News on next update

[Eolius]

Originally posted by Efflixi Aduro

This wipe will put lemurs at a HUGE disadvatage because by the time Lemurs come out players like Eolius will have 16828 pp again.

LooooL if the PPs are the problem, believe me i would give them all to you if I could
Having many pp realy doesn\'t give you any advantage. (and you know that )
I hope Lemurs will come out in a short time .
(I was about to say \"I hope Lemurs come out soon\" but that can mean ages :p)

[Drey]

i always found that lack of PP was the main problem for me...

really annoyed me when i had to go kill a few ulbernauts just to train a few agility or strength levels.

[Efflixi Aduro]

PP isn\'t the only problem. Money, training etc. I\'m tired of waiting for lemurs and the wipe so I can have my final char and begic to play and now they are wiping it without giving us lemurs which totally sucks for lemur players. While everyone is out there fighting and getting stronger we are still waiting for our race to arrive. I mean cmon, it\'s the only race left that isn\'t out yet and the dev\'s don\'t have it ready yet. I don\'t even care if it\'s skinned. I just want my race to say \"lemur\" so I can play ps thinking there\'s actually a point of my wasting my time.

[Danok]

\"That\'s what Jorrit and I have been discussing earlier. There is no perfect solution to this problem unless if the character names are not changed...\"

Please excuse me for such a post-MB-migration Noob question (I asked a Game Master last night and couldn\'t get an answer--poor fellow was inundated and then crashed).  So will character names be retained then?  If all we have left is the RP relationships out of the game it would be much easier to get started back up if we can easily find our friends to band with and go monster-hunting.  Both greater strength in numbers and jolly good company, I must say.  

Also--will the client retain my password after it\'s updated?  Yes I\'m another silly soul that\'s forgotten it already!

Thanks!
-----Danok

[Eolius]

As a GM told me the characters will be wiped entirely so we will have to rebuild them from scratch.

[Monketh]

If I may make a suggestion?

Slaying random beasts should not be a profession unless you\'re in some sort of legion.  When crafting arrives these people should have to get day jobs.

[Psignosis]

Is smeltering and weapon making going to be activated in the next update or anytime soon?

[acraig]

I\'m going to be reworking the interface for the crafting stuff to make it easier to use.  So it won\'t be ready for this release BUT I will try very hard to get something in there.

[Seytra]

Originally posted by CadRipper

GMs don\'t have the power to touch others\' statistics and inventories whatsoever. Please don\'t hassle them with that

So whom do all the people turn to when they discover that all the quick path creation did was to discard their CP?

Originally posted by CadRipper

What was the worst move, enforcing RP names, or relaxing this rule? I fail to see your argument with the oldbie names.

Relaxing the rule, obviously. Since this fatal decision was made, I rarely see a GM > L1 on, and even if, the only thing they actually change are offensive and ridiculously obvious copy-cats. Even people like \"Superboi\" or \"Gigabit\" are left alone. :rolleyes:

As for the oldbie argument: it is a fact that there are several oldbies, including GMs, who have characters with names that don\'t (or barely) fit the naming rules. However, they are left alone because they\'re oldbies or GMs. Newbies, OTOH, with these names would have to be changed. This is hypocrisy.



Well, obviously the relaxation of the naming rule was a good idea since it got rid of the hypocrisy



Anyway, I don\'t see why the devs want to

1) wipe the chars with the update, thereby allowing the final chars to be created by an utterly untested system; it would be better to test and tweak the new item generation before doing the wipe



2) wipe the items after the char wipe, thereby allowing possible exploits by stat conversion; it would make a lot more sense to me to do no item wipe but instead postpone the big wipe until the time the item wipe would occur;  



3) wipe the items only in the second wipe; it would be easier and cleaner to just re-wipe completely again.

As for the lemurs: I, too, think that all races should be be available. They don\'t need models, but they should be selectable. Gender and appearance can be changed later on, but the race cannot be as easily.

About the name stealing problem: For people who had chars with these names in MB, there won\'t be danger, because the migration reserves the name. For all chars that were created in CB, there is no such protection, and thus people will have to turn to GMs to get their names back if they were stolen.

@ Danok: the password doesn\'t matter, because it will be wiped as well. You will have to create an entirely new account, thus giving you the opportunity to enter a new password if you don\'t remember the current one.

