Count me in. To me the most valuable characters in Elanthia are the ones that make it more enjoyable for others to play. I truly value the interactions my character has with others, be they friendly or not so much. I hope others find interacting with my character enjoyable as well.

Okay, before I fell asleep last night, this idea popped into my head.

Here's the problem with RPA's: They require roleplay to stop, and to be maximized, one must grind and focus on hunt/kill/rest/absorb. THE TOWN IS IN DANGER, OR A SMALL CHILD NEEDS ASSISTANCE. OH WAIT, I JUST GOT AN RPA, SCREW THAT, I GOTTA RUN TO THE RIFT, BECAUSE I NEED THIS NEXT RANK OF ARMOR TRAINING.

You can't get around that. And, we all know that there are people who don't participate in the quests or storylines up and until an NPC is around and then suddenly THEY ARE THE STAR OF THE SHOW, SENOR HAMMY MCHAMPANTS, and no one can get a word in edgewise, because they WANT THAT RPA FOR BEING OH SO CLEVER AND WITTY AND USING LOTS OF ACTS. And those same people, will cleverly WHISPER IN A ROOM WHERE THE NPC'S CAN HEAR EVERYTHING about how they didn't get an RPA, and what a bunch of crap, huh?! Why? Because, man, they want to go out and grind out some XP, and RPA'S are totally awesome.

* ahem *

Let me present to you a better way, since you appear to have the technology and coding skills to support this sorta thing...

RPSCRIP.

Defend your town during an invasion? Convincingly? RPA is nice, but pfft... RPSCRIP can be awarded to more people, because its value is subjective. No NPC's around, just having a healthy discussion in TSC, the Hanging Gardens, or Hearthstone Porch? Helping out a newb around IMT?

You have been awarded 100 RPSCRIP for being true to your character in Elanthia. Have a nice day!

Now you don't have to stop RP'ing. You don't have to do anything that you're not already doing.

And what do you DO with these RPSCRIP? Whatever you want. You can open up a portal to a shop that sells THE BEST THINGS IN ELANTHIA for 100/1000's of RPSCRIPS, you can set up a "Sadie Scroll System" for enchanting, ensorcelling, post titles, special messaging (ala the Spire, but NOT paid for with money, rather EARNED through RP excellence).

I do think, amongst the wares offered, should be giant XP boosts, because the problem with RPA's is that you have to stop RP'ing to use them. Heck, even a big fat silver award for a particularly good RP deed. You saved the town, captured a criminal - why isn't that worth 500k silvers? That's going to break the economic system? I don't think so, no.

*

Could this ever work? Not if I'm the only one giving voice to the concept.

The concept relies on the player culture being ready to accept that THE BEST THINGS IN ELANTHIA cannot be earned through leveling and silvers and hunting and grinding. The best things in Elanthia are earned through engaging, interacting with the other players and the NPC's and getting involved and proactive during the storylines they work so hard to put together.

This is not the way things are now.

The reality is that, no matter what, people are going to grind, because that's why they play. And that's great! I like to grind and hunt, too, sometimes. Killing things IS FUN.

But the culture of the player population, right now, wants the biggest and best things to increase level/XP/mechanical advantage, and there's only ONE WAY (right now) to get the best things in Elanthia - and that means, there will ALWAYS be a market for silvers at $X per mil, and high level no-name characters that offer some utility towards earning silver and leveling up.

What if there was another way?

Just go out and RP, buddy. Just be yourself. What would your character do? Hang out and do nothing all day, flirt with empaths in TSC? GOOD FOR YOU, BUDDY, HERE'S AN AWARD FOR BEING A LECHEROUS SLOTH! When the culture values roleplay over mechanics and economics, it is a culture that will perpetuate itself.

Then, there's an Elanthia where:

You can grind out and hunt/rest/hunt and earn silver and buy things from other players and advance your character at a steady pace.

- or -

You can play your character and remain committed to engaging the environment and other players, and you can advance this way as well, and get some nice gear which will help you advance your skills.

Right now, the latter is not really true.

With RPSCRIP, it could be.

Just an idea.

---

~ Bill, Coyote.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
~ Voltaire

I got off track lol. I agree with you to a degree, I guess I just differ in that I don't really want anything for playing my character the way I think she should be played. If I got some great runestaff or a set of brig, a custom spell prep, RPA, you name it, because of that, great, but in the end, nothing would change for me.

