PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Granted or negated Wishes => Topic started by: Tomaseth on August 29, 2002, 08:46:25 pm
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I\'m curious, since there is not a \'base\' level, how will one person be able to determine the skill of another? Like say I want person A to join my group, but how will I know if person A is fit enough to join me? Or examble B, what if Person A wants to duel me or vice versa, how will I know it will be a fair duel? This is more of a question than a request but if this topic has not been visited by the dev\'s I would like to see something like this in the game.
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Basicly there are several things you get for your experience gained. you have several \'points\' for your experience. You can almost say that you buy these \'points\' with EX. There are \'points\' for stats and \'points\' for skills. how these are distributed makes for your power. Your power is then calculated and read in a consideration. If you have played many MMORPGs you will recall considerations as right clicking on a NPC, MOB, or PC and you get back a msg writen in color. Green for week, blue for a nice fight but a basic win none the less, white for an even match, yellow for a bit tough, and red for if you attack this thing you will have to remove your head from your bum to take a dump.
Though none of this is in code at this time, I don\'t think Venge would have any trouble coding it.
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So you think they\'ll be using a considering system like in EQ and other MMORPG\'s?
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Will it be by the armor you are wearing, or the sword you are wielding. Or maybe the colour of your name will change? I think there has been a post about this some time back, and i can\'t remember getting a clear answer, most likely it has not been astablished yet. ?(
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All those could quite possibly be right (assuming there won\'t be twinks) but if there are super rare high level \"no drop\" (items that can\'t be traded, sold or dropped -- EQ) that have a cool looking effect, like an illumanited blade or something, quite possibly when someone reaches a high level they get a title before their name?
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Based on the number of variables involved here, as a programmer I can tell you not to count on that conning being very accurate. It will just be a guess.
As far as how to judge the usefullness of someone joining your group, I think that is an excellent question and one that I have posed before in the dev channel.
One thing I believe we will HAVE to do regardless of how we answer the above question is to make skill levels inspectable by other players, so people don\'t have the ability to lie about having a 200 in Swordfighting and a 185 in Pie Making. In games with levels, those levels are public knowledge to everyone. In our game with no levels, we have to have something that is public knowledge also.
- Vengeance
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Why should it be necessary to immediately know a persons skill level by the simple click of a mouse? If you picked a fight in the street the only way you would have a clue about their skill is by assumptions made on their physical appearance, or their reputation as someone not to mess with. There is far more danger and excitement involved in not knowing exactly what a player\'s attributes are, especially when it comes to arena player Vs player fights.
Fear and respect of a player should come through reputation. I like Tomaseth\'s suggestion of titles possibly earned at high levels or for certain quests or achievements. You could always bluff your enemy that you are far more talented with a weapon than you actually are and scare them into backing down, but that would be part of the fun ;)
If you are concerned about people saying they are a high level in order to get into a guild, why not provide the facility for guild houses to maybe having something like a proving ground, where potential recruits would have to run some kind of gauntlet. Maybe a cellar dungeon where they must prove their worth by killing the beasts within. Perhaps the guild master could be given the ability to set the difficultly of the trial (or the level/type of monsters), thereby controlling the level of people in the guild. Hmm maybe I should put that on the wish list, I think it would add a lot to guild life.
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i agree wtih kada on the part that you shouldnt immediatly have all your skills visible to just anybody
maybe you could have control whether if they see your skills are not? so if you just joined not that long ago but have some ok stuff they do not see you as new, so its easier to get help....since a lot of people are annoyed by new people\'s questions, you couldnt tell the difference
but like for a duel or join guild the person your dueling/leader of the guild could ask to see your skills before you join
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I completely agree with Kada about reputation.
About guilds, I don\'t think each guild should have a test dungeon.
At first, not all the guilds are fighting guilds; it would not be a good way to test smithery abilities by sending the smither to a battle.
At second, it would increase unecessarily the task of the server.
