[Blissey]

So far, Sigrogana Legend 2 is currently extremely unfriendly to how a roleplaying game that involves creative writing elements should be. The game lacks any actual character impression, immersion, and influence – and unfortunately, this is turning roleplay in SL2 incredibly stale, unsightly, frivolous, and ridiculous all around, with no ample room for any serious roleplay without being entirely ridiculed and removed from the “meta”.

What we have (significantly so and by memory recall):

• A diversely aesthetic world with wondrous lore that is dutifully updated and established by Dev.
  Cities and states, countries galore, with leaders of these cities, states, and countries, as well as organizations within them that can’t be impacted by any actual character influence.
  
• An amazing, tactical combat system that, perhaps, could use a bit of tweaking and balance.
  
• Mini-games in which players and characters alike can involve themselves in for various in-character or OOC reasons, such as gambling.
  
• Timed events in which players can band together to defeat whatever menace is striking.
  
• A lovely housing system which could use more love.
  
• A singular plot line which is entirely OOC due to the confluence of players doing the exact same thing, and thus unable to fully immerse themselves into it because of how rigid the actions are – therefore everyone’s doing the exact same thing and there really isn’t any real wiggle room to have a character boast any feats they may have performed.
• Far too many weapons and battle items to count.
  
• Dungeon crawling.
  
• A donations/rewards system that is, luckily, not directly influencing player combat, or making the game P2W (play-to-win).
  
• A lot of classes, and therefore, some battle diversity.
  
• A farming system.
  
• And the general community as a whole.

So what’s the problem?

Player characters can’t affect the world. Player characters can’t become leading forces when it comes to events that could become lore-changing, and in some cases, lore-breaking. I and many other players currently think that SL2 is far too stagnant and too static to be considered a legitimately fun and immersive roleplaying game – right now it just feels like a dungeon crawling MMORPG, and the roleplay that does go on (although not always so) is very frivolous and lackluster.

So what can be done about it?

• Allow player characters to assume positions of power – to actually play characters already established by lore, or completely new ones engendered by players themselves. If a player, for some reason, needs to abandon a character with significant pull in the plot or in the world as a whole, I suggest making sure that the characters always have logs of things they say and do (likely kept in a file in the game, of course), which can then be reviewed by the new player assuming the character and going from events that have transpired.
  
• Allow players, through admin supervision and event forum applications, to create events that could significantly affect the world or portions of the world – wars, infrastructure changes, reconstruction, advancements, technological innovations, companies – all those great things.
  Allow typical characters created by players to go “from the bottom to the top”. Change can be very dramatic and radical – and if a character garners enough of a following, even a political powerhouse could go down and a new leader could reign supreme.
  
• Allow players to map for the game – this has been discussed briefly already, and perhaps setting aside the tools to do this (much like Mitadake High) to incorporate new map features could be established. Through doing this, new areas can be created, and change can be seen in current I.C. locations and venues.
  
• Recruit new GMs -- perhaps with applications asked to be filled out, an intake taken, or something -- something to assure that the person chosen is trustworthy in handling the job.
  o Likewise, give GMs the ability to cast events once more, with far more stringent and rigorous rules and guidelines set to avoid any abuse they may dole out with whatever new-found, expansive editing powers they may be given. Keep a log of this – a log of each and every editing action a GM gives, I.P. logged, et cetera, to pin-point any potential abuse – if any at all.
  
• As for houses – right now, they’re great, but unfortunately, the customization is still a bit limited. We can’t customize the exterior of houses, and likewise, the interior furnishings that we can create are magical, but not enough. It’d be great if players could have access to actual map icons to further increase the quality of their houses – for those tiles and those objects used for mapping the world are fantastic.

Thank you for reading this. Please avoid any and all comments unless they’re constructive or idea proposals for Dev to review and, potentially, consider. Any and all flaming in this thread – as well as derailment, which is of course inevitable – will be rewarded with a request for a lock.

[Rockabye]

Constructive idea: The battle system still encourages metagame, allowing people to see things they should not be able to see. Change it. The class system still lets everyone be everything. I know people hate to let go of this ("We need it for science, we swear!&quot, but it does more harm than good to roleplay. Change it. The skill acquisition system has a passable concept, but equipping them for battle makes no sense. Change it. There are no officially recognized factions to oppose the guards, and this is not only a missed opportunity, but it makes the poor saps bored. I recommend adding at least one of these. But my biggest beef is with the overworld. Still. Biggest immersion breaker next to the battle system, and it would be nice if entering it were at least optional when leaving towns, next to a nice, sensible 'to scale' world. And while I don't necessarily believe that allowing people to play the current NPCs is the best option... Yes, roles. That affect things.

