As a player, I have to say I am not a fan of the stamina system. I originally had high hopes for it, but once I saw it in practice, well... I used to enjoy leveling skills. I found it sort of relaxing. It's mostly been commitments outside of PS keeping me from the game, but due to stamina, the truth is that I have no intention of leveling again once I have the time.

My main issue is with mental stamina (though I don't like the physical stamina either). The problem is, as you level you cast spells more quickly. And the quicker you cast spells, the quicker you lose stamina, so that once you get into the high levels you have to pause so frequently that you are left thinking there was never any point in leveling at all. I don't feel it's realistic that a mage who has increased their skill to cast faster would need more breaks in the same amount of time as a result and I feel, in the very least, the stamina cost of spells should be reduced as you gain levels.

As Rigwyn has observed, r5 spells (like animate shadow) drain stamina very quickly.   Lumi has observed this even at r3. (From my previous experiments, up to r2 seems tolerable and then it quickly gets ughy.)

I have nothing against stamina as a concept, but I currently feel the effects of it are much too intense. It interferes too much with enjoyment.

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As a dev, all I can say is that there is still discussion going on but no guarantee of changes. It'll probably get more attention after the next release, and hearing more people's opinions would definitely be helpful, be those opinions for or against the way stamina currently works.

bilbous, I'm not saying no one should level things or that anyone at all should be able to make whatever wild overpowered claims about their abilities that they want. It wouldn't work.  I've always been as much mechanics player as RPer (within ten levels of maxing a way isn't skipping mechanics even slightly after all), but I just don't see it as important in the same way you seem to.

Anyway, it's not arguing really. I am actually interested in hearing how someone with this approach to play would handle the situation I outlined.

It seems quite relevant to Kaerli's query about unearned power as well. I just feel that the perception of whether someone earned their power within RP doesn't have to be about stats and skill levels. It can come from there or elsewhere, but one way or another, be it by mechanics or something else, you have to make your claim to power believable or people are not going to RP along with it very happily.

Kaerli - when I had issues with you I told you exactly what they were and we talked it through until an understanding was reached. I have had no issues RPing with you since, though I do find your RP can be a little repetitive and so focused on mechanics that I can lose interest. On the other hand, I've seen some nice RP from you as well. I personally think that the thing maybe driving people away from you is how much you talk about your RP issues instead of just getting on with the RP itself. Sadly I don't know what to suggest that I haven't already suggested many times in the past.

bilbous - I guess I'm a cheater then.  But well, having the time to level a skill the mind-numbing amount of hours to max it isn't going to make someone be suddenly capable of RPing that ability well. Doesn't even mean they'll understand the settings. Just that they have an amazing capacity to tap certain keys over and over. I'd much rather place more value on whether the person has a good understanding of settings and how to develop plot/character/interest/other things that make them worth my time. I play my main at far below her actual levels. I play (some of) my alts at far above theirs. Why? Because in both cases it makes for a better story.

I did actually once RP a character who was IC pretending to be a guard. They were not actually a guard, because the entire plot point was that they would get caught in the act and (depending on how players handled it) reported to the real guards (we had a GM ready and waiting to play the real guard so the whole thing did have some official backing behind it).

It was great fun and quite a few players got involved. I'm guessing they liked it because it was different and a bit out of the normal in terms of the RP you can usually fall into without lots of planning in advance.

But the reason I never repeated it? I got tired of the /tells informing me I'd be banned and a bit fed up of explaining that no, actually what I was doing was within the rules, agreed to and fine.

Personally, I think the problem is that even people who can usually separate IC and OOC just fine seem to lose track here a little and equate IC guard with OOC GM,  but they are (or I feel at least should be) completely different things. The guild label should be enough to show who the GM guards are and a player has no way to invite themselves to the GM guard guild after all. A player also can't change their name colour. Yet just the same, during the RP I actually got sent a /tell accusing me of GM impersonation, which I certainly wasn't doing and the character's description even made it quite clear that they were faking their position as a guard. Most people had no trouble seeing this, but there were a couple who just couldn't seem to get the difference.

