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What if you couldn't see your skills in shades of red, ever; there were no books of "self knowing", BUT you could see your initial (unmodifiable) attributes (Str, Dex, Agi, Con, Int, etc.) in shades of red?

I personally always used those, plus my character's background, as "guidelines", as to which skills he should always be on, and which ones he should just forget about. Till now I haven't forgotten what "priorities" I set to my character's attributes and personality, nor their backgrounds (their background histories and such I always keep in txt-files along with the logs of the illarion folders).

I'm sure it would help alot of people in their RP, and bring us away from the "bastard-character" issue, where people perform 12 different crafts, are fighters, and either mage/druid along with it. Maybe if they didn't know "Hey, I'm absolutely red in this skill, therefore I r0xx0rs in it and must train a new one now", they would stick more true to their character concepts. Because, if you are not "black" in a skill, rather a deeper red, you -know- you're better at it, by simply doing what your character is supposed to be doing.

Take two-weapon-fighting for an example. You don't have a skill anywhere in your lists telling you how good you're at it. You can only tell from combat itself how fast your character is in two-weapon-fighting. Which prevents alot of people from even trying it, because they claim it wouldn't fit to their character.

Ya. I discovered my char is good at handling two weapons. But I wont tell you how

I still don't see, why most of us are so anti-skill.
What's so bad with knowing your skills?
Ultimate realism? Why?

I don't know why either, I personally like it in UO that I can open my list of skills, know my character has such-and-such a rating in a skill, and feel assured if the char is at 80% in a skill, or feel insecure at something if the character has 35% in it. However, in a system where you can read actual ratings, you run danger of inexperienced role-players exchanging the numbers in-character and not OOC. That's the main reason (I assume, at least), why the staff eliminated the bar-system and replaced it by the shades, and why someone like Sean-San or me even toy with the thought of eliminating them completely.

To be quite frank, in Pen&Paper RPGs, I always felt annoyed by knowing character stats and such, they COULD ineffably detract from role-playing (an observation of mine from GMing for Shadowrun or D&D). It's an interesting oppurtunity to play an RPG where you don't exactly know your stats/skills—we're playing on computers over the internet, so why not use such an interesting possibility?

I think it would be at least interesting to try to figure out your characters stats. You would probobly learn many other things such as what your character fights best with, what he makes the best, ect. I think this would encourage people to know better, what their character can and cannot do.

Moirear Sian wrote:I think so, yes; but I have no clue.

Also, if you don't role-play (i.e. interacting with other player characters/using #me's) along with your skill-gaining, I personally look at it as PGing. However I've also come to learn that people consider this opinion of mine "overrated", or "taking role-playing too seriously" (which I disagree with, as it's the essence of role-playing and this game is still called RPG).

I'm taking this the Grant style. I only read bits and peices of some posts.

Towards the above post. I, admit, that I do not role play while alone and gathering skill. If by chance, someone appears on the screen to actually see what the hell I'm role playing, then I will begin with small descriptions of what my character is doing when they enter the situation/building/area.

I read your possible solutions Kost. You just make it harder and harder for me to not dislike you.

I dont roleplay much when I am alone tho I do things like
"Picks an Apple"
or
"attacks the undead savagely"
Even when people aren't around, I do it cause i get bored of not typing :p

In real life, you know yourself how good you are at a particular skill, or at least how confident you are at something.

We're actually growing pretty off-topic—

The discussion I wanted to start was if "PG" as a term should be abolished.

Get a move on, people.
I've practically only read arguments speaking FOR allowing it so far.

All you closet PGers, you wannabe-PGers, you anti-PGers—
what are you waiting for?

Are you afraid that people will think you're a PGer when you've posted your thoughts on this thread?

Sure looks like it to me.

martin wrote:

Grant Herion wrote:Powergaming should be allowed unless the GMs actually tell us what powergaming is.

This is a huge problem. There is no clear definition of what PG is and what it is not. It all depends on the one judging the action.
Standing 5 RL-days in the woods kicking eachothers ass and being afk clearly IS PG.
Training for 10 minutes is not, I'd say, as that is something that could happen realistically.

There is no clear line that distinguishes between PG and non PG.

Martin

<--- All wannabe PGer here.

I said all I had to say in this topic :

http://www.illarion.org/community/forum ... 00&start=0

...Or did I? Actually I just realised I'm not a fan of people who just give a link as an answer.
My thoughts are that we are either roleplayers or we aren't. We are often told that skills do not come into it and I agree. But if that's the case then why can't we increase our skills in whatever we want as long as our character remains true. It seems that skills are not important as long as you dont have any.

