[Fern]

Hi! First of all, I want to say thanks (again) for keeping an eye on the thread I had put up. Normally I don't put up very long responses in threads, so I apologize if some of my input looks short. I'll try my best to be concise regarding what I want to say, though! Fair warning, I don't consider myself a professional game fixer or anything.

Second, some people have mentioned thoughts that I fairly resonate with in this thread already. Namely:
-Walrus (Regarding being OOC, Cliques, World Rigidity, Personal Thoughts About Other Things)
-Drezdin/Balor (Point 2, 3)
-Mr.SmileGod (Character Progression)

Moving onto what I want to comment regarding the points listed in the opening (Dev) post:

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.

SL2 is the only RP game I've ever seen (so far) where there's a good amount of freedom with being OOC. I have been in the roleplay scene for roughly 10 years, give or take, and it's the only full BYOND game I can say I've seen has it. But I'm in no way saying it's bad that SL2 has this privilege. In fact, being allowed to enjoy the game in a more relaxing manner is a good bonus in my book. Why?
 
I don't mean to attack anyone, but from what I've seen, the vast majority of people that engage in roleplay games want to destress from bigger problems. The option to be OOC and do the more casual mechanics of the game, or screw around with friends somewhere, helps that. If people were hypothetically forced to be IC constantly, then the people that like being OOC semi-frequently on occasion wouldn't think that they should go IC. They'd take the alternative, which is not playing the game at all, and that's a worse result.
 
However, there's times when OOC spectators act malicious towards others roleplaying or doing certain things IC. Few examples:
 
-You are ICly sparring with someone, be it in the Badlands Arena, forest, camp or what have you. The OOC spectator(s) watch your fight, then begin chewing you out in LOOC or making an aggressive conversation about what mechanically occurs in the fight. ("how dare you use quickdraw RoT plus, you're cancerous" / "how dare you play engineer/spellthief, i bet you're a piece of junk that doesn't want others to enjoy the game" / "lmao is that another tank, classic, i bet you can't think of anything more original" / "running basic attacks? adapt to the new meta, scum")
 
-You are RPing. Someone OOCly watching (or several people) get on your case for being IC, because according to them you are never seen IC and being taunting you over it. This one actually discourages some people from going to roleplay in public areas, too.
 
And I mean, you could argue "they can just go fetch a GM." Which, you wouldn't be wrong, people generally could just throw logs at a moderator and ask them if they can help. But from what I've seen, most people are either:
 
A) Shy
B) Not wanting to get roped into a drama for reporting someone
C) Not wanting to get harassed for reporting someone liked by a group
D) Intimidated by the GMs due to feeling that they are largely unknown to them
E) All of the above
 
Semi-frequently, people tend to not want to bring it to a GM because of feeling like the GMs are largely detached from the game, as it was previously mentioned in this thread. I'm not saying pressure the GM team more, but more so just highlighting the problems that I have seen (and sometimes experienced) out of people watching roleplay OOCly. A chain of things, pretty much.
 
But that's about the biggest problems I've found on that end myself. Even then, it's more so a case of "people being toxic" and not "people are OOC." In spite of these things sometimes happening, people should retain their right to be OOC if they don't want to roleplay at a specific time and simply do other mechanical aspects of the game. Obviously, this doesn't mean they should be ruining other people's roleplay while being OOC. I'm not talking "don't quickly stop by a friend's character and spam heart emoticons on them for a few seconds then leave", I'm talking "they shouldn't be meme emoting while OOC at people roleplaying in a mocking manner."
 
Personally, I sometimes go OOC because I don't want to roleplay in that particular moment and I just want to screw around with friends somewhere, or sort out some things mechanically (I.E going to some area to get a thing set for my character, needing to LE, etc.)
 

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.

 
A formal application forum should've been a thing from the start of the game. It honestly shouldn't have taken this long to do something like that, but I'm not going to judge or complain since you likely had your reasons. And honestly, it's not too late for it either. Plenty of other roleplay games have a system very similar to what you're describing so players may fill in important or influential positions (Dragon Ball RP games, Naruto RP games, Eternia, etc.)
 
Not everything should have to go through the submissions forum, and I'm not saying that people should approve big things in secret. I'm referring to that one player that isn't looking for approval of something big, who probably just wants to know if they can summon their sword magically or if they can have a spooky ghost in their hat. The application forum should be for bigger pieces, things such as ideas for influential world changes, large event lore that the player isn't sure can work in SL2's setting, etc.
 
I don't think you'd need to make a super formal guideline for what you can/can't post, it would be more so a matter of common sense I guess.
 

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.

I'm going to be straightforward with you, Dev. I agree. There's not much you can do about cliques, because that's more so of a "human nature" thing than a "game design" thing. For the most part, anyway. You could hypothetically alleviate it some by giving more incentive to interact with stranger faces, for example this could matter more to people that want to play important positions (I.E, if I were hypothetically playing General Phobos, I would likely be expected to be willing to roleplay with anyone that approached me. Of course, I imagine the person wouldn't be forced to interact with someone that's OOCly harassing them in a rule-breaky manner, again, common sense.)
 
No one can really "fix" cliques. That would require you changing the way someone exists, or is. But if someone with an important role would be playing unfair and doing things exclusive to one group they like, dismissing everyone else trying to make approaches and the like... well, they should get a slapping.
 
Long story short on that end: don't bother trying to fix the standard clique problem because you won't get anywhere. Just keep an eye on players with important roles being unfair in that regard. Make sure there's a decent amount of monitoring for those positions, don't just let them be ignored entirely and allowed to do everything they please, etc.
 
Personally, I don't feel there is enough 'monitoring.' Sure, there is some but as it was previously mentioned, GMs are generally considered significantly detached from the game, which would mean that it is far easier for them to miss someone doing a oopsie-doopsie. Makes sense?
 

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.

You're right in that you did say you were open to taking things further so long as it would make sense. I was there for it, and saw it with my own two eyes. The reason it has been forgotten is because there is no official procedure for carrying out these large scale ideas, so people tend to feel lost when it comes to knowing what they can or cannot do.
 
This also results in some of them chalking it down to "well I'm not Chaos/Dyst/Slydria/Balthie's favorite, so my idea wouldn't really go past X person." Which is part of why we really need that application/submissions forum. Note I'm not saying they DO play favorites, but people tend to think that if a specific person is the one to bring an idea to a specific GM, that it would be more likely to get through. This is a bad mindset to have, so if we had the applications forum, all GMs and yourself would be able to see what's being suggested and comment on it. At least I think so.
 
On the note of eventmins, the larger things would need running by a GM in the end of things anyway, since I doubt an eventmin would be able to just nod to someone saying "I want my character to hunt down Mercala" without running it through a GM then yourself (or just directly going to you) beforehand. Then there's the part where the moderators would likely have differing opinions/takes on how certain things work.
 
