PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Cha0s on September 28, 2005, 02:16:07 am
-
First, before I get started, I\'m going to assume you\'ve at least read the first post of this thread (http://www.planeshift3d.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=17220&boardid=11). If you haven\'t, you may miss some of my points. Now, moving on...
I\'ve just recently learned that the majority of GMs are completely unable to do important RP-tasks such as spawning items and NPCs. From what I\'ve heard, in fact, only two GMs can do this (plus the devs). This means that truly in-depth and advanced GM-events don\'t occur often and little events that would ideally (imho; see above link) be a part of every day life (chats with GM-controlled NPCs, miniquests, etc) don\'t occur frequently at all. Therefore, I propose the creation of a new GM (roughly equivalent to the current \"GM7\"), called the DM, or dungeon master. Dungeon masters would be recruited similarly to GMs, except that they would have to show greater responsibility and, in addition, the ability to role-play well. In my opinion, this would increase role-playing in-game tremendously.
-
so a dm is more of an event facilitator then a people herder?
hmm. it maybe an idea to consider. but the selection process should be different from the gm process. perhaps something more open. kind of with an app form and the like. with a greater emphasis on planing, organization, past experince and the like. maybe with interviews and the rest.
-
As I mentioned on IRC to Cha0s, I think a nice way of looking at this would be:
GMs are the OOC Policemen
DMs are the Roleplay Leaders
Splitting the tasks in such a manner will definitely encourage better organization in-game, and open the doors to a lot more people who have a great vision and ability to involve everyone in grand adventures :)
-
The ideas in this thread (http://planeshift.oodlz.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=17220&boardid=11) (mentioned above) were not welcome with great enthusiasm, I don\'t understand, why...
I vote for adding DM \"job\" in Planeshift.
-
Isn\'t \"Dungeon Master\" a term made purely for D&D to replace the Game Master term? Just like \"Hosse\" for DeadLands?
If so, I think if anything, it would require more original naming :P
-
Yeah lets not call it DM, Dungeon master, that doesn\'t make any sense.
How about RPM? Role Play Leader (Also: Revolutions per minute). Or PSM, Plane Shift master.
Love the idea! :D We need more events
-
\"Realm Master\" sounds good to me, personally...
Although many things starting with a \'Realm\' would sound good, I think ;)
-
i didnt read to much of this thread because i have to run off to a maths lesson.
but you are complaining that there are a lack of GMs because none of us have to level to do whatever. you want DMs to do whatever. the reason GMs dont have to power to do things is because we have to work our way up, prove our worth ect, this takes time. that is why there are few with the power. the same would be true for DMs they would need a lot of time too to gain the trust of the devs to be able to do things.
plus we as GMs are working on things at the moment.
*flees*
-
I think proving yourself to be a worthy Whatever Master shouldn\'t be done on the path of being the in-game police... Game Masters are supposed to keep order.
What I think Cha0s talks about is a group that would help the role-playing evironment. Two completely different things... What follows, two things that should require different ways of proving oneself.
-
yes... but if they are going to have \'powers\' they will still need to prove themselves worthy taking time. also the proving of worthy is done by judging actions and how you are over time... its just the advancement that depends on things for example how you use the powers you have weather you abuse it how you do other things. thats my view i may be wrong.
also i may be talking to far here, but idealy the GM team would be providing events and quests. one thing with this is when people like fireofsoul have tried to do something like hags, the response from the players has been pretty poor. (thats something ive said a dew times :/) and like cha0s said for now our abilities are limited but its being worked on.
another point those one or two GMs that were mentioned are the ones who have been a GM since the start of CB... and now they are in game less and less...
kind of on the same topic if any of you have plans or ideas for quests and the like PM me or another GM and we\'ll glady help you do whatever it is.
back to the happenings of drey... maths was junk we sat there and went through homework and there was like girls who sit there colouring their work in pink, personally i spent the past hour screwing up and \'scwering down\' the same piece of paper... after a couple of hours it goes all cool. now im going to sit here a while then turn up fashionably late for physics.
and them remember the whole point of this post.. any plans contact us.
ill stop edditing it now...