I think the guilds should test their want-to-be members using the existing world; I mean, for an example, a smither should prove his value by making a good weapon or armor, a fighter by beating a guild member in the arena, or helping members with a quest, etc.
Each guild should choose its way to select its members using the usual functionalities of the game; not special things...
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Be a lovely addition to any guild I think, the guild leaders, members and applicants could have loads of fun with it :D
I\'m sure you could easily adapt the idea for smiths/rogues/bards etc or other skills by introducing anvils or locks or whatever.
I don\'t see why it would task the server unecessarily, these areas would just be part of the game world, if you think the number of guilds would be too great, then reserve a feature like this for only the most powerful/oldest/most successful/richest (or whatever).
I see your point about just using the game world, I just thought it would be quite a nice little feature that I\'ve not seen attempted before.
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Ok, i have some ideas...
The idea of titles is nice, but it wouldnt be consistant with roleplaying if they were mandatory, whereas one character would love to show off his title, another might want to be reclusive and not draw attention to himself. what should be implemented beside that is an \"anon\" filter, so you when you did a /who check those who are not anonomous show up as [Title]Player for example, and those who are anonomous show up as [None]Player or [Unknown]Player:
Current Players Online
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[Octarch]Shanky
[Unknown]Kada-El
also, it is my understanding that registered guilds are going to be furnished with houses, i think it is a bit much to ask them to add private dungeons to that. Requirements for entering a guild should be decided by the guild themselves, and structure around the public zones/areas, as i dont think it is the dev team\'s responsibility to deal with inter-guild affairs.
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Originally posted by Shanky
i think it is a bit much to ask them to add private dungeons to that.
It wouldn\'t have to be much at all really, it could be as simple as a caged beast if resource was tight.
Originally posted by Shanky
Requirements for entering a guild should be decided by the guild themselves.
That\'s why it would be at the control of the guild leader. Why would the devs be involved? The leader would decide who joins and if anyone was to take the test as way for them to prove their worth if stats are not on display.
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they\'ve already said titles are planned for the game, and that they will be earned titles such as for quests and other things, just look for the post called \"Titles\"
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Ah, this \"Title\" dealy could cause a problem. When you join a guiuld, and if you are in the top 10, you are awarded a title by the guild leader, in our case, i allow our members to pick titles, since i find that it really shows what type of a player the person is, and what character he/she will be playing. But anywho, when you get that title, and you type \"/who\" in the server caht window, your title apperas, followed by your name. Now, if they were to add more titles, the window space would get so crowded, especially with 10+ ppl in the same area.
Ex. The Brave Rouge Kada-El in [Insert Guild Here]
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Well I guess I\'m in the minority here, but I completely disagree with all of you.
Imagine you are in a group heading for the Stone Labyrinths and you are going to fight XYZ monsters. You know they are pretty hard and three of you are friends... one is a fighter/tank/melee guy, one is a caster who can nuke really well, and one is a rogue with good backstab skills. You have fought together and know each other\'s capabilities, but there is no healer around whom you\'ve fought with before.
So you annouce you are looking for a healer to come on your Labyrinth run of XYZ monsters. And then some n00b (peanut) or some jerky kid comes up all twinked with his big brother\'s stuff and says he\'s a healer and he wants to go with you and get phat lewt.
How do you decide whether you take him or not?
Remember, if you guess wrong and he isn\'t as good as he claims, all four of you DIE and spend the rest of your r/l day and night in the Death Realm maze trying to get back to Yliakum... not fun.
- Vengeance
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to Kada-El: it was just seeming to me that some posts were implying a dev involvement in inter-guild affairs, i guess i missinterpereted.
And in response to Vengeance...
I would hope you don\'t base your entire decision of whether or not you group someone based on the item/title system, it just gives someone an idea about how they play though (if they dont know the character from experience) obviously in the middle to high end game people will have established a reputation for themselves as to their personality and ability to play their character, and these reputations are generally widely known, and should you make a mistake and someone you group leads to your fatality due to lack of ability, then you know not to group with him/her again, simple as that, i dont think it is reasonable to go into an area you know to be difficult and expect not to die, and if you dont, all the better.
