So I’ve been sitting on this post for a few days, trying to decide if I wanted to risk opening a can of worms by making it.   (I think I was sort of hoping someone else would raise these objections first, TBH  )   But I’d feel like crap if I didn’t speak up, so…  I think I kind of have some problems with this project.   Bear with me for this super long post, please.

First, the technical difficulties.   Voice acting isn't the easiest thing in the world, and voice acting with a fake accent is actually very challenging.    Bad accents can add some awesome unintentional humor to media (see: Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins) but I'm not sure so-bad-it's-good is PS’s intended motif.    Also, I'm a little worried about the quality of the sound, since I doubt most PS users have access to professional sound recording tools.   Also also, since players come and go, there's no assurance that a player who records a particular NPC's voice will be here next year… and what if a new quest is implemented using that NPC?   Does the character's whole dialogue have to be rerecorded with someone new for consistency?  Bad voice acting is infinitely worse than none at all.

Secondly, the settings problems.   Why do all the races have their own accents – and such an array from different linguistic groups, at that?    Don't many of the races intermarry frequently?   Don't they regularly live in mixed communities?  (And why on earth would Ynwwn have a completely different accent from their elven parents?)    I wouldn't have an issue with having a specific accent for Nolthrir from the Lake region, or Enkidukai from Ojaveda – that's plausible enough, those are areas with racial majorities where ancestral accents would linger – but that's pretty different from saying “Nolthrir sound Spanish” and “Enkidukai sound Arab”.

Thirdly… okay, let me preface this by saying this third qualm is the reason I've been debating back and forth about whether I wanted to speak up at all, because I genuinely don’t think anyone on the Dev team had any malicious intent here, and I'm afraid someone might take what I'm about to say that way.   I'm dead certain the accents chosen were chosen because they had the right sound, not for their RL associations, but...

Players don't come into PS as blank slates.   All those accents have various stereotypes associated with them, and if a new player is talking to Neave in the tutorial and hearing her Scottish accent, that'll influence their interpretation of what dwarves are supposed to be like.     I’m… not sure that's such a great thing.

To be honest the one that bothers me most (because it's personal, not because I think it's inherently the worst) is the use of the Arabic accent for Enkidukai, even though I'm guessing it was picked for the perfectly innocuous reason that Arabic speakers use some very Enki-appropriate sounds.   I'm probably a little sensitized to this because I'm Arab-American, but it's awkward to think of my mother’s accent being associated with the game's resident Proud Warrior Race Cat People.    I hope that makes sense?    I guess I'm kinda wary, based on prior experience with how Arabs are portrayed in Western media, that using an Arab accent for Enkis will influence players to draw on cartoonish ideas about Arab culture while playing their characters.

If we have to have voice acting in the game (personally I think it's a bad idea, but that’s not my call) I think it would be better to assign accents to specific areas of Yliakum, not races, and be VERY selective when a voice acting clip features someone imitating an accent not their own.   I also think it would be better to have them be accents without a lot of prominent stereotypes attached, although I acknowledge that might be hard to pull off.    I guess in general I feel like this plan needs to be thought out a little more before it’s put into action, especially re: the settings implications.

Edited for: a few grammatical glitches.  

Player Generated Quests could use the same database table if a different type flag were added to the record.

For example a player might make a public quest that whoever excepts it will then remove it from being offered to others.

Like a jobs board, then?   That would be kind of wonderful if it were set up correctly.

RP is the primary draw to me.  There are games with much better mechanics, and if I want to while away time with chat, well, that's why I have AIM, Facebook, and a cellphone.  There's something extremely intellectually and emotionally satisfying about good RP, and I'm willing to tolerate the (many!) things I don't like about PS because there are a lot of good RPers on my buddy list.   

Quote from: Raikana on November 22, 2010, 06:09:10 am

Jayose has a "copy" spell for books! Raikana uses something similar!

Oh really? Which Way is that under?

- Nova

It's not specified in the quest that mentions it, IIRC, although I would guess it's either Blue (since ink is liquid) or Azure (since books are a visual medium, and manipulating appearances is one of Azure's specialties).   Yliakum also enjoys a technological level where a printing press would be completely within their technological reach, judging from things like the Winch, although I doubt anyone would bother to invent one when magic can do the job just fine.

Personally I think it's reasonable for Raikana to charge 1 circle for the paper.  Yeah, it's not totally in line with the settings' guideline about pricing, but the player economy is always going to be a little inflated because there aren't that many producers, and there aren't that many efficient ways for PC merchants to compete directly with each other, so...

I wonder how dentistry works in Yliakum.  The longer lived races probably can grow more than one set of adult teeth (otherwise elves, dwarves, etc. would spend half their lives gumming their food, unless their teeth are constructed in such a way they can't wear down), but Ylian et al. would definitely need it.  Do healing spells regrow teeth?

Currently it's not actually quite clear. Because most time you can't even include the reason why or the actual NPC that gave you the Glyph in your conversation in the first place, because it makes no sense that someone else did the exact same "unique" thing. What happens now is that people say this Glyph and that is rare because the quest required has a certain difficulty (who and how it was acquired is rarely mentioned and makes people feel uncomfortable when it is).

I could swear there are quests that do specifically state that a particular glyph being given is meant to (ICly) be rare and precious.  Unfortunately I can't check my logs, as the computer I play PS on is at the shop.     But I could very well be mistaken.

I agree that a much simpler and cleaner way would be to combine this with making rewards less unique as well (i.e. having NPCs sell them for big prices, while others give them as rewards.) But one can still make them quest linked with a bit of added trouble (making more than on NPC handle the same reward probably means more quests.)

A thought: I wonder if it would be feasible to redesign the NPC shops so that they reflect the NPC's feelings about the player character?   Prices at which items are purchasable would go down, prices at which you can sell items would go up, and perhaps rare items would only appear as purchasable if the NPC considers you trustworthy.  This would give a reason to quest (to build up relationships) while dodging at least some of the quest reward problems. 

Having designed plenty of college billboard flyers before... these could stand a little improvement, tbh.      Too much text, awkward grammar, address not prominent enough, etc. etc. 

And is that "500.000 registered players" meant to convey 500 or 500,000?  If it's just 500, ditch the decimal.  If you're claiming 500,000, then even if it's technically true you're going to get people logging on and saying "... Where are all the people?"

Question: how would non-unique quests affect quest rewards, especially glyphs?  If the object is to avoid having the quest system be fully integrated into RP, then it seems to me you'd have to scale back rewards, or have every NPC be ICly an Uncle Moneybags.   With a handful of exceptions glyphs aren't supposed to be cheap enough that NPCs would willingly distribute them to every smuck who comes along and helps them move a box from one end of their city to another.   They only make sense as rewards for single-time quests.

(And yes, I understand wanting to stress RP rewards over inventory rewards - but that doesn't mean wanting particular inventory rewards is always inherently bad.  Magic plays a role in RP all the time, and for that to work, players need glyph access.)