Leggerless

Are there any other RP hubs... well. I mean. Not to troll or anything, but any place that isn't listed in Food Magazine's Top 10 Bars. There's an entire area to explore and use for RP. Sands is there because it satisfies two things: The 3 V's of data and access. There's plenty of volume, variety, and velocity going into the place providing you many angles to work with and it's easy to get into to. EDIT: Seems like OP doesn't want other taverns for answers.

[align=center] WANTED: ALIVE Name: Elise Wolfe Aliases: "Lynx" and "Wolf" Age: Mid-twenties Last Seen: Highbridge, Eastern Thanalan Wanted For: Manslaughter Assault Coercion Theft Subterfuge Description (with sketch): Female Hyur. 5' 9" in height. Light color eyes. Short, blonde hair. Wears glasses. Former Maelstrom Captain. Known to dress heavily in black or white attire covering all body parts. Scar on face. Individual is armed, dangerous, and known to employ lethal force if necessary. Do not engage by yourself. Notify local authorities if spotted immediately. A higher reward is granted if the wanted has all body parts intact. Please report additional information to the Maelstrom and Yellowjackets. [/align]

OP: [video=youtube] ED: [video=youtube] Go in feeling like a badass and leave a cheery customer.

[video=youtube] Pretty much this.

Elise yawned as she got out of her bed, opening her eyes to the ceiling of a guest room. The rumours of a rundown mansion in the Lavender Beds proved fruitful and she found a place to go into hiding. Despite being considered rundown in the past, as she soon learned shortly upon arrival, a new mistress took to remodeling the battered down building into a business estate. "Ye gods... haven't slept in a bed like that for at least a moon." She moves around the room and gets ready for the day; a somewhat elaborate jacket coupled with simple pants and boots in addition to small knives hidden in the jacket. It was a day of relaxation afterall; no need to carry around the typical weapons in such a safe location. On the nearby nightstand, a plate with freshly made toast and butter as the centerpiece was surrounded by a ring of rolanberries. To the left, a small cup of Gridanian Black tea. Once dressed, she sat on the side of the bed and ate the meal properly, rotating between the toast, rolanberries, and tea until the plate and cup were empty. She set the items back on the nightstand and made her way outside of the room, proceeding outside into the foyer. Grabbing a new issue of the Lantern, she soon made her way out into the courtyard, took a seat in one of the benches, and started reading to herself. A few minutes passed before she looked up at the clear sky above if only but for a moment. "A nice place, indeed." She starts monologuing to herself. "Haven't been attacked, not lying starved and parched on the cold, stone floor, and yet..." She turns her head to look at the mansion. "I haven't bared my teeth since coming here." A small smirk shows on her face as she glances up in front of her. "Let's change that."

I would resub to this game for a month if there is a Mos Eisley cantina like tavern in-game. So yes I'm interested. I want to see a photo of it in action and also how 3.2 pans out.

Welp, guess there's a release date and CBT2 date now. https://www.blackdesertonline.com/news/view/49 Enjoy.

Elise: Ex-military officer who sometimes has to choke a bitch.

"Let's see here... officer discharge, replaced by a Lieutenant, no longer can formally work with other Grand Companies... quite the list indeed." Seated in a simple, wooden chair, she finishes up the flask in her hand before setting the empty container down on the table in front of her. "Right... what in the seven hells was I doing?" She tilts her head, thinking for a bit. "Ah yes." She rises from her chair and grabs the sheathed blade resting against the table, attaching it to the left side of her belt. "Visiting the underworld. The wolf shall be back once more." Elise smirks at the thought and grabs a small book resting in the middle of the table as well, stashing it inside of her attire. She pats down the part of her clothing holding the book twice, then heads out the door of the house into Pearl Lane. "All according to plan so far."

You create a mathematical model of an RP event.

