Just an idea that we think might be beneficial for those players that are interested in really customising their character to be different to others in their same chosen race.
During player creation on the website, when choosing a race, you are shown the base stats for that race, showing you its strengths and weaknesses. Some races are stronger with weapons, some will be stronger with magic (wisdom and intelligence).
Some races are more balanced, like humans. I will use the human for this example as all its base stats start like this:
Stat
Amount
Stat Cap
Strength
10
25
Constitution
10
25
Dexterity
10
25
Wisdom
10
25
Intellect
10
25
Charisma
10
25
Basically, we are thinking of doing 2 things to all races for player creation.
First, we will reduce the base stats by -2. So, the human would look like this at creation:
Stat
Amount
Strength
8
Constitution
8
Dexterity
8
Wisdom
8
Intellect
8
Charisma
8
But, in return, you are given +12 āspecialā stat points, which you can apply to any of the stats you wish. So you could make your human all 10ās across the board, or you could further tweak your character slightly so that it would make it different to any other human.
On top of this, the levelling station will not consider your special stats as part of your ācapā.
So, you could do this to your human as just an example:
Stat
Amount
Stat Cap
Strength
8
23
Constitution
20
35
Dexterity
8
23
Wisdom
8
23
Intellect
8
23
Charisma
8
23
The special stat you get appointed would not count towards your cap.
We can apply this change to all current characters easily enough as well. Weād just create a special web page, go through every player, remove 2 points from every stat, and credit you 12 points to spend as special points to customise your character as above. Allowing you further to customise your character beyond the āstat capā.
This idea popped up after reading @RemmyHunās post and allows some flexibility in making something unique.
I think this is a great step in the right direction for character development and customization but still think capping stats is a mistake.
However, if you can expand upon these special stats points (SSPs) so that when certain character levels are attained, say every 5 levels, additional SSPs are awarded. This certainly would be an incentive to leveling a character.
These SSPs could also be quest rewards, random rewards in dungeon chests and even a reward inside a āMessage in a Bottleāā¦
The adding a Special Stat increase every 5 levels puts the whole thing back into People Just grinding and farming to achieve GODLIKE stats. with the set limit for everyone, and with the mobility to customize your character it lets the RP and cooperation shine through. We do not want a system of Farmers and Grinders seeing who can achieve the highest stat and level, we want a System that can enhance RP and give communities something to incorporate into their RP without having to worry about Grinding to Min Max.
LOL I have yet to play a game that doesnāt have any farming or grinding involved or individuals who donāt rush to max their character level. And being in my upper 60ās and gaming since the Commadore 64, I have a played a few games. No matter how you structure SL Colonies, there will be players wanting to achieve max stats as quickly as possible. And RP will not change that.
My suggestion of every 5 levels was simply trying to work around the cap, to increase incentives to grind out the levels because SL Colonies at the moment is a huge grind no matter how you RP it.
So make it a random occurrence when a player gains a new level or create a mini game where a player rolls a die: even numbers you get a stat, odd numbers you donāt sort of thing-
Since youāve been around with the Commodore 64 and when we started playing with Bulletin Board Systems and the like. Think of earlier days of the internet when IIRC was more popular than today, and RP involved talking to other people and not focused on avatar progression as much. Think also D&D and limit the game master sets for the campaign you are playing and the storyline you have been given.
Thatās what we are bringing back. Some old school RP, SLColonies provides some āvisualā tools to allow that type of RP. Go around bartering with your other farm/village/city/kingdom members, trade for goods using words, and so forth.
MMOs are more player-centric, more about levelling yourself and getting the best āepicā quality gear. They are not about community roleplay.
The cap limit can be āraisedā as the community matures - enabling us to keep a ālevelā playing field amongst existing players.