I know what I'm trying to say I'm just not sure I'm saying it.

I see it this way:

PG: Training without real context. Like shooting arrows on each other, or magic. Melee-training is something different, you don't have to roleplay that you hit each other and make wounds, you can roleplay that you just hit the shield, or that you use blunt weapons. the losing of health could mean to be fatigued, or just simple and little wounds which are not dangerous.
Doing something without respecting the ingame time. one real hour are 3 (or four?) ingame hours. that means to train for 3 real life hours means that your character trains for 9 (or 12) hours. that is too much, noone can train that long. 1 or 2 (lets say 20 or 40 minutes rl) ingame hours of training, than a large break, and after that again 1 or two hours of training sounds good for me. of course between the 1 or 2 ingame hours should be little breaks too.

same is for work. but we have to realize that in the medievil times the peoples worked damn alot a day. lets say they worked 12 hours, that are 4 rl hours for this game. but even with a 12 hours day of work there are breaks between work. every 1 rl hour should be a good break. (damn, i can't even work 30 minutes before i lose interest and doing something else^^).
of course not every work is the same. there can be differences too. it depents on the craftmenship.

and, of course, there should be roleplay. in the past i saw peoples who stand at one pint for 6!!! hours, without #me or any moves, and who get angry when you came to them and tried roleplay with them. angry because you disturbed them at work.

doing something often which doesn't fit to your character. Like a warrior who collects flowers in his free time (um...okay, perhaps it fits to some warriors with special interests ). Or a smith who is a farmer and a baker and..well, you know what i mean.

but there we have differences too. some craftmenships fits together, some not. a farmer can be a baker, and he can collect flowers. thats okay for me. but there are craftmenships who doesn't fits.
and i think we have to differ between craftmenships, fighting skills and magic or druidry.
Yes, i think a smith, a farmer or someone else can be able to fight. why not, nothing speaks against that. but of course a farmer will never be as good as a trained warrior or mercenary.
of course a smith has better chances to be a good fighter than a baker. it is not easy to decide.

and it depents very much on the role with the character. not every role fits to every skill or skillcombination.

and of course the race is important too. yes, there is a difference between a dwarven smith and a halfling smith. because of their racial background dwarves ARE a race of fighters. The average dwarf is wellknown as someone who can fights well too. like the average elf is wellknown to be a very good archer, or mage. or the average orc who is wellknown to be a fighter, stupid and smelly .

a dwarven smith is something normal, dwarves are smith from their racial background. and it is not unusal or unnormal that such a dwarf is a good fighter too. but a halfing smith who is a good fighter too is not as normal or usual as a dwarven smith and fighter. of course an orcish baker is something special too . like a dwarven farmer is something special. something what doesn't really fit into the background of the race. of course there are peoples of that race who are in that craftmenships, but not as often as in other races. and not as good.

a dwarven mage is something unusual too (i know that galim can do magic, but its his role as a priest, i will try to change to priestmagic as soon as it is in the game).

of course something other which is important is the time. the time in which you gathered skills. it is no powergaming for me when players who play their characters since 3,2 years have many different skills. thats comes with the time. but a 2 month old charcter, who is a good fighter, smith, baker, farmer and druid is, well, unusual. and, in my eyes, powergamed.

well, that is about the skills, of course there is powergaming with items and money too. but there you can take it like with the skills.

but to answer the question of the thread. no, powergaming like i described above shouldn't be allowed.

um, thats all for now ^^. feel free to bash me

*bashes Galim with a mallet*

Grant Herion wrote:*bashes Galim with a mallet*

How mature

*bashes Grant with a mallet*

you only had to bash him when he said something WRONG. Not bash him when he is right...

*sighs* Humans...they never learn (<--quote from Misjbar)

But Galim, it takes at least two RL hours to dig out any decent amount of ore, considering how long you have to carry it.

It takes, like 30-40 clicks to mine 1 unit of stones.
It's just unplayably hard.

If you dont powergame, you wont mine anything.

It's not about how much you play, it's about gathering resources.
Back when mining was easy and when it was everywhere, people never mined too much, because it was easy. They got what they needed in 15 minutes, and they were done, gone to do something else or just talking at the smithy by the depot.

As the game gets harder, you're forced to spent a lot more time.

I was lucky to gather my tons of ore and coal during the old days, but not today.

