PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Under the moon on July 29, 2007, 04:05:25 pm
-
In a game, there are two distinct sets of skills that your character uses. The first are physical stats- Strength, Endurance, Speed, health related stats, Skills, and abilities. These are needed, as they define what your character can do, and how they interact with the world around them. A slim girl can play a bulky man in the game realistically.
The other side of the coin would be the mental stats, mainly Charisma and Intelligence. These can be done without in the game, as both rely on the -player's- skills, and not the character's. In the following examples, I will explain 'why'.
Charisma: This is a player skill when talking to other players -and- to NPCs (once the NPCs are smarter as well). It does not matter how high your charisma is, if you are a jerk in the game (as a player or character), then folks are not going to respond to you as if you are a charismatic figure. This creates a fracture between how players and NPCs would react to you, as the NPCs would still go by the high charisma stats, and would treat you like a highly charismatic figure.
A better way to do it would be to get riid of character side CHA skill, and replace it with a response side reaction, as is already started in the game.. Saying something in a nice way would raise your charisma with players as well as NPCs on an individual basis., while rudeness would lower it. I am not sure how large a task it would be to attach 'charisma points' to NPC responses (in the far soon(TM)), so this may not be an option. Other options that could change how NPCs individually rate your charisma (how they react to you) could be what you are wearing/holding. An NPC is going to find you more pleasing to talk to if you are wearing nice clothing and not holding a weapon, than if you are in rags and running up to them with dual daggers all the time.
Intelligence: This is all playerside. Intelligence is used to learn things, figure out puzzles, and utilize your other skills in the best way -you- can think of, not your character. You can go beyond any set INT skill in the game by being smart enough to work around it. A smart person can still read complex books, or talk in 'bigger words' and higher concepts, despite how dumb their character's skills say they are. Then there is the other side of the coin, where folks have characters maxed in Intelligence, but do not have the ability to roleplay to that level. You know who I am talking about. This creates another fracture between the coded character, and the played character.
The best way to fix this is just to get rid of the Intelligence skill all together. "You are not intelligent enough to do/use/learn this," is not needed, nor are magical INT increasing objects. If intelligence is needed for doing/learning magic, I would sever that link, and just go with a magic ability skill, which would be a physical stat, meaning how much or how high a level magic your mind/body can handle/learn before they tire out. Or, even have magic that is too high for your character actually do damage to you if you attempt it. But, leave INT out of the equation.
Will: This is a tricky one. It is both a mental skill in the mind, but also a physical skill of the brain and body. Since players do not feel what their characters feel, the pain, the exhaustion, the spell effects, I would not change how it is used in the game now. The only 'Will' that is playerside is the will to keep training, even when it is boring you out of your mind, or just playing, even when you should have been sleeping hours ago. Or, perhaps that should be the will to quit. ;)
-
Ah, okay, this again...
Just no.
First of all, players cannot cover all aspects of mental skills belonging to their characters.
With Charisma, you can behave all sweetly-sweet you want and use very sophisticated language, but that won't change your character could be perceived as sucker, while a brute who just has "that something" may draw more attention.
Charisma may affect tone of voice, confidence with which character moves and speaks. The general way of being, which cannot be fully controlled by a player, nor can it be perfectly detected by our poor role-player base. Over the last months I think only one character reacted as it should be done to my character's lack of manners. You want to leave the perception of Charisma to people who cannot even role-play after their character's stats and personalities? Was that throughoutly thought out?
Intelligence is a mental stat responsible for perception, speed of learning and reaction to various happenings. It covers a large area of character abilitities, which cannot be controlled by the player unless we're talking about FPS games. Normally, in a well-balanced game, intelligence would be just about the most important stat as far as character development goes. This goes for fighting, learning and avoiding various troubles.
Second, would you want all the settings eliminated either? Many players don't play according to it. So, if we are to eliminate mental stats simply because we have a poor role-player base, why leave all the other stuff in? Shouldn't things be done differently? It's not a fault on the system side of things. It's a matter of faulty user-base.
-
So if you remove those stats what would you replace them with to base your magic systems on? That is their real purpose.
-
Charisma is hard to regulate around other Player characters since they are not restricted as the NPC are by the code regarding it.
Intelligence on the other hand could be made so the player cannot get around the obstacles imposed by it. Your book for example, either make it so it cannot be read by the "dumb" character or have the game interperate, so a dumb character might only read a few words or just the simple words with the other text being scrambled. And puzzles/quests are hard to solve if you aren't given all the peices, something that the intelligence stat could alter. So that high intelligent character would get the most out of a dialog with an NPC and maybe glean even more information that would other wise. Just like ot having enough strength to wear heavier armors, eventually intelligence could play a similar factor. Another good example, some games require intelligence to train skills, where as a retarded warrior would only reach mediocre levels in combat skills compaired to a smart warrior that could become a master.
As far as intelligence around other players, you can limit the number of languages you can learn and the degree of which you could learn them. Or, though it is something I don't agree with, code manipulation of what a character can or cannot say, eg limiting the number of words per sentence or the number of vowls per word. Though if these extremes are needed because the players are not RPing their given stats, those same players can easily side step these as well.
-
There are many different types of intelligence. If you argue that it should be kept in the game from a realism point of view, one stat is not sufficient. The INT helps you decide how powerful other players are (apparently), this is a completely different skill from reading and learning things from books.
-
The same argument can be raised about the other stats, the current stats refer to the broader sense of the term, encompasing all that fall with in its field. If you want to enter into specifics, you will have to do that with the rest and with some stats overlaping each others fields, this will get complicated fast and early.
-
I kind of see your point of view but also I see the settings now point of view
I am all for Intel cha will end str and all phys stats
if they renamed the chr or int to magic ability that truely takes away from realisim
one thing you failed to take into consideration
Crafting
Some of these stats impact the out come of a crafted product
Which I agree it is infact Realistic
If you lack in a mental stat your craft will stink in quality
Also Stats impact the way you train
There is a use for the mental stats
I guess this is brought up because you get the message "you cant (fill in the blank) because you are too tired"
This is all part of the magic of our world
in time they will perfect it but the world was not build in one day
and the devs ( no insult to devs) are not God so it is impossable to make a game flawlessly in 1 day
To be honest i think they have their hands full getting everything tweeked so they can actually run the server crash free
but this is my opinion :/
But why try to
-
/me claps.
Debate time!
Well said for the ‘nay’ side. Time for counterpoint. Let’s start with the definition of charisma.
Basically: a personal attractiveness or interestingness that enables you to influence others
In depth (since some of you folks love wiki links): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charisma
First, I will address Draklar’s comments. I would like to say that Draklar is a person I consider to be quite charismatic, due to his ability to influence others and gather attention to himself. This is, of course, with just his words alone. That is a personality trait. Personality traits can not be coded into the game, and obeyed by other players. They come from the players themselves. Charisma is not alone in this category of personality traits. I’ll give a few examples of it’s fellows:
Bravery, honor, humor, intimidation, confidence, and others.
However, charisma is the only one that is singled out and used in the game, despite that fact that the others are just as important to a personality, and indeed affect charisma greatly. You may think giving a value to your character’s charisma is just fine, but what would be your opinion if the game decided your character had low honor, or high humor, or very little bravery? Not so savory anymore, is it?
To go back to Draklar’s ‘sucker’ and ‘brute’ examples, I do not see anywhere in the game or code that says “You see a well speaking sucker before you.” or “You feel the urge to follow in the footsteps of the brute who stares you down.” In fact, I don’t see anywhere at all that tells you how charismatic another character is. The only place I ever see words like that are in the character description or the character’s speech, which are written by the -players-, not the code. You see, it is up to the players to decide if they are a hulking brute that folks seem to be drawn to, or the sniveling, but well-speaking ‘sucker’ that is looked down on by all. I have played both with great success and enjoyment without ever once looking at the CHA stat. You can not just assign a stat and say, “This is how others are going to react to you,” just as you can not say, “The person before you is charismatic and you are influenced by him.” Then what do you do when the person speaks… “Yo, I juss MAXED training in CHA! How cool is that? Now you have to listen to what I say! :D :D”
Charisma is a stat now, but there is nothing to support its role in the game, or its reason for being. In the future, I would support a variable charisma ‘stat’ based on how you talked to each NPC, perhaps the tone of voice you used (angry, normal, etc), the idle stance you are in (imposing, meek, confident, etc), or the clothing you wore (fine, rags, shiny/battered armor), and even the weapon you carried, or lack of one. Change one of those things, and the NPC would treat you differently, depending on that NPC’s personality.
In conclusion for this round on the subject of charisma, I give you several related theoretical statements you could get while talking to an NPC with the current system, since that is what charisma is meant to affect..
“You do not have enough charisma to convince this person to deal with you.”
“You do not have enough humor to understand this person’s joke.”
“You do not have enough honor to give that item back to this person.”
“You are not brave enough to talk to this person.”
I see those as all being in the same category, and thus sacred to the personality the player is trying to create. So being, it does not belong in the strict realm of the code.
I give you back the floor to discus my points on charisma, and will move on to discuss Intelligence at a later date.
-
As far as I am concerned the social stats are for interacting with the NPC's and influencing your magical abilities in their specific ways. You may be able to influence a lot of people by what you say and how you say it but some others might just think you are a blowhard. It is easy to talk people into doing things they are predisposed to do, not so easy for thing they do not favor. Character stats are integral to game mechanics and player-player interactions are always on a different level.
-
UtM gave an alternative for how things are done with NPCs and the Stats don't seem vital to magic as there are plenty of other, more useful factors that could be taken into account instead. For ways that require charisma the same ideas UtM had for NPC interaction could be used.
-
Well now that you mention it, we should get rid of agility as a skill because it is superseded by my hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity, not to mention my ability to come up with key press saving macros. Eliminate endurance because I can keep running at least as long as I can stay awake steering with the mouse.
I appreciate the fact that people are looking for ways to improve the game and I have nothing against odd ideas, per se, I've floated a few myself. I just don't see this going anywhere.
If you remove the stats magic is based on you will have to replace them with something else. I suppose you could make it so that the skills that rely on them are improved only by practice but I do not understand why some should be stat based and others not.
Maybe what is needed is more applications for them. I am not sure if it is the case but you could have spells requiring a certain level of the base stat in order to be learned. You could also require a specific amount of intelligence and willpower to learn from an advanced trainer (for any skill) and charisma to get him to take you on as a student.
-
Well now that you mention it, we should get rid of agility as a skill because it is superseded by my hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity, not to mention my ability to come up with key press saving macros. Eliminate endurance because I can keep running at least as long as I can stay awake steering with the mouse.
I'm not sure I see that as a valid point, sarcasm not withstanding ;)
The problem is physical attributes are easier to employ ingame as far as interaction. You currently cannot continue to run indefinitely because the game play mechanics use your characters endurance stat to stop you when you are exhausted. Agility is not superseded by macros or better eye hand coordination other than that people who have bad real life coordination and can't write the macros are limited in their initial response. Once you click and attack a monster though the agility stat kicks in and your leet mouse and keyboard skillz are not of much use to you though your agility stat is. The issue isn't that intelligence ingame is superseded by intelligence in real life, its that in game the intelligence stat can have absolutely no bearing on your interaction with real players. You physical stats can. If your buddy has better endurance than you and you want to run somewhere distant, he'll have to stop and wait for you to rest. If you character is a moron and you sit down to play that chess like game together, there is nothing in game mechanics that affects the outcome of the game if you are controlling where to move the pieces.
Maybe what is needed is more applications for them. I am not sure if it is the case but you could have spells requiring a certain level of the base stat in order to be learned. You could also require a specific amount of intelligence and willpower to learn from an advanced trainer (for any skill) and charisma to get him to take you on as a student.
Something like that definately helps make mental stats more important but it seems to me to just be a bandage - a means of trying to force relevance onto a statistic.
The issue is that physical stats can be easily migrated into what a character can and cannot do ingame at all times. if they really wanted people to have to sleep ingame that could be implemented. If you want people to be able to do certain physical things - piece of cake. If you want to affect how a character interacts with other people you have to rely on their role playing because you cannot rely on mental stats. Just as a smart player playing a dumb character can act perfectly intelligent with no recourse, a stupid person could play a highly intelligent character and there would be no way of telling ingame from his behavior that his character was "smart". This is a problem which I don't see an easy solution for and am struggling with as I work on PT as well. You can continue to bandage by forcing relevance onto stats that aren't easily manipulated by game mechanics or you can try to solve the problem in a different way.
I'm not saying that the way its done now is bad, just that its a difficult problem to solve and UtM's ideas are worth in depth discussion here.
Death is another thing thats hard to really explain ingame and I struggle with in PT from a settings perspective. If a person is really omnipotent and cannot really die then how are his or her actions brave? These things are simply tough.
-
/me nods to Induane.
Well said.
As far as I know, charisma has nothing to do with magic, so I am a bit confused by the reference in a few of the posts. Intelligence as a needed skill for magic is debatable (and will be debated after all points are made on charisma).
I would like to make a few points on the other side of charisma. This would be the perception of other’s characters, or how you see them. You can look at other characters and see that they are tall or short. You can see that the are also Kran or Lemur, for example. You can see that they have good agility by how well they dodge in battle. You can see the color of their hair, or lack of it. The game tells you all of this. Is it right for the game to also tell you that you see the other character as charismatic? Is it just as right to inform you with a few lines of code that you find the person funny and enjoyable to be around? Is it right for the code to tell you that you are influenced mentally or emotionally by the person you just met, despite what you, the player, may think?
Since bilbous has taken the extreme to one side, I shall go to the other side, and see what happens if -all- character personality traits would be coded.
Bilbous logs into the game to find that the new totalitarian stat rules have been coded into the system. It does not seem all that bad… at first. Then, he tries to talk to one of his old friends. But, his friend turns from him and spits on the ground. In a few moments, Bilbous gets a tell. “OOC> Sorry about that, but my Rudeness stat is too high to greet you kindly.” Bilbous is a bit miffed, so goes to the tavern to relax with a drink. On taking the drink, however, his character spits it all over the bar. It now seems that his character does not like the taste of that drink anymore. Bilbous is getting more irritated all the time, so decides to just go out into the woods to be by himself… That is until it starts getting dark, and his character starts to shake and cower. It seems he forgot to check to see if his character was afraid of the dark. Frustrated, Bilbous goes back to town to do a little bit of roleplaying with some folks, who seem to be ignoring him. He come to a tall man who tells him to go do something. Bilbous tries to say, “No,” but gets a system message: “You can not resist the urge to obey this character‘s charismatic presence. Please do what he says, and do not interrupt the roleplaying atmosphere.” Finally, he opens up his skill window to see what, exactly, is going on. he sees the following:
Charisma: 20 (why no one listens to him)
Bravery: 30 (why he is afraid of the dark and deep water)
Rudeness: 15
Honor: 90
Fussiness: 100 (why he now hates beer)
The list goes on as the horrid truth unfolds before him and he gets to the last stat.
