person, or require each player to perform some task per chest, or something along those lines, to prevent a huge line or overcrowding.

Now that you don't need training for skills, the filter button is useless.  Can it be changed to filter out all skills at 0? 

It recently bothered me that PlaneShift has all the ingredients to make sandwiches but so far none have been implemented (that I am aware of) so here are a couple sandwich recipes that could help change that:

Nut Spread and Jam Sandwich
[There already exists a bread with jam item]
Crush mixed nuts into crushed nuts using mortar and pestle.
Combine crushed nuts and oil into unmixed nut spread.
Mix unmixed nut spread into nut spread using mixing bowl with wooden spoon.
Combine slice of bread and nut spread into spreading nut bread.
Spread spreading nut bread into bread with nut spread using preparation table with spreader.
Combine bread with nut spread and bread with jam into unprepared nut spread and jam sandwich.
Prepare unprepared nut spread and jam sandwich into nut spread and jam sandwich using preparation table.

Cheesy Steak Sandwich
Combine pile of sliced meat, sliced lake mushroom, sliced bogo pepper, hot cooking oil into cooking steak sandwich base.
Panfry cooking steak sandwich base into steak sandwich base using iron skillet.
Combine steak sandwich base, crumbled cheese into cheese covered steak sandwich base.
Mix cheese covered steak sandwich base into cheesy steak sandwich base using iron skillet with wooden spoon.
Combine cheesy steak sandwich base, 2 slices of bread, into unprepared cheesy steak sandwich.
Prepare unprepared cheesy steak sandwich into cheesy steak sandwich using preparation table.

[The same recipe above could be used with diced kikiri meat for a chicken philly cheesesteak too.]


Anybody else have sandwich ideas?

Now that the NPCs have some pretty interesting AI/behavior, it would be cool if certain NPCs would attack you only if you had certain faction associations.  For example rogues and cutthroats would attack anyone not associated with the thieves, certain sewer residents could attack those who don't have connections to the cabal of whispers, etc.

I really like alchemy so far.  I had a char with like 17 alchemy from creation long before the skill was implemented, so I was pretty excited when I finally got to start using it.  If I'm not mistaken though some of the NPCs during the quests talk about using poisons.  It would be cool if the alchemy skill could be used to craft poisons to help in fights.

Some other games let you apply poisons directly to a weapon, and the next X amount of times that weapon is used it does extra poison damage (perhaps with diminishing effect each hit).  I'm not saying PS should necessarily copy that, but that's how it has been done in the past.  Another thing I think would be cool is to have a special kind of dagger or dart that's hollowed out specifically for to put poison in.  The next time the dagger/dart is used it will dispense its poison all at once, doing significantly increased damage (perhaps time to implement "Assassin weapon" skill?  ).

Poisons could also have other effects than just damage.  Some ideas off the top of my head:
Freezing poison: freezes the flesh it affects, causing stiffness (decreased agility), crafted from ground frost arangma quartz.
Fire poison: burns flesh, causing intense pain and leaving the victim vulnerable to attack (increased damage taken), crafted using fire carkarass feathers and/or grendol fire blood
Infection poison: infects the victim with Raging Fever, crafted with concentrated diseased rat blood
Paralysis poison: prevents the victim from moving or attacking for a few seconds (allowing the attacker to flee)

Crafting poisons would improve the alchemy skill, but it would also affect the game in other ways.  Poisons could help sneaky rogue/thief-like characters have a chance against the warrior type characters (since a dagger could be poisoned more effectively than, say, a battle axe).  Also poisoned arrows/darts would help the ranged skill be more worthwhile.  Poison effects could ignore armor (assuming the initial attack is not dodged or blocked) which might help balance the problem of armor being overpowered.  Also the idea of the "assassin weapons" skill being implemented sounds awesome to me.

Thoughts?  Suggestions?

So I was thinking, the devs are overworked already.  And it seems to me that they're not really utilizing their largest asset - the community.  As a way to speed up development, what if the devs made a list of artwork that needed to be worked on but they haven't gotten around to.  Then every once in a while they could start a contest on the forums for the community to design one of the missing pieces.  It could be as small as an inventory icon for a quest item to as large as a new cave/dungeon.  When the contest is over, the devs can check out the winner to make sure it meets their quality standards and doesn't conflict with settings in any way.  If everything checks out, it can be added to the game.

As for rewards, I would think the satisfaction of seeing one's own artwork in the game would be rewarding enough.  Also, contest winners could have their names put in a special thanks section of the credits.  As a bonus, it might be nice for first-time winners to receive a special artist cap in-game or something, but that's not the point.

A couple of rules:
1. Artwork must be completely original
2. Contestants must agree that if their work is chosen, it can be released under PlaneShift's art license.  Sorry, but from everything I've seen/heard this is never going to change.

Please, please, PLEASE do not turn this into yet another thread complaining about PS's art license.  Please.  I'm begging you.

So with the introduction of herbal remedies and alchemy, I think we no longer need food to be the primary way of healing.  It's unrealistic that foods would heal wounds anyway (something that has always bothered me in video games).

So I'd like to propose a new system, in which a hunger bar is added to player status.  This bar would slowly fill up over time, but would fill up more quickly during activities that decrease your stamina (running long distances, fighting, mining, etc.)  When the bar becomes about half full, players start to see a slight drop in stats.  As the hunger gets worse and worse, the stat penalty gets more and more severe.  If the bar fills up, the player should die of starvation, and respawn with the bar like half full.

Rather than instantly healing characters, food should decrease their hunger.  Basic food like apples and bread should decrease it a little, while more advanced cooked and baked items would greatly decrease it.

Potions and herbal remedies should be used for quick healing.  However in order to prevent foods from losing their value, cooked and baked items should also heal gradually over time (for example, 3 hp per second for a minute).

In terms of time, hunger should not be something that a character has to worry about all the time.  I'd say for a character that's just sitting down doing nothing, it should be 2-3 (in game) days before hunger sickness starts to set in, and another 2 more or so before death.  Characters who are exerting themselves fully (ie running/fighting/mining continuously) should probably feel the effects of hunger after about 1 day in game.

Overall I think this system adds a lot of realism to the game, and it gives cooking/baking skills another, more realistic purpose.

If you make it so selling already used books doesn't give any money, players would have no incentive to take down other people's posted books or steal stuff out of mailboxes.  The character might have other reasons for digging through someone else's mail or tearing down posted stuff, but at least this would prevent people from taking stuff down for no reason.