A Call for Open Discussion

Oooh, I like that… Make it more like real life – you can purchase a home or apartment for an obscene amount or you can rent it for a slightly less obscene amount. Perhaps this could create some sort of opportunity for a real estate clan? <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>

Yeah, one thing that was also brought up is that it would be possible to use structures and buy private buildings and then a portion of the rent would go to the owner of the building. Structures have been in the works for a long time but I think it would be perfect for use with the rental system.

Even though its not even Halloween yet, I’m going to go ahead and post the things I think need attention, along with my early Festivus Airing of Grievances. If any of it is considered over the top, Anna go ahead and censor it after reading it yourself :

1) Force Purchase – I agree with Kordite. Force purchase as is, just seems like a big scam. 20,000 points and there is still a chance to NOT even get it, let alone get crappy force levels that make you pretty worthless as a forcer to start? Like Kordite also mentioned, the fact you then have a big red target on you for the rest of your character’s life doesn’t help with it either. I’ve played a fairly good bit for the last few years and if I killed off every character I have currently, I should just be able to buy a forcer and put a deposit/buy a higher end race. Thats a whole lot of time spent in game (not really buying big characters either), to not be rewarded with the chance to do it.

Buying force should be 10-12k, and there should be a 0% chance that you don’t get it. I’m alright with it being random levels generated, but to drop that many points and then be told &quot;Errnt! Sorry you didn’t get force&quot;…well that’d just piss me off enough to never even play again most likely.

2) Cloning – Cloning as is in game, is horrid. You wake up fully grown, fully skilled, fully leveled, as is from the point you were cloned? Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. Cloning should have heavy penalties to it. I get that we have to balance mechanics with realism, so I’ll rule out the fact that all yours stats, levels, etc should be back at 0 and you should be a child character. However, what about there being a heavy chance of losing attributes? Or your skills are randomized back to 0%? Or your levels are randomized back to 1/start. For a character to get killed, then 3 seconds later be right back into action is pretty dang twinky…especially considering how easy it is to &quot;RP&quot; around the lack of memory and so on.

3) Regeneration – This just needs to be removed in my opinion. The races its on don’t make a damn bit of sense to start off with…and it cycles way too fast and gives way too much health. If its not removed, it needs to be lowered drastically and given to the proper races.

4) IMMs – How come I’ve asked for help 5 times on IMMCHAT with no response from anyone, yet I see you blabbin away on OOC? I get that IMMs have lives too and want to play the game just as much as we do, but you’ve also volunteered for the spot and completely ignoring the pbase is just bad. Which brings me to #5.

5) PR – This mud lacks it drastically. From IMMs outright being spiteful, to IMMs telling lies and when confronted with the logs of their lies, trying to reverse it on the player as if it were their fault, to IMMs claiming stuff will get done..it’ll get done…it’ll get done…it’ll get done…and then when you give up on them doing it 3 months later, they blame you for it not getting done, to IMMs telling you that you have no clue what you’re talking about, the system would never do that….and then it does..and they just kind of never speak on it again. None of this is stuff I’ve made up…and all of it happen to be things I’ve been apart of first hand…none of this is exaggerated he said/she said rumor.

6) Races need to be overhauled drastically. A large majority of them make no sense at all price wise….and a large majority of them make no sense at all stat wise for that race. Also, why are races even removed? Can we only have X amount of races total or something? It just seems a lot of cool races have been removed…and it seems a lot of races are era specific for almost no reason at all.

7) Why is there still no espionage feat? Don’t tell me its because there aren’t any good ideas for them yet, there are like 50 in the brainstorming section of this forums.

Wasn’t there suppose to be some transparency policy in place as far as what clans and individuals got as far as boosts/gear/ships/etc?

9) Space/Navy/Planets – As Avanga pointed out, planetary blockade is still the trump card. Also, its a freakin planet, how is there only one space lane of travel to leave from, and that travel takes me right into the ships sitting above? If the ships are that big, how can I not see them from the planet?

10) Why is the only OOC fun game a capital ship game? Why is it always space battle? Why not something different every once in a while, perhaps something that doesn’t take 4 hours to get started and 3 minutes to finish.

