... I wonder if OOC phobic roleplayers could be pleased if the devs would stop working on the actual game until they have come up with a synthetic language, totally unique to PlaneShift (actually one per race and dialect) that has an equally unique glyph set as an alphabet. We could finally eliminate OOC once and for all by no longer having OOC words.
Well ... we probably wouldn't have any players any more either, but hey, that's an acceptable tradeoff in order to turn PS into an RP heaven, isn't it?

If that's what life on the RP server is suppose to be about (oppression, reporting and pulling silly rules out of your waste disposal), then it's good that RP is dead. More so, it should be beheaded with a shovel, driven a flock through it's heart and buried in a coffin full of garlic. Just to be sure that it stays dead.

Two points (1 cent each):

1. If you try to force people in doing what they are not interested in doing they'll just log off and eventually leave.

2. PS did not come up with the guild concept. Commercial games did and they did for one reason and one reason only: Socializing. The point of guilds is not somehow enhance settings. It is a tool for binding players to a community. Restricting guildformation is just another suicide attempt when you want to build a playerbase.

Whats the point of adding glyphs without adding spells? What's the benefit of faith bound spells?

(Please don't tell me, that this will in any way boost roleplay. It won't. It just limits your abilities. The fact that I can cast "Talad rocks" instead of "Xiosa's magical watersports" does not mean that I - or any number of players for that matter - will suddenly start behaving like Talad was the best thing after the invention of sliced bread).

Well, people will use /die to get back to Hydlaa as long as it provides a shortcut. The easiest way to shut that loophole is by spawning them again on the same spot (well ... not nescessarily in the eagle chasm or the dlayo pit) or at least on the same map they originally died on.

On a side note: Instead of thinking about Suicide abuse, it may also be necessary to think about travel times. Really, going about 6 times back and forth between Oja and BD just to finish Lorythia's quest can hardly be called fun. A spell that would allow you to set one beacon (at a time) and teleport to that beacon from any location might be a very handy thing.

I think what's overly hilarious is that the mentality that you think is here and voiced by "Mind's Eye Collective" has sort of moved away over the past few months in reaction to moves by the PS development team to "mainstream" gameplay and playstyle (not necessarily a good thing).


To be honest, I'd rather the RolePlay server be a fair amount stricter. We have a non-roleplay server, let those that don't want to abide by some fairly common-sense rules go there. Also, there is nothing wrong with creating a game to suit only a particular niche. Especially when it is non-commercial. Too many games these days are overly generic to make money from Mr. Average, it's nice that a game like PlaneShift retains at least some form of particular individuality.

Just out of curiosity: Which part of "elitism creates small communities, but advertisement requires large audiences" was too hard for you to understand?

It may be that the devs finally saw reason and stopped catering to the whims of the RP purists. It may also be that the community has become a bit more open minded in the last few months the mentality slowly started to shifted a bit. But then again, there are posters like you, who are too thick to get it, aren't they?
Your second paragraph speaks volumes, concerning your mindset. Your disregard for those "lesser" players that may go elsewhere is exactly the attitude that harms and has been harming this game for years. The outlook of running into discussions with bullheads like you, who do not have the faintest clue of what they are discussing at all, but nevertheless feel a strong urge to argue their point, is exactly what makes people not want to go to the forums in the first place.

Congratulations! You honestly earned yourself the title "Liability"!

Quote from: Talad on June 24, 2010, 12:49:12 pm

Clicking the ads multiple times in a day by the same person will cause PS to be banned by google ads program. They check for "fake" clicks, to ensure the program is useful to the companies that pay for advertizing. Thanks anyway for your support. I appreciate the fact you wanted to act in favor of PS, that's much appreciated. In addition, as part of the program, PS team is not allowed in any way to incentive ads clicking, and so we will not.

So please DO NOT click repeatedly the ads.

Crap 

Just FYI:
AdSense uses quite a lot of mechanisms to track clicks and to prevent click fraud. The obvious two are Cookies and IP addresses (I wouldn't be surprised, if they used browser fingerprinting as well). If you think now that clearing your cookies and cutting your internet connection between each click would do the trick, think again. The third big mechanism (that cannot be betrayed) to prevent click fraud is a web bug on the advertizers "thank you for your purchase page". That is, if AdSense sees a large number of banner clicks, out of which none ever makes it through a purchase, they can pretty much suspect that click fraud is going on and given the fact that there is no shortage in aspiring publishers, they can pretty much afford to kick/ban on the basis of a suspicion alone (yes, the contract, you sign as a publisher explicitly gives them the right to terminate it on whatever reason).