~Rayna, cleric of Oleani and Ta'Vaalor

My mind has been rolling this sort of thing around since the announcement came out about F2P. I don't know how much bigger the player base in GS will become, but I have lofty hopes that it will at least double (Yes, I try to look at the glass as half full whenever possible) but even if it doesn't grow that much I think we have a fantastic development here that we need to take advantage of. I've always felt it was up to the players to dictate in which direction the game goes anyway.

As Bill stated, we have an opportunity here to determine what these new and returning F2P players see, what they experience, and how they will act within the world that is GS. Gemstone has been a role playing game to me, before anything else. I try very hard to keep each of my characters unique, even though I personally feel I'm lacking in the RP department. But when any of my people are around others characters I try very hard to step it up. If each of us decides that we will do that whenever we can then it's my opinion that F2P people will climb aboard our little GS juggernaut with little effort on our part.

This boils down to giving the F2P's the chance to belong to something larger than their own characters. I speak of inclusion, massive inclusion, on a scale that has never before been tried. We obviously already have GM's on board who believe in this, as exhibited in the many and varied story-lines of the last few years, so my thoughts and ideas go out to the players. We, the players, the true reason GS exists, as a whole, must make the effort to bring these new people into the fold.

I'm not saying make every one of the F2P's your friend, but what I am saying is to give them opportunities to become part of our family. Speaking from past experience from many years ago, there is very little in GS more difficult to endure than to be on the outside, looking in, and feeling like you aren't welcome. Those days, fortunately, are now behind us.

We, you and I, must step up to the plate and take that "Mighty Casey Swing", because it's our responsibility to see this thing through, and to make it work as WE, the players, want it to work. I know we can do this, we just have to want to, and then we have to do it.

General Radeek Andoran
Drakes Vanguard
Defender of Wehnimer's Landing
Black Raider of the Mir'Sheq

Empires exist through conquest, they live on by exercising total control of the conquered.

Only the dead have seen the end of war - Plato

The RPA bonus is for 'when' you gain exp, not an immediate must gain exp now feature. Heck, I couldn't even tell you the last time I ran of a 3x gift before it was awarded again, let alone an RPA bonus.

In other words, unlike the past, the RPA bonus only counts down the timer when you have exp to gain, not when you are standing around RP'ing, just like the Lumnis gift. When your bucket is empty, it stops counting down.



- Guards haul off the stupid corpse. -

>I've had RPA's last several months before. . . You have to be in a big hurry to have them 'run out' quickly.

While I make it a point not to drop everything and start hunting like a madwoman as soon as I get an RPA, I do like to use them efficiently, and that isn't always possible. The RPA itself starts the clock ticking, but the experience my character's gaining per pulse while clear or fresh and clear is minimal compared to what she gets when she's saturated. I don't know the exact figures on this, but it's obvious even if you aren't min/maxing that you're better off staying more or less saturated throughout your RPA or Lumnis hours than you would be from getting a good fry in, going to a node and resting until you hear bells.

Add in the fact that a lot of small things start the timer going again, including guild tasks and killing a few big baddies during invasions, and someone who spends a fair amount of time doing something other than hunting is paradoxically getting less from a roleplaying award than one who adheres to a drop-everything-and-hunt play style. I've seen in my own gameplay how I've chosen to prioritize hunting over other things while I have an RPA going -- not to the point that I ignore anything but demolishing everything in the Rift, but I will use the NPC locksmith or eat herbs instead of working with other players for these services because I know I'd want to hang around and chat with them -- and that would eat up my RPA clock. As my main character is close to capping, I pay a lot more attention to those experience points than I otherwise might.

I don't like that I count points and weigh them against time spent talking with others, but I do. I don't know that I'd classify myself as "in a big hurry," either; given that others whose levels were lower than mine when I started are now a level or two above me, I certainly don't feel in a big rush. Even so, I feel the pressure to hunt for those Lumnis hours and RPA bonuses.

I doubt RPAs are going to change significantly, and I don't mean to complain about something I consider a welcome gift rather than an entitlement. They're great when they happen, and worrying about whether I should hang around to the fresh-and-clear point or go back out to the Rift is a good problem to have. I do think it would be wonderful, though, if there were some additional means of rewarding players who remain consistent within their characters, actively participate in events, show newer players the ropes or otherwise contribute to a better roleplay atmosphere.

