Roleplay vs. powerlevelling

[Cebot]

Basically the only day when powerleveling will be at end is the day where there are no means to powerlevel, people would be limited to mastering only certain parts of the game. Once that happens none will have to worry about powerlevelers because everyone can't do everything. Only warriors and mages will fight, merchants will get rich, herbalist and alchemist would make potions, etc etc.

I personally dislike that system, many other mmorpg's restrict the players to classes, something i hope will never happen to PS.
Reason is simple: A man (or woman) may RP a warrior at first, but what is a warrior needed for in times of peace? right, he has nothing to do, so he probably will spend time with other things, maybe learning some magic, or becoming a writer who writes down the stories of the wars he has seen. or starts a business of any other kind. the same goes for a miner character. one day something may happen to him that makes him unable to carry all the ores around, or swing a rock pick, he then will have nothing to do but thinking of any other kind of work he can do...or just drown hisself in alcohol to forget about this miserable life?
I really like the idea that people in yliakum can become everything they want. but at some point i agree, bloating up a character with everything that is there seems to be unrealistic too. IRL it would take years to learn the art of fighting, or getting to know the best ways to drag the ores out of the ground, or learn the best magic spells and encrease those spells with more power, but then there are chars being a fighting-miner-mage-merchant-guard-thief-murderer-hunter (you know what i mean )

For me, there is a difference between being a miner and a powerleveller. The latter one acts like the three apes -hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing-.

Heh, calling me an ape?
joking. Sadly it's true, a lot of people just do that, but look at which people do it. it are mostly newer players that just do nothing but leveling, hitting the shortcut in the mines, camping a mob and complain when someone comes around and hunts. I can remember my first weeks in the game, I was such a noob and got mad at those who came and took the mob i was camping (was before i created cebot) but i have learned  from other players, including those i have been mad at, before. Therefor my idea is to care for the newbies, seperate those willing to learn about rp from those who play a game, not a role and not wanting to rp, support the potential rp'ers and leave the others behind.
(for example when telling someone in a nice way the difference between IC and OOC and he keeps bitching around ooc'ly, then why even bother to talk with him ic'ly?)
Donari, the most important reason why the people at the mines are hardly talking is that they probably watch the system tab to see when they were unseccessfully, or talking in guildchat or tells or whatever. perhaps the devs could make the unseccessful message an On Screen Message, like the one for being successfully. Another reason may be that mining requires you to pay full attention to the job, to not accidently hit your feet (OOC'ly, the time it takes from starting the work until succeeding/failing, it doesn't leave much time to chat, or you'll be a very slow miner and won't earn much )

Greetings,
Cebot

[Giraut Mawhrin]

And to tell them to quit doing their job doesn't many any sense. You think leaving all this tria in the world is balancing?

As I said, the way the game works right now, I think you're better off leaving people too rich and live with PLers, so you don't drive away RPers, That's all I said.

Now really if I were you, instead of wasting my time "balancing" the economy (which you can never do because the price any NPC buys any item is fixed, and the number of players is always on the rise), I'd be busy developing an AI for the NPCs that buy things, so as to take into the availability of the different items they can buy, and eventually let all prices float. Then after that you won't have to balance anything at all.

And yes, I know, you've already thought about it.

I admit it's a very touchy subject these days, but you're not giving us time to implement anything without drowning us in complaints. "Hold on, this is step 1!" brings cries of "Fix it now!" or "Change it back!" or "You don't know what you're doing!"

I'm not complaining. I was just expressing my opinion about the way you guys develop Yliakum as a community. Quite frankly, PS is just a game to me, I have touchier things to occupy my days.

What do you wish to tell us that we don't already know and haven't taken into consideration?

Well, excuse the hell out of me for having the gall to think you guys might want the input of simple users. I was considering contribute code to CS, now I most certainly won't. Thanks for the great attitude.

[Zan]

Powerlevelers is a bad label ... this topic should be called "Roleplay vs. Non-roleplay".

