Roleplay, Leveling, and Questing

[Beniel]

I really don't like the idea of losing hard earned levels. And I bet a lot of other players wouldn't be two keen for this idea either. I still see the merit in the idea though, it with smiths having to craft regularly to keep their skills up, and warriors having to train for tournaments and the like.

[Prolix]

Sounds to me all you really need to keep the role players happy is a Drinking skill and a lie swapping skill. "I'm telling you *slurp slurp* that fish was *slurp* bigger  than an ulbernaut!" 

[Mythryndel]

Wow... you summed it up quite nicely Prolix. They'd never need to leave the tavern. 

[Sangwa]

PlaneShift is a MMORPG. Just like a card game player is considered a player in a card game, so is a role player considered a player in a role play game. So, when you say that we need a drinking skill to make players (or role players, same thing) happy, you're not being fair to the rest of us players (or role players, same thing) who don't want that silly skill. I know you were joking, I just can't let these confusions slip.

I wasn't speaking about losing levels. Just making other skills harder to level. For instance, for each point you raise in Job skills, your Combat and Magic skills need one extra advance to level. This would make characters tend towards focusing on certain areas, because if you raised too much of every area, everything would become harder. It doesn't waste any hard work, it just makes the work actually hard.

[Ralleyon]

For example, a certain NPC has a rare sickness. Instead of every individual character curing it we all fail, still getting a reward for trying. You could even spawn GM events and things like that, taking the NPC's problem and making that final epic quest to cure the NPC. it would make the world seem more as if it were always changing.

This is exactly the sort of stuff I'd love to see.

And in the same note I'd like to see Toda and Merrinez married in an event and that quest dropped. Some things just need closure, you know?

[Sangwa]

What are you talking about? In PS quests have no closure. If it were as such, the stupid kran would already be happy with the poem.

[Prolix]

Aha, Perhaps I should have Capitalized Role Player! But, yes, it was just a quick one liner.

Just How many Buds does Gurgus have now? That kran ought to be a billionaire just from collecting the droppings from his Gemmating snack!

However it might be nice if doing the quests had more noticeable effect on future dialogue but that is not really more practical as you would have people at different states, some seeing Kras bud others not, etc.

[rtrentc]

The biggest problem that i see in the whole system is experience points. And this is a problem that plagues a lot of games. Currently in order for a character to level up a skill or a stat they need to have gained exp points and trias. So lets take your basic adventurer.  He goes out and starts to kill rats, and then gobbles etc. He does this by hand to hand or if he is lucky with a club or a sword. Now he gains exp points, and collecting body parts he sells for tria. Next thing he does is buy a weapon and seek out a weapons trainer. Now he didn't use a weapon to gain this experience but he spends it on weapons training. Now lets switch to the crafter. Most if not all the crafting operations do not provide enough exp points, and even if they did its all one lump sum so he can train in axe making after he got points from smelting iron, and making steel. But in the end he still ends up having to go out and kill monsters to gain points so he can continue to train at a decent rate his crafting.

This is just wrong. I don't have a problem with the trias being spent on training. But it should just be training, followed by practice, and self training. How your character obtains the trias is up to him. But lets quit using exp points cause they let you use one activity to raise another that has little or no relation to each other. Example magic and cooking. You can gain points by killing monsters with magic and use the points to train for cooking. Sword Fighting and empathy. You can skewer a bunch of monsters and the spend the points on being more empathetic. This is just absurd.

I have played a lot of games and the best ones have been the ones that avoid the exp trap. Traveller -- You had skills and you raised them with training. Didn't matter how many things you built or destroyed. It didn't speed up your skill advancement unless it was to gain needed cash for training. RuneQuest -- Every game session you played in you had the chance to raise one of the skills that was used succesfully in that game session. Thus only what was used could go up. Other games were innovative but they still had the problems of the exp trap. Champions, White Wolfs World of Darkness. R.Talsorian's Fuzion. All innovate games but they still had exp points gained from all activites be used to raise any given trait.

I even find the idea of skills being allowed to deteriorate over time from lack of use to be acceptable. But I think it has to be based on time in the game not total real world time elapsed.

[Sangwa]

The biggest problem is indeed the Progression Points (what you get from having plenty of experience points. Same thing.) It kills me to see that in order to raise intelligence one is forced to fight or mine. We all get this, but for some silly reason the developers don't. It's been an year or more now.

