Path of the Roleplayer.

[Under the moon]

This is what I have been wishing for since I very first logged into the game so long ago:

I want a third path in Character Creation tailored and fit to roleplayers. One that you can create exactly the character you have in mind, with the powers and 'stats' you need to play that character convincingly to both RPers and the levelers, who see only stats when trying to RP. There would limits and caps, of course. A roleplay created character would not be able to 'level up' as much due to reduced experience given in the game. They would also not be able to make 'uber' characters, as there would be limits due to a semi class system (sort of like the Quick paths in CC now). Nothing major, just something to keep folks from making a character that is great at everything. I do so hate that. Another thing that would keep everyone but dedicated RPers form choosing this path would be restricted access to most basic ‘newbie’ quests. Only ‘epic’ level quests would be open. There would also be some sort of death penalty for combat related death. Time spent in DR or loss of items. Or maybe limited number of times dying. Not sure on that yet.

The "Why": Easy. There are five basic reasons. One, there are a lot of players out there that don't like 'leveling' and running around killing things. I happen to be one of them. I grew out of Diablo...well, halfway through playing it.

Two: the way the game is now, any history you may have made up is nullified by the way you have to play. Take someone who is RPing a merc that has been one all his life. Now he has to go out of character for a few weeks just to get the 'stats' to back that up. That makes no sense in an RP game. Unless we are intended to all play the same helpless peasants in the start? If that is the case, many people will quit right now.

Three: Time. I work forty-plus hours a week, plus an hour and a half of travel time a day. Take life duties into account, and I can play very little at a time. Most of the time, not at all during the week. There are a great many folks out there with that same problem. We simply don't have time to waste on doing something that is not fun to us. AKA, leveling. A fight on occasion is fun, but not the requirement to do it as a job. The same for mining.

Four: Balance. The game is precariously tipped to powerlevers right now. I don't care what crafts or other things you add, it will still be this way. While RPers are 'wasting time' (as I was told by a PLer) talking, they are out becoming gods and hording piles of money. Then they come back in and try to RP with the ones who do not PL. It is an awful mess, as they take one look at the “You evaluate…” text, and RP by that.  *sigh* It has happened to me. Another thing is that most RPers I know seem to have more than one character. I have seven right now, which is more than average, I know. Can you imagine all the time I would have to spend on each of them? It makes me cringe. That is why I only play the little people. Even leveling one or two characters is a lot of wasted time to a roleplayer.

Five: The challenge. A roleplay path character will have actual consequences for their actions. The wrong moves can lead to the loss of that character. many epic single player RPGs have this, and it makes for some great suspense and game play.

That is basically it. Many roleplayers would like this. Many many other people would not. That is why it would be a nice option.

You may now go into indignant flaming rant mode.

[Siteri Kidachi]

...Would you get something out of it?

[Under the moon]

"...you can create exactly the character you have in mind, with the powers and 'stats' you need to play that character convincingly..."

Yes. Hours and hours of saved time.

[Gundam Shimmabuku]

I like the Idea, but you would need a failsafe to make sure nobody made the best player in the world, and dominated everyone else. It would break the balance.

[Karyuu]

I know for certain that some members of the team believe that actually playing the game (and yes, that means training) is as important as roleplaying. Coming in with an awesome character, while it does save a player time, feels "easy." We're here to evolve our characters from nothing. As interesting as this idea sounds, to me it seems just like someone buying an account to a game like WoW for instance, with (nearly) everything already leveled and all the cool stuffs and... that's it. You're almost done. Now you hang around and act cool.

And yes, I am well-aware that powerful characters for RP are sometimes necessary, but who feels better about their character - someone who worked with them day and night for months, or someone who clicked a few buttons?

[Under the moon]

Day and night for months... Clicking on rats, then teffus, then bandits... That is not roleplaying. That is pure hell. That is assuming some of us have day and night to play.

I do work on my characters day and night, but I don't spend that time in front of a screen clicking. I develop them in my mind. Words, actions, intertwining pasts, all of it. And I enjoy that far more than the infinitely boring select-click-kill. /dig, nothing. /dig, nothing. /dig, yay, something.

