[vorlon31]

http://forums.jossh.com/showthread.p...threadid=26610

Unbelievble, an alledged plot by Quantar to develop a potentialy planatary cleansing substance and nobody cares. For months fc pilots have been keeping biomass away from Hyperial and Quantar stations to prevent that eventuality and no-one notices and now I go public with the information and still no-one gives a damn.

OK tht may have been in part of the way I posted, posting jiberish and then editing in the info once official eyes had judged the posting irrelavant, but Jeeesh!!

Who knows, maybe you all think your homeworlds need cleansing..

Me? My homeworld is long since dead, maybe its time I joined them.

[GrimGriz]

I've never liked the way they do RP in Jumpgate. To be involved you have to be lucky, terminally persistant, and lucky. Congratulations, you get to have conversations with RPCs.

[Ambrosius]

I think you may have had more response if you posted more than then simply including the links. People around HG do not seem to want to work real hard for their RP/storyline (or anything else for that matter) . . . but that's just me being old and grumpy.

[Ambrosius]

Originally Posted by GrimGriz

I've never liked the way they do RP in Jumpgate. To be involved you have to be lucky, terminally persistant, and lucky. Congratulations, you get to have conversations with RPCs.

1. What's the "best practice" way to handle as you have seen in other games?

2. How could this be applied in Jumpgate (in your opinion) given the known support limits?

[GrimGriz]

Other games have actual NPCs written into the code to provide a better framework for players to get the sense that they're doing something within the RP universe.

Jumpgate on the other hand seems a lot like a table-top RPG to me. The game itself handles all the mechanics of play, but we need a GM to become involved. I can't say for sure what I'd specifically do as I don't know the extent of the tools available to our GMs. However, I think the primary goal of our GM should be to use players to fill the roll of NPCs for other players.

For example, if Hyperial is conducting research on biomass, rather than setting the price high at Hyperial station I would have preferred to see the construction of a new POS, clearly labeled to be special. Perhaps not as far as 'Biomass Research Lab', but enough that a player scrolling through POS would take note. Then, the GM could have contacted players via forum or ingame to secure delivery of biomass to the POS. Then star reporter 'Ace Monkeyface' could have caught wind of the scandal to let the general populace know something official was up. After that, curious parties...OPL, the STCC, whathaveyou, could have contacted players and squads to find out what other players were involved (catch people docking at the POS, scan them before and after docking) with instructions to report back.

The thing is, I can't recall a news article that prompted me to think there was anything I could do to get involved. Everything has always been so shrouded in mystery and behind the scenes that you find out about the interesting RP storylines after it's too late.

There's a big stink on the forums (that I kind of started) about getting injustices back. It's been implied that a PM would start things rolling, yet I know for a fact that one of my squad leaders PM'd OPL a long time ago pledging our support of bringing them back. To my knowledge, nothing yet has come of it. Nor has there been anything about an OPL reprisal attack on spitfire production.

The key to utilizing players to fulfill the roles of NPCs is to set precidents for rewards/results of participating in the RP. Maybe credits..but I'd say fame (your name in TRINN articles), exclusive GM-awarded medals, and in-game results (i.e. restoration of injustices).

V31 posted stuff about biomass and hyperial a long time ago, but it was far from obvious it was an official RP-line players could get involved in. I personally just figured that V31 is always posting weird stuff and it was just another episode of that.

The search for solrain...even this 'can cleanse a planet' aren't going to mean much to many folks, because it's hard to see how it will affect gameplay in the slightest. I mean...if we 'find' solrain Istvan might patch a planet background into a sector..but so what? RP-lines should bring the focus into the game itself, not into the background.

[steveddie]

There is plenty of RP going on in jumpgate IF you have an eye to see it.

NO TRINN posting is ever what it seems. However their real purpose gets lost because OOC postings and the conversational spin-offs that follow. KTRI's should be read twice too.

Being a TRINN/forum TROLL and going back over TRINN posts helps greatly.

Right now I could tell you of at least 3 additional rp oddities that are waiting to happen.

But your right in that they do require GM interactions to push forward AND most importantly for someone to notice them for what they are and to pursue them in the first place.

There are questions that should be asked but no-ones asking. Is that the gm's fault if no one notices whats under their noses?

[steveddie]

RP in Jumpgate is hard though and requires sacrifice (mostly time) and as such it can lead you away from the very reasons you play for. There just isnt enough spontaneous stuff going on or even player driven things because firstly, even the most simple RP requires something that only GMK can provide and the rules of what he will and wont do are only known in fullness to him. Secondly, the best place for generating rp interest is on the official forum but because there is no enforced IC section, it only takes one OOC post to take the whole thread off on a tangent and the point is lost forever.

