What has happened to all the good roleplayers?

Gru'kuk Gorock · Post by **Gru'kuk Gorock** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 4:41 am

I have some major complaints about what has been happening lately to my character.

1. My characters number has been memorized and passed around lately. It is getting very old when i try to walk through town as my orc character and some of these noobies like Deies or Erears always recognize me because they have memorize my number. I have never #i to any of them and they haven't to me. So now, whenever I walk through town I am normally surrounded and attacked because people have memorized my number. I remember a time when people would roleplay not recognizing someone since that person hadn't #i to that person.

2. People mixing ooc with ic knowledge is also getting old. I made a thread in the RPG forum devoted to how my character was supposed to be so much more evil and cruel then the average orc in Illarion. Now once did I place his name in the thread, instead I just narrated what my character did. But now lesser roleplayers are associating what I did on the thread with what I did incharacter, and this cannot be since they don't know who is doing it.

3. General poor roleplay, you see, not only have these newer players memorized my number, they are also finding where my character hides by following my #me commands. For instance, tonight, they were chasing me because they wanted to kill my character. I lost them by going through the library, then behind the booksheleves, so I went to the tavern, one of them saw my character and said at the tavern. They didn't see my character go upstairs since they went right through the tavern and through the Silverbrand entrance. So I think to myself "lets see how these guys can roleplay.
So on top of the tavern, when the people are still running around blindly I type "#me places his mace in his bag as quiet as mice." Next thing I know, they run up through the ladder and corner by character and kill him. And they only way they followed him was by using the #me command.

What I am asking for is that the GMs look into this. These people are horrible roleplayers, I am sure many other players that have respected roleplaying careers will agree with me.

Grant Herion · Post by **Grant Herion** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 4:44 am

Back when I roleplayed this character as a "bad person" people didn't recognize my number. People would roleplay noticing my character, but wouldn't run up and kill me. Tho some character would roleplay "suspecting something was odd about the figure" and rip off his cloak and point out it was Grant.
But that was rare, mostly everyone would respect that my character was roleplaying hidding and wouldn't ruin it.

Anlan Erson · Post by **Anlan Erson** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 4:46 am

Um maybe by memorizing your number it is the same as remebering a face. I know people whos names I have no clue of but I remeber them because of their faces.

Also your right they shouldnt know your name but maybe some of them had your name and then passed it around

And the third one you are totaly right on

Gru'kuk Gorock · Post by **Gru'kuk Gorock** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 4:49 am

No offense Erson, but the problem is that you can't memorize anyone's face completely. You cannot remember where the wart was, you can't remember how long his hair was, how long his ears was, how old he looked, how long his nose was.
There are many orcs around, all of them are green all of them act rude (tho some don't), so saying you memorized my orcs face after about 2 meetings inwhich he had his back turned to you becuase he was running away won't work.

Anlan Erson · Post by **Anlan Erson** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 4:53 am

You are right after a meeting with them running away they cant remeber you completly. But also on another point if you can look at a persons face for at least 10 seconds you can get a really good mental picture of what they look like

Grant Herion · Post by **Grant Herion** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 4:56 am

People's roleplay has gone in the toilet. Nearly every new player is a powergamer and what is worse is that no GM is stopping them. I remember a couple of months ago GMs would be at monster spawns, invisible if they wanted just to make sure that no one was powergaming with the monsters, if they were caught, the GMs would do an instant kill to get the message across.
But now that never happens. The Gms have become far to busy to police the game now. For instance, Rustus Ocklam was an obvious powergamer. This new player had become one of the strongest people on the island in a matter of 2 or 3 weeks and yet no GM stopped him. And now there are 53*** numbers that are master blacksmiths. Or master carpenters or other things.
If the GMs were more active, (if you need more hands, just ask for help), then maybe Illarion wouldn't be what it is becoming. A hack n slash game. Everyone wants to be the strongest person or the best in something, and none of them are willing to put any roleplay into it.
I have some very, in my opinion good ways to find out wether a person is good at roleplaying or not. If a GM wants to know them, pm me.
I don't want to see Illarion go in the crapper, and it will if we don't stop this kind of roleplay soon.

Crosis · Post by **Crosis** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 4:56 am

I have to agree with Gru'kuk, some of the roleplaying that has been going on lately is horrible. Some people are going around powergaming, then jumping to fight at any chance they get. It makes me wonder how much the account system is actually doing.

Anlan Erson · Post by **Anlan Erson** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 5:04 am

Um how is that possible? I mean wont after awhile you will get tired? and then you would have to wait say an hour or so to do it again. I dont know If I am just babbling here but hey

Grant Herion · Post by **Grant Herion** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 5:05 am

What are you talking about Erson?

