The Gods Must Be Angry-DEBATE

[Illysia]

Ok, just a reminder... again, No one complaining ever said to enforce "rules". An understanding is a completely different beast. Even I didn't say in, most cases, to completely prevent certain types of RP, despite my extreme personal objection, as long as they are out of the way. I have better things to do then policing. That out of the way.


Not equal is less opinion. Opinion is saying which is the more valid perspective, x =/ y is just straight logic.

However, I challenge the notion of players seeking a more realistic world since that is often the term used but the execution is directly contradictory. For instance, the most simple execution for a more realistic world is: Go outside!  It has better graphics even if the progression system is bad.

However, we, as societies in general, turn more and more to virtual reality since we actually don't actually want "real". Let's look at an example, we have, in most cases, at least minimal physics mimicking the real world.... that is, until we don't. Characters in games can often make outrageous jumps, fly without wings or other apparatus, use magic to shape or destroy the world in way that may or may not even be possible in real life, ect... And typically, it is this break from reality that is more popular. Why? Because we don't want "real." Real is confining, real is mundane, real keeps us bound to that which we felt the need to leave. In fact, the more rules you add, the more "real" the world becomes and the less popular it becomes.

The truth of the matter is, we typically run back to "real" as either an explanatory short hand or an attempt at adding the legitimacy of "the established" to our argument, but in all actuality, "real" is the last thing everyone is after. However, when I argue certain points, my issue is less the real and more the logical. Logic being that which follows directly after the thing preceding. For instance, if it looks like people are always dying in a city, the thing that logically follows is that others will avoid it to prevent dying. Would you, the player, go to a city of knife wielding serial killers, in real life, for coffee just because the city happened to be there? The fact that this is a game does not inherently negate logic. This is the point I think Aiwendil is making as well.

When I argue for a standard, I argue for it on the basis that not having that common ground leads to the kind of chaos that isn't conducive for cohesive roleplay. It sets the prime growing conditions for RP cliques, constant struggles between groups of RPers, and stories that exist totally aside from each other... the anti community if you will.

An RP standard doesn't have to have a large impact on RP content because RP content is almost limitless. All it says is that if you are all playing paladin like character's here is a common thread for you all to go on to help your RPs stay close to the same page. Then you won't have to ignore each other to reconcile each other's story if you cross paths. When you have a larger sense of community, you will find completely separate and different stories intersect each other far more often, as has already been brought up elsewhere when talking about Telnavi. When there is no standard, you end up putting round pegs into square slots every time because each interpretation leads to different kinds of incompatible realizations. Simply put, several writers won't write a coherent story if they don't have an understanding among themselves.

The bigger problem is a lack of imagination. If you can't stretch a little then yes, a standard threatens to shrink your RP, but that is a problem with a lack of creativity, not the standard being over bearing. And it will become problematic in connection with many issues, not just in having a standard. This is why I regularly advocate trying to stretch out of cookie cutter, prefab RP roles.

...and the working towards less criminal tendencies as a whole,...

I really hope that's not Illysia's intention.

I would round up you delinquents if I could but I gave up on that years ago. However, remember the Stonehead Aiwe. You know how I deal with criminal tendencies.

[Aiwendil]

Would you, the player, go to a city of knife wielding serial killers, in real life, for coffee just because the city happened to be there? The fact that this is a game does not inherently negate logic. This is the point I think Aiwendil is making as well.

Yep.

I would round up you delinquents if I could but I gave up on that years ago. However, remember the Stonehead Aiwe. You know how I deal with criminal tendencies.

As far as I remember Aiwendil was always a welcomed guest in the SH...you couldn't be that strict about criminals.

[Illysia]

Oh you are safe as long as you don't do anything. 

[Eonwind]

However, we, as societies in general, turn more and more to virtual reality since we actually don't actually want "real". Let's look at an example, we have, in most cases, at least minimal physics mimicking the real world.... that is, until we don't. Characters in games can often make outrageous jumps, fly without wings or other apparatus, use magic to shape or destroy the world in way that may or may not even be possible in real life, ect... And typically, it is this break from reality that is more popular. Why? Because we don't want "real." Real is confining, real is mundane, real keeps us bound to that which we felt the need to leave. In fact, the more rules you add, the more "real" the world becomes and the less popular it becomes.

