I first want to thank each and every person who plays Planeshift and the PS crew and everybody who helped Planeshift get ahead, in creating a great free game. As a project Planeshift has acomplissed much and that should be aplauded.
I made this post in the hope that other people will come up with even greater idee's then mine , and in doing so, we will help the PS crew make a better game for us all.
I play PS my self, in all its aspects. I am both a RP'er and a Powerleveler, I write here using my Aewa avatar as the spoke's person because, I feel she is both respected by the RP'ers & Powerlevelers alike, allthough for diffrent reasons.
I am totaly oblivious to how other MMORPG's work like WoW or others, I have played board/home RP games , like (direct trans from the dutch name) "The Eye of the Master", Planeshift is the first MMORPG I play online. I have been playing PS for more then a year now, with some brakes in between.
Lets get on with the show,
I understand when I ask around in IRC that the PS crew intention is to create a RP game, I have heared people say things like, "We dont want to be a ADHD game like WoW, Planeshift is an RP game". I am not part of the PS crew so I have no idee what the precies goal of PS is, but I presume it is RP'ing like you would play a RP game at home. What ever the goal of PS might or not might be, I think the game should be fun to play and not try to devide its community , by bad game mechanics.
The major current flaw of PS is,
That it has created two community's who see each other as the rotten apple, this has happened in my opinion because , the stated goals of the game are not implemented in game mechanics. You have people RP'ing that they imagine that they are all powerfull, without doing ever any real PS training, on the other hand you have fully maxed people who never RP.
These two groups go at each others throath and claim the right way.
This has happened in my opinion because the games mechanics allow this devide to take place. Its not the players fault that there are two groups, its the way the game is implemented that causes it.
Wich brings me to, "waisting your time and getting dumber",
waisting 3 months in electricity bills pressing (in my case) the V key, to dig to get your training payed, is a very bad game concept.
The game concept only exist because nobody could come up with a better idee, but it doesnt make for a fun and interacting game.
I believe that a good game makes people want to work together and that training and getting ahead in PS should be a fun concept not mindless time waisting keypressing, like its now.
Also the time waist concept favours people like me who got a lot of free time (at least for the moment) , over people who work hard in a factory or an office all day , who are making the real world turn, those people lose out because they dont have the time to grind, helping in creating the devide that exsist in PS.
I believe that leveling up should be rethinked and a new and inventive new game concept should be thought up. RP should be rewarded by game mechanics, not just people imagining things in their head, because I dont need Planeshift to imagine things and can just play with RL people at home. I dont claim that my idee is the way forward, but something must change from the current grinding to level concept or PS will kill it self in the end. With the oposing groups fire nukes at each other.
I propose a "Cast" system where you need "promotion points from your peers" to get ahead in PS , not only money & PP. If people can promote each other , lets say every month or every week , the game would look a lot more like a home RP game where the game master promotes the players at the end of a game. You could see it as a system to get points for good RP.
I have not realy thought this fully thru yet, but ... lets give an example of how this might work for a ficticius magic way, lets call it Greenway. Lets say maximum Greenway is 100, each 10 levels is a "Cast" , you can train 10 levels and then you have reached your maximum level for the "Cast" your in, you now need first to get "Cast" promotion points to get to the next "Cast" and in doing so being able to level up from 10 to 20 in Greenway, and so on.
The "Cast" points only are for one branch of magic or skill, so to get to the next "Cast" in Greenway, you need "Greenway Cast" promotion points. You will get these points from people who are in a higher "Cast" then you are, with a sort of exponential more points at the higher echalons to give away, GM's could be in the highest cast for instance when the system would start, and stear PS more in an RP way. The cost in tria an PP for leveling up could go down to more sane levels , giving people more time to RP, and making the RP worth real points in game.
The "Cast" promotion points could also be devided by other means then just for good RP'ing, I can imagine people can win and lose "Cast" points by fighting each other, but then only for things like sword or axe skill , to get fully maxed you would still need to do some RP to get the other "Cast" points, but at the same time keeping people who have a lot of time or dont want to RP that day, happy by giving them something to do/fight over.
My basic point is however that RP should be rewarded by no fooling real game points to get ahead in PS, not just by people's imagination, or PS will never be a RP game wich it claims to be.
Awaiting your reaction and hopefully even better idee's then mine,
Love to you all , Aewa
