As one of the persons who for sure would be on a list of lurker trolls I was of course tempted to post here earlier...but didn't out of respect of something derula said (even if it is deleted by now). Still will try to make this not too much of a trolling post...so only bowing to bloodedIrishman and handing him the crown of best troll in the PS forum for starting this thread.
But the real reason why I post here now is because I was asked lately in IRC to make a short comprehension what is so different now in PS compared to the "good old times". I know this is off-topic in a way...but on the other hand might help to understand a few people why some "lurker trolls" act as they do. The reason this person asked me in IRC was to learn to better RP. And my only answer to this can be that nothing said about previous times will help anyone to learn Roleplaying better. I already hate the term "good old times" and think I never used it before. Sure I compared ongoings now with the past at times but I am also aware that there was a lot of crap going on a few years ago. So gave out a link to a
RP guide I wrote for new outlaws when I was one of their leaders...but there are others in the
Guides and Tutorials section of this forum.
And allow me another warning...me talking about "good old times" is already a joke itself as I am hardly a "midbie" player of PS. I started playing around 0.3.17/18 so in the long shot this is nothing. I can only speak about the things happening after that.
Dwarvesbane wars, The Queen of Fools preaching in front of the temple or
claiming to be an Octrach and the even much earlier crystal hunts all happened before I started playing (Or I was still far too shy to get involved).
So,
was playing PS so much different from playing it now?This question is pretty hard to answer for me. Of course playing the game was different for me back then as I was new to it and had a lot to learn. The interesting question is if it was different for a new player starting now or a few years back. The obvious answer to that is also yes, as PlaneShift changed a lot since back then. There is a tutorial now and without wanting to discuss it's content and ambitious I think that the general availability of such a tutorial made it at bit easier to start the game.
Also more skills and maps are available now...but here it already starts to get difficult. More maps for example doesn't just mean that players have more to explore now but also that the chars are more scattered. When the world didn't include the winch, Gugrontid, the caves in ojaroad2 and the ceremonial burial well (and yes, I know, before that BD and the wildness maps) but the player count reached more then 200 almost every weekend it was nearly impossible to not run into some people Roleplaying every few minutes. So learning by watching was far more easy back then (I still managed it though to stay in the sewers hitting rats alone for two weeks to get used to some game mechanics before I found the courage to communicate with other players ;)). This maybe is also a reason why some older players (like me) couldn't get used to tells asking where you are and if you are up for some RP. This was just not necessary, you played with the next person you found who was up for it. I can understand that with a low player count as the game has right now this isn't an option most of the time but OOC tells to initiate RPs still feel wrong.
A lot of other game mechanics changed also. And while all new improvements are of course to welcome most of the updates also had some "unexpected" side-effects. Allowing nonlethal duals is a great improvement. But a consequence of this is that some players dueled now everywhere just for fun. Before this change it was easy to avoid fun-only duels. You knew that these kind of players met in the library of the DR and just didn't go there (Looking at you there Lhaa ;)). Wasn't much of an issue. Ignoring a duel at the plaza is a bit harder. (And I will say a bit more about OOC activities later...so please don't take this as a rant about them happening at all)
About skills...mhh, again something not so easy. Yes, it's great that more skills got implemented. But again that had some other consequences as well. Having a max of 20 in brown way for example also restricted the need of grinding in a way. I have to be careful here as maximums of skills shouldn't mean at all that every char has to reach them. But taking in consideration that some players have fun with gaining skills raising a maximum of a magic way from 20 to 150 leads for those players to a lot more grinding.
Talking about skill leads to another major shift in the attitude of the players in my opinion. With the game maturing the claims that every RP needs a backup of stats and skills also grew. Not wanting to go into a discussion if this is justified or not. But it is for sure something that was different a few years ago. While Duraza was kind of trained I think (correct me if I am wrong) Xeonart wasn't. But training Xeonart to a level to justify his skills and ambitions would have taken very, very long. I doubt Duraza (the player this time ;)) would have spend that time for a char that was likely to downfall in the end. And I can't say very much about the RP as I only witnessed it from the sideline but all people I know who were involved had a lot of fun with it. If Duraza (and others involved) had spend all the time that went into this RP into training a lot people would miss some fun now. And people like Duraza are unique. I could never come up with a RP like this..my style is more to adjust to ongoing (casual) RPs and try to make them "bigger". But if every such grand scale RP needs a year of training before now I can easily understand why people don't feel like doing them anymore. Again this shouldn't sound like a complain about this shift of attitude but merely show differences between now and the past. Grand scale RPs are still possible even if all involved characters need skills to backup their RP. Now they are just reserved to established chars that already had enough training (and probably shouldn't get killed during the RP because of this). It's just a shift what will be RPed now. The evil wizard that is overcome by a alliance of guilds is less likely nowadays than the hero overcoming some unimportant alts.
