Death

[netforce10]

Part of it is, I think, that PS is a roleplaying game and beyond rp there isn't that much to be had in the game. Crafting is meticulous past the first few hours where it is sort of novel because it feels very different from other games, the combat is clunky and subpar to other mmo and neither is that fun because they feel like the same repetitions over and over. As for quests they are about what you would suspect I suppose, there are a few nice ones asking you to decode a secret message or the ones where you have to go to the library are nice aswell  (Although Dependant on the circumstances the game should assume you would have known the answer) as well as a couple of others but the bulk remains a "talk to x, walk and talk to y, (give z to y,) walk and talk to x" with some variation in the amount of different people you have to talk to. These complains can't be solved easily and I certainly wouldn't have the answer to them.

So RP is about it for things that keeps me playing and even then, I end up mostly playing the mechanics in the game. So, how could we foster a more active RP scene? My suggestion would be to attract characters naturally to a single spot, currently most crafting spots have only 1 or 2 jobs which can be used there and therefore only attract characters with that occupation, exceptions would be for example Harn as he is a storage but even then most people coming there for that come and go quickly. My suggestion for that would be to have a crafting hall in which nearly all jobs can be practiced.

Another proposal, although similar ideas have been shot down already, would be to have workshops/ateliers for characters. That way it would be easier to find specific persons to interact with and selling things to other player characters would be easier aswell. I for one would love to run a shop and I'm sure there are others aswell.

[Illysia]

I think you are pretty much right, but, honestly, I think regularity is needed more than anything. People have to carve out time to RP and they don't want to waste their time. What players need is a for sure time to find other people who are interesting in RPing, one that they can count on coming up again soon. Right now I don't think anyone has the resources to commit to that.

I had considered reopening the Stonehead to have a for sure meet up time once each week, but I simply don't have the real life time or resources to commit to the venture.

[Erebey]

Coming from a user that left the game my reasons were the following:
*No meaningful RP, mostly due to lack of players, and the rather large map, which means less chance off meeting other chars.
*Constant decline: It's just depressing to come on every day or even week and see the game dying slowly.
*Settings: While this is a smaller problem, there are some detailes in the settings that I don't find to my liking, though I won't go in to that now. Also noteable is the lack of progression and turns in the lore, mostly due to the non-existant activity.
*Crap mechanics: I used to play a bard character, so the ****tyness (Excuse me) of the music sheet system was just killing it for me. I coulden't get past the inability to write counterpunctually (Writing in multiple voices, polyphony).
*Lack of improvement in said mechanics: The game isn't being activly developed, at least the engine isn't, and mechanics dosen't improve. It seems that the devs can't/don't have enough time/ect. to support the gmae.
Anyway, in the end, I just ended up returning to RPing on Gmod (HL2RP), I found me some good active community (Not that mature at all times (In OOC chat ) like the great guys here in planeshift, but serious (RP rules are strictly enforced) nonetheless) and "settled down" in there.
To really bring this game back to life, in my opinion, the game will need:
1. Active development (Which probably means switiching the engine, and recruiting more devs (Has the thought of relaunching planeshift as a mod for source engine, gmod or some other game were ever contemplated?))
2. Active and involved leadership.
3. Great community (Which largly exists).
4. Recruiting new players.

[Ravna]

Well, just to add a reply to your suggestions (which are fair enough).

1) We are actually working on porting the game to a new engine (which is part of why there has not been any change to the current game engine wise since we changed a few things related to crafting months ago). That being said, we are indeed understaffed, but recruiting devs is not as easy as it sounds, especially on games with player base that is not that large in numbers.
point 3 is indeed already covered, we have great players, but we can indeed use more of them, which leads to point 4. This is a bit of a trick, since most players would be looking for a game that has a larger team behind it, meaning more frequent content changes. So this seems like a bit of a catch-22 with point 1, still, all the devs we have are actively working on bringing you more content, be it through quests, items or new engine developments.

