Current Player Levels

[Volki]

You don't roleplay, Adash.

[bloodedIrishman]

Adash, you don't understand roleplay. It requires common customs and rules of behavior.

And by the way, a game that limits what you and your character can do is not a dictatorship. A dictatorship is a form of government. All games (and life, by the way) limit you and your character.

Addition: You do roleplay, Adash, and you can. Just know that common customs are required for roleplay. That's all.

[cdmoreland]

I don't understand many of the role players here. Been on PS for 3 years and still don't get it. Who makes the rules that all of us must follow? I have been accused of god modding for rp'ing spells that I have! Many of those that rp don't know the limits or the abilities of the game mechanics. The "purists" want the rules to say what they want them to say and to disregard any of the game mechanics.

[Volki]

The way roleplaying is now is much like it is elsewhere. So what do you mean by you don't "understand many of the role players here"? If you don't get it after 3 years, maybe you should try it in other places? Other games, forums, whatever... You'll find it's about the same.

I think many who roleplay do know the limits and abilities of the game mechanics. Unfortunately, we are often forced to work around them.

There are no purists. I'm not sure what you mean by that. When we say there are rules that only means you should treat other players with respect. That includes not godmodding, not powerplaying, and not metagaming. And not being a buttwipe.

I have never seen you in-game, cdmoreland, but if you were accused of godmodding for casting a spell, it could have been that you either 1) cast the spell without roleplaying it with the /me command, 2) assumed that whoever you were casting the spell on was immediately affected, and/or 3) typed over someone else before they had a chance to post.

[cdmoreland]

If you haven't ran into Waesed at some point, then you haven't been on when I am.

[novacadian]

If you haven't ran into Waesed at some point, then you haven't been on when I am.

Sure anyone who is anyone has heard of Waesed. Volki is catching up after having had an extended period of down time.

Make the game your own, as do others, trying to meet in some compromise of both's perspective.

[Rigwyn]

I don't understand many of the role players here. Been on PS for 3 years and still don't get it. Who makes the rules that all of us must follow? I have been accused of god modding for rp'ing spells that I have! Many of those that rp don't know the limits or the abilities of the game mechanics. The "purists" want the rules to say what they want them to say and to disregard any of the game mechanics.

Without details, nobody can say when you are being accused of god modding. The rules of RP and pretty standard with small details - like how to call success and failure. Google can find them for you.

Google search: Role Playing Rules
Google search: metagaming godmodding

[bloodedIrishman]

Yeeuup.

[Jawir]

Hi All,

Someone brought up a big issue at the last dev meeting and I wanted to say why I think the game has lost so many players (and can't retain new players) and give a solution. Frankly, I think the reason for lack of players is the game is one big grinding session. Yes, you can role play without grinding but to be able to do anything with your character using the game mechanics takes weeks to get any where. My solution is to simply make levelling significantly easier and fix crafting to make it faster with less clicks (will give a solution for that in another post). The game is for role play but in its current state, it is mostly all work. I think ultimately a game should be fun and not a grind. Yes the levelling was fixed a bit with the last update but it still needs to be increased significantly. I think a general rule should be whenever a change is proposed or looking at what is currently in the game, please ask yourself, will this add (or currently adds) work to the game or fun. If it adds more work than enjoyment, it should not be added or needs to changed.

That being said, I would like to end this portion on a positive note. I really like what you did with the rogues after the last update. When I tried to fight the rogues at camp banished and one them yelled for help I was pleasantly surprised. It was the most exciting death I have had in a long time. I loved it. Thank you very much for that. 

