News on next update

[Eolius]

Originally posted by Seytra

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 think that wiping characters more often will make powerlevelling a bigger problem because ppl will try to get stronger all the time and having to start over every 3 months will make them camp monsters more.
Anyway, what has powerlevelling to do with RP? The ones who focus on that only will dissapear anyway in a short time as soon as they reach max skills and stats and get bored having nothing else to do.
One can powerlevel and roleplay at the same time.

[jorrit]

Originally posted by Seytra

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.

What\'s wrong with power leveling? As long as it is done in an RP way I see no problems with it. I\'d like to combine RP with PL as I feel that gives me most experience and fun out of the game.

Greetings,

[Arkumin Delvrim]

Ah the Wipe. All my PL stats are belong to them! Run for the hills! Ah! The hills have been wiped! Run for the background!

If you don\'t hang out in the IRC channel #planeshift on irc://irc.freenode.net, you should try it sometime. I\'ve done it enough that while not truly accepted as more than a sometimes amusing most times annoying P.I.T.A, I\'ve gotten to where I can recognize most of the less than 10 full time Developers, a handful of the dedicated and much maligned GM\'s, and a few of the oldbies. Did I say less than 10? Yep, actually it\'s much less than 10.

One of the big differences between chat and message boards is that MB\'s give you a chance to think out yer logic and arguments and responses. Guess what? The all powerful, all knowing, hardworking and dedicated Devs are just people! Imagine that! They\'ve done an incredible job creating a very unique and free virtual world MMORPG that is NEVER going to turn into P2P. So they are NEVER gonna get paid for all this hard work. So they have to hold real jobs and or go to classes at school, deal with their families, do other things than program PS nonstop! OMG! How dare they!

If you don\'t like something about the game, the dreaded WIPE, the fact that it\'s a Tech Demo (OMG I\'ve been playing a Tech Demo!) then do what I did! Demand yer money back! LOL

I\'ve got 2 questions. 1. Are the placeholder graphics gonna get replaced with better graphics? Cause that would be cool! 2. Since this is a tech demo, is it possible you might have to do another wipe at some time in the future? Cause, that seems possible to me...(/me hides behind BeerMugODeath)

To all the Devs, great work! I can\'t wait to continue TESTING this tech demo after the dreaded WIPE!

I\'ll have to stop PL\'ing and use my time in game to RP, because I\'m trying to learn to program using Python for Windows because I\'m scared of Linux. What can I say? Hey, the fact that I PL should say it all! What? Knoppix? (/me sighs) Fine! (/me grumbles about OS elitists and ignores them smirking about python wuss who can\'t hang with a Real high level Language like C++)

I\'ve never had the time or opportunity to test a tech demo before! As we can all see from the game, the IRC channel and the message boards, an open to the public testing policy brings it own headaches as well as rewards. But since I\'m not a Dev, GM or even an MB oldbie, I\'ve had as much fun watching people actually gripe about having the privilege of playing the game, as actually playing the game!

You know what we should all really be happy about? The fact that despite this being a free, not sponsored, never gonna be P2P game, we can usually log on and RPG or PL to our greedy lil hearts content.

Thanks for all the fishes.  You know the movie\'s out. Nobody should have an excuse for not getting this reference!

/me Drinks some Ale and spellchecks another pointlessly long post...

WAIT! Is there gonna be drinking after the WIPE? No, I meant IN the game! LOL

[ramlambmoo]

(/me grumbles about OS elitists and ignores them smirking about python wuss who can\'t hang with a Real high level Language like C++)  

Thats the only part of that incoherent rant I understood.  C++ rocks.  Python sucks.

[Kelden]

I, for one, will be very glad when the UPDATE arrives, no matter what the cost to my poor character\'s persona, wealth and skill levels.  And don\'t let me forget to add my congratulations to the designers, programmers and artists who have all done such a fine job on this on-going project.

My feeling about Role-Playing versus Power-Leveling is that the very act of Role-Playing at this time is very limited.
I could role-play very happily if by means of that role-playing I could derive a continuing satisfaction and feeling of ACCOMPLISHMENT.  But this is not possible at this time.

