Please find a suitable server situation!

[Xoleron]

Dear Moderator(s),
       I am sorry if this is irrelevant at the moment this is posted, but i am unable to play planeshift (I only have online use), and I have the feeling that my ordeal will resurface again, so here goes...   I would like to ask if it would be possible to somehow either fix the server status regarding the unpredictability of monster 'attackability', or kindly remove the '<NPC> is impervious to attack' message.  I do not wish to be rude, but in the better interest of all Planeshift members, i ask to have this problem corrected post haste.  You see, it is not only a matter of persevering annoyance that brings me before you, but rather, the fact that the only productive way of gaining progression points is by monster killing.  When the monsters are offline, this action is impossible, thus, it is impossible to 'rank up' any stats.  I may be one of few with this complaint, and my theory regarding such comes from personal experience.  Since I am relatively new to this game, I have not had sufficient time to advance any stats, gain wealth, or etc.  But, some of my fellow guildmembers who have enjoyed the lackadasical monster state for countless hours, have racked up numerous PP's (if you do not mind the abbreviation).  Now, a main point- why is it fair if already higher level users can continue to train, because all they need is money, and lower level persons esp. first time players are SEVERELY handicapped or even unable to do anything beyond move around the Planeshift world.  So, to end my incessant chatter- I present the dilemma: EITHER TAKE DOWN THE MESSAGE OR FIX THE PROBLEM! (Please excuse the use of the capitalization).  Sincerely,
                                                Xoleron, a Planeshift fan who is in dire need of assistance

[Seytra]

I daresay your guildmates are severely misinterpreting the purpose of PS. The purpose of PS is not to rank up as fast as possible. It is also not the goal of PS to engage in PvP or other forms of directly comparing your assortment of skills and stats to of other players. This is contrary to all other MMO"RP"Gs I know of, and the confusion about it as well as the difficulty players who have come to PS from any other such game is understandable.
The purpose of PS is to RolePlay, and to do that, you do not need to rank up fast, or at all. Of course, skills are part of the roleplay, but they're far from paramount. Therefore, PS is playable even without the ability to fight MOBs, at least for some time.
Also, while the question of fairness is valid, these instabilities have been there, to various degrees, ever since fighting was implemented, so those who were there before you have had the exact same problem as yourself. Thus, the unfairness lies in you coming later than they, which you will agree is unavoidable.

I do understand that this is annoying if your emphasis lies on levelling, but if it does, then you will become frustrated and bored by PS fast anyway, regardless of how well the fighting works because there isn'T really that much to train, even if it's becoming more all the time.

Sadly, the situation is unlikely to improve, because of the way PS works. If PS was a commercial product, then you would not have heard of it until in, say, 5 years time, when it was more or less complete. It would also be developed faster, and with a distinctly different emphasis (IOW, it would not actually differ from any other MMO"RP"G out there).
However, since PS is being developed by volunteers, in their spare time, without requiring payment and in fact relying on the server and the bandwidth being donated by hosting companies, plus the fact that PS is pre alpha (meaning it's far from completion and really barely started), it is in fact impressive that it's as good as it is right now. Therefore, the situation is not going to improve until much later. I assume that in 10 years or so, PS will have reached a state where it will really be one of the higher priorities to keep the MOBs working in combat (right now, the emphasis is on trying to keep the game server from crashing every few minutes).

Edit: Additionally, please note that PS has and will have various bugs that can make you lose items, money or stats, make quests unsolvable or not even allow you to log in for days. There will also be partial or complete wipes, usually in response to exploits, or transitions to different database structures. All of this is what playing a severely unfinished game brings to you. /Edit

Also, what guild are you in? There are many guilds in PS that revolve around the concepts borrowed from other MMO"RP"Gs (levelling), but there also are some that actually focus on what PS is focused on: RP in the true meaning. It may be a good idea to switch to one of those guilds, which will 1) relieve you from the burden of being judged by your level and 2) not depend on the menial task of killing all day.

Lastly, did you really mean to say that not displaying the message would be a good alternative to having the problem fixed?

[steuben]

if the problem was trivial to fix you wouldn't have seen it. though the mods won't be able to fix it. but rest assured the devs are. it will be fixed as soon s it can.

and to echo seytra's satement...
no message saying something is wrong is better then a message that says that there is?

[Kaityra]

Hello!

Not to mention that experience and progression points can be gained by doing quests. Although it seems that a crash of the NPC client can happen from time to time it is only a temporary annoyance for a couple of hours at worst.
PS is about roleplaying and not farming or skill gain. Please keep in mind 60% of roleplay is talking, 30% are emotes and the remaining 10% are skills. If you look for a game where you can farm monsters for hours and level up appropriate please look somewhere else.

With kind regards
Kaityra

[neko kyouran]

Please keep in mind 60% of roleplay is talking, 30% are emotes and the remaining 10% are skills. If you look for a game where you can farm monsters for hours and level up appropriate please look somewhere else.