Anlan Erson · Post by **Anlan Erson** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 5:07 am

Well you said people were getting really good at blacksmithing really fast and the sites say that you have to use Iron and coal and such. So wouldn't you get tired or something after blacksmithing?

Grant Herion · Post by **Grant Herion** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 5:08 am

You do get tired, but you only need to more food to keep going.

Anlan Erson · Post by **Anlan Erson** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 5:10 am

Then that is what should change because food doesnt make you less tired. So maybe after you get tired you would HAVE to wait awhile to go back and work

Grant Herion · Post by **Grant Herion** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 5:11 am

can we get back on topic... No offense Erson, but since you haven't played this game yet, you can't really help in the discussion. the topic is poor roleplay and how it needs to be fixed and about powergamers.

Glosin Ironstar · Post by **Glosin Ironstar** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 5:28 am

Yea Balak is another one of those bad Role players. Kills people for nothen. Than runs and logs off so people dont hunt him down. He also powergames a bit...Another Powergammer was Rusty...O man that hobbit could fight.

Xerake · Post by **Xerake** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 5:48 am

I guess you can say I'm a bit peeved that some human with a 47*** number said demons were "Great excercise" and handled it with no problem, whereas it has taken me almost a year of proper, non powergaming training and I can barely block a weaker demon.

But the point isn't whether you can kill demons or not...

The point is that people are forgetting that the ONLY purpose of skills in this game is to back up your roleplaying.

I agree with Serpardum on something. He said, that there are two crowds in Illarion. The ones that say "Don't worry about skills, just talk. Just use #me statements to back up your roleplaying." Yes, pretty dull indeed...meaning, anybody that wants to play a master swordsman (and a lot of people do), they can easily be one without earning the reputation. Might as well go to an RP chat room.

And then there is the other crowd. "Forget roleplaying, talking is a waste of time! Yeah, I'm going to work on using a needle with my other maximum parrying friend, so I can kill 13092851 beholders, demons, rotworms and super ultra powerful jelly people without a scratch! KILL, KILL, KILL!

...Oh I'm a hobbit? Well, screw that, I'm still going to take over the world!"

Many newbies these days fall into this category, where they want to earn a reputation by killing somebody strong in a blow with a firesword, ignoring all decent roleplaying factors, and race limitations.

As for the ones that do want to roleplay...well...if they don't steal ideas from television and anime, they steal ideas from other players.

Take Bloodhearte for example. I wanted him to roleplay as a vampire, and I believe I did a pretty good job of doing so. I didn't turn the whole population into vampires, I usually fed off animals so as not to interfere with other players, excelled in magic, rarely went outdoors, and I especially thought it was a great roleplaying idea to turn only one person into a vampire to cure her seemingly uncurable disease that she had since she began playing. Heck, I even killed myself with a spell if some holy priest or priestess blasted me with a water spell. Suddenly, some newbie a few days later listed on the boards that he was a vampire, another one decided to be a werewolf. Rynt let silver kill him. We roleplayed as "special" races, true, but we came to accept the fact that we have an equal amount of strengths and weaknesses.

Zerbus is OK'ed by the GMs to roleplay as a Drow, because he has the skills and roleplaying ability necessary to roleplay as a great Drow. Then a newbie copied off him and tried to become a Drow. When he was offered information on Drow language and culture, he was too lazy to learn, and decided to be "half Drow."

So what was the end result of the copy-cats? No players can roleplay as an individual of a special race no matter how good they are at it, with the penalty of deletion (with the exception of Zerbus). But can't you blame the GMs? Of course not, they don't want every power-hungry player to roam around as a vampire, Drow, werewolf, etc.

Not only are many of these newbies immense powergamers, but they have the desire to become gods of Illarion; roleplaying special races without the ability to do it properly, and an ungodly high amount of mastered skills.

Illarion has seen better days, but remember, it's still a great game to test in its Alpha stage. Let's just find a way to flush out these poor RP'ers that seem to be coming in.

Sess'sth · Post by **Sess'sth** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 5:57 am

First about the PGing fighters.... why not make it so every weapon is exactly the same, every armor is exactly the same, and everyone's skills are exactly the same? I mean, no on is stronger, whoever wins the battle is just by chance, like you do random damage between an amount of ----- to -------- on their life meter. Well.... maybe the smithed metal armor should be stronger, but anyways, if everyone is the same, no one will pg, because it is not needed...... but then again, this may start more killings because everyone is equal and all you need to do is hit them first....

Second, about the people that cant RP.... The bad thing is the GM's cant catch EVERY bad rper.

FOR EXAMPLE: I want to become a halfling killer for some reason. My story is: 'You are a halfling. You just entered town and see many people around. There are flowers and gardens around....... FINISH THE STORY'
I could put: 'You walk up to the flowers and take some water from a stream with your hand. You then water the plants and are happy with yourself that you are creating something.....' and other 'nice' things like that, BUT THEN in game I can do whatever I want. I could go on a rampage and PG my butt off so I can own everyone in this game.

