The state of roleplaying in PS (aka, something you won't ever admit)

[Xoel]

Well, the compromise is a bad thing. They should make rules that support ROLE PLAYING  for the ROLE PLAYING SERVER

 

and rules that support LEVELING for the LEVELING SERVER...

Perhaps the role playing server should be called the "General Purpose" server instead? 
This way people don't expect so much.

Its a damn shame, the game is so much like those old single player RPGs where you got your fun out of leveling and beating the next boss. Planeshift could be much better than that.

When you understand game design perhaps you'll one day understand why the mechanics are the same on any official server of any game. Also, note that many RPers LIKE (OMFG, yes they do!) levelling. If I remember correctly YOU levelled before learning to roleplay Rigwyn, don't be a hypocrite about this because frankly, had there been no levelling on the roleplay server and the levelling server was full, you would never have learned to roleplay.

In fact, most of that clique of yours that left levelled their characters up a fair bit, I remember Aiwendil mentioning magic being levelled on that char, I've seen your player character stats, which matched mine, and was even slightly higher, and I've been on the receiving end of Jacula's brute power. Levelling does have a place in roleplay, because otehrwise everyone would play an ULTIMATE FIGHTING HERO with no brains, and roleplay would die.

[Illysia]

Levelling does have a place in roleplay, because otehrwise everyone would play an ULTIMATE FIGHTING HERO with no brains, and roleplay would die.

Ok, I have to take issue with this statement as it assumes everyone is a 3 yr old that can't self regulate and although most probably are, not all are. Leveling in my opinion only serves to enable skills, once you have the needed skill no need to level any more. But you do have to cap leveling at some point. If you care about your character's qualities, you won't just go and level them to no end. If a character has high levels in something, as long as it's not leveling like that's the equivalent to beating the game, it's not too bad. But Rig is right. Until there are some more hard and fast rules, there's not going to be much improvement. It's like lines on the road. You can get by without them, but it helps to keep everybody moving more easily when there are guides. Not perfect, but better. Rules wouldn't ban leveling but each server should be more strongly focused on it's sphere of influence.

[Phage]

I am sure you know how to read, Xoel, but obviously you still need to try much harder to comprehend. Rigwyn was talking about rules, ones to support roleplaying, and ones to support Leveling. First, this has nothing to do with mechanics. Second, to support roleplaying in this regard does not exclude leveling but could provide GMs, for example, with means to enforce roleplaying. But it also would make any player to join the pretended Roleplaying Server aware. No need to go much into detail here, these forums are stuffed with threads discussing that topic. As for the Testing Server, some creative rules to motivate players to max their levels could as well help you developers (or wannabes or whatever) to improve things. This is what that server is meant for, for players raise their levels and test the mechanics, no?

Well, to not roleplay any skills could be covered by such rules. Apart from that they might also give a more or less strict definition of what is roleplaying, to establish a consensus.. meh, again: Just check those numerous threads.
I would go more into detail, once more, but my time runs short, and "to be brutally honest", I am not convinced at all you would understand much.

[Rigwyn]

Xoel, perhaps you could teach me about game design one day. Surely that will clear up my misconceptions

When I joined the gam I had read the web pages carefully and was interested in the idea of playing a role. It sounded something these rennisance festivals that friends of mine had gone to. I tried talking in character but every time I did, the othet player either spoke out of characted or had a very awkward reaction, like "oh yeah, right... Hey bud, I don't rp." Needless to say I dropped the silly "rp" thing and just acted like everyone else in order to fit in. I learned through experience that ps was about grinding. That's all anyone did.

The game started to tank and for weeks at a time, mobs could not be attacked. It seemed pointless. People discussed rp on the forums but I had never seen anyone rp in game. I wondered what the hell this secretive "rp" was about and where to find such people. Eventually I was about to quit and move on. I made one last attemp to try out this rp thing. I looked through the guilds pages and came accross "the outlaws". Tried a few different names in the thread and finally got a seen by kaisa. ( I was playing as phenerie ).

Kaisa actually role played! I couldn't believe it.. I was actually doing this rp thing with someone. She put mu up to robbing an unsuspecting menki named "jonoth". She said he was a local weapons merchant. Rich too. She said to rob him and then report back to her.

I tried to sneak behind him. He was sleeping. I then ran back to kaisa (taking the long way so as not to be noticed ) and said "I tried, however when I right click on him there is no option to 'rob'. How do I do this?"

Kaisa took the time to explain how one roleplays such actions. She said "if you want, just send him a tell first asking if you may rob him"

I thought this was the stupidest thing ever. I asked "are you kidding? Ask him 'may I rob you?' "

To make a long story short, phenerie managed to fish a few circles out of his pocket despite kra's enormous stony hands. Jonoth work up and started to come after phenerie. I got a case of "oh shit!" and started to crack up. This was 20x more fun than grinding.

I joined the outlaws that day and became more and more engrossed in rp from that point on.

[Xoel]

Then he should say "Server rules" not "rules".

From my perspective, "Rules" is the script sets that define how combat works etc... yes, that's what the "Rules" team in PS does.

[Rigwyn]

Once apon a time there was a farmer who decided to seed his plot. He scattered his seeds randomly. Some fell in rich, fertile soil, some in rocky soil, some in weed infested soil.

