I apologise in advance for my upcoming long-windedness:
Now, I\'m new at all this but I do know what I want to see in this game. And this ain\'t it. I think a healthy gaming experience requires balanced doses of roleplay and adventuring (but the \"grind\" really sucks).
So let me make some suggestions that may help alleviate SOME of the \"problems\" that some of you see here.
-I don\'t like seeing \"PLZ HELP ME I NEED LEWT 2 GET A NEW SORD I NOT 1337 ENUF TO PWNZ RATZ THX\" any more than anyone else. Here\'s how much of it could be eliminated:
Leetspeak seems to heavily favor numbers and special characters. In Say, Shout, and /me (action) modes, the only acceptable characters should be letters, !, ?, ,(comma), .(period), -, \', and \". When you\'re really speaking, \"numerals\" have no real meaning anyway. Furthermore, ! , ,, and ? must follow a letter and be followed by a space. You should, however, be able to form an elipsis (...).
If a message breaks any of these guidelines, the server will replace it with \" mumbles unintelligibly.\" Certain recognized \"words\" (plz, thx, lewt, hlp, etc.) would produce the same response. This would be server-side. And it should be fairly easy to parse, since it\'s only looking for individual characters and simple two-character patterns.
However, /tell and /help stuff must accept any characters, otherwise people who aren\'t aware of this rule won\'t be able to find out how to fix it. Also, if such a feature is implemented, the communication system must be discussed AT LENGH and in excruciating detail, with emphasis on this \"rule.\" On the FIRST PAGE of the Players\' Guide. What we have now in the Players\' Guide about communication is simply not adequate.
-Other things to consider doing:
Invititations into groups or guilds, or challenges can only be sent to characters who are in a line-of sight of the sender and within Say distance. I got asked to join a guild whien I was all by me lonesome in the depths of the sewers. Not really cool, in my opinion! Also, each player must Say at list one message while in LOS of each other before Invites can be sent.
In summary: Characters may only speak in words. Characters may only invite or challenge a preson WITH (not just to) whom they are speaking. I believe measures like this would help alleviate some of the issues that are arising from the typical manner of communication, which is my chief annoyance with the game.
So all you leetspeakers, it will be to your advantage to learn how to \"speak\" in a more understandable manner. I\'ve been researching several online RP communities and in nearly all of them acting OOC is a bannable offense. I certainly hope it doesn\'t go that far here.
But to the fanatical RP\'ers, I have this rant:
You\'re contemplating just going around and killing people just because they don\'t conform to your narrow view of how people should behave? What would that accomplish? How could they POSSIBLY learn anything from such an encounter? It would never even cross most of their minds that their behavior is what prompted that response. As far as 95% of them are concerned, they just got PK\'d. For no apparent reason. The communities I mentioned earlier have something to say about this as well. It\'s called griefing, and it ALSO is a bannable offense. If you don\'t have an IN-CHARACTER reason to kill another player, your action is OOC.
It will also turn off a lot of people who only encounter people all over the place killing each other in hate. Sure, we\'ll drive off a lot of losers that way. But we\'ll also lose a whole lot of new talent in the process.
Also, though I mentioned how much I hate \"the grind\" in general, it also has its place in a pure RP world. I would like my character Eijog Sharphide of the Stonebreaker clan to be a master armorsmith. Right now I cannot \"legally\" roleplay that character, in my opinion.
Why?
Because right now Eijog is a complete wuss. I can talk about \"me legendary smithing\" abilities till my face turns blue, but anyone who looks at my stat sheet will know that it\'s complete BS because my Armor Repair skill is A BIG FAT ZERO. I will need to train that up (when I can), and that means leveling, and that means adventuring, and that means a little bit of the grind. Not all grinding is out of character! In real life most of you \"grind\" eight hours or more a day -- to get your paycheck! And that is ABSOLUTELY in character for you!
If you\'re gonna roleplay somebody, your stats have to match your descriptions. If they\'re not, you\'re full of &%$@. These aforementioned other communities have words about that too: It\'s called cheesing, and it\'s considered being just as OOC as talking OOC constantly. And it\'s a bannable offense.
And you think the upcoming wipe is actually gonna CHANGE anything? Wake up and smell the coffee! They\'re here, and in general, they\'re not going away.
So, until the time that ALL the skills that I need to have in order to roleplay the character I want to roleplay in the manner I wish to have him to be roleplayed are implemented, my character will continue to be a simple-minded rat hunter who occasionally will hang around in the tavern shooting the &%@$ with all the friends he\'s met in his adventures.
ALL of them. And always in character.
Thank you for your patience with me. But seriously consider making changes to the chat system similar to those I suggested. I think it could help A LOT.
*EDIT* I\'m not sure I wanted this in this thread or the \"moral speech\" thread. Oh well. \'Guess it\'s the same either way. Have a nice evening, and have fun playing! I\'ll try to be there for the pilgrimage!
