I come in, and read the forums once in a long while.
I don't believe that I have posted in over a year, perhaps two...
But for that vanishing chance, that a miracle may happen, I will speak again, of why I loved Planeshift so much, and for years made it my home.
And to answer the question of this topic, I will repeat what I have always felt was in the greatest need of change.
When I came to PS, almost nothing worked.
Kill rats, loot rats, sell parts, buy things and training, repeat...
And yet, that time, before most areas of the map were made, was the golden age, for me.
We, the players, were players in a theatrical sense.
We created our stories, and we lived them, changing course as we encountered the stories of others, colliding, rebounding, orbiting, and inspiring each other.
There is no content, no art, no mechanic, no code that can hope to equal the experience of players involved so deeply with each other.
I know, that this is off track for many.
There may be some, in fact, for whom this is the last thing they want to hear.
But it is, I believe, the truth.
No matter what you build, no matter how much advertising you do, none of that matters in the slightest, if no one stays to play it.
And if no one wants to live there, all your work was for nothing.
This is what mainstream (zero RP) free gaming looks like, these days:
http://vindictus.nexon.net/As you can see, the gap between PS content and the rest of the world, is widening.
PS cannot possibly compete, retain players and attract new players, on the strength of art or design, coding or mechanics.
Even normalizing the licensing, recruiting college students in gaming courses en masse, actually using player contributions, et cetera, might not be enough.
There was something that genuinely made PS special, though.
Our community of players, telling stories to each other...
People who were, absolutely, worth years of my life.
For me at least, the most most important change there could possibly be, has been the most difficult...
I spent years posting about it, and though I expect everyone to ignore the silly RP person, once again, I cannot resist another try, even so.
For there are still some names I know in here, and I wish for them the best there may be.
I propose, as guiding thought and principle:
To make Planeshift a place where storytellers want to live.
~ Verrliit ~
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