Shattered Kingdoms

As "one of them," Dulrik, I also think linking advancement to greets is a terrible idea. Galactus' above idea is interesting, but I'm against it, too. We already have issues with things like losing bardic songs: What happens when there are no players rolling a specific class?


What I sense here above all else is disdain for the concept of rewarding roleplay AT ALL from the PvP crowd. Again, I'll state (for the billionth time) that "Roleplay required. Roleplay rewarded." is a part of DULRIK'S vision for the game. Yes, engaging roleplay is rewarding in itself, but that isn't supposed to be the end game. If roleplay and tactics are colliding here, why are tactics getting all the boons? I don't get the problem with rewarding roleplay.

I don't want my idea to be linked to the idea being floated by Galactus/Tragonis. I think my idea has much less impact to existing gameplay and has a direct correlation to increasing RP, while their idea would just make it harder to train. There are already enough examples of people who use the mentor system as a shortcut to level without using it to teach or introduce people to the game.

I'm 100% on board with rewarding roleplay, but preventing people from gaining levels until some arbitrary standard of "good RP" has been met isn't rewarding roleplay: It's a MUSH conversion. Sometimes people just want to play a character that kills things and is anti-social, and as long as they roleplay -that- role accurately, I see no problem with it: Just like I don't have any problem with people who would rather spend the majority of their time RPing instead of gathering EQ, exploring places, or PvPing.

Tying advancement to an increase in your susceptibility to <cabal spell removed> and other tactical weakspots doesn't compute, imo.

Edoras: I can agree with your above post entirely. And I miss PvEing with you all the time.

If other RPers feel the same way, I'll probably be dissuaded once again from trying this.


But here we are agreeing and I think we are right. Tactics have always gotten the lion's share of attention and therefore players who prefer tactics have often been sought out for their opinions, but I feel that the RP has suffered for it and relegated it to a second class status which goes against the founding charter of the game.

A) Only a suggestion, on getting more people talking to eachother.

B) If there are limits on how many skills/levels you can learn from someone, then they have to find multiple people to assist them. Even if it is that they must teach them in an appropriate areas (arenas for mercs, specific wild zones for scouts, ...) That would require RP to set up.

Complete hyperbole. Your standard MUSH doesn't even have a combat system. Nobody is suggesting removing tactics from the game or changing any of the ways that you can already gain XP. I am talking about requiring people to demonstrably interact with other characters throughout the leveling process, instead of just concentrating on a collection of stats.

I like the premise and would like the idea to be expanded on a bit. My characters have always tried to RP during or between "training sessions," and you're far more likely to find my characters in a group than outside one. Especially when leveling, it's nice to enjoy a decent conversation and share backstories on the cooldown. The incentives for group experience are already pretty dramatic, and I try to raise awareness of that. I'll often pair newbies up together and send them out as well specifically for that purpose.

The difficulty is that it's far more difficult to provide a metric for necessary, quality, or even "good" RP. I don't think it's entirely accurate to base it on impressions, but that's certainly one fair metric. Maintaining an active group with another character (or group of characters) of a close level should be an acceptable alternative. I'm hoping there are some other acceptable "milestones" as well that could be achieved if you did want to implement a system like this.

Yes, I'd love to brainstorm other metrics that accomplish the same purpose of identifying the act of roleplaying with other characters. I am not tied to only the one I brainstormed this morning.

This solution seems to come at the expense of players that enjoy or favor the tactical aspect of SK (who knows - maybe they will end up loving it too?), and it also feels very MUSH-like to me. I don't agree that RP has been relegated to a second class status, so that is probably why I disagree with this sort of system.

Other than most updates being focused on tactics, I am curious to know why you believe RP is second class. I have only been playing again for the last few months, but I did not get that impression on my last character.