RP and PL deliberation

[Neryam]

What is Roleplaying? What is Powerleveling?

From other topics and places, Roleplaying is apperently creating an alternative self and building his or her life. ANd playing it.
But I am mainly confused about Powerleveling. Wikipedia says it is \"The exploiting of bugs or a stronger character to help you and kill monsters in RPGs that are far stronger than you normally, thus earning a very large amount of XP for your level and leveling up very quickly. This is considered a form of cheating in most MMORPGs.\"

I discussed it in-game with some random players and 6 out of 7 agreed with this definition. However, the 1 said that \"PS has its own definition or Powerleveling, and what you\'re doing here (We were tag teaming some npcs in the Arena) is powerleveling!\"

Now I am wondering what this \"other definition\" is, is it just killing monsters as a group? Or is it fighting a group of monsters for more that 30 minutes?

Now this brings me to RPing again. What is the apparently fine line between RPing and PLing? Is just walking to a location and killing some monsters on the way RPing or PLing? Is going on a Ulbernaut-killing crusade with your guild and using strategies and teamwork to defeat the dealty monsters RPing or PLing? If all those are PLing, what are the monsters there for?

What I do know for sure is that PS supports RPers and rejects PLers. I know those monsters are there for a reason, so please explain.

I was even driven by that one person to beleive that RPing was just standing around and talking. Now this confuses me, as then the game seems quite useless. Also, if youre supposed to live an alternate reality, what thing in RPing would drive me to play this game rather than live my own life? And if your supposed to RP your magical fantasy alternate character, why would killing monsters be PLing and not RPing? In real medival times plenty of people went on holy crusades and killed things and each other, and in fantasy books they destroyed dragons and overlords and even ancient sentinels and whatever? Now I am really confused.

And that\'s not all - apperently there is a secret dev plan (pardon me) to make the game miserable for \"PLers\" by making enourmous amounts of PP and tria needed for each level. But then does that mean all the other wonderful skills (when implemented) will be incredibly hard to train also? Now this doesn\'t seem very \"RPey\" to me, in real medival life there were definitely master craftmen and swordsmen and kings and whatnot, and in fantasy there are definitely master warriors and magicians and dragon-slayers and druids that can crumble an entire mountain to dust, and I\'d think you\'d really need to be a \'master\' from training and experince to do that and are not a master when you walk out of your house for the first time, so what\'s the deal? I don\'t think with the system now that any of those wonderous \'master magicians\' or \'high druids\' or \'best swordsman ever to live\' like in the shannara books and LOTR will arise, and Everybody will be sitting in the town square or tavern and chatting instead. I don\'t quite get it.

Can someone very kindly explain all this? And read the whole thing before saying anything big. :rolleyes:

[Zan]

In my opinion PS does have a somewhat different opinion on power leveling ... which I \'ll try to express but don\'t kill me if it \'s not completely accurate, these are just my views here.

What they mean by a powerleveler is someone who will go to all costs to get to a higher skill level while neglecting the rest. These are the people that usually exploit cheats the most but they don\'t have to per se. I think you could say that those people that don\'t put any effort into roleplaying but are only concerned in making their character stronger are labeled as PLers.
The examples you gave .. working in a team and such seem to lean a lot closer to roleplaying than powerleveling.

Personally I \'ve been on one of those Ulbernaut Crusades you mentioned with a pretty decent group of people .. if we just went out to kill the ulber in order to get pp\'s it would be considered PLing but since we created a whole story around it and most of us didn\'t quite care about the pp\'s, only the group experience of it all, I \'d say it is definitely roleplaying.

This one person you talked to seems to be exaggerating a bit since I don\'t think killing monsters is anti-RP if you dress it in nicely.

The thing that is up with the enormous amounts of trias and PP\'s needed to level up .. well I suspect the Devs intend to make roleplaying more rewarding than killing creatures in the future. How they are going to do that is something we \'ll have to see

[Karyuu]

Hiya! First thing:

Originally posted by Neryam
[...] apperently there is a secret dev plan (pardon me) to make the game miserable for \"PLers\" by making enourmous amounts of PP and tria needed for each level.

May I inquire as to where you heard this? It doesn\'t seem like something the dev team would have in mind. Mentioning a specific source would help tons :) I\'m quite curious.

Then: I believe powerleveling as it is defined in Planeshift is not so different from the definition provided by you in the beginning. As I see it, powerleveling is the completely OOC grinding of skills and stats for very little purpose beyond building a sort of \"uber\" character - being the best, having the most, etc. The characters of most powerlevelers are nonexistant - the players themselves are doing all the killing or grinding, not the Enkidukai, or Dermorians, or Klyros or Hammerweilders, who all should have some sort of story behind them, some sort of personality, and a reason for every action that goes along with such.

