Shattered Kingdoms

In print, it looks good and even cute. In practice, we will see the same negative outcome that we have seen from loyalty token CRS rewards: as a system, it is too easy to farm and not actually care about.

I'd sooner see quest chains to unlock statuses in the game rather than XP-based leveling. No more grind. No more training level. You complete quests and get told a narrative about the game world and your place in it. The system in place already could manage it. We just have to give up the ghost of grinding and building dungeons and instead start writing stories.

Remove the LP then, that was the smallest detail of what I mentioned. As far as leveling grind.. there has to be some sort of leveling grind.. this isn't solely RP based.. it's a MUD after all. Anything to take away some of the monotony of the level grind is what is needed as Dulrik already stated NO to new game+ and I'm sure what he will say to what you just mentioned about some kind of quest/RP dialog to further your character's progression... which I'm not really feeling myself. As a new player, I would rather depend on slaughtering NPCs than spending hours doing quests... it's more dependable in regards to getting me the levels I need to further my character.

I'm saying that it shouldn't be more dependable to zen out and make an alias of ten commands to kill a NPC then sleep for two ticks, find another, then do it again.

Some immortals were better at approaching this than others. ******* was spot-on with the Valley of Ashes. ******** did pretty sweet with what I heard about a certain hedge maze once in development. Heck, even ancient contributions like ****'s chancel was pretty good ... until his stuff got the serial numbers filed off. Whoever did the sky realms had a good start, but it just doesn't tie into the world. It's a forgettable experience as a character.

You should be able to tell interesting stories about where and how you leveled up as a character. Not "uhm, my friend casted a gate to saok and I made the ogres fall down."

Zones don't lead naturally to one another. A character's past is a bloody and disjointed wandering about the world like some sort of psychotic ronin.

Quests with strong enough rewards could change all that.

My suggestion was to make the bounty idea pretty much is a type of quest that could make leveling tell a story and if done right, these stories could all be slightly different, enough to make the experience more unique for each player. I was hoping you would look at what I have mentioned and maybe tweak/add to it in a way to make the thought better and more likely to fit with the world of SK. I think you have some pretty good ideas at times, Grep. I get ideas and simply throw them out there for people to discuss/flesh out. No one ever seems to care about fleshing another person's ideas out though, from my experience. If it sounds cute, add to it so that it's cute AND realistic. Remove LP to prevent the abuse you spoke of. What else is flawed about the thought? Other than the fact that one has to use hack and slash means to go further into this hack and slash style RPG.

I think the idea has appeal, but isn't really for new players. After you've learned the fast-route through leveling zones, it's nice to have incentive to do something else. New players are usually still searching out the fast-route. They're never going to find some NPC target in an rarely-traveled area.

I'm generally with grep. I don't think we can easily change the mob-killing nature of leveling, but making good leveling areas more exciting from a story and gameplay perspective is a better use of time. (Or alternatively, change some of the most interesting zones into the best leveling areas.)

For some reason, your rewording of what Grep said makes a lot more sense to me.

The far away yet seemingly 'close to home feel' that we call "character backround rp" is often cluttered with the inequities of how we each view our own characters, much like the 'all seeing eye' we try to surmise its validity. Often times its not alien to any of us and is merely a stones throw away, if we could simply use that stone an break through that brick wall that is the strict guidelines of rp, I can begin to roll my unique snowflakes with impunity, creating ripples of shock and awe along the way. Through the seemingly endless maze of rp pk and quests, we run around like starving rats only to find the cheese was merely a mural, a wedge of wood if you will, spray painted yellow and scented with sweet nothings.

Quests with strong enough rewards could change all that.

Every story worth remembering has a snowflake as its protagonist. This is in fact the cornerstone of literature. The idea that PC's shouldn't be snowflakes and should be happy playing out as anything less than what they find incredibly fun to try is a malignant elitism that deserves to be crushed. We're up against some fossilized glaciers that I don't feel confident would be survivable if confronted.

Back in the realm of the possible, from mechanics to roleplay, the game drops the ball on a lot of natural consequences and instead all but hard codes cause and effect. Looking at all levels of the game to turn outcomes into consequences would do a lot to keep SK a game you participate in while you're logged in.

They have depth and might be atypical compared to the rest of their kind, but I don't know about snowflake. I will use my favorite hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, as an example:

He is atypical of hobbits, since he leaves the Shire to go adventuring in far flung lands with Gandalf, Thorin and company. However, if this sort of atypical behavior were to be expressed by your average SK player - it might looking something like this:

He would join up with Sauron, give him the One Ring, and then give aid and comfort to orcs, trolls, etc. For whatever reason, players on SK want to break their alignment in order to be different/unique/snowflake, instead of having interesting quirks that add depth to their character and make them stand out.

Just sayin'.

Or Aragorn, for example. He is reluctant to take the crown, but never strays a moment from his strict scrupulous path. He judges that the hill folk are undead but not evil and treats them accordingly. He would never pick Boromir's more dogmatic GondorGondorGondorgivemethering approach. That doesn't make either character bad. Alignment isn't about what you think it is! It's a framework for the character, not the character itself.

How about Kvothe? Well, he's a great protagonist for Rothfuss' books. He's probably best classified as unscrupulous. If Rothfuss were to come out and say "Kvothe was designed as a principled character who is always looking out for the life and wellbeing of others" then we'd all have to laugh at him.

Ever stopped to consider that lighties may just not be your thing? I promise you that if you come up with a concept you can choose an alignment that suits it. You have great ideas. Just get over the idea that there is or should be any sort of meta-game to creating a character other than picking as accurately as you can in the creation halls and then sticking to those choices and you'll be fine!