I like the idea. I bought 2000 credits, and if Richter gets stagnant, and I don't want to continue on, I'd like to do something else with him.

I think Sidharta's idea is great. I'd love to see it implemented.

Sidharta's idea reminds me of an LP MUD I once played and worked on a bit. We had a system of RP points which were awarded by -players- to other players. (hence permitting bonuses for more private RPs) To prevent abuse, they kept a log of every point awarded, and checked it. Granted, that would be exceedingly difficult with the playerbaes Lusternia has.

There were rewards you could get for RP points, such as restring tokens to change an item's description and such.

The only trouble with that is as soon as the possibility exists, the Gods will be flooded with requests for it, deserving or not. I wouldn't blink to find out that restart deals have been made behind the scenes, but it will never be public, and it will never be acknowledged.

Sidharta's idea is pretty much in place. Everyone just starts with full "rolepoints." There's a hefty xp penalty involved in slipping ranks.

Except that there's absolutely and completely no coded (bolding the important word just so you know what I mean) benefit to roleplaying well. Everyone basically starts at 100%, if you do bad (OOC) things, the Gods take points off. When you slip to 80%, 60%, 40%, you lose things (channels, shouts, reduced experience gain) but there's no way to get to say... 150%.

With this system, everyone starts out with a full glass. The Gods tip it out if you screw up, and it gradually refills. But you can't change the system to give someone extra water, say.

The game does have a focus on RP, true. But Rewarding people for good rp, and boosting them, doesn't work. To many RPs aren't obvious, and only the vocal people who jump into events, get good bonuses. This annoys a large portion of the player base, and means less sales.

EDIT: Anything that would chomp into credit sales will not happen. Transferring lessons to new characters, favouring certain people. Both will possibly hurt sales. Neither things fit into any IRE mud.

This is a big problem I'm seeing with the whole idea. The only good RP that would be defined is the really loud people, for better or worse. What about those roleplaying shy, quiet people with really indepth personalities? (Just by way of example.) It just seems unfair to give bigger advantages to those who want to play more prominent characters, and succeed at doing so. Say, Visaeris may well have been a good RPer, but I can think of quite a lot of people who did just as well, but were less outspoken. (I think that's the right context for that word.)

Then they can prove it. "I have a very good history, and I roleplayed prominently in the largescale events of ____, and my own personal roleplaying events which consisted of ____ happening to _____ during ____!"

The rewards for rp was tried on Aetolia. It failed, miserably, due to the inherent flaw that not all RP is loud, and there aren't enough divine to police every single bit of the world.

EDIT: Can't forget. The roleplay itself should be enough reward for being part of it. Rewarding a person like you suggest, would bring RP into the 'power gaming' area in a sense, and screw it up quite a bit.

The idea of actually killing off people...sounds creepy, yeah it might be better for the RP point of view, but as so many have already said, it's bad for business, and people would abuse it. Plus, only the best of the best of the RP-ers would get to do this? Well, kinda ties in with only the "loud" ones making that yes? Anyways, I kinda like seeing who's the oldest, I wanna see someone reach 300 one day *sagenod* I myself favor the number 7, so I'll be trying for 777, then again, that's gunna take a while O_o

That would be why you could theoretically nominate people for reward, citing examples, or logs, and stuff. And if you still think that it wouldn't work because some people are just never noticed, then... what in the hell are they doing? Roleplaying with rat corpses, in an empty room?

But then the problem becomes, people would collaborate and RP a scene out, agreeing to nominate each other... the counter-dilemma to that is: is that so wrong? Or is it bad that roleplaying would be so openly rewarded with 'points'? Is in-depth roleplaying genuinely meant to be a completely selfless task that only a minority partakes in? Too big and opinionated an issue for me to tackle.

Anyway, don't stress. What i'm proposing would be a major addition to the system, and the 'major addition' type ideas you hear discussed in public (by people like me) almost never make it anyway

edit: So I was writing my post after Shiri, and didn't see all the responses. But if it was tried in Aetolia and went so disastrously, well, there's my answer I suppose... can't blame a guy for suggesting something (Unless it's a genuinely evil idea that gets picked up. Whoever 'suggested' car alarms should be shot. Hmm, maybe I should be more careful with what I suggest!)

Some people do just have a hard time getting noticed. I had a character in another IRE mud that was a GM of a major guild (at the time), was allies (and enemies) with some of the more major players, and held a ministry position in a city. Besides all these, I RP that sucker like crazy (not to mention he was one of the oldest active characters for awhile) and people/Gods still were like, "Who?" when his name was mentioned. (Not to mention, no mention in the Notables file).


But I'm not bitter

Many people just RP a quiet life, having a family, serving his city or guild at its best posibility, and if that suits their idea of their character that's good RP for me.

Problem is, you cannot go around saying that only those who make big events are good RPrs, because if those "events" are not following the idea of the character, that's bad RP in my opinion. Thus, is very difficult to really say if somebody is a real good RPer, or just a guy who happens to love to call attention and be lucky enough to be around at the right place, right moment.

Maybe I wasn't clear about being a good roleplayer, then.

I mean affect the realm in a good way, make it more enjoyable by roleplaying publically. Like Visaeris.

So. Be loud, vocal, murder, pk, steal, annoy, get yourself enemied to everything, recreate, repeat? Sounds wonderful. It would just let people avoid IC reprecussions. Because they can't transfer anything to new chars, they have to deal with consequences.

No. Work towards a goal, try to achieve it, make things interesting. Which is what I said.

The gods wouldn't OK the person more than once if this happenend.

The people who are going to do that, are going to do that anyway.