@ Darkhack: What you are seeing is a small fraction of the community. Also, the wipe has been announced for months. People aren\'t happy about the fact that there will be a wipe. At least most aren\'t. What people are happy about is that the wipe will finally come and that they think that afterwards they can start grinding for \"a purpose\".

If another wipe will be announced say, a month after the first, then you will see that this community is not at all different from the others. There will be some who accept it without complaining too loudly, sure. However, just look at what the recent server outages, which lasted only for a comparatively short time, did. People were already asking that a backup server be brought up. :rolleyes:

Originally posted by CadRipper
It will surely end up in another return to the post-migration step,

Indeed this is more likely than anything else.

Originally posted by CadRipper
but it would be bad to tell that to everyone since it seems to render a whole part of the community inactive (a concept I\'ll never entirely grasp).

The only reason I can see for this is that these people aren\'t mainly roleplaying but mostly powerlevelling, which is why I am all for scheduling a complete wipe every three months.

Edit: Just look at this very thread. People wishing for more lootable MOBs, even wishing for monsters to have weapons to be looted. This means that their main focus is PL, not RP. While it is indeed necessary for RP to level a bit, this can easily be done during these times when there is no RP opportunity. It worked for me pretty well, though recently the bugged spawns indeed removed this option since every MOB was indeed heavily camped most of the time.

[steuben]

i don\'t know. every three months. feels a bit harsh. though it is probably just a semi-random number. ... i hope.

though i agree. the paired wipes rather then one big wipe, is a bit odd in my book as well. though this may have been explained else well in the thread. i\'ll have to run off and check.

while i\'m not a big fan of a wipe. the fewer the better. but, i\'m rolling with this one for one big reason. there is absolutely js that i can do about it.

[DaveG]

Originally posted by Seytra
3) wipe the items only in the second wipe; it would be easier and cleaner to just re-wipe completely again.

Agreed.  The second time should clear everything.  If the characters are to remain \"permanent\" all should start off exactly equal.  Though during the pre-release stages, I think Seytra\'s estimate of every 3 months might not be that far off...  New things can\'t be implemented properly without the wipes.  It\'s not evil, it just has to be done.  Deal with it.

[CadRipper]

Seeln: That\'s true, I\'ve seen many petitions and posts about this problem. If it didn\'t work in your case, maybe you should give the information to the devs so that they can check if they can reproduce the bug and hopefuly fix it.

Originally posted by Seytra
So whom do all the people turn to when they discover that all the quick path creation did was to discard their CP?

The developers are currently the only ones who can help them in that case.

Has this problem been reported? I see two closed issues in the bugtracker about CP but I know other tools were used. Did anyone got a feedback on this?

Originally posted by Seytra
Relaxing the rule, obviously. Since this fatal decision was made, I rarely see a GM > L1 on, and even if, the only thing they actually change are offensive and ridiculously obvious copy-cats. Even people like \"Superboi\" or \"Gigabit\" are left alone. :rolleyes:

As for the oldbie argument: it is a fact that there are several oldbies, including GMs, who have characters with names that don\'t (or barely) fit the naming rules. However, they are left alone because they\'re oldbies or GMs. Newbies, OTOH, with these names would have to be changed. This is hypocrisy.

That\'s what I thought, the question came from the fact that most people felt the other way round about the naming rules. But I\'m sure you saw the endless discussions about that in the forums: GMs are now seen as people sitting and unfairly renaming people when they\'re too bored to ban or kick. Maybe by the trolls themselves though, which is why I wouldn\'t care much

Name issues have always been a pain, since day 1. Personally I\'d go on enforcing them as before, but on a practical level it\'s very awkward. Firstly because the name space is too small (maybe other characters could help a little bit), secondly because of the success of Planeshift. You simply have too many trolls to handle, and come to think of it, it\'s not different in commercial games where you regularly find silly names too.

After months of experience and ungratifying struggle, we all came to the same conclusion, relaxing is the only way.

What confused me in your argument is that the database wipe will reintroduce the names of MB, which are not RPG compliant for the most part. A lot of them have been changed, we\'ll see if they\'ll be changed this time with the new rules.

Originally posted by Seytra

Originally posted by CadRipper
but it would be bad to tell that to everyone since it seems to render a whole part of the community inactive (a concept I\'ll never entirely grasp).

The only reason I can see for this is that these people aren\'t mainly roleplaying but mostly powerlevelling, which is why I am all for scheduling a complete wipe every three months.