Your involvement in running events of your own would be pretty great, and pretty much the first time I'd see you do anything like that post-Bloeden. I had assumed that you likely just planned to leave that to GMs (and later on eventmins) because you were too occupied. I don't think you'd have to always strictly hop on the game and use Event Tools or anything, I think something like a forum post or announcement detailing something going down somewhere would also work and help make things feel active.
 
Relatedly, part of the reason people don't want to try doing anything big is because they feel as if the world's own lore will just snuff out whatever they're trying to do. Some instances I've heard of and seen are frankly exaggerated, but there's one I personally agree with (to an extent), which is...
 
That some factions in the game are made out to be far, far too powerful for someone to feel like they can do anything impactful (action-wise) with them. The biggest offender in this case is the Sigrogana Empire. It has brought comments such as:
 
"Why should I try stirring up trouble within the empire, the NPC guards are considered stronger than the level 60 PCs and they will murder me the moment they find out I did something"
 
"I don't want to deal with the Guard Commander's overtuned abilities, if he gets involved my character's stuff will immediately collapse"
 
"The empire's army will just slaughter (insert group here) because they're said to be the strongest troops in the game's lore and have never known defeat"
 
Just a few examples of things I've heard. The apparent power scaling difference between the most relevant parts of the lore, in comparison to the player characters, tends to turn a lot of people off or make them feel entirely hopeless.
 
I'm merely pointing out bit by bit why some people don't want to bother with trying to bring up things. As for me, I wouldn't be able to tell you the real answer on "how strong" different factions and nations of the game are. I have honestly never gotten a consistent answer on these things myself, so I personally tend to try to do the big things fully expecting my character to fail, with my own objective being to entertain other players with some kind of story. (See: Arael Schlager leading the Black Falcon with the intention to overthrow the emperor because of his intense hatred for Elias, Arael's brother Cornelius seeking to attempt deicide because he wants a world with peak human progression and no divine intervention.)
 
It essentially tends to feel too restrictive to attempt to do anything major. It being restrictive to an extent makes sense, and would be desired. It feeling too restricted is what you would want to avoid if you feel you want to see people step up and offer things, in my opinion.
 
Of course, not trying to attack Chaos or anything regarding the Guard Commander bit, but it's one of those things people tend to be afraid of having trouble with on a OOC level.
 

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.

Yeah, people tend to not really bat an eye to someone with the title 'Medical Head' or 'Water Sourcer.' Mostly because both of these roles don't particularly mean much from a roleplay sense (although Medical Head holds a bit more weight than Water Sourcer.)
 
Because if your character is ICly injured, people don't generally go to the Medical Head's place, they tend to go a player established hospital house made specifically for roleplay (see: Sanctuary Hospital or Sunflower Hospital.) Meaning that the Medical Head position does not end up having much of a roleplay purpose.
 
And Water Sourcer is just seen as "oh, you're the person that helps find water" rather than anything bigger. Which personally I don't really have much of a problem with, despite being the Oniga Water Sourcer myself. I wouldn't think of it as a role that needs much recognition, frankly, I'd pin that on Medical Head instead... but back on track.
 
From what I understood, you were mostly testing the waters which is okay, but these mechanical roles will generally not be of much impact. What tends to matter to people is characters in political positions, characters part of official groups from the in-game lore (such as what Walrus mentioned: Church Knights, Verglas Monastery, Geistritters, Agency, etc.)
 
Thing is most of the roles that would really matter are already filled by NPCs from the lore, as Walrus mentioned. I'm not sure if you should just suddenly say that these spots are vacant, though, that would be really weird without a really good reason. And frankly I don't have many ideas on that regard myself, but here's an example one that I have at the moment (could be expanded upon or modified as seen appropiate, it's really just an idea to get the message across):
 
Players want to roleplay as being part of the Alstalsia High Council. The options are:
A) Allowing them to apply for roleplaying one of the existing members and only one (similarly to how a GM in the past asked if they could roleplay a god)
B) Allowing them to apply for their character ICly joining the High Council
 
Again, just an example of a what-if. It would likely be a case-by-case basis, but I think it's possible to come up with something that can fairly satisfy both ends for these important positions in general.
 
It would be hard to elaborate on it as of this moment because we don't actually have much to go off regarding what we can or cannot do in relation to that sort of duty, however. It's not too clear what people can attempt to sign up for. There's the offer of "you can apply for a significant role" but without knowing what the roles listing is. Of course, I wouldn't think that you'd not work on a list to show to people or something along the line. We basically need to know what you'd be fine with people applying for!
 
These positions should be monitored frequently enough if they come to be, though. Not saying that they should be watched like hawks 24/7 for every little word they put in, but their more important/influential decisions should be kept track of by the game's moderators or yourself (ideally both.)
 
On the note of meaningful roles, currently if you want to be part of the guard force from any nation that isn't Sigrogana, you must sign up for the Sigrogana Guard first. I'm not aware of the reasoning behind this, but from what I've seen it's part of what turns off people from having their character interested in anything guard related. I believe this should change and allow players to apply for guard forces from other areas without having to be part of the imperial guard, if the intention is to give them more leeway with character roles.
 

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.

 
What people want to do with their antagonist varies from person to person. Some want their antagonists to be successful, some want to see their antagonists try to do something and see where they go and some generally prefer to make them entertain other people. I fall in that last category.
 
I make most of my antagonists locked to events due to the reason that frequently bringing them out elsewhere tends to result in messy or otherwise OOCly distressing situations. For example, if I were to do something in public, I would get a large horde of player characters wanting in on the action of beating up my character. I normally wouldn't have a problem with this if it weren't for the fact that if my character or my group lost, then we would have to put up with the 'soft-ban' or worse.
 
This has led me to make the 'doomsquads' back in the day. I know they're not that fun to fight generally speaking and I know they're salt inducing because I used to create them in a way that would make their loss as unlikely as possible. Meta, on top of meta, on top of meta, on top of game breaking team compositions. It didn't feel good to do for the most part - the exception being when people were happy at seeing the group or character be treated as utterly menacing, which happened sometimes. I did this quite a bit with Black Falcon, because it's the sort of antagonism that is overly reliant on Event Tools and back then the only ones with them were GMs. So I would often be prodding a GM or two, but due to unavailability, it would take a long while to do each event. We had to keep things rolling, so we used doomsquads for the more public things. I'm sorry for doing that because I know it's not fun, but at least there's no reason to do that sort of team composition anymore since eventmins or GMs can just slap statuses on your character that make them beefier if it's for the sake of an event fight.
 
Punishment for your antagonist failing is to be expected. The main problem is that, as you've mentioned, making the slightest mistake tends to result in everything immediately falling apart for your character from a OOC stand point. I almost experienced that myself at one point due to a mistake I made, but was essentially saved by people in the scene going "yeah if we just ruin this dude right now we're just gonna ruin a lot of possibly cool stuff" (kudos to the guards from that day that OOCly allowed me to escape with that intention, I'm really grateful!)
 