The truth of the matter is, we typically run back to "real" as either an explanatory short hand or an attempt at adding the legitimacy of "the established" to our argument, but in all actuality, "real" is the last thing everyone is after. However, when I argue certain points, my issue is less the real and more the logical. Logic being that which follows directly after the thing preceding. For instance, if it looks like people are always dying in a city, the thing that logically follows is that others will avoid it to prevent dying. Would you, the player, go to a city of knife wielding serial killers, in real life, for coffee just because the city happened to be there? The fact that this is a game does not inherently negate logic. This is the point I think Aiwendil is making as well.

I agree, a virtual world must give the 'feelings' of reality then lets the players cross the boundaries: that's where the fun begins 
Like I said before the murders/plague plots are not my favourite and while I don't skew them at all I used to spend a lot of my time outside hydlaa, in the wilderness or in Gugrontid. And this was a proof of Illisya's point.

When I argue for a standard, I argue for it on the basis that not having that common ground leads to the kind of chaos that isn't conducive for cohesive roleplay. It sets the prime growing conditions for RP cliques, constant struggles between groups of RPers, and stories that exist totally aside from each other... the anti community if you will.

An RP standard doesn't have to have a large impact on RP content because RP content is almost limitless. All it says is that if you are all playing paladin like character's here is a common thread for you all to go on to help your RPs stay close to the same page. Then you won't have to ignore each other to reconcile each other's story if you cross paths. When you have a larger sense of community, you will find completely separate and different stories intersect each other far more often, as has already been brought up elsewhere when talking about Telnavi. When there is no standard, you end up putting round pegs into square slots every time because each interpretation leads to different kinds of incompatible realizations. Simply put, several writers won't write a coherent story if they don't have an understanding among themselves.

The bigger problem is a lack of imagination. If you can't stretch a little then yes, a standard threatens to shrink your RP, but that is a problem with a lack of creativity, not the standard being over bearing. And it will become problematic in connection with many issues, not just in having a standard. This is why I regularly advocate trying to stretch out of cookie cutter, prefab RP roles.

In a perfect virtual world all story are coherent, but my point of view I don't feel like coherence is a primary goal to reach in a virtual world. Also striving for coherence at all costs usually gives all sort of problems like explaining perfectly how magic works and usually it fall-back to creating a "too much" real world with real life physic, real life issues and all sort of things most of us want to leave in real life when playing a game.
I think where coherence leaves some gap creativity fills in the rest. Same can be said for setting: where minor things are unclear that's where players can step in and create their own explanations. This gave birth to many interesting RP in my case.
About the community I think the respect for each others is its main glue. More than cohesive RP. if I feel respected OOCly and I feel other players are willing to open me the doors to their rp (even if I don't like it) and don't let me down just because I don't feel like to join it, well I would stick with such community

[Bonifarzia]

About the community I think the respect for each others is its main glue.

This quote will be perfect for reuse in future discussions =)

[Illysia]

It occurs to me that people probably think I am saying they should change the type of RP overall that is going on. For those that feel that way, let me quickly clear that up. Basically, I am advocating a different approach to the whole matter.

In a perfect virtual world all story are coherent, but my point of view I don't feel like coherence is a primary goal to reach in a virtual world. Also striving for coherence at all costs usually gives all sort of problems like explaining perfectly how magic works and usually it fall-back to creating a "too much" real world with real life physic, real life issues and all sort of things most of us want to leave in real life when playing a game.
I think where coherence leaves some gap creativity fills in the rest. Same can be said for setting: where minor things are unclear that's where players can step in and create their own explanations. This gave birth to many interesting RP in my case.
About the community I think the respect for each others is its main glue. More than cohesive RP. if I feel respected OOCly and I feel other players are willing to open me the doors to their rp (even if I don't like it) and don't let me down just because I don't feel like to join it, well I would stick with such community

Umm... This one I have to disagree with in certain places since it kinda goes inherently against the nature of storytelling. I don't care how much respect for each other two authors have or how much goodwill there is, if they write stories with a different nature to their worlds, that is the fundamental baselines are different, those stories won't mesh until you reconcile the differences. Yes you can mix characters, and genres and so forth but I don't care how much you try to push Avatar's story line and Twilight's story line together, you are going to have to decide on what to keep and what to toss to even begin trying to fitting the story together. And yes, even in PS RPs can be that wildly different. Further, coherence doesn't imply you have to agree on every little thing but one great source of tension did happen to be from the settings team not being able to address certain things and then players getting offended when the settings was finally addressed and their individual explanations no longer fit. If even official settings isn't allowed to come up with an explanation how would it be any less messy when it is between players who have the same amount of authority on the matter?

