Some Observations from an Old Man Yelling at a Cloud

[Cataclysm of Iron]

A) Looking to do the Writ themselves and looking to group up with people that are.
B) Not doing the writ, but probably grinding exp or looting treasures, but also do not want to force people trying to do the writ to wait for them, or harm their exp gain by being around.
C) They are high level characters and are going to leave the area to not monopolize the area from characters that are normal for the area, as per they should per server "Be nice" rules.

All three of these are metagaming, imo. C) probably comes under the "good kind" as you mentioned, for the "Be Nice" rule, but B) is just adding complicated social contracts to the game for people who might just want to explore or mine iron or whatever, and A) is an OOC mechanic very awkwardly wearing an IC trenchcoat.

The sentiment of the post you're quoting here strikes a chord with me - questing for tangible materials or items is one thing, but otherwise... the spirit of adventure and questing does feel cheapened by the rigidity of the writ system.

[Xerah]

A) Looking to do the Writ themselves and looking to group up with people that are.
B) Not doing the writ, but probably grinding exp or looting treasures, but also do not want to force people trying to do the writ to wait for them, or harm their exp gain by being around.
C) They are high level characters and are going to leave the area to not monopolize the area from characters that are normal for the area, as per they should per server "Be nice" rules.

All three of these are metagaming, imo. C) probably comes under the "good kind" as you mentioned, for the "Be Nice" rule, but B) is just adding complicated social contracts to the game for people who might just want to explore or mine iron or whatever, and A) is an OOC mechanic very awkwardly wearing an IC trenchcoat.

The sentiment of the post you're quoting here strikes a chord with me - questing for tangible materials or items is one thing, but otherwise... the spirit of adventure and questing does feel cheapened by the rigidity of the writ system.

Wirts are an IC thing. These are not meta gaming.

[God_In_Action]

Possibly nitpicky but...

Secondly, as you also just said, leveling speed is fast. The in between period of slow character progression where leveling is fluidly expressed in RP is a ship that sailed when you first introduced writs

Whilst I think there's truth in this, respectfully I found that for me, leveling speed went off the rails when the adventure pool xp increased to 120 per tick. Before that the speed of your leveling was very much balenced by how many writs you did. Now even if you go out of your way to do relitivly few, you find yourself leveling super fast in the first few levels, at any rate.

This is my experience anyway.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, the Adventure Exp is what has made levelling speed accelerate. It would be far better if Adventure Exp was used as a top-up to combat Exp, up to a maximum per hour, rather than as an addition to combat exp. Right now, you can level up your character by RPing and enjoying Adventure Exp, but you will always get more by going out adventuring and stll getting the Adventure Exp as well. Adventure Exp would make sense as a way of evening out level gain between RPing or adventuring, instead of being a tool of leveling up on steroids as it is now.

[definatelynothealbold]

A) Looking to do the Writ themselves and looking to group up with people that are.
B) Not doing the writ, but probably grinding exp or looting treasures, but also do not want to force people trying to do the writ to wait for them, or harm their exp gain by being around.
C) They are high level characters and are going to leave the area to not monopolize the area from characters that are normal for the area, as per they should per server "Be nice" rules.

All three of these are metagaming, imo. C) probably comes under the "good kind" as you mentioned, for the "Be Nice" rule, but B) is just adding complicated social contracts to the game for people who might just want to explore or mine iron or whatever, and A) is an OOC mechanic very awkwardly wearing an IC trenchcoat.

The sentiment of the post you're quoting here strikes a chord with me - questing for tangible materials or items is one thing, but otherwise... the spirit of adventure and questing does feel cheapened by the rigidity of the writ system.

None of these things are Meta Gaming.

Writs are NOT an OOC thing, they are deliberately an IC thing.

[Cataclysm of Iron]

A) Looking to do the Writ themselves and looking to group up with people that are.
B) Not doing the writ, but probably grinding exp or looting treasures, but also do not want to force people trying to do the writ to wait for them, or harm their exp gain by being around.
C) They are high level characters and are going to leave the area to not monopolize the area from characters that are normal for the area, as per they should per server "Be nice" rules.

All three of these are metagaming, imo. C) probably comes under the "good kind" as you mentioned, for the "Be Nice" rule, but B) is just adding complicated social contracts to the game for people who might just want to explore or mine iron or whatever, and A) is an OOC mechanic very awkwardly wearing an IC trenchcoat.