I would also like to note that banners are not mobs that need to be clicked to death and looted afterwards. Advertisers don't pay publishers for getting people to click on their ads (that would be completely pointless!). They pay for the referral. The goal of every banner is to produce some kind of sale out of which the click is  payed.
In other words: if you want to PS to earn an honest buck, you'd have to buy something after clicking a banner. But then again, in that case you could also directly make a donation via paypal or whatever and give the PS team the full sum instead of the breadcrumbs, an advertiser would pay for a lead.

Having said all that. Good luck with AdSense on the forums, Talad. I doubt though, that it will turn into a viable source of income. The PlaneShift community has taken every attempt of inbreeding in the last couple of years ("if you don't wanna roleplay, go play somewhere else"). This is especially true for the forum which only has a couple of frequent posters/readers. You can only make money from AdSense when you have literally thousands of page impressions coming from thousands of different people (remember: each click ideally leads to a purchase. How much stuff can the few hundred PS Players possibly want to buy?).
Well, maybe that will finally lead to the insight that the "PS is only for elite roleplayers" point of view is futile ... Then again ... who am I kidding?

PS: Maybe you want to look into "project wonderful" instead of AdSense for the beginning. Their payout is crap, but unlike AdSense/Adwords you can use your earnings directly for advertizing yourself on other websites without fear of click fraud, as banners do not earn money per click but per time. Webcomics seem to make heavy use of it to shift around their readers, so I guess, while you don't make a lot of money out of it, it can at least be good for community building.

We restored the DB on the other server as soon as we could.

You know I am sorry but we had need of the second server to test the new release.

I don't know what it is you want us to do, we are all volunteers working on donated gear.

The whole tone of your post isn't very friendly or understanding at all.

I am well aware of that. I am also well aware, of the fact, that in this community, everyone who does not subscribe to the "roleplay is holy" doctrine is considered to be a second class citizen at best and treated as such. If you are complaining about a lack of manpower in your voluntary effort, I might suggest thinking about how many potential volunteers you already lost, because you and others told them to "play somewhere else", which they happily did. And this is exactly the reason, why my tone is not very friendly or understanding at all. In all the time, I have been here, this community has taken every effort to drive people away and the dev team has always been happy to assist. The RP covenant only being the latest of these antics.
Do you guys actually think about, where PS could be today, if the game was more welcoming? And no, it is not welcomning, to just state, that everyone is welcome, if that is immediately qualified with "as long as your roleplay", without a definition of what "roleplay" is suppose to be (such a statement alone is a serious turn off to everyone, who does software development) and a threat, that you can be dealt with, if you do not follow the non-rules.


The thing I want you (as in "dev/gm team") to do, though I have no hope of that ever happening, is to stop catering to the idiots. Plain and simple. You managed to breed yourself an utmost vocal and utterly braindead community of people, who shoot themselves in their own foot with every wet dream they get fulfilled (anyone remember that  time, where you had to mutually introduce yourself in order to not be labeled "Someone" in chat - Great roleplay feature!). With a little bit of sanity and throwing the moronic attitude of roleplaying is so holy, that it deserves no other place than the main chat over board, there would neither be a need for a covenant nor for a second server with relaxed rules (which as a statement is stupid to begin with, because the strict rules do not actually exist in any applicable way). In other words, what I expect you to do is to stop making PS a parody of "bacon of hope".