If you read my post, you would have understood that this does not give an advantage over the ‘trained’ players. This path comes with severe limits and costs. An RP path character will -never- be able to ‘level’ as high as the other paths. But what does that matter to a player what has exactly the character they want. There is only one way to roleplay the game now without going out of character. That is to start out as the know nothing farm boy/girl who just comes to the big city to make hisher way in the world. There is no other way. You say you are a great warrior as you first step into the game? Your stats say otherwise.

I resent you comparing this to purchasing an account in WoW, Diablo, or any of the other ‘Player progression” games. Not only that, it implies to me that that is all there is to this game as well. Get to the top after months of work…then look cool? That disturbs me to think of it that way. But, it brings to mind the Super Weapons of Uber Death, and the cool new armor that everyone HAS to have. Oh, and the bestest shiny magics! gotta have those.

And also, certain team members are wrong. There are many ways to roleplay, and not all of them consist of endless hours of training, and doing ‘tasks’ (I refuse to call them quests) that everyone else has done before them. You are cutting out all the players who do not like to play that way. You may remember them...as they walked out the door.

I counter your question with one of my own. Who feels better, the person who spent all that time clicking their way to uberpowerfullness in every stat they can then has nothing left to do, or the person who has to sit on the sidelines wishing they had the time just to make the character they wish for?

Answer me that. Then tell me why I should stay.

[ramlambmoo]

I think a good way to fix this problem would be to limit the amount of experience and/or tria/items that can be obtained in say a 48 hour period.  If there were a limit of, say, 10 monsters that you could kill each 48 hour period to give you experience, then you would not be at a disadvantage if you could only login a reasonable amount of time every 2 days, compared to being able to be online 10 hours a day.  You could still kill more than 10 monsters in that time period- but it would be for pure roleplay, as you wouldnt gain anything extra.  If this were implemented straight after a complete character wipe, then the roleplayers would be able to strengthen their characters at the same rate as the powerlevers.  The 48 hours could be tweaked to be longer or shorter, as necessary. 

The result of this would be a far greater portion of time in game spent roleplaying, as people would be forced to actually do something with that extra time that isnt going to strengthen their character to ridiculous levels.

Anyone else think this is a good idea / horrible idea?  Criticisms?

[Suno_Regin]

I completely agree with you. Powerleveling just...completely takes out the feel of who I'm trying to roleplay, it makes me want to just abandon the character because I did something OOC. Back when I first started playing, I loved it, and played and learned to roleplay as I went. Well guess what? First character was ruined due to OOC actions. I didn't quite know how to roleplay, but it was a nicely powerleveled character I'd spent a lot of time on. So, I make another...guess what? The monster AI's were working again, so I had to train on rats...for so...so...long. That got boring as HELL, so I go to mine and see if I can get a little money. Dig, nothing, dig, nothing, dig, nothing...45 times later, dig, you found some gold. Hurray, I spent an hour trying to get money and I got 2 progression points and one gold that only sells for 40 some trias. Now I have to do that 9 more hours so I have enough money to get that one level. And here's something highly retarded - I never meant for that character to be a miner, but the way things are it's the only way to gain money. Sure, there'll be things in the future, but mining is no different from powerleveling. I have to go totally OOC to powerlevel, and all I want is more intelligence for my character, and that's it. Say I'd want to be...a smart enkidukai? Well, out of character creation, I choose just about every intelligence-based stat I can think of, but there's that blasted CP, darn. What are my finishing stats? Oh, this is interesting...94 agility, 48 intelligence. What the hell? Races, and powerleveling, and these unoriginal histories, oh and my mortal enemy, CP, completely ruined my character. Now to get that intelligence I want to roleplay my enkidukai scholar, I have to go and mine for money, then grab swords and max that skill so I can get more than 30 experience per kill.

