You call it bad design decision .. I call it originality.

Perhaps it's an original bad design? 

hehe, you are soon going to change your RPg definition or leave PS
PS isn't any RPG and god bless it for this. It is funny as you write about believability while you say realism is bad for RPG. A game world may be only believable if all its aspects try to be realistic.

A game where you live in a huge magical underground cavern isn't realistic at all, but you can make it believable.

Take magic, which is completely unrealistic, but that is not to say that you can't make it believable. JRRT and C.S. Lewis do a good job of making magic believable, while, say, J.K. Rowling doesn't.

There is no such thing as a "realistic fantasy" as fantasy is by definition unreal, a believable fantasy is entirely possible though.

If you don't like interaction then you are playing the wrong game.

I like interaction, but I think requiring interaction to learn the basics of the game too restricting to new players. I've made my viewpoint overly clear on the matter.

A rather horrible statement? And framerates have nothing to do with it.

Ugh. The point that I was trying to get across is that I was never arguing that the game was unplayable without good mouse control. I just said it was bad, and needed fixed. Then you come along with the statement that "you don't need good mouse control to play the game right?" Which was rather pointless. Bad mouse control doesn't make the game unplayable, just less fun. Same thing with playing the game at 10FPS. That was the point I was trying to make.

Its realistic is it not? Thats the aim. If it promotes the interaction, hey, all the better then!

If all that you care about is interaction, then go play a MUSH. If all that you care about is realism, then go play a simulator. No RPG is realistic, and forcing new players to beg for help in my experience builds more frustration than interaction. The big mistake that open source developers make is that they often have a rather closed minded idea of how a game should be played, which is fine for them, and the few people like them, but horrible for everyone else. In an RPG you generally want to promote player choice and play style variations, not limit them. What if I want to role play a 'lone ranger' kind of character? In PS this would be an exercise in frustration.

I have to say that the biggest problem with requiring new players to beg experienced players for help is that the experienced players often don't want to help the newbie. When this happens it becomes very frustrating for the new player, and generally makes the game feel even more sloppy and unpolished than it really is (in the alpha state).

Firstly do you need a more sensitive mouse look to play the game?

That's a rather horrible statement. It's like saying "Do you really need good framerates to play a game? Isn't it still playable at 10 FPS?"

And in RL a person is born. Without interaction with other people they'd die rather quickly. See a parallel?

Being as helpless as an infant does *not* make for a fun game. The entire aspect of making beginners helpless doesn't even make sense from a pro-interaction viewpoint. Having a player ask "Where is the dungeon" or "Where can I sell my rat hides" is ultimately shallow, and the helper and the helped will go there separate ways afterwards, without any connection formed. Good interaction would be more along the lines of "Let's team up to take out the dragon" or "Let's make a guild. Like I said, no professional developer would ever try to intentionally make their game hard on beginners.

Ok, so I've started playing planeshift, and it seems like a pretty good attempt so far. However, there are a lot of things that I don't like. Some of these are small and easy to fix, but no less annoying. Even though this post is going to have a negative focus, keep in mind that I'm really impressed with what the devs have done. so, things that need fixed:

Mouse look: Mouse look is pretty worthless because you're horizontal speed is way too slow. Look at the way you control your character in any fps out there to see how this should be done. Come on guys, this is easy!

First person mode: Feels very sloppy, I should be able to see my weapon when I'm attacking.

Noob friendliness: You guys have failed, absolutely failed at making the game inviting to newcomers. Trying to find someone to buy rat loot is a huge exercise in frustration, heck, even finding the sewers is harder than it should be. Relying on experienced players to help the newbies is, to put it bluntly, a really cheap-ass thing to do, and is a drop dead stupid design decision, if thats what it is. When newcomers join, you should make sure that they can easily reach the sewers, and that there is someone nearby, as in right outside the sewers, to sell loot to.

Quirkiness: Just tried to create a new character, and, about five times in a row, half way through the process, I was told that the server was unavailable and kicked out of the game. When I went back in, I logged in to the server after two or three clicks of the 'join server button'. The moral of the story is, when the game can't reach the server, don't kick the player out, but have the game continue to try to connect to the server. Remember the 'drop player' box from Starcraft? That's how the system should work, let the player decide when to stop waiting for the server!


Good luck guys, and I hope you fix all of these stupid little problems, while small, they sure do make the game a helluva lot worse.

Ok... very weird. Even though I had uninstalled and reinstalled the client, it seems that the game still crashes (at the loading screen) when I try to log in with a *new* character. Is my account in general somehow screwed up?

*edit*

I tried logging in with a completely different account (nervbird [at] yahoo [dot] ca), feel free to delete that one if you have a policy against multiple accounts, I only want to use the hurleybird [at] gmail [dot] com account), and still crashed at startup. This is really messed up, I just reinstalled the game!

*Edit*

Restarting my computer fixed the problem.... strange.

[Broke up the email addresses to prevent webcrawlers picking them up. Never post your email address on a public forum because you will find yourself receiving lots of automated spam. -- Santiago]

The error box says that planeshift has "requested runtime to end in an unusual way"

*edit*

Ah... this will help a bit more.

Error log:

<\Luca\Crystal Space\planeshift\src\common\util\psxmlparser.cpp:282 ParseFile> Could not find file: /planeshift/world/podium/sound.xml<\Luca\Crystal Space\planeshift\src\common\util\psxmlparser.cpp:282 ParseFile> Could not find file: /planeshift/world/terr_common/sound.xml<\Luca\Crystal Space\planeshift\src\client\psclientdr.cpp:237 psClientDR::HandleStatsUpdate> Stat request failed because CelClient not ready for 272<\Luca\Crystal Space\planeshift\src\client\psclientdr.cpp:237 psClientDR::HandleStatsUpdate> Stat request failed because CelClient not ready for 272

Please avoid posting two or more successive posts before others have replied. Just "Modify" your last post to add new information. Thanks! --Karyuu

Ok!