[EthanGreen]

Hey Ethan, Sigrogonian Here.

You might've known me as that guy that did some things and dissipated due to a lack of interest. But, I might as well lay my hand on this topic given my experiences. This post will be quite long but gives my opinions. These opinions are through my brief experiences over a period of months. Opinions are opinions at the end of the day.

State of the Game

The main problem with the state of Sigrogana is it's conflict of identity. The game can't really decide what it wants to be, does it want to a video game first and a role play game second? Or does it want to be a roleplay game with video game elements? Naturally, this conflict of identity has surfaced for quite awhile. Most of us are in for the RP game, yet the Dev hasn't really focused on RP game. Instead, he has been developing the game play of the system by introducing reworks of classes or creating new classes entirely. I understand that the Dev is a mostly one-man army when it comes to coding and functionality of the game, this isn't to downplay his efforts. The point is that the Dev has not been making strides to foster the growth of RP, and as such the aspect of the game people want the most suffers.


The problems due to the state of the game.

The game needs conflict most definitely. Now, the nature of conflict people have on this server is relatively minimal. The most conflicts usually exist of the following in SL2.

    Event admin tailored stories to specific groups of people
    Seto Kaiba normal summons his Black Wolves to attack a town's life points directly and triggers Sigrogana's trap card -- several armed vagrants to beat him up.
    A black door phenomena.
    IC disagreement, most likely due to booze or just conflicting ideals.

The current conflict list is rather minimal and small, and usually inconsequential. Events are usually bragging rights that "I stopped this guy." But the most important thing to note here is that life never changes, even if a conflict arises. This is what I believe is one of the main reasons that people get turned off from SL2. Our characters need conflict, they need it in order to grow and to become another living piece of the lore itself. But, this doesn't happen. The reason I left SL2 back in the day is because nothing I did meant anything. Everything is peaceful, and nothing changes. The world needs to be able to change due to someone's actions. I feel like the best example of this is the in-lore assassination of Onigan Emperor Tennou. Because he was assassinated by magic, it eventually led to the ban on magic itself. If I had assassinated Tennou, then I would feel as if I had meant something to the development of the world itself. Naturally this example is rather grandiose, but you should get the point at what I'm trying to do.

We create out characters and roleplay with others as a way to live this character's life. Their history shouldn't be something along the lines of "I went to Stella's Bar and got hella drunk every week." or "I went to the Obenque and hung out a bunch." If people want to live mundane lives and just be a slice of life character, then they can perform it. If you aren't that type of character then you will naturally struggle with want you want to do.

I agree with Sokuryoku and Perdition, the world needs conflict more than ever.

What I believe needs to change
As for the aforementioned conflict, I believe something needs to happen about the handling about the development of SL2. The Dev needs to continue working on the gameplay as it is, it's flawed and needs improvement in many areas. However, the Dev needs to delegate the duties of the lore to his fellow staff members in developing the lore of the world. Rather than creating single events that would infringe on the eventmin's toes. These admins would focus on adding onto the world's lore and causing global conflicts or events to arise that would change the world based on the player's decisions. Maybe Elias would organize a force to reclaim Mallus, a series of events would take place in order to remove the source of the haunted armors and then rebuild the town to it's former legacy. Then Mallus would become a place where people could enter and roleplay there, due to the actions of a group of players. Said group of players would feel like they've contributed to the world. This is an example of what could happen, not what should happen. These style of events should be more precise and planned out than normal eventmin events or else it could jeopardize the world itself. I feel these type of events would freshen the staleness of the bread and give players what they want from the RP game.

I know this post is rushed and probably flawed in many areas, but I hope you get the gist of what I was going for. I may have missed certain aspects of the game due to my limited experience, but I hope my opinion is worth something. I do agree with the points made on this thread, it's a chore to make characters because you have to expect that eventually you will get to a point where you will have to duke it out with somebody. I have two characters in particular that are half-way grinded and need to go another extra mile. But I don't feel like LEing again just to do it all over again. The grind mostly depends on the character itself, but your character needs to have some sort of combat ability.

Typically, my day with SL2 usually goes like this.

Want to finish a character
Grind
Feel unmotivated
Go to OOC corner
Rinse and Repeat


It usually takes about two LEs and the Black Blood quests to max out your character, now keep in mind that after you LE. It's a commitment to get back to level 60 so you're in fighting shape. As a player, I feel like I have an obligation to get to this level in order to have the best chances of leaving a successful dent into an RP PVP encounter (these don't happen often but still). It is for this reason that I don't have any characters RPing out in the world yet, namely because I'm still grinding.

That's my opinion on this rambly rant of a post I made, Ethan out for the count.