An Idea

[Mathy Stockington]

Maybe it would be best if each race started off equally in the beginning.

[Waylander]

That is worse than the current system in my eyes, Dajoji, except if your character was able to change his main skills through some effort. The limitation to them staying main and secondary skills would be purely OOC.

Not really, people have talents in certain areas and learn faster.  Saying that designating those areas is OOC is saying like having anything to do in your characters creation is OOC

I like the idea but, it's been discussed a lot.  Keep going, by all means, maybe you'll think of something new.  As for the skill points at the beginning, I don't really like that idea as Myth pointed out, it's somewhat exploitable.

[verden]

Add a lot more professions for parents to the character generation screens. Choosing exceptional for them then gets you some maxed levels, but still works within the limited CP pool when making the character.

[Dajoji]

That is worse than the current system in my eyes, Dajoji, except if your character was able to change his main skills through some effort. The limitation to them staying main and secondary skills would be purely OOC.

Not really, people have talents in certain areas and learn faster.  (...)

Exactly. A few things are naturally easy for me to do and learn while others take me a lot more time to learn and that can be perfectly IC in-game as well. If you are born with certain innate abilities then you should also be born with certain limitations.

[Pizik]

I did suggest in the past (not long ago) that giving players a one time use of "/setskill me" would aid in RP.

[zanzibar]

Monkey wrench time... Let's say you give 100 levels... what is to stop one person from completely breaking the system by creating an alt for each skill/way? Start with a 100 level metallurgist and a 100 level miner... then augment your other characters however you want with the trias earned by those two characters...

How does this help the game? I'm not trying to say that this is a bad idea, I've just been thinking about it and this is just one way that I can think of for this to be abused.

This would really only affect crafting, and crafting should be only a small part of the game.

Crafting is inherently non social anyway, so I don't think there's much reason to be concerned.

People do chat while mining.  They chat less while crafting, but it happens.

People will continue to chat while doing these things, even if they're switching from character to character.  Unless they weren't going to chat anyway.

What might be lost is player to player trades, but those are a relatively poor form of social interaction.

[Thoss]

from my perspective I tend to like Dajoji's line of suggestions.  Just seems closer to how abilities would really be acquired in the reality of Yliakum. 

Would the limitations be OOC?  I don't really think so...those limitations would be part of the "character" of the Character.  To me a facet of OOC is something unreasonable with the settings or illogical for gameplay...so to me, a new person, to creat a character who is already a skilled warrior would be OOC...because I'd have know idea what I was doing.

the game to me has more depth if my character is of equal ignorance as I. 

Now...what happens when I learn a bit...and want to create a new alt....still think that the alt should have to learn before I RP that alt powerfully....seems like that's what connects the game of RP and the game of PL.  The skill leveling forces one to learn prior to RP that skill.....the system just isn't ideal, because the games still being created...

seems it'll all be smoother as things progress....we need RP to keep things fun and interesting....we need some leveling to have an actual game to play....but that's just me...

[thesoundless]

I think RP is what makes up this game.  I do not think many people actually like leveling up, but do so to act like "a strong warrior" and be able to back up their claims.

Also a character could instead start with one stat maxed, and I do not think the devs would oppose this a lot since they just maxed out many player's stats in december from what I hear. 

If you like leveling, then there are dozens of other skills and stats to level as well that can keep you busy for a very long time.  This way allows everyone to be happy, and provides a conducive RP environment.

Any input from Dev's??

[zanzibar]

Players don't enjoy leveling, but they do enjoy the rewards of leveling.

I don't really buy into that system anymore though.

[Bamko]

I reluctantly get pulled back into this debate...

It is valid to say" I do not like leveling" or even "I do not think that many people do not like leveling" but it is invalid to say "Players don't enjoy leveling"

I am a player, and I enjoy working hard to see not only improvement in my character, but improvement relative to others who do not bother to train.  What you call "leveling".

I enjoy the process so much I have started at least 8 characters in PS, just to keep the process fresh and to compare relative rates of improvments among different techniques.  I also have close to a dozen Characters in another game I play.  To be clear I joined a guild in one so I could donate 95% of my expereince to the guild, to decrease how fast I level so I could better enjoy the process, and learn more about the game! 

Am I a majority?  No, I suspect not.  But do I exist?  yeah, I think I do. (gooOOOO Descartes!)

I believe Zanzibar does not enjoy leveling.  I also believe he tends to try to speak with more authority than he possess.  When you try to speak for everyone, you speak for me.  Please do not do that. 

thesoundless's statement... "I do not think many..." is fine.  I disagree with it, but it is a valid assertion.   

I also suspect that how levels are handled in PS is pretty much set, and thus this self flagellation is moot.

I think the debate topic is a good one, but I notice emotions tend to rule the day when it is applied to PS specificaly.  I wonder if there is a forum somewhere on the internet where Devs are/have discussed this already.  PM me if you know of one.  I would like to link to it on one of my sites.

of course, http://mu.ranter.net/theory/general.html has a lot of good ideas as a starting point for stuff like this.

[verden]

By all means, increase the character creation options so that more practical builds can be created. But I do not think, by any stretch of the imagination, that levels should be allowed to be allocated at will to 100. Allowing people to create characters with maxed skill levels just makes all the work anyone put into their characters to be useless and destroys the point of the game.

Is this a game? Then there are rules. If there are no rules and anyone can do anything they want, then what is the point of all of this work and development? If we spend eight years hashing over mechanics and in the end all those systems are dropped, then what was the point to begin with?

There have been times when features that many thought would be great, turned out to be a waste of time. One time was the "introduction system". Does anyone have an estimate of how much time went into discussing openly, then discussing privately, then implementing, then testing the "introduction system"? All of that work ignoring much original input from team members that indicated that it would be a waste of time, I might add.

Seriously, if you open the game up for arbitrary builds that do not cost the player anything to achieve, then it is a huge glaring, sign that the game is not taken seriously by the developers. Add some more options to character creation to build out characters and leave it at that.

This argument is very similar to the argument that the art and content of PS should be free and open for everyone. In other words, everyone wants something but they don't want to pay for it.