Karmane...it only takes my other char 2 clicks to get 1 unit of iron. Or coal for that matter. I think it is just your char

Lysu Davanum wrote:Karmane...it only takes my other char 2 clicks to get 1 unit of iron. Or coal for that matter. I think it is just your char

I have to agree with this, my main character has little problem mining anything, and his strength is far below the average (most characters are fighters, so you have to give that average consideration). This considering he has bought appx 75% of smithing resources he has ever used. My character generally avoids manual labor this way, and hires people to do unskilled work. I hope jobs like mining and lumberjacking require dedication to be skilled in, in the future. Right now most people have to gather resources because few people sell them. This would also give the people harvesting the resources more monopoly giving them a better profit compared to the final product. Whereas right now they make little profit compared to the final products made from the resources.

That's not really the concern here, though. The way to fix that would be to somehow raise the prices of finished items while keeping resources at lower prices. This would encourage people to buy resources, and, in turn, people to sell them.

Moskher Heszche wrote:That's not really the concern here, though. The way to fix that would be to somehow raise the prices of finished items while keeping resources at lower prices. This would encourage people to buy resources, and, in turn, people to sell them.

Sure it would encourage people to buy resources, but it would discourage the ones solely gathering resources because it would be more profitable for them in the long run to use the resources for themselves to be able to make the products. If its not profitable enough for people to solely gather resources, than it will remain everyone gathering for themselves and everyone developing the skills to use those resources. Basically how it is now.

Then the difficulty of mining/farming/whatever would have to be less in comparison to crafting/sewing/whatever.

This would make it a coin toss as to which is more profitable and which is less time consuming.

However, I find that there are people who are willing to do the dirty work for you if you pay *fair* prices, which isn't usually the case. Most people pay SMACC price at the very most, and SMACC wasn't intended to be the end-all-be-all price.

Because SMACC is a roleplayed organization, characters should find ways to fix the market with roleplayed action. For example:

Character A is tired of having to sell his wares at the low SMACC cost because everyone else is selling it at said price. Character A starts an organization that intends to monopolize a product. It's a "you're either with us or you're bullied daily" kind of organization, and it's quite vicious.

I know you all like to complain here that it's impossible to be a villain in Illarion, but I know plenty of villains that survive and even prosper. The only way to make it easier on villains is for everyone who has four or so characters to have at least one villain, because there's strength in numbers.

However, again, I think we're getting off-topic. This is an issue of economy. Powergaming is an issue of mathematics. It can only be fixed with programming that makes it entirely impossible. The GMs know this and Sian knows this, and I think that's why he posted this. Sian isn't saying that he likes powergamers. On the contrary, he's from the hardcore roleplaying camp that can talk all day about how horrible powergaming is but rarely comes up with a valid solution.

What the issue is, I think, is that as long as powergaming is not made impossible outright by the system, powergamers are encouraged rather than discouraged by it, because as long as there's a reward for powergaming, it will exist. And with no reward, there's no skills, no items, no fighting system.

The sad thing is that no matter how we try to fix it, there are still powergamers in Illarion. Illarion does more than any other system to make it tough on powergamers, and, yet, there exists as many powergamers now as there were in the beginning.

You'd think there were plenty of games that outright encourage powergaming to keep powergamers away from Illarion, but this is certainly not the case. We have a different breed of powergamer here in Illarion. Whereas powergamers in Ultima Online have names like "KikAzFighter2020" and don't roleplay, our powergamers enjoy marginal roleplay that mostly involves finding reasons to be better than anyone else at everything.

What this leads to is that, as above, the only solution to make an actual roleplaying mmorpg, as Illarion was intended, is to eliminate the very opportunity to powergame, rather than making it more difficult or what have you.

There are a number of solutions along that line that have been argued over one way or another. Feel free to argue them here. If you don't believe those changes are needed, Sian is encouraging you to say "Yes! I'm a powergamer!" and tell everyone why you are an acceptable part of the community who should not only be encouraged by the system as it is, but why the skill increase factor should also be encouraged.

Keep in mind while you're arguing that that many non-powergamers are disgusted by the fact that your powergaming has lead to their skill increase being marginal over the months that they've been playing, because they had to tweak the system in a desperate attempt to keep you out of it.

Otherwise, start your own thread.

(Sorry if I sound like I'm being mean, but I'm a bit tired and I'd actually like to see some useful results from this thread.)

there are two forms of powergaming.

