One of the things I most like about Planeshift is its emphasis on roleplay.
However, there are several ways in which I feel that this is taken too far, ie beyond the bounds of pragmatism and coMMOn sense.
Planeshift is now a much more mature game than it was previously. There are many more quests and the ingame mechanics are a lot more fleshed out. To me, this means that one would expect more people to try the game out and want to play it for a longer period of time.
But, you have to realise that both roleplay and MMO are social passtimes which are fun because they involve interaction with other people.
Spoilers do tend to undermine the enjoyment for some people but, in my opinion, suppressing the natural human inclination to share and to help is much more damaging to potential enjoyment of the game.
When I was at uni, I ran a real pen and paper roleplaying group for several years. Naturally, as the game master, I did not undermine the amount of time and effort I had put in to creating fun and interesting quests for my players by telling them the answers.
At the same time, though, the fun of the game, whether I was player or gamemaster, was the enjoyment of the players discussing among themselves the problems my quests posed.
As I said, roleplaying is a social passtime.
In PS, there is far far too much emphasis on not helping other people to solve quests. Yes, I agree, we should not merely hand out answers. In that respect, we are all gamemasters for each other.
At the same time, if you prevent people discussing amongst themselves, you are also inhibiting their inclination to form and participate in the social group and community that is inherently part of any roleplay and any MMO.
An MMO without player community is, by definition, a failure.
Likewise, an MMO where you can simply ask for and get the answer, OOC, is also a failure.
Planeshift has consistently stood head and shoulders above other MMORPG, as a roleplay game, by insisting that we remain in character.
At the same time, the insistence that we not help each other has also caused it to be a consistent failure as an MMO, by suppressing our natural inclination to help each other, thus forming friendships and a social community.
So, I would suggest, that Planeshift would be both a much stronger MMO and a much better environment for RP if the restriction on helping other people was relaxed a little.
IE ...
no direct answers allowed, but reasonable hints allowed
questions must be asked in character and answers given in character, but otherwise we should be allowed to interrelate to each other in a normal, friendly human way
The question "ok how do I complete quest X at the point where .." is clearly out of character and would be destructive to the RP environment that Planeshift tries to create.
But I honestly dont see anything wrong with "This carpet salesman, Y, in Ojaveda wants me to get Z. Can anyone suggest where I might get that?"
Also, what exactly is the problem with asking directions or where to find someone? Think about it! You dont wander, lost, around a city for 3 hours looking for some address! You pull over and ask someone how to get there!