You have people who create an original character with it's own personality ... and if their character happens to be a miner who spends hour after hour in the mines making a living, then that's perfectly fine. If that character is a warrior who dedicates his/her life to training in the arena ... nothing wrong there. However you also have people who don't bother about creating a character's personality but only care about getting more skills and more tria. Those are the people that will jump on any new stat, skill or job .. especially those with exploitable bugs .. and then whine on the forums as soon as something becomes harder.

The former type of people should be encouraged by some sort of system that rewards someone for staying in-character.

[Karyuu]

Giraut Mawhrin: We're not CrystalSpace, we use their engine :) They have other projects as well, so I think it would be a very silly move on your part if that's indeed what you were interested in. I hope it's not simply you having a fear now that you might accidentally end up contributing to PS too.

As I said, the way the game works right now, I think you're better off leaving people too rich and live with PLers, so you don't drive away RPers, That's all I said.

And at what point would we have player approval to change this? At what point is our effort to actually improve something for you guys not going to be considered wasted and better spent somewhere else, ignoring the fact that those who take care of rules are not the same devs who know how to code and implement features or develop NPC AI? Things weren't changed because one developer woke up one morning and thought to himself, "I wonder what would happen if..." We changed some things around because after a lot of thought, it was decided to be one of the necessary steps towards a better environment for you. What you are saying is effectively "Change it back," calling our choices misguided, and speaking as though we have no idea what we've done.

Now that upsets me.

[Waylander]

And to tell them to quit doing their job doesn't many any sense. You think leaving all this tria in the world is balancing?

As I said, the way the game works right now, I think you're better off leaving people too rich and live with PLers, so you don't drive away RPers, That's all I said.

Now really if I were you, instead of wasting my time "balancing" the economy (which you can never do because the price any NPC buys any item is fixed, and the number of players is always on the rise), I'd be busy developing an AI for the NPCs that buy things, so as to take into the availability of the different items they can buy, and eventually let all prices float. Then after that you won't have to balance anything at all.

And yes, I know, you've already thought about it.

The Dev team isn't wasting time balancing this economy.  The Dev team is spending time working towards an economy that can be balanced.  Where NPCs don't have fixed prices and so on.

I admit it's a very touchy subject these days, but you're not giving us time to implement anything without drowning us in complaints. "Hold on, this is step 1!" brings cries of "Fix it now!" or "Change it back!" or "You don't know what you're doing!"

I'm not complaining. I was just expressing my opinion about the way you guys develop Yliakum as a community. Quite frankly, PS is just a game to me, I have touchier things to occupy my days.

This is mainly a general comment.  Granted, you are giving your opinion but, many many others do nothing more than complain.

What do you wish to tell us that we don't already know and haven't taken into consideration?

Well, excuse the hell out of me for having the gall to think you guys might want the input of simple users. I was considering contribute code to CS, now I most certainly won't. Thanks for the great attitude.

They do want input they just don't want the same input over and over again

As opposed to blaming the Devs for having "great attitudes" perhaps you should look around you at the thousands of idiotic, self centered and useless posts.  The player base has whittled away at the patience of the Devs, blame them.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

Giraut Mawhrin

CS is an entirely different entity than ps, and we devs can be a bit sensitive at times.

Players do not get to see internal discussions so it is hard for you to know what we are considering.

Great effort has been made to make it possible to get player feedback, but if you look around on the forums there is a lot of room for growth in this regard.

Zan you are right, our big concern is how to do so without people exploiting such rp rewarding systems, but don't go thinking we do not want the same thing.

[Giraut Mawhrin]

We're not CrystalSpace, we use their engine They have other projects as well, so I think it would be a very silly move on your part if that's indeed what you were interested in. I hope it's not simply you having a fear now that you might accidentally end up contributing to PS too.

I never wanted to contribute to PS. I've done enough engineering to know when to stay away from a project.

We changed some things around because after a lot of thought, it was decided to be one of the necessary steps towards a better environment for you. What you are saying is effectively "Change it back," calling our choices misguided, and speaking as though we have no idea what we've done.