-
I \'ve suggested this idea before somewhere only I called them EM\'s or Event Masters.
I\'m all for such a thing but like Drey said those people should be selected with care, preferably handpicked. It is easy to mess things up, create unbalance in the game, ... if you have those kind of powers but on the other hand it would greatly increase the game experience.
If such a thing gets put in I \'m definitely going to consider joining up. I have been working at events as a normal player and some people already suggested to me that I should become a GM but unless you are a very high level one it won\'t really help you much. If I could control NPC\'s, monsters and such the possibilities increase greatly.
One problem I see is that the system is far too unstable for that kind of things being messed with at the moment. I don\'t know how it is but I wouldn\'t want to crash then entire server just because I tried to put an event together. There also shouldn\'t be too many of these or the events lose their appeal.
-
Idealy, there would be a part of the GM team who are all about events, known as \"The Event Team\", but as i have said in earlier posts due to limmited commands and abilities our options are limitted at the moments. That said we are working on a few ideas at the moment, also stfrn has a few things in the works...
-
Obviously care needs to be taken selecting the DM/EM/PSM/whatever team (I don\'t really care what you call them! :P ). However, I disagree strongly with the current system setup. I am modeling my thoughts on the NWN server mentioned in the above thread, which was pretty complex, so I\'m going to elaborate a bit.
First, only major events (requiring 15 or so players, I\'d say) should be announced before-hand on the forums. Little events with one or two players or may a slightly larger party should be run spontaneously, all the time, with no announcement in-game or on the forums. How would this work?
Illustration:
DM/EM/PSM possess some NPC and walks up to huddle of players. \"Excuse me fellow citizens of Hydlaa, my name is . I know you probably don\'t know me, but could you do me a favor?\" Players respond, RP continues, DM/EM/PSM sends players to retrieve some item somewhere in the middle of nowhere. DM/EM/PSM sets up special fights with monsters along the way, culminating in a large battle at the end for the nice item which they bring back to the original NPC.
Simple, somewhat-realistic. Good role-players will be able to make up better stories easily (that was a toy example ;) ). This brings up another point, DMs/EMs/PSMs need to be excellent role-players or they won\'t be able to do their job.
That (*points up*) is the first part. The second part is the creation of two new forums. First, the DM/EM/PSM Coordination forum, which includes character profiles for NPCs and discussion on planned events. This forum would be restricted to DMs/EMs/PSMs, of course. Secondly, the In-Game Roleplay forum would be created. This forum would be used by DM/EM/PSM to introduce major events in-character (as their NPC of choice) and for players to post about events they participated in. The DMs/EMs/PSMs would also post OOC information at the end of their IC post explaining the types of characters needed for the event and the date/time it would take place. This forum could also become a place where players could post in-character diaries (of events with DMs/EMs/PSMs or of just things that they did during the day). The important thing is that every post (except stickied rules, of course) is in character (with minimal OOC notes allowed at the end of a post). These two forums would ensure a more uniform world (as DMs/EMs/PMs would all know the same information) and would allow players not participating in certain events to hear of them and keep up with major going-ons in the world.
Anyway, if the devs can find time to recruit role-players to act as DMs/EMs/PSMs and to create the two forums mentioned above, I think it would act as a huge boost to the role-play community.
EDIT: oops... that was long...
-
ChaOs, I agree with you entirely, I think this would add a fantastic new aspect to the game, people would take their time for no one will know when a NPC will wake from their current zombie state. There would be less run to sewer, kill, kill, kill, run to Old Harny, run back to sewer etc. (replace sewers with dungeons, arena, or anything else you wish, even people that have been around before me still do this.) Of course for the NPC to be posessed, some new code will likely be needed, but doesn\'t sound like much should need to be changed.
I also don\'t care what it\'s called, but Dungeon Master should not be copied lest Wizards of the Coast rain fury upon the land.