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Well, I totally agree with you and that\'s what I have been implying.. (Vengeance) You can\'t really base it on reputation unless you know everyone on the server and you play all the time. People play at different times and you won\'t have a chance to meet everyone. I mean it might work but it\'d be harder.
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Another option is to have the new player set an option that will allow the group leader to see his skills.
For example,
A group of fighters ( The A-Team ) is looking for somebody skilled in magic and stealth. Their leader, Smith, is talking somebody who wants to join ( Face ). Face then selects something like \"Allow Smith to see my Magic and Stealth Skills\".
Smith can then take a look at these skills and see if Face is what he is looking for. This can work both ways as well, since Face would probably want to know about Smith\'s Fighting skills.
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well, if the entire party is sharing skill info, they might as well be publicly known, mabye if your skills are kept private, or only available to people you choose in towns and traveling type areas, also PK areas if they are put in, but in zones designed for leveling, your skills are public domain
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Than how about a little message board, where travelers can come, and post who they are looking for. YOu can either choose to post about yourself, Just bu clicking several buttons, and the server fill in the rest of the information. OR you can chose to post who you are looking for, like thier skills, and so on. I think this would solve some of the problems. Maybe not... ?(
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A message board might cause some problems, like a person might post a message, and leave, or not respond, etc. what would work though is having like a corral for people looking for groups in or near leveling zones, mabye in the form of a bar or pub or shop...mabye something as simple as some long lost benches in an obscure zone, anything really where adventurers can congregate freely and safely while awaiting a party.
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I quite like acraig\'s idea of having the ability to reveal your skills to an individual. That way there would be no doubt of your abilities if you needed to prove them in a certain situation, it would be like having a \'demonstrate skill in [insert skill]\' option, which also keeps things pretty realistic. You could even include a small animation for each skill to acompany that demonstation which would get more spectacular as your skill level increases - heh, or maybe not *imagines high levels players standing around demonstrating their faboulous swordplay skill, or fancy magic animation - showoffs :rolleyes: :P
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This reminds me of a post I made (http://www.planeshift3d.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=1081&boardid=11) ?before I was on the dev team.
It is probably one of the reasons I am on the dev team?
However I really am split on this and it is one of the core, (role-play Vs. Game play) things in a game of this type.
How do people verify a lie, how do people know if a monster can beat them???
Some creatures at first glance should seem scary as hell?they would hardly be so if they conned as a insignificant gnat to you. there are creatures that have a bark that is much worse then their bite.
On choosing a partner?I?m also split on the best way to do this?resume/title/reputation might be something. Allowing people to see another?s stats, makes me feel like there is something very wrong.
I have a small problem having players know the stat of their own characters, allowing people to show others their stats makes this a pure hack and slash.
Hack and Slash?there is a term for you non-role-playing types :-)
People who know the term?well knowing the challenge rating of something and how good something is leads to this.
People who don?t?when a role playing game is reduced to number crunching?you are hack and slashing, I don?t care if it is having your character make a quilt or killing kobolds. Hack and slash is when you reduce and challenge/confrontation to number crunching.
Venge, and everyone else, I know that in the end everything on a computer is reduced to 101010. But I feel it is our job to create an environment where the player can escape that reality.
With computers doing the number crunching, we can to a large degree get rid of much of the numbers?I know we can?t get rid of all the numbers (this was discussed a while ago)
But to give a real life experience?about 12 years ago while at a Rural School in South America?me and my class where walking back from a demonstration on Plowing techniques?and as most teen age boys do when unsupervised and surrounded by hand size clumps of dirt, we stated a dirt rock fight while we slowly made our way back to class. And as I was reaching for my next dirt rock I noticed a coiling up right in front of me?I put my foot on it.