I've been absent for long enough that some of these arguments may no longer be valid, but my attachments to the community and my character data (the character creation system still being the best on byond, credit where credit is due) are the only reason I kept playing. These kinds of threads have been created too many times now. It's a shame they've gone ignored for years, because people have been nothing if not supportive of the game's success. Even if that support comes in the form of pleas for change.

[NaitoPsych]

Now, I'm not going to say these things are bad. But some of these things would impact the game and it's community in a pretty big way. Let me explain:

Allow player characters to assume positions of power – to actually play characters already established by lore, or completely new ones engendered by players themselves. If a player, for some reason, needs to abandon a character with significant pull in the plot or in the world as a whole, I suggest making sure that the characters always have logs of things they say and do (likely kept in a file in the game, of course), which can then be reviewed by the new player assuming the character and going from events that have transpired.

This one is the most dangerous. Why? People. Specifically people who constantly talk about roles and things. This is giving too much freedom to the players and let's not forget some people in this community are rather egotistical as it is already. The community is primarily divided into cliques as it is right now. This would not help RP as it would simply impliment something such as a class warfare and other things. You may -think- you want to RP such things but you do not. Because those who end up getting outdone and ousted out of their roles will simply complain OOCly what not and claim corruption and other silly propaganda. Really, we have things like this already. Such as the silly rumor that Slydria is brainwashed by Soapy, whom alot of people hate for no real reason. This would only get worse.

Not to mention, from Dev's point of view, if I made a character and a lore I wouldn't want people to just come in and erase it.

Allow players, through admin supervision and event forum applications, to create events that could significantly affect the world or portions of the world – wars, infrastructure changes, reconstruction, advancements, technological innovations, companies – all those great things.
Allow typical characters created by players to go “from the bottom to the top”. Change can be very dramatic and radical – and if a character garners enough of a following, even a political powerhouse could go down and a new leader could reign supreme.

This one is again another one that's good on paper. But we all know no one would really enjoy this. Because all that's going to happen is whomever gets to the top will just do things out of their own interests and people who don't like it (OOCly more than likely) will grow angry form a rebellion and then charge. This is a problem because of the rule of needing player permission to kill characters. Not everyone wants their characters to die in any case. And them being forced to have theirs killed off will cause them to complain about it OOCly to the admins who will then have to deliberate on a conclusion. If you think I'm lying I'd like to point out this kind of thing has happened a few times in SL2 already. And with everyone RP'ing trying to be something important (because who wouldn't) This. Would. Be. Widespread.

Not to mention that like a certain other RP game there could be a new brand of metagame introduced. Where someone without power ICly does 'something oocly' to/for someone in power to obtain a position/item they otherwise wouldn't have gotten. And don't even get me staaaarted about the favoritism.

TL;DR: SL2 isn't a game for immersive RP. In my opinion, it's just a lighthearted RP game for people to RP, have fun,
kill shit and maybe trade items. Not to overcomplicate the world Dev wrote just because some people want to feel more important than they actually are. If you want to be able to influence things go to Eternia, where all of these things are implimented already and let the people who have the ability to RP within' the world as it currently is.

P.S. There's really nothing stopping events anyway. Sawrock's mutant invasion and Fern's Mechanation attacks happened.

I'm done and not gonna reply because I don't argue over the forums being I'm RP'ing right now. Seeyas.

[Soapy]

Damn, who knew Psych could type?



I'm in total agreement with him.

[Neus]

Rockabye » Sat Sep 19, 2015 3:17 am[/url]"]But my biggest beef is with the overworld. Still. Biggest immersion breaker next to the battle system, and it would be nice if entering it were at least optional when leaving towns, next to a nice, sensible 'to scale' world.

It's an entertaining idea, and one I've thought about several times (and maybe it will happen someday), but it's not exactly a simple thing to do. Plus a lot of things rely on the overworld system, such as the random dungeons. While random dungeons could still generate 'fine' on a Skyrim-sized overworld, it's a lot harder to find them on a huge map than a more tightly packed one, which can be frustrating given how wildly different they can be.

Secondly, due to the way BYOND's z level system works, having large exterior maps causes their size to be applied to each z level. Since SL2 generates new z levels for houses, dungeon/house floors, and battles, a large enough map can cause an exponential increase in the number of turfs used. (You could get away with this by cleverly making the exterior maps smaller and giving them transitions, and turfs aren't as restricted as of recent BYOND versions, and they're pretty memory efficient.) But these are all things you need to consider.