Thing is, I doubt that would happen to everyone. In fact, I consider that a rare circumstance, because I almost never see that happen.
 
I've already commented my thoughts on the guard force factor when I replied to World Rigidity, so I'll avoid needlessly repeating them!
 
But yeah, long story short, people that play antagonists generally want this... (from what I've seen and experienced) 
 
A) They want their antagonist to attempt something and see where it goes (either large scale or personal regarding another character(s) they're connected to.)
B) They want to provide some kind of driving force for other people's characters.
C) They want to provide entertainment to other players by giving them something to look forward to.
D) All of the above.
 
Regarding scene locks, I wouldn't be able to tell you if they're good or not, but I've heard they generally work. I'd be willing to give it a shot, personally. And of course, I imagine it wouldn't apply in places with a massive amount of people gathered up and what not.
 
Lastly, on the topic of alternative punishments that aren't jail character bans, I can't really give many ideas myself honestly. Your propositions on that end sound fine to me. The "jail ban" wouldn't be as despised if more roleplay came out of it I'd say... just throwing an idea into the wall and seeing if it's interesting, but maybe a Fort Arjav prison community project would be worth considering. I.E allowing people to play prisoner characters that roleplay in that particular area. It would open up some prison break RP potential, too, but again this is just spitballing that's not all that fleshed out.
 

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.

 
As you may already know, I'm an altaholic (see: I have a gazillion alts) for better or worse.
 
What I'm about to say is mainly my experience with this particular segment. I'll put it into a spoiler because it's pretty much a personal tangent.
 

I like making several characters because I like trying out several concepts, be it either build ideas or character ideas. Sometimes, it's because I really like a playby and want to use it because I got an idea out of it, or I simply want to use it. At times there's really not much of a big reason to why I'm making another character. Generally, I just repurpose (repurpose is the term given by the community to the action of changing an existing character slot's playby and other things to a new one in order to skip the grind, since sometimes people just no longer want to play a specific character but don't want to waste that slot) a character that I don't plan on using for a long, long time to whatever the new one is. I usually don't have reason to start the grind from zero for the new one because the concept I have in mind tends to be that of a race I already have fully (or mostly) set-up.
 
The reason I usually only go IC with them after they are Level 60 is because I want to be combat ready in the off-chance someone or something happens that puts my character in danger. Essentially, I don't want to be curbstomped because I didn't at least set up the minimum of my character beforehand. Seeing sudden Level 60s is not unreasonable, at least to me, because this is a common trend in fiction and technically in real life as well. I'll elaborate on that.
 
In TV shows/anime/manga, there are often times where the characters meet someone fresh new to the story that turns out to be just as strong as them or perhaps even stronger. In Dragon Ball Z, the characters were initially unaware that there were other planets and even galaxies, as well as a full-on afterlife with warriors much, much stronger than them, and they eventually found out that such a thing actually existed. Was that a bad move for story writing?
 
Personally, I wouldn't say so. If it were, then this sort of trope wouldn't be so common in most stories we see today. It tends to have varying levels of shock when people find out such strong people that they never met before exist, and usually adds intrigue/curiosity. Where does that person come from? How did they get to that point? What's their purpose here? That sort of stuff.
 
One of my characters is a Chataran that goes by Neron Magnus. He's the IC leader of my adventurer guild, Blades of the Promised Land. I had thought that being the leader of an officially sanctioned adventurer's guild would usually mean that you'd likely be a very skilled person. He was not the sort of character that I would've wanted to begin from Level 1.
 
So instead, I made him start at Level 60 with a build specialized in damage reduction stacking, since his core theme was supposed to be that he thought defense was the best offense. ( this resulted in Golden Glow and Weir Konnen being changed to not be additive ;_; )

I asked for help with getting him set up, I started the guild, tested the waters with a relatively small amount of people then opened up to letting more players in. Did I skip the "potential development" from the IC grind? Yes I did. I definitely did. Was it worth it?
 
Yes.
 

 
Very much yes. Because I did not turn him into a flawless character that knew how to do everything - he was meant to be strong, but not perfect. As the guild proceeded to grow, so did my character that had originally only become IC after reaching Level 60. He had been designed to be the wise sounding man, and despite that, he ended up learning from the people he met and battled alongside with, on top of the members of his own guild.
 
He learned that he can't always be so distant from people. He learned that there'd be much more left to do in his life, and that he wasn't truly content with things as he thought he was. He learned so many things, even in the field of combat-- Neron came to the realization that defense doesn't mean everything in a fight, and started working towards improving himself in that regard. He began attempting to improve his offensive capability, seeking to determine what would be the best timings for a defensive/passive/offensive behavior in a fight. As he did that, he began ICly getting stronger. How did I represent that?
 
I began LEing off-screen and showing his changes in segments every time he would return on-screen. Improving on his builds, improving on his stat spreads, his equipment, and trying to come up with better tactics for PVE/PVP myself OOCly so I could represent it ICly. He's not the only one from my roster that has gone through similar to all of what I've described, either. The character I usually play the most, which is Delphia/Joker, has gone through 6 OOC years worth of character development.
 
It may not be the character grind development you might have envisioned when designing the levelling system, but it honestly felt worth it to take that route for me. It's the sort of thing that wouldn't have happened the way it did if I chose to treat all of his grinding progress as IC, or purposefully refrained myself from going past a certain level range too often.
 
I end up stressing myself out at times because I sometimes find myself bumping into a wall of 'how do I keep Neron's mechanical strength similar enough to his IC ability.' But there's usually something I end up content with, in the end.
 

3. The community doesn't want a harder grind. Levels or mechanical rewards are not going to inspire people to stick to one character. Roleplay does. A sense of weight on the world. I believe point one would remedy this issue, because it would allow people to feel more comfortable pursuing a goal in the game. Because they would feel confident setting an objective within the world, and reaching out to achieve it.

 
Drezdin said this and I strongly agree with this statement for the most part. People generally see the grind as a chore, something you 'have to get out of the way' like your parents asking you to wash the dishes or to do laundry when you're already interested in doing other things, rather than something you could have fun with. I understand that one of your intention were to give potential for IC progression through it, but this is generally only a case with new players. It's usually more appealing to hit Level 60 first, then make mechanical changes throughout time in order to represent it.
 
