Roleplaying Focus

[MustangMR]

People who like the PvP, stuff getting,  and action of WoW and such leave because PS does not deliver on that aspect, not because of the focus on roleplaying. If the game was fun for them, they would stay despite having to leave their l33t behind. You will find that people are very adaptable and compromising when it comes to something they really enjoy.

Truth be out, and this'll probably get me banned. but I am also the guild leader of a fairly large guild in WoW.  All that you mention kills WoW as well, and people leave all the time because of that damn l33t attitude.  I have members level to 70 and then stop playing as soon as they hit that wall and realize that there is only PVP awaiting them, and that kills our PVE aspirations because we can't seem to get them all coordinated at the same time.  It's one of the main reason I'm here, because I can't stand the direction WoW is heading, which is nothing but PVP.  The affect WoW has had on the market that is probably affecting you is that they set a standard for MMORPG's that you are being measured against.  They dumbed the genre down a ton, and the direction the market is going is to simpler PVP based systems and less on hard core PVE.  Look what happened to Vanguard.  There are also a ton of people out there who can't stand EQ because of what Sony did to it, and quite frankly, PS is more of a clone of EQ than anything.  People will come here, realize that PS has the same frustrating quest dialog engine that EQ had, and will just leave.  After WoW threw all that out for a menu driven quest interface, a lot of people are never going to go back to this style.  I hate the menu driven system as I'm sure most of you do as well.  It has lead to a completely useless PVE experience for most people who just click their way through quests to get to the reward.  I hated it when it was first introduced in Baldure's Gate, but at least there you had choices that affected your characters development.  Your quest log is a great step towards supporting the engine you have at least.

If you could create a really good dialog engine with NPC's, you would have something that would hold people here.  No one likes to deal with an NPC that does nothing but tell you they don't understand.  This will be a big challenge for you to overcome, and I hope you do it.  I would suggest looking at some of the technologies in speech recognition as an assist, if you're not already doing so.  There are some good tech's out there that may make the job easier.  It will not be easy to do what you want.  The amount of language you will have to support is staggering, but a good phraseology tree can go a long way towards making it a reality.

I will say as a newb here that I haven't experienced the RP police.  I do my best to stay in character, but I'm still defining who that character is as I learn more about the game world.  You have to give people that time to learn the world, but no one has come up to me and said I needed to roleplay better.  That's probably because I am not in the higher end parts of the game.  I would bet that most people do not leave because of this reason because they don't stay around long enough to experience it.  They leave because the game is in alpha, and given what I've seen of the server and game so far, you aren't ready for a massive influx of players.  You are about where you need to be for the game world you have.  As it gets larger, the game gets better, you will grow accordingly.

[Taniquetil]

Lol, i don't think being a WoW player wll get you banned but i know what you are talking about. I recently have played Guild Wars to the fullest extent of its PvE. I got sick and tired, though, of all the updates and such being for PvPers. So, i left and came to PS and it was quite a relief. The game is almost completely PvE, yet theres always a duel going on somewhere.

As far as the NPC engine goes, there are currently only a few people working on it, so changes come slowly, and understandably so. I really don't want to see a menu quest system, but having many more different options of phrases that will be accepted would be nice. Just have to sit back and, once again, say "Coming soon(tm)!"

The RP Police? Hmmf, i heard they don't exist, just some crazy idea to scare us

[Tuxide]

If you could create a really good dialog engine with NPC's, you would have something that would hold people here.  No one likes to deal with an NPC that does nothing but tell you they don't understand.  This will be a big challenge for you to overcome, and I hope you do it.  I would suggest looking at some of the technologies in speech recognition as an assist, if you're not already doing so.