Oh yea. I totally forgot to make a post about this. A month ago, I designed a pseudo-realistic simulation of the Grindstone event. The technical report/executive summary for that shall be pasted below within a spoiler. If you want the file itself, you'll have to send me a PM. You will also need Simio 7 for software. Anyways, enjoy. Kept it in spoilers because... it's a bit long. It would be extremely long if I posted the appendix too

Ahem. I suppose it's time for... theorycrafting. Not the typical mathematical/statistical analysis I usually do; this isn't Elitist Jerks. Communities and players are trading genuine, social interaction for efficiency. That's the thesis. Read it carefully. Done? Read it again. I've been thinking to myself about something I've seen not just in this forum but across every MMO and communities at large; I thought to make a thread to air such thoughts and possibly dirty laundry. I'll use two example MMOs here. Suppose we'll look at FFXI first. The more I think about it, the less I think people didn't form social groups because they wanted to, but because they had to. It was efficient. The fastest way to get content done. People used groups and other players to get levels as quickly as possible. At the end of the day, you the player and everyone else you're likely playing with may leave once they finish their objective and not see each other again. In that same instance, you may also retain a few contacts for leveling so they can help yourself level up. Not much more I want to say about FFXI, so let's move onto FFXIV. FFXIV is a weird crowd to work with. Players want to improve, yet are shunned by the anti-parser crowd and the "git gud" players in general. NA/EU culture seems whack, distorted, and designed here in such a manner that the only player that matters... is you. Afterall, you paid the sub for the game right? What do other people care what you do with the sub? There's occasionally content that requires a group setting, but almost all of the time everything you need to do can be done by yourself or done through the automatic group matcher. There's not as much of a need for you to go out an form a group; a group will often be formed for you instead. Is there a point between comparing FFXI and FFXIV at this point? Sure there is. People made social groups because it was the path of least resistance in FFXI. People don't make as many--if almost no--groups because it isn't really required in FFXIV. It's whatever is the most efficient, if you ask me. Now, let's introduce theorycrafting's effect on a community--the mathematical analysis kind. Though originally prominent in Starcraft, an RTS, it's biggest debut in NA/EU MMOs, imo, surfaced at Burning Crusade's launch for WoW in 2007 and Elitist Jerks' emergence. Optimization now reached MMOs, whereas it was typically confined to RPGs like KOTOR and RTSs like Starcraft and Warcraft III. Before theorycrafting became a "thing," playing whatever class you thought was fun to play is perfectly acceptable. Now that it's around in full force, playing the most optimal class to its greatest potential is a major concern. What happens when your class doesn't become or is no longer the optimal class? Complain to the developers to balance it out, of course. Having fun paled in comparison to being optimal; the highest benefit for the lowest cost. Suppose being efficient applied to groups and social communities. Let's do an example: Say you want to run a dungeon. You can do a few things: 1. Join a current group that has experience and could carry you through. 2. Join a group that doesn't have much experience, but will still take you along. 3. Make your own group to beat the dungeon. So, let's assume I, as a player, want to get through something with as little a cost to myself as possible. I'd say choice #1 looks pretty nice compared to the rest of them. I can join a group that knows what they're doing and can essentially carry me through it all without me trying as much as possible. I can take it easy, not exert as much energy, and just have fun. Sounds pretty beneficial, right? Well. Time for a bold opinion. If you picked choice #1, you may be the problem. Afterall, you're expecting other people to play the game in a way that picks up your slack--something that contributes to hatred from the carriers, laziness from the carried, and destructive behavior all over. If the carriers start expressing hatred for these "new" players they have to carry through and help all the time, I guarantee you they will stop doing runs with random players due to multiple bad experiences. They want to be as efficient as possible and the "new"/bad players aren't helping them out. If you picked choice #2 or #3, I'd say you're doing fine and I couldn't care less. At least you're with other people in the same boat as you. #3, however, could be as destructive as #1 if you invite other players who carry you through. Take a small break now. Done? Hail Hydrate, get some water, and keep reading. Now we have ourselves a divide of exceptional players (the carriers) and terrible players (the carried) in the community. I'm not specialised in psychology, but I'm pretty sure players remember bad experiences more vividly than good