You don't necessarily have to give people 'gold stars' or an increased level cap, Dev. If you added them, I personally wouldn't object until after trying it out and making an opinion on it, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. What I think people need the most is:
 
1. Feeling rewarded for investing time and effort into developing a character that's attempting to pursue a particular goal (as Walrus described, I think special opportunities or items would be a solid start. Not necessarily the only thing.)
2. Not feeling too obligated to spend several hours on SL2 in order to be mechanically relevant alongside people that sink so much time into character developement
 
I'll elaborate on #2. One of the pros SL2 has over other RP games (to me) is that unlike a Dragon Ball RP game or Eternia, you don't have to be no-life playing the game for several hours to be relevant and contribute once in a while. You don't have to play 24/7 to catch up to people on the mechanical side of things, be it PVE or PVP. Why is this good? Because:
 
1. If you're a busy bee, you can stress less about your character's relevancy
2. Roleplay is generally considered a hobby. If the game doesn't make you feel forced to be on all the time, then you are more likely to treat it as a fun hobby rather than an annoying chore.
 
If you do ever decide to raise the level cap, I think it should be tied to roleplay in some form, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary to increase the level cap with what has been previously mentioned. Again, if it does happen, I would prefer to try it out before telling you if I think it's good or bad, but I don't think it's needed. At least not right now.
 
I'm aware that some people are feeling very cynical or pessimistic about this thread. Personally I want to have some optimism about it myself, because it's the first time in a really long while we've had anything like this, even if I understand why they would feel negative about it. This thread is a fair start to me.
 
I know you're a reserved man, Dev. You have your reasons and everyone is different. But I want to say that your attempts at getting more in touch with the community over time have been a great help, specially the part where you suddenly joined the SL2 Discord. I'm not going to say you should be forced to do it, you are free to do whatever you want really - but I think that if you keep doing this sort of thing, it'll also keep helping! Also it'll probably help you be more in the know about the more important things that happen with the community's people, since as far as I've understood, there's a lot of things you've been (mostly) unaware of until recently.

 
If you read this far, thank you for reading, I really appreciate this and the thread's existence as well. I'm hoping that the game I've played for so many years can get better and I have more of an excuse to rope more friends into it. I'm also grateful that people contributed to the thread I had previously put up and helped make this happen, honestly.
 
I kind of just typed as I read, so I apologize if some of it sounds/is written strangely!

[Perdition]

And Water Sourcer is just seen as "oh, you're the person that helps find water" rather than anything bigger. Which personally I don't really have much of a problem with, despite being the Oniga Water Sourcer myself. I wouldn't think of it as a role that needs much recognition, frankly, I'd pin that on Medical Head instead... but back on track.
 
From what I understood, you were mostly testing the waters

Testing the waters indeed.

[Maksimum_Fire]

Okay, there's something I feel needs clarifying at this point in the thread.


Character Progression feels unnatural.

By that I mean leveling up does not contribute to good RP, nor is it fun or fresh content.  The way you level up is by throwing yourself at BDPs until you hit level 60.  But that's not fun, not contributory to RP, exhaustive over time, and tedious.  It's nice maybe once in a while, but it's pretty well understood as not enjoyable which is why vets don't do it.

What's more is that BDP grinding doesn't make sense for how a character is becoming progressively stronger.  Maybe you could argue the physical activity makes you better able to take hits or bulk your muscles, or that you get better insight into how monsters will attack- but especially at the low levels, this happens all too quickly, and it also doesn't give any explanation except for really boring and silly "I came up with it!!" explanations for the skills you learn along the way.  It feels better to learn your magic spells from a tutor or during library visits or anything that's not "I beat up monsters and then I figured out how to cast a new spell/power up an old spell".  This applies for other character concepts too.  You don't just summon special arrows out of thin air I imagine(unless that's your lore I suppose???), they seem like the kinda thing that'd be prepared beforehand that an Archer pulls out for the right occasions.  Learning a new Arrows skill out in the field doesn't contribute to this.  Learning Pulling Shot doesn't contribute to good rp.  How do you learn to meditate, or perform martial arts flipkicks, or do a crane hop, or all the other stuff that Martial Artist can do?  The ways to learn skills that best contribute to RP have no effect or a negligible effect on mechanically learning those skills.  No matter how much you practice magic?  You'll make ZERO headway.  No matter how much you cross swords in sparring practice with your pals, or get fencing lessons from your teacher?  You will NEVER improve.  Every two hours or something you can get RPXP, which is 10% of the way to a level IIRC, but that's miniscule enough that it may as well not be there.

It's because of this that OOC grinding has to be a thing, because without it, grinding up to level 60 would take months, or even a year of time dedicated to RP.  Nobody wants a training arc that long.

The reason people level up to 60 isn't always so that they're out-the-gate a titan who's raring to go at the arena.  It's often so that they have a strong handle on their character's progression and can ease it along properly so there aren't really odd power spikes that don't make sense.

How and how not to fix this:

I'll start with the how NOT to fix this.  Fern already clarified in an excellent way why forcing characters to engage super actively with the world in order to be strong isn't especially great- it means that playing casually isn't really an option.  It means you have to get super actively involved and stay actively involved and tax your time in a way that doesn't really work around the whole, having a job and a life thing that some of us do.  It also means that characters lose their character backgrounds, because you can't reasonably have 'studied at karaten as a mage' or 'worked as a black knight' or even 'hunted for your own food' in your backstory because you have absolutely nothing to show for it.  This sort of ties in with why people build even if they don't plan on doing combat; they need to represent the character they're playing in the few situations they do have to fight, or they break character and nobody wants to break character.

My suggestion on how to fix this:  Keep the grinding system as is so that people have a way to progress their characters, but also on the new GM forum, create an application process for players to submit in-game logs of events where their character learned a new skill, sparred with their practice partner, learned from their teacher, or participated in an event.  After a small review just to ensure the log is what they say, several level ups and maybe some murai could be given out as a reward; or for certain events, the end of a long training arc, or an extensive backstory, etc legend inks could be awarded.  This lets you keep a balancing act between asking for engagement in the world and letting people manage their own progression; which I'm pretty sure people would rather do at least some of the time given how the game has handled itself so far.



I might have more to say later on the segment about roles, but I also don't want to let my day get totally drained typing all this up, so I'll take a break with that.

[Perdition]

The issue with the proposed idea of providing logs for level ups, murai or legend inks is that ultimately these things don't matter. The grind to get all your stat bonuses from legend inks is really not that bad even if tedious, given there are laplace quests. RPing and submitting logs is also more time consuming than just grinding the levels out and then RPing after when you're at full strength. You would need to have a means of strengthening your character solely through noteworthy RP that goes beyond what you can grind for OOCly. Otherwise those rewards are meaningless.

[Balor]

As a player I don't think the Application Forum should be used for leveling up, or skills. The GM team isn't very large, and the most active of them just recently resigned. It's replacing a tedious but harmless leveling mechanic with a system reliant on constantly attentive Staff, which not to offend them. Are likely in need of better in-game means of collecting chat logs, organization, and transparency with the community.

Things that should be addressed before we put it upon them to have to read through logs and upend the games entire progression. Progression that while tedious at times, made it very enjoyable to a New Player like me who doesn't always have the free time to keep up with people and get into the game. Something I wouldn't be able to do in other Byond titles. Especially if you gate skills, levels, etc behind GM's having to read logs.