11) Points – I still don’t get how points are awarded for characters. One character I’ll have maxed out level wise, 100% in all the skills…and still get 0 points. Another character, I’ll have a few levels maxed and a few skills at 100% and get a ton of points. (Not counting deposits of course). I understand that we can’t give out the formula specifically so people would just make characters only for that, but its frustrating assuming one character should get at least something, only to get a big 0 at the end.

12) As mentioned in other threads, we need to stop claiming that Forcers/apped characters/certain races/etc are going to be held to higher standards, because we don’t make them. &quot;I’m so clever, I’m a Jedi that turned Sith..nobody saw that coming!&quot; Yes they did. You’re not the first. You’re not even the first this era most likely. Aren’t we suppose to hold forcers to higher standards and not just let them &quot;RP&quot; whatever they feel like? It seems the forcer that starts in one group and stays there the whole time, is the rarity these days. I put the blame on this squarely on the IMMs for granting the spyapps. STOP DOING THIS, YOU’RE FUCKING UP THE GAME.

13) I know we aren’t suppose to talk about current stuff, so I’ll try to make this one as vague as possible. This has been the absolute worst RPed timeline I’ve ever seen. And its not just from one side, its from all sides. The &quot;good guys&quot; act worse than the &quot;bad guys&quot; and the &quot;bad guys&quot; are viewed as good because they’ve never really done anything bad until the &quot;good guys&quot; came around and started acting bad…..all the while the Pro-Light Forcers team up with the Pro-Dark Forcers that were too dark to be with the &quot;bad guys&quot;…all teamed together to take down the &quot;bad guys&quot;. W….T…..F? Really? And you guys (IMMs) are just going to sit there and watch it happen eh? Really? Alright then, moving on.

14) There are a ton of skills/feats in game that do absolutely nothing and should just be removed. I don’t need to give examples, because I’m sure every single one of us know exactly what I’m talking about.

15) Restoring – I’m not worried about the process of restores. I think the RPC, when we have a good group, tends to do a good job overall. What I want to talk about in the restore process are ships, stores, gear, credits, lockers etc. All this stuff might have been fixed since the last time I was restored, but just in case. The last time I was permed and restored, I lost my shops, all the gear in them, all the credits in them etc….I lost my ship, all the gear in the locker on the ship and I lost all the gear and credits I had on me at the time. The only thing I did not lose, was the stuff in my lockers outside of my ship.

16) Crashes crashes crashes crashes – Perhaps I should have started off with this one since it should be the #1 priority.

Edit by Anna: Forcers are allowed to flip back and forth from light to dark provided that they have either rolled the force themselves and have apped for an alignment change, or they have apped for a change of sides on a character that was not rolled. This is permitted on LotJ and often times serves as an alternative to PK.

I agree with almost everything in this post, accept the current talk about this timeline (I missed a big chunk of this era and the last bit of the first, so I can’t honestly comment either way on it).

One thing I’ve noticed, and yes perhaps this is for game balance, is when you adapt a skill you still sometimes fail. Yes I know no one can do any one thing perfectly ALL the time. But I seem to be failing simple tasks that i’ve mastered several times in a row. I wouldn’t mind if I failed something every now and then, but when said skill fails three times in a row and I’ve &quot;Mastered it&quot;, it seems a little screwy. Its just something small, but it does kinda irk me when I have to dig in a room 8 times for an item I know is there when i’ve mastered the skill. Or I go to locate a ship and I fail to locate the records when I have 150/150 slicer levels and 100% toward the skill. Wouldn’t something requiring such a low level slicer be mundane and almost muscle memory to someone more skilled?

Cortosis:

Now I may be out of my league here, as i’ve never ICly seen, owned or used a piece of cortosis or cortosis gear..
But from what I gather its a rather big topic amongst the Pbase. And the argument over it seems to go like this.

Us: We wants the precious!

Them: LoLz, it won’t help you, why even ask about it? It’s not a magical, balancing, forcer killing material. Lolz

My question is then.. if this is the argument over it.. Why isn’t it in game? People want to see it, and those who could care less don’t think it will matter even if they had it. Honestly I just ask because I’m tired of having to shut off OOC to avoid the spam when the topic gets brought up.