I have also been playing games for a ā¦ well lets just say for a while, And not all Games were Grinding and Min Maxing, I remember the Original Kings Quest. And Rolling Dice is not RP, that table top mechanics. RP is interacting with other people to get things done, and taking on a role in a community. not just rolling a dice and doing what the Game Master says happens because of the outcome. I was a DM in DnD for many years and some of our best time never had any dice rolls. it was characters interacting and RPing the actions they would do. as the DM i was there just to make sure that the interactions maintained a fairness, and to provide structure to the story. What we are trying to achieve with SL Colonies is a tool for RP communiiti3es to use to enhance their community by providing jobs and rolls for their people. Not just rolling a dice and letting RNG dictate how you play.
This matter is too serious to move again or quickly. Where are the other members??? 3 or 4 people should not be the base to focus on system development!
Where are the people who invested thousands and thousands of lindens? Donāt say anything! Where are the āgiantsā???
Iām a little intrigued by this āsilenceāā¦
Personal opinion: I always think Discord distracts people. There it is shared, here it is closed and exclusive.
I am pleased to have inspired some wiggle to the original capping implementation!
I can only speak for myself, but the very fact that āGODLIKEā characters are a āconcernā or something to be āstoppedā or āpreventedā by making their existence āimpossibleā is one of the big reasons Iām no longer interested in SLCās and the Special Stat Points (SSP) donāt make a difference for me.
Pro - GODLIKE characters explanation, for those interested-- skip it otherwise. (1) The game I am building is being designed with the aim of being RP playgrounds that promote the (relatively) safe practice of trusting other players/people with power; as in trusting in the mutual desire to write (and thusly experience) epic stories and have fun, to the point that interruptions of the story and fun are address (with a player-mediator if desired) with the intent and purpose of getting back to said stories and fun-- a measure of self-governance & faith practice rooting from common ground (stories & fun.) (2) Canāt have a āGODs & Mortalsā RP without GODLIKE charactersā¦ yes, I have loose plans for this as a ācornerā of the game Iām building where any player can explore that age old question, āwhat WOULD you do, if you had GODLIKE powers?ā Are you service-to-others or service-to-self? etcā¦ If you can have fun playing with these extremes (GODs vs Mortals) then you can have fun with the Life/Death vibes that can come with the Real World. (Iām very pro conscious-evolution, if you didnāt notice, and having fun with it; learning how diverse āfunā isā¦) (3) GODLIKE characters reduce āgrinding for statsāā¦ for those who were just doing it to make certain tasks/jobs āeasierā and more efficient in their available play times. It allows more freedom to choose how to utilize the game functions around their storytelling-roleplay by the āeasier tasks/jobsā and in some cases, the sense of security to protect ones self against less civil GODLIKE characters.
Just to name the big 3.
@drakkhis did a great job of describing the RP players you guys say youāre looking for, which I would say is right up my alley, exceptā¦ I have the personal preference not to RP some of the ātasksā I consider āgamer RPā like harvesting berries off bushes, milking cows, collecting reeds, etc, where most of the game is in my mind and maybe short-lined (one-line written RP, letās say) to another person or player in the midst of itā¦ but otherwise itās between harvests and āgamer tasksā where I feel most natural to engage in more lengthy and āqualityā roleplay.
To me, those āgamer tasksā are like background and active aids to my roleplay, not the central pin with which all my RP pivots off of. By this I mean, those I consider āgamer tasksā are the things I do when my play partners arenāt online, or they are online but I donāt feel like writing stories at the momentā¦ etc. ((And as an added note, I havenāt been RPing much because Iām building my game and a bit of a work-aholicā¦ itās something Iām practicing better balance with.))
Anyroad, it almost reads like youāre on board with that kind of player, except you just made a shift (without warning or discussion) that crippled the play-comfort ofā¦ Iām not sure how many players, more than a handful.
So then I feel compelled to ask, was the stat cap really about steering the SLC players toward more engaging RP (storytelling, community & relationship building), or eliminating āGODLIKEā characters from being possible?