Humor: 350.
Bilbous does not think that is funny. His character, however, finds it hilarious.
-
Charisma (CHA)
Represents the ability to convince an audience of your ideas, to lead your soldiers in battle or to attract followers. It is used in casting spells of the Crystal and Dark Ways. ...
...Mana Points are the sum of all the bonuses given by your character's mental stats. Intelligence, Will and Charisma all influence Mana Points in an equal proportion. ...
...Your character's mental stamina is based on intelligence, will and charisma
pswiki (http://pswiki.xordan.com/index.php/Players_Guide/Character_Statistics)
I believe you will also find some of this information in character creation or elsewhere, Way skill descriptions??
The point I was trying to make (no sarcasm was intended) is that there will always be a disjunct between player capabilities and character abilities. As it stands now, if I try to match myself in combat with someone thirty years younger than me ( a teenager) I am going to be at a real disadvantage due to my slower reflexes and my fading ability to zone in. It is a natural effect of aging but my character might have 2-3 times the agility of the younger player and it might not make a significant difference to the outcome.
Like I said I have no problem with this discussion, I just think it is not viable in the long run. If you can come up with something specific to replace the stat system I'd be glad to hear it.
One problem I have with "how you talk to the NPC's" is that it puts the international player struggling at speaking English at a real disadvantage or complicates the code unnecessarily to account for their lack of linguistic polish.
-
Here is my current mental statistic list in PT and I'm considering knocking out Intelligence after reading this thread.
* Intelligence
* Regeneration
* Resilience
Intelligence doesn't seem to fit there anyways. The other two statistics would easily be enforced ingame. Regeneration would be the rate at which your mental endurance returned, and Resilience would be be the amount of mental endurance you posses. Mental endurance would be used in a manner similar to mana in some games for spell casting, as well as for calculating your ability to focus for long periods of time on tedious tasks. Sometimes keeping it simple is better I think though I'm not sure this system works either :) Untested you see...
-
So basically you are thinking of replacing the base stats such as we have with the derived stats that depend on them in the PS system (more or less)? How will they be generated?
The PS stat training is a little silly, I think, the stats should be raised organically by doing the things that depend on them instead of paying money and pp's. They should be increased at a slow rate through use and degrade at a slower rate with disuse. Skill should have enough cross stat requirements so as to ensured stat degradation is uncommon and the result of very strict specialization. In other words, any particular skill or task within a skill ought to have a major stat requirement as well as a minor stat component. For example hammering a blade could have a major requirement of strength (perhaps) which would directly affect the output quality grossly and a minority component of agility which would affect output in a minor way. This would allow for advancement of the strength stat and maintenance of the agility stat. Similarly smelting of ore could have a major of endurance to withstand the heat and fumes and a minor of intelligence to be able to separate as much of the dross from the desired metal as possible. These examples are just that and some other combination of skills might make more sense with further thought. The idea would be to balance out the major and minor stats across the skill spectrum so that characters can advance fairly steadily and have their various stats degrade only in extreme circumstances.
In the end I do not think it matters too much what the stats are called as much as how they are used in the game mechanics.
-
Did I read that right? Charisma affects the casting of spells?
/me bonks the Dev on the head who thought that up.
That just seems like another case of "How do we make this CHA stat more useful?"
Charisma (CHA)
Represents the ability to convince an audience of your ideas, to lead your soldiers in battle or to attract followers. It is used in casting spells of the Crystal and Dark Ways. ...
This clearly states my point. Who, exactly, are you going to try to convince of your ideas? Who are you going to be leading into battle? Who are you going to attract as followers? I do not think any of those can be answered easily with NPCs, but come naturally with other players. Therefore, the CHA stat is useless as it is defined, and instead forced into a 'magic' role.
Bilbous, by "how you talk to them", I was referring more along the lines of the Faction system, not the actual speech you would use. Talking to the right NPCs about the right subjects/quests gets you more influence with them and their faction. That is how it is already intended, so my suggestion is nothing new. Also, you continue to stat that playing with other players is separate from playing with NPCs. In this, do you suggest we are actually playing two completely separate games on the same server, with split personality characters who act one way around players, and completely different around NPCs? That, I will not accept, even though it -is- that way it is done now.
As for what 'stat' to use for casting magic, a simple Magic Ability or Spirit stat would be all you needed. Magic is not a 'real' thing, so does not have to rely on 'real' stats.
Magic, as I see it, is the Spirit equivalent to physical stats, and should be nearly parallel in use.
Some basic physical stats are Strength, Agility, and Endurance, which affect how strong your character is, how fast, and for how long they can go. I would mirror the same for magic, such as Magic strength, Magic Speed, and Magic Endurance. Intelligence does not really have to play a part, and Charisma does not belong in there at all.
Now that I have said my piece on charisma, and why it creates a rift between roleplaying with other players or NPCs, I will move on to Intelligence in my next post, and why it does the same, only perhaps in a worse way.
-
So basically you are thinking of replacing the base stats such as we have with the derived stats that depend on them in the PS system (more or less)? How will they be generated?
Yes quite so. They will be generated initially as an initial stat level based on character selection. After that ingame they simply level in a linear fashion from use. Using the skill causes its skill level to increase, disuse causes it to fall. Our initial incomplete skills and stat page is here: http://wiki.peragro.org/index.php/Skills_and_Progression (http://wiki.peragro.org/index.php/Skills_and_Progression). We want the system fairly simple and free from lots of overt complexities, and since the game is about player freedom we decided to incorporate a realistic leveling system with appreciation and depreciation. Its not a perfect system, but none is. I'm leaning more and more towards throwing intelligence out as a stat also and replacing with a mental agility statistic of some sort. The more nimble the mind the more quickly you can cast spells for instance, but I haven't given it enough thought yet.
-
Some basic physical stats are Strength, Agility, and Endurance, which affect how strong your character is, how fast, and for how long they can go. I would mirror the same for magic, such as Magic strength, Magic Speed, and Magic Endurance. Intelligence does not really have to play a part, and Charisma does not belong in there at all.
Those 3 magic stats are summed up by intelligence. The charisma stat influences certain magic ways that are attributed to your character charm or lack there of. ie a Charm <NPC> spell. Giving the game time to evolve, we might be limited in groups by how much charisma the leader has, limiting the number of followers, experience shared, and over all effectiveness. this is not a magic only game, there are other aspects that use or will use these stats. And adding more stats will only complicate things. Like wise, Will as well falls under the magical stats you propose, do you want to get rid of that too? Or is this just ploy to rename them to more magic friendly terms?
-
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Those three stats are -not- summed up by intelligence, just as physical stats are -not- summed up by intelligence either. Intelligence is the ability to use what skills you have in the best way your mental ability sees fit. I say 'you' because it is the player that decides what the best path is, not the character. Dividing the one supposed INT stat into three distinct ‘MAGIC’ stats give the players more room to customize their character through leveling. Then you can either make a character that can cast many small spells quickly, or one that focuses on large and complex spells.
It seems that many people are under the assumption that intelligence is a prerequisite for magic. In this case, they are completely wrong. In all games I have played, the creatures of the games can do almost identically the same magic as the characters can. Are those creatures intelligent? Not at all, if you compare them to the characters. Is PS going to leave out any magical creatures based on that? Hardly. And how many times have you seen the big dumb guy with the super powerful magic spells? Yes, the one that can barely spell his name, but somehow he has mastered high level magic. Even the Glyph system in the game does not seem to actually need to use intelligence, as it is a tool and mana based system, not a mental. Magic is an incarnation of the body and spirit, not a side affect of intelligence.
I am not trying to rename anything. I am saying the stats INT and CHA can -not- exist without conflict in a game with both live players and NPCs. It creates a fracture in how your character interacts with other players and NPCs. In a single player game, it works great, as -all- other characters will read your CHA stat, and believe that you could be a charismatic person, or your INT stat, and see that you may be smart. That believability is suspended the instant you talk to a -real- person in a multiplayer game. How you play and speak then dictates how you are seen. A Spirit or Magic Ability stat or stats do not have that fracture. You can do what magic you can do, and players and NPCs alike will see the same thing, and react accordingly.
That limiting aspect with CHA that you mentioned sends chills through me. Step back and imagine what would happen if that were the case. Suddenly, not only do you have to level up all your skills and attributes, but now you have to level up your -personality- as well! Are you going to suggest that you can not even talk to certain other players if your charisma is not high enough, or that you can not complete a quest because your character would not be smart enough to figure out the riddle, despite that fact that -you- know the answer? Not likely.
INT and CHA -cause- more problems than they solve. You can not force players to play or react ‘correctly’ to these two stats. You can not count on players to have the ability to even play up or down to the ‘level’ of INT or CHA their character has. Speaking of levels, how do you even interpret the number you are given for the two mental stats? Two people with 100 INT are not going to play it the same, as it is open to interpretation. Unless you want to write a tutorial for how to RP each and every level. Honestly, how many people do you know that can perfectly play a character that is maxxed out in either INT or CHA? I can’t name a single one, despite how awesome I think a great many players are. I know I don’t have that ability. That would be the same as telling players they have to be as equally skilled in real life with a sword as their characters are in the game. It simple is not feasible.
As for ‘WILL’, you must have missed my first post, were I clearly stated it should be kept in the game.
--Induane, might I suggest a tri-stat for magic? Speed-Volume-Reserve (by other names)
Speed sets the length of timeout between spells. Level up, and you can cast spells more rapidly.
Volume sets the ‘size limit’ for spells. Level up to cast higher magics.
Reserve sets the typical ‘mana’ in reserve.
And yes, toss out intelligence. ;)
-
I'm a little undecided on this. Obviously, the rift between NPCs and PCs is very much there. It does exist, to a degree, with physical stats, as bilbous has said, but that's not a big issue, especially because they're less noticable than the mental stats should be / are, and can be worked around / ignored as well.
CHA is used in some games in conjunction with empathy, a skill that will be in PS as well. It is also used in magic systems to define how much control you have over creatures you have summoned, including how well they will serve you, for how long, what the chances of them turning against you are, etc., IOW "magical empathy". It can even define how well a PC can train another character, should that ever become implemented (with low CHA, people are less likely to bear with you, and you're less able to adapt to their specific character in order to ease their progression). Thus it isn't completely useless WRT game mechanics, and AFAICS the same as e.g. STR (obviously one'd RP being able to summon / control 6 Clackers... or not being able).
WIL and INT are similar.
The issue is now that all of us are used to the physical stats limiting what we can do ingame, while the experience of our mental stats limiting us ingame is nonexistant. I am not sure if, should it become implemented that one can't get all clues for riddles, etc., people would complain a lot. They would simply do what they do now with physical stats: max them out, and then either RP it, or just RP whatever they like.
In this light, the difference between mental stats in terms of game mechanics, and in terms of other players, are just as big as those between physical stats between game mechanics and players.
Agility is a very interesting one, because it's got a great difference. All players are limited by the movement system, and even if it undoubtedly could be better, it will never really be truly immersive, as long as there's no direct mental link.
Therefore, agility doesn't show at all, and the best we can hope for is that agile chars can eventually run faster. Maybe one could even customise the turning rate within the limits of the AGI stat, but that's about it. So AGI doesn't show to others, even though in combat one could deduce it, but since combat itself is anything but RP the audience for this subtlety doesn't really exist AFAICS.
Same with STR: almost never in an RP scenario is STR being used. Most players have loads of junk with them, be it because there is no bank, or because they don't really care. In an RP situation, it's hardly used, unless you're running somewhere. However, that almost always doesn't occur in an RP way, anyway: the movement system does not allow you to RP while running / walking, so you don't. Running therefore takes place mostly between RP: you go to Ojaveda to RP there, and in this light, it more or less just hampers RP, because you can't really get where you want to be as fast as theoretically possible.
Even if RPing travelling or carrying things, STR isn't necessarily accurate due to the aforementioned junk. IOW, all the stats are more or less just for the game mechanics, in order to create a system that is not free-form RP, which is most needed in PvP, of course.
In PS, skills and stats are somewhat odd, anyway, since it seems like every PC has not gained any of them until the control of them is taken over by a player. Once that happened, the PC then gains skills and levels at an incredible rate. However, that rate is different for every PC, because it depends solely on the player, not the character.
Therefore, one has to either live with what one can train WRT time and player endurence, or RP what one envisions one's char to be. Thus, RPing being exhausted whenever the game says so is is just as well as ignoring it.
Therefore I am really unsure of whether to keep or to ditch the stats. Just as anything ingame, it can be made use of for RP occasionally, but most of the time it can't. The most useful thing WRT RP IMO is animations, closely followed by all other visuals, while anything else needs to be heavily interpreted and used very carefully.
Of course, when the game mechanics are more advanced, and different stats and skills are needed in a group, they'll gain more importance. However, as I already said, then they'll simply be levelled more, not RP'd better.
In a way, wouldn't it be rather sad if there's a newbie whom you like, but you can't take them with you on your quests because they're so much weaker than you in all skill / stat respects, while your RP doesn't differ in any way?
As long as the game is based around levelling, RP and game mechanics will either differ greatly or RP will be adjusted to the increase in skills / stats, regardless how realistic / likely that would be in terms of the personality of the char. Therefore, it doesn't really matter if you keep or throw out any stats...
-
I do not see why you would need to exclude the low-level character, you might need to coddle and protect him and he may end up clawing his way out of the DR more often. In RPG terms Merry and Pippen did not start out very strong nor did Samwise or Frodo (Bilbo even, for that matter) but they are grew into their armor so to speak. The way the leveling system currently works is not such that your low level compatriots can earn their place as they go along and that is why I think there should be progression with use, faster with the training but continuous even without.
-
Again I'm finding the conflict people are having differentiating between Character and Player. Where as the two are treated as one and the same, even though it is the player that is controling the chracter, the character in the end it is one that plays and is essentially living the part in the game and NOT the player. I know it is hard to comprehend since the Character is like a puppet extention of the Player but if it was just a marionette, this would just be a chat room. MMO are more than a chatroom, they add bounderies and limits to the character that the player has to abide by, not as the player but as the character. Leaving all of the players RL characteristics and taking on those of the character. which in this case, involve stats that might not agree with how the player is in real life.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Those three stats are -not- summed up by intelligence, just as physical stats are -not- summed up by intelligence either. Intelligence is the ability to use what skills you have in the best way your mental ability sees fit. I say 'you' because it is the player that decides what the best path is, not the character. Dividing the one supposed INT stat into three distinct ‘MAGIC’ stats give the players more room to customize their character through leveling. Then you can either make a character that can cast many small spells quickly, or one that focuses on large and complex spells.