--- Lauren, Lylia's player

* This isn't intended or directed towards any specific individual(s). *

I'm always surprised at the number of min/maxers we seem to have in the game. Since the only two multi-player games I generally play on-line are Gemstone and Wow (both of which seem to have their share of min-maxers) I don't know if this is a community thing or just the general trend/nature of people in the multi-player game market in general.

While I get what people are saying when they complain about their gift being 'wasted' or how they are 'forced' to hunt less than optimally because they got an RPA, their gift kicked in, etc. It's still over and above what you (general you) would be getting if we didn't have the Lumnis gift/RPA bonuses at all. And while I get that not always being able to optimize these bonuses causes great consternation for some individuals I would really hate to see the direction of these types of bonuses in general cater to the min/maxers which, in my mind, would only further encourage the min/max mindset.

The gift of lumnis was originally setup, at least in part, to help people that hunt less frequently keep up with those that hunt more frequently. To the extent that people are unable to min/max this benefit every week I think speaks to its effectiveness at helping the average player who hunts less frequently catch up or at least fall behind more slowly vs. the min/maxer.

If it really bothers some individuals to receive an inefficient bonus, how about setting up a flag which simply prevents an individual from receiving an rpa bonus or gift at all (turning the gift flag back on would result in your gift kicking in one week from that point)? My guess is that the flag won't be used by anyone but maybe people will start appreciating these bonuses a little more for what they are, bonuses, vs. some sort of entitlement that needs to be maximized at all costs.

Keeping with the general thread theme, I do mostly like the idea of providing non-experience based RPA boosts as well. The 'advantage' to the RPA award being experience based is that it sort of rewards players for taking a break from hunting to do something else (and doing it well enough that it earns some level of recognition) while reducing the 'penalty' for not hunting. But, assuming that isn't a concern or goal, what other rewards would make sense for RPA awards? Silver? ADV Guild points? RPABucks (tm)? What sort of ideas do people have for alternatives?

-- Robert

"Wyrom isn't interacting with me, I think he is AFK scripting."

>If it really bothers some individuals to receive an inefficient bonus, how about setting up a flag which simply prevents an individual from receiving an rpa bonus or gift at all (turning the gift flag back on would result in your gift kicking in one week from that point)? My guess is that the flag won't be used by anyone but maybe people will start appreciating these bonuses a little more for what they are, bonuses, vs. some sort of entitlement that needs to be maximized at all costs.

I'm not really sure how "something I consider a welcome gift rather than an entitlement" translates to "some sort of entitlement that needs to be maximized at all costs." My statement was pretty much the opposite of entitlement, and going back to others' posts, I didn't find anyone else who said or even implied that. You were careful to explain that your post wasn't directed at any individuals, but given that no one posting here seems to consider RPAs an entitlement, I don't know where this view came from. Maybe there are some people in game who complain but haven't posted here? If so, I agree: Feeling entitled to a gift is pretty awful.

My post wasn't a complaint but more musing about why we might want other kinds of rewards for people whose roleplay enhances the game. RPAs as they stand now are wonderful, and I thank every GM who's ever seen fit to give me one. They're great gifts! It's just that...well, they sometimes feel a little bit like getting a slice of cake for successfully reaching a fitness milestone. I love cake, but I feel a little guilty eating it as a reward for something that's kind of the opposite of cake. I feel as though if I eat the whole thing, I'm no longer doing the thing that earned me a reward in the first place.

Even that isn't a good analogy, because roleplaying and hunting aren't opposites. I roleplay my character when she's swatting vaespilons just as much as I do when she's hanging out on the porch. It's not either/or, and I enjoy roleplaying no matter where I am or what my character's doing. It's all the same to me whether she's in town or hunting (although it's admittedly easier to have a conversation when you aren't in mortal peril). The current structure of RPAs, on the other hand, gives a clear advantage to one kind of play over another -- and often, it's not the play-style that initially earned the RPA. When you get one, you're technically better off dropping what you're doing and going hunting, which is antithetical to hanging around until an event's organic conclusion or finishing your conversation. It's an issue that was discussed 16 years ago, and it's still one that merits revisiting.