The sentiment of the post you're quoting here strikes a chord with me - questing for tangible materials or items is one thing, but otherwise... the spirit of adventure and questing does feel cheapened by the rigidity of the writ system.

None of these things are Meta Gaming.

Writs are NOT an OOC thing, they are deliberately an IC thing.

No, but the fact that they exist for each character, independently of the actual outcome, and that the same group of people might have been hired to both deliver the same outcome independent of when or if the other delivers it, and therefore that it's something that happens in the course of each person's journey not that it's something an employer needs doing once (or if you prefer, then concept of "here to do the writ") - that is necessary OOC mechanics.

"I've been chartered to clear this cave of goblins" - IC
"Everybody will be chartered, once, to clear this cave of goblins, and the award for doing it is scaled rather than limited to each of them" - OOC, mechanics

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Arcane Tower/Mayfields - this too is generally dead, more a place that players choose to pass through than stay and visit.

I don't think it's because players choose to pass through instead of staying. What happened with the mage tower was an unforced error. I can get behind the ideas behind more npc leadership, but that's not what it turned out to be. It all just seemed to be "We want everyone to be welcome and are instilling a thayan npc at the towers head with no other clear objective beyond driving the point home that EVERYONE is accepted". Basically, the players were told they don't have any agency over the tower anymore but were also left to their own devices at the same time.

Mage towers can be excellent hubs for roleplay, perhaps better than any other thing you can create, especially given how popular wizard is despite being awful in pvp. But you need things for people to roleplay about. If I were designing what you guys did with the NPCs, I would have had seven different personalities representing each school running things- sure, one of them can be a thayan, but there needs to be a known story behind it, or people will just not care to find out- and I would have dms possessing those personalities regularly. Then I would set up a tier system similar to say the radiant heart but with more of a roleplay and dm interaction focus for the pcs. Obviously, this idea is more complicated than a short paragraph, but its intention is inspiration and not a blueprint. This should be a slam dunk to be one of the best parts of the server, and it's pretty much anything but that.

[definatelynothealbold]

No, but the fact that they exist for each character, independently of the actual outcome, and that the same group of people might have been hired to both deliver the same outcome independent of when or if the other delivers it, and therefore that it's something that happens in the course of each person's journey not that it's something an employer needs doing once (or if you prefer, then concept of "here to do the writ") - that is necessary OOC mechanics.

"I've been chartered to clear this cave of goblins" - IC
"Everybody will be chartered, once, to clear this cave of goblins, and the award for doing it is scaled rather than limited to each of them" - OOC, mechanics

Not everyone takes the same writs.

Some people completely skip some Writs, like I refused to clear out the Iron Mines of kobolds, because I like kobolds, and personally disagree with invading a kobold tribes home is at all justified, and find them retaliating by breaking tools to be perfectly acceptable.

Sure, sometimes people do go clear out the same writ, but the goblinoid fortress? Sure, someone cleared them out, and more goblins moved in, not that crazy. You killed an evil spirit? Well it's not permanently dead (Maybe it has some special requirement to permanently move on?), and double checking it wasn't part of your job description so they send someone else to deal with it.

The fact it's a persistent world means some things are gonna be kind of weird, that doesn't make writs OOC though? It's just one of those things you have to accept because it's a persistent world, not a single player experience that once you clear it out the problems completely gone.

Writs, and the acknowledgement of people doing work with writs is not an OOC thing, nor is it metagaming at all.

[Rei_Jin]

Personally, I like to imagine that there's a monster's writ agency, and they send monsters the right level to fulfil the writ too... it's just that their job is basically to die on your blade/spell/arrow after giving you a good challenge, if you're worthy.

Not canon, I know, but it's a fun thing to imagine.

[-XXX-]

Personally, I like to imagine that there's a monster's writ agency, and they send monsters the right level to fulfil the writ too... it's just that their job is basically to die on your blade/spell/arrow after giving you a good challenge, if you're worthy.

Not canon, I know, but it's a fun thing to imagine.

That's a really terrible job. I wonder how long before the monsters unionize.

[RedGiant]

Good grief.

There is an option to toggle when you start doing writs to slow everything down.

You can further slow everything down by toggling adventure xp on.

If that is still too fast for you, you are on an a remote island by yourself...and it is not Arelith.

I've only been here since 2008 and I, for one, do not miss the days when I could get my private pilot's license faster than I could get to epics.

Just sit back and enjoy the options*.