---

I also wanted to say that the new OOC Corner has more effort put into it for a hangout for people not RPing than most actual portions of the map. Genuinely I think rather than gating levels and mechanical advantages. We should build up new areas like Loyrwell, the boom of RP in that area while it only lasted a month. Was exciting, and again to hark on an old point. Having more lore available for players to confidently create characters in the world, and more interesting locales would help.

If we can slip in OOC Combat Clubs with that much polish, then we can support Dev and wait for large scale areas with the same attention to detail.

[jintheblue]

I'll ask you forgive me for having my first post on the forums be here, but I've been a player for at least a year now, and honestly I'm fairly happy with the state of the game as a whole, so I'll keep my comments to 2,4, and 6, since I feel their nature relates them all quite closely.

The vast majority of the world has no strictly defined laws, and with how all over the place SL's world is in terms of time period, I don't think it's fair to think one is assumed. Obviously one can't murder, or steal, but what about duels to the death, or spell theft? Void magic, is pretty dangerous, and I've heard it's illegal, but how illegal? Do these things vary country to county? How do rights work for the Undead, and mechinations?

I bring this up because right now SL supports two types of antagonists, social antagonists that at best force players to confront shame, anxiety, and the like, to achieve their social goals, and world ending villains, where GMs and eventmins, and the occasional ambitious players create powers that are one and done, perhaps with a mini boss or two along the way. Sure you can try and play something in between, but imagine for a moment you want to play a thief? You either do it all off screen, in which case you aren't an antagonist, or you try to rob someone, a fight breaks out, guards get called, and you sit in Arjav for a few days. The next week some people are bitter, you robbed them, you're where you started and the guards are watching you a bit closer if they're around, which largely they aren't.

I should also say I don't blame the guard for not being around, since it's a viscous cycle. The imperial guard are an incredibly powerful faction with power that have powers beyond that of a regular player, or guild, so any criminal will always eventually loose, and others will have second thoughts about making a new criminal. With no new criminals, the guards will get bored, and people will be on there other characters.

What if Arjav only took prisoners from Celsvitch, and the other cities had other prisons of varying quality? We have a Dormeho militia that has been begging to be given legitimate authority to run that town and there is a team of GM's and eventmins that could handle running the other towns. Allow for prison breaks, and jurisdiction to matter so that people can flee one city, and have to worry about bounty hunters dragging them back. We can foster thieves guilds and smugglers to steal, or run protection rackets, and give them the same kinds of treatment as the Celsvitch guard gets. We have eight perfectly valid cities and Voilegrad, but everyone roleplays publicly in Celsvitch, or Dormeho, because all the spaces are equally valid, to role play in, and everyone is already there.

We don't need full charters, just some general rules, and beyond that they don't have to be fair. Are you a mechination? Maybe it's legal to sell you in Karatyn if you aren't already property. Maybe Celsvitch keeps true to denying Shaitans exist, and the guard don't let any Shaitans in, but a local gang can help you sneak in so long as you stay hidden. Let legitimate honor duels to the death happen in Chaturanga, but only there(and laws end) so social antags can "settle things like men" or lord it over others. Laws end could live up to it's lore, and be a place for those who have bounties in every other city state.

All of these things would require ooc consent, like death perms, or guild/eventmenin help to happen, but it's a lot of rp hooks for people to make a difference. Eventmins, gms, and guild leaders would also need to openly communicate in a big way, and take a lot of work, but I believe it can happen.

Also it would help if we had a people finder that wasn't lfg. Lfg is a huge beacon that will draw every desperate user to a location. If the portal screen listed the number of users in each city with a mages guild, and player houses had a toggle where they could display "we're open" and list the number of users inside, we'd see a lot more people in places that aren't the two squares, and badlands.

[Jupiter_Storm]

Fix Proposal - Forum 'MySpace' RP Profiles

The biggest problem for the game out of all that have been posted in this thread and the other to which it is a reply is the community's own interaction with itself. In a Roleplaying game the onus should not be on the developer and GMs alone to rapidly force-feed content in order to spark a week's roleplay or give people an excuse to dust off an old character for one last hoorah.

You can't force people to Roleplay with each other, and you can't "fix" a community. What you CAN fix is the accessibility issue, and it's relatively simple to do without any alterations to the game itself. It's something that is common practice for browser-based Roleplaying Communities and is immensely successful in connecting like-minded individuals who would otherwise never cross one another's path.

More on that in a moment. First, some showerthoughts:

1) The Imperial Guard & Antagonists - My unpopular opinion is that the Imperial Guard (and the First Squad) have no business in engaging with antagonists outside of managing Bounties and Quests pertaining to them... With the EXCEPTION of law infractions that take place within smelling distance of Cellsvich. You've created a Roleplaying game where the focus of said Roleplay is upon Adventurers who are very frequently treated as children, and treat one another as children (read: "get behind me, it's dangerous!!!"), when it comes to addressing world threats.

The purview of the Imperial Guard should remain exclusively, Cellsvich. Antagonists should be something that Adventurers handle, because their entire purpose is to create conflict and thus offer new RP opportunities to the majority player-base, who are NOT Imperial Guard.

2) Character Progression - Actually, I agree with Dev's thoughts on how this would work. It solves a very clear-cut issue with regards to how the entry-level requirements for RP are viewed. Everybody knows you can roleplay without being level 60 with a full build, so reinforcing that point is irrelevant when the practice still persists. There is objectively no disadvantage as far as Roleplaying is concerned in managing character growth with separate Level Caps with individual developmental requirements. The only people this would negatively affect are those seeking to race a new character build to 60 - as well as Newer Players, which in turn can be solved by having a channel in-game dedicated to character growth with tips for Newer Players and contact information.

This is already being done, as evidenced by the Hardcore community. For all the negative shade it gets, the Hardcore SL2 community was founded under the pretense of meaningful character development, with a system of clearly-defined rules for progression in place (such as Journal Entries, Mentoring Requirements and Event Attendance). The moderators for this community have been very active in managing this and have consistently kept it open to all players.

I'd encourage Dev to contact the creators of Hardcore SL2 to bounce ideas or potentially recruit people who'd be willing to oversee that kind of Character Progression mechanic, if you decide to go ahead with it.

3) OOC Corner's Map - ... I mean, look at the thing. It's incredible. This should be a secret underground fight club where you can obtain illicit substances and gamble at risk of discovery by the boys in red. It shouldn't be a place where people congregate to meme, AFK or build test. 

---

Now, the Proposal:

Will keep this brief and concise. I cannot link actual examples of this, because it would probably in some way violate the privacy of its users and I refuse to shill my own pages. However, a perfect example of what I'm going to outline - browse at your leisure:

https://www.roleplay.me/

The problem you're looking at in terms of community accessibility is that people find it too difficult to get in touch with other stories that they might enjoy, or otherwise encounter people they might click with who are not roleplaying within common areas. This issue proliferates when you consider timezones, work schedules, and inactivity periods. Nobody wants to stand around or run around for hours on end in the hope that they will encounter some random world RP. I mean, some do, I have done it, but it's a masochistic obsession.