But "Magic" in not the only name of the game, there are other aspects to PS other than magic that require an Int score. This might be the best idea yet where magic is concerned but it give the short straw to the rest of the game as a result.
It seems that many people are under the assumption that intelligence is a prerequisite for magic. In this case, they are completely wrong. In all games I have played, the creatures of the games can do almost identically the same magic as the characters can. Are those creatures intelligent? Not at all, if you compare them to the characters. Is PS going to leave out any magical creatures based on that? Hardly. And how many times have you seen the big dumb guy with the super powerful magic spells? Yes, the one that can barely spell his name, but somehow he has mastered high level magic. Even the Glyph system in the game does not seem to actually need to use intelligence, as it is a tool and mana based system, not a mental. Magic is an incarnation of the body and spirit, not a side affect of intelligence.
Mana is derived from intelligence, it and will are the two stata that shows mental prowess like strength and endurance shows for the physical side. If you want to expand it further, so be it but then which of the three will be rolled for a language check or lore check, checks that have nothing to do with magic but still require a die roll and a check agains stome, now deleted stat.
Now if a magic tree(vegetable) can cast spells and so there for the village fool can too, even though he is a prime contender for the Special Olympics and can't tie his shoes or let alone comprehend what magic is, yet he raised those three stats so that he can, i show you there, the mirror image to your NPC "magic" monster in a PC form, the magical retard. Now, you might say he is no village fool with those three stats maxed, but who's to say since there is not stat to mesure IQ, this metal prowess of a dog turd can then cast spells like the best of them and RP the imbacil drooling on himself since he is a magic being, or so your proposed stats say. Alas if we did have intelligence, a GM could come along and notice his stupid behavour and permanently lower his Int score to more closely reflect his "dumb" outlook, there by eliminating this freak of nature from ever casting another bolt of death again.
Listen, players will raise their stats and play the complete opposite, why, because they can. whether is those three stats just for magic or the lone but all encompasing Intelligence. Players will be stat whores no matter what, but that is why MMOs have staff to keep the overly trouble some in check.
I am not trying to rename anything. I am saying the stats INT and CHA can -not- exist without conflict in a game with both live players and NPCs. It creates a fracture in how your character interacts with other players and NPCs. In a single player game, it works great, as -all- other characters will read your CHA stat, and believe that you could be a charismatic person, or your INT stat, and see that you may be smart. That believability is suspended the instant you talk to a -real- person in a multiplayer game. How you play and speak then dictates how you are seen. A Spirit or Magic Ability stat or stats do not have that fracture. You can do what magic you can do, and players and NPCs alike will see the same thing, and react accordingly.
Players will interact with other players how ever which way they please, ignoring what ever their character would do other wise. Just how Str, Dex, etc control the player on how they can interact with the game through their character, so in a future version will Charisma and Intelliegence play their part. Str is easy code, X level of str needed for certain armor and simple to put into an equation for damage modifiers. Intelliegenc eand charisma take a little longer to develop, a leadership skill limiting the group structure witht he charisma stat influencing that skill or comprehention of the game surounding based off the character intelligence score. those will take longer to hash out since they need additioal skills and code, but eventually like the strength checks we have now, so will we have intelligence and charisma checks. For example, say you neglected the characters, intelligence and he is as dumb as rock. should you as an english major influence this dumb character as to speak(write) elequenlty and precise with out a typo or faulter? I would rather see code enforcing their limit and force a player to choose simple words and sentences in order to convay they part of an idiot Character. I would like to see code that made leaders train charismain order to get the most out of their followers, PC or NPC, and like wise the followers in return getting the most from charismatic characters.And with out a stat to measure up, there can be nothing to code with.
That limiting aspect with CHA that you mentioned sends chills through me. Step back and imagine what would happen if that were the case. Suddenly, not only do you have to level up all your skills and attributes, but now you have to level up your -personality- as well! Are you going to suggest that you can not even talk to certain other players if your charisma is not high enough, or that you can not complete a quest because your character would not be smart enough to figure out the riddle, despite that fact that -you- know the answer? Not likely.
So I take it you don't level your other stats, your sole interaction with in the game is sitting around chatting(RP) with your friends, like a 3D messenger. So this might seem a little harsh, having to level a stat that will interfere with your RP because instead of Role Playing your character, infact you are Role Playing yourself. Heaven forbid you have to limit yourself to what your characters state is, why not get rid of all the stats and skills and just make PS one of those 3D visual chatrooms. This would be most beneficial to you as then you would not have to interact as a CHARACTER but as YOU the PLAYER.
INT and CHA -cause- more problems than they solve. You can not force players to play or react ‘correctly’ to these two stats. You can not count on players to have the ability to even play up or down to the ‘level’ of INT or CHA their character has. Speaking of levels, how do you even interpret the number you are given for the two mental stats? Two people with 100 INT are not going to play it the same, as it is open to interpretation. Unless you want to write a tutorial for how to RP each and every level. Honestly, how many people do you know that can perfectly play a character that is maxxed out in either INT or CHA? I can’t name a single one, despite how awesome I think a great many players are. I know I don’t have that ability. That would be the same as telling players they have to be as equally skilled in real life with a sword as their characters are in the game. It simple is not feasible.
You cannot hold players ascountable for anything that goes on in a MMO, since they are a little bit harder to hack than a stand alone game, the majority of players will just thumb their nose at the rules and the RP environment till they get caught in the act and repremanded. The best an MMO can do is set up a structure where the player is forced into their characters role, rather than the other way around and try to keep a sensible atmosphere for all to enjoy. Now the limits to stats might seem harsh, I know, it took me a while, carrying the dead weight of chain armor in my inventory cause I did not know the correct strength level to wear it, but they make the players play the role of their character and develop their characters with in the game, rather than having an instant dwarven physicist becuse the player is a Rocket Scientist. Because that is how all players are, they try and bring anything from the outside to give them an advantage over the environment or other players. If a body builder could some how imbue his strength onto his character, he would. Intelliegence and in a limited way charisma and will are the only attributes the player can channel through his character. knowledge of the land/quest/etc of which his current character would rightly have no knowledge of but yet the player in his ever present persuit of an edge will rightly use all knowldge to his full advantage, forgoing all the characters true attributes. So a Don Juan in RL plays a character that he has not developed its Charisma, should, cause he is so charasmatic in RL be allowed to play the most charamatic character in the game? NO. Now can you keep the player from NOT using please and thank yous, no. But you can limit his interaction vs the environment of the game, limit how great a leader he is in groups, So those underhim do not recieve the full benefits of someone with a higher Charisma score, even though he may be the Don Juan to out do all other Don Juans, his character is no Juan at all and that is who is truely in the game.(the Character)
As for ‘WILL’, you must have missed my first post, were I clearly stated it should be kept in the game.
Will Is the equivilent of intelligence in a spiritual sense. Inner strength and like that of an inner beauty, ie charisma. The three overlap each other, take out Intelligence or Charisma and might as well take Will out too.
-
Good points, Seytra and bilbous. Truthfully, it seems to me that most stats are not RPed by, be they physical or mental. I personally know many a good RPer disregard stats completely. Not because they could not RP by them, but because Creation does not allow them to create the character they wish to play. I do try my best to keep true to the physical stats garnered in Creation, but ignore the mental. Physical stats are the body, and how it reacts to the environment, and are therefore the realm of the game. Mental stats are personality, and belong to me alone.
As said, the reason RPers will ignore the stats is that the character they wish to create simply can not be created. I'll be the first to admit that I have a 'cheat sheet' to Creation and all of its options, and I am not ashamed to use it when trying to create a specific type of character. But even with all the numbers, it is hard to get just what you want, and then you have to disregard all of the 'background' choices you made.
A few folks have asked me why I don't "Stop being lazy, and just level your character up to where you need it." And even Talad himself has told me to just have a friend do the leveling for me. Some of the folks reading this may not understand the aversion to either of those 'suggestions', but any avid RPer will cringe at the very thought. It is just something that can't be explained if you don't feel it yourself.
Back to the stats themselves, the reason they are ignored in RP is that there are little to no RP elements that use physical stats. The only kind of fighting you can do generally ends in death, which is truly limited in roleplaying. Most RPed fights end in one person being overpowered by the other, not killed. The stats and system do not support that, though. Therefore they both get ignored.
Ill give one more example of the difference in physical stats, and why they are needed, and mental stats, and why they are not.
Let us say the Devs create a new maze map. It is very devious, with many traps and twists. You have a character that is very low level in both INT, AGI and STR. You come upon one part where the path is blocked by a large boulder. RP your heart out, but that boulder is not going to move, and you can not climb well enough to get over it. The only way to move it is to have high enough STR to push it out of the way. Now, you decide to just go another way, and use your brains to solve the maze. Remember, your -character's- INT stat claims you should not be able to find your way out of an open door, but you can easily find your way out. Let's also say you have very low CHA as a stat. Very low. You should not be able to convince a starving Kran to eat. But you can easily walk back out of the maze and convince a random person to come help push that rock out of the way.
I know some people will read that and say people should just RP by their stats then. I tell you now that that will never happen.
CHA could be used as Seytra suggested, but is it really worth the bother? Use the empathy skill alone when controlling animals, and use the teaching skill alone for teaching. No need of using CHA or INT as a modifier.
In other threads, I have talked about leveling vs. RP. Though I am 100% against having to level mental/personality skills, I have nothing against getting stronger/better physically/skills-wise. That is as a -choice-, though, not as the standard, cut-from-the-mold PL RPG type of games. I still hope to one day be able to create more 'mature' characters with the exact stats you want right from Creation. With sacrifices, of course. But that is another thread entirely.
I guess the sum of all this writing is that physical stats are needed, but personality stats are not. Simplify things and just vanish them.
Edit* Unnamed_Source, I, personal, have the ability to play any type of character and stay within the set 'stats' Most people, however, do not. Should a Pearson who has a charismatic personality in real life have the choice to play the most charismatic person in the game? Yes. Should a person who is not charismatic in real life be able to play the most charismatic person in the game? No. Why? Because they simply do not have the ability. 'Stats' give the false impression that you can do that, just because you are a higher level. It is not believable.
EDIT2* In your statement, you say you would like to see a word limiter for low INT characters so you can not appear smarter than your character. What are you going to do for unintelligent players (pardons)? Add a text enhancer to make them seem as smart as their character? Are you going to add a prompter for 'charasmatic things to say' if your character has high charisma, but you are a hermit that lives out in the woods? Be realistic.
-
Good points, Seytra and bilbous. Truthfully, it seems to me that most stats are not RPed by, be they physical or mental. I personally know many a good RPer disregard stats completely. Not because they could not RP by them, but because Creation does not allow them to create the character they wish to play. I do try my best to keep true to the physical stats garnered in Creation, but ignore the mental. Physical stats are the body, and how it reacts to the environment, and are therefore the realm of the game. Mental stats are personality, and belong to me alone.
Wrong, All the stats should have reactions with in the game, just cause it is not in the game now, that doesn't mean it should not be. You are not playing yourself in the game you are playing a character with the limits of its stats, not your limits. And so be it if you are not wiling to RP your stats, like the strength requirement for armor there should be one day a mentalrequirement, be that a limited speech/vocabulary or anotehr disability. If that effects your ability to RP, that is the consequence of playing in an MMORPG that take into account other aspects besides RP and still have to deal all of them a fair hand. Like your character now being able to wear chain armor cause you do not feel like leveling his strength.
As said, the reason RPers will ignore the stats is that the character they wish to create simply can not be created. I'll be the first to admit that I have a 'cheat sheet' to Creation and all of its options, and I am not ashamed to use it when trying to create a specific type of character. But even with all the numbers, it is hard to get just what you want, and then you have to disregard all of the 'background' choices you made.
That breed of RPer wants god mods, they do not want to work or eveolve their character, but just sit around like ina a chat room and instantly be the hero of day. So why have any stats or skills or anything for that matter, a simple 3D chat would do just fine.
A few folks have asked me why I don't "Stop being lazy, and just level your character up to where you need it." And even Talad himself has told me to just have a friend do the leveling for me. Some of the folks reading this may not understand the aversion to either of those 'suggestions', but any avid RPer will cringe at the very thought. It is just something that can't be explained if you don't feel it yourself.
In your case, an "Avid RPer" would think IRC is the perfect place to have a game. I don't see how "avid RPer" such as yourself are drawn to places like this that have stats and skills and crafting and PK, as it seem to all go against your nature. Mind you I'm agains leveling, for the same reasons as you , cause it's a pain in the ass and quite the snore fest after a while. But unlike oyu I also enjoy the other aspects of MMOs, and I am willing to under go a bit of displeasure just to see what is on the other side.
Back to the stats themselves, the reason they are ignored in RP is that there are little to no RP elements that use physical stats. The only kind of fighting you can do generally ends in death, which is truly limited in roleplaying. Most RPed fights end in one person being overpowered by the other, not killed. The stats and system do not support that, though. Therefore they both get ignored.
If you are just going to chat, then everything can be ignored. RP is not just about brandishing wits on a teleprompt. You are taking on a role and like real life you got to work at it, mature with it not just sit around and banter. The stats are the most important part of the RP, because they are what define the character, the very persona you are now playing as. Remeber you are taking on a role, not playing yourself. Anything less and you might be and "avid something" but certainly no RPer.
Ill give one more example of the difference in physical stats, and why they are needed, and mental stats, and why they are not.
[/quote]Let us say the Devs create a new maze map. It is very devious, with many traps and twists. You have a character that is very low level in both INT, AGI and STR. You come upon one part where the path is blocked by a large boulder. RP your heart out, but that boulder is not going to move, and you can not climb well enough to get over it. The only way to move it is to have high enough STR to push it out of the way. Now, you decide to just go another way, and use your brains to solve the maze. Remember, your -character's- INT stat claims you should not be able to find your way out of an open door, but you can easily find your way out. Let's also say you have very low CHA as a stat. Very low. You should not be able to convince a starving Kran to eat. But you can easily walk back out of the maze and convince a random person to come help push that rock out of the way.
