Originally posted by Winterheaven

1) Character Names

@Golbez: You spoke about LOTR-Char-Names... No doubt, these are apposite names. But remember that Tolkien was a \"professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University\" - not everybody can have the feeling for the _right_ name. At least names are hollow words. Of course they can improve and affect roleplay, but should not do it in a big way.

there are automatic generators of names. (like in DAoC) We could impement an optionnal one for players that don\'t have ideas.

2) Communication between Players

I did not like the idea of (too many) channels. To many channels can ruin the game. You must click through the whole channel list, to get something to talk with?

There are 6 different kinds of communication:
+ shout (seen by: all player in the game)
+ talk (seen by: all players on screen)
+ party (seen by: all players in the same party independend of location)
+ DM (seen by: only logged in DM)
+ whisper (seen by: players in the range of 1-2 meters)
+ tell (seen by: only the specified player, aka private message)

I think players should have the choice if they want lots of channels or not. Then if you prefer to be quiet you only keep one or 2 interresting. And if you want to have many private conversations (IC or OCC) you must have the possibility to have many channels, otherwise players will be forced to use generic channels for private chats, which would disturb everyone.

4) only few NPC

Only some words: You can not play all roles by players. Nobody is ever on. Nobody has all authority. Not all children, church priests, farmers and dracos could be played by humans. (the \"normal\" dragon sits for years in its cave... a really enjoyable role for a player.)

wrong ! When I played the 4th coming,  I played a children for almost 2 years and i LOVED it ! I had friends playing clercs, beggars, blind men, cooks, even prostitutes ! Any role outside the hero is wonderful to play. I even can\'t understand what\'s interresting in being a brave dragonslayer or a terrific demon master.

However discussion about ageing is useless since it is too complicated to implement at this stage of developpement (which I regret sooooooooooo much :\'( )

5) Hide Stats

Uhm.. i think, players really need something to compare. That is the same as in RL. The human being grows with their comparison to other humans. Else you are soon playing on a plain social server... But, what is needed, are skills, which really make sense.

As a human, do you have stats tatooed on your skin ? No, but you know that this friend of yours is stronger than you, that he runs faster, that he plays chest better but you are betgter at starcraft than him.  Why do you know that ? Not because of a number saying hoiw good you are. But because you have challenged your friend, and now you can compare with him.
Hiding stats is just the same but in a RPG.

My point about this subject is that whatever you would do, powerlevellers and pure roleplayers will exist. But if you want both to cohabitate peacefully, you must manage so that they don\'t disturb each other. And for this, a few basic tips can help a lot.




Here are a few ideas (some have already been mentionned) about how to enforce RP :



I/ Character names...[/size]

...only allow letters \"a-z\" ; \"A-Z\" ; \" \" (space bar) ; \" \' \" and \"-\" for the name of the character. This way you won\'t have any players called \"D4rk 50u1\" or \"Rambo_1987\"...

Furthermore, in-game moderators could ask players to change their name if they are not RP or badly written ( DaRk SoUl for instance would become Dark Soul, that, even if not perfect, is a more acceptable name)



II/ Enforce communication between players...[/size]

... wether it is RP or non-RP. What I mean, is the possibility to create as many channels as you want. Then players choose on their own wether it is the player or the character that speaks on the channel. There would be 3 or 4 official moderated channels (main, RP, trades, help...) and as many underground unmoderated channels as players want to. Those personnal channels must OF COURSE have a password (of course chosen by the player)

If anyone has ever player the 4th coming, I am exactely describing its cc system.

And this system solves quite a lot of problems : you want to RP peacefully ? Shut down main, trade and help cc ! You are a newbie and you have questions ? Use the help cc and older players will answer ; it both avoids RP players to be disturbed and  newbies to be disdained ! You want to communicate with your guild ? Create a private channel for them ! You want to play in the evening while talking with 2 or 3 friends about your day ? Create a private channel \"myfriends\" and you\'ll be able to speak freely, without damaging the RP environement !



III/ Limit as much as possible non-RP langage[/size]

a) no weapon must be called \"long sword +5\", but \"blessed long sword\". All that devs need to do is to use adjectives such as \"blessed\", \"strong\", \"well smithed\" instead of those meaningless \"+1, +2, +3...\"


b) Set up a clever censorship :

=> on main, help and trade channels : censorship on insults ( \"****\" instead of \"fuck\").

=> on roleplay channel, /say and /shout commands (dunno if they exist, but you have the idea) :
- a censorship on most common abreviation : \"intelligence\" instead of \"int\", \"Amusing\" instead of \"lol\"... On the one hand it censors those meaningless words (mostly good towards noobs), and on the other one it shortens the typing for common expressions. (this is Davis\'idea)
- censorship words made of a mixture of letters and numbers : \"uber-l33t\" would become \" *cough* \". Simple, fun, effective.