experiences. Say "good" players keep pairing up with the bad/carried players and continue receiving bad experiences. The "good" players forced to deal with the bad players seclude themselves off and avoid the public scene. Sound familiar with how/why FCs and people hole up within their own cliques? It should. As more players seclude themselves from the public scene, they sacrifice the number of connections and interactions they could make with others. When the good players are completely isolated, all that is left are the bad players. When the bad players are all that's left for the newer players to play with, the number of bad players will increase. And when good or average players see these players not caring, they may wonder "why should we care?" and the ranks of the badders increase ever more. Now we have a bunch of bad players present in the works. What's the easiest and lowest thought-provoking way to tell people they're bad? By telling them they're bad. And by telling them they're bad, I mean insulting them. Offering advice requires some knowledge you have to extract out of your brain, type out in a hopefully understandable answer, and then hope that they accept the advice. It's much simpler to tell someone "you suck at NIN" than it is to say "You should consider keeping up DE, SF, and MU." What do most people do? Take the path of least resistance of course--players start to throw out insults. Now you have a community that tosses out insults at each other, degrades each other, and contains players doomed to suck at a game in addition to plenty of players that feel it isn't worth the time to help out the players lagging behind. Players who are insulted or feel weak generate anti-elitist, anti-parser, and anti-whatever groups to unionize themselves against the haters. So... congratulations! You're a MOBA, Harry! When a community reaches the MOBA point, the best solution is scorched earth tactics. Destroy it all, rebuild it from the ground up, and pray to whatever gods (or to science) that it goes much better the second time around. Hopefully that cycle won't repeat, right? Let's ask Satan for a comment on that! What say you, Satan? "Societies work in cycles, Leggerless. They may be great for a time, but they'll always fall at the end. Least Hell doesn't have this issue; we're going strong for all eternity." Thanks, Satan. Have a cookie on the way out; they're chocolate chip. So, what can you do to make your community not reach the MOBA point as quickly? Plenty of things, but they require a continued effort. Making interactions with people instead of taking the most efficient route through everything. 1. Have a smile on your face sometimes. I don't want to pity the fool. I'm a player, not Mr. T. 2. Don't be an extremist. There's more than just your side to an argument. 3. Don't be an entitled little shit. Learn how to be somewhat self-sufficient; in the process of becoming self-sufficient you can inspire others to do the same. 4. Try to have fun when you can. If you're too much of a hardass, everything looks gray, mucky, and like a black lagoon and CoD color palette merged into one grotesque scene. 5. If someone is offering you advice, take it with a grain of salt and try not to lash out at them unless you have plenty of evidence suggesting the advice is bad. If you do lash out, they may stop helping others in general. Don't be that player! 6. You've probably reached a breaking point once or twice. Let me tell you this. The world is your oyster. Fucking own it. JUST DO IT. DON'T LET YOU DREAMS BE DREAMS! Show those naysayers that you're not just all talk, can walk the walk, and break out of your comfort zone! 7. A consistently above average community can get more done than a community made of both exceptional and bad people. It's called quality control and yes, it is a very real thing. Japanese (and the Wu Tang Clan, by coincidence) ain't nothing to fuck with; they made the Kanban system and have their quality up to at least 5 sigma. 8. Macho Man Randy Savage says the sky is the limit? Show him otherwise. Snap into a Slim Jim. Transform into a dragon and yell out quotations. For the community, make it the day that they receive a great blessing. For you... make it so it is just another Tuesday. 9. Learn how to lead a group. You don't have to lead a group yourself all the time, but you really should know what it takes to be a leader should you be forced into that position. WoW Raid Lead guides can give you a starting point. The concepts of leading are very consistent across video games. At the very least, you're going in knowing something rather than nothing and people can appreciate the fact you took the initiative to lead the group when no one else did/could. 10. Respect. It is earned, not given. Earn it if you want it. Also applies to trust. Now that I've made my giant wall of text I'm heading to the Winchester, grabbing a pint, and waiting for this all to blow over. P.S. Want to apply this whole thing to RPers? Replace dungeons and skill with roleplays and roleplaying ability. P.S.S. To those who may think I'm throwing my airs at a soundbox, don't worry. I may as well post a copy of this to Reddit, flair it as "Satirical Discussion" and see what happens.