Why the one-place-that-is-under-the-moon would speech recognition help?  I know this is off-topic but natural language processing and speech recognition are two very completely different fields in AI.  I don't mean to disparage you, but I'm not too sure you knew what you were talking about.  I'm a graduate assistant researcher and my field is in natural language processing so I would know.  PlaneShift-the-engine uses synonym rings, or synsets defined within the server database, and the only way to improve NPC dialog is to expand the synsets by either adding more words to them or to generalize the query dialogue using something like Porter Stemmer or Soundex.

And no, saying that you're a guild leader on WoW will not get you banned here.  It probably would on WoW though, but I don't know.  That-place-that-is-under-the-moon, last I heard even acraig plays WoW so he would know.


Edit:

My thought was that in speech recognition, sooner or later you have to take the spoken word and decode it and pass it into a recognition system to figure out what was said.  We use it in the training system I support, but I don't do the speech decoding myself.

OK so you do know what you mean.  But I don't know, literally talking to NPCs sounds rather silly in my opinion.  If PlaneShift-the-engine ever did this then I wouldn't want to be caught playing such a game in an airport.  This has gone very off-topic so I will stop here.

[MustangMR]

Why the hell would speech recognition help?  I know this is off-topic but natural language processing and speech recognition are two very completely different fields in AI.  I don't mean to disparage you, but I'm not too sure you knew what you were talking about.  I'm a graduate assistant researcher and my field is in natural language processing so I would know.  PlaneShift-the-engine uses synonym rings, or synsets defined within the server database, and the only way to improve NPC dialog is to expand the synsets by either adding more words to them or to generalize the query dialogue using something like Porter Stemmer or Soundex.

Settle down.  It was just a suggestion and no one is saying you don't know what you're doing.  My thought was that in speech recognition, sooner or later you have to take the spoken word and decode it and pass it into a recognition system to figure out what was said.  We use it in the training system I support, but I don't do the speech decoding myself.  We use an engine where all we have to do is define the phraseology that leads to an input into the logic systems.  It's not that bad and is very easy to use.  Under it all, is probably the tech you are referring too.  All I was saying was that there may be some techniques to leverage off of there, "if you aren't already doing so", which it appears you are, and I wish you all the best with it.

[Mythryndel]

I may be the exception to the rule here, but I know exactly what a Nazi is and was. I am second generation German living in the US. My Oma was born there and lived through WWII. I have also taken several years of German in school and translated from the original, Anne Frank Diary. THE SHOE FITS. Sorry the PC environment doesn't appreciate this. I am not trying to say that all RPers are nazis. But in all seriousness there are a few that behave this way, and it tends to kill discussions on the forums. Fortunately I haven't encountered one in-game yet.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

Mythryndel, I understand the point you are trying to make, but maybe we can make our points with less inflammatory language for the sake of the argument.

[Under the moon]

* Under the moon thumps Tuxide with the Stick of Use Less Why-the-hell's when commenting to other's suggestions.

I have pondered over voice to text as well (and text to voice), so it is not an outrageous suggestion. Not something PS can do itself, but there are other programs that could be adapted to work on someone's own computer if they wished and had some ingenuity.

The hardest part about making quests and NPC responses is figuring out everything players are going to ask in every way (as the syntax is based on phrases, not keywords), and answering it. Even with an easier to use keyword system, we still have to come up with all the answers in a meaningful way for each NPC. That is why we need players to tell us what they are asking that does not work. As a Dev, when you know about everything behind the scenes sometimes you overlook things that someone who does not would ask.

[Tuxide]

* Under the moon thumps Tuxide with the Stick of Use Less Why-the-hell's when commenting to other's suggestions.

OK fine I change it UTM to a more general location of where hell is, since you are totally asking for it xD Enjoy. Now we really need to reword the fourth option in the poll as well.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

But I love the fourth option, it is so telling!

[Prolix]

I think you are Mything the point about the Nazi comments. When was the last time you literally had your door smashed in, got dragged down to a forced labor camp and ultimately gassed by a role player? What? You only had your feelings hurt by an insensitive comment? Ohh Boo Hoo Hoo, suck it up!