So many more questions spawn, though I feel like this post is long enough, and without the answer to that last question of your/the games intentions, I feel like I donāt really understand SLCās enough to ask or say anymore right now.
Thanks for your time,
Remmy
P.S. I second @axelnaxos2008 ā¦ where are the thoughts and perspectives of the rest of the players? Iāve seen around 80 active players at peak times, and even if (Iām being liberal) half of those are alt-accounts, thatās still 40 players of which only a few have chimed inā¦
Iām not sure what Axel meant about Discord vs the Forum butā¦ I donāt really use Discord, so any discussions on there, I miss.
It was more about bringing the system back to where we had intended.
If you never could go beyond what we intended in the first place, this discussion wouldnāt be occurring.
Looking at this screenshot, you will see the column player_stat_max. If you scroll down to Charisma, Dexterity, Strength, Constitution, Wisdom, and Intelligence, you will see that the stat max has a setting of 18. This column was created more than a year ago (weāll have to ask Drakkhis, but I think probably 2), and the intention was not to go beyond 18 on any given stat.
This feature never ended up getting implemented, and those caps never worked. Not because we didnāt want it, but because it, for some reason or another, got left behind and forgotten about in all the development that was going on. We completely forgot about it and allowed our players to upgrade their stats freely without even noticing that they were going beyond what we had intended for the game at the time.
The stat max still does not operate through the database as intended, and the new stat cap has been implemented through the levelling station in-store for the last 24 hours.
So I guess to answer some of your questions, God-like characters were never intended to be a part of our system. And you would not have noticed if we had implemented the feature from day one.
We will, however, increase the caps as the community matures, closing the gap. You also have to remember that our PvP system, Dungeons, Monsters, NPCs, and Magic system have not yet been implemented. And to ensure that those features work as intended and are balanced, we canāt have God Like characters 1-hitting other players and 1-hitting dungeon bosses. However, once the community matures and we know where everyone is, we can increase NPC damage, health, and PvP abilities and, in return, allow players to level further to achieve those higher requirements.
Thereās a lot of thinking that goes into creating a game. I donāt want to debate with all of you all day here. Yes, I should have posted about it first, but guess what? Posting about it would not have solved anything. It would have just softened the surprise of the sudden change. It would not have changed the decision.
Some decisions I make with community input, but some have to be made at a higher level and are decided between Drakkhis and me. As ultimately, this creation is our ultimate vision.
Many players choose not to participate in forums or discord discussions. We also have players that prefer to be in private IMs, and we have players that enjoy and accept whatever we do during Beta and have every right to follow or not to follow and stay with us based on where we are heading.
We still feel we are heading in the right direction, and we still enjoy where we currently are and cannot wait to see where we end up. What we have accomplished within Second Life is already impressive. With the entirely player craftable weapons, furniture system and clothing system, allowing players to craft themselves anything essentially and not cost them a L$ is fantastic. Mind you, creating the mesh, textures and the expenditures to obtain original mesh where needed to make these things available to players at no cost costs us quite a bit of money out of pocket, but yet, we do it (yes, you can argue and say youād be paying for a station to put weapons, furniture and clothing together; but remember, the sim owner/RPG builder might have that initial cost, but your players within your community have zero cost).
Youāve already decided to leave just as suddenly as I decided to enforce the change in stats. Nevertheless, I wish you all the best in your endeavours and the game you are making.
I will not be debating more on the above, my thought processes and the like. The change has already been made, so I see no point in discussing it further. All the answers you seek are in the posts already made.
But we COULD and DID go beyond, and we are having this conversationā¦ Well, kinda, but I see youāre putting your foot down about it (as they say) and hard-steering the course correct executively.
Indeed they are! Thank you for being so clear about your intentions of the game and desire to make sure it remains in that line!
Thank you again for the learning experiences!
Enjoy your journeys! Iāll be logging out and leaving you all in peace.
