Inconsistancy in death.

[Aegohl]

So we should add a chance of 50% that your character is permanently banned when getting ghosted.

I prefer a 100% chance of being perma-banned when you log in. =)

[Damien]

Possibly the real question is not about inconsistence in dieing, but about inconsistence in logging in.
Whatever change in technical ways are made, a technical change will never teach roleplay.

[Grokk]

Whatever change in technical ways are made, a technical change will never teach roleplay.

That's just rubbish.

If you are promoting a 'true roleplaying game', then your game mechanics should absolutely make it easier for people to learn how to roleplay and encourage them to actually roleplay well. The problem is a universal one. There are plenty of good roleplayers hidden away within Illarion. Very few of them roleplay death properly. Very few of them roleplay fear properly. Actually, I wouldn't use the term 'properly'. They are roleplaying properly. If no one ever dies or suffers any serious consequence for dying, then why would any character give death a second thought? If demons invade a character's home many times, but never do anything of significance, then why would said character continue to fear them?

The roleplay is not bad. It is lame. And it is lame because of the game mechanics. A system with no serious consequences is not conducive to good roleplay. A system that rewards powergaming is not conducive to good roleplay. A system that focuses solely on skill-level is not conducive to good roleplay. A system that completely ignores roleplaying is (surprisingly enough) not conducive to good roleplay.

There are reasons why DnD, UO, NWN, etc. were highly successful from a roleplaying perspective. And it is not because they got lucky and picked up all of the people who knew how to roleplay 'good'.

[Elijah]

Chop that up as one of the many reasons I wished Grokk still played this game.

[Illal]

Take out the skill screen.

After death, without knowing exactly what happened to one's skills (via colourcheck), one has to feel their way around, focus on the skills they really need, and perhaps forget some others.

One of the best ways to encourage caution and roleplay is to know ones character. Having those coloured bars is unnecessary for someone who already knows their character's capabilities and is a crutch for those who don't have a good feel for them.

[Athian]

Whatever change in technical ways are made, a technical change will never teach roleplay.

That's just rubbish.

If you are promoting a 'true roleplaying game', then your game mechanics should absolutely make it easier for people to learn how to roleplay and encourage them to actually roleplay well. The problem is a universal one. There are plenty of good roleplayers hidden away within Illarion. Very few of them roleplay death properly. Very few of them roleplay fear properly. Actually, I wouldn't use the term 'properly'. They are roleplaying properly. If no one ever dies or suffers any serious consequence for dying, then why would any character give death a second thought? If demons invade a character's home many times, but never do anything of significance, then why would said character continue to fear them?

The roleplay is not bad. It is lame. And it is lame because of the game mechanics. A system with no serious consequences is not conducive to good roleplay. A system that rewards powergaming is not conducive to good roleplay. A system that focuses solely on skill-level is not conducive to good roleplay. A system that completely ignores roleplaying is (surprisingly enough) not conducive to good roleplay.

There are reasons why DnD, UO, NWN, etc. were highly successful from a roleplaying perspective. And it is not because they got lucky and picked up all of the people who knew how to roleplay 'good'.

Its not that a system can't teach roleplay, the question is how do you motivate players into wanting to learn roleplay? This is especially true when you talk about the new player crowds who could become easily demotivated by their characters perma-death. I think that anyone can be a good roleplayer if they put the effort into learning it.. Whats going to be the deciding factor about Illarion that is going to make enchanting enough for new players who suffer perma-death vs the environment or other players? When people don't already have a vested interest in a game its just so much easier to quit and find another game rather then dealing with a overly harsh system.

I'm not sure what the measure should be of number vs roleplay quality. Id rather have both as opposed to prompting one and slashing the other.

[Aegohl]

What sort of system doesn't reward powergaming?

[Arvemor]

Well, possibly the idea of making critical hits practically killing people. That makes combat a very risky affair.

or

Players awarding other players "rp points"(akin to an xbox gamerscore...which has no real purpose but to show off...I imagine that would work quite well in our little community)?

[Grokk]

What sort of system doesn't reward powergaming?

I doubt there are any outside of something like Secondlife, or tabletop RPGs. But I don't think that it is difficult to imagine a system that minimises the reward.

- Reward Roleplay. If you want to motivate people to learn how to roleplay well, and to encourage people to roleplay full stop, why not reward them for doing so? Give out significant skill increases from roleplay. Two guards acting out a quality training duel? Give them some more combat ability. They are going to be a heck of a lot more valuable to the game than that guy grinding solo in the graveyard.

- Reduce the Grind. This has worked just fine in other games. Don't have such a high skill cap, make it much quicker to raise skills, or allow characters to start with a few skills at a good amount. If everyone can PG, its not so advantageous.

- Decrease the Skill Gap. Make lower skilled characters competitive. I don't see the need for gold characters to be demi-gods. What's so terrible about the idea of four peasants overwhelming a trained knight? It would fix a few of the game's issues, actually.

Whats going to be the deciding factor about Illarion that is going to make enchanting enough for new players who suffer perma-death vs the environment or other players?

New players wouldn't suffer perma-death/serious consequences in the form I suggested, unless their character was foolish enough to die 10 or so times.

[wolfsword]

I agree w/ the above- on rewarding RP, anyway.

Hell, it'd be great to have GM's pop up in individual's RP's as NPCs once in a while as a "reward" as well.

[Arvemor]

I second that (e)motion!

[Bloodhearte]

What sort of system doesn't reward powergaming?

Right?

One thing that has never really been defined in Illarion - powergaming. What is it? Nonstop training for 4 hours? 2 hours? 30 minutes? What?

You can't stop players from wanting to make their characters powerful in the shortest amount of time possible. Implementing slower gain times and the like just punishes everybody. I personally don't enjoy roleplaying as a "weak but aspiring swordsman" for a RL year. Co-sign on what was suggested above about motivating proper roleplaying.

The reason why there used to be about 50 - 70 people online at once back in the day is because characters didn't have to worry about isolating themselves for hours a time trying to get powerful/skilled. They got powerful in a few weeks or so, and could spend more time building an atmosphere around their character (it was also riskier back then, if you wanted to be a tough guy you had to tackle some big baddies and try not to get clouded). What will the end result be anyway? The guys who want to play fighters will be fighters and the guys who want to play tradesmen will be tradesmen. It's all just a matter of time either way.

The result? The game was more fun, more people logged in and there was more drama.

[Arvemor]

Sample chatter :
"I'm off to go kill some reds."
"What?"
"Reds. Red skeletons. I'm gonna go train on them."
"You're going to go test your skill against hordes of demon undead, with a high chance of dying, because...lets face it, you can't practically or logically hold off an unending stream of creatures, just because you think it will make you better at using your sword?"
"Yeah, that's about right."
"..."

Should killing creatures even level people up?

[1d20]

Offer a better solution to that, Arvemor.

[Kevin Lightdot]

What sort of system doesn't reward powergaming?

Remove gear and skill levels?

Everyone gets a stick and how you kill people depends on how fast you can type smash.