[Egil]

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:

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.

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:

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 (" &quot
- 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:

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:

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:

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:

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.

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:

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:

... 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.

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.

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.

[MegaBlues]

With how the Reckoning affected how equipment works, you need to pick the weapon you'll be using before even starting a character, or you may find yourself with no way to actualize their concept. I think the most common way to create a character is to get a vague idea of the class(es) you want your character to be, find a weapon with favorable scaling, plan out your stats point by point before even entering Pink's Tower, then get a friend to powerlevel you to the point where you can get decent EXP from world events. And if you happen to be a new player that doesn't know every weapon's scaling and every armor's effect, you might end up having to LE after inefficiently getting your character to max level, while the rules state that other players are only allowed to give you minimal help at best, unless they go out of their way to hunt down a GM.

The way the rules are set up encourage only the in-group to make new players, because unless you have access to an already established person with thousands of Murai to buy you the equipment other players have hoarded, chances are you won't get anything you can use. And even if you wanted to help a new player by giving them something, they'd have to be level 10 before you can. Which usually means an OOC trip to the arena for an OOC fight to quickly bump a newbie up to 10, if they're nice enough to even take the time, which doesn't help roleplay at all.

So, yes. The twinking rule was probably put in place with good intentions, but all it does is encourage an annoying form of triangle trading, discourages actual new players from bothering with the game in the first place, and makes people skirt the rules because all they do is inconvenience the playerbase. Sure, you might not be able to trade items to yourself, but what's the need for that when you can get a friend to give you theirs instead?

But I suppose that it's made the community closer.

[Neus]

I'm not interested in another debate about the twinking rule.

[Egil]

I'm not interested in another debate about the twinking rule.

This isn't a debate. The twinking rule is bad for roleplay. That's just the reality of things.

[Lolzytripd]

the Twinking rule isn't the cancer here, the cancer is a lack of explanation to newbies, the player economy being inflated to silly levels at times.

Now the nice LE shrine actually offers 1 free respec you can use, meaning you don't have to to LE(tho some of those bonuses are nice)

[Snake]

It's just the way it is in my opinion and we should deal with it. Twinking will never be changed, and the game will continue being extremely unfriendly for those DU/SS13/Naruto RP/Bleach RP noobs.

The game lacks early level fun, so it's mandatory to be LV60 if you want to enjoy most of what the game has to give you without like, being pathetic.

The game lacks end game goals, so even after getting LV60 your choices are either one, Rebirth for no reason and re-level like a doofus because "DOH HOH, PVE IS FUN!" or become a statue in the Arena or Cellsvich, waiting for any RP that is not a meme (even memes are more interesting than being a statue tbh) or waiting for damned EVENTS that never happen anymore because the playerbase is toxic/unused to events due to their rarity.

SL2's endgame is pure sandbox, but early-to-end is not for some reason thanks to a lot of limitations that gives the feel of a MMO, SL2 is a MMO until you 'beat' it, then there's nothing else you 'can' do.

One thing you can do is to pick your side, choose an alignment and follow it thoroughly-- Wait, nope. Can't be a villain in a hero world.

The Villains are pathetic because 'the good Samaritans' and 'White knights' are an overwhelming presence in the whole game, since being evil gives no reward but a 'mini-ban' in jail.

The Guards are 'op' on keeping everything clean and peaceful, because Sigrogana is the main focus of everything and there is where they hold their power, if things happened in other places under other conditions, this would stop being so stale and villains would be able to do more than being cornered in Law's End.

Another problem with the Guards is that if a normal player being a statue is boring, imagine someone who's even more scarce on it trying to have fun? That's why they jump at anything bad and suffocate any 'incorrect' acts on 'batman on crack'-level of vigilantism.

Yadda-yadda.

[Egil]

The game lacks early level fun, so it's mandatory to be LV60 if you want to enjoy most of what the game has to give you without like, being pathetic.