So in other words, it is not possible for the GM's or anyone to make a story that will keep everyone out because everyone can lie.... I hope I am not giving ideas to new people....

Many people act like #me is like you are saying it. One day, I put #me thinks to himself that this person is crazy, but he doesnt say anything. Then the person walked up to me, killed me, then followed me to the cross saying "Thats what you get for calling me crazy!!". I tried to say "When did I call you crazy? Are you one of those mind readers??" Then I tried explaining it to them OOC, but then the person said ((STOP SPAMMING WITH OOC JUNK)) and that makes me mad.....

So in conclusion, I think:

To make it harder to PG, the GM's will have to make it more complicated, like instead of getting hit, to raise parry you have to get hit and hit back for hours and hours at a time to raise it just a little or something.....

It is just about impossible to keep all the PGer noobs out because everyone can lie on their story and questions and stuff.

Some people just cant RP and if nothing else works, just report them or something.

Konstantin K · Post by **Konstantin K** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 6:08 am

How come bad RP topic always gets mixed up with PG topic?

Xerake · Post by **Xerake** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 6:12 am

These are fairly good ideas, but in my opinion, slightly flawed...

Yes, all skills, armor, etc. COULD be the same, but as I said, anybody can say they are master swordsmen from their old kingdom or whatever, and they can easily be one without any backing. Throughout history, swordsmen in both Europe and Asia could easily defeat or kill an opponent who has not enough experience with a blade. I think the skill system and weapons/armor are fine, at this point...

Second, making skills even harder to raise in combat? I haven't powergamed, and as I said, a year later, after tough training, I'm being called a "weakling" by newbie humans and halflings, despite Xerake's famous history as a skilled assassin. Making it harder for the powergamers this way would make it tougher for them, but it would be just about impossible for the people that play fair, and can only go on for about three hours a day (you shouldn't have to play all day long just to be a sufficient player).

This has been the solution for anti-powergaming for a long time: Make the skills harder, make the skills harder, make the skills harder, make it more complicated...no matter what will happen, there will always be somebody, somewhere powergaming and becoming a master in no time. If it keeps getting harder, then the players that play fair will pretty much forget about skills because they'll be too tough to raise.

I think it would be a good idea to make it where you can only learn a certain amount of skill per day; a shade, maybe, each day, at the most, so one would have to play for almost a year before they're a master at something. But, this has been proposed, and I'm not sure if the programming would allow this (although, there is a 24:00 clock at upper right hand corner of the screen; maybe this can have something to do with it?)

Xerake · Post by **Xerake** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 6:14 am

Konstantin K wrote:How come bad RP topic always gets mixed up with PG topic?

Because many bad roleplayers seem to be powergamers; they're a lot harder to deal with than those who just roleplay bad, but have no skill whatsoever (for example, they can't "accidentally" kill you for talking about their poor RP; it's happened before

)

But, there are also great roleplayers that powergame occasionally. This I don't mind *too* much, namely because they're roleplaying very well.

Anlan Erson · Post by **Anlan Erson** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 6:23 am

Um I am wondering what is the punishment for pging?

Drogla · Post by **Drogla** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 6:24 am

Gru'kuk Gorock, you nhit the RP flaws. i remember when i was on my first charector, the RP is like you are talkin about

this new RP is currupted.
i dont contribute to teis currupted RP...purposely. i learned my leason a ways back...sivers at teh memory

Gro'bul · Post by **Gro'bul** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 6:44 am

Punishment for pg'ming can be jailtime, temporary ban, permaban of that character, ban of your account, ect. Pretty much anything can happen, I suppose it depends on the severity.

Anlan Erson · Post by **Anlan Erson** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 6:47 am

Why dont they just take away all the skills and make it harder for that character to get the skills back. That in my opinion would be a bad punishment for a pger. But I am not in the game so I am just throwing out ideas as they pop into my head forgive if they are off.

Gro'bul · Post by **Gro'bul** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 6:51 am

Accually, that can happen too, thats why I said ect. I'm sure its probobly happend to someone or another. Follow the rules you've got nothing to worry about ooc.

Konstantin K · Post by **Konstantin K** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 7:37 am

The cure from powergaming lies not in making skills harder, but, I think, in making skills not that important and desirable. People's attitude towards skills must change, so that they play naturally as it goes for them.
If skills stay on the background, not grabbing attention, people will not wish to raise them so much.
Today a player is valued mostly for their skills. All guild exams are based on how much skill one has.
And this is kind of natural, and in the same time cannot be completely cured, unless skills are made extremely hard to learn.
Nobody buys cheap weapons, for example, that's why everyone wants to become a master as soon as possible.

