PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Nilrem on January 04, 2006, 04:33:08 pm
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Hi,
my intention with this thread is express my opinion about the events that the game holds (either ruled by the RM team or the GM one) with the purpose of remarking its powers, but also the flaws, that could be polished.
I\'ll start them for the events that were(?) ruled by GM (Game Masters) since they were the first to appear.
In my opinion, those events had clearly one good side, and it was player interaction; being a new player to the game, you\'re dropped in the middle of a city, and everything\'s new for you, the feeling of being lost is powerful, as has been pointed out in several other threads. Still, having the chance of hearing one of those events (mainly consistent on searching for hided items with a group, and getting a reward from the GM) could definitively help the new player to feel a warmer welcome, since those events, forced the interaction between players (so players knew each other, and there\'s the chance for them to build relationships that started at that point) and also, encouraged the knowledge of their sorroundings (exploring the world to find the objects) as well as sharing their own knowledge for the benefit of the common objective (and thus learning, and being tought at the same time) wich at the same time, encouraged partnership.
Where\'s then the flaw? Mainly, in the fact that, those events, at least for me, couldn\'t be considered no other thing that ooc (Out Of Character) events. Roleplaying a treasure hunt, is hard to do, specially when several groups have been able to find, and take, the same objects, at the same places.
Right now, a new kind of event has been invented, the events ruled by RM (Roleplay Masters) trying to fill that gap that those GM events had.
I see those roleplay events, as a nice chance to invite new players to, first watch, and if they feel like it, interact with. Due to the special circumstances of those events (they\'re broadcasted, and, by their nature, require the participation of some group to achieve something) I think they\'re the right thing that a new player can see, to have a first (friendly) encounter with roleplaying.
I say this, specially because, being a new player, chances of finding a roleplay going on may be few, but even fewer are finding some where that new player could get involved with (characters already living their lives, not really paying attention to that new visitor of the city, for instance) by the RM events nature, that should be opened to everyone willing to participate, and even more, encourage that participation, those new players can find a nice platform of what can be expected from this kind of games.
Still, I understand those events as gap fillers. That is, in an ideal scenario, there should be no need of RM events; simply because, when the number of roleplayers is big enough (and diverse enough) those initiatives should pop up by themselves, by own player initiative.
I\'ll try to explain a bit further this idea: Since RM events are meant to bring more life to Yliakum, making it feel more complete, more real; they\'re meant to fill the holes that no other char is making, at that right moment. For instance, the alchemist one, since there\'s no presence of alchemists (that I know of) I think the first event went about an alchemist, and it can be a nice idea, to have some RM empowering some sort of \"Master Alchemist\" if only to rise the rp chances of those that wished to be an alchemist, but desisted, seeing no game mechanics support for it (while that shouldn\'t care at all, we all can agree that it may be discouraging).
As opposed to this, we\'re now seeing that, when Maanar has left (momentarialy?) the tavern, there has been a new group of players that are willing to keep the Kada Els tavern up (Aradia amongst them) and things like those are the ones that lead me to think that, if new roleplayers are welcomed, spotted, and accepted, this that happened with bartenders, would happen also to a bast variety of professions that, for certain will enrich the PS world (I\'m now thinking, with a bit of deception, about Kerol, that unfortunately ended up being a GM, while I kind of expected him being a blacksmith roleplayer, a pitty. No worries Kerol :P) if we already have musicians, minstrels, pet medics, herbalists, etc... It\'s only a matter of letting the roleplayer community grow, to see how it fills all the spectrum range that we can imagine.
While this roleplaying (perhaps showing/teaching) aspect of the RM events is, without any doubt, the best of them, there are also some flaws:
The first thing that has to be present in mind, is that perhaps, not all the characters taking part in a certain event, have a real roleplayed reason to be there. This again, while being a thing that has to be assumed, isn\'t a decisive factor. The important thing is that those players participate or, at least, respectfully follow what is going on, and, with a bit of fortune, take some learnings from it, that he/she could apply to his/her own roleplay.
Another thing that can happen is the temporality of the characters that the RM are using for those events. While that temporarity, in certain events can be justified (such as a merchant arriving from another city and making a stop for a day in the city, while travelling towards another one; or a passer by traveller, etc) I personally wouldn\'t like to see those characters as \"one event last\" ones. Since it\'s true that, in real life, you can meet someone one day, and won\'t ever see that someone again, converting this in the rule to each and every of those chars wouldn\'t be a good idea; in my opinion, there should be, at least, the chance of meeting that same person again, in the game, simply to add a bit of more consistency to the character itself. I haven\'t taken part in those RM events, so perhaps I\'m completely mistaken, but, for instance, on Taela\'s bag event; was Taela only staying for some days at the city? Those questions I think should be stated during the roleplay going on, and definitively, the minimal shadow of feeling that a character\'s will be _always_ temporary should be swapped. That is, if the plan is fill certain holes on the everyday life of Yliakum, that no other player does, the purpose is filling them with the most scrupulousity and care as possible, and thus the idea of making the chars played by RM during those events more solid, consistant, lasting in time. It has to be prevented, as much as possible, the chance of letting grow, in the player\'s head, the idea of that, on every event, there will be chars that are meant only to last that short period of time, mainly because, with that idea, the player most likely, would not act as he/she would had in character, since that idea can easily trespass the barrier between ooc and ic.