Here are some really easy ideas, that would instantly relief you of most of the quarrels:
* Scrap the covenant and rephrase the tutorial/loading screen hints. It's really basic psychology, that people are far more inclined to do something, if offered as an option instead of as a must. While at it, also clarify that [ooc bracket rule] to be a convention to be used only, when you have to step out of character and want to prevent missunderstandings. Make it perfectly clear, that Brainy Smurf behaviour will not be tollerated in the future (currently, it is encouraged).
* Make the whole world open PVP. Roleplay is about consequences, right? Can you think of a better consequence for bad roleplay, than to be beaten up for it? I run around all the time with weapons drawn and seriously, when someone steps up to me, to remind me of the law, he'd better be in a position to actually enforce it (alone or grouped with others). This also opens up a path for real roleplay.
* In order to keep people from grieving others with random PK, install a criminal system. Every player starts out with zero PK points. Whenever someone assaults someone with zero PK, s/he gets 5 points, another 5, if that aussault results in a kill and even more, if new players are attacked. Every character having PK points can be attacked without penalty and also be looted by everyone, once defeated. Only way to remove PK points is by paying heavy bribes to government chars or similar.
* Heck, man the guards occasionally and hunt PKers in the city down!
* Get RP out of main. Seriously, I mean it. The whoe idea of main being the RP chat is flawed to begin with. For once, roleplayers love to be among themselves anyway and second, one channel does not scale anyway. You cannot have two stories take place in the tavern at the same time, one including it being set on fire, while the other being about whatever you do upstairs. Instead of RP taking place in main, make use of story specific channels, everyone interested in can subscribe to. If you want it really fancy, put a glowing beacon in the air, stating "a story is going on here", which also provides the last 5 minutes of chatlogs for those who come in late. That will completely remove the need for any covenant. People can just choose their own style, instead of having own shoved down their throat.
* Give players the ability to flag themselves as either strict or casual roleplayers. That way the evil powerlevers can know ahead, who is an roleplayer and vice versa, allowing both groups to ignore each other.

Thanks Shangsi for completely missing the point. How do you actually roleplay with that level text comprehension? The point was not, whether or not I can claim to have killed a dragon, but that I will immediately have people like bloodedIrishman, Akkaido Kivikar, you and a whole bunch of other self proclaimed "roleplayers" on my trail, which are so skilled in their chosen art of "roleplaying", that whining and complaining to game masters/the forum or lecturing the player in question, seems to be the only way you know how to deal with the situation.

Yes, I do understand, that there are genuine newbies, who are actually serious about wearing a dragon skull on their helmet, but know what,? I do not care about that at all. What I care about are "roleplayers" with a rule fetish. You know, that kind of people, who love to sleep with a AD&D source book (or an RP covenant for that matter) under their pillow, so they can lecture others like Brainy Smurf. I care about idiots, stepping up to me, because they feel the need to remind me of sheating my weapons (I don't do that, because the UI is sluggish and I don't want to remember equipping them again the moment, I hit attack on an ulbernaut). Thats the most dull, repetitive and pointless "roleplay" I am forced to do over and over again(it is especially annoying, since these idiots obviously never spend a single thought about where they want to go with their so called "roleplay"). I do especially care about idiots, feeling a need to report me to Game Masters for this and other things, they are too narrow minded to understand (unfortunately, most GMs I have had to deal with seem to be of the same breed).

That ill begotten covenant is not helping roleplay at all. It only gives squealers and know-it-alls an excuse to force their opinion on proper roleplay down every one elses throat. It actually stiffles roleplay to a point where any creativity is killed on the holy altar of settings. People are trained to think twice about everything they say, lest they offend someone. I for myself would not mind at all, if Darth Vader himself paid a visit to Hydlaa main square, if it was entertaining, because that is why I log in: to be entertained, not to watch some completely anemic, but totally conform "roleplay" about properly introducing yourself and then visiting the tavern as the only other option of doing something acceptable. I like the settings and it most certainly disturbs me, when they are violated. However, I do not complain about that like a crybaby. When someone approaches me, who has a dragon skull in his character description, I have all of these options:
* Completely ignore him
* At least ignore the dragon skull, if it is not actively brought to my attention
* Make an IC remark, that I never encountered such a creature in these lands (potentially confirm OOC, that this is indeed not a critter, living in this world).
* Simply go along with his story (if it is fun) and afterwards totally ignore, that the whole event took place in the first place. I do not consider my chatlog to be an epic work of poetry, that might only be filled with proper content and caption.

In any case, I do not need a covenant, to enforce what cannot be enforced, since it cannot be defined and only forces Game Masters to act at haphazard just to please an RP community, that is actually nothing but a liability to this game in terms of public relations. Or does anyone think the phrase "maybe this is not the right game for you", which is used ever so often by die hard "roleplayers" is actually a welcoming message? Does anybody think, that the attitude "covenant breakers can/will be dealt with" is particularly attractive? Especially, if it is peanuts, which can upset roleplayers and the tutorial leaves little doubt about that?