Cheers for proposing this,
Xirius
-
most excellent idea Cha0s I\'m all in favour, although I think the DM/etc. should be completely separate from the Game Masters and not have the /kick /mute punishment powers and only use NPC\'s that would ensure that they couldn\'t be pestered
-
Xirius: exactly my thinking. More RP, less power-leveling.
Lanser: DMs/EMs/PSMs *would* have normal characters so that they could talk to players en masse OOC after an event for feedback (it\'s sort of stupid when an NPC goes OOC :P ). Most of the time, however, they\'d use the already available invisibility feature and roam the world, looking for some likely players to RP with.
-
i just had this flash of greek myths. you know the ones where the gods take on human form and reward the worthy.
-
Originally posted by Cha0s
Most of the time, however, they\'d use the already available invisibility feature
forgot about that ability :)
-
That is great idea.
A RPer who was playing only pen&paper RPG gets kind of shock after he/she realizes GM in MMORPGs have often very different function. I will also say that not all GMs in MMORPGs can be RM (Realm master - as Draklar suggested) The way how is RM choosen, should be different, yet similiar to GM.
And for gods sake, don\'t call them DMs. What dungeon master means anyway? Master of the dungeon? What dungeon? Really, the fact that D&D is popular doesn\'t mean that the one who leads players through adventure must be called DM.
I give my vote for RM - Realm Master
-
The name isn\'t important for me. I just picked something identifiable to most people. What I\'m most concerned with is the function. If we can get something going like this *gestures up* ... well, I\'d play the game. :D
-
Hmm... some further thoughts about the discussed function, and why I think it should be seperate from GMs.
I don\'t think RMs (I guess I\'ll stick with this term) should have the title sticked above their heads (or anywhere for that matter)... They shouldn\'t be different from other players. It isn\'t important to know who they are. If anyone\'s heard of Jorrit\'s role-playing \"seeds\" idea, it could even be merged.
What follows, RMs shouldn\'t be picked after answering some newbie questions. It should be done on the basis of role-players\' observations (but yeah, once again that\'s taken from discussion about Jorrit\'s idea...)
RMs shouldn\'t be bugged about things that GMs are supposed to be taking care of. Role-players not always have to be good at doing the police thing, and, as was proven many times already, Game Masters not always are good at role-playing aspects.
In the end there\'s too many differences to be made between the two to actually put them in same box.
-
I\'m not certain if I completely agree here.
I do think RM\'s and GM\'s have one main thing in common - responcibility. The GM\'s are responcible for the entire gaming community and have to keep the order therer. RM\'s are responcible for smaller sections but will most likely still deal with the same issues, just only in their specific event.
It would be disruptive if a RM needs to contact a GM every time some player is purposely trying to destroy the roleplay going on. I know from experience that those people are around and they can shut down any roleplay in a matter of minutes. In such cases I think the RM\'s should be able to mute and even teleport said player away. Aside from that RM\'s will need to be able to spawn rewards, become invisible, teleport themselves, ... basically a lot of the GM commands right now will be needed by them too.
In my opinion RM\'s need to be just as responcible and mature as GM\'s since they need to watch over the game as well (or doing the police thing as you said). They won\'t need to worry about renaming players or guilds, banning or kicking people, testing out new things ... that is all reserved for GM\'s. RM\'s will need to work on their next quest or event instead, try out scenarios, etc. They need to be creative, good at improvising, have roleplaying and organisational skills.
Basically GM\'s work for the Devs while RM\'s work for the people. There is a definite overlap though and there will need to be a lot of communication between the two but I agree that they should be separated even if it is in name alone.
-
even though i dont have uber leet RP skills, i think this would be a good thing and some good points have been made and a lot of thinking would need to be done.
though the point that i am trying to make is that these people would need to gain more trust from the devs than any of the currrent GMs have... so for you lot to get a \'team\' of some sorts, is going to take some time and work.