Moathia · Post by **Moathia** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 8:29 am

I have to agree here, I don't do anything to powergame, it's taken me eight months to get where I am as a tailor, and I can say legitimatly I am one of the best on the island, but I have taken a long time to make money, because I rp my char as spending days or weeks on a dress, and making a lot of money when I finifh and sell them, but then Rustas came along an said, he is making 10 ingots a day from tailoring. Also, I have my character go into the library and look up books on dress making, and designs. People have to be told to take a long time to learn skills, making them harder again is stupid, the 10x skill increase was bad enough, though useful, what I think is that, all skills should be invisble, just get rid of the show skills page, that way no one knows how good they are.

Anlan Erson · Post by **Anlan Erson** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 1:42 pm

Hey good idea Moathia about going to look up designs in the library. If I ever get in Ill think Ill use that idea

Faramier · Post by **Faramier** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 2:23 pm

There isnt ENOUGH roleplay, in the past, I used to walk through town, it would be bustling with people, making trades, talking, sitting round a campfire baking bread and making stories. I would go out of town and there would be someone casting spells, but then a tutor would come up and explain the proper hand motions and pronunciations. The monster spawns would be guarded by a few people who roleplayed getting injured and generally there was roleplay everywhere. Now there is hardly any, if we are to increase the quality of roleplay, we need to increase the quantity of it, we need to practice our roleplaying skills, we all need to be powergamers, we need to powergame roleplaying, then we shall become master roleplayers. Then instead of letting new player go off and become hack n slash fans, we can introduce them to roleplaying.

The whole atmosphere needs to be roleplayed, not a small section here and there.

So all you good roleplayers, get off your arse, get in the game, and roleplay, dont stop. We are all falling into the trap of giving up caring, if we do that of course its doomed, a problem will not go away if you ignore it.

Get into illarion, and start setting an example for the new players, if they act OOC towards you, dont break the mould, keep IC no matter how out of hand it gets. And if I does get out of hand, report them, and hopefully the GM's will do something about it.

We need to do some of the best RP we have ever done, and lots of it, we dont want to sit here and mope around talking about the problem, we know what the problem is. We need to get active and fix the problem.

Get roleplaying.

The Returner · Post by **The Returner** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 3:00 pm

About number memorizing

it is proper RP, if by chance your character saw and heard a conversation before and set int at a fairly high level

People DID use simple logic back then you know, I must know something like 50 people who I havent met face to face by simply observing actions.

Moving right along, powergaming

theres a simple solution, make it about 5X harder then it WAS not 10X

and add a good deal of skills in each section, lots of skills, sword skills, bow skills many existed during that time.

Next is to add several.....hundred......weapons and peasent clothing of various types

Illarions armory is quite impressive.....ly small

, where everyones wearing plate and RPing like they are wearing peasents clothes, and carrying fireswords even though they are peacefull elves.

Twania Green · Post by **Twania Green** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 3:47 pm

Leading by example will help considerably. All of you veteran role players know the great tricks that make a rp session fun. Use these with the newer players as well as your old buddies. Mentor them if you need to. Things associated with the coding and game dynamics are ever-changing and improving, but the majority of you have only one job ~ role playing and role playing well.

The best rp sessions in my experience have been when the situation posed was drawn out a bit. All characters take time to post actions and reactions. Conflicts are edgy and nail-bitingly intense. Opponents eye each other up, giving a chance for physical and emotional descriptions. If the tension rises to a crescendo, which may not happen in every instance, weapons may be drawn. Here the players sometimes toggle the attack mode on and off, giving plenty time for dialogue and actions. Someone lunges forward to jab with a short sword. Someone suddenly looses his composure and dives aside, loosing his shield in the process. Someone’s arm is sliced by a sword, and the blood spreads out on the sleeve of the shirt. Eventually the conflict comes to an end. Someone is injured badly (“killed”) and goes off to lick his wounds and recover. Someone is left to recover from his wounds and be tended by a healer. Perhaps a bystander standing too close to the action is grabbed and taken as a hostage. To battle against scenes with nothing but a bunch of red x’s, you veterans need promote the good stuff.

Of course, fights are far from the only scene that you veterans can help improve role play. “Working” requires role play. Chopping trees? Get a splinter? Find a strange ring with an engraving? Going on the great hunt for sandberries? Get lost? Are you involved in the politics of the island? Does your group or guild have plans and purposes?

If you show “those great examples of rp from long ago”, believe me the less experienced players will want to get involved too and learn by your example.

Lastly, to vexation of those receiving violation reports, if you see real, honest to goodness rule-breaking, report it. I don’t want to see every infraction of poor role playing; I don’t want bands or vigilantes looking for rule-breakers; and I certainly am not asking for tattle-tales. But, if something is going on that needs attention, let us know.