Finally, I don't think there's a point to having a 'to scale' overworld if the majority of it is going to be big and empty. Which means I would have to make it full of interesting terrain, mini-areas, quests, and so on. Not a problem, but realize how complicated and time consuming planning and implementing those things are.

I've been absent for long enough that some of these arguments may no longer be valid, but my attachments to the community and my character data (the character creation system still being the best on byond, credit where credit is due) are the only reason I kept playing. These kinds of threads have been created too many times now. It's a shame they've gone ignored for years, because people have been nothing if not supportive of the game's success. Even if that support comes in the form of pleas for change.

They haven't been created that many times, to be honest, nor were they ever ignored. A lot of good has come from them and I have implemented some requested features every time it comes up. Saying they've been ignored just because I don't satisfy everyone on everything (because the notion is ridiculous) honestly bogs down my motivation.

[Miller]

I was going to make a long and horrible post, until I saw Psych already hit every single one of points on the mark.

Although I'd still appreciate some sort of 'dynamic' change to the world.

(even if I don't play really anymore)

[Neus]

Player characters can’t affect the world. Player characters can’t become leading forces when it comes to events that could become lore-changing, and in some cases, lore-breaking. I and many other players currently think that SL2 is far too stagnant and too static to be considered a legitimately fun and immersive roleplaying game – right now it just feels like a dungeon crawling MMORPG, and the roleplay that does go on (although not always so) is very frivolous and lackluster.

A very vague and subjective desire. What does it mean to 'affect' the world? You can carve out an identity and help create a facet of the world just fine, and for everyone else, that means you affect it. Furthermore, I'm not convinced that people try very hard to do so, considering the lack of communication on the subject that's been passed to me. Should all characters be able to 'affect' the world equally? Even the ones we dislike or are poorly roleplayed? Probably not, right.

Why can't players become leading forces for 'lore-changing' or 'lore-breaking' (this doesn't sound like a great idea) events? You never really gave reasons why. Have you ever tried or discussed this with a GM? Tried to get some sort of roleplay response from my side through them on the matter? Because the few times people have, and I've seen proper effort put into it, I've typically said yes to such events. Granted, perhaps with different results than what was expected in the end.

Allow player characters to assume positions of power – to actually play characters already established by lore, or completely new ones engendered by players themselves. If a player, for some reason, needs to abandon a character with significant pull in the plot or in the world as a whole, I suggest making sure that the characters always have logs of things they say and do (likely kept in a file in the game, of course), which can then be reviewed by the new player assuming the character and going from events that have transpired.

Going to quote myself above and say no one's really tried or asked. The idea of playing characters 'already established by lore' isn't likely and I don't know why it would ever be; it sounds like a free pass to a position of power and doesn't make sense. You also bring up the very significant issue of 'what if this player decides, suddenly, they want to do something else' and everyone else involved getting screwed over because of it, but your solution doesn't really solve much. Is your idea that a new player is going to play that character instead? I assume most of the time the actual player of that character is going to take issue with that. Even if they were, very few people are going to dedicate the time of reading through huge logs over multiple weeks to try and be consistent.

Allow players, through admin supervision and event forum applications, to create events that could significantly affect the world or portions of the world – wars, infrastructure changes, reconstruction, advancements, technological innovations, companies – all those great things.

Players can and have done events in this manner. I'm not going to flub established lore and NPC reasoning just so they can start a war of dubious RP import (which will just lead to a bunch of people complaining about class balance even more or powergamers on one side; how do you have a war while the permission-only-death rule is in effect? Does it become a war of attrition until one side decides they want to do something else?) Infrastructure changes are very vague; what infrastructure, what changes? Reconstruction of what? Advancements of what? What kind of technological innovations? Why can't you already start a company?

Allow typical characters created by players to go “from the bottom to the top”. Change can be very dramatic and radical – and if a character garners enough of a following, even a political powerhouse could go down and a new leader could reign supreme.

Again, very vague desire. First of all, a lot of 'political powerhouses' aren't very well established in the world, which is part of the reason I'm doing write-ups of noble houses in different parts of the world. Secondly, 'political powerhouses' are often powerhouses for a reason, and they don't always play nice. They'll kidnap your loved ones, they'll kill your men in the street, they'll take you to their hideout and execute you. Risks that some players aren't willing to take on or will try to weasel their way out of, or be the first to complain about GMs/me being too controlling, putting us in awkward situations when really your plan might not have been very well thought out. Again, this is just speculation and former experience moderating RP, because no one's actually come to the team with a desire to do this.