While I'm happy for you that just the OOC understanding is enough, I don't think that it is enough to form an RP community though it is most assuredly critically important to keeping OOC cohesion. RP is not OOC so OOC will only help the story aspect so much. But the OOC understanding really must be there or you have the same problem with community but for a different reason. I believe what made PS popular in the past was that you could feel distinctly that you were stepping into a large story, a dynamic one, and not just a visual world. If everyone is kinda doing their own thing, traveling between RPs is more like island hopping than exploring a whole world. And one can easily get lost in the cracks.

All I am trying to say is that island hopping is not bad, but you loose a lot of potential than if you were to have a continuous landmass. All those gaps in between the "island" are those interactions missed due to not caring for a continuous story. For instance, Illy was about as lawful good as PS characters came, but her life regularly intersected those that weren't and she regularly dealt with them. Why? Because all the characters were interconnected in one great big on going story and they were dynamic enough to have more than one way of relating to their environment. And it wasn't a "let me stop/finish this plot and join another plot" story. Their stories flowed into each other. These characters had lives that told a story instead of just episodic bursts of "something happening" in their lives. This is what I mean when I keep bringing up storytelling in general.

Further, and I know people don't like to hear this but it's still a valid statistic: Planeshift's average player count is about 40 and that is with a regular trickle of new people coming to look at the game. What is going on now is simply not enough to hold the attention of enough people to grow the player base. Yes there are a variety of factors, like the short attention span of the average MMO player, but keep in mind two things:

First, planeshift grew up from a playerbase that was smaller than this one, it had less to do, and even less RP , yeah I said it, but it grew up to eventually get as high as 200 players online during the day... And there were still factors then, as now, that made it unlikely that the player base would have grown. But there was enough there to keep people's attention and to make pretty loyal players who put up with a lot even if not everything. When people have something to latch on to, they will latch on and they will hang around even when it is inconvenient. I put newer players on my buddy list as I interact with them and as it stands my buddy list still stays pretty red. Anticipatory side note: there are many people out there with computers that can handle the game's requirements and that also RP. Even if former players couldn't run the game there would still be new players that could.

I guarantee you that at the rate it is going, PS is not only not growing, it is shrinking and will keep on that way. The highest player count of the year should be during summer when people have the most free time, not winter... It basically has to go down from here until next summer. Whether older players were elitist, had their heads too far up places we won't speak of, or whatever, there is something to be said for the results. That's why we call them results. I stick out as a note though that the reason the numbers came down at all was that lack of OOC respect between groups. As I said earlier, it is critical, but it's not enough on it's own either.



Second point, graphics and visuals are nice but are less important in a RP world, the charm and compelling story are the sticking points. In RP, the story is less the sum of the building shaped boxes and pointy objects you can stick into mobs and more the character's and their interactions with each other and their circumstances. You can take away the items, the maps, and a character model and what would be left is the story much like the ones written here on the forums. Now take the RPs going on in PS now and string them together end to end... Would that story look like a continuous story or would it look like a few storylines stuck parallel? Would it look like a full world, or would it only show a certain segment. I know that you can never achieve full continuity, or address every aspect of every character's life, but it can be done more than it is currently.

Look at games like ADOM and Nethack, they aren't RP games but they are ascii games. That's is as low graphically as you can get. They have a distinct story or perspective for you to advance with a great deal of thought put into it, which is more than a lot of graphically more advanced games. And a far larger player base than PS... The reason I even bring these games up is because often people want to cite newer MMOs as being a reason for PS's player decline, or that focusing on graphics and skills will fix that... These games are rather simple compared to PS, but they maintain more loyalty through engaging the player in the world more. If games like this which are not specifically for rp can do it, shouldn't it be that much easier to do in PS where it is set up for you to be able to create stories together?



In the end, I imagine it's a we agree to disagree matter. But I think adding more concepts of traditional storytelling would flesh out PS, allow for a more full feeling world,  give newer players something to latch on, and give existing players more to work with.

[Phantomboy86]

Couldn't resist. Don't really care about the argument, mostly a giant oldbie pissing contest to me. Rather rude to start it with some other guys RP as the title.

[Mariana Xiechai]

Rather rude to start it with some other guys RP as the title.

Yes. This. Thank you so, so much. Have someone move the discussion to some other thread, like "General Discussion," this isn't about an ongoing roleplay, after all. It's in the wrong section as it is.