I guess I'm looking at it from the other end of the telescope and seeing RPAs not as a means to erase a "penalty" for not hunting, as you describe it, but as a gift, a reward for contributing positively to the game's environment in some way. As it stands now, the people who make the most of this gift are the ones who change their behavior to maximize experience gain instead of those who keep doing what they were doing to earn that RPA.

>Keeping with the general thread theme, I do mostly like the idea of providing non-experience based RPA boosts as well.

That's exactly what I was trying to communicate and apparently didn't say well enough to be clear. RPAs tied to experience are incredibly useful, and I wouldn't want to see them disappear. It would be good if we kept the cake on the table but also added the possibility of apple pie, spinach crepes or fresh strawberries, so to speak.

Now I feel like kind of an ingrate for speaking about it at all, especially when I appreciate RPAs tremendously both for the recognition they represent and for the experience boost they give my already-far-behind-her-friends character. The cake is very welcome, and I don't want to come across as complaining that it's chocolate and not almond.

I wanted to leave the thread alone a couple days to see if it would grow organically.

I will admit, that most of the time when I post here on the boards, I am posting impulsively, without a lot of critical thought or analysis. This is the writer in me that says, "write now, revise later".

The discussion of RPA's is a good one, but - not at all - my point. Where concerns RPA's, two personal notes: 1) I do not get them very often anymore, and I RP all the time. 2) I am very appreciative of them, when I do get them. Regarding min/max - due to RL schedule issues, I can no longer recall the last time I used up my Gift of Lumnis. I do believe it was last year.

That noted, it seems silly to criticize someone who is wanting to get the most out of their XP award. It's like getting a 10x Vorpal sword of doom, but, meh, you just keep it in your locker, because you don't want to show off. Why? You got it. Use the thing! We are above using gifts given to us to give our characters more experience/skills? No, I disagree. Respectfully. However, I do not think NON MIN MAX folks are any better or worse than min max folks. We're paying a premium to play a niche boutique game, I don't think it is necessary to criticize how folks want to use that time or develop their character.

**

None of that was my point, and while I did mock those who "expect" an RPA for showing up at an NPC function, and I did make a broad assumption about how "some folks" respond to receiving an Roleplay reward, what I was getting at was ...

Theoretically, roleplay is its own reward. I am not discounting that. I get a tremendous joy out of Turinrond ruffling feathers and getting certain reactions to his stupid nonsense, and I'm not doing it for any other reason than I enjoy it. If I can coordinate a large scale RP event - fantastic - and the very reason I created the Dae'Randir however many years ago was to promote RP opportunities for the morally grey folks in Elanthia.

I stand by my observation that what people VALUE is not THAT. People value power. Power takes skill level and upgraded gear. People value COOL NEW GEAR, and that COOL NEW GEAR costs silvers.

I do not think there's any way to get around the gear/level valuestick. I do not think that we're going to evolve into an Elanthia where, for instance, a favor from Silvean or Lylia or Roblar is worth T5 Voln Armor, no matter how highly those characters are valued.

At the same time, however, we present ourselves this conundrum: The best things to have in this game, based in no small part upon general public opinion, is directly related to silvers and gear. The ONLY WAY to achieve the best things in this game is through hunting/buying/selling.

That may seem perfectly reasonable, and maybe that's just the way it is. It's fine by me. I'm broke, but I have most things that I want. Also, if I wanted to shift my focus, I could go be an earner.

The problem, to me, is that we are introducing a bunch of new folks to this world while the population is much lower than I've ever seen it (mind you, I was gone for 5 years), and IMLTHO, they are going to very quickly see what it takes to get the best stuff in Elanthia. And for all the folks that complain about scripting zombies (just yesterday, someone entered the NPC locksmith, opened one box, left and returned and did it all over again, about 15 times in about 45 seconds while I muddled through opening 3 boxes), so long as everyone values SILVERS to buy the cool new gear coming out, and so long as there are no alternative means of gaining experience and/or getting the best things, then... the scripting zombie problem is going to continue.

As I wrote a few months ago, I am not one to cause a stink or come on here and whine and complain. When I feel the number of improbably fast moving PC's in the game outnumber the number of folks with whom I can engage in RP - I will simply quietly and politely quit playing, because the environment has shifted toward a value that I do not share. That doesn't make those folks bad. IRL, for instance, I am a skilled boxer, but I do not enjoy conflict - thus, I would not join Fight Club, but I would not judge those that do. I would simply go somewhere else, to spend my time/money.