I\'ll now touch other things, hoping I\'m not forgetting anything important on my already made expositions.
The next topic I\'d like to pop out are world shouts, and god impersonation.
I\'ve seen world shout abused, several times. It has to be a tool used with extremely care, as, like its name denotes, it\'s heard in all Yliakum. I seem to recall, that once there was some kind of judgement, and, a worldshout was made, inviting people to go to Hydlaa Plaza, to show their support to one side or another. While the intentions could be fine, the fact is that every single char being at Akkaio, heard that request. So, again, extremely caution when using such functionalities.
About the god impersonation. This is one of those times, when I feel (and that\'s just my impression) that OOC gets mixed, clearly, IC. In my opinion, lots of the \"debates\" that take place between the gods, and the population, tend to last so long, that soon loose any possible roleplay aspect they may have. Talking for instance about an invasion of monsters, and, certain people on the crowd, even encouraging to do that, since they alone would face it (knowing the game mechanic limits, certain that the monster spawning process wasn\'t going to be easy, and at risk to crash the server) or even, when the god decides to \"mute\" someone, but that one exits the game, and relogs, so appears like someone that has been able to \"break\" the god\'s spell, or when the one playing the god role, decides to send someone to the Death Realm (killing him/her?) but that other reacts, running out of it, spawning again, and showing himself like a resurrected one, that has been able to bypass the god\'s power (aahhh the ways of roleplaying the Death Realm... That only topic allows for another enterily new thread) all and all, a clearly, weird mixing of in character actions, with ooc ones (abusing the flaws of the game mechanics, trying to take that \"advantadge\" ic)
I\'m pretty sure I\'m forgetting about aspects that I had in mind to mention, but, arrived this time, either have been forgotten, or buried with my concern on trying to express my ideas with words. While writing this has been tiring, I do hope that each reader that has reached its end, may had taken something possitive from it, or even have seen some of his/her ideas reflected in those words.
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I think we can divide our current events into two types, like you mentioned Nilrem.
First there are the actual events like treasure hunts, tournaments, etc. They are loose entertainment orientated events that can be organised by just about everyone without much of a background story. I disagree that these are automatically OOC though, they just aren\'t tied in with a storyline but can still be very much IC. Just like students organise raves at college, Yliakeans organise tournaments and games for entertainment. The danger of turning things OOC is higher though because it doesn\'t have a RP frame to build on.
Secondly you have the RM \'events\' which are meant to encourage and reward roleplaying among players. They create a dynamic playing world as well by being submerged into the whole, they aren\'t separated from the planeshift history like the former events are. I wouldn\'t see these as organised events but more as every day happenings. Since the whole RM thing is pretty new people can get overly enthousiastic about our events though and can jeopardise the role they should be playing. Over time most of these RM events should become normal to the players and most won\'t look up anymore whenever an NPC starts talking or moving. Now everyone knows that whenever an NPC comes alive an event is going to happen and they react with OOC enthousiasm in the hope to participate in this event. Ideally NPCs should be treated like other players and not like they know an RM is behind it who can reward them.
Your issue with the created characters being used once is a bit out of place I think since we try to use existing NPCs or even player characters when possible. For example the Trasok Abduction event revolved around a few famous Akkaio NPCs and Tyrnal, one of my characters who works as a city guard, before the event and after the event took place. Sometimes it just works better by introducing a new character into the story, also because at this time we can\'t yet move NPCs while making it look realistic.
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*nods to Zan*
While I definitely recommend that players run their own events and form their own adventures, there is a lot of depth that I think only RMs/GMs can create at the moment. I\'m talking mainly about NPC involvement, items, use of various GM commands (teleporting and sliding used as magic), etc. I doubt that right now, players alone could have successfully run the Rogue event, closing with the Akkaio War. So I don\'t think we (RMs and GMs) are filling in gaps that are meant for players - we\'re creating gaps that players can fill :)
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RMs facilitate roleplay that players can\'t facilitate, mostly due to time and limited people, though a lot of the commands RMs have make this easier as well. These issues will be relieved somewhat when more features are added to the engine, though I believe the RMs will always have a place in the game, if not simply to bring life to existing NPCs.
As for the \"never see the NPC again\" issue, I\'d like to point out that Hydlaa is theoretically huge, containing thousands of inhabitants. This fact, coupled with the fact that the NPC probably appeared in a specific place for some reason relating to the event (i.e. Taela doesn\'t just stand around all day... she was found where she was for plot reasons) means that your chances of seeing the same NPC (besides merchants, etc) twice, is pretty low. However, when we get more organized, we will start running more events and you\'ll end up seeing these temporary NPCs more than once.
You need to remember that just like the game itself, the RM system is in its infancy. Things have been slow recently because of the holidays and we face some challenges in settings up the team, but things should get moving again now that all the holidays are over. Look for big developments soon after the next client release in particular. ;)
P.S. We weren\'t the ones worldshouting. *looks surreptitiously at Tmed*