1. doing something for a long, long time, without rp or breaks.

this form is, well, the more honorestly form of powergaming, because the player abuse nothing. He, well, works "hard" for his skill. And he has the disadvantage that he miss all the roleplay and the fun, because it is not really fun to mine for 6 hours without any roleplay.

2. Abusing the game or the technical parts of the game or giving a crap on logical situations for your character.

like shooting arrows at each other, or casting magic to raise magic skills or magic resistance. Or holding up two shields and let the other other one hit you with needles or daggers to raise attack and defense as fast as possible. And and and, I don't want to count more possibilitys



Number 1 is a powergamer who just miss parts of roleplay in his gaming stile. He is not as "bad" as number two. There is no "mean" thought behind his doings.

Number two. Well, he or she is the evil powergamer. He abuse everything what he can find to raise his skills as fast as possible, giving himself as fast as possible the biggest advantage with less work than the average player (or number 1 powergamer). what he does is mean against the other players, who work, well, honestly for their skills. He hasn't the disadvantage of number 1 powergamer too, because he can raise his skills fast, and can have the roleplay. And mostly, he is proud of his high skills, and he roleplay this. Their characters feels like the strongest, and the best. Because they powergamed their skills.

Number two powergamers never respect the logic for their characters. They avoid the thought, or ignore it, that his character wouldn't like it to get pierced by arrows over and over, or to stand in flames for hours, feeling all the pain. He is the really bad roleplayer, because he ignores the roleplay. He give a crap on it, just for raising the skills. Number 1 powergamer do no roleplay, yes, but they aren't as bad as number 2 powergamer, because the number 2 powergamer don't just do no roleplay, but he ignores good one, and he breaks a frontier number 1 powergamers don't break.

What I want to say is, number 1 powergamers can learn. They can be involved in roleplay. mostly they just miss it, and don't know how much fun it can be. but number two powergamers don't even have the honor to "work" for their skills. they avoid the "legal" way to gain them. It is hard to teach them the better way.

The real problem are not the number 1 powergamers. They are not as bad as number two. It is their problem when they want to miss all the roleplay and fun. And when they just want to work or fight. The only thing what disturbs me is, that they don't do roleplay between her work or fighting, but that is all what disturbs me. If they prefer to work and to miss the real fun, okay, its their problem.

The real problem are the number 2 powergamers. they are the one who disturbs me. who are a pain in my...well, you know what i mean. And here we have the point were we (well, of course the gm's) have to change the gameplay so that it is impossible for that players to do powergaming. Of course this is damn hard. And can't be done without disadvantage for the good roleplayers too. It is the hard desicion of the gm's to find the fine line between working against the powergamers, and don't destroying the fun for the roleplayers.

arrr, again alot of writing from me. please excuse me. again everyone who thinks different is free to bash

Galim,

I would agree that there is a difference between powergamer 1 and powergamer 2, but I would disagree if you are implying that there is a way to fix the system so that powergamer 2 is entirely absent and powergamer 1 can continue to play on the basis that he isn't a malicious powergamer.

If it is a capability in the system for powergamer 1 to exist, there is a capability in the system for powergamer 2 to exist. The only option is to make powergaming entirely unavailable as an option.

I'm not speaking bans, warnings, or anything of the like. As I've already said, the only option is to make it impossible to powergame in the system itself.

--Mitch

Moskher-

How exactly would you be able to eliminate powergaming without destroying the fun for everyone else. As long as there are skills and abilities in this game, people will find a way to powergame them. You can't have skills without powergaming unless you make it so hard to learn them that no one even bothers to do anything, and I think everyone will agree that at current it is hard enough.

If you take away all skills then Illarion becomes nothing but a three-dimensional chat room where everyone stands around in town and does nothing but talk...then leaves. Granted, this isn't all bad as an idea. But I for one would miss being able to gather some friends and go drinking and mummie hunting. No one would ever be any better than anyone else without skills. Also, you'd then have to get rid of all the monsters cause no one could fight them and all the tools cause no one could use them to any purpose.

I'm not arguing taking away all skills. That is obviously not the case or I wouldn't have argued about economics in Illarion above. Without skills there is no economy.

What I am saying though is that we have to minimalize the ability to powergame as much as possible. As for the solutions, I have my own, and I've already spoke to the GM's with my proposals.

What I was saying, though, is that we need suggestions on how to eliminate powergaming, not a discussion on increasing or decreasing the rate at which one builds skills. We all already know that that has no effect on powergaming. This could start with you. I'm trying to bring back a derailed thread here.