Here's how this would work:

1. The modification would be made to the Member Lists and Profiles either on this forum or a separate site with a different engine capable of handling this format if it's not possible here.

2. Each community member can 'create' characters on their Profile - i.e. either separate links to sub-profiles for each character (in Blog format) or a summary list of their characters, with a picture and brief biography.

3. These member profiles are also assigned specific keywords (chosen from a checklist or drop-down menu) displayed as their OOC notes. Detailing their Roleplaying Interests (Themes, i.e. Horror / Adventure / Comedy / Slice of Life), their Writing Style (Casual / Para / Narrative), and their Preferred Locations. And anything else you can think of.

4. Other members can then Search the Member List for those people who share similar interests to them, and browse their profiles / characters to check out their descriptions and any Stories that they are currently part of. Then Direct Message those people to get in touch with them.

5. Optionally, you could also incorporate Laplace.net into this, with some characters perhaps having their own In-Character Contact Methods if that's how they prefer to meet new people. They could include their character's Laplace.net ID, their fighting style, their adventuring focus, their goals, and their likes/dislikes. The same as above, except the DM could then be IC instead.

I have actually made, and been using, a Laplace template for something else - so this image won't make sense out of context, but you understand better what I'm getting at. I'd be happy to make anybody their own character's Laplace entry for free using my template if they want.



Anyway. That's the proposal. For your consideration. I really think it would make Characters and Roleplay more accessible to everybody - particularly those who are actively looking but don't have a way to get in contact with others who are otherwise doing things outside of common areas, or log in at different times.

[Shujin]

First of all thanks for putting the effort in, with discussing with us and listening to our worries and complaints to properly work something out, to enhance everyones experience.

OOC Characters/Existing OOC

• I think OOC characters are fine, aslong as they lurk around areas like the "OOC" room. To some extent I would probably prefer if the Test server was basically permamently avaibale or manually hostable.This would make it easy and low effort to build test, even with very difficult to get item, like 10*. Its also in certain cases "Unoffical" ways to get normal players better ways to host mini events for their own Cliques by quick creating certain mobs. Its not the cure of all by all means, but it can make people not stand around "unacessable" in the OOC corner, cause their real characters would still be avaiable and could be pinged for attention.(Which I am certainly guilty of, as I haven't even logged into the games for months outside of sometimes checking out updates and RP mostly in discord if at all.)

Applications for Events, Requests, Lore, Etc.

Clarity and transperency is certainly an issue I struggle with and is disheartening in many cases. I have been waiting for 4+ years on clarifications on one single event. An Event that is very essential to my chracter and with how time flies in game, this resulted in her basically twiddleing her thumbs for soon 30 IC years. While time is a bit objective within the game world, I feel that is also a big disconnect when one person is RPing the time accurately to ingame time and some others cause it makes realisitcally more sense to not have a stare down for 3 days straight during an RP fight thats probably taking les than 5 minutes. It creates awkward situations where someones child is suddenly of legal age while you basically only made it progress a few days since you were "scene locked" in an event that took forever.
While people often joke it off one way or another and try tow ork around it, its certainly immersion breaking, even more so when you RP a character who is putting a lot of value into "DOING" what they say as soon as possible just to wait 30 years with not a inch of progress.
I do not think I need to eleborate on how this is frustrating and not making you feel as you can reach literally anything.

Community: Cliques

A nessecary evil that is unfortuantely not good for "Newbies". I think it can't really be helped all that much, except that a trent that I used to notice back then, was that there were only certain people that basicaly spotlight hogged every single event at all times, simply by being a bigger clique/stronger mechanically tot he point that event actively got catered around them.

This isn't a you problem, and more a Community problem. But being aware that eventmins certainly should help and pick up the smaller people and allow them shine in their own way is definetly something people should keep in mind. Its disheartening when the difficulty of events and the only solutions to them is catered to for exampled a PVP squad.

Sometimes our local Heros simply need to be "Cock blocked" so to say. They can't get every "trophy" in the game.

World Rigidity & Lack of Roles

I pack them together as this is a bit of the same deal in this. And I certainly do not attempt to attack you here, but simply retell my personal experiences with that, and why I believe why this statement of yours is...A bit of a punch in the face. While also trying to get one clear statement of how your current mindset on those things is, as times certainly change.

I have to start with this from almost 5 years in the past. Back then, le me was a very active (and only active together with my guild) member of the Laws End. I figured that this sand box was...A bit too much sand and too little anything else so I wanted to make it more interesting while keeping its theme of being a Lawless and dangerous place.
Over the time I came up with the idea to "Develope" the place to be more meaningful in the "Underworld", I am sure you remember me sending you serval drafts ideas and fishing for the greenlight regarding a blackmarket with very exclusive items/arena etc.
Which you eventually did! Great, that was awesome! You put on the simple conditions that I have to do a couple events regarding that raging from Caravan raids towards getting yourself known with other big underworld fishes. Colaborated with a couple of players there and did it. Another condition you set to me was that I provide the map for it, which I eventually send you and early alpha of (basically just a redesign of the Laws End pub, with a secret entry down to a room which was very barebone with a fer carpets/tents supposedly for the shops, made by skulls cause I can't map for the life of me).
So then I didn't get an answer from you, I also was a bit shy because I didn't really want to bother you so there is a bit of blame from me to take for not pushing it. So I dropped it for a while participated in other relatively meaningful events for my characters and got distracted but eventually I wrote you again with a plot progression of this, and here is where I feel like this is a little bit of a smack in the face as you say we do not really make any efforts in fleshing the stories out at all and they basically boild down to just wanting to bomb X/Y (I am aware this was hardly a personal thing, but since up to this date nothing any direction regarding this plot has ever happend I feel like its a good time to point out as it doesn't give the impression that you can actually become what you claim we can.)

I post a very short version here, cause that plot was gigantic, written over serval pages connected with alot of research and reading of already established lore:

• My charatcer played part in an event with supposedly high stakes/high rewards run by Chaos.
  
• During this event, my character lost their dominant arm permanently (also no repalcement possible) and was crippled from neck down for 2 IC years. In exchange for that since she basically won the game with the highest possble reward, she asked how to find the Kraken god Grave and how to get there and perfom the ritual to godhood step by step. (This is something I wait since 3 years now on any sort of feed back and progression towards the storyline..As this is obviously huge so I didn't want to push for it either.)
  