-
Originally posted by Zan
It would be disruptive if a RM needs to contact a GM every time some player is purposely trying to destroy the roleplay going on. I know from experience that those people are around and they can shut down any roleplay in a matter of minutes. In such cases I think the RM\'s should be able to mute and even teleport said player away. Aside from that RM\'s will need to be able to spawn rewards, become invisible, teleport themselves, ... basically a lot of the GM commands right now will be needed by them too.
Thus I think there should be GMs present on such events as well. But RMs shouldn\'t be expected to deal with trolls, when their job would be based on making sure the event is going as it should go from the system\'s side. I would probably be able to pull off RM\'s job, but when it comes to dealing with trolls, I wouldn\'t trust my judgement. Both jobs require completely different things. If not seperated into different groups, it would show lack of organisation.
And I didn\'t say RMs wouldn\'t need to prove responsibility. I pointed out Jorrit\'s idea... And it would be a bit off-topic to explain it here... So I\'ll just say the way of picking worthy community members he presented, surely would be more efficient than what we have now with Game Masters...
-
I\'m not sure about methods of picking RMs (or whatever you want them called). In fact, that discussion would probably best belong in its own thread, though I will say that they should not be chosen the same way as GMs.
However, there are two points I\'d like to address. First, an RM should not have to bring a GM along on any event. RMs should have all the necessary powers (teleport, mute, etc) to maintain control during events. Firstly, it is a waste of resources to require two people to go along on an event and only have one of them actually doing something. Secondly, I do not think GMs would have fun trailing along, doing nothing while the RMs had fun RPing a story.
Though RMs should have these powers, they RMs should not have a manifesto to seek out and deal with trouble (as the GMs do). In all non-event-related cases, an RM would refer a GM to the problem if possible. Only if a GM was unavailable would an RM attempt to deal with the problem. In my opinion, an RM is not completely separate from a GM. An RM would need some of the same skills in addition to good role-playing.
On the other hand, RMs would not need powers to rename, ban, etc. These are things for GMs. In short, an RM should have the power to maintain order and weave a story of limitless possibilities, but not to deal with major \"police work.\"
-
Originally posted by Cha0s
However, there are two points I\'d like to address. First, an RM should not have to bring a GM along on any event. RMs should have all the necessary powers (teleport, mute, etc) to maintain control during events. Firstly, it is a waste of resources to require two people to go along on an event and only have one of them actually doing something.
I don\'t see how that would be a good way of dealing with things. You can call it wasting resources, but once such RM would try to do over 100% of his/her normal possibilities by running event and dealing with trolls, then you can be sure that both attempts would end up screwed up. Sometimes it\'s better to keep some resources unused than to run out of them (keeping an eye on the event, being annoyed by trolls ruining it all, having to call GMs... it all doesn\'t sound like the event would end up in full success).
Second, saving resources in such way means that instead of putting safety in hands of an experienced guard, you want to put that safety in hands of someone who is trained to do completely different thing and what is more, someone who will be constantly concentrated on the event. That means either you have GM there or you\'re putting the whole event on a serious risk... one way or another.
Originally posted by Cha0s
Secondly, I do not think GMs would have fun trailing along, doing nothing while the RMs had fun RPing a story.
I might be missing your point here, but... How is that different from saying
I do not think GMs would have fun trailing along, doing nothing while the players had fun RPing in Planeshift.
Edit: \"Wasting resources\" actually means mental stability of the people who won\'t suffer from too much work...
-
I doubt things would ever get so out of hand that a GM would be needed. If things did, I\'m sure the RM would be able to cope until a GM could show up. An RM should be almost as good as a GM at keeping order, as this an important job on long events. In addition, this would make getting an event together even harder, as the RM would have to wait for a free GM to be able to get started.
It also goes against the notion of spontaneous mini-events: \"Oh, look, some players with nothing to do. Let\'s get Harnquist over there and start something... Oh, wait... I need a GM...\" *five minutes later* \"Got my GM... wait, where\'d they go?\"
As far as your second statement, a majority of the time, I believe, the GMs are not fully paying attention to the game and so are able to do something else in addition to GMing (the exception being when they are dealing with a problem directly). To keep up with an event, they would have to pay attention the whole time, doing nothing but following around the RM for almost all of it. In addition, they would be witnessing serious RP for a long time and have no chance to join in. When wandering the world as a normal GM, the amount a real RP seen would probably be less and less exciting.