Now about 3 seconds later I knew this was a stupid idea?while I had really sturdy steal toe work boots, I?d have to jump away eventually, plus me and the snake where on a mound of loose dirt, my time was short?worst of all is we verified the snake was poisonous, it was a Coral Snake, and being a 15 min run from the school and about a 20 min drive to the nearest hospital?my personal life expectancy had suddenly become very short.
However two of the 30 kids in my class made some good side money selling pelts and skins. And while they where the only voices of calm among a bunch of panicking kids, I personally had transcended to that stoic silence some people get when they are pretty sure the out come will not be favorable.
Well the end result was two kids too off their pants and we wrapped my lower legs with a thick layer of protection?and then I prepared to jump?all the other kids waited for my count?and stoned the poor snake to death.
The two skinners in the class where a bit pissed that we thrashed the snake, and I had a big bruise from where a stray rock hit me?I was happy with the result.
Point of all this: Well knowledge is power, those two kids formulated a plan based on luck and knowledge, as well as personal experience. I was an outdoorsy type at the time, but I never encountered that snake before?and I was pretty sure that it was a false Coral, (thinking real Corals didn?t live in those parts) if I had not had the opinion of two people I felt knew more then me on the subject I would have probably have done something stupid.
Now in a game, how do we give this knowledge to the character, how do we impart life experience to the character?
I think we can do it with a very good faction/reputation/allegiance/acquired knowledge system. Is that realistic?not sure, should it be accurate?no. But a character with a ton of charisma and the right talk should be able to get a low mental stat individual to think he is a healer, when in reality he is a rogue looking to score the next big Loot run.
But this also comes down to the type of game we want to have.
As some of you know, I can go for either one, but if we are going for the best RPG to date?this is one area I strongly feel we should not allow exact information.
We should allow people to lie about how good they are, and what they have done. But we should also allow people to verify some things quickly.
I suggest a skill?Bullshit detector :-) that helps compare things?but that is just a suggestion. If we want a Real Con system we can have one, but a Con system that is cross referenced with character knowledge would be more up my ally, and being able to see the Stats of other characters is a total invasion?Like looking at another persons character sheet during a role playing competition.
Anyway those are my thoughts on the subject :-)
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I think you have a great idea. A con\'ing system based on the characters personality stats. That\'s very unique and would make this game a strong roleplaying type. I guess that idea gets my vote.
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That Paxx\'s post was really complicated for me to read, but I think he says what I wanted to say: people should be able to lie.
Moreover, that way good leaders can distinguish themselves by testing their party members before recruiting (I don\'t know how, perhaps a place of mini-quests can be inserted on the towns?).
I like the Kada\'s solution of inserting little animations for showing skills. This is a quite unacurate way of showing your skill, and is done only if you want.
The more I think on it, the more I like the mini-quests way...
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And another note was that you should be able to \'consider\' people, and if you have a lot of CHA, you\'d come closer to considering what they actually are. If you aren\'t familiar with considering, it\'s when you press a certain button and it displays a message usually in different font colors depending on the level range of the character. Like RED if they are way too hard and WHITE if they are about the same level and GREEN if they are way too below your level. And the higher your CHA the better you would be at coming up with the write con.
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OR, we can just simplify all of this, and make it a trial-an-error process. If you try and kill a mob, fail, and die, you respawn, really pissed at that, but next time you will make a better judgement, plus you will know your skill limitations for now. And if you take a guy into your party, and he turns out to be the biggest n00b of all, you can just kick him out later on. I mean you would die in the depths of that dungeon, but you would be more carefull next time. :]
It all seems too complex to be fun... :O
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Or how about implementing a conning system which is skill based, as in you have a conning skill. When you first start out, it sucks and while a person in acctuality would be white to you, they show up anywhere from red to green. I think the conning should be based on your targets skills, as in how well developed your targets skills are. This would leave some essence of the \"lying\" part in the game, as it doesnt even touch on gear or skill of the player, but still gives you a representation of how developed he is. Also, this conning system should never be completly accurate even if your skill is maxed, because we all have room for error.Just my ideas :D
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The exploit for this is to make a new character (accounts are free, remember?), twink him with some or all of your items, and have him hook up with the people you are trying to get back at. The newbie player twink convinces the group he is good at Skill X, and proves it with his uber equipment. The group allows him to join and the group gets wiped in their first mob encounter. The vindictive player gives all his stuff back to his other player and never logs in as him again. It\'s another way to screw people over.