[Mythryndel]

suggesting the devs don't "get it" or don't care is NOT appreciated. The devs have their plan for how things should work, and they have a big picture. I can guarantee that you will not always agree, but that doesn't make them stupid or wrong. If you don't like things that bad, don't play. This way of doing things is MUCH better than a "level based" system, where you just gain skill by clicking a "plus" icon after each level. You can gain skill in anything without ever even using it. At least PS requires you to seek a trainer, and then put those skills to use before gaining proficiency in a skill.

[Caarrie]

also it is _not_ easy to redo the training system, that requires recoding a LOT of the game and then a ton of work for settings to help with setting up all the npcs to work with the new system. Last i heard xordan had an idea but he has been busy with other aspects of ps that are more important at this time to get done.

[rtrentc]

Mythyndel what we have now is a cross between a skill based system and a level based system. Again its using experience points to provide advancement. And there is no relation between where you gained the exp and where its spent. My favorite example of avoiding the exp trap is the game RuneQuest by Chaosium, and then later released by Avalon Hill and Chaosium. It use % values on all skills, and you only got to roll for advancement on those skills that were successfully used. So no matter how many times a character used his sword to kill the local baddies, he would never get a roll to advance in sorcery. Here I go out and kill 100 trepors, maybe mine a little bit for cash and boom I can now buy training in crystal way. Do you see why that is just wrong. I have no problems with practicing the skill after I buy the training. That is what they did right. Just get rid of exp points. Train, self train, practice. That is all that's needed.

Caarrie Yes I realize the recoding the advancement system would be involved but it wouldn't need to be a case of starting from scratch. A lot of what is there is good. Its just the exp that needs to be removed.

1) Training -- use cash to pay for the training points (x number of trias = 1 training point), and allow use of the skill to provide for self training. Say 10 practice points {using the code for creating practice points that already exits} = 1 training point. Thus a character can advance slowly on their own or more quickly if they pay trainers to train them. (the number of practice points to create the training point [what you currently use exp (pp's) for in training] can be adjusted to create the proper balance.)

2) Practice -- No need to change this code at all.

3) Stats -- Define activities that would provide practice points just the way you have activies for the skills, so that stats can be trained up without the need for exp points just like the skills.

This would resuse most of the existing code and decouple the use of one skill to raise a totally unrelated one.

[Waylander]

The other side was saying that some people don't care about settings info and history and we shouldn't make them sit and learn about something they don't want to know about every quest they do.

Keep in mind that I, as a member of the settings team, don't care about this people at all.  By that, I mean, I'm not making any content for them.  I don't speak for anybody but myself in this case.

Besides that, I agree with your idea.  You want the information to have real-world (well... fake-world) application.  This is hard to implement right now, unfortunately, in quests people are more likely to go with the answer they think the NPC wants than the answer their character would give.  This means that many, many forks are completely ignored.  Having it so people who have knowledge of settings get ahead on quests would be hard just because of the sheer amount of places we'd have to edit to add that in.  There are a few quests that do have this, though... Not sure if they are ingame yet.

[Sangwa]

If you don't like things that bad, don't play.

I never told you I despised the game bad enough to quit. I merely disapprove of the system and, in my ignorance of the Developer's progress in this topic, the developer's progress. I don't know to what extent this matters to them, nor do I care about that. They have this section and I have this opinion.

also it is _not_ easy to redo the training system, that requires recoding a LOT of the game and then a ton of work for settings to help with setting up all the npcs to work with the new system. Last i heard xordan had an idea but he has been busy with other aspects of ps that are more important at this time to get done.

It's not easy? Great, that means it's possible. And Xordan's ideas rock too.
I can wait years, that's fine by me. However, I greatly doubt our perspective of importance matches. I play the game and the current two worst set backs I notice are exactly the Progression Points system and NPC-Player interaction; because they directly fumble all attempts to role play and this game is considered, by the developers running it, a Massive Multi-Player Open Role Play Game. It looks to me as a central question, opposed to improving other game mechanics.
And the sooner it's done, the less converting you'll end up doing.

[Duraza]

I play the game and the current two worst set backs I notice are exactly the Progression Points system and NPC-Player interaction; because they directly fumble all attempts to role play and this game is considered, by the developers running it, a Massive Multi-Player Open Role Play Game. It looks to me as a central question, opposed to improving other game mechanics.
And the sooner it's done, the less converting you'll end up doing.

I agree there, especially with the part about the less converting that will need to be done...I don't know much about game mechs but it sounds like changing the current leveling system would be a lot of hard work...But if you do continue to add more game mechanics before deciding to change the system then by the time you get around to deciding to change the system you'll be in way over your heads with the amount of things that need editing. It will be almost like doing everything over again. Of course, I may be wrong as like I said, I'm not so smart when it comes to the tech stuff