An RM needs the skills of a GM and role-playing skills. If an RM can\'t keep order, he/she will have trouble leading an event.
-
Originally posted by Cha0s
An RM should be almost as good as a GM at keeping order, as this an important job on long events.
That means training as much as GMs do, but in creating events, plus training \'almost\' as much in keeping order. That won\'t ever happen.
Originally posted by Cha0s
It also goes against the notion of spontaneous mini-events: \"Oh, look, some players with nothing to do. Let\'s get Harnquist over there and start something... Oh, wait... I need a GM...\" *five minutes later* \"Got my GM... wait, where\'d they go?\"
I doubt things would ever get so out of hand that a GM would be needed.
That means mini-events most likely wouldn\'t need moderating powers at all.
Originally posted by Cha0s
To keep up with an event, they would have to pay attention the whole time, doing nothing but following around the RM for almost all of it.
I have to ask here... Did you actually see the way GMs work ingame? They do join role-playing situations, it\'s not like they just stand aside and watch...
Originally posted by Cha0s
An RM needs the skills of a GM and role-playing skills. If an RM can\'t keep order, he/she will have trouble leading an event.
The problem would arise when such RM would deal with someone who wasn\'t actually doing anything that bad... Just was annoying to the RM who obviously had other things to do than watch the player for a longer while to find out if he\'s really trolling or not.
I can see even more complains than we have now...
Small events most likely won\'t need moderation. Big events should have few GMs anyway. Otherwise it should be easy to call a GM when such need arises. If a RM has problems with that, how can you expect players to do such thing in similar situation. If he actually has time to observe troublesome player, then surely calling a GM wouldn\'t be a problem.
-
I feel the same about this issue as Chaos does ... why make things complicated by needing two people working together to succesfully create events? It\'s not like it is such a gigantic thing keeping the order in your event. I \'ve even had to do it as a normal player and believe me that can be extremely hard on rare occasions. Those times you need to be able to interfere yourself by simply muting the annoyance or removing them.
If you can be in charge of a quest that entertains dozens of people it is a piece of cake to remove those that purposefully disrupt that quest. Of course you wouldn\'t need to make any big decisions like banning people, just keeping order in your \'workplace\'. If you can\'t handle that basic responcibility being an RM is probably not suited for you. It \'s not just about roleplaying or having ideas but also about being able to bring them out there and create/maintain the atmosphere.
Draklar, you are right that there will be even more complaints than there are now though ... there will be more complaints without implementing this idea as well. There simply will be more complaints because there will be more players to complain and more people in charge to complain about. It can\'t be avoided ... like the dutch proverb says \"Tall trees catch a lot of wind.\" it means that when you \'re in a higher position you will always recieve more negative remarks.
-
Basicaly you just want a new GM team.
-
Originally posted by Zan
why make things complicated by needing two people working together to succesfully create events?
The problem would arise when such RM would deal with someone who wasn\'t actually doing anything that bad... Just was annoying to the RM who obviously had other things to do than watch the player for a longer while to find out if he\'s really trolling or not.
I still find it to be a complete lack of organisation. Or at least a very basic one (trying to get the most from resources).
But if a GM would try to keep order on an event, then both jobs would be done much better. First, two people would have it easier to do something than a single person; Second, a mechanic would do a better job in repairing something, than someone who was learning multiple professions at once. The latter would have biggest chance of just screwing things up.
Making things not complicated in this case would mean adding a risk of event becoming a failure and someone becoming upset (when a RM encounters stressful situation and judges someone wrongly), which means more complains. Thus the said proverb doesn\'t in any way apply here, as the discussed problem isn\'t how people will behave because of other having more power (which wouldn\'t even matter if RMs were more secret...). The reason of complains would come out of RMs having to do too much work... Another proverb states, \"The tree breaks that takes all the force of the wind.\"
-
First of, all, for big events, it usually will be several RMs, not just one. Second of all, in the event that something goes horribly wrong, RMs could call a GM (I said this, I think) who would resolve the problem. RMs simply need the powers to deal with minor disturbances that don\'t warrant a GM\'s attention.
e.g. A power-leveler trying to force his way into a quest without RPing, for instance. A little teleport away (RPed, of course) and the solution is solved.