Anyway.

This is not about whether we are entitled to Roleplay rewards. As it has always been, that should remain the discretion of the Game Masters.

This is not about the relative efficiency or counter-intuitiveness of RPA's. I do not imagine that those are going away.

I simply feel that we are at a fork in the road, with a potential influx of new players, many of whom may stay and become paid subscribers and thus have an investment in their characters as many of us do, and since we are a relatively small group of players in a relatively niche/boutique game - we very much have the opportunity to change the perceived values of what is important.

I propose that solid RP, however you want to do it, should *have the potential* to result in as great a reward for the "coolest stuff in game" or "advancing in skill level and experience" as scripting. Will 24/7 script hunting be more productive? Sure, til you get busted. That's missing the point. I want to take away the feeling that the only way to advance is to grind it out.

That sounds a little crazy? We are probably the only game on the internet where such a thing would be possible. MOST EVERY RPG follows the model of "complete task" --> "gain experience" ---> "get reward" ---> "apply reward toward advanced equipment which enables the next series of tasks to be completed". I don't want that to go away.

I am simply proposing an alternative. I personally dislike that someone can automate playing a game as personalized and customized and complex and fantastic (where concerns the RP/storylines/etc) as this one, and get better results than someone who plays a great character, gets deeply involved in all the activities, knows tons of characters by name and reputation. I think an RPA is an inadequate reward for all the hard work that the CE GM's do to bring Elanthia to life and all the hard work that so many players do to expand upon that foundation.

RP is its own reward, yes. But, why should the automated robo hunters selling characters and silvers get all the cool stuff, then? If I want some cool stuff for my character, too, you know, I have to give up all the RP and go grind some experience and silvers.

Which is fine, if that's how ya'll want things. It's what every other game does, right?

I just think we're in a unique circumstance to .. shift the perceived values in GemStone.

Keep the RPA's. Keep the grind/grind/grind. Keep the cool merchant events and keep releasing cool new things, because they are awesome. Don't change those things.

Just ... consider... that if we expand or broaden the roleplay rewards to allow those that focus on roleplay and contributing to the tremendous depth and complexities in Elanthia, consider giving them an opportunity to slowly -also- work towards having some of the best things in Elanthia, whether that be experience/skill levels or gear.

I believe, perhaps naively, that if RP rewards ever have a chance to match that which is achievable by robo hunt MA scripting, you might slowly see more people embracing the RP, and enjoying it, and less emphasis on the silver/gear grind, which could (eventually) devalue that segment of the population. I think so long as we continue to embrace the model that only high level characters with tons of silvers are the only ones who can have the best things in game, we will continue to perpetuate the decline in an interactive player population and more towards an automated population.

Ignore, embrace, dismiss, discuss as suits you.

---

~ Bill, Coyote.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
~ Voltaire

For myself, I am already cringing at the introduction of yet another form of currency in these DA scripts. We have silvers, premium points, adv guild bounty points, krolvin script, arena script. I am not certain another form of currency is what we need.

The game does set value of whatever some people deem a uber item, but the staff controls that value as well. Do you need 10x gear to 'win' GS IV? Certainly not. It is our responsibility to control the value of these items. The one constant in this game, is that actions create silver, endless amounts of silver. Play long enough you will amass a fortune, take a short cut and step out of game, you can amass it within minutes.

What is the silver good for, really? The staff sends in a merchant who charges 30m to enchant an item, and the market value on that item on the secondary market is 40m. How do you earn 40m? You hunt endlessly or you find someone to give them to you.

Players have complete control here. We can, as a group say no, that is not worth 30m, it is worth 300k to me. Or we can make the realization that we really don't need this item of perceived uberness to enjoy the game. We just need each other.

There are of course some pretty nifty things out there, but to this player, who capped the game in nothing over 5x gear, there is not a single line of text in the game worth 300m silver.

This is the line that should be drawn, before we create yet another form of payment or reward that would just further askew the perceived value of what the game offers.


- Guards haul off the stupid corpse. -

>>We have silvers, premium points, adv guild bounty points, krolvin script, arena script. I am not certain another form of currency is what we need.

For wahtever reason, the thought just occurred to me that if I could turn in one kind of these to get another, I probably would. Has anyone tried that in the bank exchanges?


Clunk

(Buy your swords at CBD weapons in Zul Logoth.)