[Neus]

I said I would keep an eye on the thread, and I did, so now I will be responding to it as best as I can. First of all I appreciate everyone's candid opinions, even if they caught me a little off-guard, so thank you for that. I'm not going to be able to respond to every single post, but I did read through it and gather up what I feel were the general takeaways of the thread, so that I could give my personal thoughts and have a discussion about what positive changes we could make in regards to them. These are in no particular order.

OOC Characters/Existing OOC

• Characters that exist in the game environment in an 'OOC' fashion undermines the RP environment and can create confusion about when and where it is appropriate to try to start RP with someone.
  
• Similarly, people behaving in an OOC manner or polluting the IC channels with memes and OOC jokes are distracting and have a negative effect on RP.
  

My Thoughts: I very much sympathize with people who feel this way. Meaning no disrespect to anyone, since I'm sure when this is done, it's not with negative intentions, and at times is distracting no one else. However, when it is done excessively and in very public areas, I feel like it is a large negative to people who are seeking to engage in more meaningful RP, and may in fact drive them away to other areas, even private ones, so that they can distance themselves from it.

Solution Ideas: The primary idea that comes to mind is simply to have more concrete rules on what substance RP in IC, especially public areas such as towns or the arena, should have, so that people grow out of making OOC jokes in IC channels, or otherwise being a distraction. 

Furthermore, as far as characters existing OOC, there should also be more well laid out restrictions on what you are and are not allowed to do while 'OOC'. This requires additional discussion on why someone goes into 'OOC' mode to begin with, however.


Applications for Events, Requests, Lore, Etc.

• The process for getting things approved and requesting them is vague. It is hard to see when someone gets something approved and for what reason.
  
• For this reason it is also hard to know if someone actually has some aspect of their roleplay approved, or if they're just making things up.
  
• Sometimes the lack of transparency creates a feeling of favoritism when someone is denied something, but sees others get things approved.
  

My Thoughts: Ultimately I feel this is an issue of clarity and consistency. The process has always been to contact a GM or myself privately, and while that's fine for the most part, it does create the issues listed above.

Solution Ideas: The first thought I had for this was simply to make a public forum here for player applications and requests, as well as guidelines on what you should do to get something approved or not. Establishing this forum would allow for greater clarity, allow review by both GMs and players to see what has been approved and what hasn't been (and why), and help correct the perception that nothing significant is approved.


Community: Cliques

• The game often breaks down into friends only wanting to be around their friends instead of RPing with others they are less familiar with (for whatever reason).
  
• Could partly be caused by people breaking down the RP environment with OOC-like behavior or 'memeing'.
  

My Thoughts: Cliques are not inherently a bad thing, but they definitely hurt RP in some fashion, especially when people only interact with their friends group in private areas. However, this is something that involves the community primarily - there is not a lot that I can do to resolve it, I feel.


World Rigidity

• People perceive the world as incapable of being changed or affected in any meaningful capacity.
  

My Thoughts: When we first announced eventmins, one thing that was asked and answered is that I was definitely open to people being able to take steps through them to change the world in a significant way. I feel like that has been forgotten, or that people haven't had the proper motivation or ideas to do so. In a lot of areas, though, this is my fault as well, as I haven't personally run events with the intent for something big to change and given players an avenue to participate, and have instead relied on the idea that players who want to see such things would rather take their own steps towards it.

That said, a lot of the time, when people approach me or the GMs about their requests, we hear a lot of the same things - I want to blow up X town/building/person. Not to dissuade anyone from going for such a thing if they desire it, and I am certainly not against such activities, but if feel you've hit a roadblock while trying one of these, just know that we have heard it a lot and it can feel a little low effort.

Solution Ideas: On the players' parts, if you have interest in causing such change, then I encourage you to make use of the eventmins. On my part, there may come a time where I will have to actually help steer or do some of these events myself. I also feel that the previously mentioned application forum would go a long way here.


Lack of Roles

• People perceive that there is a lack of place for their character to go, and positions in the existing world that their character can fill. (Not just mechanical Roles.)
  