For the first three months of me playing SL2, I did not roleplay much, if at all. I just grinded endlessly, even after I got through the Main Storyline and did all the quests. Unlocking all the classes and fighting every single kind of monster was an amazing amount of fun to me. Discovering new items and new dungeons made it feel like a real adventure---

But the moment that grinding became dull and I started actually roleplaying, I stopped having fun, for the most part.

The game lacks end game goals, so even after getting LV60 your choices are either one, Rebirth for no reason and re-level like a doofus because "DOH HOH, PVE IS FUN!" or become a statue in the Arena or Cellsvich, waiting for any RP that is not a meme (even memes are more interesting than being a statue tbh) or waiting for damned EVENTS that never happen anymore because the playerbase is toxic/unused to events due to their rarity.

Exactly. At endgame, you either grind endlessly or stand around waiting for something to happen. That's dumb. That's why we should eliminate the things that incentivize endless grinding (like the twinking rule) and implement changes that encourage meaningful roleplay, such as an evolving plot driven by players rather than by sporadic updates to the main storyline.

SL2's endgame is pure sandbox, but early-to-end is not for some reason thanks to a lot of limitations that gives the feel of a MMO, SL2 is a MMO until you 'beat' it, then there's nothing else you 'can' do.

It's not a pure sandbox, though. There's a beautiful universe written out to be explored and played through, it's just severely lacking and limited.

One thing you can do is to pick your side, choose an alignment and follow it thoroughly-- Wait, nope. Can't be a villain in a hero world.

The Villains are pathetic because 'the good Samaritans' and 'White knights' are an overwhelming presence in the whole game, since being evil gives no reward but a 'mini-ban' in jail.

The Guards are 'op' on keeping everything clean and peaceful, because Sigrogana is the main focus of everything and there is where they hold their power, if things happened in other places under other conditions, this would stop being so stale and villains would be able to do more than being cornered in Law's End.

Another problem with the Guards is that if a normal player being a statue is boring, imagine someone who's even more scarce on it trying to have fun? That's why they jump at anything bad and suffocate any 'incorrect' acts on 'batman on crack'-level of vigilantism.

Once again, you're right. Players being able to escape death and permanent injuries ad infinitum in most cases guts any chance of there being stakes in a serious roleplay scenario that isn't romantic or slice of life in nature, and the way that the Guardship operates makes it even more improbable that villains will get anywhere because the moment that they venture away from hideouts devoid of roleplay and try to interact with other players, they'll receive the soft ban known as IC Prison.

It's archaic and antithetical to meaningful roleplay, and it's been said before... but nothing came out of it.

And that's okay.

The end result is not as important as trying to obtain change in the first place. That's why this:

It's just the way it is in my opinion and we should deal with it. Twinking will never be changed, and the game will continue being extremely unfriendly for those DU/SS13/Naruto RP/Bleach RP noobs.

... is bullshit. Settling for shitty things and not aspiring for greater horizons is for weak-minded people.

Twinking may never get changed. It may be there to encourage people to buy donation items and, thus, keeping the rule earns Dev money. Maybe Dev has no intention of actually emulating MMOs as he claimed before, and just used that as an excuse to keep twinking around--- because actually emulating MMOs would involve making an interesting endgame environment for the players to encourage them to stick around. Perhaps he actually doesn't care if the twinking rule is antithetical to roleplay. Who knows. All I know is that change is possible, and as long as that is the case, I'll make my voice heard. If Dev remains unmoving, then perhaps I'll inspire GMs to focus their efforts on expanding roleplay rather than stifling it. If the GMs remain unmoving, then perhaps I'll inspire players to create proper villains who are then able to provide intense conflict that leads to meaningful roleplay. If players remain unmoving, then maybe it's best to just find better videogames to play---

And that's okay.

I'd rather be known for trying to change what I don't like than meekly accepting it just because it seemed impossible to change.

[Slydria]

I think this topic is going off the rails. If you wanna talk about these other issues, you should make a thread more specifically for that because from where I'm looking, this has little to do with the twinking rule.