As to races, i don’t like the idea of having to apply to pick certain race (of course if this race is era specific, I can’t argue with that).. And honestly if there is fear of people running round with these uber races having surprise butt secks with half the pbase and running off to do it again like some coming of age teenager.. Wouldn’t it balance out? Two uber pkers would half to collide at some point.. and even if they didn’t.. an easier fix would be to simple lower the points you gain from these deemed &quot;uber races&quot; So every era you can’t just keep rolling them up and running rampant on the mud..And if you do, your points pool will vanish just that much faster.

Then again I could be wrong.. I still don’t have great feel for the pk system or the races, so I can’t honestly shed any hard coded knowledge on the subject, just my opinion.

And.. that’s all I can think of at the moment.

[quote:1kias7j3]1) Force Purchase – I agree with Kordite. Force purchase as is, just seems like a big scam. 20,000 points and there is still a chance to NOT even get it, let alone get crappy force levels that make you pretty worthless as a forcer to start? Like Kordite also mentioned, the fact you then have a big red target on you for the rest of your character’s life doesn’t help with it either. I’ve played a fairly good bit for the last few years and if I killed off every character I have currently, I should just be able to buy a forcer and put a deposit/buy a higher end race. Thats a whole lot of time spent in game (not really buying big characters either), to not be rewarded with the chance to do it.[/quote:1kias7j3]

Force Purchase is an outdated system that needs to be shot like Old Yeller in favor of…something else?

[quote:1kias7j3]2) Cloning – Cloning as is in game, is horrid. You wake up fully grown, fully skilled, fully leveled, as is from the point you were cloned? Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. Cloning should have heavy penalties to it. I get that we have to balance mechanics with realism, so I’ll rule out the fact that all yours stats, levels, etc should be back at 0 and you should be a child character. However, what about there being a heavy chance of losing attributes? Or your skills are randomized back to 0%? Or your levels are randomized back to 1/start. For a character to get killed, then 3 seconds later be right back into action is pretty dang twinky…especially considering how easy it is to &quot;RP&quot; around the lack of memory and so on.[/quote:1kias7j3]

Cloning is horrid, but not for these reasons.

[quote:1kias7j3]3) Regeneration – This just needs to be removed in my opinion. The races its on don’t make a damn bit of sense to start off with…and it cycles way too fast and gives way too much health. If its not removed, it needs to be lowered drastically and given to the proper races. [/quote:1kias7j3]

High Five.

[quote:1kias7j3]) 4) IMMs – How come I’ve asked for help 5 times on IMMCHAT with no response from anyone, yet I see you blabbin away on OOC? I get that IMMs have lives too and want to play the game just as much as we do, but you’ve also volunteered for the spot and completely ignoring the pbase is just bad. Which brings me to #5.
5) PR – This mud lacks it drastically. From IMMs outright being spiteful, to IMMs telling lies and when confronted with the logs of their lies, trying to reverse it on the player as if it were their fault, to IMMs claiming stuff will get done..it’ll get done…it’ll get done…it’ll get done…and then when you give up on them doing it 3 months later, they blame you for it not getting done, to IMMs telling you that you have no clue what you’re talking about, the system would never do that….and then it does..and they just kind of never speak on it again. None of this is stuff I’ve made up…and all of it happen to be things I’ve been apart of first hand…none of this is exaggerated he said/she said rumor. [/quote:1kias7j3]

As staff, I’m supposed to deny that we don’t fuck up, but I can’t really. Working for LOTJ is our labor of love because we sure ain’t getting paid, and the players may never know just how hard we work, but there’ll be mistakes and errors of judgement on our part. If you’re having problems with staff/PR/whatever, the best thing you can do (and always worked for me before I was staff), is to take your grievances up the chain and always in a respectful manner. Someone will listen to you; I guarantee it.

