Conquest of the Horde

I just typed like nine paragraphs that could have been Trenton's profile and deleted them. < Clearly better at complaining then profiling.

I can shorten it to this. I don't profile everyone because there's nothing special about most of my alts. Trenton is a witch hunter with a shiny sword, the concept of said sword has been cleared by members of the GM team. I just can't type out all his history. It's too long, I don't have patience, I don't have the drive. I just want to RP, I don't want hours of toiling away to do it. He didn't sex up Illidan, he didn't have a baby with Arthas's secret daughter. Don't punish me for not wanting to deal with the hassle. Ask Reigen how many time's I've begged her to help me get through a profile. It's a tiring process, and if the character doesn't need it, they don't need it. Frankly, I see profiles as a way to get something special within reason, not a way to keep people from being -too- special. It's no different from prestige's before. The profile is a way to gain snoflaikyness, -and- a way to keep it in check. If the character is mundane and doesn't need clearance, why make the alt creation process more work?

I suggest a rank above Grunt for trusted players who've been around for 5 months or longer with no major infractions. They'll still need a full profile for any character who has snoflaik variant abilities or a questionable storyline, but alts maybe get a short-form profile? It would speed up the process for trusted players, lighten the workload of forum helpers and help weave the community thicker by creating something to aspire to beyond gruntship. The requirement could be something along the lines of "Two GM referrals and 5 months on the server." Could open up more RP opportunities for GMs as well, "Get out there and test the waters with those nublets."

It's just a thought, I didn't put much into it, but maybe it'll help someone else.
Edit: The alts would also likely have limits on them as to how much they can affect other characters.
Edit Edit: Changed my wording to be a little more accurate. <3
EDITEDIT: REIGEN EXPLAINED THINGS. <3

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On a completely unrelated post and note.

I LAVE JU RIGGLZ.

Just a small note while I'm on the phone, Oz, we once had something similar which I believe was called something along the line of 'Heroes'. This concept ultimately failed because it tended to create an elitist upper class

As said, just my 2 cents.

EDIT: What people (Like me) forget is that profiles don't really -Need- to be that long. The minimum is somewhere around 10 lines on a 1440x900 screen or something like that. Ten lines of history isn't that bad. And you don't even need to have an abilities/skills section.

Aye, as Kril said. As mentioned before though, if players feel the profiling process to be too strenous, that's surely something we can work on. If this were to go through I'm sure working with you guys and evaluating the profiling procedure would not be too much to ask for.

Hey Rigley. I've not read all the posts in this thread but I just wanted to toss in some words regarding the whole thing, call it my own ramblings on the subject, and I'm not entirely sure there is a point to it.

The use of IC currency has always been something I've really -really- wanted to see become a reality, in a sense a sort of hybrid open RP thing with actual game infrastructure behind it, where money couldn't just be pulled out of your ass and you really had to work for things to get them, facilitating a whole exchange between players who were supplies as in the WoW profession economy, to people who crafted the armour, to people who bought it and used it and then back again. In fact I loved the idea so much I spent over two real life -years- attempting to implement that sort of relationship on the Prologue servers. It's such a difficult question and perhaps it is my own failing but in the end we were never able to come up with a viable solution that worked.

During that long path of discovery however I realized along the way that what I was trying to implement was simply not a good fit for the kind of server and RP that the WoW private server community meshes with. Whenever we implemented more game-mechanic ish concepts in order to facilitate mercant RP it always ended up creating that kind of retail server grind experience, and a few smart folks knowing how to work the system and stockpiling massive amounts of currency. Again this could definitely be due to our failure to make a solid concept but at the same time I stop to question if the reason such systems appear in MMOs is to create that grind style system with each reward giving that certain rush of attainment making you want the next.

What I love about merchant style RP is the interactions, and you don't need a mechanic reason to do that. I've come to believe after the two years of chasing those mechanics that folks will engage in that RP with you if you make the move to initiate it. You can do RP with a supplier and there doesn't need to be any type of tangible currency exchange, folks will do it for the fun of it. Similar most folks are willing to RP with you as a merchant and do purchases, haggling, and all the business that makes that type of RP fun. It's even quite possible to set up repeat business and create a whole small RP infrastructure behind that. People -will- do this with -no- IC currency motivation just for the RP.

Before I would have argued this point that it's important to add meaning behind it by creating a finite resource and thus make actual demand, but the truth really is it doesn't matter. RP is a demand, and time is a currency, and you can do all the things you want to do as a merchant by simply doing it. Folks will get into it if you infect them with that excitement. Paint the scene for them, and they will come. I remember some of the best RP I've done was with an old player called Hogral, he did a dwarf, and nothing we did was ever particularly amazing or unique, we had a small guild called the Lodestone Company and all the time we RPed out small transactions, haggling, bartering, small time missions, training, drinking, etc. What made it special was the man's unique talent for taking monotonous things and turning them into really fun RP.

