This is aimed specifically at Neus. If anyone else wants to participate, feel free to.
I believe that the twinking rule does more to hinder RP than encourage it. It assumes that the entirety of SL2 is dedicated to roleplay when that is not the case. There are other sizeable portions of the SL2 experience that revolve around other things, such as grinding. Such things are negatively impacted without a tangible benefit to RP or to the atmosphere of the game in general.
I've carefully read through previous topics about this subject, so I already understand your feelings about this, Dev:
Dev wrote:
SL2 is an RP game. Being able to mule items and then dish them out to your alts as required is not RPing. It directly contradicts RP, because the exchange of goods is entirely OOC between yourself, and yet somehow has an IC benefit to you. You could make the same argument about donation items but since those are a result of support to the game and the items themselves do not offer much if any benefit beyond convenience, it's not that big of a deal.
Dev wrote:
Your character(s) shouldn't have an IC advantage just because your/your friend's other character(s) have extra items. Nor should your character(s) be interacting, because of OOC conflict of interest. There's a multitude of reasons why twinking isn't allowed but that's the main one.
So I'm not here to understand your viewpoint or meekly discuss it with you until you simply stop responding.
I'm here to change your mind and get this archaic rule obliterated.
Why? Because something you said here made me want to speak up instead of accepting this rule quietly:
Dev wrote:
It directly contradicts RP, because the exchange of goods is entirely OOC between yourself, and yet somehow has an IC benefit to you.
Here are a list of things that are (or can be) entirely OOC but have a tangible IC benefit and are also completely legal:
- Grinding
- Grinding in the arena
- Refighting Bosses at the memorial statue
- Legend Extending
- Omniclassing (unless you're a genuine master of numerous professions)
- Picking Traits (you don't do this IC'ly, you do this OOC'ly)
- Picking Talents (you don't do this IC'ly, you do this OOC'ly)
- Picking an Astroloy Sign (" ")
- Creating Dungeons with the Chaotic Key
- Buying items from player-owned shops
- Laplace Quests (raremetal, murai, etc)
- The Main Storyline Quests (murai, experience, etc)
- Other Quests (murai, stat boosts, etc)
- Donation Items
- Static Dungeons (bosses magically respawning has been previously stated to be OOC rather than IC)
- Religion (the vast majority of people do not IC'ly worship the god that they are OOC'ly listed to)
- Void Poisoning (everyone ignores this and indulges in void-related powers in IC without ever contracting the illness)
- Vampires (many players ignore the specific limitations of this race, such as being hurt after long-term exposure to sunlight and needing to drink blood to avoid weakening, instead playing them as normal people with pale skin and red eyes)
- Shaitans (most players do not play them as the mind-warped fearless creatures that they are written to be, instead playing them as normal people with amnesia and carapace around their arms)
- Dullahans (most players do not play them as the roaming berserkers that they are written to be, instead playing them as normal people that just happen to be made out of metal instead of flesh)
... And there's more, but they fall moreso under other issues and I don't want to run along this tangent for too long. These things directly contradict with RP in the same way that you believe twinking does, Dev--- Yet, they remain. You aren't ignorant of these things. You either implemented these things yourself or were made aware of them in the past and did very little, if anything, to amend them. Your standard here is inconsistent.
You've already given a response for one of the instances listed above, which is the only response I could find from you on similar counterarguments:
Dev wrote:
You could make the same argument about donation items but since those are a result of support to the game and the items themselves do not offer much if any benefit beyond convenience, it's not that big of a deal.
Allow me to list all the Donation Items that provide a benefit that goes beyond convenience and, infact, contradicts what you said yourself about OOC activities giving a tangible benefit to a player in IC, Dev:
- Brain Food (increased exp = more power IC'ly)
- Chaotic Key (exp/items = more power IC'ly)
- Fruit of Fluidity (redoing your stats affects IC)
- Golden Lockpick (never losing lockpicks affects IC)
- Golden Pickaxe (never losing pickaxes affects IC)
- Asago Crafting Manual (double crafting EXP affects IC)
- IaplaceNET PDA (being able to accept/turn in quests with this item affects IC)
- Majistra Frequent-Teleporter Card (teleporting around without spending murai affects IC)
- Portable Kitchen
- Portable Science Kit
- Portable Smithy Kit
- Pet Kit
- Mask of the Night's Lord (people often use this IC'ly)
So, Donation Items being tradeable without restrictions because "they do not offer much, if any benefit beyond convenience" borders on insanity as a concept. Now... why should supporting the game give a player the license to metagame? If you truly believe that twinking involes metagaming, then why should one of my characters be able to give Brain Food (free exp and, thus, an IC benefit) to another character OOC'ly?