[Illysia]

Couldn't resist. Don't really care about the argument, mostly a giant oldbie pissing contest to me. Rather rude to start it with some other guys RP as the title.

Rather rude to start it with some other guys RP as the title.

Yes. This. Thank you so, so much. Have someone move the discussion to some other thread, like "General Discussion," this isn't about an ongoing roleplay, after all. It's in the wrong section as it is.

Thanks you two. This gives me a chance to make another point for those actually reading the thread.

Notice who broke the "lets be nice and respectful" trend. Notice, who is being disrepectful of other opinions. Who is making needless disparaging remarks about something they don't agree with without bothering to show the slightest hint of regard for another opinion? Notice who is putting words in the mouth of people that have not only stated their opinions in this thread, but have also proven they are capable of speaking for themselves. Notice who is bothering try to try and help others understand their perspective. This is exactly why some oldbies come out the woodwork swinging, it's this kind of unkindness that comes from not upholding that standard of being nice and respectful equally. Oldbies are always told "if you don't like it go away". But who tells the others to do the same?  Just something to think about.

[Mariana Xiechai]

Thanks you two. This gives me a chance to make another point for those actually reading the thread.

Notice who broke the "lets be nice and respectful" trend. Notice, who is being disrepectful of other opinions. Who is making needless disparaging remarks about something they don't agree with without bothering to show the slightest hint of regard for another opinion? Notice who is putting words in the mouth of people that have not only stated their opinions in this thread, but have also proven they are capable of speaking for themselves. Notice who is bothering try to try and help others understand their perspective. This is exactly why some oldbies come out the woodwork swinging, it's this kind of unkindness that comes from not upholding that standard of being nice and respectful equally. Oldbies are always told "if you don't like it go away". But who tells the others to do the same?  Just something to think about.

Oh I haven't read through the thread, or really commented about it. But as he just said, it's rude to start a thread that implicates you're just going to critique a dude's entire RolePlay, and then keep it in this section. I don't care if you all want to yammer it up, but move the thread. It's not an ongoing roleplay. It's not really even stimulating roleplay. And you don't have to use harsh words to be cruel. Sure, have your opinion, hammer it out. But give it a new title, since it seems to have deviated way off the track of the initial discussion, and move it to a more appropriate location. Only cordial.

[Illysia]

It was moved, that's why this thread is here. That is the mod title... And how many threads get entire name change 6 pages into it? This started from that thread, the first posts are in connection with that thread, thus it maintained its connection. I think if cairn really had a problem with it, he would have mentioned it himself in one of the many times he himself commented here. I think his reply button works just fine. And nothing mentioned here is overly harsh unless your ego is too easily pricked. That's how the niceness and "cordial" nature of the thread had been maintained until this point.

[verden]

Taking a whole lot general discussion and making it somehow personal when it is not, or posting some random image into a discussion thread, instead of bothering to read and understand what is being discussed almost perfectly underscores Illysia's point. There are times when it is appropriate to say nothing, this would have been one of them.

[Illysia]

Thank you Verden. I was going to let it go at this point, but I will add this one thing because it is important to point this out while there is a calm discussion and because Eonwind is right OOC respect is very important. Here's something else for people to think about, especially the would be paragons of "everyone be nice".

What just happened here was really small scale compared to the 5 to 10 people that would dogpile on in the past, but the same thing that let that happen then is still in play right now. There is an unspoken double standard that if you stick on a label of "cranky", "elitist", "mean" to an oldbie, that immediately justifies any kind of reprehensible behavior the person with the handy dandy label gun wants to deal out. And this applies whether that person justifies their label or arbitrarily wants to stick the label on to any player that disagrees. I've seen it happen to players that aren't even "oldbies."

Keep in mind that every player regardless of how long they have played, is still a human being with many of the same motivations, feelings, and reaction that anyone else has. I can't tell you how many times I've begged former players to come back, to help me, to just keep me company in game for a little while only to be told no, sadly, because they were sick and tired of the abuse. Especially those that only even bothered because they were actually trying to help only to get their heads ripped off. This needs to stop, it really doesn't matter how long you have been playing, being a jerk is the same across the board.



For the tl;dr crowd: Being a jerk is always a bad choice and you don't get to criticize when you are guilty of the same or worse.

[LigH]

Thank you for the summary. That one I read!

But I hope you will agree that I usually avoid being a jerk, anyway.