This RP path thing, I don't entirely understand it, but I would like it to be implimented. From what I know, you're saying that skills should be gained through RP, and from your character's history, not powerleveling, right? Some limits of course, but none of that CP "you can't have this skill it'd make you overpowered" crap just to give you enough intelligence to still not even figure out how strong someone is so you can roleplay with your character. Maybe my character just wants to be a good groffletoe player? He would need high intelligence, MAYBE charisma? Well I have to max all my other stats, then max swords and go kill everything I see. Then I have to mine until my finger goes numb from clicking that damned mine shortcut so many times. Heyyy, whaddya know? I finally have maxed intelligence, but now everyone knows me as "that powerleveler" not "that roleplayer" because I spent weeks on end maxing all those stats and skills just so I could get my freaking intelligence where I needed it. I'm certainly not gonna be able to only train intelligence with low stats, no fighting skill, and only 30 experience per kill. It's stupid.

[zanzibar]

A couple problems:

1.  All players are supposed to be roleplaying.
2.  Entering the game with a fully levelled character goes against the concept of the game.



It is possible to level up your character and stay in character at the same time, believe it or not.

[Nikodemus]

This idea could work, but there realy needs to be somethink what will stop everybody from choosing it.
I think we can get max rank 70 in sword... Character made along Under the moons idea would start max with 30 out of 60 rank points in lets say sword and now has choice what to do with the rest. Put it all in armor training? a bit on everything?
But we will need changes in current gameplay as well. 1) or 2).
1) you can train every possible skill to 70 (commonly available) sword, axe, melee, mining,crafting, armor... everything
2) at the char creation... if in game you can train sword to 70 and mining to 35, then if you spent a point on sword, you gain a rank, but to gain rank in mining you have to spent 2 points. It all depends whats max in game.
Both will be annoying when devs will want to add new skills and make cap for other skills higher or lover.
Two-three times as hard progressing, possibility for perma deatch and more. All kinds of restrictions may be good.
With such skills we have very avarage character in only one profession. Fair? As long as PLers wont take the path to advance faster, then it is fair for me. If RPers will take he path it is ok for me, as i don't care much about stats of others, as long as they know how to behalve ICly.

[Uyaem]

Serious question: If you only roleplay in the strictest sense possible - why do you even need the stats at all?

Limitations of the setting
The current system that PS (and pretty much all the other games) have is: You start with a simple, comparatively unexperienced player. This somewhat limits you in the choices of your char's history.
The "path of the roleplayer" cannot be effectively limited in a way that is fair and makes sense, unless you have regular life cycles (characters dying eventually, aging, children and all these things - see below). On the contrary, I believe that this "option" would eventually be the choice especially PLers will take as a shortcut. "Imagonna make new char but dnt wanna mezz with lo lvl mobs ololol kthxbai". No good.
Quests? Who cares about quests if you are a true-and-only PL?

Death
The discussion is not new, so I'll cut to the chase: The reason why there's almost no games that have characters who, once they are dead, remain dead. There's an influence outside the game world: the connection between client and server. (fictional now:) Say, you run from Akkaio to Hydlaa and your ISP decides to kick you off the net for a few minutes. Your client exits, but the server has not realized yet that you are offline. Your char, now out of control, runs into a group of ten Ulbernauts. Bam, char is dead and lost forever. This can only cause grief, and as GM or dev we'd have to say "sorry, there's nothing we can do". Now that would suck.

Time in game
I know the problem - I don't have enough time to game as much as I want. And I too hate it if some 14yr old kid levels twice as fast as I do just because they have all afternoon. But that's just it, your character "sleeps" all the time that you are not there. That's also a limitation that is hard to work around. I hate it, but there's not much that can be done. Your char would have to go to "auto-mode" once you log off, instead of disappearing. But if we had that, fragnetics would need a couple dozen more machines to manage the tens of thousands of characters that actually exist - not even mentioning the problem of overpopulation.

[zanzibar]

This wish is pretty useless and even if it did somehow happen (which it never will) it would give nothing to the general community.

[Akaye]

Serious question: If you only roleplay in the strictest sense possible - why do you even need the stats at all?

Now there is a good question and one of which I wonder myself. I don't use my stats. I couldn't care less about them. I used to power level when I first came to planeshift and had no clue what roleplaying was. Now that is all I do when I log into game, I roleplay and care not about what is in my inventory (unless needed for the visual of roleplay), and my stats have no bearing on my roleplaying skills OR my character.   I dream up what I want Zorbels to be, not game mechanics.