The ability to lie about abilities, steal from other players, or even gang up on them and PvP kill them are really all the same thing. They all come down to whether you want to let jerks mess up the game for other people in the name of \"roleplay\".
Having objective facts out in the open, like skill levels, is simply a substitute for richer information gathering environments in the real world and more real consequences for misbehavior. Having objective facts out in the open will make the game a *richer* RP environment, not a weaker one.
- Vengeance
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I think there should atleast be a way to hide your skills if you want to, and when you want to group, go unanon or dont get a group, but if skills were public all the time, you would go into a town and have the good chance of being flooded with newbies asking you \"hey, you are level 400 in swords, tell me what i should do in x situation or y circumstance. And there are always times when you just dont want people to know how developed your character is.
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I am ok with having an anonymous or hidden mode, but I just think people need the ability to see who they are dealing with when they form groups.
I also agree that there are better ways to present this information than just a big row of numbers, but the information is necessary, imo.
I also agree with the posts about reputation, but that is counter to one of the main goals of MMORPGs, which is to get people to play together, meet people and make friends online. We want people to play with a broad variety of people--not just with the same people they always fight with because those are the ones they can trust.
Character progression is one thing that makes these games fun, but Single Player RPGs have that too. What makes these games unique are the interactions with others, and I\'m afraid if we don\'t allow people to verify claims made by others, we will end up with lots of 3-person groups that don\'t know anyone else but themselves.... might as well play NWN if you want that...
- Venge
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People gain independent views on the people they work with as they level in the game, when i played EQ, if i didnt know some one, it didnt mean i wouldnt group with them, but if someone i knew to be a horrid player came along, i knew i would not waste my time in a group with them, and though i did prefer to play with people i knew well, it did not stop me from meeting new people, all the way from level 1 to level 59, :D
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Ok, speaking on a preference? ?If I was given 50 million dollars to develop a MMORPG as I wished? other then the setting being a Hodge-podgy Sci-Fi setting and a billion other things, that are not Planeshift cause I?m a freak. When it came to Character Conning?all you would get would be your general feel of how the person carries themselves?the closer they are to you in expertise?the better you can judge their level, the further away?the broader range they could be. And there would be skills in impersonation.
Now as far as my thoughts on Planeshift?this is a player knowledge Vs. Character Knowledge issue, what do we want other players to know about others and such. There are good reasons to allow people to know who they are grouping with, at the same time if they group with a moron that is there own fault, and if they want to dual?knowing your opponents abilities is a powerful advantage. If one player (Power Gamer Type) Duals another player (casual gamer type) and upon conning character A (power gamers character) sees character B (casual Gamers character) ?has attained at least 43rd circle in Blue Way, 103rd focus of Dodging, 92nd Circle of the Crystal Way, and 98th discipline of unarmed combat.
From experience of hundreds and hundreds of hours of gaming and reading websites on game stats the Power Gamer has a huge advantage as he has a better understanding of what he is getting into and what character B will most likely do.
Mean while the Casual Player has no real good idea of what to make out of Shield skill 150, magic?s all over 40 and under 60, staff skill 75.
And here lies the issue, while in real life both characters would be able to size each other up and get some ideas from that (be them right or wrong) here the characters get nothing the Players get the information, and the information means more to the person who plays more and thus allows him to make a better judgment on his chances of winning this outcome.
If we had a less informative system?that didn?t select stats to show, but did a number of calculations and arrived at the EQ type conning system?we would have to make the even area very broad. Or we could have 30 questions?offensive magic Vs. Magic Defenses, Offensive Melee Vs Defensive Melee?and that should give the player a concept of where he stands?but I really don?t think we should give away peoples skill levels, simply telling the player to heal them with their most powerful heal will answer the ?how good are you at healing?? question.