Let us say the Devs create ... and in the middle of the maze you confront a beast that blocks your path, not even an army can slay it. Sure enough your firned that bothered to train his CHA can lul it to sleep ... you enter a room with a mechanical trap, an ingious device, but not needing be since even untieg shoe laces proves a daunting task for your character, no this requires an INT check, too bad the entry way was cealed and the cealing is dropping, well after you get out of the DR you can ask your intelliegent and dextrous buddy to help you out. Oh but wait wasn't the entrance to this cave guarded by the city guards, being that it was "very devious, with many traps and twists" they wouldn't let you go on all alone, so a group was needed with leader capable to leader all your buddies. Maybe that charismatic buddy could lead this band and while all the others work you can come along for the ride.
I know some people will read that and say people should just RP by their stats then. I tell you now that that will never happen.
You are absolutely right, that is why you got to have check and balances like the strength requirement for medium armor. There will be the same for Intelligence, charisma, Will, dexterity, etc.
... Though I am 100% against having to level mental/personality skills,
but that is the key here, the mental/personality stats are of your character, not you. No matter how you are in RL this is not how the character is in the game. His stats are not your stats, your knowledge is not his, and even if you don't want to play with those stats you should be penalized all the same. ie strength vs armor type.
I still hope to one day be able to create more 'mature' characters with the exact stats you want right from Creation. With sacrifices, of course.
But like your earlier comment about people never playing their stats, so too will people for go the sacrifices as the make insta gods. Now on the other hand I would like this as I wouldn't ahve to level and instatly be able to craft and do anything. but like cheating though a stand alone game, it will get boring quite as fast as leveling and it;s off to the next challenge, key word challenge.
I guess the sum of all this writing is that physical stats are needed, but personality stats are not. Simplify things and just vanish them.
All the stats are needed, they are all the of the CHARACTERS Personality ... even if the player doesn't wish to use them.
Should a Pearson who has a charismatic personality in real life have the choice to play the most charismatic person in the game?
Only if his stats allow him to
. Should a person who is not charismatic in real life be able to play the most charismatic person in the game?
Only if his stats allow him to
Are you going to add a prompter for 'charasmatic things to say' if your character has high charisma, but you are a hermit that lives out in the woods? Be realistic.
No enhancements, just detraction. It would be the coincidence if both the high INT character and your low INT character spoke at the same level but like the retard in RL playing that high INT character so too is your character in the game a retard and the detractions are there to keep that realisty in line. Your character never learnt to read or write and a hase a very basic vocabulary, why do you get to elevate his INT by yours, that goes against the role you chose to play, in this case of a retard. AND this is realistic.
BTW, you can get Internet reception in the woods? where?? I want to move there! the whole notion of Ted Kazinski in a one bedroom shack in the middle of nowhere with nobody around for miles had that one negative going for it that all correspondace with the outside world was done through a manual typewriter, not worth the move, I'll stay a Urban Hermit. BUT if you know of a desolate woods someplace with excellant telecom reception, both in and out, satialite just wont cut it, Please spill the beans.
Rememebr its the Character, not the Player who's in the game.
-
In your case, an "Avid RPer" would think IRC is the perfect place to have a game. I don't see how "avid RPer" such as yourself are drawn to places like this that have stats and skills and crafting and PK, as it seem to all go against your nature. Mind you I'm agains leveling, for the same reasons as you , cause it's a pain in the ass and quite the snore fest after a while. But unlike oyu I also enjoy the other aspects of MMOs, and I am willing to under go a bit of displeasure just to see what is on the other side.
Now I see the problem. You completely misunderstand me, my intentions, how I play, what I enjoy, and basically everything about me. I'll explain it in detail in a PM later.
Edit* One more thing. If it is -just- the character in the game, and the -player- should bring nothing of themself into it, as you seem to be suggesting, then you might as well shut the chat down completely and go with preselected responses that you can click on to talk to both NPCs and players. Better yet, don't even let players choose responses, and let the character decide what should be said. And take out movement as well. You would not want a player going somewhere their character would not, or doing something that goes against their character traits. Then, you -have- to play and talk by your exact stats. There is no other way. In fact, why don't the Devs just make a PS movie instead of a game, and just tell people who they are in the movie? By Jove, everyone would be the perfect RPer then.
-
Now I see the problem. You completely misunderstand me, my intentions, how I play, what I enjoy, and basically everything about me. I'll explain it in detail in a PM later.
No PMs, I could care less, if you have anything to say say it out here in the open or don't say it at all.
Edit* One more thing. If it is -just- the character in the game, and the -player- should bring nothing of themself into it, as you seem to be suggesting, then you might as well shut the chat down completely and go with preselected responses that you can click on to talk to both NPCs and players. Better yet, don't even let players choose responses, and let the character decide what should be said. And take out movement as well. You would not want a player going somewhere their character would not, or doing something that goes against their character traits. Then, you -have- to play and talk by your exact stats. There is no other way. In fact, why don't the Devs just make a PS movie instead of a game, and just tell people who they are in the movie? By Jove, everyone would be the perfect RPer then.
Leave the player at the door. You do not go out for a part ona play and then play yourself. Try and have some separation between you and your character. I agree that none here are ever going to be actors on the big or little screen but at the very least they can try, and if they just can't simple limitations based on the stats will help them along, ie strength vs what armor your character can wear.
If you start taking out stats because they don't agree with how you want to play your character, then all the stats should go. The stats limit how a player structures their characters and defines how the character will interact in the game envrionment, no matter how brillant or strong the player might be in real life.
-
We can be involved mentally with what goes on in the game but not physically so the mental stats aren't needed but the physical are.
Try and have some separation between you and your character.
Its meant to be an immersive experience.
-
We can be involved mentally with what goes on in the game but not physically so the mental stats aren't needed but the physical are.
You might be a blackbelt in real life, having that mental knowledge, should you be allowed to carry it on to your character? Like wise, you are a mechanical engineer, that MENTAL knowledge would allow you to build a crude but effective steam engine, with the little INT your character has, would your character even conceive such a notion let alone build one? if your character has a alow stat, you should have to play with that low stat, it is easy to conceive such limitations on stats that you have no control over but what if you did, tif there were sensory gloves or even body suits that you could endow your RL life physical embodyment onto your character, would you then be asking for the removal of the physical stats as well? I can run the four minute mile so my character should not be limited by this low endurance, sounds kind of silly with todays technology but it is just as silly as giving all your mental capacities to a low intellegent character. And I have asked this before, who is in the game environment, you,the player, or your character?
Its meant to be an immersive experience.
Then why even have characters? We should have bio's like a dating sirvice questionare of ourselves and every one plays themselves, no races just regular humans that think and talk and do everything that we can do in RL. We'll have to up the time lines cause their ain't many Blacksmiths around in RL anymore, let alone any that play on Computers. So the new trades are computer/mechanical engineering and the not yet implemented Liberal Arts. Martial arts and guns would be the fighting norm. Like an on line Grand Theft Auto, except we don't play the role of the hood but the of the role of the schmucks getting car jacked, cause not many gangbangers play computer games or have the computers to play them. Yes thats quite immersive, we play ourselves, not very Role Playish but it is immersive, an MMORLG.
Immersive yes but filtered through the role you are playing, with ALL the limits inherited by that character. Let me ask you, do you play all your charactes the same, no matter the race or gender?
-
I'm not talking about mental knowledge. Talking about personality traits such as intelligence and charisma. Immersive experience doesn't mean you ARE the character, it just means that you are involved in their decisions and can feel that it is a living breathing world you are having an input into.
-
So how can you account for the self-deluded boor who thinks he is the life of the party? He will expect to have legions of followers because in real life his daddies money buys a lot of sycophants. Like it or not people will always make judgments about the other people in game and character stats are purely for game mechanics. All the stats in the game could be replaced with other unrelated stats and all it would change is the way the game system gets designed. For example you could make the base stats Luck, Fortitude and Wit. All the skills would then be affected by whichever of these three stats was deemed to be relevant by the game designers.
If you doubt that the stats are for game mechanics try using your native charisma to get Harnquist to give you a free sword or a better price for your gold. It can't be done. It may eventually be implemented but that would be an advance in the game mechanics. You will never be able to successfully model human behavior with a few numbers. You must be able to suspend your disbelief at some point and do the best you can.
-
No PMs, I could care less, if you have anything to say say it out here in the open or don't say it at all.
This is rather disappointing, to say the very least. I must say that you have just forfeited a great deal of respect and credibility with this statement.
Just so you know, I consider a PM a very polite and appropriate form of discussing things that involve merely two people, and are of no concern to anyone else. This is the case here.
You, OTOH, have stated that you are not interested in having a possible misunderstanding cleared up, and instead seem only interested in public bashing.
WRT the actual topic, I might as well add this:
As bilbous' post hints at, people in PS actually play two games: one which revolves around stats, and is hampered by their limited accuracy and required fairness and progression system, which exist solely for the purpose of preventing godmoding and, just like in any other RPG, they are doing a poor job at best (instead of instant maxedness, players need some time to get maxed, and afterwards their claims are backed up, making matters worse since noone can tell them to "tone it down" anymore: after all, they "earned" it.).
Anyway, the stats-based game involves the game mechanics and also the NPCs. It is more like a strategic simulation than anything else.
The other game is one about social interaction, which is as far removed from stats and items as it gets. Indeed it has similarities to a chatroom, but it also is more.
I do not see where you get the notion that IRC might be more appealing to "storytellers" than PS. PS appeals by being visual. It therefore removes the need for pages of text describing everything, and instead simply displays it (as one of the developers summed it up pretty well: "We don't need to tell a player that a barrel is a barrel."). This speeds things up, and removes abstraction. It also provides means of interaction other than text: emotes have animations and indeed can do without a system message. By being graphical, it also provokes more creativity in interacting with the world, although it limits it because of the engine. Still, it is much more efficient and pleasing to just augment the engine by using text, than having to do everything in text.
As has been argued all the time, both games in PS appeal to players. However, if the stat-based game's appeal overshadows the social games's appeal, then PS is not a good option for a player, because it has less to offer in that respect and will always limit this in order to not hamper the social game.
You also speak of challenges. The most enjoyable ones are those that require some thinking. It would be no fun if the system would do that for you. All RPGs I know of rely on the player's mental abilities for that, and only fall back to stats when an unbiased vote is required. If this were not so, then the quests would state what you have to do and say instead of letting you figure that out.
Leave the player at the door. You do not go out for a part ona play and then play yourself. Try and have some separation between you and your character.
It is perfectly valid to play yourself. The only thing you must do is to separate yourself from your character when it comes to what you know and what you don't know. Edit: and also in what others do to your char and not to you, though this distinction is invalid if the other player is a jerk and merely hides behind the character. /Edit
I agree that none here are ever going to be actors on the big or little screen but at the very least they can try, and if they just can't simple limitations based on the stats will help them along, ie strength vs what armor your character can wear.
Acting is so far removed from RP that it rightfully has a different name. The restrictions exist in order to prevent godmoding, which is however limited to things people do. A player can godmod their INT and CHA and WIL as much as they like, if others don't agree with it, or they can't pull it off, then the others ignore it. If you want to help people along, then you must not only limit, but also augment. Unless you can do that, you mustn't limit, either.
If you start taking out stats because they don't agree with how you want to play your character, then all the stats should go. The stats limit how a player structures their characters and defines how the character will interact in the game envrionment, no matter how brillant or strong the player might be in real life.
Yes, it is a crutch, not a panacea. If the crutch can be replaced by something better, then that is preferrable. I do not see need to go out of one's way to try to remove the mental stats, but it would be possible. In the end, it doesn't matter, since the game would still need to be based around something for the game mechanics to work. This is going to stay until there is an AI that deserves it's name (and in that case we are going to have a way bigger problem than the rift between game mechanics and RP).
As I said, people would simply set their mental stats to a level that allows them proper interaction with others. I am even convinced that, should this be implemented, the CC would issue a big fat warning like "WARNING! If you lower your INT any further, you will not be able to interact properly with others!".
Thus, I really don't see how enforcing INT on speech is going to improve RP. The only thing it is going to do is make people turn away from PS, and the rest will simply set their INT to a minimally usable level. This would then be nothing else than a minimum value. I might even say that only the worst PLs and PvPers, and a select few already good RPers, would use INT lower than the minimum level: the PLs and PvPers because they "communicate" by beating others up, and the RPers for the experience. I daresay, though, that this wouldn't be their main character. All in all, RPing still needs to be fun to the players, and if it would become a chore through added realism, then realism must be sacrificed.
-
I see now that it is rather pointless to continue addressing a person who could care less. So this is the last post I make to Source.
No enhancements, just detraction. It would be the coincidence if both the high INT character and your low INT character spoke at the same level but like the retard in RL playing that high INT character so too is your character in the game a retard and the detractions are there to keep that realisty in line. Your character never learnt to read or write and a hase a very basic vocabulary, why do you get to elevate his INT by yours, that goes against the role you chose to play, in this case of a retard. AND this is realistic.
Ok… not sure if I understood much of that. So, you are saying that we should limit the playing ability of an intelligent player until his character is smart enough. Horrid thought. But then you contradict yourself by saying a ‘retard’ in real life can also not (tries to decipher this part) play a high INT character because they are a ‘retard’. Excuse me, but THAT IS imparting real life personality and mental abilities onto a character in the game. If you have ‘detractions’ for players who do have the mental skills to play a smarter character, then you -must- also have enhancements for ‘retards’ who do not. What, are you going to require a test in Creation to gauge the limit of the player’s intelligence so that the character can not go beyond that? Ridiculous. Get rid of the stat, get rid of the problem.
BTW, you can get Internet reception in the woods? where?? I want to move there! the whole notion of Ted Kazinski in a one bedroom shack in the middle of nowhere with nobody around for miles had that one negative going for it that all correspondace with the outside world was done through a manual typewriter, not worth the move, I'll stay a Urban Hermit. BUT if you know of a desolate woods someplace with excellant telecom reception, both in and out, satialite just wont cut it, Please spill the beans.
I live out in the country. I have Satellite. It works fine. Bigfoot could be playing PS, for all you know.
Leave the player at the door. You do not go out for a part ona play and then play yourself. Try and have some separation between you and your character. I agree that none here are ever going to be actors on the big or little screen but at the very least they can try, and if they just can't simple limitations based on the stats will help them along, ie strength vs what armor your character can wear.
Roleplaying is not acting. You missed the sarcasm. Acting is assuming a prewritten role that you can not step out of. Roleplaying is the free flowing playing of a person -you- create. I still do not understand why you keep bringing up strength. RPGs are mental games. You want to play strength, go outside.