• Since just getting OP for no reason what so ever isn't really satisfying I worked out a huge plot that connected to my previous established control of caravan raids, this plot included the involvement of basically every Clan that has been established by you in the Offical Oniga forum. It went from working with the Kusaragi (I think it was them I honestly haven't looked it up in a while anyway they hate the current tennnou and are masters of information gathering/manipulation and seek a new strong leader). Then the already established caravan raids as a usage of artifically creating even more provety in Oniga to keep the people on the fence, using fake propaganda to fan the unrest more and step by step lead it up to a Civil war against the current Tennou, which then would be hijacked by my character to support the Rebellion and work towards winnign the war and becoming tennou themselves.
  
• Once in a position of more global power, and since all of this has been by design to begin with they could artifically increase the wealth of people again, by simply not withholding the resorces they have gathered over time and with the obviously decreaed number of living people (they just came from a war afterall, so casulties are kinda  a given) she would creat a feeling of "stuff getting better".
  
• In reality while she also wanted to work something out with the Emporer of Sigrogana which I wanted more specific input from you from as I only have some rough ideas and theories what the true resaon for Sigrogana/Oniga war and the gold curse is, she would use her new position of power to furhter build up Laws End and enhance the lives of those there cause in the end of the day, that place is her home and she cares deeply for it and their people and whats to better their life.
  
• She wanted to work out something to truly lift the Gold Curse and bring true change and prosperty to both Oniga AND Laws End.
  
  I am sure I had more worked out, something that also invovled  Sawrocks Vampire Clan at that time cause they had very specific beef with Oniga and would have been a colaboration with dear Sawrock. This whole thing was stomped down with one line from you.
  "I have plans for the Tennou." While I respect that, 3 years later nothing has happend around Oniga nor anything regarding my plot and I am frozen in time forced to do nothing.
  
  Again this is by no means an attack. But I feel this certainly a lot deeper than just "I wanna blow up X" with more than just a one demensional "Villain" that while the methods are certainly crazy, means greater good. (It never mattered to me if this was truly succesful, but this eventline had a lot of potential in many ways for people to take active part in it and change the world in one way or another). So while definetly not the best plot ever to live, and even if Tennou was a big no-no, many parts of this plot could have been adjusted slightly one way or another and mayhaps shifted to an "Do my own thing, but kinda like this just differently?"...
  So yes that one liner after I went through a lot of Events, some very depressing ones for my character and literally crippling ones, and the lose of serval of her close friends during these events wasn't really encouraging to try anything at all as it just seemed undesired. Which is why I want a clearer statement here and if anything of this is remotely possible, even if in alternative forms. (If not Tennou I am certain I could probably pull a similiar plan without the Civil war part for example)
  
  I do write Chaos from time to time about and progress about this, because my last info was he is working something out with you. Chaos as much as I love him as an Admin though isn't really...Responsive most of the time and tends to "forget" and I tend to be "I do not wanna bother them too much". Which is a bad combination of personalties when you are trying to make something work. And this has been for over 3 years now. If a change to that would come, even if its just a clear "Nah, not posisble at all" or a "You can probably go up to that point and no further" is indefinetly better than the uncertainy one expereince in the many years of literal silence and the simple "We are working something out" statement.
  

I'd highly appriciate if you read this and gave a clear answer, I am certain this also helps other peoples to get an idea of what could be possible, as this certainly is an extreme case of trying to influence the world.

Conflict, Rules of Engagement

• I gave my personal thought about that in the other forum.

Personal Thoughts About Other Things

This is an unpopular opinion, which I can also understand the people that are iffy about it. But personally? Some of the best, most magical and interesting moments I had Pre-GR. Even though the gameplay was so much more flawed and less polished. It was still the better RP in my opinion.

This is a bit of a rant, and trip down my memory lane and "Best of" SL2 from what I experienced and why it felt to me more special than many of the engagements I feel in the more modern SL2, while in a weaker form they still exist...Its...Well not as meaningful anymore in most cases. you do not need to read it, but I think the "must have 60" mindset is party due to the lack of what I remember as being great.

• I play SL2 ever since it came out, with my off and on times when I felt burnt out from it. I know that I was one of the first ten to reach 60 back then (probably even first 5 but there is no real way of checking that and unsignificant to the matter). While a bit trivial I remember a innocent scene in the pub where we oh so happend to be together with some of the currently highest level people all on one table, and people starting to joke that we could literally solo the rest of the server, while of course just a jest it was kinda a cool feeling, cause leveling back then? Was a chore and a half.
  
  
• Another dear memory I have was a time where I have been working on the character (remaking afew times cause we didn't have LE system back then and I wanted to more optimize what I was doing as I got a better Idea of what charatcer I want to play. Full on Ice/sword fighter. Naturally since the stats back then were all RNG, and I remade a couple of times to get more useful stats for me, I was fairly strong. But so where certain other. Others not so much and...They knew it. So I remember the episode of a Knight, that I shall not call his trendy name, and some IC drama about some supposed cheating and people (literally) picking up pitchforks and torches to chase this man down, who has been known at that point of time to be...Terribly strong spearman, and he was! So people actually had to gather a mob! They even asked me ICly to assist them cause I was fairly strong at the time as well.
  Get this! Someone was literally so strong and feared, that people who were upset with him had to gather a literal lynchmob to confront him! that. Is badass. While the person in question certainly felt more than one headache about this OOCly, from an RP perspective? This is a huge accomplishment. that this situation was absolutely ridiclious made it one of my most fondly remembered memories, something current SL2 will never have in this form again (cause the person in question wasn't really impressed by the lynchmob, more than he was annoyed). this also lead to my first real meaningful character interaction with said person, as my character choose to not help the lynchmob and they had a little heart to heart instead (and she proceeded to duel him, and if memory serves right, she won too even if barely. Unimportant to the story!). Something I like to note is...People weren't caring so much about reaching level 60. Many were fine and comfortable around level 45-50. Because it was very hard to level at that point, and RP actually did you better than running the dungeons (kinda, of course you could have done both and level faster, but meh). I feel that the random RNG and feeling happy with your rolls to that point played into it as well, making you feel more confident.
  