I suppose really what I'm trying to say is the mechanics don't matter, and I personally believe that in the kind of setting we have on a Private Server, with the coding we have available, and the types of things we want to do creating a physical IC currency is an impossible or unreasonable and unnecessary idea. I challenge you to initiate the merchant RP anyway and don't even bother trying to work out any IC currency business, even though the member can simply add the item themselves I'm willing to bet you'll get the same level of RP you're looking for without involving anything else tangible.

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Onwards to Profiles, heh.

So one of the things I've always loved about CoTH was its' stricter regulations revolving around the type of characters players can play, and forcing everyone to be a bit more accountable, while killing off a lot of the immersion breaking ideas. Profiles are both a blessing and a curse in my opinion. (On the flip side I also think that CoTH would benefit from being a bit more flexible with ideas and both event and character concepts than we traditionally are. ) Back in the day there was more incentive to put up your profile true, without silver tokens life was hard, heh, and there was no super epic OOC mall like we have today. There was some stuff, true, but a -very- limited supply. Wait times also sucked, there was far less staff and you could be sitting for up to a week to see that character approved. These days the turnaround time can be as little as an hour, it's a -huge- improvement. One thing I suppose I hate about profiles though is that it can spoil character secrets from their history by being forced to reveal it in public. Granted I've heard you can do secret profiles now, not checked into it.

At this point the benefits of a profile are diminished considerably but I'm not entirely sure this is a terrible thing, ultimately if you are just trying to RP a pretty standard character I don't really have a problem with anyone just taking the Bronze token, going to 50 and never submitting a profile at all. (The problem can of course arise when people's definition of standard varies, but that has always been the case and in the end why we have GMs to take care of the nonsense. :P) In my mind, I see profiles as most useful for pitching more questionable or influential character ideas such as nobles, prestige classes, other members in actual positions of influence or otherwise a tad high profile. I was part of the Hero system a long time ago and it used to be that you could not submit any profile other than a standard class and standard race with no authority at all. In order to make a necromancer (as I wished), you had to be part of the extremely limited group of heroes, or a GM+. As we are now that has opened up to everyone, which I think is a large improvement in general but anyway I'm getting a bit off topic...

The point is I think perhaps it's not a big deal that there isn't a pile of significance attached to profiles anymore? At the end of the day they are excellent for filtering and double checking the characters that can really impact other people or the area around it which are the ones that -truly- matter. Other profiles are great to see submitted as well, and there is still a benefit in the status of sorts that comes with being level 80 and having your concept all approved and check marked, even if it's not as tangible. I don't really see limiting .addrp as a necessary change in order to force people to submit more profiles, but then again I also don't see the level of problems that the GM team may be running into with rogue level 50s and silly concepts, so I could be entirely wrong.

Just to touch on the hero thing I actually don't believe it failed because it was creating an elitist upper class mostly because at the time it was closed down there was only three heroes active, myself, Wallace, and Hogral I believe. The system was simply not used at all really, it lingered around until the GMs decided it didn't really have a point to it. And at that time it didn't. I've always liked the idea of supporting a sort of heroish stand out concept because I think it helps to promote certain types of behaviour, this could be interpreted as elitism but to be honest I actually support certain levels of elitism. What it means is promoting a style of RP and OOC conduct that is generally the right sort of behaviour, and helping folks improve their RP, fix there grammar, write better, etc. Everyone is learning and no one is perfect and I do think that each person has something that they can pass on to everyone else but there are certain people that fight the current, troll, become a neusance or are simply really fresh with RP and don't have a total grasp of the concept. The latter group I have no problems with at all, but the former I don't really want to be involved with and am ok with ignoring / cutting from folks I want to interact with, and I'd hazard to say a lot of you would agree with me.

Really, the fact that CoTH runs introductions in order to become part of the community can and is often viewed as elitism, which again, I think is a good thing.

Anyway, in closing I don't really think .addrp needs to change, and even if it was to go or be restricted I doubt it would help with the types of concerns that are mentioned in the first post, even when folks were forced to make profiles in the past in order to get silver tokens I always found myself sort of... I don't want to say templating, but then again it was close to that, in the sense that I would roll out a quick slightly generic or ambiguous history in order to get the character approved and leave the bulk open to be moulded as RP progressed. Of course also, even back in the day, we still had the same lollers and silly concepts running amuck, the difference was the GMs had a much heftier workload.

Excuse the lack of flow here, I just basically typed it up without reading it over at all in a massive paragraph at work, lulz.

And me. :c y u frgt meh Bbi?

