Shattered Kingdoms

On that note, I'd like to pause and give some of the people who drove the initial ideas in this thread (for example: Smoochy Bovine, Aelandron) a chance to respond. Newer players who joined with a motivation for RP and appear to be not fully satisfied are more qualified to answer your question than myself, Finney.

For that matter, have I gone so far off the track from their original proposal that they are now tuned out, or are they just not monitoring the forum on a Saturday evening? I'm guessing it's the second, but let me know.

I don't have a problem at all with rewarding roleplay, though I tend to think that the roleplay is the reward in itself. Also, coming up with appropriate "pure roleplay" rewards is difficult without incurring a bunch of effort on the part of immortals.

Some of the possibilities have been mentioned by people here, such as:
* Access to a mechanism for redescribing items or rooms (see dreamscape skins)
* Ability to create gear that grants no tactical advantage (e.g., unenchanted rings, pieces of furniture, etc.)
* Ability to order emotes and such from creatures that would otherwise output "a horse makes some incomprehensible gestures"
* perhaps minor ability to "control" city NPCs insofar as getting them to do says/emotes
* Earning reduced prices in shops (in certain kingdoms?) if you are recognized for great roleplay? Heroism?

I would also increase the value of enlightenment rewards by 50-100% I think. And maybe have them be a set amount of XP rather than a sliding scale based on GM experience. So that if you reward a novice a medium amount, they might get up to 4 or 5 levels? This would encourage people to "play their characters" earlier. As it is, a reward for a novice is equivalent to about 0.5 seconds of grinding.

Sure, it's hyperbole, but the slope starts about here: Our difference is that you feel "requiring" people to RP some mechanical standard is the way to go, whereas I would rather say that "rewarding" RP based on some mechanical standard would be better. (If you code it, it's going to be mechanical either way). If it actively hurts people who don't meet the metric, it isn't a reward, it's a punishment. It also makes little game sense. I see no reason why every diabolic necromancer, reclusive scout or battle-crazed barbarian should be forced to sit down and fountain RP in order to learn how to raise better undead/tame more powerful creatures/get angrier and more magic immune, if they're already learned said skills. Sure, it might be -easier- if they meet others and learn from them, but it shouldn't be the only way.


I also can't help but notice that the original intent of this thread was nowhere near requiring RP to advance in levels, as that topic wasn't brought up until page 10, where it came out of left field in the middle of suggestions for upgrading emote.

In fact, I bet that the heavy RPers of SK would much prefer targeted emotes rather than anything like requiring RP to advance in levels.

A lot of the best PKers are also the best RPers in this game, D. Just because someone has mastered the mechanics of pvp/pve does not mean that you should ignore their opinion when it comes to discussions concerning RP. I feel like if all my characters had flailed about spastically in pvp, you would be taking my input seriously instead of brushing it aside as a white guy trying to maintain the status quo. I don't think anyone outclasses me, Edoras, or jhorleb when it comes to thinking of well-developed, consistently played characters who contribute to the richness of the game environment, and the distinction you draw between "RPers" like Ilkaisha, and myself is insulting. If I did not enjoy RPing, I would not have played this game, which leads me back to the original point that finney made: RPing does not need to be incentivized because it is one of the main reasons the game is fun, and one of the main reasons many people play the game.

I do not think I could support the suggestion you have made, regardless of what metric you were using to measure how much someone was RPing. This is because I suspect that any such metric would have the shortcomings of the ones you proposed. Namely, penalizing players who do not play at peak times, encouraging BAD RP (if someone is interacting with other characters just so they can go train, what kind of quality of RP do you expect), making little IC sense, and making otherwise solid RP concepts not viable (as mentioned by styles and edoras).

Actually, I have changed my mind. This is not the perfect solution, but I don't think it is terrible either. Worst case scenario, it could be removed and/or modified in a future update. I think it would affect people that re-roll frequently the most.

In the end, I think anything that encourages players to keep the same character for more than a month or two is good for the game. I doubt that is the intent of this system, but it would probably be an unintended consequence.