I don't know whom you talked to to decide the mine thing for example, but it wasn't anybody I know in-game. I never meet anybody who's happy about the little depression you caused. Now, if you have a grand plan and this is step one, perhaps you would care to expose it to us? Maybe we'd understand.

I do think your choices are misguided, and I reckon you guys should consider the possibility that people outside your tight-knit group can have better ideas about the situation. It doesn't take a PhD in economy to figure out that any adjustment you make to the input and output of trias is bound to be constantly wrong, since the NPCs buy at fixed price and the yield of any commodity (be it mines or loot) is tied to the number of players extracting it. My opinion is that, until you let prices float, you're better off letting too much money into the economy. That way, the only people who have fun in-game are the RPers, and that's what you want.

Now that upsets me.

What upsets me is a forum where users are invited (presumably) to express their opinion, and the powers-that-be peremptorily dismiss it on the ground that they think they know better. Well, here's what I see myself: 7 years in development, and 400,000+ account registrations, and yet the game is still officially alpha (it's not really, it's beta, but saying "it's alpha" it's a good way to deflect criticism), and only 50-150 players online at any given time? I'd say it's a pretty big turnover, if I were you I'd ask myself why it is that people don't want to keep playing...

This said, I'm done posting here. I'll go back in my corner now.

[Waylander]

She never said you did.  She was saying that if you wish to join CS team, do so.  Don't let the fact that you don't like one of their projects stop you.

...

If the devs have to lay out a plan for every change they do PlaneShift will develop slowly.  The mining was changed by the devs, I'm sure they have something in the works.  I understand your opinion but the players need to realize it's an unfinished game and there will be balancing issues.  Especially in the economy.  It would be silly for the devs to hold back every change to the economy until they can add all of them.  That would be months without change and then much too much to test when the economy changes happened.

...

Forums users are invited to express their opinions IF they read the stickies and use the search button.  Many do not.  Repeating the same thing over and over again is annoying.

It's officialy a tech demo.  And considering it is open source it has been related to commercial games in alpha in relation to the amount of features.  This is a completely correct comparison.

All the best games were unplayable early on, I don't see why players think this game should be so amazing this early in development.

Anybody who points out the 7 years will be ridiculed by me   Volunteers working on freetime, don't compare it to commercial games.

[Duraza]

This said, I'm done posting here. I'll go back in my corner now.

Stay there.   As you said your free to express your opinion. No one said someone would listen to you.

I personally dislike that system, many other mmorpg's restrict the players to classes, something i hope will never happen to PS.

You know what I mean  . Eventually there should be balance. For example I can be a born warrior but can I also become a magical expert? No, but I can still learn a little about magic. Maybe I'm a merchant but does that mean i can't learn a few tricks with the sword? Like that, I didn't mean specific classes.

Now someone who don't know what the hell i'm talking about may need an example, so i try to put it short.
We don't go in the wild or to arena, to kill respawning enemies. But we go there and on arena, we are meeted for a  fight, for money. No looting. It makes no sense in arena where gladiators fight for fame and honor and alike.
In the wild we track to finally find and kill the prey we can take valuable things from it. A fur, skin, how many of they you can wear and bring to town at the same time? 5 max i think. So it is that many beasts you kill, no mass killing, because going back to town takes time.
Who knows, maybe rogues ambush you and you have to defend yourself and if you win, you can loot their stuff.
There is no calculating and knowing exactly which NPCs of the same kind are how strong, you can ever know. Fighting is dangerous, really!
The examples go on and there is one point: So that fighting things stops being economical calculation and starts a real profession and style of RP life.

Is there a game like that you know of because I want to play it   That would surely be a nice game in my opinion. It doesn't sound too much like one thats powerleveling and the game mechanics would only enhance rp. Almost as if rping without game mechanics would only be chatting, the rest done purely with what the game has given you.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

"I don't know whom you talked to to decide the mine thing for example, but it wasn't anybody I know in-game. I never meet anybody who's happy about the little depression you caused."

I don't know anyone who would typically express happiness if their income was reduced from the astronomical to the subsistence level, that does not mean we should not do it.