If you start taking out stats because they don't agree with how you want to play your character, then all the stats should go. The stats limit how a player structures their characters and defines how the character will interact in the game envrionment, no matter how brillant or strong the player might be in real life
Wrong. As I have said before, a weak person can play a strong character ingame. An unintelligent player can -not- play a intelligent character.
I have to ask this. Do you, Unnamed_Source, look at your stats and play by exactly what they say? Will you stop training INT once your character reaches your real life IQ? Do you ever stop to think if your character is charismatic enough to be talking to the other characters around you in the way you do? Do you await the day when the server gives you a warning for using words that are ‘too big’ for your stupid character to know? Answer carefully, or be named hypocrite... Also, expect no PMs.
Feline Prince has hit the nail on the head on both accounts. Mental knowledge is not the same as personality traits. Knowledge, you can code. Your character will know how to do ‘this’ and do it, even if you can not. Personality, you can not code. Even if your character has the highest INT stat in the entire game, the player’s own intelligence is going to dictate how smart that character really acts.
bilbous, you once again prove my point. The self-deluded boor who thinks he is the life of the party is going to be treated exactly like a self-deluded boor who thinks he is the life of the party. It does not matter if he think he is. If he can not play that personality in the game, it just is not going to happen, no matter what stats you have.
Sure, you could get a better price for a sword if your character has higher CHA stat. But the instant you step out of the NPC tab, that CHA stat does not mean squat to other players. That is why the faction system should be used to judge if an NPC is influenced by you. If you have higher standing with an NPC, then he will be more likely to give you better deals or more information. If not, then you will be lucky if he answers you. That is basically how it works with other players. No more is needed.
Seytra, once again, a very well written post. I see you made many of the same points I did (but posted while I was still writing).
To clarify how I play to those whom do care: I do like physical stats, as they are how you interact with the physical ‘world’. I do like magic stats, as they allow you to do interesting things. I like skills, as that is what you teach your character to advance them. I do not like mental stats, as players can ‘max’ their character’s skills beyond their ability to play. I like leveling… in other games, and if the character I am playing has the personallity to want to get better in skills. In PS, the leveling system sucks, to be blunt. I like creating characters… but not using Creation in PS, as it is horrid, controlling, unrealistic, and limited. I like doing quests that allow me to stay in character. I do not like PS’s single player RPG type quests. I do not just “stand around talking” in PS. In my RPs, I actually do play to, and use the physical stats my character has, and try to get other to ‘roll’ by theirs as well. I like fighting in RPGs, but do not fight in PS because I can not stand the leveling system, or the form of Dash-n-slash, three-point-turn combat. I have never ‘RPed’ a fight, as those are skills my character knows, and should be controlled by game mechanics. I dislike RPing in IRC or a chatroom, and do not even like MUDS or Text based games. I want to see the world.
The list could go on in great detail, but there are likely more people that do not care than do, and that belongs in General anyways.
/me bows out.
Edit* I would like to clearify something I wrote about quests. It is the single player nature of the quests in the multi-player world that I do not like, not the quests themselves. In a single player game, the quests I tried out would rock.
-
This is rather disappointing, to say the very least. I must say that you have just forfeited a great deal of respect and credibility with this statement.
This is another issue I could care less about, your opinion of me, as last I checked this is NOT the Unnamed_source forum but indeed it is the Planshift Forum. I come here to discuss things about the game and nothing else, so stick to the subject. If you can't share it with in the public arena, I really don't want to hear of it either.
Just so you know, I consider a PM a very polite and appropriate form of discussing things that involve merely two people, and are of no concern to anyone else. This is the case here.
Oh no, that's where your are wrong, that is certainly not the case here. And my statement holds true, I don't care what where you come from, I don't care what you do, and I don't care what you had for lunch. I come here to discuss about the game nothing else, So stick to the subject. The only thing I use PMs for it to test things out before posting them on the board, mainly for the game issue questions.
You, OTOH, have stated that you are not interested in having a possible misunderstanding cleared up, and instead seem only interested in public bashing.
This is a debate about the game, the two of use aren't the ones deciding on how to code this VR, so what is the point it taking this private? None, since only the ideas that come onto this forum may possibly make it onto the game, how will a private conversation make that goal? That staement also made it clear, what ever conceived misunderstanding the other party may have with me, they should keep to themselves, cause I wouldnt bother to have one with them, there is not point to that.
I do not see where you get the notion that IRC might be more appealing to "storytellers" than PS.
As you said it your self, what "storyteller" covet is a plavce to chat, a chatroom. What you might not be aware of, is there are VR chatrooms, an IRC with avatars. But the point of the statement was it's a chatroom, nothing more nothing less, that this kind of "storytellers" want. Yes, a VR chatroom, with nothing else to get in the way of their chats(or what they call RP).
As has been argued all the time, both games in PS appeal to players. However, if the stat-based game's appeal overshadows the social games's appeal, then PS is not a good option for a player, because it has less to offer in that respect and will always limit this in order to not hamper the social game.
The social game will happen no matter what the code imposes, the only thing that will kill it is making PS a stand alone console game. By make it a little difficult to chat, you will get rid of those that do nothing but sit on their butts and type all day long, but like those that like to kill thing that can't wear Medium armor straight off the bat, so too do the the chatters have to give a little effort to get what they want out of the game.
You also speak of challenges. The most enjoyable ones are those that require some thinking. It would be no fun if the system would do that for you. All RPGs I know of rely on the player's mental abilities for that, and only fall back to stats when an unbiased vote is required.
Right, and if before you could get to those challanges the game checked to see if your character could solve them, THEN allow you the player to see the puzzle. Hay that works.
It is perfectly valid to play yourself.
Oh wait, I misjudged you, you're an elf in real life.. Oh wait, no, a dwarf, NO! wrong again, a giant smurf... Oh no, pointed ears and fur, you're a human sized cat.
The only thing you must do is to separate yourself from your character when it comes to what you know and what you don't know.
Correction: you must seperate what your CHARACTER knows and what your CHARACTER doesn't know. Keep the Player out of the equation.
[/quote]Acting is so far removed from RP that it rightfully has a different name.
OH no, that statement contradicts itself, how to Play a Role is a quintessential part of acting, or rather good acting. ie Play a Role = Role Play, one and the same.
The restrictions exist in order to prevent godmoding, which is however limited to things people do. A player can godmod their INT and CHA and WIL as much as they like, if others don't agree with it, or they can't pull it off, then the others ignore it.
True but also the one lacking the will to "godmod" will suffer the same fate or his buddies can ignore his character low intelligence and all the deficiencies tha come along with it, like speach impediments. If you want to help people along, then you must not only limit, but also augment. Unless you can do that, you mustn't limit, either.
The augment is the end result, you work hard at getting your character to the stage you want it at and you'll enjoy the benefits that come along at that lofty goal. The "limits" are there as a separation between the haves and have nots, or in this case those that bothered to mold their character to what ever they wanted to role play and those that would rather live with the deficiencies that come along with low stats no skills and what ever else they think is bothersome.
As I said, people would simply set their mental stats to a level that allows them proper interaction with others. I am even convinced that, should this be implemented, the CC would issue a big fat warning like "WARNING! If you lower your INT any further, you will not be able to interact properly with others!".
You can lower your stats? I did not know that. All the same, whether you raise or happen to lower them, you still have to contend with the consequences. Lower your strength and you won't be able to wear that spiffy chainmail and have to resort to wearing that drab brown leather, but that is a decision you made for that character and you got to live with how that character looks. Same for the other stats, what ever their deficiencies might be.
Thus, I really don't see how enforcing INT on speech is going to improve RP.
It will improve as it enforces the notion that the games populace did not come out of a cookie cutter, that the room is not full of perfect super heros but there are others in the mix, old, young; smart, dumb; strong. weak. It enforces the ambiance of the game, as it is the stage onto which the Role Play is played out. Those others in the mix that are dumb will have to contend with a speach impediment. And thus add themselves to the ambiance.
The only thing it is going to do is make people turn away from PS, and the rest will simply set their INT to a minimally usable level.
Those that turn away, turn away because they cannot Play the Role, that chat is all the seek and thus since the game no longer makes chatting an easy task, yes they will leave. If they takr it upon themselves to gain but the minimum amount to chat, they would other wise miss out on all the other aspects of the game, all the same, since all they are willing to do is set minimal standards in order to chat, which is still the only activity they would be doing if there were no requirement.
Is that all you think PS is, a VR 3D chatroom?
the PLs and PvPers because they "communicate" by beating others up,
Actually the Power Levelers like to show off their goods, a reward from attaining high levels. In order to show off they need communication skills otehr than grunts and two sylibal words. The PKer like to taunt their victims after the kill, unless the two are using some chatroom, that is usually done in game and thus like the PowerLeveler if they want satisfaction they must learn to communicate through words. All in all, RPing still needs to be fun to the players, and if it would become a chore through added realism, then realism must be sacrificed.
If it's free of challanges, it will be a bore right off the bat.If you make the chores fun and rewarding, they won't seem like work at all.
***I tried editing this post to include the comments by Under the moon but it reached past the 20000 character limit. My next post may seem out of context.
-
I see now that it is rather pointless to continue addressing a person who could care less. So this is the last post I make to Source.
Oh so you really don't care about then game then, cause that is all I am here (in the forum) to discuss about. Now I wonder why you even post here if all you think is that it's pointless to discuss the game (in the forum). And mind you this is an open and very much public forum. PMs here are about as usefull as an unwriten idea.
Ok… not sure if I understood much of that. So, you are saying that we should limit the playing ability of an intelligent player until his character is smart enough. Horrid thought.
But why Horrid? is it because you HAVE TO adjust the levels of the character you are playing to suffice what ever critaria you may have towards this Role your are trying Playing. That you cannot just start playing this character right from the starting line with out a little work. If it's so Horrid, then all the stats should go, and why stop there, skill levels get in the way too of your "RP".
But then you contradict yourself by saying a ‘retard’ in real life can also not (tries to decipher this part) play a high INT character because they are a ‘retard’. Excuse me, but THAT IS imparting real life personality and mental abilities onto a character in the game.
Right, and because I'm a rocket scientist in real life I can then have the right to embue my intellegience onto a character so he can build an A-bomb and rack up the most PP in one push of a button.. Are you for real? I am sorry but to douse your illusions here. Even if the retard cannot play to the abilities of the Mensa player, that should not dectract from the character if the retard leveled his character int level to mirror the invers of the RL reality. The Mensa player is not the one in the game, his dumb character is, so the Mensas dumb character will suffer while retards character will propser in the game. On a social level, heck, that retard could be a jerk that cusses at everyone, still the game allows him to, while the Mensa that didn't bother to mold his character doesn't. Why, because its part of the game. and last I heard this IS a game and not a chatroom.
If you have ‘detractions’ for players who do have the mental skills to play a smarter character, then you -must- also have enhancements for ‘retards’ who do not. What, are you going to require a test in Creation to gauge the limit of the player’s intelligence so that the character can not go beyond that? Ridiculous. Get rid of the stat, get rid of the problem.
Everyone starts out wiht the same detractions, the enhancements come from leveling the stats. That is as far as any game can go. It's a harsh life that not eveyone can meet your standards of "RP" but the stats balance the game and starts eveyone with an even hand. Add race profiles to the mix and not everyone will be the combination Master wizard/fighter/thief. Add detractions and not all the races will excell at every thing. Get rid of this stat and you will make every character equal in this reguard. Every character is neither stupid nor smart but the same. The settings teams is sure gonna love this. Heckm why have different races, if they are all the same?
I live out in the country. I have Satellite. It works fine. Bigfoot could be playing PS, for all you know.
It is only a one way street with satilite, up loads you have to connect via a 56K modem, if you can even get the 56K. If bigfoot doesn't have a telephone connection, Bigfoot wil not be able to play PS. Again, Ted didn't have squat but a crummy old type writer and that is the cloest thing you can have for a modern day hermit. Plus I don't even want to hear the phone ring, just a T1 up and down speed in a log cabin.
Roleplaying is not acting. You missed the sarcasm. Acting is assuming a prewritten role that you can not step out of. Roleplaying is the free flowing playing of a person -you- create.
You have never witnessed improv?, There are plays where all the actors do is improvise, a setting is given to them and the ACT. Anyway, all the stats in this case, is your limited script, it is not giving you the dialog but it is giving you the setting from which you must Act/Role Play.
I still do not understand why you keep bringing up strength. RPGs are mental games. You want to play strength, go outside.
Because my strength example is one of the few examples that are coded and everyone has been able to come accross in the game. Please if you can think of some other stat requirement example, do share and help get me out of this rut
Wrong. As I have said before, a weak person can play a strong character ingame. An unintelligent player can -not- play a intelligent character.
Maybe, but neither should an player play intelligence with an unintelligent character. The stats determin that for the character, not the player, that is as far as the game is concerned and to my knowledge "RP" is part of the game. If the player cannot RP, so be it, the character on the other hand is not role playing, he is the role play or part of it anyway. If the character cannot step up to the performance the player wishes cause of the limit of the characters stats, then the player should not step in to compensate, that is not playing the character, that is playing as the player, which is not part of the role play.
When I am playing with you, I am not playing with some human on the other side of the planet, I am playing with a Kran, dumb witted Kran. And I expect nothing more than that from our conversations, Unfortunately you seem to like playing Intelligent Kransm that go against the settings of this realm and hopefully with time, code will prevent you from using your Kran for philosophical debates.
Now I have my other friend here, his character is an elf, A high intelligence elf at that. how do I know, cause he told me and because he is able to get through those difficult Intelligence checks. Now I know through our conversations that this guy is a complete imbecile in real life, but I can look past tht since my character adventuring with the intelliegent elf in PS and not the human imbecile some where on earth. Just as I can look past the issue with the charismatic devil, being a quadriplegic in RL makes waiting on his player to type ot a simple phrase a seem like forever. But the guy is sufficient enough in his macros to lead the 20 of us around with out a hitch. Unlike you that didn't train his Charisma and there for cannot even lead one of us around.