If you must know my proposal, it involved the following:

Daily skill caps on all skills, to the extent where if you increase one skill and reach the cap, you cannot increase another skill.

Increased effectiveness per skill point, but same skill progression. This one should be attributed to Martin, because he was the one who suggested it and without it my proposal is lacking.

A cap to total number of skill points so that as one skill increases above the cap, other skills will decrease. This one should be attributed to Quain, who just proposed it to me tonight. He's a very smart guy.

Skills are seperated into different skills as proposed by Darlok in the proposal board. This would mean that instead of there being a single "Tailoring" skill, there would be a Tailor (someone who sews clothes), a Leather Worker (someone who works with leather), a weaver (someone who weaves threads), and a Sheep Herder (someone who sheers sheep).

Now that skills are split into the way they worked in medieval society rather than general and broad categories, a status system could be started using what skills you have as well as what luxury items are in your depot. This is unrelated to powergaming, but this was something that the developers have been meaning to implement since long ago.

The effect would be that people who want to get overly powerful and quickly would have to specialize in one or a small number of related skills to the extent where other skills will be lost. It will also make magic progression very difficult, but, in turn this can be balanced out by making magic more powerful.

This will also lead to people specializing more often than not, so that the tailor(merchant class) would rely on the weaver (craftsman class) and the weaver would in turn rely on the sheep herd (peasant class). This would build a solid and realistic economic system.

There's my proposal. Where's yours?

You were the one with the proposal not I. I was simply stating a fact that as long as the skills in the game are the way they are (ie to more you work the better you get. working all day builds lots of skill) then people will powergame. It is an inevitable conclusion. You said you wanted it changed, so I wanted to hear your ideas on how to go about changing the system and still retaining the skill system.

Here's my proposal :

Give everyone max skills in everything then we can roll play that we can or can't do something. After all this is a Role-Playing game.

For:-
1) No people comparing skills all the time.

2) Players able to be what ever they want to be. (No more warriors eaten
by flies, or middle-aged carpenters who can't make anything but sawdust.)

3) No more bitching about characters who've been on a shorter time than another being able to do more than the the "older" character.

4) More time to role play as there's no need to work like hell to get the skills to back up your story.

5) It will stop older characters who have all the skills telling everyone else that skills are not important in the game.

6) Stop powergaming. With no skills to get why powergame?

7) Give players the resources to create more interesting quests without bothering the GMs


Against :-
1) Turn Illarion into a graphical chat room. (But then isn't the original complaint that the characters are working all the time instead of sitting around campfires chatting.)

2) Wreck the economy. (Perhaps but then it's not in a great shape anyway. And surely we can RP around this problem)

3) Turn noobs into power mad PKers. (surely the entrance exam weeds out most of these and a ban would sort out the few that get through)

Arnold Schwarzenegger said:

Stop whining!

And he's the govenor of California now! Must be a sign.

yes i agree with sam but that during character creation you pick a skill or two that start out maxed, like for example

Say i wanted to play a elven fighter, who was a very timid person and liked to sew clothes in his spare time. i would pick a fighting skill like "long swords" and tailoring "clothes". both of those would be maxed out so that you would get the image of a real character who has actually been living before he came to the island.

i think, i hope i explained this correctly. my whole thought behind this is that you would be good at something when you first came here so you can talk and get to know people instead of spending your first months mining or doing other scut work. It would also get rid of that i came to the island at 30 years old and im a tailor but i dont remember how to sew a stitch type of thing.

Hermie wrote:Arnold Schwarzenegger said:

Stop whining!

And he's the govenor of California now! Must be a sign.

Hermie, you're a girly man.

Tal,

I couldn't disagree more. It is my belief that if the system worked properly, no one would have any skills maxed, especially if the usefulness per skill point was increased, which is apparently possible, considering it was Martin who proposed it.

There should always, even after years of play, be some way to be better. The problem that we have is that there are players who believe they should be grandmaster fighters in a matter of weeks.

Sam,

The system that I proposed included a way in which younger players could achieve a higher skill level than older players, and that would be specialization. By specializing in one or a small number of skills, you will, mathematically speaking, eventually surpass your elders if those elders have not specialized.

Why don't I consider specialization powergaming as such? Because it sure as heck beats players who have a lot of knowledge in every skill and are entirely self-sufficient.

Velin,

Don't get defensive. I'm not trying to hurt you, pal. I'm merely trying to get your brain working on making Illarion a better game.

--Mitch