*I'm not sure whether Astral was being ironic, but I too reserve the right to descend into a 'An Endlesss Pit of Curmudgeonly Grumbling' on the Monk rework, unless, of course, its heavily, recognizably DnD. Then I will praise it as visionary.

[msterswrdsmn]

To the OP, as someone else from "back in the Jjjerm days"

Yeah, a lot has changed. Some good, some bad, but there is far, FAR more of an emphasis on mechanics and build prowress than there was back then.

Has this impacted the roleplay? Somewhat. I feel like it simultaneously amplified and nullified a lot of the issues from back in the day, when you'd have 1 or 2 extremely powerful people stomping all over everyone. It brought that tendancy out in EVERYONE, so now everyone is sort of...kinda avoiding that? Its really hard to put it into words. Its like "everyone is special so now no one is, but GODS HELP YOU if you aren't special like us"?

The biggest impact this has had isn't with pvp; thats still pretty easy to avoid unless you write yourself into a corner if you want to avoid it. PVE is where this is most noticable and I hate it. As someone that prefered solo exploring with semi-limited playtime, the jump in PVE power is incredibly signficiant and if you don't want to die as early as midlevel areas, you MUST adhere to some of the new "build standards". I'm personally saddened by "If you don't have 50 AB/60 AC/ESF Discipline you're useless", but i've noticed as early as level 19 I cannot travel in level-appropriate areas alone unless im' willing to conform to "build standards".

I've personally always hated the "lol, get gud " or "big party always required" arguments so I won't go further into that. I know i'm not the best builder/player, but i'm not bad either. Right now though, the server content seems to cater to the extremes of either end, whereas 15 years ago or so (damn, its been a long time) areas were more accessible for a wide variety of players regardless of skill or build quality.

This had, very slightly, in turn, affected the way players tend to tell stories with their characters. Some of the more memorable characters had weird and unusual builds, but were built in a way to tell a story rather than show numbers on a sheet. Don't get me wrong, there are absolutely people that still do this, but I doubt you'll see something like Nalee Darin with a druid/rogue build anytime soon. Or a shifter; why waste my award on a shifter with its crappy shapes (more or less unchanged from default nwn) when I could be a half giant weaponmaster with a colossal sword instead?!

Certain builds, or just straight up classes aren't commonly played simply because there is something newer and shinier that does what the old model did and then some. Wizards and sorcerers were, and to some extent, are, stuck in this rut, compared to newer classes like hemomancers, elementalists, etc. Gods forbid you want to play something like a harper/zhent scout, which eats 2-3 feats on useless feats for questionable benefits.

To be clear with that last paragraph, i'm not attacking anyone or trying to criticize. I'm just pointing out the way people use their characters to tell stories has very much changed since "Ye Olden Days". I wouldn't go far as to say "build first, story second", but I'm definitely not seeing as many people willingly gimp themselves anymore to create an interesting character.

[Cataclysm of Iron]

Remember Hound? Hound was great. Not a chance Hound survives today.

[Yma23]

Remember Hound? Hound was great. Not a chance Hound survives today.

Brought Hound back a few months ago for a bit of fun! But yeah his build was awful.

Got a pc now who's very much an rp build. Not sure how that'll go. Well I hope? Lets see. Thank you for the complement! (Player of Hound)

[AstralUniverse]

but I'm definitely not seeing as many people willingly gimp themselves anymore to create an interesting character

Because you just dont need to gimp yourself to make an interesting character and more good roleplayers have gotten better at the game, mechanically, since the early days. That's why you see less gimped characters probably.

[-XXX-]

There's the Stormwind fallacy and all that, but that doesn't address the fact that the current leveling pace and mechanical awareness greatly enables players who would not qualify for that. i.e. they're not good at (or even interested in) RP and dont play well with others despite being mechanically savvy.

Narratively speaking, characters who fail are generally more interesting than those who never do.
However, with the current levels of build quality and average player skill it's almost like mechanically powerful characters can only ever fail on purpose.
And that's a problem because whenever we see some sort of epic downfall of a renowned character, it often turns out to be just another scripted charade spinned by their OOC clique as they're trying to swap characters around while still keeping everything "in house".

So yeah, it kinda seems like conflict RP has finally devolved into either

• high stakes rock-paper-scissors game with maxed out S-tier build entry level requirement
• scripted show performances by closed OOC groups spinned for the "public"

Both pretty boring options. To make things even worse, they are utterly incompatible which we can often see spilling into OOC resentment.