[aranamor]

Repost from the Stale thread because Chaos told me to move it.

Though I love the potential that the game has for its lore and its vast around of races, I feel like the only people who RP characters they actually want to sometimes just didn't notice the disadvantages of them in beginning when they joined SL2. There are alot of things in the suggestions section that could really drive the point that SL2 could be a greater and combat-reliant game if the world was just opened up to the players even just a tiny bit more.

Other than the combat-crutch that SL2 uses to barely hold its Rp up, I don't think the game has too many problems. Though I feel like the combat focus could easily be out shined with some actually role-play content.

Also, there has literally been about forty-sixty years since SL2 first started. The 'story' of SL2 feels completely out of place and is very immersion-breaking for people like me.

I agree with basically everything in this, save for the last, and even then I sort of half agree with it. The story -is- getting stale. We had an argudiscussionment about this at the arena today, with one position being that since everyone has kicked Kinu's ass six ways to sunday by now and nothing's come of it, and it's better by far to roleplay personal stories and development arcs in lieu of an excuse plot; the other position being that the plot won't advance itself, and with player cooperation we could push it forward without making anyone the single main character.

I am in favour of the second position (because I put it forward :p), and I think that if we moved the story along as a group and had more input into the plot as players, it would be much more interesting and with that apocalypse averted, we would be able to move on to the next storyline for the game. There's an NPC who mentions that the Dead Cities are rising again, why not make the second story about that? Why not see which character the players agree with more? Kinu wants to kill all the gods, right? I think a lot of players would want to side with her to bring a Dark Souls-esque Age of Mortals scenario. What about the worshippers of Mercala? They'd want to side with Ashe to preserve the White Lady and the status quo. And then, if any zerans want to be actually zerans instead of, um, 'sheep', they'd almost certainly be invested in having to deal with the conflict of interest in fighting against Zera. Personally, my development arc has been more or less all about that conflict and how it makes Meddy feel to have to fight the God she dedicated her life to for the sake of the people she swore to defend.

There's a lot of potential for factions and politics, religiously and secularly. If Chaturanga, for example, becomes a hub for anti-Zera activity, maybe Alstalsia would want to declare war on them? The Mercalan Paladins would be extremely displeased if people started converting forcibly or otherwise to that Mud God guy, and given how Ashe behaves the first time you meet her, it could lead to revolts and stuff. It doesn't just have to be conflicts either. Maybe Oniga is enlisting geomancers and doriads to help them take back part of Gold and form oases? Cellsvich is a center of arts and culture, why not have a Bard's College open up?

There's a lot of stuff we could do with this, I feel. If players were interested enough, and if development was willing, we could really make a dynamic world with this game.