I\'m not a fan of PL, but I do think that a balanced experience is more enjoyable than pure RP, or pure crafting, or only fighting and so on. And I\'m convinced this view is shared by quite a few others. Except for pure RP, you need to progress to certain skill levels to enjoy it, so that\'s probably another reason that could explain this reaction.

I think there\'s more to it. When you are in a guild and want to try out a few ideas (e.g. teamwork, progression steps, ...), but that you are told the database will be reset soon, it tends to demotivate most of your members. They won\'t start something that can take a while if they see a big \"DB wipeout soon\" warning.

At least for those two reasons I wouldn\'t schedule a regular wipeout over a too short span of time. It\'s also worth pointing out that a part of the test is about the evolution of characters, the developers probably won\'t have a significant feedback on short periods.

[Efflixi Aduro]

Originally posted by Seytra
As for the lemurs: I, too, think that all races should be be available. They don\'t need models, but they should be selectable. Gender and appearance can be changed later on, but the race cannot be as easily.

Exactly. Could you guys do this before you wipe? *puppy dog eye*
Pweeeezy

[Seytra]

Originally posted by CadRipper
Has this problem been reported? I see two closed issues in the bugtracker about CP but I know other tools were used. Did anyone got a feedback on this?

Originally posted by CadRipper
That\'s what I thought, the question came from the fact that most people felt the other way round about the naming rules. But I\'m sure you saw the endless discussions about that in the forums:

I have seen the countless threads of people who wanted to keep names that are unsuitable, yes. However, this does not mean that everyone feels that way, or even that most do. In fact, the (now locked) \"names\" thread proves that I am by far not the only one who is utterly unsatisfied with the current developments. In fact, there has been more people supporting a return to the previous standards ,and within a shorter time, than I have ever seen on one of the \"I want a dumb name\" threads. The reason why these usually aren\'t as vocal about it is because contrary to the 1337ers they have posted these arguments countless times before, whereas every 1337er thinks they are the first and also otherwise special.

Originally posted by CadRipper
Name issues have always been a pain, since day 1. Personally I\'d go on enforcing them as before, but on a practical level it\'s very awkward. Firstly because the name space is too small (maybe other characters could help a little bit),

In one of the naming threads, I calculated how many names were available, and IIRC with 10 letters I arrived at an astronomically high number that would allow to even not use 9 out of ten names and still be higher than the numbers of chars that were ever created in PS AB, MB and CB together. The name generator has no trouble coming up with new names. It\'s just the players whjo don\'t bother to use it / want to stand out for \"1337ness\" by having an improper name.

Originally posted by CadRipper
secondly because of the success of Planeshift. You simply have too many trolls to handle, and come to think of it, it\'s not different in commercial games where you regularly find silly names too.

Indeed, but in commercial games noone cares, because every troll is another paying custome. Therefore, allowing every possible name will yield higher income than would properly enforcing the rules, which is why obviously no company is going to do it.

Nevertheless, what we do now shapes what the community will become. We see this from AB and MB -> CB: the longer an improper name has been allowed to exist, the harder it will be to change it. Even GMs, who must be absolutely pristine since they are supposed to enforce the rules, have chars with improper names (this bigotry is probably one of the reasons for the relaxation of the rules!).
The more popular PS becomes, the more important is consistent enforcement of the rules, because word of mouth will influence whom people introduce to PS.
Therefore, if the enforcement is strict, the number of trolls will rise, but the number of people for whom PS isn\'t the right game will dwindle if even MMORPG websites say something like \"WARNING: very strict naming rules\", greatly reducing the amount of renaming and also sharpening the distinction between trolls and RPers.

Originally posted by CadRipper
After months of experience and ungratifying struggle, we all came to the same conclusion, relaxing is the only way.

Tell this to the police IRL...

Originally posted by CadRipper
What confused me in your argument is that the database wipe will reintroduce the names of MB, which are not RPG compliant for the most part. A lot of them have been changed, we\'ll see if they\'ll be changed this time with the new rules.

Indeed it will, but I expect the bearers of these names to /petition for a namechange immediately. Also, the char creation should automatically assign a preliminary random name upon upload if the previous name already is in the bad name database, which can easily be checked. But with the current \"enforcement\", I have no hopes of names like \"Waterforbody\" ever being changed.