I have to ask this. Do you, Unnamed_Source, look at your stats and play by exactly what they say? Will you stop training INT once your character reaches your real life IQ? Do you ever stop to think if your character is charismatic enough to be talking to the other characters around you in the way you do? Do you await the day when the server gives you a warning for using words that are ‘too big’ for your stupid character to know? Answer carefully, or be named hypocrite
No body does, there are no rules or code to govern such actions, if the code for the strength requirement to wear medium armor was not in, do you think people would question that their low strength wouldn't be enough to wear it, No they'd wear it all the same, hence the low Int examples I gave should hold just as true. The low Int character should not be able to comprehend as much as the player can, yet everyone treats their characters like they themsleves are in the shoes, no matter the stats. Till, that is, when code steps in and makes it the rule. And Yes, I love my low Charisma cause I can talk the shit to everyone and it fits with his persona, guess what race he's not. As far as leading a bunch of NPC/PC around, till it is coded in that I can't, I will, just like everyone else. Now as long as intelligence keep not interfering the way it does, it will remain low, but once it is coded that I can't raise my smithing skills cause the character could not comprehend the next lesson, I will be the first to become the class genious. That and I'll then be able to keep on speaking with others in my rough and mean manner but now in full sentences.... Also, expect no PMs.
Thanks, that's all that I'm asking
Feline Prince has hit the nail on the head on both accounts. Mental knowledge is not the same as personality traits. Knowledge, you can code. Your character will know how to do ‘this’ and do it, even if you can not. Personality, you can not code. Even if your character has the highest INT stat in the entire game, the player’s own intelligence is going to dictate how smart that character really acts.
No, the players own intelligence show the POTENTIAL of the character can be.
bilbous, you once again prove my point. The self-deluded boor who thinks he is the life of the party is going to be treated exactly like a self-deluded boor who thinks he is the life of the party. It does not matter if he think he is. If he can not play that personality in the game, it just is not going to happen, no matter what stats you have.
AND like wise, though you may hate to hear it, if your characters stats measure up to be the same boor, no matter how high in society the player may be. the character will still be a boor and through the code this should be reflected.
Sure, you could get a better price for a sword if your character has higher CHA stat. But the instant you step out of the NPC tab, that CHA stat does not mean squat to other players. That is why the faction system should be used to judge if an NPC is influenced by you. If you have higher standing with an NPC, then he will be more likely to give you better deals or more information. If not, then you will be lucky if he answers you. That is basically how it works with other players. No more is needed.
How would you come to getting a high level of asteem from a faction in order to get the deal or info? through quests, quests that should idealy be given to those that the NPC finds pleasing, hence where the charisma steps in. Like wise if your character is forced to speak 3 monosylible words per caridge return, show an ugly avatar, and let out a fart/belch every once in a while, others around you would be less likely to interact with you. Unfortunately those aspects would have to be forced because nobody will willfully act out that part. And that is how the stats would work in RP if everyone would play the part. Unfortunately no one does, they will even look past all the deficits and interact with the character like they were "normal" becuase they are playing with their buddy, the player, and not the character. Though it would bring atmosphere to the game and to what ever strangers there might be around.
To clarify how I play to those whom do care
Hay now, as long as you are ready to bare it all and lay it down for all to see, I'll give you my time. But don't confuse this with PMs, cause I will sooner delete, than read it. Unless it goes on to improving the game, I don't care and most PMs do diddley towards that goal. SO unless this is a solution to some bug or some such, I personally don't want it in my message box.
: I do not like mental stats, as players can ‘max’ their character’s skills beyond their ability to play. ... I like fighting in RPGs, but do not fight in PS because I can not stand the leveling system, or the form of Dash-n-slash, three-point-turn combat.
A bit of a contradiction there, you do not like the player influencing the character beyond the players ability. But you hate a fighting style that gives way for players with a better connection, macros and the players DEXTERITY to manuver mouse faster than you.. REALLY NOW?? You can't have it both ways, either we can fully engage as the player or be limited as the character. Come on now, in the one hand is the players influence of the character movement in battle and in the other is the players influence of the characters comprhensive smarts, they're exactly the same. Now either the player is fully immersed in the game and we get rid of the notion of a character and call them avatars, with no stats or anything that would impose a restriction on the player OR we have to reinforce the character so that the player is forced to play the game through the character. There is so little we can imbue to our characters but even that little bit detracts from the environment of the game as a whole.
Remove these stats and you will have smart Krans and high society dwarves in the end game, basically humans(race??) in costume. You will give everyone the equal chance to be what ever they are in RL, As the Player and Out of Character.
Might as well remove agility since the main use is succumbed by the quick action of keyboard and mouse by the player during fights.
While we're at it, might as well get rid of Will, since its an exostential part of intelligence and charisma, with a bit of endurance but its the inner soul and mental type fortitude, borrowing from Intelligence and charaisma and it can be replaced by the player.
That leaves Endurance and Strength.
who's to say, me staying up 24/7 doesn't influence my characters endurance? heck he is running every where while most are asleep. yank endurance..
Strength.. lets see what can I come up with to get rid of that...
OR,
Keep them and then make sure people adhere to them.
But I' have come to the realization that I'm never going to convince you what's IC and what's OOC, So lets leave it at, I'm right and your wrong and leave it there...
-
Please try to sum up your points instead of nit picking through others posts. We as the player in a Role Playing game should get to chose the personality of the role we play and not the computer because a computer can't simulate things that detailed and we don't want it to because then it just becomes a film if we don't have any input. Which would happen if the personality was controlled by the computer because its the personality which defines what decisions a character makes. The personality is defined by how intelligent, charismatic and wilful a character is among other things obviously but these are the things the system tries to represent. You still seem to be getting knowledge and intelligence mixed up but I can't think of an eloquent way to describe the difference to you at this moment.
In regards to the PM argument, I feel you are being quite rude. It is useful to describe things to a particular person who doesn't quite understand something without taking the discussion on an off topic tangent as has happened here because of your abrupt rejection of UtM's offer to send you one. <- thats the sort of thing i would have sent in a PM if you accepted them.
-
If you look at the history of role playing games, the stats system was always there for players to interact with the game masters environment. The players were equal to each other to the extent that no one player had more influence over the course of action than any other unless it was specifically built into the scenario's premise. Thus the paladin with the 18 charisma did not always get to order the magic-user with the 6 charisma around.
I think part of the problem here is that the purist Role Players have dropped the game component. Role Playing is something you do in an acting class or a psychologists sofa. A role playing game is something you do with your friends and isn't really the same thing. You are not trying to impress the teacher and get good marks or come to some understanding of your situation or that of others, you are trying to have fun within the strictures of the setting and the game mechanics and none of it is any more important than that.
I do not know how much this has to do with the rest of the discussion but it is an extension of what I have been saying all along. It may be inappropriate for the social skills to be reflected in interpersonal arrangements but the stats are all just for game mechanic purposes. It isn't perfect but that is the way it is.
If you were the brightest person sitting around a table with your friends and your character had low intelligence, would you not supply the answer to the riddle none of your friends could solve in order to prevent the ultimate destruction of the party? If you would I wouldn't want to be at the table with you. Even dumb people have brilliant ideas occasionally. The nature and context may not be the same but that is besides the point.
-
Bilbous, with pen and paper RPGs, you have a small group of players interacting with one live game master. They are skilled in the art of roleplaying, and can stay in the strict rules of roll imposed personality stats. If they try to go outside that, the game master can say, "No, I am not sure your character would think of that.", and they can debate if it is possible. Online RPGs have a completely different playerbase. The great majority can not stay in the character of preset personality stats, and will not enjoy being force into it. If there was a Humor stat, how many folks could adjust the way they play to coincide with the level of humor their character has? How many would -want- to? If the same set of strict personality rules from PnP RPGs were imposed on PS, this game would fail very fast.
If we have intelligence and charisma stats that should impose limits on a player, then why are there not bravery, arrogance, humor, honor, kindness, and all the other personality traits?
If everyone in the game could abide by, and -enjoy- limits based on personality traits, then I would not be opposed to it at all. The fact is, most people can not, and even fewer would enjoy it. I do not play a game to ‘work’. I play for enjoyment. I would bet most people play for the same reason.
I am not sure by the wording of your example, bilbous, if you would not sit at the same table with me if I let everybody perish or not. In a tabletop game, I would let everyone perish if my character could not know the answer, but I did. In an online RPG, that depends on what character I am playing, and what _I_ chose to let them know. Example: Hyuken was the holder of a stone that could have saved many people much misery for several weeks. I knew exactly what had to be done to use that stone. Hyuken just thought it was a pretty stone. Jagk, however, knew exactly how to use it, but would not tell anyone until he was paid well. In both cases, everyone would have perished if they did not figure it out. But I do not have the ‘hero’ complex that makes me want to solve everything, like is so common in other players. I just play the role and personality that I create, and leave the physical stats up to the code.
Unnamed_Source, you once again assume you know me and what I consider ‘RP’, and once again prove you don’t know a damn thing about either, as well as other things.
You do not seem to have the intelligence to comprehend that most people do not have the ability to play personally traits that they do not posses. You say smart people should be forced to talk ‘retarded’ if their character is ‘retarded’. So, why are you not saying a ‘retarded’ player should not be forced to talk in an intelligent way if their character is maxed in INT?
(non-English speaking) Player says: Who nows whut you can do MXed INT wit this stat?
System message: You are not roleplaying your INT stat correctly. Please use larger words and more appropriate syntax. Non-compliance will auto-ban you.
Why are you not saying a dumb player should not be forced to know the answer to a riddle, or know just what to say to an NPC?
NPC: What is the answer to this riddle?
Player: I am not sure.
System message: Stay in character. Your INT stat says you are smart enough to figure out this riddle. Answer correctly in the next ten seconds, or be banned.
Why are you not saying a dumb player should be forced to figure his way out of the maze faster?
System message: You are not escaping this maze as fast as your INT says you should be able to. Please solve it faster and stay in character, or you will be banned. --the RP Nazis
It is only a one way street with satilite, up loads you have to connect via a 56K modem, if you can even get the 56K. If bigfoot doesn't have a telephone connection, Bigfoot wil not be able to play PS. Again, Ted didn't have squat but a crummy old type writer and that is the cloest thing you can have for a modern day hermit. Plus I don't even want to hear the phone ring, just a T1 up and down speed in a log cabin.
I live out in the country. I have satellite. I don’t have a phone of any kind hooked up to my PC in any form, size, or shape. I could even completely disconnect myself from the power grid if I wished to do so. Level up your INT and figure that one out. Ignorance is not a virtue.
You have never witnessed improv?, There are plays where all the actors do is improvise, a setting is given to them and the ACT. Anyway, all the stats in this case, is your limited script, it is not giving you the dialog but it is giving you the setting from which you must Act/Role Play.
Since when is improv limited by the supposed personality of the role a person takes? Improv is only the personalities that a person can act out and assume. Without prompting, a stupid person can not improv a smart person.
“A bit of a contradiction there,”
No contradiction. It is just you falsely assuming you think you know what I am talking about. I like combat styles where your character and camera view can stay focused on your foe as you circle them. I like games that you have to use cunning to find and expose your foe’s weak points. Then, I like to use my own keyboard dexterity to run in at the proper time and place to strike the properly trained move while dodging the opposing attacks, then trying to avoid the imminent counterattack. I do -not- like PS’s click-and-run-mindlessly-at-your-foe while hoping-the-server-gives-you-a-good-hit-roll and your-timing-is-right-for-the-lag then back-off-and-do-a-three-point-turn-to-to-keep-your-foe-in-view rinse-and-repeat style of combat. Completely unrealistic, boring, and without any variations. Magic may be better, but I never bothered to try it. OOC for my characters to want to learn magic, you see.
But, that is what I would have said in the PM I offered, so your ignorance is your own fault once again, as is the following.
Remove these stats and you will have smart Krans and high society dwarves in the end game, basically humans…
Kran are said to be “They are not one of most intelligent races of Yliakum, but they tend to be loyal and firm in their beliefs.”
Where does it say in that that no Kran are intelligent? For that matter, I know plenty of humans who are not the most intelligent. Player characters are meant to be the exception to the rule, not the standard. We are playing the ‘heroes’ of the game, and thus have the ability to excel above and beyond ‘normal’ NPCs. As to your thinking Dwarves can not be ‘high societly’, I do not know where you are pulling this information out of, as it is not in the Settings, but it must not smell like roses there.
But I' have come to the realization that I'm never going to convince you what's IC and what's OOC, So lets leave it at, I'm right and your wrong and leave it there...
/me chuckles.
Others would beg to differ. The only thing you have ‘proved’ here is that you are an RP nazi who is unwilling to accept any way to RP that does not fit in with your own. You are not right, because of the simple fact that it will never be your way in this particular game, and has more of a chance to be more like I have suggested.
-
*Note: I started writing this then fell asleep at the keyboard, was migrated to bed by my wife, then came back to see it was still unsubmitted so it may seem a bit out of place.
This is another issue I could care less about, your opinion of me, as last I checked this is NOT the Unnamed_source forum but indeed it is the PlaneShift Forum. I come here to discuss things about the game and nothing else, so stick to the subject. If you can't share it with in the public arena, I really don't want to hear of it either.
Oh no, that's where your are wrong, that is certainly not the case here. And my statement holds true, I don't care what where you come from, I don't care what you do, and I don't care what you had for lunch.
I don't mean to derail the conversation but I found these statements so appalling and offensive that I was compelled to post. I would have taken care of posting this in PM's but those are apparently unwanted. PMs are INTENDED for personal chatter between two persons that isn't necessarily something that should be discussed in the public arena. I occasionally send messages to various forum leaders to voice a concern I have about a particular action. I do this because the point is not to flame them or embarrass them but to try to make a point in a venue that is more private and thus less subject to feeling like a personal attack because it is simply not a public complaint. For instance, I once ran across a thread with a question that had been asked many times. In a unique case, I happened to have a possible solution come to me but was unable to post because the thread had been locked. The moderator had in my personal opinion used harsher rhetoric than was necessary as well when the thread was closed. Here I had two options. I could have 1.) Posted a new public thread publicly criticizing the moderator, putting them on the defensive and getting nothing done, or 2.) Sent a polite PM stating I thought the rhetoric was harsh for the situation and requested that they add my possible solution to the post. My PM was well received, there were no attacks, no one left with hurt feelings and the problem was for all intents and purposes, resolved.
You see, when a difference of opinion becomes overly personal our own biases really jump to center stage and we become more defensive. For this reason it is sometimes prudent to resolve portions of a discussion or difference of opinion in something like a PM.
And as for the 2nd quote especially, I really feel that either you simply posted that in a heated and poorly thought out manner as we all do occasionally, or that the statement is possibly an indication of ignorance or at least a lack of intention to consider another point of view.
When engaged in a discussion such as this it is prudent to try to perceive it from various perspectives. And when you are debating someone, knowing their perspective is paramount to putting forth a worthy argument. If you do not and instead simply react to what they say without considering their own perspective then you will be missing parts of the puzzle and won't have the ability to make as strong a case if you are still certain you are correct. Knowing the perspective of the person you are debating can be used offensively as a way of strengthening your own arguments, or as an attempt to smooth some of your own biases so that you can objectively look at the opinions presented and rationalize the decision instead of reacting emotionally which is more common.