Baldric, I don't want to take away from any and all RP you have displayed, which I'm sure has been superb. But are the best PKers also the best RPers on SK because you guys are just such hot roleplayers? Or is it because we have driven other roleplayers, who may be even better, away from the game due to our self-reinforcing tactics-centrism?

The latter. Baldric and myself stick around because we are glutton for punishment.

I like to think of myself (or players like me) and baldric (and players like him) as peanut butter and jelly. Sure, you can make a delicious sandwich with either, but it's so much better when you put 'em together. We have to be appealing as a game to both camps.

I'm sure that the distinction is not made with intent to insult, but only to clearly define two very different play styles. They exist.

You're absolutely right, baldric: Several of the best RPers in the game are triple-plus awesome at PVP as well. And there's not actually a whole lot of room in SK for people who outright refuse to roleplay.

The whole thing is tricky because, as mentioned by players in both groups, BAD roleplay is NOT equal to good roleplay, and a system that checks against greets or training interactions does absolutely nothing to address quality.

Any system that involves a metric to determine eligability to advance based on a system of greets or exchanged says/tells/emotes is going to encourage quantity over quality, as has been stated already by a few people. It is very much like trying to polish a teapot with a handful of soot. It's not going to accomplish your goal, and is in fact going to go quite far in the opposite direction.

Any system that exists for encouraging or incentivizing rp should exist purely as a bonus, not as a restraint. In addition, you cannot look at those who are good at mechanics and those who prefer pure mush-style rp as seperate entities in the playerbase, and attempt to single them out as such in any conversation regarding it. In doing that, you are actually only encouraging a greater gap between the "societies," instead of trying to raise the overall quality of rp in general.

And this is all really about raising overall quality, is it not? Pure quantitative increases in rp are not going to accomplish the intent of this kind of conversation. Three times the amount of crap is still crap, it's just more of it.

Quality rp is, in a game like sk, also reliant upon the mechanical aspects of the game. That is part of the core charter of the game as well, is it not, Dulrik? Where roleplay and tactics collide, yes? It doesn't matter how great your emotes are, how eloquent your speeches are, how superbly described your character is, if your RP is to be a hardened, hardcore battle hero, but you can't even survive a simple, short encounter in a mechanical sense (whether it's pve OR pvp) then your RP is actually bad. By the same token, if your character is a weak-willed, physically inept, or otherwise heavily impaired by concept, and yet you still go out and wreck faces just because you can manipulate mechanics better than the next guy, your RP is equally bad. In a game such as SK, where the core concept is to have both working in tandem, any incentives SHOULD work towards both. The mechanics are literally made part of the RP.

Frankly, the incentives that most players would probably appreciate are simple enough, and would effectively promote quality AND quantity, but they can't be handled by hardcoding things like greet counters and sayto counters. They will require active oversight by staff, or at the very least a referal and log submission system which other players can use to draw particularly good RP to the attention of those capable of issuing the rewards.

And EXP is probably the least effective reward for quality rps. I've had a number of characters who've had entire free reincarnations stacked up after GM from enlights. It's pointless. Instead, a redesc of an item for personalization, an opportunity for lasting impact on the game world through things like plaques, statues, or small "hall of heroes" type areas that feature portraits of particularly impressive characters are much more impactful to the player mindset. Creation of trinket-style items with a chosen stat/save mod (capped at the usual building level, of course), which cannot be regained if lost or destroyed, or access to unique, top-end, death-rot items that can be recognized by all to be gained only through superior roleplay that the rewarded players can recover through unique quest flags and particular NPCs and keywords. All of those things will actually encourage top-end rp, and increase the overall bar of quality AND quantity of RP. Not only that, you will maintain your core charter of combining RP and mechanical application of concepts through character conflict.

As one who definitely considers herself within the RPer group, I too disagree with linking advancement to a certain number of greets of people. I don't see running into an inn and greeting everyone, then leaving as increasing RP in any sort of fashion which is what the nonRPers are going to do.

I do, however, like the idea of length of conversations being some sort of indicator... though perhaps you could institute a 'friend/enemy' system where after a certain amount of conversation between two people, they are leveled up or down (they could choose even) as friend or enemy to a certain number of degrees. These degrees of friendships or enemyships could be what is used as part of the level requirements for attaining new ranks.