The seeds that landed in the fertile soil grew to be strong healthy plants and bore fruit.
The seeds that fell in the rock soil were plucked out by birds.few grew into plants.
The seeds that fell into the weed infested soil got choked by the weeds and died. Some grew but were weak.

Understand the importance of the soil ?

Yes? Ok, then apply this logic to planeshift.

[Xoel]

First of all, there's an Octarchial decree saying all citizens must be trained to help defend Yliakum blah blah blah...

If by current leader, you mean Talad, or HaniX, I've roleplayed with them both... wasn't too bad. Not everyone is perfect, as you seem to expect.

Let's also look at the "soil" analogy. You don't know what seed you're casting. So you can turn perfectly good soil into weeds. It doesn't matter if you make good soil if the seeds thrown at it are poison ivy.

[Phage]

First of all, there's an Octarchial decree saying all citizens must be trained to help defend Yliakum blah blah blah...

Define "trained". If a character with starting values in fighting related skills is against the rules to be played, change the rules or the starting values. Who would want to start playing a game only to stupidly grind several weeks only to have a valid character to start off with?

If by current leader, you mean Talad, or HaniX, I've roleplayed with them both... wasn't too bad. Not everyone is perfect, as you seem to expect.

I had the same "pleasure", but obviously expectations or demands can differ tremendously.

[Draklar]

Levelling does have a place in roleplay, because otehrwise everyone would play an ULTIMATE FIGHTING HERO with no brains, and roleplay would die.

Just a tiny note.
"No leveling" does not equal "no stats". You can create a fixed-stats system, which in natural way will promote player cooperation as opposed to personal character development. Plus, there are roleplaying systems that lack any stats whatsoever (there was no stats in the early forms of rpg's, for example).
Stats-building is actually a device used in story development: increasingly powerful characters can take part in increasingly epic adventures. For this reason it is much more prevalent in high fantasy games (most notably D&D) than in dark fantasy games, which reject the idea of epic characters, making leveling much more limited (if existant at all).

[Xoel]

HaniX definitely can roleplay. I was in his player guild on my player character for quite some time.

Also, do note that PlaneShift is a tech demo/alpha/beta....

If we didn't make anyone test things, we'd get nowhere, wouldn't we. And believe it or not, the team considers getting the project to 1.0 more important than making things perfect for the purists. Which is all you can expect, really. Sad fact of life, if the roleplayers bothered to test things for the team, as is the general idea of the game at this point in development, we wouldn't have to write it into settings to make you.

[Rigwyn]

Xoel, the soil story that I told you was originally used to teach a spititual concept to uneducated peasants who probably knew little more than how to grow a few kinds of plants. I rather surprised that it flew right over your head.
I'm sorry, but I cannot make this concept any simpler.

[Talad]

And: Talad can't RP. Hanix is only GM leader afaik, feel free to correct me. And he can't RP either.

Pepito can you clarify what you mean by Talad can't RP. Thanks.

[Xoel]

Xoel, the soil story that I told you was originally used to teach a spititual concept to uneducated peasants who probably knew little more than how to grow a few kinds of plants. I rather surprised that it flew right over your head.
I'm sorry, but I cannot make this concept any simpler.

I was merely pointing out that your analogy doesn't really work to well with PlaneShift, which supports multiple playstyles.

[Phage]

Talad,
my personal reasons for why I think you are not really a good RPer are all those events you made up to introduce new technical game-features. The way it was played out was anything but immersive, in fact it totally destroyed my own mood, and the ones I was playing with.
Now why is that? I can understand that you want to introduce major new features in a big event, and preferably even do that yourself. But it appears as if you rarely to never roleplay in PS, and when doing so for the reasons mentioned above, it feels to be pretty much out of place, OOCish and not integrated into the game and its atmosphere, but in fact like a "Making-of" for, say, Lord of the Rings right after having watched that movie - your roleplays to introduce new stuff always feel like granting a glimpse behind the developments curtain. And thats just anything but immersion.
For example, when you introduced guildhouses and you auctioned the first one. Your play implied that this was the first time ever in the history of Yliakum that a house was sold - you see what I mean?

On the other hand I want to be understood properly that I dont see anything wrong in all that, after all you are the head dev, you dont have to play the game all day long, but rather focus on coding, for playing out events and such you have your people, GMs or whoever - just leave it up to them to weave a nice and fancy story around the new features and have them flow into the game smoothly, by people who are at least more used to roleplaying in PS. And as for the cheers, the one to be thanked most at the end will be you anyway.

Xoel,
I am sure you assume your aphorisms way smarter than they actually are - plus, you just dont get the point.

[Mogweh]

Sad fact of life, if the roleplayers bothered to test things for the team, as is the general idea of the game at this point in development, we wouldn't have to write it into settings to make you.

I find this irritating. Pushing the players vs devs is counter productive. If you want testing you need to create test plans and test cases. Just throwing software at a bunch of gamers is no way to get a descent cover. Nor is pissing them off by telling them they can't be bothered.

I feel that any comments communicated to the players at large really should come from someone that knows what they are talking about and has some notion of PR.