A roleplayed character may very well have daily Trepor killing sprees, or spend hours upon hours with trainers. But he or she will always talk and handle him or herself in a distinct, IC manner, and have a reason for killing and a reason for training. Being the best swordsman is a perfectly valid goal, but what good is a best swordsman in Yliakum if he or she has no alignment, no definition of morals (barely there or held tightly in check), no enemies, no friends, and no plans besides being the best? It\'s the ties players form between their characters and the characters of others that make PlaneShift and all other true MMORPGs magical. When the goal is simply to kill sprites on screen and raise some numbers, that magic is destroyed.

At least that\'s how I see it.

[Xordan]

Originally posted by Neryam
And that\'s not all - apperently there is a secret dev plan (pardon me) to make the game miserable for \"PLers\" by making enourmous amounts of PP and tria needed for each level. But then does that mean all the other wonderful skills (when implemented) will be incredibly hard to train also?

The idea is to make it so that lots of people don\'t become amazing at everything within a few months of playing, and to make things boring for people who just spawn camp monsters all day. It certainally won\'t make things boring for other people who take part in quests and other features which we will impliment in the future. As we\'re in a \'testing\' phase for the game, you should expect to see the rules change often as new features are added. I doubt we will have a completed set of rules until a much later version of the game.

[Neryam]

Personally I \'ve been on one of those Ulbernaut Crusades you mentioned with a pretty decent group of people .. if we just went out to kill the ulber in order to get pp\'s it would be considered PLing but since we created a whole story around it and most of us didn\'t quite care about the pp\'s, only the group experience of it all, I \'d say it is definitely roleplaying.

Ah this makes sense.. yeah and theyre quite fun too.

The idea is to make it so that lots of people don\'t become amazing at everything within a few months of playing, and to make things boring for people who just spawn camp monsters all day. It certainally won\'t make things boring for other people who take part in quests and other features which we will impliment in the future.

Right, this was what I hoped.. So there would be diffrent better ways to obtain those other skills other than crafting 10,000 swords right? Cause that would make sense then.

That one guy was quite rude, and although I won\'t mention any names I did expect he was sortof a smart-aleck extremist. :]

Oh and @Karyuu yea Xordan was the one I heard the \"secret\" plan from, its not really secret but as you can see he posted right here so there you go.. although this was mentioned in a few other topics too.

[TheMinority]

basically, watch out for the players going \"LOL u c@nt b3at m3 i hve l33t skilz n u sux0rz!1!1!11one!1!\"

and, because everyone else got to give a definition, here\'s  my version of the planeshift version of the definition of PL:

 i believe that a PL is one who believes that the whole point of the game is to become the strongest character possible. while the levelling of characters to become stronger is PART of the game, it is not the sole purpose. the purpose is to play the life of your character, meet people, experience a new world, and have fun. not just mindless killing of monsters to gain levels. (although killing monsters does become mindless when you\'re trying to get a sword you want or are collecting something for a quest. ^_^)

and true, not all PLers type like above, and some RPers type like that too, but yeah... generally, most RPers tend to use somewhat correct grammar and avoid the \"l33t\". bow to the grammar wizard, ye knaves!

@Neryam: true, i have met someone who was quite rude... and by quite, i mean he was a total *WOOPS*!!! bah. i won\'t rant here. >_<

[Neryam]

Hehe  

Suprising enough, I havn\'t seen much l33tsp33k in PS..  ) Which is a good thing.

So spending 3/4 of your time at a spawn point blankly double-clicking each time the monster  spawns would be a PLer.

Actually I think the PS-PL sorta breeds and draws Wiki-PL as a result  :rolleyes:

[SnowWolf]

To the true Role Player \'Power Leveling\' does not exist - only bad RPing!

If someone exploits cheats that is against the rules - but rules are a developer\'s problem. You are only around to have fun, right?

If you like killing with no back story and that is fun for you, why should that bother me? My character only sees some lunie who\'s spent too much time in the woods.

It is my personal opinion that anyone calling themselves a roleplayer should be responsible for their own fun. With a little imagination, any weird PLers, n00bs, or whatever will become part of the story. If a GM or DEV decides to add to your fun - yay for the community - you\'ve made some friends.

Otherwise, deal with it.

[Neryam]

Ah, good, I\'m glad you think that. Because not many do... Most people think PLers should be purged from PS and some thing RPing is stupid..

Shades of grey are good in a game, I think.