In any case the background of people playing the game IS a relevant part of the subject. Such glimpses into the persona's of players is important because the game cannot cater to the needs of any one individual and if you won't look at a problem through the eyes of different people, particularly ones who are willing to spend time explaining their personal parallax then everything you say must be completely one sided and as such not worth nearly as much to a discussion. Idealogs follow an extreme form of confirmation bias which makes them useless in rational discussion as they will never consider the fact that they could be wrong. We all do this to a degree but many take it to an extreme level. People who do this will often find that rational people don't give the opinion of such people much weight. I think the dialog between UtM. Seytra, Feline Prince, and Bilbous is all well done. They discuss without insulting or making wild assumptions about things they know nothing about such as a persons internet connection or what they care about. They have different points of view and different perspectives and are discussing them in a rational and respectable manner. When UtM counters one of Bilbous' points for instance, he does not return with anger, personal attacks, or declare that he doesn't care about UtM's point of view. He responds with different points. This is how discussions should be.
P.S. As far as satellite goes, most if not all broadband satellite companies now completely use 2 way satellite streams. The satellite stream is beamed from your satellite and received in the same dish. This was true in 2002 when I had "DirecWay". This was 5 years ago. They had quit offering the version where the upstream went through the phone back in 2000 though. I'm sure the obsolescence of that old system with the combined satellite and phone was obsoleted at different rates in different places but that said, even the two way satellites are old technology. Its a silly thing to nitpick, particularly when your knowledge of the subject is outdated and flawed. Its a sign that you continue to assume you are correct despite evidence to the contrary. Give it up. Its ok to be wrong sometimes. We all are.
-
Bilbous, with pen and paper RPGs, you have a small group of players interacting with one live game master. They are skilled in the art of roleplaying, and can stay in the strict rules of roll imposed personality stats. If they try to go outside that, the game master can say, "No, I am not sure your character would think of that.", and they can debate if it is possible. Online RPGs have a completely different playerbase. The great majority can not stay in the character of preset personality stats, and will not enjoy being force into it. If there was a Humor stat, how many folks could adjust the way they play to coincide with the level of humor their character has? How many would -want- to? If the same set of strict personality rules from PnP RPGs were imposed on PS, this game would fail very fast.
If we have intelligence and charisma stats that should impose limits on a player, then why are there not bravery, arrogance, humor, honor, kindness, and all the other personality traits?
If everyone in the game could abide by, and -enjoy- limits based on personality traits, then I would not be opposed to it at all. The fact is, most people can not, and even fewer would enjoy it. I do not play a game to ‘work’. I play for enjoyment. I would bet most people play for the same reason.
Right, Planeshift players wouldn't enjoy p&p elements in the game. That's true. But does that mean Planeshift would fail? I don't know where you get these fairy tales from :P
Did Planeshift fail after switching from MB to CB? I think it would be ignorance to state communities between those two didn't change drastically. MB was a 3D chat with crystal-hunt feature. CB is a game. They attract different people. Most MB'ers aren't even around anymore.
Planeshift was never, isn't and most likely will never be a role-playing game. Massively Multiplayer Online Socialising Game with elements of adventure and character development. That's what it is. It attracts socialisers, not role-players. People who will be outraged over the idea that their characters may have only one life, or that they may be forced to accustom themselves to their characters, not their characters to themselves.
That's also why people are reluctant to abide by their characters' stats. They won't want to work with what they are given. They will want to shape it into something completely different. Perk of doing otherwise belongs to role-players, and those seem awfully out of place as PS isn't a role-playing game. And here's the problem. PS has elements of character development, which is drawn from the role-playing games, yet at the same time it has socialising elements drawn from the MMO games. As you already noticed, those two elements don't work well together as it is in Planeshift at the moment. But unlike what you seem to believe, there is more than one way to get out of this problem.
One is what you said, eliminate the conflict by eliminating some aspects of character development. By all means, that may be a good move. It would push PS even further from a role-playing game and into a socialising one (more freedom in creating personalities, communicating with others the way you want to -- in this form acting differently to how you do in the real life isn't role-playing; it's a basic aspect of internet chatting, just pushed a bit further), but that doesn't pose a problem, since as I said, PS isn't even a role-playing game. So it's all good so long as you're not going to whine that PS playerbase isn't top shelf when it comes to role-playing.
Another way is to introduce p&p elements, so that there's actual reason for the stats. This on the other hand would push PS away from socialising game and towards a role-playing one. Obviously the current playerbase wouldn't fancy this turn of events, but to assume no one would be fine with character-enforcement?
I'll give you example of one change I introduced as a GM to a player's character.
Basically after many mind-warping hardships and influences from dark sources, a noble'ish elf character couldn't take the pressure anymore and simply snapped. He began losing his mind whenever he was reached by a stressful situation. Eventually he started going amok. At first the player wasn't all okay about that. He wasn't all too happy when I told him to roll Will Power in the most uncomfortable situations.
But then he got accustomed to it. First he began asking whether he can roll for amok on his own. Later he started taking that insane face expression and silently preparing to roll the dice (and if any player noticed that, there was immidiate "he's going nuts!" alert, which often led to comical "in-game" situations -- especially if it happened while another character was going all diplomatic with an NPC). In the end he got so used to it, that he role-played his character's struggle with amok without even rolling the dice.
That's what, in my opinion, makes good role-playing. Role-playing isn't happening when you decide Romeo shouldn't die and leave the entire audience in the theatre wondering what the hell just happened, while you simply left the scene.
I would say you people should just jump down from your trees and quit slinging poop at one another. Both sides make some good points, but neither wants to accept that.
P.S. Psh, allowing players to debate with GM what they can and what they cannot? Sign of a weak GM. If I say no, it's a no. They may pout but in the end no one has any problems with that :P
-
P.S. Psh, allowing players to debate with GM what they can and what they cannot? Sign of a weak GM. If I say no, it's a no. They may pout but in the end no one has any problems with that :P
From a P&P standpoint I disagree with this statement. The GM does have the final word but one who is completely arbitrary and cannot allow himself to be persuaded on occasion will find himself with sub-standard players as the game is for all participants and not just the GM. Besides Rules Lawyering can be more fun than some adventures.
From a PS standpoint I also disagree because there is a dispute resolution system in place, Again the GM team has the final say ultimately but there is a method of appeal before that happens.
-
The GMs have no power over RP and what your character can and can't do at all in Planeshift. GMs are there to smack the backs of hands of people who say naughty things and/or abuse the game in an ooc way.
-
P.S. Psh, allowing players to debate with GM what they can and what they cannot? Sign of a weak GM. If I say no, it's a no. They may pout but in the end no one has any problems with that :P
From a P&P standpoint I disagree with this statement. The GM does have the final word but one who is completely arbitrary and cannot allow himself to be persuaded on occasion will find himself with sub-standard players as the game is for all participants and not just the GM. Besides Rules Lawyering can be more fun than some adventures.
That would again be a sign of a weak GM. Over the years I've gained enough trust and respect for my GMing among my players to have them shut up if I say no. They usually know they want to do something stupid and are just trying to find out how far they can get away with it :P
The "debates" usually look something like that:
GM: Okay, make a roll if you succeeded.
Player grins and prepares to roll.
GM (before the dice stop): You failed.
Player: What?! But why?!
GM stares at the player.
Player: But...
GM stares some more.
Player: ...okay
Arguments over idiotic stuff aren't good for the flow of the plot.
The unwritten #1 rule of role-playing games states "Game Master is always right." How harsh this may sound, it means GM can bend the rules, cheat and so on and so forth so long as it is done for the good of the game. Another thing to remember is that GM is creating the scenario. It's a good etiquette from the players to respect his work and not bother him too much. Of course, if GM becomes unjust and overly cruel, the players may leave. But so far no one was upset over the way I GM (rather quite the contrary) and I had no one leave. In fact, the better GMs I know don't tend to step back from their decisions. It's usually the lower standard ones that do.
More on topic I find it weird how you approach the case where player refuses to solve a riddle because of the character. In my group it's quite common to have characters get others into trouble just because of their personalities and no one really has any problems with that.
-
Draklar, you have many good points, but I disagree with some of them. First and foremost, this statement: "But unlike what you seem to believe, there is more than one way to get out of this problem."
I know there are many ways to solve this dilemma, and have even thought of many more ways to do it. I even agree with a lot of what Source has said. But in the end, with all options weighed, I came down on the side of eliminating the stats at the heart of the problem. I’ll explain the reasons why.
First, PS is meant to be a game for everyone (or, as many people as possible), and spanning many demographics. Right now the game teeters towards the fighting/leveling crowd because of the implemented features. No right minded roleplayer would even attempt to take the leveling/training/questing features literally in their playing of a role. What they do base their play on is the stats, which PS has aplenty, though little use for most of them. They also crave a larger, changing story to react to. PS will have this. Socializers just like to talk to people, and ‘develop’ their characters' relationships with other people, so they can go into pretty much any game that has a friendly atmosphere. Levelers/hackers just like to kill things, and there happens to be many things to kill in the game. So, as it is, there is a base structure for all those types of players. The trick is to enlarge each of them without cutting out the other types of players.
Option one: Keep the intelligence and charisma stats, and add all the other personality stats I stated in another post (humor, bravery, and such). Then, enforce them strictly. I would not be opposed to, and would actually prefer this one if you got to chose your own personality stats upon creation, within reason. Events in the game would change your hardcoded personality stats as you went. This would then become strictly a roleplaying game, more like one worldwide tabletop. However, the Socializers and Levelers would not be able to handle such a thing. And Creation would have to be monumentally more indepth and flexable.
Option two: Keep the stats exactly as they are, and gameplay exactly as it is. Continue to keep the unrealistic separation between player and NPC reactions to personality, and the confusion it brings. Not much more to say about that. Roleplayers are turned off because no one can stick to the unenforced mental stats. Levelers don’t care, as it just gives them something else to level up, and Socializers would just continue to talk, oblivious to the existence of the stats in the first place. Though I am a roleplayer type, and -strictly- follow the physical stats, I generally ignore the mental type stats, as I find Creation to be horrid and limited.
Option three: Get rid of the mental/personality stats, as I suggested. Socializers never used them in the first place. Levelers really would not miss them. Roleplayers -good roleplayers- will self regulate, with self imposed mental and personality stats. Also, improve the ‘physical’ feel in the world, so that the other stats do have use, such as kicking down a door, or smelling something on the air. Then, create a fighting system even roleplayers would not be opposed to. Of course, this leaves out the 'players' that run around 'wearing' five-hundred pound armor, and casting super spells, but do you really need them?
Of course, there are many other options, but this seems to be the best way of doing things without giving a good part of the player base the cold shoulder.
That's what, in my opinion, makes good role-playing. Role-playing isn't happening when you decide Romeo shouldn't die and leave the entire audience in the theatre wondering what the hell just happened, while you simply left the scene.
It is not up to roleplay to decide what happens due to your actions. That is player prescripting. It is, however, roleplying to decide what your character thinks about it. Whether it is by coded personality, or by your own choice, it is still roleplaying. If you were -acting- the role of Romeo, then of course you have to die. However, if you were roleplaying the role of Romeo, then perhaps the choice of action does not end in death. If I am sitting across the table with you as the GM, and you tell me my character suddenly gets melodramatic and kills himself because that is what is supposed to happen in that part of the story, I would laugh in your face and mutiny the game (read that as kick you out and take over). There are such things as bad GMs. When it comes to personality traits and enforcement, computers are the worst of them.
-
No, if you don't kill yourself, then you aren't role-playing Romeo. The character has specified personality, which in the scenario will lead him to the suicide. There's nothing you can change about that. If you do, it's sticking out of the role. Also, acting and roleplaying are synonyms. The distinction you make has absolutely no support... The term "roleplay" was borrowed from the theatre along with many of its elements. It is the 'G' in RPG that introduces the possibility of choice. RP remains the same. To play out certain personality. Theatrical plays are easier in this aspect that you know exactly how the character should act. In RPG roleplays are easier in this aspect that you can step out of your character's role all you want and usually no one will notice.
The art of GMing is to have an ability to influence how players role-play their characters without even saying anything about it. Often done through proper NPC-to-PC communication as well as doing several neat "dirty" tricks. This was often ignored in computer role-playing games, which effectively led to decay of the role-playing genre. Yet still, there are some computer games out there that not only manage to borrow some typical p&p methods, but also introduce methods previously unknown in the tabletop communities. That's where the game design becomes art as well.
Option three: Get rid of the mental/personality stats, as I suggested. Socializers never used them in the first place. Levelers really would not miss them. Roleplayers -good roleplayers- will self regulate, with self imposed mental and personality stats. Also, improve the ‘physical’ feel in the world, so that the other stats do have use, such as kicking down a door, or smelling something on the air. Then, create a fighting system even roleplayers would not be opposed to. Of course, this leaves out the 'players' that run around 'wearing' five-hundred pound armor, and casting super spells, but do you really need them?
Right, self-regulate. Why exactly should they play game where they have to self-regulate? Obviously if the game forces them to do that, it's not aimed at the role-players. They can self-regulate in Counter-Strike, irc, pong or chess, but I think they would much rather play a game that provides solid role-playing features (and I'm not talking about features like clothes, animations and other stuff meant to give an illusion of a role-playing game). Effectively game that encourages role-playing, ergo one that has a solid role-playing community. The option you propose isn't providing solution any better from the other ones. Or wait, isn't it the worst solution? Socialisers never used those, power-levelers wouldn't miss them, role-players now have to self-regulate... Okay, so who exactly takes an advantage from this option? And who stands against the stats?
To create a game that will please both role-players and socialisers is an extremely difficult task. It's not going to be settled by such moves as "eliminating all mental stats."
-
You know you could replace all the stats with just one: luck. That way there would only ever be one thing to check against and implementation would be easy.
If you are lucky you can pick up the boulder blocking your path and roll it down the hill bowling over the advancing ulbernauts. If you do not like to call it luck you could call it your Wyrd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyrd). If it is your fate to do it you will do it. If not say goodnight. Why bother trying to model anything further than that? Do you need strength to hammer that sword? If you are meant to do it you will have the strength. Want to add a shiny pebble to your pack? If it is meant to be yours it will fit. If not then your pack might spill all your goodies on the ground. Why should the player know exactly what he can do? Why should he always be able to do the same thing again? Life is a crapshoot!
