Shattered Kingdoms

Forcing conversations will end up punishing people that can't play during peak times when as little as two or three others could be playing.

Then allow conversations with quest NPCs to be part of the consideration too. After all... quests are a lot more RP than PvE... though the interaction there might not be 'worth' as much as interaction PvP

Dulrik, though I don't like the idea you put forward, I think just looking at that in a different way could be exactly what you want then. I always wondered the easy of coding something like this, but since you put it out there, it obviously could be done. How about giving some xp based on counts like those. Count everytime you greet or greet another unknown PC. Counting everytime you sayto somebody and somebody uses sayto to you. Emotes and socials in the presence of and directed at other PCs (targetable emotes would be great for this). And so on. It obviously should take quite about to be noticeable, as it would be preposterous that someone could sit in the inn and suddenly become a grandmaster, but rather than requiring some amount, allow people to know (without providing specifics) that interacting with other PC's straight up provides some XP.

If you wanted more, you could use these same counters along with age and hours played and hand out mentor or loyalty points based on that. I have no idea what the plans for loyalty points are, but those could be huge incentives and boons to RP, maybe allowing for slightly different character creations than are normally allowed.

I agree this would be the twink approach to a poorly conceived system and what I am highly motivated to avoid happening. The core of the idea was more about conversation exchanges with the greet system being leveraged to avoid finding a few fellow twins and then asdfing your way to GM.

Yes, this could conceivably happen. But the idea for stockpiling would assist here.

No matter how you look at it, the game is not a fun experience with only three other people playing. More mechanics that encourage you to recruit other people to play the game will make a difference in the long run.

This.

That said, SK is still the only RP mud I can recommend to my friends. It may not be perfect, but it is, in my opinion, a step up from those MuD's or other 'roleplay' games where you just cannot touch anyone unless they first condone to it. It just doesn't feel real at all. No immersion.

I do however feel that what Dulrik said is true. "The game feels like text based counterestrike with RP for fluff" is what someone said to me when he quit


I really think loot is a big part of it.


Seasoned players will play characters that 'magically' know where loot is, and they will go get it. They also of course magically know how to GM in 15 hours. The game rewards this kind of play, and well it should, but it should also reward the player of a 600 hours long character that is still level 40 -more- than it rewards the 30 hours long character gm with all the epik lewt.

How? That's the big question.

Specific vendor selling good (and I mean top tier) armor and weapons available only to long time players? Maybe. Maybe it also gets better the more you play.

Ability to train in a skill that is not in your class? That might work.

Ideas like these are a dime a dozen though. If Dulrik decides that this situation 'needs a fixin' I'm sure he will come up with something that will, in the long term, work well.

Hrm... although I do applaud the creative thinking in the direction of trying to encourage more RP. I'm not sure using the greet system as it is to force RP is the best approach.

Notably for these reasons:

1) It takes some role play decisions away from the player's concept of their own character.
> Is it not RP to play a loner, or someone who interacts with few players, but to a greater extent?
> By forcing number of player interactions, you are encouraging only a type of RP'd character to be created (the extraverted gregarious type)

2) Although you did indicate that the system would involve greets AND followed by a number of interactions, this is still a rather easily performed task.
> Consider the number of individuals who walk into a room and Greet all. (One reason why I've turned off my auto-greet in game). That followed by a few declarations, or brief interactions would likely count for several interactions.
> This is likely going to reinforce / concentrate RP hubs in the world, places where people congregate to achieve this goal.

I think it's hard to equate RP in similar terms as how we equate some of the existing systems in the game. There is no confirmation that you have RP'd in the same way as if you had killed a monster, which has something that is system recognizable.

I myself would be more inclined to make the assumption that people are RPing on a regular basis, and reward them (to a minute and slow degree) whenever they aren't or haven't been in active combat with a NPC (and are being active), then by trying to engineer some recognizable event that they must achieve.

By rewarding RP outright as I've suggested, you'll get more people RPing because they don't need to always do the NPC grinding, (reward by incentive) rather than forced interactions (RP by necessity) which only interupts the grinding.

That's why the I also suggest that the assumption of RP awarded to everyone could be subjected to rating, because you are making an assumption that everyone is being fair about it. When there are those who are found to be not, they themselves are punished by lowered ratings.

Now I'm not going to go back into that suggestion in any greater depth right now, it's still in the post (earlier), but I hope you see the differences outlined.

ANYWAY, if you are still considering a RP-by-necessity approach. Perhaps instead of Greets and conversations being the key (which again forcees a type of roleplay)

You'd consider an approach that looks for other triggers:

No NPC kills for a certain amount of TIC, with a measure of player activity (that is still definable)

Activity could be defined but here would be an example:

A player is active if they have in the last X number of Tics performed one or more of the following:

> spoken
> used either the tell or gtell system
> used an emote
> used a pemote
> used an action

Again that's just an example.

YES that's easily scriptable, BUT, you should never tell players how many TICS is considered in this endeavour, both the length required for RP or the length which determines activity.

And I presume there are already punishments for those who are BOTing

OK peace out, there are a lot of ideas there for consideration.

For some reason this made me think of taxi meters. They get paid the most if they get you to your destination fast (by mileage), but still get paid, though somewhat less, if they get stuck in traffic (by time).

Posted my suggestions using many of the ideas in this thread in another gameplay thread. Check it out.

Are you hitting on me?