Shattered Kingdoms

Dude, I see clearly now that it's impossible to get common sense through you. That post is full of so much BS and twisting of wtf is going on that I don't even know what to say.

Here's the problem: if you keep rewards AND quests, then the rewards become meaningless as people will avoid the interaction and just quest to GM. If you remove quests from advancing you, then you go back to the problem I stated. If you limit the xp of quests so you CAN'T GM without rewards, you destroy an explorer's time. You start moving into the realm of improving a socializer's time relative to others by making others trashier, not socializing better. The idea is to make socializing better and more rewarding - not make other paths more difficult or inhibited to balance it out.

The one extra level between GM and GM+1 offers few advantages except, for what I can remember, immunity to gate/summon and no longer being hungry or thirsty. No one is ever going to think "Man, all this drama is terrible, I keep getting annoyed by people doing stupid #*&$, my class isn't balanced, blah, blah, blah, blah....but you know, GM+1 makes it all worth enduring."

You need to move outside of the box of fixing paragon and forcing people to roleplay in a way that pleases others in order to unlock PvE/PvP. RP is currently required in all ways. This is not a MUSH, however, and I think people need to keep that in mind when proposing these forced-RP scenarios. No one has fun doing something that's a job/chore. The idea is to "incentivize" it in a positive fashion, not balance it by making others' times harder/forced to travel through a mentality of play they may not want.

Some RPKers mudsex. So what? Veloras definitely made paragon. If you would like to wager on that, I'm happy to. Whoever is wrong has to GTFO of this forum forever.

Your concern is a bit dramatic, and I think you are not seeing the big picture. You see, if rewards carried more gameplay weight, you wouldn't see the same people amassing them that you do now. You would see more of them going to RPKers, with more RPKers emerging from the ranks of pure PKers (and, as such, more RPKers emerging from the ranks of pure RPers as they interact with PKers more). What's more, even if you were right, if only mudsexors made GM, who cares? Like 1 in 20 of them actually know how to PK and could put that advantage to any real use.

But, what's most amazing about this is that you have completely missed 100% of what I have been saying in the last few posts. I am aware that the above system of making it harder to make GM is unpopular. I have offered an alternative idea if that is just too harsh for the player base to accept (which I'm sure it is): the idea of allowing for the advancement to hero level through rewards. What's so bad about that? The gameplay advantages of that are real and would encourage long term RPK, but not so significant that they would prove unbalancing.

Dude. What. Following your logic is like purposefully driving off a cliff.

You may have misread my post. It did not read, "Veloras was NEVER paragon, OMGOMGOMG you are so wrong and I will wager all 3 of my balls on it!" I said I wasn't sure that he was. He very well may have been. That does not disprove what I was saying about the majority of paragons being mudsexx0rs.

I don't see any advantage to bring back the hero system. Not one.

Opey, Ithorim made PAR. RPKers make PAR. It's all fun and games until you seriously propose only mudsexers get PAR. That's not really the case. It just seems that way because a chunk of the playerbase remaining are...mudsexers. Not many RPKers left nowadays.

Styles, people get rewards when they RP. Not when they mudsex and not when they do stupid stuff. They get rewards when the RP - I'm proof positive of this. It's not a matter of the same people ever amassing them. Unless "same people" = RPer. One will never force a PKer to be an RPKer other than penalizing them for not RPing their PK. Obligating a PKer to jump a hoop to reach max level will make them do one thing - jump that hoop. It won't make them into RPkers. Continual enforcement of existing RP rules will do that, or will make them delete. Either way, RP enforced.

If everyone who got the xp to tick over to 51 became a hero, you destroy the benefit of it: prestige. It also only reinforces an achievement factor for the achiever - it does not actually address reinforcing socializing. What happens once they hit 51? It's like an "achievement unlocked" on a video game - they stop going after it. That's the problem with achievement/prestige-based rewards. You achieve them. Then you become immune to summon/gate, no longer need food/water...then what? It doesn't address the root socializer and and surely does not reward them in a way that perpetuates socialization.

Whatever, mudsexx0r.

We all know Ithorim was screwing Charyn every which way imaginable.

I'll take the both of you right through your chainmail pants if you keep it up.

I don't completely agree with this analysis. I think rewards and quests would be fine, and that quests would not render RP rewards meaningless. I don't believe I could get from Champion(1) to GM with quests alone by myself on every class, but that's just me. Whether I'm questing or getting RP rewards, I'm going to have to interact with other people. This would reward PvE mastery (and so many people are woefully ignorant about PvE) and RP competence in whatever ratio you prefer. Some will quest their way to GM, some will RP their way to GM, but most will do some hybrid.


Incentives are about nudging someone along, not solving all of the problems of SK in one clever move. GM to GM+1 is but one incentive. They can be stacked as per many of the suggestions in this thread. I do think that people would be more hesitant to delete (retire, whatever) a GM+1 character than they would a GM character. It's a lot more work to get there; you have made a bigger investment. No longer being hungry or thirsty alone would be worth it to me! Also, I have to imagine your spells would be cast one level higher, your skills would operate one level higher, you would have one more level's worth of HP, and so on. The difference is small, but material.


I personally can think of no greater incentive than not having to eat and drink anymore. I've always thought that was a real drag. But, that's just me. Everyone would gain a little something from the GM+1 bump, and also from ideas like a mentor point component to rewards. Who doesn't want more mentor points? I think, too, with these incentives we will see a different landscape in terms of who is handing rewards out. There will be more well-rounded players put in charge of this (a higher ratio of RPKers), likely with the ability to make good judgments about what merits a reward.