With that said, I would be totally against giving player guards any kind of power at all by mechanics; but I really think it should be fine and acceptable to RP as lower ranking guards or other IC low level officials without fear. The RP community here is not stupid. If someone is obviously trying to use an IC position in an abusive way, people will either see that as IC and respond to it IC, or they'll ignore the RPer. (For example, a guard who abuses his position would get reported to the captain of the guards. So after the initial RP exchange, the players would be completely within their rights to totally ignore future RP in the same direction or IC state he can't possibly still have any authority to tell them what to do as he would have lost his position, unless the RPer playing the guard is able to speak to them and sort out a plotline that causes it all to make sense. Then we'd have consent from all sides anyway.)

If there were more/more active GMs who did actually RP outside of events then it would probably be a non-issue, but there's a problem when RP heads in a direction that would realistically demand a guard's involvement but then no one can play the guard. You can tiptoe around the issue and invent excuses for why the guards didn't show up, but after a while it can be a bit of an RP breaker and bleeds away the chance to 'believe' in the setting. And to simply avoid any RP at all that might need a guard..? To me that feels like a huge limitation.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. I'm tired so probably making very little sense at this point...

This is actually an issue I started testing a while back.

On a completely new character with no real extremes in stats (so not really specialised toward either combat or magic), I was getting 1pp every two rats I killed and also 1pp every two tloke drones. I don't find it an issue with one-eyed rats so much, but feel that once you move onto something else, anything else at all, you should get a minimum 1pp a kill. I then tried to move onto a clacker to see if that would give me anything higher and got slaughtered horribly. 

It doesn't take many kills at all to level an offensive skill at the beginning, so there is absolutely no way 1pp every second kill is going to cut it. Quests can help, but I also don't think it's right to make doing them a must in order to progress. Some players might not want to invest in taking in all the information from them until they've experienced gameplay a bit.

I've noticed stamina drain on running as well that I don't think was there before. I didn't test walking or riding yet, but I really don't like it. Long travel (Hydlaa to BD and similar) was already annoying/tedious/boring enough. I really, really, really pity characters with low stats right now.

My thoughts on mental stamina on the other hand are quite mixed. I've never known a game to have/need two different consumable stats for spell casting before. Stamina as consumable stat for physical actions and mana/mp as consumable stat for spells was always the normal. The current assumption for PS though seems to be that hp for a fighter equates to mana for a mage, and therefore stamina equates to mental stamina, but this is false as hp is also a requirement for a mage as well, and generally stamina for a fighter should equate to mana/mp for a mage.

To make sense, mental stamina needs to do something different than mana/mp, and as far as I can see so far (limited testing so please tell me if I am wrong), it doesn't really achieve this. So it feels like a bit of a pointless over-complication f the system to me that will be more likely to annoy people than add anything to gameplay. With that said, if it can be given value of it's own, it can have a lot of worrth (maybe mental stamina can instead be a requirement for casting spells higher than 0% power, but is not required for lower power spells that take less concentration? Just a quick idea as a way to differentiate them and give both things value, so there are probably better ideas than this around as well...)

I'm also not going to vote.

I don't care about a character's abilities (unless I am working on an RP that requires someone with a specific skill or lack of skill in order for it to be realistic), what I care about is HOW the roleplayer handles the skills.

For example, if you want to RP as a high level master mage, that's fine. But if you walk up to me and type "/me waves his arms and causes Taya to die screaming in a giant fireball." I'm just going to sort of sit there and laugh at you. On the other hand, if you play a mage who you say is high level in everything, but then RP that the magic has affected his mind to the point where he's not in touch with the world, so often doesn't see if someone's about to stab him in the back, then this can be interesting (assuming of course that the RPer is mature enough to let those sneak attacks work and so on.)

Another point is that I don't think the power level is really all that relevant for 'normal' in town RPs. I could be playing as a master in a way, adept in others, who is also an excellent armour maker, blacksmith, cook, fist fighter, knife thrower, professional rivnak racer and... you'd never ever know - unless of course my character was inclined to wave these facts in your face every few minutes.

And that's the real point I think I want to make. Relying too heavily on what your characters skills are for RP can be boring and off-putting for others. On several occasions I've tried RPing a very weak or a very disadvantaged character only to have "oh just train until you can hunt trepors then you'll be fine" thrown in my face. And that's boring, since it's like saying "everyone can be powerful and kill things" whereas I like RP that accommodates characters of any ability.