  
• Next! Was another very fond memory that I have up to this very date, and I hold very dear. It was during some of my off time and just returning to the game, I was a bit holdign back, so many new faces (which wasn't because people remade, but because we just had a influx of new people. So people I had connection with were still around ICly) and one of them being Fern. He had been around a bit at that point, so he kinda figured I was new. We interacted a bit, RPed and fought in the Arena. He absolutely destroyed me, because my build was outdated and it was the time where LE had been around already, so I had a unlucky "run" at that point as well.
  What was funny to me was, that this NOOB had the guts to tell ME icly that my charatcer was weak. This was hilarious to me on many levels, cause from established IC she knew she was better. So it ICly hurt her pride, gave me a bit of incentive OOCyl to regrind and we started a beautiful rivalry between us, training, competing each other and rising each other to higher heights with each run. Spo eventually joined that "rivalry" and another terrifyingly strong swordman.
  This rivalry was ICly beautiful for many reasons. It had conflict. It had the feeling of accomplishment when you reworked this tedious grind and got better rolls AND equipment (Back then 10* weren't the shit (with the exception of unarmored turtleshell, which I feel by todays standarads actually has a right to exist again with how squishy dodgers are.)...the Shit was randomly generated items with very specific materials and enchantments on them...For me it was one sword that suddenly made me like 25% stronger...Rustic Arctic Yukijin! (with positive quality rolls) ...By todays standard literally a trash item, but back then? *chefkiss*... Also finding that item took me and serval people who helped over a year to get. Cause you couldn't just handwave a material kit or tools to even out these flaws in the weapon, what you got is what you got.
  All of this? was a long journey. A lot of lost sanity in the alot more painful grinds than people are used to today, combined with frustration when you missed a single roll in your 60 levels of randomly generated stats and absolutely glee when you unexpectingly next to all of your main stats somehow happend to also get Vit/def so you are not only dodgy but relatively tanky. And people that were newer recognized that as well, titles lile "Local Behemoths of Badlands Arena" were tossed around, and some of those people there genuinely able to 1 v 2 others of equal level. Simply by putting more effort into it. ICly at this point you were recognized as something and you had a REAL journey of growth over just "grind to 60 and done". While the system back then certainly had flaws and I do not want to go back to RNG stats, It did progression still a lot better than todays SL2.
  While some of those titles are still tossed around todays...Its not because you put alot of work in it, but because you happen to play the current meta or simply hardcounter someone. I feel its far less deserved and making you feel accompliehd then back then, and it fades more and more away with each update that heavily shifts the balance around. 
  
• The next memory, I vividly remember and made a huge impact on serval people even to this date was around the time where bloeden and his gang existed. My character had been a resident of Laws End, long before they appeared. I remember great interactions between bloeden attempting to assert dominance over my character and "taking over" Laws End, which either hilariously failed or because Sawrock is a great RPer when the muse strikes him...In just memorable interactions that are entirely out of the left field. Long story short, he wanted my character to join him, she didn't want to because she believed Laws End didn't need a leader and she is against it, but he can do whatever he wants. While he didn't like it, and they kept clashing in hilarious interactions, he and his group became known as "Leaders" of Laws End, because they were the ones actively stirring up shit and my Character didn't care as that title held no meaning to her.
  Eventually the sad day appeared where Bloeden after the more or less failed execution of the emporer (or rather his revival) was captured and soon brought to the axe, for the ONLY real interaction we EVER had between us and you(Dev) in RP. One that was actually player driven and not around the convienant new map of Cellsvich for example.
  So with him gone and his gangs remains scattering, people assumed Laws End was up for takes. Cause the assumed Leader was dead. My character was still not thinking that that place needed a leader as it was a place of freedom for her...So she clashed with serval groups that wanted to "take over", and back then, I could do that alone because I was stronger than the average person. I could effectivle hold the fort to to speak.
  The most memorable group that tried to bring "laws" and protection to Laws End, was a guild named "Black Guards", while my character didn't approve of that, they also saw benefits in having them around and hijacked their guild more or less to supervise them. Time passed and eventually they had a little fall out, based on my chgaracter disliking that they recruit children/child like character to a place that is as dangerous as Laws End....fast forward-> She humiliated the Guild leader, in an attempt to make sure she would never do anything like that again and the Guild retaliated in an attempt to bring my character down in a 4 versus 1.
  While that fight was a mess and a half from an OOC perspective as there was a lot of grief and OOC communication involved that even made that gank possible, I accepted it and played it out. An epic battle unfolfded, not all of them were maxed, and I was clearly better prepared for the fight as I had experience with Laws End stuff and had potions and stuff..I won. Pretty Sure Fern also got invovled had his on fight with another person outside of that but...Now there I was, having basically 4 people at my mercy, and frankly from an IC standpoint I should have probably killed them. I hate doing that OOCly though, and this is my favorite memory of why you do not just kill...So what I did was give those people a sort of ultimatum. One of the 4 people, that she icly saw potential is...She recruited. She told the rest to disband the blackguards and leave Laws End.
  So why do I like this so much? Because this significantly effected serval characters. My Character, up to this date has the person she recruited that day as her loyal servant. The leader of that FC was traumatized ICly and had certianly alto to chew through ICly and while sad, it certainly added to their character growth (I certainly hope they felt similar, but from later conversations it seemed that way.) a thrid of those characters, turned into a hateful psycopath ICly. Who many years later encoutered them and had obvious tension because of it (ironically they met in Jail, which was probably the only good time I had in Jail). This was great on many many levels for many storylines. Not only was it an accomplishment for me, that being prepared/stronger/knowing what I do that neted me a situations where I could have just as well lost my character as a win, but I felt from an RP perspective this was a good developement most people could be "happy" with, seen longterm.
  

I am sharing those memories because, they kind of point out that people do not all need to be "Equal" and "Fair". If power is handled responsible it can be very rewardning, also for the people that do not have it. Another point is that SL2 in its current state is TOO convieniant in many ways, that it takes away this feeling of growth of accomlishment because the ceiling, the absolute top, is reached fairly easy so people think they might as well just go there and "Max out"....I do not think SL2 should be so easy to "Max Out", if at all.
I had REALLY big hopes when the rework of the Crafting system was announced, but my concerns with it are pretty simple...Its once again just...Kinda halfhearted without any real accomlishment tied to mastering a craft. No real work (even if harder now) and once you are done and have it maxed? You might as well forget about it. Jobs are still very much a joke...Same as the progression system. Most items get trivalized by the fact that material kits/quality tools exist, so have a "masterwork" smith make something good, is worthless...I much rather have it so, that you could level up higher (further enhance the chance for quality rolls/maybe even better ones if you truly want to keep tools) and that this grind doesn't nessecailry "max out". You just eventually take very long to see any progress, but longterm? having a level 12 smith, over 10 is a little accomlishment on itself, even though they probably don't get much benefit out of it. Though I guess you could justify applying for a custom made weapon then, that you smith yourself. RPing as a blacksmith that can make "one of a kind" weapons? That would be pretty cool and feel rewarding.

By today standards...nothing makes me less interested in a character than being "done" with them. Which in terms of progression I acheive in less than a day. Then there will be never any form of progress. neither meaningfully ICly storywise nor strength growth for those battle freaks..Or crafts for those support chars. (Globally speaking, outside of slice of life and in character events that are otherwise meaningless)

A bit of wisdom I feel many forget, when they get on the fence when I try to suggest to take away the "training wheels" of SL2 and its handholding.... One can only fully appriciate what they have, if they also suffered for it. The amount to happiness one can feel, is expotentional to the amount of challange and effort put into it...Also why games like Dark souls feel extremely rewarding.

TL;DR:
I feel more insignificant in this game, than I feel in real life...Thats an accomplishment on itself...But not a welcome one in a game where I am supposedly part of the "1%".