I want to know. What do the devs have planned to save this game?

[Karyuu]

The \"Big Wipe,\" as it has been dubbed, is a wipe of all the characters - so skills, stats, inventory, everything. All characters will have to be recreated from scratch.

This wipe has just been a removal of weapons with a slash above 10.

[Vjorin]

No, I understand that.  But I thought there was a big wipe months ago.  I only assumed so because I created and played an account on an earlier version of PlaneShift, but when I came back recently, I didn\'t have any characters.

[Karyuu]

Ah, my mistake. There was a wipe before, but it certainly isn\'t the only one to happen ever. There will be many to come until the team feels that stability has been reached and balancing no longer requires a clean start. We\'re so early in development that sometimes wipes are simply necessary - and they are never done if they can be avoided.

[Ewesat]

OK. I will try to both answer the original question in this thread and provide my perspective on some of the issues raised.
As far as needing some sort of overall goal to \"save\" PS from losing players to boredom or lack of motivation, I may have agreed before I really thought about the focus of PS. Having some grand overarching objective would be cool, though it would of course eventually come to an end (unless there is a continuous string of new ones -- who has the time?), but if the focus of PS is on having a large world with strong roleplaying then such an objective is not needed. The motivation in such a world comes from you as a character in the game world and your interactions with the other characters (player or non-player).
At the moment there may not be much else to do other than kill a limited number of monsters and mine some gold, but as more and more features are added there will be an increasing number of options for going on your own adventures (either alone or in a group). When there are seven levels to explore and all sorts of skills it will be much easier to form a group to go on a grand adventure to a far away city and search for the treasure rumored to be hidden there. Right now this may be feasible, but having some drinks in the tavern and shooting the breeze with fellow adventurers is still fun.
Now this doesn\'t mean that some sort of large scale quest or objective would detract from the game, but I don\'t think its necessary. Also, as more features/areas/skills/etc are added some of the players who left will come back to try them out, and there will be more and more new players all the time. (Who can resist such beautiful game that\'s free to play and open-source?) I agree that you can visit the same area only so many times and when I reach that point I may take a break, but I\'ll be glad for the time I spent with the game.
As for some of the issues about the expectations for RP seeming too strict and driving away many new players, and the mods on these boards occasionally seeming too blunt or ill-tempered when responding to concerns regarding these expectations, I would have originally agreed as well. But then I thought about from their point-of-view and realized that they (devs and mods) are likely tired of continually emphasizing that the focus of PS is on roleplaying. Also, since RP is the focus having \"only\" 10,000 people interested in actual role-playing would make the game more successful than having 1,000,000 players with 99% of them named \"h4x 4nd sl4shz0r\" saying \"HEY PPLS WHER IZ teH SEWRZ!! GIVE ME A SORD I WILL KILL j00!\" I would have to agree.

[Bnm85]

Personally, I don\'t think that people would bother complaining or making suggestions about the game, or even wanting to save it, if they didn\'t like it in the first place or if they didn\'t care for it.

That\'s why I think \"don\'t like it, don\'t play it\" argument is rather unfriendly or even rude.

If I play a game and I absolutely hate it from the get-go, I will not even bother posting about saving it or making suggestions to the devs on how to improve it. I simply would not care enough and move onto a better game instead.

Having said that, the fact that devs work on it on their free time and that the game itself is free should be appreciated, of course. But they made this game public and hope to attract players and other developers, so they should expect both, positive and negative feedback.

If they really don\'t want to hear negative feedback, they are just as free to make this game private (to play with each other) and the \"problem\" is solved.

C\'mon, if people want to play and enjoy this game and they\'d like to see improvements, there\'s nothing wrong with suggesting one thing or another.

I\'m not bashing the devs or mods or even anyone here. I know their jobs can be hard. And no, the devs don\'t \"owe\" anyone anything. But it is understanable when people voice their concerns about where the game is going. I don\'t think they take it for granted, I certainly don\'t. I just think that a typical player/dev relation with positive and negative feedback is unavoidable, just because this game is free.

I really wouldn\'t want to be a part of a forum where everyone only posts positives about a game, and anything negative is bashed and/or censored, only to be disappointed rather than prepared for a game\'s cons later. I do agree that discussions on negative should not get out of hand. Keeping things civil is important.

Just IMO, so don\'t bash me for it. I wouldn\'t even be here if I didn\'t want PS to succeed.

[Xyl]

**Pre-warning: I\'ve only read the first page of this topic, so I might have missed a lot in the other 3 pages, I\'m just too lazy to read the rest... **

Having read Talad\'s post, I\'d like to see a possible bounty system included in planeshift in the future. One where people who do things unlawfully (Steal, Killing NPC\'s or other players in non-combat areas) get a bounty rating lpaced upon their head (Placed on NPC and Player Characters).

A bounty hunter(s) can then sign up for the task of tracking down and killing these unlawful people, for a reward based on the bounty rating.

To keep this from becoming a scene where every person who joins is a bounty hunter and there are no evil characters, a system where evil factions/guilds require a certain bounty rating before they will allow your to join their guild or buy there items. This would encourage people to be evil, which will encourage others to be good. Which in turn, should provide a roughly natural balance of GoodVSEvil to keep players entertained. (AI logical based quests from NPC is limited, but the mind of a gamer is limitless, let the players create the quests on the fly)
Imagine having a 100000Tria bounty on your head for your unlawful crimes, your always living on the run, never staying in the same town longer then a few hours, just so people don\'t spot you and alert the local bounty hunters.

I personally reckon it would be a blast to be an evil character on the run, never safe, but making a lot of money and getting a reputation with the evil guilds. But I would also see it being awesome being a lawfully bound character, tracking down these evil characters and trying to return peace to our world. Making a lot of money in the process

Anyway, just my 2 Hexa worth

[nightstalian]

Originally posted by zanzibar
Even if all the skills and spells are implimented....

Even if the already gorgeous game recieves the rest of the character models, clothing, and items....

Even if there\'s a huge bestiary and many maps.....



That won\'t be enough to save Planeshift.



So my question is, what will be the point of it?  What will save it?



What I mean is, characters need to have a constant motivation that everything else is framed around.  The quests which are in game right now are very limmited, and seem to be rooted mostly in the pursuit of material wealth or power.  There\'s no evil army to fight, or a great war which players are taking sides in, or political espionage or a mystery or anything else for that matter that players enter the game with as their primary concern.  Right now, there\'s just power levelling, exploring, and socializing.

Hate to break it to you, but the most played and well known mmorpg was based off of that alone though I hate the most people like it. it being Runescape

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by Xyl
Having read Talad\'s post, I\'d like to see a possible bounty system included in planeshift in the future. One where people who do things unlawfully (Steal, Killing NPC\'s or other players in non-combat areas) get a bounty rating lpaced upon their head (Placed on NPC and Player Characters).

There already is a bounty system in place.


It\'s called \"role playing\".