=> on private channels : no censorship (players have to rule it on their own)

(PS : I m against a systematical censorship on slang, because rude characters could not roleplay properly, and players could not mess around with friends, so that it we would have a puritain polite well-thinking boring world)



IV/ As few NPC as possible[/size]

(idea already mentionned in an answer before)

Because this way players have to communicate and interact, and communication is the first step to RP. A powerleveller that can play without talking to anyone will never have the idea to try RP.

We only need NPCs for :
- helping newbies to start
- do very boring things (NPC merchants for a guild for instance)

but no NPC that would sell infinite weapons, or buy tons of loots.

(I am waiting for reactions about the beta of Dark and Light, where they put an offline mode, where your offline character becomes a merchant that sells what you collected while being online)




V/ Hide stats[/size]

THAT is a very innovative idea. (i don\'t remember who said it first in this post) You would not say anymore \"I have 500 strengh\" but \"once i was attacked by a group of 5 huge orcs and I killed all of them...\"

It has already been discussed before,  so I\'ll make it short : it is a great stem for plots !



VI/ A strong and alive background[/size]

a) Improve the current background and make it available for everyone : an official library.
For this I would recommand an official site called \"Laanx\'library\" for instance where we could find tons of stories : the official background, player tales, poems etc... this site would look roleplay, and have only roleplay texts. This library woud be the base of the game background. A second site could be used for a FAQ, a player help etc. but it must not mix with the library.

b) A dynamic background : Game Masters.
GMs must be often connected to make alive campains and scenarios that would enlive the whole world. GMs would play important roles (a council member any famous knight back from a caimpain, an orc warlord, a prophet...) that would need the players to solve their problems.
And those GMs could reward (or not) good RPers by increasing their stats (whether their character is \"good\" or \"evil\"). The great point is that if stats are hidden, we won\'t have ppl doing the quests just for XP, since they won\'t even know they have gained any stat ! But rewards are not only stat points ; they can be unique items (unique doesn\'t mean powerful), important social roles, political secrets...



VII/ No immortal character[/size]

I am now reaching more sensitive points. If characters never die, there will be players that will want to make their character the strongest, even if stats are hidden. They will want to kill the biggest mob, to archieve the hardest quest and so on. BUT if your character finlly dies ? What would that powerful character leave behind him ? NOTHING ! The only way for a character to survive after his death is via fame, friends and family.

The only problem here is with elves, krans and klyros that can live hundreds of years old... Well my advice would be to reduce their life expectancy, but maybe I\'m going too far here.

An other aspect is to not forget CHILDREN and OLD PEOPLE. I can not imagine a realistic world with only halthy people between 20 and 40.

This is not hard to implement. Only needs other skins, hairs... to model old characters, and smaller sizes for children. Nothing more ^^


VIII/ Open PvP[/size]

Another sensitive point.

Just gives more freedom for more RP possibilities.
And for those that are affraid by pks, here are 2 reason to be confident. First, with no stat or lvl, it would be harder for pks to choose a weak victim. Furthermore, GMs could create a guild, \"Ylakium Guard\", where loyal-good characters are recruted and paid to protect other characters. Each town could even have their own council, and their own guard. How wonderful ! pks have become a new possibility for RP !

However since the idea of \"only PvP in arenas\" has been chosen, I don\'t want to discuss this anymore. I only regret that devs are too shy on this point, with this hybrid solution. All games have the same problem : devs are affraid of any excess, so they don\'t take any risk; It is understantable, but I regret it.


IX/ Help newbies to act on a RP way[/size]

Because when you are a newbie, most ofthe time you have never played a MMORPG before ; you try this game because it is free, and you are intimidated by those strange guys speaking on a strange way (i\'m talking about roleplayers). That\'s why they must be helped.

a) character creation : instead of choosing stats, jobs and so on at the character creation, the player would only choose :
- race, sex
- physical aspect (hair, eyes, size, age, build...)
- type down a short description
- type down a short background.
This way, since the very beguining of the character creation, the player knows he\'s in an uncommon game. Of course at the character creation all characters of a same race would have the same stats, but very soon each character would specialise to become unique.

b) we could have a short tutorial for the main gameplay commands (how to attack, to run, to use magic etc.)

c) we have the \"help\" cc I mentionned before.

d) It is each player\'s role to help newbies. When a noob asks \"money plz\", do not ignore him, but tell him \"what are you saying ? I don\'t understand...\" until he understands he must speak properly. And once he asks \"Would you have some money for me Sir ?\" don\'t give it right away, ask him any cheap staff he can easily get, and reward him generousely : that will be his first quest (even if it is basic ^^)



X/ Begin as soon as possible[/size]

We must use the beta to build a healthy core of roleplayers, that will help new players to integrate and make a harmonious community. It is obvious that if suddenly 2000 players settle in a few days without any knowledge about RP, we will only have another boring camping so-called RPG.

However I am confident about this, when I see all these active guilds spawning, and the number of people that want to enforce RP.




The main point in all this is mutual respect. Roleplayers and campers can live together, but they must interact on a non-aggressive way for both. Campers must not sp34k l1k3 14m3r5, and roleplayers must not be agressive towards those strange people that love crafting for hours. And here, the channel system described above seems a very good solution.