TLDR: Your points (I've skipped #2 as you may have noticed) are certainly valid and being worked on, but fixing them is unfortunately not as easy or fast as identifying them.

[Illysia]

Has Talad tried contacting local universities and asking their computer science departments would like to collaborate on the game development? It is experience and this is a live game. Talad has had other people donate to the game, maybe he could charm a local school into helping.

It should be much easier if you put them on the Unreal transition instead of the crystal space version.

[Erebey]

Well, just to add a reply to your suggestions (which are fair enough).

1) We are actually working on porting the game to a new engine (which is part of why there has not been any change to the current game engine wise since we changed a few things related to crafting months ago). That being said, we are indeed understaffed, but recruiting devs is not as easy as it sounds, especially on games with player base that is not that large in numbers.
point 3 is indeed already covered, we have great players, but we can indeed use more of them, which leads to point 4. This is a bit of a trick, since most players would be looking for a game that has a larger team behind it, meaning more frequent content changes. So this seems like a bit of a catch-22 with point 1, still, all the devs we have are actively working on bringing you more content, be it through quests, items or new engine developments.

TLDR: Your points (I've skipped #2 as you may have noticed) are certainly valid and being worked on, but fixing them is unfortunately not as easy or fast as identifying them.

1) I know about the unreal engine port, though I don't know how's progress is going with that because there is no devblog or anything (Would be great if you do one, I would follow at least), and last I heard you are having (A meet the devs few months (Maybe a year now) back) difficulties with that, mostly due to lack of devs. Thing is that it is indeed hard to recruit new devs, so I'm not judging here, I just meant to say that to get the game back to life, more devs are needed in my opinion.
2) Regarding point 2, it was only my opinion and personal feeling, but I haven't felt that there is a very active leadership, or at least involved leadership, mostly because of the lack of important events that progress the lore, or the player's characters, which makes the world feel static (Dead) and not evolving.
3) Non issue.
4) You are right, I think that solving the other issues will indeed bring more players, another problem is probably figuring out how to market the game. The best marketing usally includes visuals and eye candies, but because of the old engine/design, prospective players who are not RP die hards, will get put off. A UE planeshift will indeed be much more marketable.

Personal note:
I don't think that the great aspects of PS lay in the mechanics/quests, but mostly in the community (Fun to talk to people in OOC, friendly) and in the good RP. But, aging mechanics/engine are hindering the game's growth, because as I said, it's hard to market a 10 year old game to new players. And if I will see improvements in activity I'm defintly coming back, but right now, PS dosen't feel viable to me, in the long term (Or short term for that matter). It's really depressing seeing a community die, and much more to actually be in a dying community.

Has Talad tried contacting local universities and asking their computer science departments would like to collaborate on the game development? It is experience and this is a live game. Talad has had other people donate to the game, maybe he could charm a local school into helping.

It should be much easier if you put them on the Unreal transition instead of the crystal space version.

It might be a good idea actually! I hope that you guys (The team) try it, maybe it will bring new life to the development.
Also there are other venues like gamedev.net or gamedev reddit/IRC, maybe some shameless advartising can do wonders?

[Can-ned Food]

The engine, and what you guys call the “mechanics”, are important:  think of them as dolls or clay in our hands.  Such things ought be used to support the play, not to detract from it.  If you can't do what you want with a certain instrument, then you put it away and you get something else.

Know what you want from your toy, and then build one which allows you to do so.  If you want a virtual animatronic diorama which sees the text of your RP and generates visuals to fit them, then develop something like that.  If you want a system which performs rolls and calculations, and which manages rulesets and character properties, then use that.  Et c.

Another proposal, although similar ideas have been shot down already, would be to have workshops/ateliers for characters. That way it would be easier to find specific persons to interact with and selling things to other player characters would be easier aswell. I for one would love to run a shop and I'm sure there are others aswell.

Shot down?  There is the Hydlaa Market.  Or do you mean automated shopkeepers controlled by users?

[netforce10]

Shot down?  There is the Hydlaa Market.  Or do you mean automated shopkeepers controlled by users?

