PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Deerant on January 20, 2006, 10:43:31 pm
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Hallo, i stumbled upon your website by seer luck (through the openGL site) few hour ago and i must say i am really pleased to see that you have undertaken such a project. I played UO some time ago and i tried hard to find rp servers with a decent number of players but i failed miserably. So i find PS really interesting but i\'m not to join any time soon because i\'m in the middle of exams and i\'m on dial-up. I hope i\'ll be able in 1 or 2 months.
I did a bit research of the site, not much though, and i didn\'t find how the skills work. I mean in game mechanics, how the percentage to hit is calculated etc. I think it would be very usefull.
In UO i really enjoyed playng a thief, i never was a very successfull one but once i was a decent spy, and this propably will continue in PS. I am aware of \"griefers\" and i really hate them because i was a mark too many times in the beggining. I would recomend that anyone who would like to rp an outlaw would take a look at Xavori\'s tales in http://uo.stratics.com/content/darkside/stories/xavori.shtml because he is really a master.
So to my suggestions. In the beginning UO was pretty balanced because it was skill-based. However the age of shadows expansion introduced powerfull items and the option to pay for them keep them after death. This made a bunch of wealtly superplayers who could afford superitems thus unbalansing the game. I think this really ruined UO. I don\'t know anything about magical items in PS but please do not make them too powerful and a player should loose every possession when dying, after all loss is part of life. I\'m sorry if this is too general but i\'m not in position bo be more specific.
To my real suggestion now. In real life never happend to meet a person with his name flashing above his head. This way everyone must introduced himself first. Of course i can ignore names in PS but i thought something else.
So let\'s say that i play the game and i meet Peter the Elf (i know it is a silly name for an elf but we can ignore this for the sake of conversation or monologue in my case) so i see Peter written above his head, i ignore it and i introduce myself as he does.
Concider an other way. When i meet Peter i see \"A young male (Elf)\" written above his head. So he says his name is Peter and i have the option to change his overhead display (an obvious choice is Peter of course).
What i really mean is that the server would identify a player to my client by a certain string of characters let\'s say PSP2118 and my client shows \"A young male\" to me. I change his name to Peter and the client logs PSP211 to Peter and when i meet him again i see \"Peter\". It would be also helpfull if i could write some notes about Peter in his profle.
So the obvious advantage is that one could lie about his name. But an other is the possibility of existence of a disguise kit and maybe a disguise skill too. This kit would allow to a player to change his apearence, and maybe his race too in a given range of course, meaning that would change the id of a player. Thus player PSP211 would be identified by the server as PSP335 and would apear to me as \"A young male\" again.
Of course this means that there will be no \"red\" or \"blue\" or any other colour players, as in real life murderers don\'t have a flashing \"MURDERER\" sign following them. Of course this would work only at a rp server but this is what PS is all about i think and griefers should be punished manually and this takes me to my next issue.
Reporting players would be difficult this way. It could be solved however with a \"report id\" or something like that button. In the previous example if i would like to report Peter i would press the report id and target him. This would give me an id, let\'s say R324 and the server would log R324 to PSP211 so i could report player R324 to a gm and he will be able to find Peter. The report id sould be generated at random and logged avery time i ask for one.
I think this would really help people that want to be con artists and not just thugs.
Any feedback is wellcome.
*PSP stands for Planeshift Player and no for Playstation Portable.
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Suggested before, believe it or not ;) But how would this work with the chat window? With multiple elves running around, how do you attribute a sentence to the one that actually spoke it? The idea of having a string of characters for players in the chat window, or a bunch of \"A young male says:\" isn\'t very attractive.
One \"solution idea\" in the past was to introduce chat bubbles by the heads of characters. However, that idea too has flaws - and ultimately a chat window with logged text is rather necessary.
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Good ideas for later development. We do not have enough skins yet. But I like where you are coming from.
The game is still too unbalanced to loose everything when you die. It would only cause many headaches and give the spell casters the advantage on but hunt quests.
*edit*
Sorry just want email notification...
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Originally posted by Karyuu
Suggested before, believe it or not ;) But how would this work with the chat window? With multiple elves running around, how do you attribute a sentence to the one that actually spoke it? The idea of having a string of characters for players in the chat window, or a bunch of \"A young male says:\" isn\'t very attractive.