I?m really torn on this, so many options and no right answers.
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Originally posted by Kada-El
Why should it be necessary to immediately know a persons skill level by the simple click of a mouse? If you picked a fight in the street the only way you would have a clue about their skill is by assumptions made on their physical appearance, or their reputation as someone not to mess with. There is far more danger and excitement involved in not knowing exactly what a player\'s attributes are, especially when it comes to arena player Vs player fights.
Fear and respect of a player should come through reputation. I like Tomaseth\'s suggestion of titles possibly earned at high levels or for certain quests or achievements. You could always bluff your enemy that you are far more talented with a weapon than you actually are and scare them into backing down, but that would be part of the fun ;)
If you are concerned about people saying they are a high level in order to get into a guild, why not provide the facility for guild houses to maybe having something like a proving ground, where potential recruits would have to run some kind of gauntlet. Maybe a cellar dungeon where they must prove their worth by killing the beasts within. Perhaps the guild master could be given the ability to set the difficultly of the trial (or the level/type of monsters), thereby controlling the level of people in the guild. Hmm maybe I should put that on the wish list, I think it would add a lot to guild life.
Nuff said, its lame whenever people know peoples levels instead of fighting the run or just log out completely...Ive senn what happens in different games when everyone can see your level.It makes for power gaming.And even if your the best around it dont matter cause nobody will fight you.Having levels on monsters and on players is just gay it should of never been introduced into any roleplaying game.If you ever played table top games did your DM or GM ever tell you the lvl of the certain monster...I dont think so...and if he did he or she didnt know what the hell they were doing and should of been playing not Dming.
In short you add levels for everyone to see and the creative roleplay goes right out the window...and thats the truth.
Len
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Another idea is a sort of consider skill connected with the skill groups you want to check on the other guy.
An example of a skill group will be all one handed weapon skills or all skills related to fire magic.
This reflects that you can consider someone with similar skills much better than someone with skills you don\'t have any or only few knowledges.
For example: You are a mighty swordmaster looking for another melee type of character. You will then get to consider that guy much better than if you consider a healer type of character because your skills in healing are low. The grade is not a clear number but more like a basic description. The result of a consider would be looking like this: One handed melee: good, Healing magic: unknown, Fire Magic: unknown and so one.
It is still possible that you get a guy not fitting for your task.
Seravajan
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I think it\'s important that we know each others skill levels from the time we see anyone, especially in areas where we can fight each other.
A few people said that we could judge peoples skill by what they were wearing, this is not really the best solution because a level 99 fighter could wear full bronze armour just to fool somebody, and when the battle begins, you will die pretty quickly if your not near his level.
I do agree with having a Green, White, Yellow, Red indicator as the persons name indicating their level compared to yours but also in brackets next to their name should be their level, ie.
Pancake Man (Level 5)
Just having their names in red isn\'t enough, I know in previous RPGs I enjoy dueling people who are in red but only say 10 levels higher than me because if I use a bit of magic and I train purely attack instead of defence I am able to defeat them with a bit of luck, but if they were 30 levels higher than me, then ofcourse I wouldn\'t stand much of a chance. So if you saw someone who was red you would want to know what level they were before you engaged.
Another suggestion someone pointed out that it shouldn\'t be told what level someone is, we should fight them and find out. Well once alot of people reach a higher level combat and we walk around all the \"newbie\" areas of the game and some new people who just got their brand new bronze sword and want to try it out accidently attack a level 100 because they couldn\'t see what level he was, is a bit unfair for the newbie and would be a common scam trick.
Great ideas though everyone, after all the better RPG is one that is a bit different to the rest in its own unique way 8)
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Well, first, there are no levels. It\'s hard to determine what color it is because of that.
Second, since both players must agree to PvP, then it is the newbie\'s fault if he goes and attacks someone powerful. Newbies (in game) should know that they shouldn\'t duel people until they are of decent skill, or are very good at running.