"Now, if you have a grand plan and this is step one, perhaps you would care to expose it to us? Maybe we'd understand."

We are under a binding NDA, as usual, we tell you what Talad chooses to make public. It should be enough when we tell you we are working on it. Propsal have been flying around for a while, changes will come in time. Because development is internal none of you currently have a realistic picture of the # of people working for which team etc. Things are getting done, and the economy is fairly high on our priority list.

Of course if we fix this here is what will happen, "omfg, why did you choose to fix the economy before finishing plate mail for all races? I hate this game" or, "omfg, this floating point things is too realistic, this is a game, i want to have fun"

If you really look around the forum you can see the the devs are inundated with some brash claims, some woeful demands, insults and backseat devs. You will excuse us not having rosy dispositions.

Look what players have done with the gold change, now you tell me you want to cut into your skills making harder to be all things?

* Xillix Queen of Fools looks around for a means.

[Nikodemus]

you can't know without joining the team.
The funny thing is i wanted to flame a bit at him, coz he are not listening what others write there, what is true. He are ignorant.
But it is also true that because everything inside the dev group is so secret, you start wondering what the heck is wrong, when for instance people want to contribute and they are waiting months for this to happen. How many did give up?
Now, he playes so all-knowing self-centered guy, but he has a good point. Maybe there is no point to devote yourself to this project, if 90% of the time you could spent on helping it, you have to ask devs around of they implement what they did? Maybe he has good reasons to believe the talent he can put into the project isn't worth the bugging around? Or he can nothing and thinks he is amaizing and want to feel us bad about he not helping. Now i suppose some certain people know what i'm talking about, but i hope writing all this won't put me in bad light?

I'm just saying. One time you show us amaizing work and the other time you give nothing to kill our concerns, when we have good reasons to believe the game could have develop better.


Duraza, I don't know of a game, where we had it. But then i don't know a single MMO truely RP. I consider PS inside it as of this moment. Maybe that's why its called tech demo? But that is why i give idea, so hopefully it is going to change.

I don't know anyone who would typically express happiness if their income was reduced from the astronomical to the subsistence level, that does not mean we should not do it.

You forgot about me ;P But there is a chance, i didn't have an occassion for it, near you ;P

[Waylander]

I may be wrong about this, and if I am please correct me.

But I believe most contributions are handled quite well.

It is a fine line to walk though, too much information will ruin the surprise, too little and it's hard to know what to contribute.

If you want to add to the game, apply to the dev teams, write bug reports, post opinions (With proper usage of the search feature) and let dead dogs lie.

If the devs say "We are working on it", believe them.  I understand you want to make sure they are doing it correctly, make sure they aren't forgetting anything but, there are very many players and if each gets to check on it, development would nearly halt.  Instead, wait until it is out.  There is a feature request option in the bug tracker, if you think they forgot something, put it there

Players and Devs are, at the moment, practically at each others throats.  There's no need to play the blame game, one should instead look to rectifying it.  Players need to be more polite, Devs, more understanding.
In this case, it is up to the players to make the first move.  If you see an impolite post, reply to it, asking the poster to be more polite and then add your two cents.  Don't attack the player for his impoliteness, merely point it out.

Can't we all... just... get along?

[Nikodemus]

Players and Devs are, at the moment, practically at each others throats.

Really? ;P maybe i don't know of something. Or you are just talking about this certain topic?
I been suprised there were complaints on the topic of recent guild house.
I were very suprised by what Gag wrote recently... hmm i don't know, maybe something broke inside of him?

Anyway is it worse than usual? I'm not saying its usually bad, hehe. I just wonder if something is going on?

hah, and I wrote all starting from your short sentence

[Kaerli]

I personally think that the players need to be a bit more adaptable (I was actually OK with the change to gold, for instance).  Also, what are we going to do to stop people from griefing by interfering with RPs intentionally or by other means (killing random players for no IC reason, for instance)?

[Waylander]

Ignoring them and declining duels are all I know about for now, Kaerli.

Niko: It's not that bad, just posts are taking on a more angry tone