Originally posted by CadRipper
I\'m not a fan of PL, but I do think that a balanced experience is more enjoyable than pure RP, or pure crafting, or only fighting and so on. And I\'m convinced this view is shared by quite a few others.

It is shared by me, to the point where RP ceases to be prime priority.

Originally posted by CadRipper
Except for pure RP, you need to progress to certain skill levels to enjoy it, so that\'s probably another reason that could explain this reaction.

Point taken.

Originally posted by CadRipper
I think there\'s more to it. When you are in a guild and want to try out a few ideas (e.g. teamwork, progression steps, ...), but that you are told the database will be reset soon, it tends to demotivate most of your members. They won\'t start something that can take a while if they see a big \"DB wipeout soon\" warning.

This I do not understand. If you are in a guild, then obviously you will expect the guild to be refounded and the members to return after the wipe, no? Therefore, if you progress through the ranks in the guild, you can reasonably assume that you will get promoted to your former rank immediately after the wipe? Also, teamwork is immediate, and it doesn\'t depend on your chars stats, so this can be done up until the second before the wipe and continued right after the wipe.

Originally posted by CadRipper
At least for those two reasons I wouldn\'t schedule a regular wipeout over a too short span of time. It\'s also worth pointing out that a part of the test is about the evolution of characters, the developers probably won\'t have a significant feedback on short periods.

Indeed I assumed that part of the reason for the wipe is feedback on char progression. Yet, the whining will be even louder if after, say, 12 months of grinding \"for a purpose\" another wipe will be announced, than after three months. In fact, I don\'t dislike \"building my char\" as people call it. It just is 1) only tertiary priority, the others being RP and exploration, and 2) something I do strictly within the confines of what my char realistically would learn. The only reason why I actually trained several things was to be able to find bugs in them. In fact, I regard the so called \"hunting\" (read: grinding) as 95% OOC activity.

[CadRipper]

Originally posted by Seytra
In one of the naming threads, I calculated how many names were available, and IIRC with 10 letters I arrived at an astronomically high number [...]

Most people don\'t like to have the name of their character handed to them, they like to choose it and it\'s quite natural. And their imagination has nothing to do with astronomy

In any case, unless the use of the random generator is enforced, the classical scenario that you can observe after a while is a newcomer trying one name, then another, yet another... and ultimately comes up with something either stupid or just provocative because they\'re upset. That was typical in the last months of MB, but hopefully the random generator will help in the case of CB - provided that people decide to use it after a few failures.

Originally posted by Seytra
Even GMs, who must be absolutely pristine since they are supposed to enforce the rules, have chars with improper names (this bigotry is probably one of the reasons for the relaxation of the rules!).

The reason is not there. But you\'re right about the names, this has to be tackled soon.

Originally posted by Seytra
Tell this to the police IRL...

Police? GMs are not paid, and they care, that\'s already two big differences. On the similarity side, I\'ll grant you that there are probably not enough of them to get the job done

Seriously, it\'s quite straining to spend one\'s time checking the names, explaining to a troll why their name is wrong (most of the time not getting any form of response, the rest of the time being forced to argue for tens of minutes), trying to find a better name. It often ends up in IRC with a complaint against the GM who then has to justify everything a second time. Or it happens in the forums, which forces a moderator to lock the thread...

And then everyone suddenly wonders why some GMs are not as kind as before. Or not so available for more important issues.

All this pushed towards the \"relaxation\" of the rule, and it doesn\'t mean not renaming bad names, but limiting the action to annoying ones. This rule is still enforced.

But sorry, it\'s getting a bit off-topic...

Originally posted by Seytra
Indeed it will, but I expect the bearers of these names to /petition for a namechange immediately. [...]

Hopefully some will ask for a name change. The name refusal at character creation can\'t be applied because of the migration, and it certainly couldn\'t give a random name without the user\'s approval, it would be harsh to say the least.

Originally posted by Seytra
This I do not understand. If you are in a guild, then obviously you will expect the guild to be refounded and the members to return after the wipe, no? [...]

*nods* The guild structure shouldn\'t be affected. The problem arises when you want to set up a strategy to increase the wealth of the guild, training everyone, buying weapons, ... in summary making it work like a guild, and not individuals.

If a DB reset is planned soon, possibly with a change of the system, most will just think it\'s better to wait until everything is settled. That doesn\'t stop anyone from coming in the game, but that\'s one less possibility.