Player Feedback for Discussion

[Kinaed]

I was told this today, and would like to hear the pbase's thoughts as I tend to, at least over-archingly, agree with it. That means I am likely to act on these items:

"I think you have put alot of effort into making a place where the code, the environment and the canon are all designed to promote RP. you have excellent tools such as where that allow players looking for it to easily find rp with checks in place to keep it from being abused. Your players seem, for the most part, dedicated to promoting good RP, though of course there are varying degrees of skill but in RPI muds we must take what we can get as they are not the most popular genre of such games. They are above average, however. I think that, perhaps, you allowed some problems regarding your staff to go on longer then was wise and that has caused some ooc problems. I think that you have a issue here with information being passsed constantly in IM. I know factually of once incident and see the overt signs of others. This is not so much presented as a criticism as an observation as there is little you can do about it. I think the 'rename' option has created a class of players who will always control the game and make it nearly impossible for new players to assume anything but lesser roles as, when push comes to shove if I make a character with my freshly minted 50K and you rename you character who you have over two other incarnations earned 200K and are allowed to reshuffle those points where you like them...thoguh we may make the same role the is going to be no contest."

[Estelle]

A few thoughts:

1) I think the greatest advantage a char can have is politics, not xp - WHO you mainly RP with and if said RP gleans you friends in high places, in other words. The most powerful characters in the game now do not, as far as I know, have 200k worth of xp in their skills/stats. I do not necessarily mind this, since I think politics is a huge part of the IC genre, just putting the observation out there.

2) I always did think rename was a little shady, especially for characters that have been played a LOT. It is one thing to make a char, play him/her for a couple hours and go, 'Gah, this is not going to work out', in which case a rename might be suitable. It is another thing to make a char, play him/her a LOT, then lose interest for whatever reason and want to make another char of similar strength without needing to sacrifice anything. I do think renames should only be limited to chars that are still cyan, or MAYBE have been inactive for the past one OOC month.

3) I do think that if information is passed through IM and it can be shown without a doubt that it happened, and a formal complaint is lodged, there should be penalties. We definitely can't stop passing of information, and I am sure we have all been involved in 'benign' information transfers - I know I have. But I guess it should be treated like mudsex - do it at your own risk. If you do it, the people involved are mature enough to just treat it as a juicy piece of gossip and not let it affect their IC actions or otherwise react to it OOCly... and it therefore causes no problems and no one ever finds out, fine. If you do it and it somehow affects things, know ahead that there will be consequences.

[Kinaed]

The IM thing is a major, major issue, but it's also something that's next to impossible to detect, then once detected, it's necessary to prove that the info that's gained IC really has come from OOC, which means we need to prove that an IC transfer did NOT occur - next to impossible in many cases. (Eg, we can prove something did happen with a log, but we cannot prove that something did not happen with a log). That's why some really game breaking and unfair info flat out requires desc notes. But the pbase at large isn't a fan of filling in desc notes, so I'm reluctant to go the route of having to document your character's entire history/being, etc.

Really, I agree there's not much we can do about it except punish people when we're pretty certain. I'm slow to certainty, however, and even if I wasn't, I think this issue is so common place in minor ways that it's more drawing a line around major things because it'd be a full time job to manage OOC info - and one I'm not sure can be elegantly done.

The rename thing - yeah, I'm thinking of altering or removing that policy. Generally speaking, the people who have requested it thus far really are not avoiding RP - or if they are, they're turned down pretty quickly. Still, I think there's a valid sentiment there, so I'm probably going to institute a cut-off for the current policy.

So... anyone with a desired rename, I recommend you get it in quick before I get around to deciding what the new rename scheme will look like!

[registerednuisance]

I really don't have a problem with renames thusfar. Only maybe two or three were big name people that folks would've really liked to RP out a resolution with, and it came after a long while of inactivity with those folks. I think rename probably helps retain players who might think, "Man, my char blows, I'm bored, I guess I'll kill them off or quit." Instead of losing everything they've achieved, they have an out. I'm not against it, but maybe it should be accounted for in paccount or something. Documented, so that the same person isn't renaming after playing their char for 2 months, getting in trouble, dropping off, etc..

[Rabek]

I really, really like the rename policy. I think it'll be rendered near useless with a cut-off date. As a player, I'm rather known for making lots of shortly-lived characters. I tend to lose interest after a time. Most of my characters die due to magery or heresy, yes, but I've also been forced to get a character killed off elsewhere due to being bored and having no option to suicide (a policy I strongly oppose) or reroll. In addition, rename puts the character as an NPC. So really, the rename policy adds to quality RP. It either prevents people like me from doing lame stuff to get killed, or it allows the NPC to continue doing stuff if the staff wants. Often both of these are true.

All of that said, I do see where the concern is coming from. Some form of XP penalty for a rename is not totally unjustifiable. It shouldn't be a goal of someone to worm their way from a death so they can get a rename and avoid the XP loss.

All that in mind, I voted for keeping the policy and adding an XP penalty.

[registerednuisance]

Since you're not killing your character, but are cutting them off kind of, maybe the 5k xp cost to kill another player is justifiable. If you're renaming, it's not to keep 5k exp, so I think that's a reasonable cost. Plus tracking on paccount overall to ensure it's not the same 3 people over and over.