Allow players to map for the game – this has been discussed briefly already, and perhaps setting aside the tools to do this (much like Mitadake High) to incorporate new map features could be established. Through doing this, new areas can be created, and change can be seen in current I.C. locations and venues.

I'd still like to do this, at least for new areas. Existing areas have complications because they have NPCs and such in them and honestly I don't need someone spending a lot of effort editing an existing map for a change that I don't want or agree with. New areas could be good though, so I'll spend some time soon trying to get it working in a way that I'll be able to use in the main game.

Recruit new GMs -- perhaps with applications asked to be filled out, an intake taken, or something -- something to assure that the person chosen is trustworthy in handling the job.
o Likewise, give GMs the ability to cast events once more, with far more stringent and rigorous rules and guidelines set to avoid any abuse they may dole out with whatever new-found, expansive editing powers they may be given. Keep a log of this – a log of each and every editing action a GM gives, I.P. logged, et cetera, to pin-point any potential abuse – if any at all.

There are very few candidates who are active players, and the last one we recruited didn't stick around for long, but we always keep an eye out for potential recruits. As for events, there's nothing stopping GMs from running events currently except lack of tools. I know we discussed this the last time it came up, but it's something I plan to actually dedicate time to after I finish the 10* updates, since I've had a desire to use them myself.

As for houses – right now, they’re great, but unfortunately, the customization is still a bit limited. We can’t customize the exterior of houses, and likewise, the interior furnishings that we can create are magical, but not enough. It’d be great if players could have access to actual map icons to further increase the quality of their houses – for those tiles and those objects used for mapping the world are fantastic.

Exterior of houses is a bit complicated, but maybe if you could put exactly what you have in mind for exterior customization in a suggestions thread, along with tiles you want to use in houses, I can sticky it and look into doing another housing update sometime after the 10* one, since we haven't had one in a while.

---

Basically my summary is;

1) A lot of the ideas presented in the thread are really vague and hard to approach discussion for that reason.
2) A lot of the ideas presented in the thread, even vaguely, could happen, but no one has made their efforts aware to the GMs.

I suggest putting something more concrete into words, because I would really like to discuss this topic and see if anything feasible could be done.

[Rockabye]

I can't quote well on a smartphone, so bear with me.

I didn't mean to bog down your motivation Dev, I'm sorry for that. You're still one of the best byond developers. I'm probably partially upset because when I made a thread for an RP friendly combat system, you applied its context to monster battles whereas my concern was with player battles. A topic that ties in well with the frustration people experience in roleplay. To be honest, my concern is less with the absence of roleplay support, and more with the systems that are obstructing it (largely seeing what should be unseeable).

As for the z levels, I wasn't aware of that. Transition environments would actually be fine, and dungeons could remain on the overworld. The new space could be used for other things/places/houses/activities. I am trying to be understanding though, I admit to not being too familiar with byond restrictions.

[Clockworkers Doll]

I don't mean to go off topic on a debate (or something) with Dev because of my late reply, but... I'm all for the map editor idea honestly! I was planning to just make a thread with some RPGMaker maps that were just extra towns (I mean, when are gonna see what those two towns near Cellsvich are? The ruins of Mallus when?). Other than that, I can't say much without just repeating Psych or Dev. But, I actually have another suggestion that I didn't see listed that adds a bit more of the RP-side of things:

What about aesthetic season changes to like, the towns/arena that mimic the seasons? I mean, I don't see why it couldn't snow in Cellsvich during Sigrogana's winter seasons. Or less rain during Summer. Orange trees during Fall? I don't know how complicated that would be to implement, however.

[Breakaway~totheweird]

Snot and other gross, sick person stuff is obscuring my view, so forgive my general lack of input:

I agree with everything Blissey mentioned here. These ideas are vague, and not entirely specific, but I'm sure other people will take the time to appropriately flesh out any ideas here.

I also agree with Psych, except for one thing. Eternia is nice for immersive, deep RP, yet somehow, somehow, the community here seems to be leagues better than there. That's why I continue to come back here, even after taking breaks.

Lastly, I indefinitely agree with everything Clockworkers Doll has mentioned in their post. Aesthetics would be amazing. Despite the awful lag, I personally enjoyed the 'cloud' portion of SL2's weather system.

A suggestion to toss in, based off of seasonal changes: Why not have similar lighting changes occur within houses themselves? You know, when it's night time outside, it's night time inside. Or, have weather effects show on external tilesets? And if that's too hard to determine what is considered 'outside' in a player's home, provide the necessary tools for someone to decide on their own.

In the end, you have some support to further improve SL2. I'd also be willing to help chip in when it comes map making, spriting, and otherwise to flesh out the world.