Eatuck

Hello Eatuck, yesterday I was speaking with Menille about grinding time, skill levels and stamina drain. She pointed me to your thread so I would like to share my point of view. Currently I'm training the axe skill and let me say that to max out that skill takes a huge amount of time. In my opinion though, the time required to rise the skill isn't an issue, in fact keeping that hard and time consuming prevent to have a lot of players with maxed chars. Maxed chars should be sort of exceptions, were only the more devoted players reach the top level. What I think it should be improved though is the difference between each level of a skill. I mean, currently from what I can see (I don't have exact numbers) until level 100 in axe skill you are not really effective against mobs, and from level 150 to level 190 there isn't a huge difference in damage dealt. So, on an hypothetical graph where the x axis is the time spent (or skill level since they are somehow proportional) and the y axis is the damage dealt, the slope of the curve isn't steep enough. If that slope could be steeper, people could be satisfied stopping for example at level 100, were the most devoted in training could aim to reach level 200 with a huge difference from lower level characters (because after all they master that skill and no other npc, even in BD Fortess, you can find with better proficiency).
Little off topic (but not so much): the more you train in a certain skill the less your stamina should be drained, currently it seems just a constant related to the fighting stance. In my opinion, the more I train in axe skill the less stamina should be drained while swinging my axes.
Those are just my thoughts! 

[Eatuck]

Hi Jawir,

Thank you for your response. I do agree with you for the most part. I think there would need to be some middle ground in there though. For example, the levelling could be sped up (not a huge amount but significant) and then add in your idea for greater improvements with each level. That way players gain ranks quicker as well as gaining a greater reward for each rank. Of course there will be players that play every day and obtain max skills fairly quickly but that shouldn't be at the expense of players that don't login as often.

Eatuck 

[Bonifarzia]

[...] the slope of the curve [for damage as a function of weapon skill] isn't steep enough. If that slope could be steeper, people could be satisfied stopping for example at level 100, were the most devoted in training could aim to reach level 200 with a huge difference from lower level characters

Personally, I think less players are "satisfied" with non-maximal skill ranks if the top skills will make a "huge difference". The "slope" or usefulness per skill seems okay to me. Especially if you take into account the very significant effect of (rare) equipment.

Little off topic (but not so much): the more you train in a certain skill the less your stamina should be drained, currently it seems just a constant related to the fighting stance. In my opinion, the more I train in axe skill the less stamina should be drained while swinging my axes.
Those are just my thoughts! 

Considering stamina usage, I also thought it would be a great aspect of skill progression, especially for defensive ones, like shield and armor skills, where a higher damage reduction does not make much sense IC, but is very convenient in terms of rule complexity.
However, we should really avoid to make the life of low level characters more cumbersome - imagine increased stamina usage on low weapon skill times low armor skill levels, times low physical base stats: Not funny.
On the other side, higher skills could easily lead to total irrelevance of stamina mechanics. From this point of view, the current rules do not seem bad to me.

[Jawir]

Personally, I think less players are "satisfied" with non-maximal skill ranks if the top skills will make a "huge difference".

This is the main reason I'd like to keep the current levelling speed, so each one can find the proper trade off between damage dealt and time spent training. 

[Ascomanni]

I have two parts to this message:

One, I would be against the implementation of stats being used in RP settings for a lot of the previously stated reasons, however one important factor that is missing is that sometimes in an RP setting a player needs to create a character to fulfill a certain role (an exceptionally strong warrior, a deamon bent on the characters destruction, a super intelligent alchemist, ect.) with significantly higher stats. In some cases these should be higher than even a character's maximum. I feel that the proposed change would greatly hinder that capacity.

Secondly, and this is more to where the thread has lead rather than the original topic , one problem I see at least in this thread is that we have a lot of older, more experienced players arguing about what new players want and why they are leaving/not continuing . I think that it might be best if instead of arguing on behalf of the new player, if you got a commission of newer players together to create a list of their challenges and viewpoints. They might even be able to offer solutions, but I think even just the list of challenges would be a great help for the development of the game toward the newer player.

So my proposal would be for the gathered experienced players to contact a new player (maybe a median of a month in), maybe one that you have taken under your wing or even brought into the game and invite them into a development roundtable much like the regularly scheduled DEV Q&A were they can just talk about, vent, or maybe even rant about the issues they see. Have some Devs present to listen and take notes, but have it be really low key and OOC without their sponsoring character present (some might be hesitant to be honest with all of their frustrations if they were there too). Who knows, maybe even just having a mini community of new players might help with retention.