If players are free to trade donation items (that often times DO have a tangible IC effect despite the items themselves being entirely OOC) with no restrictions, then players should also be free to trade any other item with no restrictions as well.
I'm getting ahead of myself, though. We need to understand twinking before we can comfortably make a conclusion about whether or not its' bad. My understanding of twinking comes from the following quotes, which can be found in the game rules:
Dev wrote:
A) Transferring any items and/or any amount of Murai to a different character you play.
A2) Having a proxy transfer items to or from characters played by the same person still violates this rule and in this case, both players will be punished.
B) Transferring excessive amounts of items or Murai to lower level characters. Excessive is defined as one of the following within a 1 month (real-time) period:
1) Murai exceeding 50 * the receiving character's level.
2) More than 10 items total.
3) Characters under level 30 receiving items exceeding 6* rarity. (Note: This only applies to items received in trades or as gifts. Items obtained legitimately as drops are fine.)
The simple explanation as to why this is a bad idea is this: Not allowing players to trade 99% of items in the game amongst their own characters (and, in many cases, other players' characters) encourages excessive grinding and powergaming, which takes away from not only time that one could spend roleplaying but also tilts the game's focus more on getting high-level items and being strong rather than roleplaying out adventures and other enjoyable activities and happening upon high-level items and getting strong from roleplaying.
The complex explanation requires the whole point of the twinking rule to be laid bare:
Dev wrote:
Purpose: The spirit of this rule comes from the idea that, because this is a roleplaying game, new characters should not get a head start above others because they're OOC friends with someone who has a horde of magical artifacts laying around. Characters should have to earn their own things, whether that's through hard work or well-done roleplay. Furthermore, decking out your alts in the best armor and weapons around is not roleplaying at all; it's metagaming, and should not happen at all, unless the only items transferred are donation items, which you can do whatever you want with.
Let's dissect this a bit more closely:
Dev wrote:
Characters should have to earn their own things, whether that's through hard work or well-done roleplay
If you intended for SL2 to be a game where this sentence actually described how characters earned their equipment, then you have failed in that respect.
In regards to hard work, I myself had to grind for around an accumulation of ten hours when I first started playing to have the items to be competent at PvE, and had to grind for an accumulation of over thirty hours in order to be viable in PvP--- and this was as a strong class combination, Magic Gunner/Demon Hunter. To get the Mutated Jammer Core, Borneblood, and other incredibly rare pieces of treasure to be more than just competent, I had to grind for even longer. I am confident that I've easily spent over 60 hours grinding on SL2 in total, which is still not as great the time that some others have spent as Summoners leveling up their Youkai or players hunting for even rarer items. Some players spend over 100 hours total grinding for items that other characters/players have but cannot give to them due to the twinking rule.
If you wanted characters to earn their own things through hard work, then you shouldn't have equated hard work to hours of meaningless grinding that promotes people to not roleplay and, instead, become powergamers seeking to optimize their builds into godhood. In essence, you make the strongest, rarest items only available to those who OOC'ly want strength and power on the game, which is not conductive with roleplay at all--- because in a roleplaying game where the plot is unmoving and there's not many much to do beyond fight monsters or other players, grinding is an appealing way to spend one's day rather than roleplay.
At the very least, you could implement more monsters to be fought in ordinary dungeons, but I digress.
In regards to well-done roleplay, that's a joke in and of itself. I have rarely obtained anything beyond food through 'well-done roleplay'. Very few people give away decent weaponry/equipment to people they don't already know OOC'ly and, instead, hoard such things within their banks. It's not like in literature, where an aspiring hero is bestowed legendary items by people he meets along his journey. Players are not eager to throw away equipment, even if it isn't useful to their own builds. They save them for their OOC friends, not their IC ones. Most events don't give out items, either--- and if they do, they're almost always PvP-based events, like player organized tournaments. Such events don't require 'well-done' roleplay in order to obtain anything but, instead, just an optimized build.
Essentially, the only way to actually obtain good equipment is to grind. You won't get strong by roleplaying. You get strong by powergaming. If you want to change that, the twink rules are a step in the wrong direction--- because they encourage people to spend more time grinding than roleplaying.
If you wanted characters earn their own things through well-done roleplay, then you should've implemented incentives to encourage that instead of expecting players to be selfless within a system that encourages people to scrap high-tier items that are useless to them for raremetal and otherwise keep anything valuable that they find for themselves since such items are painstakingly (and arbitarily) difficult to obtain--- or worse, expect players to settle for low-tier or bad items in a game that revolves around combat when people aren't chatting about the weather.
Dev wrote:
B) Transferring excessive amounts of items or Murai to lower level characters. Excessive is defined as one of the following within a 1 month (real-time) period:
1) Murai exceeding 50 * the receiving character's level.
2) More than 10 items total.