Continually trivializing the legacy of the Nazi Party serves only to aid those who would see it return. Were they the worst group of people in history? I guess not, they are rivaled by the legacy of the Communists, the Spanish Inquisition, and many others. Is it appropriate to casually slander people with the term? Not at all. Give it up or lose any credibility you may want.

I know you Wormtongue, get back to your master Saruman! 

Only 14 votes to go I know we can do it. Maybe we can get Xillix to forgo the rest if we grovel properly...

Xilly! Xilly! Xilly!

Now I am getting pretty Xilly! err silly.

[Garris Shrike]

Sounds like you understood, Mythryndel: Neither "strict roleplayers" nor "strict crafters" nor "strict powerlevelers" could make PlaneShift a game worth to play. Players with a compromising playing style must exist. So they deserve a bit of freedom to find their personal limits in each degree of freedom this game offers. And if their trials scratch the limits of the "average player", we can only hope that there is a bit of tolerance on both sides.

yes, yes, and yes! now seriously, this is the truth of the matter.

There must be a certain ammount of freedom for both. Not a completely game-distorting ammount, but....enough.

[Mythryndel]

Prolix... you think i was over the top??? I am not trying to trivialize anything. There was a lot more to the group everyone dislikes me mentioning than the concentration camps. They didn't start out that way. They started out as a positive thing. They were pro-Germany. They had a very positive view of the country and it's people. They were very proud. They started with the children (read: newbies) getting them to tow the party line. It was only later that they started silencing people who disagreed. It was only AFTER they had the majority opinion that the few in charge could fully execute their agenda. The National Socialist party was around for a LONG time before they started requiring people to register their status and sending people away. Apparently the later exploits are all people remember about them though. Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The prevailing attitude i dislike seeing is people being overzealous about protecting PS and it's strict roleplay environment. What they don't seem to realize is that they are killing the environment here on the forums (and possibly in-game, but Yliakum is a lot larger place than these forums so I haven't bumped into them there). They seem to be trying to squash any opinion that is not pro-strict-rp. There are a lot of players here for a lot of different reasons. There is room for all of them, and all of their opinions are valid. Please keep this in mind when posting.

I don't believe that the strict-RPers aren't or shouldn't be allowed to voice their opinion. They just tend to make a lot of people that don't agree with them feel unwelcome and that they should just go away. They are like the scenario i posited before about jumping the guy in the alley about his shoes. They are ganging up on the newbies and berating them into either NOT RPing at all and therefore silencing them forever, or discouraging them to the point that they leave. Neither option is positive in my view. Nor can I see this as "encouraging".

[Edit] I suppose I should be going to cry now, but I think i will just bash down Prolix door and... Gotta love the personal attacks people dish out. You make my point excellently though. I am apparently not welcome here in your eyes.

[eldoth_terevan]

I think Neko should be given the mandate to lock threads that mention Nazis, Hitler or the Third-Reich. This is in accord with Godwin's Law. Its just not a good comparison to use because it causes discussions to suddenly veer off into a political area that is best kept away from Planeshift.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

myth, calm down.

I agree with a lot of what you said, and even some of the characterization.

Prolix has a point though, and while I too have used the terminology of rp nazi, to refer to some here, I now see the merits of avoiding this language.

For the sake of keeping this vital argument clean and allowing people to express their views let's avoid flamey flames

I am very curious to hear from more people who voted "to hell with anyone who does not rp" as well as those who voted yes.

If it helps the thread try to direct your commentary at me instead of each other for the time being.

Sh*t, now someone has evoked godwin's law! The thread is doomed! Vote fast!

[Taniquetil]

I picked "To hell with anyone who doesn't RP!" Thanks for putting that in there.

This is an RP-based game, is it not? Follow the rules of the game! You wouldn't go into a football match and use your hands....(don't say anything about a keeper ) So, don't play PS if you have no intention to RP...