One \"solution idea\" in the past was to introduce chat bubbles by the heads of characters. However, that idea too has flaws - and ultimately a chat window with logged text is rather necessary.
What? Of course i won\'t believe it. Maybe just a little.
I never thought of that as in UO\'s 2d invironment what a player said appeared above that players head which leads me to an other original idea \"chat bubbles\" that appear by the heads of characters!
No seriously what are the flaws in that? The client clould log the text anyway even if it is not appeared in a window with the player\'s id and the time it appeared.
Karyuu where is your is your signature from?
And Andrek as i said i don\'t know the game mechanics so i cannot make any specific suggestions (i\'m not being defencive or anything i just cannot write it as i would say it in person. no insult taken)
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Originally posted by Deerant
No seriously what are the flaws in that? The client clould log the text anyway even if it is not appeared in a window with the player\'s id and the time it appeared.
Log the text from who? What name would appear by \"____ says:\" if you don\'t know the characters\' names?
Karyuu where is your is your signature from?
Alice in le Wonderland ;)
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It would apear \"PSP211 said\" or if you have given the name Peter to him it would appear \"Peter said\" or \"PSP221/Peter said\".
It reminded me the film Rosengrantz and Guiderstern are dead. I may have made a couple of mistakes at the names.
*EDIT*
It could even work in chat window. Instead of dozens of ?a young male? one could have PSP221 PSP321and PSP534 talking to him and then he could name them.
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That doesn\'t encourage roleplay at all. Have you noticed our strict naming rules? :P Having numbers for characters is a horrible idea.
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This will only be until they introduce themselves. Then the names that one will give to them will appear. I think it is not far from what i originally suggested.
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This is assuming everyone will introduce themselves to everyone else. In the meantime, the landscape will still be cluttered with numbers above character heads, and the chat window filled with similar nonsense. I dislike it mightily :>
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Forget the number thing.
Just remove the names over the head and either keep track of people as you speak to them or add mouse overs to identify - then when skins come along the problem will be solved since people will be more identified.
RPers can just ask names of people they do not recognize rather then mouse over.
And then maybe someday it will make sense to keep track of which person has introduced themselves to which other person ...
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No one is really addressing the problems I have mentioned - how do you keep track of who said what in chat windows, how do you report players that misbehave, etc. But again, this idea has been discussed to death and back again before - all you have to do is search :>
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I like the way you are thinking, but let\'s look at a different approach.
Setting aside any game mechanics related to character\'s names, there is nothing preventing you from role-playing as if you can not see their name. ;) This is something that I myself have just recently tried to consciously think about. In fact, it was Karyuu that brought me to this realization and way of thinking when I called her by name \'in-game\'. Although I knew of her from the forums, it is true that my character had never actually met her. The way she played it off inspired me (/me bows to Karyuu with respect to her skills).
Since then, I have been trying to avoid referring to someone by their name (which is clearly visible) until they introduce themselves. This seems to work well most of the time. A simple \"My name is ____. What is your name?\" is often all it takes for them to introduce themselves. Then you no longer have to ignore the fact that their name is visible. Then again, there are times when this approach seems to confuse some people. Perhaps they think that name labels do not work on your computer or you do not know what they are. :D Believe it or not, I actually had someone respond with \'/me points above their head\' when I asked their name.
It is true that this means you have to rely on your real-life memory as opposed to game mechanics to remember who you have met and who you have not. You may occasionally find that you introduce yourself to someone that you have already met before. But, in real life the same thing can happen. Have you ever forgotten that you met someone one time at some social gathering three years ago?
This approach to introductions can be very natural and a lot of fun.
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Originally posted by Samoth
Forget the number thing.
Just remove the names over the head and either keep track of people as you speak to them or add mouse overs to identify - then when skins come along the problem will be solved since people will be more identified.
RPers can just ask names of people they do not recognize rather then mouse over.
And then maybe someday it will make sense to keep track of which person has introduced themselves to which other person ...
Okay on the part where its just remove the name floating about the characters head?
You go into then then remove all the labels. This is already featured in planeshift ^^ As for the chat box >.> hmm I have no clue...