Jumpgate and RP is like everyone enrolling into a carpentry school and the only teacher available wont let anyone use the tools incase sombody gets cut with a chissel. So all the students spend their time scratching out their names on the benchs while they wait for pre-tooled chunks to be given to them so that they can then be glued together.

[Supermax]

What has been described in the above posts appears to be basically how things were run on the EU servers, at least during the 1 1/4 year while I was Operator myself. Too bad EU was shut down when the team finally had the manpower, the motivation and the tools available to provide decent RP and player/NPC interaction on an almost 24/7 basis.

Unfortunately the legal situation in the US seems to prohibit the use of volunteers, and paying for a sufficiently large number of GMs is simply not an option with the current player numbers.

Perhaps Istvan *might* extend the current account permission system in a way that allows for pilot accounts with enough powers to be useful für RP purposes, but without access to commands or tools that should remain "GM only". Staying within steveddie's metaphor, selected students might be allowed to use the chisel, while the electric saw still remains under lock and key.

[steveddie]

the answer to legal situation in the US seems to prohibit the use of volunteers is simple. Make the tools available to "special players", like empowered players but more. That way its not volunteering or breaking any laws its customers Playing a role that enables others to play there's. Of course GMK would have to lessen his grip for that in the first place.

[Nohbody]

I think you may not understand how things like the EP program works.

Those given access to special tools have to formally agree to follow TG's guidelines for those tools, as well as sign a non-disclosure agreement. They're not going to just throw out special tool access to any J. Random JGPlayer without some kind of formal agreement. Past abuses of the OP program on the EU server, when it was active, serve as evidence that giving special powers to players requires more than just "here, have these toys and go play".

[Supermax]

Just FYI, the volunteers on EU all had to sign a NDA as well, and usage of NPC accounts and tools was very tightly controlled. I can of course only speak for the last 1 1/4 years of Jumpgate EU when I was a member of the OP team myself. IIRC though, apart from one remarkable incident which involved some players who were given NPC ships for the purpose of a single event, most if not all of the really bad cases of abuse were conducted by paid GMs.

[steveddie]

RP on the eu server was a living breathing thing, mainly because there were teams of people to help develope story lines and nearly always some official presence available to run ideas by and keep things in hand.

The WWS is a game server, pure and simple. There is no RP support in flight. There cant be with just one GM. Even on the forums RP is dead because OOC posts are mixed with IC ones at every opportunity, diluting point and purpose. Look at the online numbers right now, count the HG/civ ratio's. Where have all the role playing civilian life blood pilots gone? The answer is to other games. And questions need to be asked like why. The inability to RP a trader/miner/fluxer role will be one of the answers you would get.

RP is not about uber shields and win buttons, its not about besting another player, its about personal character development, in game purpose and feeling like your part of the bigger story.

All of which can be taken away by GM sanctioned stat padding civ killers in one hit.

Yes I said GM Sanctioned.

Any and all civ kills on the WWS is GM sanctioned because by doing nothing about it, by not coding in protection in the form of ai policing agents and safe routes to cover for the lack of real gm presence, they are endorsing every single civilian kill, player abuse and all the player losses that those bring.

Without the civs in space enjoying their game time, and getting out at least as much as they put into the game, all you have left IS quake in space where any die hard civilian traders/miners etc will always be seen as second class citizens fit only to provide gear and be shot at when its a quiet night for willing pvp.

All it takes for a good mmog to die is for the GM's to DO nothing when the community begins to fail.

[ZeroZ95]

I've said it before...all this cloak and dagger stuff is way to complicated for the Jumpgate setting. It's great RP, but it's all so amazingly behind the scenes (realistic, to be sure) that only a handful ever get involved and next to no one ever knows what really is going on. That is, until someone like you finally gets sick of it and spills the beans to everyone. (I was a bean spiller once in the TEC/ITA messy days.)

The short answer is: people aren't doing anything about your post because they don't know what they can do. It is very much like a paper and pencil RPG where the characters stumble around blindly trying to find the plot the GM has laid out for them.

As for OPL...they aparently have no desire of their own to restore IJs, but they are waiting on Octs to contact them about restoration since aparently Sols contacting them isn't good enough because Sols are the enemy. Funny that OPL doesn't mind selling IJs in mass to the enemy, but has a moral delema about accepting the same "enemy help" in restoring their production.

*scratches head*