My Thoughts: This is going to sound like a repeat of the last section, but again, I am absolutely open to people trying to rise up the ranks of the existing political structure, or to try and create their own. That was one of the goals of adding the roles system - to give people a foot in the door for contributing to the world in some fashion, and help them foster RP around it. However, it hasn't done as good of a job as I'd have liked.

Solution Ideas: This is another area where we would benefit greatly from an application forum.


Conflict, Rules of Engagement

• Rules for expected etiquette in situations of conflict only exist in vague terms.
  
• Playing as an antagonist character carries a lot of risk with very little in the way to bounce back; a single failure often carries extremely harsh punishments, including long times in jail away from meaningful RP.
  
• Other parties, including guards, can often feel like an insurmountable, infinite, and at times omnipotent force, stifling antagonist encounters and RP.
  

My Thoughts: This is definitely an area where we have had long struggles, and it mostly falls on me. I haven't really been able to discern what, on average, a player looking to be an antagonist actually wants, and how to properly keep that in check. This is something that will require discussion, with the intention of creating a very clear list of guidelines and rules of what antagonist characters can do, when and where they can do it, and what protections they and their potential victims have, without the need of GM oversight in every situation.

I also do feel that taking antagonist actions, especially illegal ones, should come with the risk of punishment, but I also feel that there are more creative ways to deliver that punishment without inflicting 'soft bans' on people (although such things will likely still exist for extreme cases).

Again, this requires a lot of discussion based on what antagonists think they should be able to do without GM oversight, and what players are concerned could happen, or what a fair 'defense' would be.

Solution Ideas: First and foremost is establishing a clear set of rules and guidelines for antagonists and engaging with them, as mentioned.

For the problem of punishments, perhaps instead of hard jail time in every instance, the requirement of paying a fine within a certain period of time, or commuting of sentences in return for doing community service, or hunting down another criminal, or some other type of redemption service could be explored (and failing those, you would just get thrown into jail).

A 'scene lock' rule has also been suggested, where once an antagonist scene has begun (for example, a robbery), the scene is locked and no one else can participate without the permission of the two parties. This would prevent issues such as being mobbed by a growing party of guards, or someone calling for backup, or things getting extremely complicated when people simply wander into the scene. Such a rule would likely not apply if it occurs in plain view of NPCs or guards in a town, etc.


Personal Thoughts About Other Things
Note: Nothing in this section suggests that I am going to change anything randomly. They are merely my personal thoughts and things I've noticed.

While I understand why it exists, I view the mentality of having to rush to max level and gear out to begin RPing their character to be a negative for a few reasons;

1) People feel like they can't RP when they aren't max level, leading them to spend more time grinding instead of roleplaying, which can exacerbate the lack of finding RP.
2) It skips over potential character development and puts your character right at where you want them to be, giving them less room to grow.
3) Max level characters appearing out of nowhere leads to characters feeling ephemeral and without much substance.
4) It encourages the same behavior out of other people, as they may feel excluded if they do not.

The general solution to this would be to require you to RP to actually progress your character. Mechanically this would probably be represented by level caps that can only be overcome by putting in enough effort in your RP, such as with in-game RP posts that are reviewed by GMs (for example) and given a 'gold star', or posts on the forum that can also contribute to that sort of progress. (Potentially 1 level = 1 gold star.)

I also feel like such a system would be met divisively by the player base - since it doesn't exist currently, it adds another roadblock to getting to 'PvP ready' status. It can also be a demerit for people who like to make alts for different character concepts that they want to enjoy mechanically, and may encourage people towards omniclassing characters, leading to a lack of distinct, fleshed out character concepts.


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I would like to hear your thoughts. Since this thread covers multiple topics, try to keep your opinions organized so that I and others can easily keep up with it. You are, as always, welcome to disagree or try and clarify something if you feel I have misunderstood it. I would also like things to stay civil and constructive - there were a few posts in the large thread that were not very helpful and more insulting, although the overwhelming majority was all very good feedback.

I am committed to improving the SL2 experience for everyone, and I recognize that in certain areas such as RP, I haven't put in as much effort as I should. While some problems will take longer than others to address, I will do my best to do so.

Thank you for reading and contributing.