Or a bunch of newbs shouting nearby and refusing to shut up. A little RPed mute...
I am not advocating for the addition of banning powers, name changing, and everything else the GMs have. I want only teleport (which can be necessary for RP anyway) and mute, in addition to the rest of the RP commands. I also stress that a RMs job would not be to solve problems with dissenters, but to keep the event-environment fun for the RPers. Basically, RMs would move the problem away or deal with it temporarily and inform a GM to address the issue in full.
-
Well, Cha0s asked me to post, but I only have time for a few points so here goes.
This is the wish list for discusing the futureof planeshift- if you have a simple request, you can make a feature request. In that case there is not much to talk about- everyone wants bows for example. But the things people really debate about are the thngs that aren\'t just hard to do, they are hard to do right. Like PvP, we coudl slap down any rules and blame, PvP. But instead there is a whole sub-forum on it, and not much has changed :P
That in mind, I would like to see changes to how Gms work, what groups we have, and more encourgement of roleplaying. But there are many factors I am unsure of still. It will all take time.
-
Originally posted by Cha0s
A power-leveler trying to force his way into a quest without RPing, for instance. A little teleport away (RPed, of course) and the solution is solved.
This is exactly what I\'mtalking about, actually... I don\'t think anyone has such super powers that will allow him/her to automatically know whether someone role-playes or not... All I see here is moving away someone who potentially might want to join role-play. Aka future complains.
-
Anyone who acts out of character will be judged not to be role-playing. An RM would have to give the player a chance and plenty of warning before removing them. But requiring a GM to do this could severely hinder the RM\'s job. If all the GMs are busy, the RMs should be able to deal with it themselves.
The dilemma is this: if a GM can\'t come to help and an RM can\'t directly deal with the disruptive player, the event is ruined for everyone. If the RM is too hasty in his decision and removes an earnest role-player, the event is ruined for that one person. The only real solution is to make sure RMs are well-trained and patient with people new to the game to role-playing. However, if it comes down to making one person unhappy or making a whole bunch unhappy, the former is clearly the better option.
-
I\'d rather have a bunch of people have their event ruined, than a good role-player becoming discouraged and what follows pushed to leave the community :/
Being treated like that when you\'re new can really hurt I guess...
-
Like, I said, I am not advocating for anyone who like he\'s not a role-player to be teleported away on sight. Everyone deserves a chance and RMs need to be trained to understand this and to be patient. However, truly disruptive players do exist and RMs need to be able to deal with them when simple tells just don\'t work.
-
I think you \'re looking at this from a personal point of view Draklar. Now that\'s not really a wrong thing to do but sometimes we need to let go of that personal and individual judgement to create general rules.
Of course in any situation people have to make decisions depending on the circumstances and since we are all people mistakes will be made inevitably. If you are going to \'great lengths\' in order to avoid making mistakes, like you seem to want to do, you might end up worse off than when you use a system where some mistakes are allowed.
To put it crudely .. we sometimes punish people who never commited a crime. If we never punished anyone that would be avoided but criminals have free reign. So instead we chose to arrest and punish criminals, with a minor chance of being wrong. It still beats letting the bad guys get away because we\'re afraid of punishing a good guy though.
This is very exagerated of course.
I do admire your idealistic attitude but I just don\'t think it is very realistic in this case.
-
Not afraid of punishing people... But sending people who have time and experience in it to do it. That\'s minimalizing the possibility of making a mistake. It\'s not idealistic attitude, but simple organisation where team is split into several functions to make things work as fluently as possible.
Originally posted by Zan
I do admire your idealistic attitude but I just don\'t think it is very realistic in this case.