3) Characters under level 30 receiving items exceeding 6* rarity. (Note: This only applies to items received in trades or as gifts. Items obtained legitimately as drops are fine.)
If you wanted players to obtain items through RP instead of Grinding, then these restrictions are a glaring contradiction in your logic. If I meet an aspiring hero and want to give him a Shine Sword (6*) to help him along in his journey... and can't because he's Level 25? You're not promoting roleplaying. You're promoting 'go level up more in order to be able to roleplay'.
And this:
Dev wrote:
C) Requested exceptions made through supporting roleplay that is submitted to a GM for approval. (That GM is also required to post the approval in the GM forums for the sake of awareness, and to simplify things if it comes up in the future.)
This? That doesn't excuse these needless limitations. I should not have to call for a GM every single time I need to be exempt from a rule that does not accomplish it's stated intention.
Let us go back a bit in that previous quoted paragraph:
Dev wrote:
... because this is a roleplaying game, new characters should not get a head start above others because they're OOC friends with someone who has a horde of magical artifacts laying around.
Not allowing players to trade to characters who are below Level 10 just makes people wait until Level 11... in exchange for not allowing players to trade ordinary things like food to low-level characters, which is not conductive to RP. The notion of having level-restrictions for item trading is pointless, anyway, since people generally do not RP until they get their character to lvl 60... so if you wanted to encourage roleplay, then allowing people to gear up lower-level characters so that those characters can get to lvl 60 in a timely manner.
I completely understand that the notion of a Lvl 5 Zeran wearing an Armor of Eyes is a silly concept, and most games have level requirements for items... so have level requirements for equipment. Simple, like this:
- Level 1-20: Cannot equip anything above 3*
- Level 21-40: Cannot equip anything above 6*
- Level 41-55: Cannot equip any 10*
- Level 56-60: Free to equip anything
These restrictions would be lifted if you had Legend Extended. In this way, one's first and genuine run through the main storyline and the game itself is a challenging and fun experience and, yet, grinding itself is not needlessly restrictive on roleplay and veteran players.
Dev wrote:
Furthermore, decking out your alts in the best armor and weapons around is not roleplaying at all; it's metagaming, and should not happen at all, unless the only items transferred are donation items, which you can do whatever you want with.
No one ever finds out about the Red Letter, Screamers, or most useful equipment items existing in IC. They find out about it OOC'ly and, if they want it for their build, they grind for it until they find it. The majority of grinding/questing does not fall under what actually occurs in IC or RP--- otherwise, everyone would be able to brag about defeating Kinu or finding the same long lost sword for a war veteran in Oniga. So...
If decking out your alts in the best armor and weapons is metagaming because you're doing so with OOC knowledge of those items, then everyone is a metagamer for playing off of OOC knowledge all throughout the game. The quoted sentence above is nonsensical.
Infact, nearly everything that most players know IC'ly (in regards to the universe and the IC world) comes from OOC. Most players do not feign ignorance of Sigrogana and it's various details unless it's something that ordinary characters are not meant to know of, such as Lazarus actually existing. Nearly every character I've ever interacted with has not been ignorant of the lore at large (including what's answered in the lore question topics) despite most of that information being gathered OOC'ly.
The metagame argument is not valid.
Dev wrote:
The spirit of this rule comes from the idea that, because this is a roleplaying game, new characters should not get a head start above others because they're OOC friends with someone who has a horde of magical artifacts laying around.
That idea does not apply here. If it did, trading items would require GM permission and a GM would have to go to the scene and be made to understand the situation at hand to make sure that the trade is actually IC.
The spirit of your rule is based on a reality that does not exist. Being given good items in order to get done with grinding quicker and have a finished character that can defend itself properly is not antithetical with roleplay. What is antithetical with roleplay is encouraging people to grind for items with low drop rates for longer than they should be grinding for simply because they can't get it from another character of their's that has already obtained it.
TL;DR
The twinking rule does not promote a healthy roleplay environment. It limits roleplay by encouraging people to spend more time grinding and fighting mobs, and promotes an environment focused moreso on powergaming and building.
My solution?
Get rid of the twinking rule, implement the changes I've already listed above, and give people more to roleplay about. Tweak a few things, such as how guards operate and the rulings on death, so that antagonism is no longer stifled into oblivion. Enable player villains to cause trouble, and then give non-villains a platform to reasonably fight back. Give more unique things to do in various towns to encourage people to visit them... and then allow player actions to affect those things, such as the economy (taxes on player shops that gets lower the more black beasts are killed, anyone?). In short?
Invest your energy and time in creating a meaningful roleplay experience for the universe you have meticuously written up instead of creating an environment where people just grind, partake in idle chit-chat, and cyber over discord.
Statistics: Posted by Egil — Sat Mar 11, 2017 5:31 am