-
To me, roleplaying is mimicking life. To say "This is your persona, so this is what you -will- do..." is not mimicking life. Life is filled with choices, 'what if', 'what now', and 'or'. In Romeo's case, he chose death. But, he could have just as easily chose life and revenge. That would not have been stepping out of the personally options. If you play the persona of someone who likes turning right, and generally does so, that does not mean that something may just click at the right time, and you take a left.
I agree that GMing is an art. It is the art of predicting and flowing with the choices players make. It -can- be done by controlling the character's personalities, but I find that too easy and predictable. I find it much more enjoyable to predict what the player will do, not -knowing- how the character will react.
In the Un-common Cold RP I set up, I predicted and controlled the actions of players for weeks in advance. Not by prescripting, as nothing was set, but I predicted what would happen because I understood how folks would react in general, if not the specifics. I treated characters not as individuals, but as a mass, trusting that those with the right player endowed traits would come to the front and find one of the right paths. I then use the old 'if, then' setup to counter react with my own characters, but not in a "this is exactly what I will do" way.
Let's say you GM a game with a very curious elf in your player characters. You as the GM put a shiny box on the ground in the path of the heroes. If the player controlling the elf does not pick the box up, as you predict, or -know- they should, do you take control of their character and make them pick it up? Let me put it another way. Since you, as the GM, knew the elf would pick up the box, so you specifically put it there for him to pick up, who, then, is actually roleplaying the elf? Is it the player, who is reacting exactly as he is -supposed- to... or is it you, the GM, who is forcing the story to go the way you wish, based on the fact you know exactly what -your- characters are going to do? The only thing left to players in that case is to toss out a random roll of dice once in a while.
There is another thing you can do in a PnP that can never be done in a computer game. In both, you can assign stats and personality. You can change that personality by reacting to events. If your character sees a death, PnP and comp can both give your character trauma or fear status. However, how does a computer game handle a grumpy old dwarf with a seeming hate for all things who slowly becomes friends with a high spirited elf, who shows him there is yet things to smile about? In a PnP, that is easy. The GM see the interactions, and can just change the allowed personality of the dwarf. How does a computer handle it? In fact, how does a computer handle -any- player to player interactions? Your dwarf has low intelligence, but the elf you made friends with has very high. In a PnP, you can raise the dwarf's INT if the elf talks to him a lot, telling him about things. In a computer game, you get nothing.
A computer game simply can not handle things like player to player changes in personality, including intelligence and charisma. A computer can not make art with feeling. Not yet, anyways.
-
Reread my posts, then reply with arguments that have anything to do with what I said. You're doing too much assuming.
Until then, o/
-
I read and fully understood them the first time. What you are saying, basically, is, "I have my opinions on what roleplaying actually is, and anything else is sub-par."
What I am saying, is that I also have my opinions on roleplaying, and many of them match up very well with yours, but I also accept that they are not the only 'right' opinions, and not even the right ones for an online RPG.
In PnP, you have strict rules. You have a set story to follow, and a goal to proceed to. You have specific characters to follow that story, and be the heroes. The story is dedicated to entertaining a select few skilled players, and so is tailored that way. And often, you have a resolution at the end.
An online multiplayer game does not, and can not follow those same rules. No one is the hero. No one is the center of the story. There is no 'winning' or ending. No one is hovering over every player to try to keep them entertained. The goal of RP in this type of realm is not to proceed, but to exist and react to both game elements and other people. In this case, I very much doubt that many people will wish for a computer to tell them how they are supposed to react, based on stats 'rolled' at creation.
The simple and base reason behind this request is this: As a PnP GM, you can gauge the mental skills of a player, and decide if that player can act out the role of the character he is given, such as very high intelligence. If not, you adjust the role. An arbitrary computer can not.
Just for your information, I toss out the mental stats in PnP games as well, and merge the player's own abilities with the character's. I do not accept random rolls based on intelligence to see if something can be read or solved. So, what is wrong with creating a character with your exact intelligence and charisma, but a completely different body type and personality? Nothing. I would never tell a player that their character is not smart enough to solve something, but will grin from ear to ear if the player himself is not. I am devious that way. I will, however, tell a person that they could not pick a lock based on a roll with an unskilled character ( a skilled character can just roll it). I am strict that way. In a way, I am more flexible as well, as I will often design the lock out, and players have to say how they are trying to open it, and how the pick is being moved. In this way, they can use their own intelligence. This is much more enjoyable to both myself and the players.
Now, sir Draklar, tell me I am wrong.
-
As someone who played for years but never ran a game here is my perspective. The idea is to have fun and the GM can design wildly complex tricks and traps but it is not fun for the players to get stumped time and again and get no help from the GM. The intelligence role is a last recourse not a routine measure and the quality of the role indicates the quality of the help that should be received. If the stipulated difficulty of the role is 1/4 the stat and the three mages with their 18 int all role twenties they will all get wildly conflicting misleading hints but if the fighter with his 8 int roles a 1, he will have seen this kind of thing before and get quite a good tip. If you really do not want the players to know if their hint is good or not the you as the GM can role it. The reason for stat roles is because the scenario designer cannot always separate from his own assumptions. There have been times when faced with such a situation the after the trick was left unsolved and there was no going back to it, it was revealed that it depended on some specific knowledge the designer had the none of the players were party to. This is unfair in the extreme and a sign of poor design. If you take away the exceptional role you do not give the players a chance.
As to your example I haven't the first clue as to how to pick a lock and I do not really care to, but I do sometimes like to play a thief character who would have some understanding and after a while even expertise. Perhaps your players are mensa members but the people I played with just wanted to drink some beer and have fun. Are you suggesting that the characters should have suffered the effects of the players pickling their brains? A lot of beer was consumed on many occasions (even by the GM).
-
Gah, once again you skipped parts of my post in your haste to disprove me.
I said a high lockpicking skill can be rolled. If one has no lockpicking skill, the player can try to figure it out.
As to the drinking problem, I am sure your intelligence in playing an online game is going to be impared, unless you want to have an /I_am_drunk command to suddenly make the game take a lot less intelligence to play, or maybe put your character on autopilot.
Nothing can account for a bad GM making impossible situations that need inside info. That is a bad example.
I also dislike the idea of rolling a random number in a situation to see if your character would know something. They either would have known it, or would not. "Do I know Harken Elvish?" *rolls a two* "I guess not."
-
I read and fully understood them the first time.
[...]
Now, sir Draklar, tell me I am wrong.
You are wrong.
-
Well, that is your opinion, and you have your right to it. In the realm of ideas and likes, no one person's opinion is right. I did not specifically address some of your points, as I see them as invalid.
Statistics support me, in this case. Would the game be be better if it had strict rules for mental and personality stats? In my opinion, -for me- yes, to a certain extent. It would also be a lot emptier, and nearly impossible to code. If strict rules were enforced, I would be staggeringly surprised to see more than five to twenty people online at a time. You may think that would be a good thing, but I do not. I enjoy the personalities created by other players, including their self assigned mental stats.
And that, Draklar, is how this Massively-MultiplayerORPG would fail. It would become a tabletop mimic MORPG, built around just those few that can play specific roles, and enjoy doing so in a virtual, computer-generated world. It would fade for the minds of most of the people who play it now, and become a small cult game.
Since we are on the subject of a better system, what do you propose to do, and how could the code be made to support it? I give you two example characters to base your system of enforced mental and personality stats on, three potential player types, and some potential situations. I left out my player type, as I could play either of these roles easily without any extra code.
One: This will be a young Dwarf of surpassing intelligence (high INT) He is a renaissance type, skilled and learned in many areas. He is an inventor and philosopher. People group around him when he starts to give a talk on one of the many subjects he is very proficiant in (high CHA). He even has some training in the art of battle and fighting, as his father was a trained soldier, and saw fit to pass his knowledge onto his son. The dwarf is not without flaws, though, as his pride often gets him into trouble with his fellows and foes alike (high WILL/Pride). He is also afraid of deep water and most animals, though for unknown reasons (low bravery). He has no problem at all switching to the highest bidder for his works, despite what may have been promised (low Loyalty, high Greed). He will never however, take something that does not belong to him.
Two: This is an elvish fisherman's daughter. She takes after her father's side of the family in the intelligence department, to her mother's great disappointment (low INT) She is often coarse in language, and prefers using her fists instead of her brain to get out of most situations. She is barely literate, and often has a hard time getting her point across to others (low CHA). She is fast to anger and gives up quickly when faced with a problem she can not easily solve (low WILL). She also tends to have sticky fingers, and does not respect other's possessions (low Honor), but even being a thief, she never sees fit to take more than she needs (low Greed). The one thing she shines in is sticking to her friends and defending them at any cost (high Loyalty/bravery),
The player types:
A: The friendly player who likes to help people. Let’s say he is not very smart.
B: Drey or Seperot, who I find enjoyable to play the game with, but find to be limited in roles they can play (from experience, anyways).
C: The very smart player who is not a very good RPer, and loves to finish everything.
The basic situations:
1: A very valuable purse or item is seen being dropped unnoticed by a fellow player or NPC.
2: There is a debate on advanced construction, which the Dwarf has the stats to know about, but the Elf does not. The same can not be said about the players.
3: The only way to get to the next quest is to cross deep water on a boat.
4: There is a very hard maze that needs to be solved.
5: You need to talk some folks (NPCs or players) into helping you do something (group quest, maybe?). More specifically, the elf has to talk the dwarf into doing something.
6: Other.
Now, in a PnP, every one of those situations are easy to control using nothing but the reasoning of the GM. Now, come up with a code solution strict enough to force all players to act out those situations correctly (as you see it), yet flexible enough to account for the infinite other situations that could arise. That is your test. Remember, the clock is ticking, and I grade hard.
-
See the problem I have here, UTM, is that you seem to expect the players to slavishly follow your dictates. Who is to say that my character will never do something unusual. You seem to want to pigeon-hole characters in such a way that if they do something you do not expect you firmly set them back on the straight and narrow and real people are not that invariable for the most part. I doubt very much that you would have allowed me to play most of my D&D characters as I typically chose Chaotic Neutral. A lot of the time I acted in the best interests of the party which is what most players want from other players but other times I would take wild chances that would endanger the party. For instance I had a thief character that checked 50 feet of a 60 foot sloping corridor for traps and ran down the last 10 setting off the inevitable boulder trap just because he got bored. I do not see it as the GM's job to tell the players how to play their character, it is his job to keep the action moving and provide the consequences of the parties action. If the paladin with the 18 charisma decides he doesn't like his hosts and acts like an obnoxious twit are you going to tell him it is not possible for his character to be so rude or are you going to have the court react with shock and great affront with all that might entail? Player stats are a guide to the character but should not be a straight jacket.
Forgive me if I am interpreting your words poorly but you sound more like a cruise director than a game master to me. I do agree that NPC AI is not something that can be modeled in such a way that it will replace human direction and I approve of your desire to try and enhance it but I think you will inevitably have to accept that what you would like to see and what is possible are two different things. The soft stats are there so that the NPC's have the means to judge appropriate responses and since they exist they pull double duty as the basis for some skill sets. That said I do not think the NPC's actually do use the stats to make decisions as this game is currently implemented. This is my understanding of the RPG genre at any rate.
BTW I am not trying to disprove you, I am merely trying to express some of my disagreements with what you have posted. I do not see it as a matter of right or wrong but one of preference.
-
Bilbous, you are very much missunderstanding me. I -want- players and characters to do things that are unpredictable. I never dictate to people how thier characters should react. That is not to say I do not dictate how the world would react to them.
My examples in the above post were to prove that strict control of personalities (including INT and CHA) simply can not be done easily or at all in a MMORPG.
I do not see it as the GM's job to tell the players how to play their character, it is his job to keep the action moving and provide the consequences of the parties action.
Exactly!!! That is why I don't think INT and CHA should be included in the hardcoded sats, as those limit the personalities of the player created character. A computer makes a poor GM in this case.
If the paladin with the 18 charisma decides he doesn't like his hosts and acts like an obnoxious twit are you going to tell him it is not possible for his character to be so rude or are you going to have the court react with shock and great affront with all that might entail?
If you read my post above, you would see that I would not give out a charisma stat at all. But no, if a player was playing a high CHA character and decded to go off the wall, I would not step in his way. The outraged folks around him, however, are another story all together.
If you tried to play a strong character, and your stats said you were a small weakling, then I would put my foot down. The game code does a fine job of this already. You just can't do things if you are not strong enough. If you want to play a split personality, one side smart, nice, and helpfull, and the other side dumb, course, and rude, all lights are green from my side of the table. The game code, however, could not comprehend such a thing, and would not allow such a character to exist.
I think Draklar is the one you want to talk to for nazi style enforcing of intelligence, charisma, and other mental/personality stats. From what I gather, he would not let you go Waterboy in a crowed inn if you had a high charisma character. But, perhaps I am wrong as well.
-
I actually like this idea. At least changing them to get rid of such vague things as charisma and intelligence. Could probably be replaced by stuff like concentration (Might be too vague too), or, for charisma, some kind of "Sense", the ability to read into things in a different way, say a third eye kind of thing.
Biggest problem I see is the fact that charisma and intelligence are situational, and kind of hard to "boost".
I'll simply use Unnamed as an example here (No offense unnamed, you just happened to be right here): Even if he played a character that had a high charisma stat, I wouldn't want to do what he says, simply because I consider him rude and unwilling to listen to other people's opinions. But I bet you there is some people out there who would prefer someone who believes so strongly in themselves to take charge, who won't take "no" for an answer.
And intelligence is pretty similar, some are good at seeing how mechanical things work, others may be better at planning out troop movements. In some cases it's even hard to separate intelligence and charisma.
I would likely fail at playing a high charisma character, as I'm bad at figuring other people out, and tend to stay quiet until I have something to say. And it doesn't really matter if the game tells me I have low or high charisma, I'm simply not sure if I am charismatic or not. Most people would probably say I'm not, but some people I could probably deal with better than a charismatic person.
In opposition, physical traits are much more rigid, where strength would usually be something along muscle mass, a more muscular person can lift more, with some difference in technique, which might actually fit well under agility, whith things like balance, flexibility, precision and speed. Endurance depends on what you use it for, in some games they toss some muscular properties here instead, like how much you can lift (heaving a boulder 10 meters versus carrying a bag of potatoes to the next town), but generally it governs aerobic ability (How well you can keep your muscles oxygenated while running for example), and often how much damage you can take.
Therefore, I think it's better to just toss intelligence and charisma out and replace them with something else. There will be complications, but I think the end result will be better. And, no, it should not mean that someone gets some incredible bonus to magic just because they are smarter, like someone seemed to interpret it.