Gosh there is so much to read in this thread. I've lost some thoughts by the time I got this far. Mind you that is because there are posts with content rather than "you are stupid poopy head" arguments
What it sounds to me what Aramara is looking for is called "Free Form Role Playing", and well its just not in the scope of a PC game let alone a MMORPG game.
I agree with Korumak here. I think that these ideas are good(although I don't necessarily agree with all of it), but when you break it down the biggest problem I see is not conceptual but the limits of technology and workforce. I don't think you can achieve this kind of detail in this medium, even with an unlimited budget.
Reminds me a bit of the old Sierra quests, where you poor char instantly died in a huge variety of ways, just stepping in the wrong direction, or pulling some wrong thing. They were rather fun because of the stress element (but at some point fun becomes frustrating).
I agree with this as well. For me the equivalent was Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM). The game is very simple graphically but highly detailed, you can do almost anything, and almost everything you do has consequences. However, you are doing good to keep a character for 5 mins since the odds are always stacked against you and then once you die, not only is the character good and dead, the game deletes the save file. This can get very frustrating very quickly. I like the level of thought put into the game but I don't feel like devoting my life to surviving the game since sometimes I just need a little something to do, not a major time investment.
I don't think ALL death should be permanent, but death should be made into a much more strenuous ordeal. Or in a Dakkruist's mindset, the perfect vacation getaway.
Death is an ordeal, the mechanics are not, and, to be fair, if you rely on mechanics to teach people to RP you will always have trouble. The mechanics will always be lacking in some way. Although I think a DR map upgrade with equivalent quests and items would help this issue greatly, if you try to use limiting mechanics to force people to RP the settings right, more than likely, it will just end up being frustrating to people and force people to just find OOC ways around the issue.
In the end, I think making actions consequential is a good idea, but it needs to be balanced with keeping game play open (and not burdensome) to all, including those that don't have a lot of time to devote to learning the quirks and plotting ahead. I think the best way to do this is to not completely overhaul the system, or really bust your hump trying to make a game more "real", but rather to make the game more intuitive.
In an intuitive game, mechanics would follow logically and would provide incentives to play along with settings. By incentives I mean making it easier to play with settings rather than against it. For instance, you don't need the DR to be so much larger. What you need is access to merchants, trainers, and items that are equivalent to what you can find in Hydlaa. It is is supposed to have the same kind of details that the realm of living people have and that is much easier to recreate via mechanics than it is with art. Further, the reason to jump back and forth is that you can't get everything you need where you are. For some reason there is a notion in PS that you must be sent all over the place to get you to spread out or to make the game play better but I'd challenge that as it only serves to make people spend less time in other places since they are so busy running the long quest routes. And it is typically just tedious and frustrating, not good game play.
It would take time to make equivalent quests and set up new trainers and merchants for each place but it would be worth it for the return. People could travel to Amdeneir and actually stay there and RP for a while since they would be able to do similar quests and get the training they want/need to do in that area also. It actually doesn't add much more than frustration to send people all over on wild goose chases and the travel time cuts greatly into RP. Even on mounts a lot of time is lost since there is a never ending stream of "go fetch it" things to do. (might I also add that this would probably cause fewer game stopping bugs than other features)
In addition, despite the fact that you could play the game without NPCs, let's just accept that people will generally follow the NPCs before they follow the RP, especially if they have never RPed before. I personally think we can do without relying on mechanics so much but I know people will do that so at this point I look for how to make the system half way work. Making most training available in all cities would prevent people from leaving RP situation to chase that next level in whatever, same with chasing that particular weapon type, so on and so forth. I can see some things being exclusive to certain places but not basic things and things that make the game more playable. Have one mount available outside of the winch and have better mount inside. Practical thing is now available to everybody but there is still something to achieve for those that want it.
On a topic more along the OP example. To make combat more intuitive. Damage modifers could be attached to certain types of blows and percentages would need to be changed to the types of blows. For example, a blow to the head could do way more damage than a blow to the arm but it could also be a more rare occurrence to prevent you from being insta killed constantly. It's not loosing an arm but for what it is worth, a blow to the arm isn't always a matter of a direct blow that takes off the arm. It might just be a glancing blow, but a blow to the head is problematic pretty much no matter what. Brains are such fragile things.
For the RP aspect, the community now needs to step up more like in the past, simply set standards and stick by them in their own RPs. Make sure, collectively, that your RPs work with the mechanics instead of against them. If you have fun RP, people will want to join. If you have certain standards, like not killing frivolously, others will eventually imitate so that they can have fun playing along with you. For instance, the guards can't bust every little thing because they're NPCs, but you should RP along with the mechanics and play as if the guards can, while in the city. Well for the most part. They can't catch every "little" thing but big things yes.
This will help to not aggravate the RP settings/mechanics divide further. The community was better able to self regulate this kind of stuff in the past because of unspoken understandings that developed due to the way RPers worked together (obviously not universal but more effective) to uphold certain standards. This is partially because the community wasn't waiting for mechanics to create a general consensus on things, they just played along and got a feel for what was expected. A lot of the mechanics weren't around then but the system still worked, so it should be even easier to do such things now that some more mechanics are around to regulate.
yikes! This is long for something that is not an angry rant.