When it comes to realistic training hours I think the dev team has the system set up alright. I mean you can't learn to sword fight in one day. It would take hours of training. For me it did just that. Zorbels is awesome with her swords, but give her a pick to dig gold ore and you will get a blank look as she wouldn't know the first thing about mining. My stats and skills say different and that Zorbels does know how to mine. Well I feel more realisim my way so I ignore that stats. Not only that but now I have opened up myself to promoting team work and roleplay because now I can hire a couple of characters to mine for me. Maybe they are not as good at slaying beasts as I am, so instead the make their trias from my skills, and I get some gold ore through their's.   
Now what are those sword skills really used for in my daily roleplay? Absolutely nothing. Oh sure I can kill ulber after ulber, but so what? Where's the fun in that or the realistic feel we seem to be going for in planeshift? Things may change as the game develop's, but for now I think pushing the game to be what it cannot accommodate right now won't help anything.

I wonder at times if people take the way the game is being developed a little to serious, enough to have them lose sight of the fun they once had in this wonderful world. You can be anything you want in planeshift if you don't abuse the rules and settings. Game mechnics does not prevent that or help it either. Only you control your character and what path her/she may take.

  That's just my my opinion, though I do like your idea UTM I really can't see how it will help make planeshift a better place. Also I want to address a little comment you made in your post.

Balance. The game is precariously tipped to powerlevers right now.

The reason I ask this next question is only because as a roleplayer I have never had this effect me and I am curious as to how it may effect you.

Please explain to me how powerleveling effects your roelplaying? Especailly if these people are not involved? If they are invovled then you should kindly tell them that you have a different way of playing planeshift, and powerleveling doesn't fit into your story line. Then encourage and teach them your ways if they are willing to learn. If not then you know who not to invite. To me it is that simple.  PS is a big playground and we don't all have to be friends. We are going to have our differences and not like how the other operates. To accept that and let others play they way the will, while they let you play the way you do ....  is what makes this an awesome community.

Anyway, I have  responded to your wish and hope you understand my criticism, suggestions and confusion on certain issues. 

[Suno_Regin]

To roleplay, we do need strong characters. Just an example:

Back when I was playing as Xidus, half the time when roleplaying people would say "I can beat you easily" because I never powerleveled him. Then when I do finally train him (IC he had the same power) Satayne was saying I got so much stronger since the last time he saw me.

This wouldn't be a problem at all, except duels are almost needed to be IC depending on what you're roleplaying (pretending you're hitting eachother just...doesn't work), and people with enough intelligence can tell how strong you are. I HATE to pretend, anyone who confuses pretending for roleplaying I don't even want to talk to. Pretend is like saying a chair is a lamp. Roleplay is taking on the experiences and life of someone else. I'm not going to pretend my character's buff and can kill anyone (since clearly that doesn't work because of people who ruin the RP saying you're really weak, just because powerleveling takes monthes), I have to powerlevel or else a good RP won't work because of people calling you some noob.

[zanzibar]

To roleplay, we do need strong characters. Just an example:

Back when I was playing as Xidus, half the time when roleplaying people would say "I can beat you easily" because I never powerleveled him. Then when I do finally train him (IC he had the same power) Satayne was saying I got so much stronger since the last time he saw me.

This wouldn't be a problem at all, except duels are almost needed to be IC depending on what you're roleplaying (pretending you're hitting eachother just...doesn't work), and people with enough intelligence can tell how strong you are. I HATE to pretend, anyone who confuses pretending for roleplaying I don't even want to talk to. Pretend is like saying a chair is a lamp. Roleplay is taking on the experiences and life of someone else. I'm not going to pretend my character's buff and can kill anyone (since clearly that doesn't work because of people who ruin the RP saying you're really weak, just because powerleveling takes monthes), I have to powerlevel or else a good RP won't work because of people calling you some noob.

I agree.  We're playing characters within a certain setting.  Our levels are a part of the setting.