I've noticed several posts throughout these forums (mostly in the complaints department) by people who are not having fun playing PlaneShift. Usually, they get shouted down by a chorus of people saying, "Everybody else seems to be having fun, so if you're not having fun, it's your fault for not getting engaged." Well, I think that there is certainly some validity to that argument, but I also think that many of these "complainers" make some good points. Because PlaneShift is a game, and the primary purpose of games is fun (not the only purpose, but certainly the main one), I wanted to start a discussion about what makes PlaneShift fun, and what parts of it really aren't as fun as they should be. I thought about putting this in the complaints department, but I want the focus to be more positive than that. I have three cardinal rules I would like everyone to follow in this thread:
1.) If you dislike something, don't mention it unless you can also name at least one specific step the developers can take to make it better. Not perfect, just better.
2.) Leave technical faults out of this (we all know that the NPC conversation system needs serious work, as do monsters, etc.)
3.) Mention at least one positive thing. If you can't think of anything positive about PlaneShift at all, then why are you even here?
So, to start off with, here are some things that I think are FUN about PlaneShift:
Interacting with real people as I RP.
Being able to gain significant experience and money solely by completing quests for NPCs, with no combat required. (I really like combat, but I also really like the fact that it's not central)
And some things that I think are NOT FUN about PlaneShift:
Drudgery: Fighting endless swarms of rats to gain experience is never fun, no matter who you are. Likewise, spending half an hour of real world time running across empty landscapes between cities is never any fun. Most especially, spending hours of time in the real world watching your character pick away at a virtual wall for virtual stones is never any fun.
Solutions:
Lose the rats. Seriously. Start characters off with enough ability and equipment to take on real monsters. I understand that there need to be weak monsters at the bottom of the progression, but killing one-eyed mutant sewer rats is still, well, killing sewer rats. People play fantasy medieval roleplaying games so that they can be epic heroes. Epic heroes don't work as exterminators.
Create some sort of rapid-transit system between population centers. There are plenty of fantasy medieval-appropriate mechanisms for establishing this. Set prices low enough that most players can afford to do it frequently, but high enough that some people will chose to go cross-country anyway.
Stop trying to balance the economy and let the economy balance itself. This probably leaves many of you scratching your heads and saying, "Huh?" Here's my proposal: have the server track player-to-player economic transactions. Take a running average of player-to-player prices for goods, and then set the NPC-store price for each particular item slightly higher than the average price for the same item when a player sells it to another player (say, 120% or 130% of average player-market price). Example: players are always selling lumps of iron to each other. Imagine that the average price for these transactions on a particular day is 125 tria. For that day, NPCs will charge 150 to 160 tria for a lump of iron, but will pay only 100 to 110 tria to buy one. The next day, the average player-to-player price for a lump of iron is 110 tria, so NPCs buy at 130 to 140 tria and sell at 90 to 100 tria.
Also, eliminate the NPC-store stock limits on mundane items (lumps of ore, non-magical weapons, armor, and equipment, low-level glyphs, food, potions, etc). Players will have a choice: they can either find another player to buy their goods from, or save time by paying the extra money to get what they need from an NPC instead of making the effort to find a player who is selling it. If you find that too many people are shopping from NPCs, just increase the price multiplier for NPC goods until you get the balance you are looking for.
I'll admit that this is actually more complicated than it sounds at first. If it seems really simple to you, consider this: how do you value the items in this transaction: Geoffrey trades three lumps of iron and two diamonds to Brunhilde in exchange for a sword and shield. Believe it or not, there are ways to incorporate that kind of thing into your model, and they're pretty easy as long as you get a little help from a fellow named Laplace and another guy named Markov. It involves some really BIG matrices, but this whole thing is running on computers, so that's not really a problem.
Final thought:
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, "complainers" are often told, "You'd have more fun if you would engage in some RP with other people." Well, from what I've seen so far, player-player RP in PS consists primarily of chatting with each other. It can be very rewarding, but how is it any different from an IRC fantasy channel? Well, there certainly are a lot of significant differences between PS and IRC, but these "complainers" have noticed that most of the things that make the difference are no fun as the game stands right now. If the only part of PS that is any fun is the person-person RP, then what's the point? Why not just fire up the old internet chat and engage your imagination? If PS is to succeed, we must take these complaints seriously and focus on the things that distinguish PS from chat, and make them FUN!
If you actually took the time to read this entire diatribe, thank you!
-Lucas
