[Noxid]

Okay gonna try and respond to your points. Some I agree with some I don't.

5: Yeah pretty much but it's not that bad and it's one of the better places to meet new people.

4: I'd agree the laplace card is a bit weird to RP. Often I don't even bother RPing it or RP my char not having one which seems to blow people's minds.

3: This isn't exactly true. Most people are gonna be killing monsters and shit but in my experience people are quite different in their backgrounds. The monster killing tends to just be a side thing for a lot of characters. But there are plenty of people who don't even touch dungeons IC. At the arena for example many of the people there only PvP and non combatants usually just get leveled OOCly to get their talents or whatever they need. Actually I've seen some baker guy going into BDPs that others are emptying and just scooping up all the chests.

2: You are pretty spot on here for the most part although I wouldn't say it's necessarily a problem, I'm glad we have a nice community who don't just hoard shit for themselves. I've had strangers give me rare stuff for free. As for the rest of what you said here I'd say you are shouldn't be using mechanics to enforce your RP so much. Let's take the the cook for example. I know a guy who runs a bakery and has gotten tons of RP in it he will use some food items as props but will often RP these are something else. You could do away with even handing out the items, in my own guildhouse me and a friend pure roleplay out serving tea.

You character does not have everything they want on a material level though. They have everything they want on a game mechanical level. I'll use my character as an example. He has had his gear pretty much set from the first week I played him very easy to gear so mechanical wants were filled very easily but the thing is IC he isn't really bothered about being stronger. His goals were to start a business and grow it. So he started off helping someone else's then he got his own small stall now he has his own guildhouse. Now if by material level you are talking making enough money to keep a roof over your head and food in your belly the honest truth is most people are gonna find that boring as shit, people come on games like this to escape that kind of stuff in their real lives.

1: To this point I'd say "I never got that far because it's so much investment to get any kind of story going." is your big problem here. Cellsvich square RP is never gonna be that fulfilling, I only use it myself to meet new characters. You need to join discord groups, add people as friends OOCly and plan things with these people to get the best experience. For example right now I'm in a group where our characters go off on adventures in a custom event space made by another player. The combat we do for the most part is pure RP, meaning that we hardly even touch the SL2 combat system and because of this the host of the event can do some very cool shit. This is just one example but there are tons of little groups, guilds and factions with there own storylines going on you just need to reach out and get involved. I'd say the effort is worth it, I met tons of cool people along the way who I can spend time with even outside of SL2. But obviously whether or not effort is worth it is down to the individual.

While I agree that it would be nice having some more of the mechanics line up with RP I have to disagree heavily with the idea of some kind of mechanically supported conflict. This would not encourage good RP at all actually I'd say it would do the opposite. It would encourage OOC gank squads to be formed so people could take these resources easily no casual player would stand a chance because an elite of players would be the ones forming groups and taking shit. I kinda like the idea of players being able to rule parts of the world but then I think back to Eternia another byond rp game. A nice fantasy world turned into an undead ruled hellhole because people are edgelords I guess. I wouldn't trust 99% of players to be able to rule an area in an interesting way.