[quote:1kias7j3]6) Races need to be overhauled drastically. A large majority of them make no sense at all price wise….and a large majority of them make no sense at all stat wise for that race. Also, why are races even removed? Can we only have X amount of races total or something? It just seems a lot of cool races have been removed…and it seems a lot of races are era specific for almost no reason at all.[/quote:1kias7j3]

Gotta disagree. The race system went through an overhaul pre-TL and it’s doing well.

[quote:1kias7j3]10) Why is the only OOC fun game a capital ship game? Why is it always space battle? Why not something different every once in a while, perhaps something that doesn’t take 4 hours to get started and 3 minutes to finish.[/quote:1kias7j3]

I used to run a few, and it wasn’t always a space battle. Also, they generally started on time. Unfortunately, capital games are a hard thing to keep going because the immortal(s) running it have to have time on their hands and a whole lot of patience. Player ego is the single biggest problem with running these things due to rule-skirting and point-blank cheating.

[quote:1kias7j3]12) As mentioned in other threads, we need to stop claiming that Forcers/apped characters/certain races/etc are going to be held to higher standards, because we don’t make them. &quot;I’m so clever, I’m a Jedi that turned Sith..nobody saw that coming!&quot; Yes they did. You’re not the first. You’re not even the first this era most likely. Aren’t we suppose to hold forcers to higher standards and not just let them &quot;RP&quot; whatever they feel like? It seems the forcer that starts in one group and stays there the whole time, is the rarity these days. I put the blame on this squarely on the IMMs for granting the spyapps. STOP DOING THIS, YOU’RE FUCKING UP THE GAME.[/quote:1kias7j3]

High Five.

[quote:1kias7j3]13) I know we aren’t suppose to talk about current stuff, so I’ll try to make this one as vague as possible. This has been the absolute worst RPed timeline I’ve ever seen. And its not just from one side, its from all sides. The &quot;good guys&quot; act worse than the &quot;bad guys&quot; and the &quot;bad guys&quot; are viewed as good because they’ve never really done anything bad until the &quot;good guys&quot; came around and started acting bad…..all the while the Pro-Light Forcers team up with the Pro-Dark Forcers that were too dark to be with the &quot;bad guys&quot;…all teamed together to take down the &quot;bad guys&quot;. W….T…..F? Really? And you guys (IMMs) are just going to sit there and watch it happen eh? Really? Alright then, moving on.[/quote:1kias7j3]

I’m sure some will claim that I helped fuck it up as much as anyone else, but High Five. Worse yet, the above situation is a vicious cycle for many reasons which shall not be touched upon.

[quote:1kias7j3]14) There are a ton of skills/feats in game that do absolutely nothing and should just be removed. I don’t need to give examples, because I’m sure every single one of us know exactly what I’m talking about.[/quote:1kias7j3]

Every skill currently in the game has purpose at one point or another–the most useless skills, in the right circumstance, have saved my hide.

[quote:1kias7j3]16) Crashes crashes crashes crashes – Perhaps I should have started off with this one since it should be the #1 priority.[/quote:1kias7j3]

Always have been, always will be. Though as a former coder, eliminating the source of a crash is not as cut and dry as you might think, and the coders are already 10x busier than even PR, whom are already pretty frakking busy. In other words, killing a crash is like killing a Hydra.

Lot of good points here, puma, even if your delivery’s a little off. Hope you know that some players will now flame you for eternity.

Modem is back in town, bitches.

We’re on a Star Wars MUD. Do you know what would happen if everyone didn’t do anything that’s been done before? (It wouldn’t be a Star Wars MUD, a hurpdedurp.)

Some forcers are going flip-flop. Same reason that regular, normal-people characters flip flop. You’re sitting on your thumbs claiming it’s shit RP, but if you think there’s actually shit RP going on, why not harass the IMM staff to look into it?

I keep hearing this latest bitch-buzz, and people coming out of the woodwork to ask me if there were any times in the past that I can recall where someone had a race reset or whatever for shit roleplay, so I’ll assume this is just more of the people’s retarded whining coming out. They can’t see RP to know if it’s bad, but it’s not something THEY would do, so it MUST be bad RP.

You wanted to make illegal, and destroy any ships that had anything more than ion cannons on them, but the IMMs said the building aspect would be too hard. You couldn’t think of anything else that might be something like that?