Our characters are so very limited in what they can actually do.  As I have often said, \"My character can\'t even sit down when he is tired.\"  I cannot \"create\" any new gestures, motions or dances or what have you.  The best I can attempt at this time is to paint a \"word picture\" of my feelings... via an extremely small, single-line chat box that makes this forum window seem an absolute luxury in comparison.

But to continue...

I can mine and mine and mine, but can do little with the ore at this time, except to sell it.  A long, slow and tedious operation that has made the killing of rats seem a blessing... most especially when comparing the relative rewards.

It has not been possible for me to complete any of the quests (the NPC\'s took things from me, but rewarded me with nothing... and I was left with dangling, quests that could not be completed)...

There is, as yet, nothing in the way of a crafting system that would allow me to get a \"day job\" in the game... creating something or selling something or providing a service to others...

It is not yet possible to construct anything within the environment.  No houses, no sculptures, no road blocks...  I wouldn\'t even be able to post some artwork or what have you...

It is not possible to \"customize\" one\'s character.  No head dress, no variation in coloring.  Not even simple shirt or banner designs...

The environment, itself, is also fixed.  Doors cannot open, the scenary is mostly static.  There are no \"puzzles\" to be tackled at this time.  No secret compartments or traps or boxes.  There isn\'t so much there to challenge the player\'s  cleverness. Mostly, the player only has the opportunity to walk or run through the environment... or by a mis-step to occasionally fall to his death or such.

Power Leveling ends up as the only currently viable goal for the player.  And it is then so that Power leveling becomes the daily foundation upon which we characters build our personalities.

Now I do not think that this is completely a bad thing.  And certainly, many of us have had a fine time within this somewhat limited framework.  We have had lots of fun and have made some good \"virtual\" acquaintances and associations along the way.

If there is any criticism at all, it would be that the game has so many \"unexplored ideas\",  so many \"unfinished bits\", so many \"raw edges\".... or should we just look (with a kinder eye) upon this as an \"infinity of future possibilites\"?  One could defininitely make all sorts of suggestions as to how the game could be improved, but it is certainly not bad given its current state of development.

I do not yet know what pleasures (or unexpected BUG\'s) the UPDATE will bring, but I shall look forward to experiencing it and trying (in some way) to develop my persona within the game.  If Power-Leveling is the only viable mode - relative to the limitations imposed by the game\'s structure and environment - then that is the one I shall follow.  But be assured... as other interesting possibilities are made available I shall be more than just a little interested and curious to experiment with them. They will lead to the future... and very possibly to that RP environment of which people speak so lovingly.  ;-)

[Kias]

I tip my hat to you Kelden. An awesome outlook towards the update! I share the same feelings, even though I have an assortment of glyphs, mugs and the like. In the end, the game will only get better and I\'m all for a wipe or two.

[DaveG]

Originally posted by jorrit
What\'s wrong with power leveling? As long as it is done in an RP way I see no problems with it. I\'d like to combine RP with PL as I feel that gives me most experience and fun out of the game.

Thank you for putting it like this.  Too often I either hear RPers ranting about how one should ignore the actual game and only RP, and PLers ranting about how limited the game is and refusing to RP.  It\'s all about creating a level of immersion into a world.  No one wants to need to mindlessly kill things forever (I hope), but getting rid of actual combat all together defeats the purpose of making the game in the first place.  Insane PLing needs to die as a viable option (simply \"training\" is realistic and IC), and RPing needs to become natural.  It\'s all about balance folks.  

[CadRipper]

Nods at the last remark

Originally posted by jorrit
What\'s wrong with power leveling? As long as it is done in an RP way I see no problems with it. I\'d like to combine RP with PL as I feel that gives me most experience and fun out of the game.

... then maybe it\'s not really powerlevelling, but the normal levelling that occurs naturally as you enjoy a more balanced gaming experience

[jorrit]

Originally posted by CadRipper
Nods at the last remark

Originally posted by jorrit
What\'s wrong with power leveling? As long as it is done in an RP way I see no problems with it. I\'d like to combine RP with PL as I feel that gives me most experience and fun out of the game.

... then maybe it\'s not really powerlevelling, but the normal levelling that occurs naturally as you enjoy a more balanced gaming experience

Perhaps but Seytra seemed to suggest that gaining power is inherently bad. No matter how it was done. i.e. the suggestion was even to do a full wipe very three months or so.