That's only your way to RP.  Other people's ideas of RP is to be the great heroic adventurer, who groups with many of their fellow adventurers, to go out and slay to dark force that has been emanating from the Stone Labyrinths for the fame, glory and power that doing such a feat may bring upon them.  But in order to defeat such a force, they know they must train long and hard.  Sharpening their skills, just as they sharpen their weapons.

Whether the player enjoys sitting by the camp fire telling stories through the character, or taking their character out for adventurous training/exploring/slaying dark forces, it still RP as long is the actions are done becuase that is what the character would be doing.

[Kaityra]

Hello!

Well, in that case you better solve the problem with NPC not being attackable real soon...

I was just visualising a fantasy movie where the hero slays the same kind of monster for two hours to get better and then kill a more challenging monster the last ten minutes of the film. No dialogs, no acting just slaying. Really great movie. Let's give the role to Arni.
By the way, there are tons of MMOGs (I left out the RP on purpose) which operate just this way, e.g. 9Dragons, Last Chaos, Runescape, etc. Is PS just another one? If so, I'll have tell you that other MMOGs have more content and better graphics. Does PS really try to rival them? I hope not.
Please don't get me wrong, I don't want to ban the ones trying to be a fighter hero but it should not become a sole technical issue of farming and skill gain. And that brings us back to the topic of this thread. I'll repeat myself. The problem is "just" temporary. The devs are aware of it and are probably working on it. So the initial complaint seems to be a little bit immoderate.

With kind regards
Kaityra

[neko kyouran]

Ever watch My dinner with Andre?  people could find 2 hours of just watching 2 guys eating and talking small talk boring as well.


2 sides to every coin. 

[Seytra]

While it is quite probable that people actually might be dining and having smalltalk, it is significantly less likely that people will keep on fighting daily, in the same place, the same things, over and over again, only pausing to sleep and eat, without ever speaking a single word. This is different from the "going out to slay the dark hordes", but even that is rather unlikely. Even if there actually were any dark hordes, these hordes would be hordes, and therefore require a similar horde to take on. If you're going to play guerilla games, then this also requires a horde on the enemy side, not a couple of little groups. If you're however going for little group vs. little group at best, it doesn't matter at all whether you team up to slay ulbernauts or rats. IOW, if you want the experience of group fighting, then you can do that without having spent a single PP. This leaves the only reason that it's not, and never was, about roles or interaction or groups, but indeed merely about higher numbers. You'll agree that, given the vast majority of games that are based around just that, and the insane amount of people that play them, this is much more likely than the vision of glorious adventurers. Not to mention that there really can't be a hero in a MMOG, simply because so many people would try to become one that it's not heroic anymore, it's merely somewhat more than average.

Now you might compare that to military training camps, but then again, there usually is a supervisor, and the soldiers will also talk to each other, at least after training. Some of them may even leave the camp for a while in the evening to do something else.

Really the only thing that would come close to what these people call "Roleplay" (or rather, to what you are calling RP in order to pretend that these people might be doing something even remotely similar) are fighter drones (even the Terminator is more chatty). If PS is supposed to become "Drone Wars", then please let me know in advance, so I don't waste bandwidth downloading that version.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

There is room for varied interpretations of what ps is for. It is a roleplaying game but many of its roleplayers also believe that there must be an engagement with the skills system to properly play your role. I am of that opinion i think anyone playing the role of a mighty fighter with 29 str is off his nut!

We will get this fixed in time and it is a current priority.

Enjoy questing in the mean time as it is a great way to earn PPs.

I advocate both roleplay and engagement in engine to every "player" as a means of fulfilling their part of the obligation to test our features and help us create the richly featured, stable, Rp centric, game we all hope it to have it be.

These things take time and the distress of players is never lost on us. At least half the team actually still plays the game today. We are with you. Help us out. 

[stumagoo]

I also find that while the monsters are unable to attack its a great time to go exploring and try to identify different areas and remember there are NPCs to find in the more remote area's (oops maybe I should not have said that).  Also a great time to meet and greet, get to know others and share knowledge. Ingame that is.

[DejviDejf]

I don't think that doing quests is the best idea when the server is so unstable as it is now. I do not even think that the game is playable when you must relogin every 5 minutes. The best you can do is to take one day break, enjoy your real life and try to play tomorrow when the server is hopefully more stable.

[Kaityra]

Hello!

I don't think that doing quests is the best idea when the server is so unstable as it is now. I do not even think that the game is playable when you must relogin every 5 minutes. The best you can do is to take one day break, enjoy your real life and try to play tomorrow when the server is hopefully more stable.

Well, there is one major drawback to this approach however. The bugs won't show up when nobody plays. And the overall goal is to remove the bugs, isn't it? I would suggest just the opposite. Play as hell until the devs scream that the have enough evidence for the bugs to remove them. That's when they shut down the server for a day or two to patch it. Then you have to take a break anyway.

With kind regards
Kaityra