If you’re unwilling to compromise on shit for the sake of the game, then it sucks to be you. Sorry to hear you hate that game so much now, but it’s nothing to do with the IMMs telling you ‘no’.

If anything, spyapps were always fine. They were a good way to keep fun in the game, and for IMMs to actually look at the RP and go &quot;Ok, this asswipe’s done a good enough job to be able to do something kind of dickish.&quot; Maybe something has changed in the last few months, I couldn’t tell you, but if people had to choose one side and ONLY one side and had to stick to their guns no matter what bullshit was thrown at them, nothing would change.

You join the Empire, the Empire treats you like shit. You don’t want to be in the Empire anymore, but SUCKS FOR YOU YOU ROLLED IT. SPYAPP WOULD RUIN THE GAME.

If the IMMs need to keep an eye on shit for &quot;higher standard RP&quot;, that’s their deal. Your standard is not, and may never be, a higher standard.

[b:i4jnoyph]As for the actual bulk of this thread, I may as well contribute from my mystical timemachine and comment on what I can:[/b:i4jnoyph]

App races aren’t a bad idea. There are some races that require a good person to RP them, and sometimes just letting anyone with so many points have one leads to like… nothing. There were plenty of examples of last TL, and from the OR/little bit in Empire era of people who buy alien races, then never emote anything. They wear covering armor all day long, and if it weren’t for sometimes you seeing their face, or maybe they might some day mention it for some obscure reason that has no bearing on anything, you will NEVER know what race that person is, or is playing.

On that note, people who &quot;RP a race badly&quot; and people who &quot;don’t RP at all&quot; aren’t the same people, but should they all be held to this mystical higher-standard? You get a Firrerreo running around who’s got a desc of a Firrerreo, but they never emote about the sun glinting off of their[b:i4jnoyph] golden/silver skin[/b:i4jnoyph], or run their fingers through their [b:i4jnoyph]two-toned hair[/b:i4jnoyph]. Should that person get their race ripped away because they don’t write out emotes that say &quot;BY THE WAY- I am an alien.&quot;?

You have a Chagrian who only very rarely mentions that they can’t taste food. LE GASP. Should we set them to human?

mortchat Chagrian You don’t openly hate food enough. You’re a human now.

Force purchasing I can’t really comment on. Yeah, there’s a chance you get nothing, but that’s the risk involved. Yeah, there’s a chance you get shitty force, but is there seriously nothing you can do with a low-force forcer? Forcers on the MUD aren’t just about levels and magical super-powers, forcers on LOTJ were often part of some of the more/most integral storyline RP on LOTJ. There used to be a lot of cool RP that pretty well any forcer would be privvy to, if the right people were able to give it. If you’re going to buy force, I’d hope you’d do it to be involved with roleplay over &quot;i m going to rawk so many facezzzz&quot;. 20000 points doesn’t seem like a bad idea, but I had that by the time Empire era rolled around, so maybe I just can’t see them as being that insane.

IMMs are volunteers. This will always cause problems for some, while making others seem utterly fucking amazing. Welcome to real world.

Uh, CG games have been ground combat before and I did pretty well on them. Did they stop those?

That’s all I can see by scanning back that I can comment on, but to sum up:

If you think shit is bad, ask the IMMs. If you don’t trust the IMMs, stop playing that game.

[quote:3qwakjob]In canon Star Wars forcers flip-flopped all the time.[/quote:3qwakjob]

Out of like twenty prominent Jedi in the first three Episodes, Anakin and Dooku were the only ones to flip, and had a damn good reasons for doing so. Dooku didn’t flip back, either.

Out of the light-siders in the last three Episodes, Vader was the only one to flip, and this flip was arguably the central theme of Star Wars itself (light conquering darkness). None of the Jedi who survived the first three episodes flipped at all.

Forcers flip-flop on LOTJ for two reasons, generally.

1) It benefits them.
2) They can.

If you post rants to each other again, the topic will be locked and you will all be sent to bed without dessert.

I will also then put together a team of players to brainstorm with me, and they will be the ones to decide the fate of certain systems, and your ass won’t!