Specific examples as in linkable examples? Nevertheless, we're probably going to see a few more replies responding to the sensationalist material that is now OP's post before anything tangible shows up. For now, enjoy the thread and grab some popcorn. It'll be a long night for this one. P.S. @Aaron: RPC quality is down. Less than 20 chararcters with spaces.

A new person? Well... *Randy Savage voice* I got you for three minutes. Three minutes of PLAYTIME! Ahem. Assuming you're NA, these FCs may peak your interest. Door #1: Gold and Glory Door #2: Wayfarers of Eorzea Pretty sure there's more, but those are the ones that immediately come to mind that are adventurer/mercenary based.

Ok, that's deep. If I also want to throw in a simple, yet fancy theory on the community at large, it'd be this: We traded genuine, social interactions for efficiency. Exposition edit! Examples: FFXI community compared to FFXIV community PS1 community compared to PS2 community Communities from years ago compared to communities today. It seems the amount of time people have to play the game--RP, PvP, PvE, w/e--is dwindling. Rather than waste time by taking risks, they take the path of least resistance that yields the highest benefit at the lowest cost. That cost includes taking the time to form connections and be social; something you have to spend energy on and dedicate time to. There are scientific disciplines (e.g. industrial engineering) dedicated to optimization in systems of all kinds. It is both a blessing and a curse; one seen in theorycrafting and communities alike.

Well, layer me once with glaze and call me a donut, I was just thinking about finding merchants today for RP! Looks like I may have found a keeper. I'll hit you up when I can this week.

Such a coincidence haha! Does that mean you're interested in being a co-host? May just be a guest speaker of sorts rather than co-hosting due to other obligations I have. And since I'm not exactly the Sounsyy of lore, I'll stick with what I know best for games: theorycrafting, large-scale events, tournaments, etc. and how they may run in RP. OOC stuff.

How coincidental for this thread to pop up now. I just so happened to get a new fancy condenser microphone for Christmas. Pretty cheap one though, but it's much better than using a headset mic.

White knights are people who are loyal to a product and defend it to near-death despite its flaws; they're a type of "loyal customer." Re-read that sentence again where I use the word white knight: "If they won't innovate, then they'll need a way to extract even more money out of the current loyal customers (white knights included) to offset the loss." It's used in a non-callout context. Were it truly a callout on your person or a specific group--which it is not--a moderation warning or note on the post would be observed. Nevertheless, the fact that simply mentioning "white knight" can trigger an unironic response is, in my opinion, quite hilarious and degrades the person's credibility responding. More heavily trafficked websites are better for getting a complaint heard; that I'll concede. Instead of complaining, however, I'll be working on projects useful for a community rather than wasting time finding and reposting old information on different websites and complaining into a soundbox.

There is no "all logic" being thrown out for a tortoise flying. It's in the fucking game that there is a flying tortoise. Per Companions fighting, they already said this shit in a live letter. If they do it for one companion they have to do it for -every single mount-. They have to make now more unique animations for -every single mount- to do battle with. It's not feasible for their team. If you read one of the interviews you can see how poor their staff is. They can't even make new 60 fights for the level 50 primals because the only people on their staff who can are working on, get this brilliant idea, -future content-. What good will adding future content do if they don't fix the present content first? It's like adding a new engine to a ship with holes. It'll perform better, but it's still going to sink unless you fix the hull first. Team Fortress 2 is a bloody amazing example with how well balanced their game is; once that was perfected in gameplay, then made new content. I don't have to read a live letter to assume and see FFXIV is going down the post-WotLK route--making new content to retain and regain their playerbase. What they write and what they implement are two very different things. A spark of ingenuity is what revived FFXIV and made FFXIV:ARR. If FFXIV:HW wants to stay afloat and not bleed more consumers, Square needs a new spark of ingenuity. If they won't innovate, then they'll need a way to extract even more money out of the current loyal customers (white knights included) to offset the loss.

