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Some interesting commentary made me wonder - are we too noble heavy? Is this a problem? Should we reign in the nobility?

The big issues I see with it is that nobility by theme are people who were born into it. It's hard to create churn there so that everyone has an opportunity to play and older noble characters don't go stagnant.

But, the current setup does make the game noble heavy.

Is a noble-heavy game really a problem though? You tell us!

I do agree that the game should not be focused around nobles. Especially if we want to seem attractive to newbies, who will most likely not have the xp to make an all-rounded noble character.

However, I don't think the solution should be so much reining in nobles, as encouraging freemen to RP. We certainly have no lack of freemen chars - people just don't play them much. Perhaps because there isn't that much RP to be found for them? In that case, it would be a vicious cycle.

I would suggest having one of those monthly specials... 1QP awarded to every character of the freeman class who is flagged as active at the end of the week, perhaps, just as how QP is awarded to the top 10 chars on the activity list. Do this for the first month to break the vicious cycle, and then on random weeks?

I, too, emphatically agree that the game is far too noble-heavy, and believe that it is a huge contributing factor to the not-quite-so-newbie-friendly atmosphere that's lately been remarked on.

By its very nature noble RP is geared toward exclusivity. Nobles don't loiter around in the pubs, on Church Street and in Church Square like commoners do, and when they do, they aren't approachable, and when they are, it's frankly a little jarring, thematically. There IS an undeniable and ever-present class line, even if it has been softened somewhat by the Law of Charity. They aren't going to hobnob with peasants like they will with their peers, and they shouldn't be expected to.

Freeman/commoner RP, on the other side of the coin, defaults to the streets and the pubs and the squares, is easy to jump into, much less RP constrictive, and a million times over more newbie friendly.

Yes; I do think the number of noble positions should be capped off and limited. I don't think we have the playerbase to fully support both the upper and lower classes, and feel that what effort we put into adjusting the game to make it more newbie friendly would be best spent bolstering playability of the freemen and the peasants.

Can make it that freeman xp gain is higher and faster than noble xp gain to encourage people to play their freemen as much as their nobles? They can use the XP wherever they want, even on their noble char?

That could work too, Kin! Not toooo high, of course, perhaps 1.3x or something.

Also saw a suggestion to improve XP for RPing in rooms flagged Public (places you can't turn whereRP off). However, I'd also probably try to prohibit people from going afk there... not sure how that'd work.

Yeah, I suggested that in the game forums. :P I don't think AFK people get RPXP anyway?

AFK is an icky topic - sometimes it's not foreseeable. So penalizing too heavily would lead to people not even daring to show up in those rooms if they are RPing at work or anything that could lead to them being pulled AFK all of a sudden.

I think the current idle timer is good.

I mentioned on OOC then logged off, what if nobles came with the caveat that they had to have a freeman alt as well. Just a thought. I didn't see the discussion, if there was one.

Maybe RPing with a freeman as a noble also gets you xp slower? Or rather, lower the current rpxp and then give normal xp to freemen and those who RP with them. Remember that often times nobles picked up a wide variety of hobby skills, like fencing, riding, and art, while most commoners just stuck to what their job was.

Um, if there are too many nobles, why don't you just double or triple the cost to make one? Why are there talks to penalize people for playing as nobles (two suggestions have been to -slow- rp when talking to freeman as a noble: which means people who only have a single char that is noble [like me] might actually be discouraged from RPing with freeman. The second was to increase freeman play by giving them a boost, so again as a player who only really one char, a noble, I feel like I'm getting screwed).

The new law or whatever regarding nobles interacting with the commoners makes the previous statement, that 'the nobles that are approachable/rpable with commoners thematically jarring' (i'm paraphrasing) a moot point, and one that goes -with- theme and not against it.

There also seemed to be resounding support for Cellan's idea of nobles having 'households' to include commoners in their RP and such so if that's the case and either of the above mentioned 'solutions' are implemented, then that idea will more than likely collapse because either 1) People will be too busy farming XP on their freeman chars or 2) people will be too busy RPing with other nobles since RPing with everyone else gives them .7 (or whatever) the normal rpxp gain.

Solutions that penalize people are not going to be helpful. Ideas that -promote- interaction between all players and discourage further nobles from being made are, IMO, the better way to start steering the game in a more freeman-gentry heavy population without pissing off the current players (like me) who have invested a lot of time and energy into their noble chars. The idea about making public/commonly RP'd in rooms have more experience gain, like church square, the pubs, etc. is much more preferable to me. Unlike the suggestion to slow noble experience gain when they RP with the lower classes, it encourages it, and right now it was my understanding that we're trying to have people get together and RP. The above would just discourage it.s

I'm obviously biased, but I'm also one of the more dedicated players, and I personally would be pretty pissed off if I was suddenly penalized for a decision I made back in January. If you want less nobles, make the cost exponentially higher and be done with it.