@Vrahn: Well, actually in the past I've found that relying on trust when it comes to currency can get a bit.. silly. As in, people whipping out ten gold for a casual purchase, or tossing one hundred gold coins at a slave auction. It just seemed very bizarre, and that was why I first attempted IC currency.

But, you're right. It is a grind, and it has been exploited. Well, exploited is a bit of an accusatory way to phrase it-- it's been used as intended, but that has led to some rather weird conclusions, where a normal character might have five times the wealth of a noble just because they've been doing the daily quest for coins all the time. In the end it has gotten to where you will still see ten gold being chucked about, but it's no fault of the imagination. And then we're right back to square one, heh. I guess as a plus at least that gold is actually being pulled in and out of circulation, but that it still happens is just bizarre.

Regarding profiles my concern is more -for- the extraordinary characters since, more often than not, they're the ones who will be adding the more intricate armor sets and the like, over the more commoner-esque characters at least. Thus why I feel that modifying .addrp in a way might help get a feel for these characters more.


@Cressy: Actually, I haven't forgotten you. Far from it, really. See, as far as I've seen your auctions are one of the only ways coins get tossed around and actually used. That's a failing on our (the GM team in general's) part, but also partly just on the idea that commerce would kick the wealth around a bit more. Though that being said, there's an initiative for more market RP starting up-- we'll see how that evolves from here.

Oh, I meant Vrahn forgetting I was a hero.

But <3<3<3

@Rigley: Yeah, hehe, it's true that some people do mess up the currencies or use extrenuous amounts of gold but then again that same sort of principal is present in trust fights, boarderline metagaming and general RP, really I think it's at that point more of a general problem with who a person RPs with as opposed to a flaw with the system.

I agree with you on the .addrp thing allowing folks to get some really weird armour, I wish there was some way to filter which items were allowed by .addRP in a reasonable fashion, I guess one arguement I could make is at least it would flush out the guys who choose that style of equipement extremely quickly. I know that when I RP I generally aim to specifically avoid anyone who has an excessively large set of shoulders or weapon, or a pile of glow, as well as ICly mock their choice of armour, hehe. It is a conundrum. :/

The thing is even if you limited the number of uses of .addrpItem to lets say 10 for non level 80s then they could still get a silly set of armour, and if you remove it entirely then I feel it will create more work than it's worth really, unless the number of folks who do choose to wear crazy outfits really is more than I expect o.O

And sorreh Cressy! I thought you were a GM by then. :3

Heroes was a bad, bad idea. I'll be the first to admit it. The idea of giving glorified players special privileges doesn't do anything other than foster hurt feelings. No player-rank should be given the crap that we wanted to hand to them, or be built up the way they were.

What did you guys want to hand heroes though? As far as I could tell all it ever gave privilage wise was access to more classes and an unused hidden forum.

Overall the idea should have been used as more of a pseudo storyteller kind of position a bit like gimped content GMs, that probably would have been a better application of the whole idea. But regardless that discussion falls outside the scope of this thread. :P

(04-23-2012, 11:02 AM)Vrahn Wrote: [ -> ]What did you guys want to hand heroes though? As far as I could tell all it ever gave privilage wise was access to more classes and an unused hidden forum.

Overall the idea should have been used as more of a pseudo storyteller kind of position a bit like gimped content GMs, that probably would have been a better application of the whole idea. But regardless that discussion falls outside the scope of this thread. :P

If I remember correctly, they got leveled without having to have profiles, free armor whenever they pleased... all that kind of stuff. As long as they took it in moderation.

However, we quickly changed that around, seeing as how a majority of them quit as soon as Krent pointed out that it was very-very unfair to the other players that we were showing favoritism.

They sort of were liked a gimped GM... without the responsibility of one. We were entertaining the idea of having them help out with like, profiles, since at the time Sasail and I were the only two GM's who really liked to do them, heh.

Again, the memory is very fuzzy, and without being able to look back at our ideas behind it... this is from only what I remember. Cressy was the last one... am I right? I remember you were a pink perma-banned nub.

This was also our first attempt at "Trial" GM, although they didn't have the actual duties even slightly identical to GM.

All in all. Bad idea.

Haha, wow I guess I missed that part, granted that may have been the earlier incarnation before I was apart of it.

Yeah. We never got that. It was only that we could play prestige classes. That was it. :c

You guys have worse ADD than I do. Just supah saiyan.

<3

(04-23-2012, 11:57 AM)Piken Wrote: [ -> ]You guys have worse ADD than I do. Just supah saiyan.

<3

Probably because the topic is twelve pages long, and dwindling down, haha. Every opinion has been expressed, the only thing left, new topics.


But yes, I think the rest should be on-point posts, instead of "IN MAH DAY!" type stuff. Whippersnappers.