Greetings,

[John_Thazer]

So the shadows are gathering yet again...The Great Wipe, that is waited by some, even by me in a way, (maybe this time I will actually be able to use MY NAME, and not some stupid mutation that I had to use just because someone created same first name as me, grrr) is coming soon. Although I am sceptical about this \"soon\".

It\'s nice to see some news released, although when there\'s no news there\'s always cvs which is fun enough.

[Eolius]

Here is an example of powerleveling being necesary for roleplay.
As the quest system was down many players started they\'re own quests (including myself and i plan to do that more often).
So, let\'s say that my father wich was killed by an evil wizard lost his sword somewhere and that thing is verry precious to me.
I give directions and clues to others, based on an old document i found when i avenged my father, and they go searching for my father\'s sword.
They find it but as i\'m weak and canot kill some monsters in order to give them a reward i say \"Thank you my friend.\"
I wonder now if i will get so many ppl doing my quests and search for weeks maby to get a simple \"Thank you\".
I\'m shure some would do it for the adventure and for fun but some would do it for adventure, fun and money.
Plus i would feel verry bad for not rewarding them.
So i still stick to my oppinion that PL and RP can exist in the same place.
To improve roleplaying i think we should have more public activityes although some may wonder how will those help.
Those will help because in fact roleplaying has to do with ppl and if we have activityes where everyone can participate some can meet new friends, can hear they\'re bacground storryes and perhaps they may even have fun.

Edited:

Thank you Cad for the deffinition

Quote from Wikipedia :

Powerleveling is most frequently used in multiplayer games, where it usually refers to a player that is of much greater power assisting a player of much lower power in defeating monsters that are far too powerful for the low level player, but are easily and quickly killed by the more powerful player. Defeating high level challenges rewards the lower level player with experience points more rapidly than normal.

End Quote.

I\'ve rarely seen that happening in Planeshift so i think we are safe
So we are talking about leveling...

[Seytra]

Originally posted by jorrit
Perhaps but Seytra seemed to suggest that gaining power is inherently bad. No matter how it was done. i.e. the suggestion was even to do a full wipe very three months or so.

Probably I have failed to express myself clearly, then. I did not intent to suggest that gaining power is always bad. I was saying that it most often is done without RP reason, RP background, RP justification; in summary: more often than not, levelling and RP are two completely separate things.
Yes, people will argue that they \"RP someone who only wants to gain power, by whatever means\", or that they \"PL in an RP way\". Sadly, this way to paper over their uncaringness for RP becomes obvious when you try to actually RP with them, and also when you witness that the non stat-driven factors that usually are involved in gaining power, namely social interaction, are completely absent from their so called \"RP\".
So what makes that so bad, as RPers can simply ignore them, then?
1) RPers cannot simply ignore them. They are obviously the ones who camp all MOBs, so that when an RPer needs to level they will have to put up with greedy PLers and beg them to let them have a kill or two.
2) How do PLers show off? Exactly, by using their pretty stats. Even if they don\'t start griefing, they will and do battle among themselves or walk around challenging everything that moves or talks or somewhat remotely looks like a player. Therefore, they disrupt the RP by challenge spam and / or by cluttering up the scenery and chat window with their battling.
3) A PL is never going to talk appropriately. They can\'t be bothered to designate their OOC talk. They don\'t even understand nor care what that means.

So yes, PLs do detract from the RP experience. While there may, in some limited cases, be some faint justification of PL in the sense of the third paragraph of the wikipedia entry, i.e., in guilds, there is no justification for it in the sense of the first and second paragraphs.

And yes, I suggested a regular wipe, because it
1) would still allow testing
2) would make all non RP levelling pointless and thus hopefully discourage it completely

I don\'t think it\'d make PL worse, because AFAICS, people who only want to max out their stats will not bother if they know it\'ll all be gone after 3 months at most.

However, as I said, since some levelling is required to be able to believably RP, this would also negatively affect RP.  I\'m not sure how much, though.

As for the limited options that supposedly hinder RP: this is the usual constructed argument PLs use to justify their unwillingness to RP, as DaveG pointed out correctly. There is absolutely no way to ever have the amount of gestures and expressions that would be required to actually RP without any text besides what is spoken by a char. Not as long as full fledged VR is there. While the presence of a lot of animations would certainly help RP, the myriads of variations and ad-hoc gestures cannot be captured by it. /me-ing even is easier to use than animations, because selecting the correct animation will take longer since you need to dig through menus and subsubsubmenus, and also you need to grab the mouse first.