PS : I am not english, so please excuse my French ^^ Furthermore  don\'t play much, because it is hard to RP in english when your vocabulary is limited. I hope a French server will come soon ^^

and how will small connections reqct when they will be lqgging ? I do agree with ju;ping into a lake or things like thqt, but please no boring laracroft-like movements, where you hqve to ount your steps qnd ump at the right time unless you fall an have to do everything again

paxxx, are you also planning to make GM animated campains (I don\'t know if I translated it right..), divided into several scenario, like in a pen and paper RPG ?

(those campaigns would last several months, and each scenario could be played in one day... I don\'t know if that\'s something common among MMORPGs...)

And first of all, will some children be designed ? Or will we be forced to live in a boring serious adult world ?

(I don\'t care playing a child for years, I just want to see children, for all the reasons I gave before )

I think that would just slice-up the community. There would be germans, french servers, and (to the rest) english servers. Players like me won\'t be able to go up to many of these, as I can only speak English (and German a bit). So what about us and others: polish (polack), slovak, hungarian (like me) Should we all have sub-servers??? That is not a good idea.
The world is not just: french, german, english! But as english is the most accepted language on thr Net, we in the eastern part of Europe have to learn this.
Again, this would only slice-up the community.

I absolutely agree that at this early stage of developping it would be an error to split people because of their native languages, we wouldn\'t have this wide pool of ideas, and as many points of view to confront.

However, once the game is released I would LOVE to have a French server. Not that I don\'t like other languages (if I did what would I do here reading english all day long ? ). But roleplaying demands a perfect use of the language, what if someone gives you a task that you even don\'t understand ? Even on these boards I spend much time looking for missing words in my dictionnary. Furthermore speaking for a long time in another language is REALY tireing (needs more brain effort than naturally speaking in your mother language).

And to finish with, since it\'s open source, anyone can translate into any language even you elminster, just team up with other English-speaking Hungarians to translate the game !

But most of the time the reason why we only have French/German/English translations is that those languages are the most spoken in western countries, and that countries speaking those languages are the ones that can make devs make the more money. It is sad to say so, but pay-to-play games are only interrested in money...

So instead of criticising a possible French translation, tak the chance that it is open source to translate it into Hungarian ! The first Hungarian-speaking MMORPG, I\'m sure you would have a great success ! (and this is NO irony)

from paxx (Developer ? Member) on Thieves :

\"Realism is not an argument for anything, related to a game, realism is an argument for a simulation.

Now for engrossing 3D worlds and such, a level of realism is somewhat necessary, but using it as a ?reason? for anything is not even a decent argument?it is an extremely weak one.\"

This being said and agreed by everyone, we don\'t want fall damage because it is realistic, but because it is an excellent limitation to all kind of silly abuses. With falling damages devs would widely reduce the \"what if\" questions...

So get ready it\'s gonna be rather long...



How to rule jumping ?[/b]

First I would like to say that how fast you are falling isn\'t really important. It would be much easier (and wouldn\'t remove much) if you fell at a fixed speed, whatever the height of the fall and the weight of the character.

Second, all the formulas and numbers used here are just illustrations, and will never be included in the game since they don\'t take care of skills limitations, a more perfect influence of your stats...


A/ Basic reference jump : 30 cm high, 1m long.

This jump is definite for a \"virtual\" character :
- character\'s weight = 0
- character\'s \"athletics skill\" = 0
- no backpack nor armour.


B/ Race influence

Depending on your race, a number multiplies the values of the basic reference jump :
elf : 1,5 (so the basic elf reference  jump is 45 cm high and 150 cm long)
kran : 0,5 (so the basic kran reference jump is 15 cm high and 50 cm long)
diaboli : 1,05
enkidukai : 1,7
etc...


C/ Skills and stats influence.

The system is similar to the influence of race. A formula would give a number between 1 (all stats=0 ; athletics = 0) and 10 (max stats)
For instance :
A = 1 + (Athletics + agility + will)/50
(with 1 < A < 10)
You would multiply the basic racial referencer jump stats by this number.
For example, an elf with 200 athletics, 70 agility and 30 will would jump 3,15m high and 10,50m long.

Let\'s call this number your personal naked reference jump.


D/ Weight influence

A formula of the same kind would give a number between 0 and 1
For instance
B = 1 ? weight/strength
You would multiply your personal naked reference jump by this number to know how far tou can jump when carrying your material
For instance, the elf described above, carrying 20 kilos with a strength of 40 would jump 1,57m high and 5,25m long.

By combining all those formulas you get the magic formula that can calculate how far you can jump, paying attention on your skills, your stats, your race, your weight.. And with the same system it is easy to add more parameters...





With such a system, the maximum jump (a naked edikundai with max athletics, agility and will) would jump 5,10 m high and 17m long...
uh that looks enormous... maybe changing numbers, or formulas, would make this better... but anyway you understood how one can easily take all those phenomenon in account, and rapidly make a good way to rule jumping...


I\'ll post tomorrow about how to calculate damages more precisely, I\'m feeling a little tired this evening ^^