I find expecting a single person to be able to judge fairly and run amazing events at once to be idealistic (and not realistic) attitude, actually... Even our current GMs make mistakes...
Also, personal point of view?
Edit: My personal view is that role-playing events shouldn\'t have so much fuss around them. They shouldn\'t differ from normal role-playing situation much, with the only difference being that it\'s supported by the system.
-
Draklar: again, I stress that RMs would need some GM training. Yes, mistakes would be made, but events would run much more smoothly in the face of a disruptive player if the RM could take care of the issue themself.
-
No, no and no.
Reason 1: If you have anything to do with the PS settings, then you\'re a settings dev in the PlaneShift team, which means you gain access to GM9 / God commands, and can do whatever you want.
Reason 2: If you DON\'T have anything to do with the PS settings team, you have NOTHING to do with the ingame settings, and therefor you are NOT supposed to do events, simply because settings are none of your business.
You people have to get it into your heads that settings devs do events, \"GMs\" don\'t. GMs are tech support; They are NOT event organizers. They simply lack the skills and the ability and imagination to do settings-related events. It\'s not bashing, it\'s fact, and I don\'t care how many raids you\'ve done on insert-ridiculous-private-server-for-random-korean-game-here. You\'re no event organizer, and you have no clue what kind of planning and how strict you have to do, to create an imaginative and successful gameplay-related event.
Raids... Bleh. Someone should kill the person who invented that stupid thing.
P.S. If you argue with this, you don\'t know what you\'re talking about! :)
Edit: No GM or dev should ever have the ability to spawn items. The server administrators (Vengeance, Acraig and Talad) yes, but not any of the GMs or regular devs.
Edit2: None of the players either.
-
Kiva, you seem more worried with keeping power in the hands of a select few than in making Planeshift a good role-playing game. If no one but devs can spawn items, I will tell you this now, PS events will not be fun and role-players will look elsewhere (NWN, for example) for a good place to role-play. Items are not just rewards for players, but important quest tools, useful in maintaining role-play over multiple sessions and in inspiring players to role-play in the absence of facilitation.
While inter-player RP is a very important piece of role-playing (what you suggest seems to point to this being the primary form of RP), without people to facilitate and unite players with common purposes, role-play will not be as frequent, nor as rich as it could be. Therefore, there has to be a group of people that are in charge of running events. \"The settings team,\" you say. And explain to me why they\'re qualified? I\'m not saying they\'re not, but simply having an imagination does not qualify you to coordinate events. Being able to write a good story, organize an environment... these are parts, yes, but there is a lot more to running good events, such as good intuitive thinking, being able to move quickly and be creative on the spot; being able to type well and get into a character\'s head, multiple characters at once, in fact. You make gross generalizations with your assertion that all settings team members are qualified as event-runners.
And yet you generalize even more with the GMs. I will not accept that all GMs, in your words, \"lack the skills and the ability and imagination to do settings-related events.\" Many of them are quite good role-players, in my opinion, and the fact that you make such a deprecating statement--and then go so far as to call it \"fact\"--drops my estimation of you quite a bit.
Furthermore, you bring up \"Raids.\" Did anyone mention raids? Did I ever say anything about the so-called \"raids\" being even related to events? This complete non-sequitor is not an argument against what I propose. If the people recruited for the role I suggest are recruited for their raid experience, I swear I will leave Planeshift and will not come back. I do not want people who will organize raids.
I want people who will organize events. Clearly, the settings team does not feel any inclination to do this (from what I\'ve seen) and, personally, I doubt they are organized enough. That is why I advocate for the creation of a new team who is better able to handle the task. Creating settings for the game and running events in-game are different (albeit, related) tasks, both of which require a lot of work. If both jobs are to be accomplished with maximum efficiency, there need to be separate groups for each of them.
I\'m very disappointed that you take such a negative attitude and hope that you see why I am suggesting what I am suggesting. My goal is to bring role-play to Planeshift so that all role-players may come and say, \"This is the best RPG I\'ve ever played,\" and mean it. Without an organized system for running events and a good team of people to run them, this will never happen.
