[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!