[Kim]

I have to agree with SnowWolf. I haven\'t been on PS long, but I can imagine how being uber fanatical on either end of the spectrum can be grating. As a RPer, you can imagine an excuse for the PLer\'s behavior most of the time, and still have fun by talking to them as if they\'re the town nutcase.

I\'ll have to admit it can get really annoying if you are surrounded by them though, but I\'m also new and don\'t know many other RPers yet. That\'ll change in time. If only I could get my client to work again...

[Neryam]

HAHA the town nutcase, yes, I like that one.  

Mabye the extremists who think PLers should be wiped off the face of the earth can be nutcases too  :]

I shall implement this in my RPing right now.

Your client doesn\'t work?

[Kim]

I\'m on a Mac, so even though ChaOs and dfryer finished an updater for it, it\'s not working correctly for everyone. I can get into the game, but the graphics are all buggy, most of my commands won\'t work and it crashes every time I try to loot a kill. Actually it crashes for a lot of things.

In effect, it\'s almost impossible to play. I spawn in Ojaveda and haven\'t even tried the trip to the Plaza, since I\'m sure it\'ll never make it.

So I\'m sitting tight until there\'s a fix and going to work on writing my character\'s history for the time being.

[Seytra]

The definitions given for PLing average at what I have in mind, so I won\'t add yet another one.

However, I am most certainly against having any sort of PL ingame. Furthermore, there is no meaningful way to RP others PL without destroying the world as it is supposed to be. If you RP the myriads of PLs, then you get a world that is filled with mindless drones. Furthermore, they do bother because of the challenge / guild invite spamming they often do, let alone the constant duelling in places that would in no realistic city be accepting it, like the plaza, which doesn\'t just clobber the landsape with completely unrealistic violence, but also clogs up the chat window with the system messages (yes, it can be filtered, but the filters also filter other things so this makes you do extra work switching tabs).
Furthermore \"RPing\" a reply to \"This game rocks\" is just silly. For me, from an IC perspective, PLs or in fact any form of non-RP do not exist. RPing bugs is just the same: there are no glitches, bugs or engine limitations in Yliakum.

[TheMinority]

but, is not our world also full of mindless drones running amuck in the streets? *cough*teens*cough*  XD

you can\'t get rid of the PLers, so why bother complaining? they\'re present in any RP game (except those that are text based... since you have to be a genius to understand those anyway).

my advice to those who want the PLers just to vanish forever: ignore them. sure they are annoying, sure they do spam, sure they do bicker and argue over who killed who...

or better yet! think of this:

aren\'t we, the RPers, doing the same thing? granted, we\'re not being mindless killing machines, but we are bickering over this whole ordeal. sometimes we just stand in the plaza for hours! doing nothing but talking!

perhaps instead of having this argument, we should be setting an example to those who do PL. instead of standing around the plaza, why not get a group of friends and go hunting? or go the tavern and have an ale? or just go take a walk somewhere. i think if we showed the PLers that RPing isn\'t just standing around like a bunch of old fogies, we might be able to persuade them. i know quite a few newbies who would have made great RPers, but instead became more of PLers, simply because they wanted some ACTION with their game... not just standing around, talking.

and some of them won\'t get it and will continue to be annoying, but it\'s something we can\'t get rid of.

RPing is playing the life of your character, not talking it. PLAYING. as in MOVING AROUND. i mean, even if you want to stand in the plaza, how about just switch places? make things interesting. you wouldn\'t be able to stand for countless hours in one place in real life, now could you?

i\'m not trying to point the finger; i too have stood in the plaza for countless hours, doing nothing but talking. i\'ve never been on an ulber-hunt with a large group of friends (mainly since i wouldn\'t do anything except tickle the ulber with my little knife... ), and i too have gotten mad at the PLers and wanted to just burn them all with heat vision. but i do try to help the newbies in developing their characters into excellent RPable people.

i just think we could try actually DOING something WHILE RPing... it\'s crazy, but hey. it could work. and if it doesn\'t, you may all give me a wedgie. : (

[Seytra]

Well, this obviously depends on what your char does, but I nonobviously agree. My RP usually involves changing locations and other movement. Granted, not moving vast distances, and almost never killing monsters, but even these do occur. This is why I am so badly hit by the almost unworkable controls: I find myself unable to properly accompany my RP with moves. /me-ing does what movement cannot do, but what can be done by moving, will be done by moving.

Furthermore, the people in the plaza are not RPing. IMO, they are just as bad as the PLs, because what they are doing is OOC chatting. Not just that, the chat is more often than not not designated properly. Basically, I shun the plaza for the PLs, \"funny people\" and chatters.

Edit: Indeed the only thing to do about PLs is to ignore them, which I do. Not just in RP, but in everything else as well. Trading or even talking with a PL is encouraging them.