Basically, I'm reading this announcement as "3.2 will introduce most of the same stuff in another format because there weren't enough complaints to justify otherwise." If it says otherwise, please point it out towards me. This repetition is worse than running 10,000 replications of a single opener--repeating for 30+ openers of course--to find an optimal with >= 99.99% accuracy. Edit: The game needs innovation, not addition.

Hrm. Alright, so I'm doing... two things I guess. 1. Bringing back Elise Wolfe this weekend for people to fight against. 2. Making a Reddit post advert on r/ffxiv so you can raise as much money as possible and have a nice safety stock. Got it. See you all then.

"Captain Wolfe." One of the sergeants addressed her by rank. Elise stayed still, seated vigil within her quarters atop a newly imported Doman tatami mat--a gift from one of the immigrants after a local foray was resolved by her. "Sergeant." She said, raising her head slightly. Her irises, once a vibrant morbol green, were now faded and as white as clouds in the sky. "If it's written, you'll have to read it." "A-ah... apologies ma'am." He stammered, embarrassed, and swallowed once before quickly opening up the letter. Elise's ears twitched as she heard the slow tearing of paper from the small knife he used; a quiet process not usually given a second thought captivated her. "Strange..." She said out loud. "Something wrong, captain?" She turned her head towards the direction of his voice with a plain look on her face. "Nothing. Please, read it." The man gave a silent nod and opened up the letter, reading it out loud with a clean, brisk voice. As he went through the motions with his hands, Elise paid attention to how his arms and hands moved, as if assessing his physical details on a whim. "Number of privateers increased by 27% within the past few moons. Adventurer applications at the Adventurer's Guild increased by... 35%. Maelvaan's Gate shows an increasing number of merchants and crafters shipping out goods to and from Coerthas--25% in the past moon alone and 15% the five moons before it." A pause in his voice. "That is all for this report." He finally stops, puts away the letter within his overcoat, and looks up at Elise. "Permission to speak freely, captain." "Granted." She said, right as he finished addressing her, with a small wave of the hand. "This current situation... mayhaps it tied to the effects from Ishgard joining the Eorzean Alliance?" She let out a deep breath, mulling over her words before replying. "You need only know that Limsa Lominsa gains treasure from Ishgard opening its gates in many ways. Our city-state is still recovering from the Calamity, but recent events have... expedited the healing process." Elise turns her head back down and looks down at her knees. "If that is all, you're dismissed." "Captain." He salutes as he closes the door behind him while exiting the room. With the room to herself once more to herself, she stood up and grabbed the sword placed in front of her with her hands. She attached the blade to her left hip and unsheathed the sword with her right hand. Elise closes her eyes and raises the blade to eye level as she points it towards the wall in front of her. Inhaling and exhaling slow, deep breaths, she listens to the sounds not easily heard. The rustling of the ocean waves, the touch of the breeze, the flickering of the candle light on the nearby desk. She moves the blade in her hand and practices some swings. The sound the sword makes as it slices through the air is felt throughout her body and keeps her from accidentally hitting herself. After a dozen swings she stops, sheathes the blade, exhales once, and opens her eyes once more to a hazy world. Her sight only captures the light around her and leaves all else black as night. She sighs and lays down on the mat, resting her head on a pillow. "A curse... or is a gift?" She muses at the thought for a moment, but soon falls asleep as she cannot physically stay awake any longer this eve.

It's kinda like parsers, this whole argument. Saying that using them can get you banned but people do it anyway. Especially with the "Please don't do it" attitude Square's heralding. Another piece of proof I just found through 3 minutes of forum searching.