However, jorrits emphasis on PL AFAICS proves that the main focus of the dev team is not RP, but grinding. It is no coincidence that theDuelling Points, that have absolutely no relevance to RP, are present in the stats window. Even worse, the one most important and most complete feature for RP, the char description, has been essentially removed with the introduction of the DP display. This is a sure sign of utter disrespect for RP by whoever did it. As my patch in the tech help section proves, it was quite easy to make the editor usable again, and therefore there is no excuse for this not having been done by the devs before the update was distributed!
There is no way a RP oriented dev could have missed this, so it\'s obvious that it wasn\'t considered important, which is a very very bad sign.
I therefore stand by that while PS claims to be about RP, it in fact is not, and instead is becoming more and more like any other MMO\"RP\"G out there by it\'s implementation, which is the only thing that matters.

[Phinehas]

Originally posted by Eolius
Here is an example of powerleveling being necesary for roleplay.
As the quest system was down many players started they\'re own quests (including myself and i plan to do that more often).
So, let\'s say that my father wich was killed by an evil wizard lost his sword somewhere and that thing is verry precious to me.
I give directions and clues to others, based on an old document i found when i avenged my father, and they go searching for my father\'s sword.
They find it but as i\'m weak and canot kill some monsters in order to give them a reward i say \"Thank you my friend.\"
I wonder now if i will get so many ppl doing my quests and search for weeks maby to get a simple \"Thank you\".
I\'m shure some would do it for the adventure and for fun but some would do it for adventure, fun and money.
Plus i would feel verry bad for not rewarding them.
So i still stick to my oppinion that PL and RP can exist in the same place.
To improve roleplaying i think we should have more public activityes although some may wonder how will those help.
Those will help because in fact roleplaying has to do with ppl and if we have activityes where everyone can participate some can meet new friends, can hear they\'re bacground storryes and perhaps they may even have fun.

If you can\'t figure out a creative alternative to powerlevelling to be able to provide rewards to quests, then I just want to know where you copied the name Eolius from, because you obviously don\'t have enough of an imagination to come up with it on your own...

That is either a lousy excuse, or just plain sad.

[Seytra]

Originally posted by Phinehas
If you can\'t figure out a creative alternative to powerlevelling to be able to provide rewards to quests, then I just want to know where you copied the name Eolius from, because you obviously don\'t have enough of an imagination to come up with it on your own...

That is either a lousy excuse, or just plain sad.

Hmm, actually what Eolius seems to say would be acceptable, because it would
1) while being OOC, have RP as reason,
2) would be going on for a very limited time only and
3) would be done in a nondisruptive as possible way.

Obviously you can team up with someone who has a lot of money to give out the rewards, but they need to get that money first, too. A quest doesn not need a big reward, but it does need some reward. If the reward is big, PLs will do the quest to more easily gain money, so it\'s even a bad thing. Still, it is nice to get something in return, especially to be able to tie in the participation of your char in the quest in your RP.

If that was what he intended to say, that is. Grinding sword, armor and HP up to max in order to be able to provide quest rewards is, obviosuly, pure nonsense. By the time you reach these stats, you could have rewarded hundreds of quests.

[Eolius]

If you can\'t figure out a creative alternative to powerlevelling to be able to provide rewards to quests, then I just want to know where you copied the name Eolius from, because you obviously don\'t have enough of an imagination to come up with it on your own...     That is either a lousy excuse, or just plain sad.

Well, comming up with some quests and not saying \"go look for a sword near the third tree in the woods\" i think it requires a bit of imagination...
I was not trying to start a flame or anything i was just pointing out that one can roleplay and levell up at the same time.
As rewards for the completition of quests please make a sugestion...
The name is not copied neither
I really consider Planeshift GREAT because of the comunity there and not because of the fact that i kill 30 rougues and get a sword and lots of pp.
I also think that ppl should roleplay more but i don\'t think that levelling is stopping ppl from roleplaying.
Who wants only levelling will soon get bored and leave but perhaps menwhile he/she will tell some friends that are not aiming to levell only about Planeshift and the role playing comunity will gain more members