-
Originally posted by Cha0s
First, before I get started, I\'m going to assume you\'ve at least read the first post of this thread (http://www.planeshift3d.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=17220&boardid=11). If you haven\'t, you may miss some of my points. Now, moving on...
I\'ve just recently learned that the majority of GMs are completely unable to do important RP-tasks such as spawning items and NPCs. From what I\'ve heard, in fact, only two GMs can do this (plus the devs). This means that truly in-depth and advanced GM-events don\'t occur often and little events that would ideally (imho; see above link) be a part of every day life (chats with GM-controlled NPCs, miniquests, etc) don\'t occur frequently at all. Therefore, I propose the creation of a new GM (roughly equivalent to the current \"GM7\"), called the DM, or dungeon master. Dungeon masters would be recruited similarly to GMs, except that they would have to show greater responsibility and, in addition, the ability to role-play well. In my opinion, this would increase role-playing in-game tremendously.
This would be a good idea, but at the same time, most DM\'s would go corrupt like some GM\'s (not going to mention names...but I think you know who you are) by abusing powers and all that.... A DM would only control events, but also imagine what they can do to annoy people by lower FPS, or something stupid...Spawning items everywhere, in the sky, all those places...Choose wisely :P
-
i agree with Cha0s. we do need more rp-able events. the rm\'s should be able to provide it. even if they have to be a subset of developers rather then gm. the actual reporting line (you know those nice lines on the org charts) perhaps can be finalized at a bit of a later date.
but, i think that just about everybody agrees that we need something. regardless of what they are called or what department they are part of.
rms _are_ needed. especially if ps is to grow to be more then just a rather pretty chat room.
i don\'t know if this will provide a bit more light for some people. but, the way the cc corp runs \"the world\" without the apparent evil, more like the elder characters in .hack/twilight or .hack/ai buster.
-
Well, with GMs, part of the problem is the sheer boredom/annoyance of the job. I\'ve heard several complain of annoying, menial petitions that they are supposed to take care of and the constant controversy over GM decisions can hardly be fun for the GMs.
With RMs, there would be a set purpose and things to do, something to occupy them and a place to channel their powers. Yes, candidates would have to be chosen very carefully, but as long as the selection process keeps this in mind, I don\'t think power-abuse will be much of a problem.
-
The \'fact\' that only settings Devs should run events is ridiculous in my eyes.
Planeshift is a game that, I \'m sure we all agree here, will be in developement for years to come. Everywhere I go I see messages about how there are not enough Devs, how they can use more teammembers .... and now you want to give them even more to do.
As I see it the Devs shouldn\'t need to worry about actual gaming experiences directly, not until Planeshift is completed which is hopefully never. Yet the gaming experience is still very important if they want to keep players here ... so another team takes care of that. Mainly the GMs right now.
But if the Devs could create a world in which it was possible to manipulate NPCs, creatures, quests, events, ... with relative ease, then some other people with different skills like roleplaying and responcibility could be in charge of a better gaming experience.
Like was suggested in this thread there should be a tough selection process and not many of these RMs around but we can\'t depend on the Devs to do this.
Right now I\'m trying to organise events as a normal player and it works sometimes, sometimes it doesn\'t simply because it doesn\'t appeal to people unless there are rewards. Most people \'d rather go rat slaying instead of doing something more entertaining and better roleplaying just because the latter doesn\'t have any rewards.
There are also many ideas I cannot realize simply because I lack the abilities to check for cheaters, observe the whole event, ...
I also can\'t create any form of storyline because I cannot shape some of the surroundings to actually mean something.
My vision of Yliakum is that it is a dynamic world where NPCs change, creatures migrate, cities get build up and destroyed, peaceful times switch off with times of war, ... all of this can\'t be created with code though. It can only happen if people, qualified people control things.
I don\'t feel those qualified people need to be the devs, they can be picked by the devs, they will need to listen to the devs and even report to them, yes but they don\'t need to be the devs because those already have enough work as it is.