Konstantin K wrote:I like those proposals. I say, implement them all, and you will get your anti-PG oriented graphical chat, where people will craft for 1 day and then sit idle for 6 days. I bet you, you will have 5 players online at most, because Roleplaying without actions is boring.
What you're not considering when you write this is the following:
You can still roleplay and carry out actions with these proposals in effect. All the more, any roleplaying and actions cannot be deemed PG since they would be paramount to a question of style. Furthermore, if these things are massively slowed down for everybody, everybody will be low in skill and items; which will signify a slightly more balanced IG-situation, statistic-wise.
Last but not least, the GMs will have a tool at their disposal; namely they can monitor statistics and item caches of a character and discern on an easier basis whether someone is cheating (hacking or abusing bugs) or not.
Konstantin wrote:What can you talk about? Sheep? Flowers? How beautiful the buildings are? Families?
This joke is void, because this proposal is supposed to adversely inspire people to
not fall victim to the "
sit around the campfire and talk all day"-symptom. How would that work you wonder?
I'll tell you how: Go around the boards and find every post of someone saying that they're tired of playing because they don't know what PG is and what is not. Because they don't know how they should roleplay without falling into the "
sit around the campfire and talk all day"-symptom, and at the same time, without being slandered "PGer", "cheater", or other nonsense.
Konstantin K wrote:Okay, do that for a day or two. You still have 4 days of the week to occupy with something. And that something is: plots, conspiracies, attack plans, operations, trade routes, crafting, merchandise interactions, magic studies, and mercenary employments. And all those things - need skill.
I don't see how this will prevent those things you speak of. Following my theory, a fighter should fight, a crafter do his trade, a whatever do his whatever. Other things however will be impossible:
Younger characters can never surpass previously existing ones (in the sense of skill ratings) unless the older ones take extensive breaks of missing out in play (although, following method #2, the latter type of player character has a chance to stay on top easily).
If this is a bad thing is arguable, however I'd like to add that the PG rules are in place to somewhat cause the same effect; however, I am convinced these rules should not be professed by human beings judging what is PG and what is not; instead programmed by the game designers and regulated by the actual game.
But while this is a thing that may become impossible, I think this is the price many of us would be willing to pay in order to have an unconstrained RP-environment where people are not labelled PGer for their style of playing.
Additionally, there are things that are oftenly independant of skill ratings and the likes. Integrity within an in-game community or society, for example, is oftenly only achieved through certain amounts of roleplaying. As for items, player characters should be far less self-sufficient; not so it's impossible to be slightly self-sufficient, but to the extent where the players are driven to more interaction (if you think of the crafting and item drops being restricted by the game, this is the main purpose behind it).
Konstantin K wrote:If you limit the game's skill gain to extremely slow pace, like you want it - it will become boring.
This is not true. The pace of music, for example, does not determine the quality of the music, instead it's the orchestration that creates the full effect on the listener. These are the repercussions I'd estimate in follow-up to these methods falling into place:
• old characters will always be more skilled and have more items than young ones
• player characters who "train" alot can finally go under the description of being "ambitious" or "eager", without the player being labelled a "PGer" or assumptions being made about the player
• the playfield is slightly levelled out between the people who sit around the campfire talking about sheep or flowers or cupcakes all day, and the ones who train alot or craft alot out of RP-reasons
Konstantin K wrote:Why do you want slow skill gain anyway? Just have people become good at their trades, what's your problem?
As my entire initial post indicates, the purpose behind the slowed down rates is to eliminate discussions by players as well as GMs concerning whether a player is a PGer or not. What concerns me most is
players labelling others PGers. As Aegohl once said, the GMs see all and know all. The players more oftenly than not do not
know a God damn thing about the other players.
Secondly, it is not necessarily that I want slow skill gains. Moreover, people can still RP to be good at their trades; their progression rate in skill ratings will simply be much slower. It is ridiculous to say this will end all actual actions that go along with the RP; in the contrary, it would hopefully inspire people to actually carry out more actions! And you'd never have to worry about someone having an unfair advantage over you because of extended free time they spend skilling up or gaining items.
Terook Telcove wrote:Actually he has a good point if he can only gain a certain amount of skills in a certain amount of time none of his actions after that skill gain would amount to anything except a waste of time
Not true. Any actions that would normally gain skill or items after reaching a cap are purely a matter of style then. If someone wants to play the murderer, or monsterhunter, or pied piper, whatever that person does is a question of style and not of gaining skill, thus the PG rules could be narrowed down to simple things that could be bulletted well and serve for a better atmosphere paired with the illusion of fairness.
As it is now, it is an illusion of mythical proportions to ever make perfect PG rules, or eliminate PGing forever. Instead the game should be welcoming for new players and new player characters, and the playfield should be balanced out for the type of PG which I don't consider malicious (as you can read in the edit below, I do not agree with the current definitions of "PG": I consider "cheating" to be "PG"), and within the borders of proper roleplaying.
/Edit.
This is what I consider PG:
- • Hacking the client for unfair advantages.
• Consistently abusing bugs in the game for unfair advantages.
• Speaking consistently and exclusively OOC when "training" or "crafting".
That's it. Anything else people dub "unfair advantages" sounds silly to me since this is
real time a player is spending, playing with the
underpopulated game world! But that is beside the point. My proposal serves so that people can RP any style of character, even one who camps out near some bandits and kills them day in day out (which
is a distinct character type), without being labelled PGer.
Japheth wrote:As we all know, powergaming is something that can hinder the roleplaying environment in Illarion.
I underlined "can" because it's just that. "Can". I can say that most basically, PG as some other people define it, concerning skilling up, lurking around monster spawns and such, does
not hinder a fantasy roleplaying environment.
What hinders a fantasy roleplaying environment...
... is OOC talk
... is characters stepping out of their roles (a fighter suddenly acting to be the scholar or a scholar suddently acting to the fighter)
... is PKing without roleplaying background
... is abusing bugs that cause odd in-game situations
... is encountering characters with names stolen from mythology and fantasy literature without a single alteration to the name
... is silly brabble off the game about what the players are doing wrong, when we're supposed to be in the game having fun together.
/
Thank you for your attention.