No I meant player owned buildings specifically for shops, so that you could set up a shop (in which they could work their main profession) and just lock it when you are doing something else or offline. Player owned buildings have been proposed or has been asked about a couple of times but the short answer was always no if I recall correctly.

[Can-ned Food]

Oh, of course.

Well, I think one of the reasons for that not being implemented nowadays is the fact that it would lead to unnecessary contention.  See to the recent closing of the RCD for an example of why.

It would be nice if you could rent venues for a certain amount of time — but what would happen with evicted items?  Again, contention and nastiness bleeding over from the simulated world to the users.

Alternatives:  I think you can ask a GM to lock–down items of yours which would make for a stall somewhere.  Almost like a brick–and–mortar shop. 

[Volki]

The addicting element of this game for me was the roleplay. In the past, the gameplay may have been addicting, but it's no match for other MMORPGs out now. Back then, the kind of roleplay PlaneShift is known for probably evolved from the community that both worked on and played for the gameplay elements that were attractive back in the day. Many players joined for the gameplay and stuck around for the roleplay. But once gameplay on newer games became more addicting than the roleplay here, people left. The roleplay is no longer addicting because it barely exists if at all. And now that the gameplay here cannot compete with gameplay elsewhere, people aren't joining.

I honestly think the way to recover would be to rebuild a lot of the gameplay elements around the brand of roleplay that made PS popular. Even this game has stifled players' creativity because it limits players on what they can do a great deal. For example, you can't feasibly become a guard, a government official, a rebellion leader, etc. There's only so far you can go due to the mechanics and the rules enforced by GMs.

This game needs to fully support the roleplay if it wants to be unique enough to survive.

[netforce10]

"Natural" occurring RP is indeed sparce and far between and usually very shallow(my own fault aswel). I wouldn't go as far as to say that the game stifles players's creativity but more than it doesn't necessarily aid them with it. And there should be a look at how to have some form of strive, competition or atleast something which occasionally pushes certain situations onto characters.

I don't think being able to play a guard, government official or any other vocation that has "official" power is the way to go. It would most likely create too much OOC conflict. Imagine a guard or official that, lets say locks up or prevent entry or otherwise hinders someone for a semi legitimate reason(i.e. accidentally having a weapon unsheathed or a staff in hand.) then the person would complain to a GM, GM would either punish the guard making the guard's player pissed as he considered it just his job or the GM would do nothing about it making the player of the victim pissed. In short, conflicts will arise which causes the people playing the characters to be frustrated, unhappy, etc..

Some official occupations could perhaps be filled by players but they should have no way or authority to enforce anything beyond what any other player could enforce and is authorised to enforce. That should be the case both IC and OOC to prevent a player being forced to rp something because he is ICly required to have his character comply. In short: Government vocations should only be a task the characters do and they should not have any power because of it.

As for a rebellion leader, you could occupy any of the pvp places?

Ultimately the game will always have limitation because it has mechanics, such is simply the nature of it but it would be nice for the game to accomodate RP more than it currently does but I have no concrete ideas or concepts on the topic.

[Illysia]

My suggestion is for players to find an RP groups somewhere else for a while then come back to PS. The problem is not what you can RP, but how you think about it. I didn't realize how set in a rut I and fellow PS RPers were until I started RPing in other places.

Everyone probably just need to come out of their comfort zone and see a place where people are RPing differently. Then they will get fresh new ideas about where to take their RPs and what they can do with their characters.

[Volki]

If this is a roleplaying game to the extent that it's advertised, I think it's failing in its purpose. There needs to be more to attract players to the roleplay and more to force them to do so. It's too easy to get by alone, and there's not much that necessitates players interact with one another. Too much reliance on NPCs because players cannot fill their niche. I think the game would prosper if it was more focused on supporting players in pursuing their goals, but most players can't actually become or do what they want due to the limitations set on them. Other games offer this freedom, so players take their creativity elsewhere.