All those side effects wouldn't pose a real problem...if they were dealt with in some way. And just saying once a year that guards should be respected in a casual post of a PS team member or sending out GM guards for a week or two after a lot of complains in the forums again isn't the right solution.
Now the points get even more only a personal view of me.
Did the general Player of PS change? I would answer that with yes, but it's hard to say if that is really true as I changed a lot in the years playing PS. So let's start the easy way...What was the same back then: There were also as much complains about everything in the PS forums as now. Already when I started people complained about too much OOC in main chat, duel challenges just for fun, GM favoritism, lack of rules and much more. Also most wish-list suggestions nowadays were already made in the past. There were large OOC dramas back then...anyone still remember Order of Daggers leaving the game? The tone of the PS team towards the players and the other way around was also not that different ("You have been Caarried" ;)). There were also always some new players who after playing for a few weeks knew everything better and left a months later again because nobody listened to them. But it still felt different in game. When I started playing and someone used OOC chat without brackets in main it usually didn't take very long until someone complained and explained that this shouldn't be done. You used the name of another char without getting introduced? Then you could be sure that in most cases you were poked about it. In the first week after I joined my first guild I saw how my guildmaster back then kicked two people from the guild because they kept on talking OOC in main even after several pokes in guild chat and tells to not do it. And this wasn't a very RP oriented guild. And not saying that everything was better back then, just that there was more of a consent among all players what is accepted in game. There was still a lot of crap happening like OOC spying on other guilds or godmodding. There was also grinding back then and people did it a lot. (Even if it was gold instead of mining platinum or slaying rogues now). But the mines didn't feel as silent as now. And with the overall less need to grind it didn't take long enough to get bored about making up mining songs and poems with Anumesa there.
But what is the problem for some long playing people then? Nothing of this sounds as if it is very serious.The main answer to this is already in the question. Over a long time a lot builds up and can't be seen separated anymore. And it also means you have seen most of the discussions already. And a very important point is that you might play long enough to see how some things shifted. For example Progress Points. Over years members of the PS team kept on telling that they know the system is bad and that it will get changed in the future just not now as there are more important things to work on. Now not too long ago this was revised and it was stated that the PP system is the system to go with. So I guess a few people who kept silent about the PP system as they thought it would be redone at some distant point in the future might be a bit disappointed now.
Another big point is EZPC in my view. Over years it was said there must be a way to get RPers and casual players not interested in RPing to be on the same server. After years of complains of those fractions about each other a second server was introduced. All fine so far...and what happened then? Nobody was encouraged to go to EZPC, all people wanting to stay in laanx just to not loose their skills were tolerated. A separation of the two fractions never happened. The PS forums are still full of the same complains of RPers or casual players as before the introduction of the second server. Every suggestion for guidlines on laanx was rejected and it was said that this server should be for everyone. So in the end a complete OOC server and a server that only kind of tolerates RP were created. No wonder that the complains kept on coming...for a lot people the situation only got worse by it. The second server was a missed chance to get rid of a lot of complains in the PS forums. OOC actions like "painting" pictures on the ground with animal parts, having duels just for fun in all places, chatting about the latest music or figuring out what places you can jump on with the help of your mount are fun for a lot of people and a reason to play a game. But at the same time exactly the same things are annoying for another group of players. Both groups could have been made happy with the two servers but it wasn't done.
For me personal it got kind of obvious the first time that this is not the game I was wanting to play with the
guild house auction marathon. Sure there were some examples before that like GMs ranting about
players not playing as they want them to be in their events but that's less of a problem in comparison to saying that if you want a GH you better forget about all fun and only mine. Roleplaying? It's an event so it's already a support of RP. This was also the first thread I posted in without caring to even try to be nice. At this point it should have been clear to me what kind of players PS wants to attract and that I am not one of them. Still I kept on playing...and believed that there will also be improvements for RPers. But another year later it was clear that there is a complete different understanding what can be seen a RP. Again nothing that really poses a problem...just move on and find something else. It turns into a problem when you get told by people who either can't understand what you mean or don't even bother to read what you type that everything you say is just plain wrong and then are given examples that have nothing to do with what you (wanted) to say. If you go through discussions like this for a year or more I guess it's normal you start to act the same way...and just write replies the same trolling way. So my respect to Arerano who managed to leave without much trolling...I wasn't capable of that.