Some official occupations could perhaps be filled by players but they should have no way or authority to enforce anything beyond what any other player could enforce and is authorised to enforce. That should be the case both IC and OOC to prevent a player being forced to rp something because he is ICly required to have his character comply. In short: Government vocations should only be a task the characters do and they should not have any power because of it.

As for a rebellion leader, you could occupy any of the pvp places?

For government officials, the player could work on things like public events, designating guildhouses to be auctioned off, or calling upon militias to defend the city during an event, etc. The character would hopefully be voted in by other players or have some other meritocratic method of becoming an official.

As for guards, I don't think they should be able to have the power of GMs, but they should be able to have some means of keeping order. For example being able to duel any player that enters the city. If a player guard abuses this, it should be dealt with in-character. Presumably a GM would be the leader of the guards and decide which players to hire in the first place. Nothing should be out-of-character.

You could pretend to be a rebellion leader right now, but what are you going to accomplish if you can't take government officials hostage, riot in the cities and fight their guards, or seize the means of production? 

My suggestion is for players to find an RP groups somewhere else for a while then come back to PS.

I wouldn't know where to look for a game that has a similar environment to PlaneShift. I'm also not of the opinion that the community is the problem here. The current state of the community is a symptom of the game itself and the context of gaming at the moment. Lastly, if everyone goes off to roleplay elsewhere, that could be the nail in the coffin for this game.

[Illysia]

Well if you are looking for pure environment then Wurm Online is, in my opinion, the game that PS was trying for. However, there is no significant RP community there, to my knowledge. However, once I started RPing in other games I began to realize how our assumptions stifle us in PS more than anything.

RPing with other groups will show you your biases and let you get back in the habit of RPing regularly again. It gives you a chance to grow as an RPer. However, I know that the hitch is that you have to come back to PS for it to do PS any good.

This is why I say the problem is that the community needs to change how it functions. It's not the community itself, but how it approaches RP and the problem of building community that is making things harder. For instance you can RP being a neighborhood leader or some minor official and organize RPs around it. You don't have to be a vigesimi to create and run a plot or organize players. How you think about/ approach the problem contributes to how hard it is to deal with it.

[netforce10]

As for guards, I don't think they should be able to have the power of GMs, but they should be able to have some means of keeping order. For example being able to duel any player that enters the city. If a player guard abuses this, it should be dealt with in-character. Presumably a GM would be the leader of the guards and decide which players to hire in the first place. Nothing should be out-of-character.

Yes, IC should stay IC and not affect OOC, the problem is, it often does and especially so when players act in a way they think is appropriate and allowed for them to do but then are punished for it. If a guard character would halt someone for holding a staff out and say he should stow away his weapon, the other character would shrug it off with something like "I have some trouble walking and this is a staff that helps me." If then the guard would escalate matters then no one in this situation did anything inherently wrong but one of the two ultimately gets the short end(either the civilian or the guard if a guard captain(GM) punished him) and there is a large chance that the person playing that character is annoyed. I mean the PVP zones are already a source of complaints, although most of those are either along the lines of "He just attacks and kills me" or "If I approach him for rp there then he just ignores it/leaves."

You could pretend to be a rebellion leader right now, but what are you going to accomplish if you can't take government officials hostage, riot in the cities and fight their guards, or seize the means of production? 

You can take the plat mine hostage? Regarding hostages, You could also approach the GMs/settings?,  either have it approved for your group to do it on your own or plan for them to play it out with you. They might still deny it, or don't have the time for it.

One suggestion I would have to improve the gameplay to faccilite rp more is to make the races different beyond the npcs saying nolthrir instead of lemur. To paraphrase from the wiki because as far as I know these aren't implemented: Give Dermorians an improved rate of harvesting and a slightly lower range with bows. Nolthrirs an experience and effectiveness bonus with Blue way, etc.. It would be escpecially nice if Klyros would be able to atleast jump slightly higher(given that flying or anything close to it might break the game map quite a bit more.) Ultimately I think the races should be fundamentaly different beyond their rped stereo types and different skins.