So far from all the opinions that have been mention. It's been established that the GM's are in firm place that changing the system may not be in our best interest as the ones that suffer the most are the players that have played the longest. I for one don't want to discount any of there long term experience building. So I have to swing with Kitty, and Cygnus on that fact.
However- We do have serious problem we are facing. In a game where characters don't retire, or don't die, we will be faced with an ever growing godly character sheets as we roll forward. They only way to deal with this is a HardCAP, Death, or Retirement, or becoming NPC. So- Longer we play, the more we are going to see players grow into what some are considering godly characters. Xae's being an example- the player, the character is likely one of the oldest members of the fleet, IC/ and OOCly.
The way I see it. We only have a few options.
A.) We force players into NPC Status (Admirals) or Retirement Status (Civilian Experts), or start to enforce permanent death. (All of these options are ugly).
B.) We implement a addition to the system that allows even the most experienced characters with ratings of 100 still have chance to fail. (A little more graceful).
C.) We live with the knowledge that HARD CAPS save us from escalating our role playing to Hard Core level where character death is acceptable.
D.) Adjust the rate at which we offer improvements to skills. Smaller reward, or
A suggestion was made to me that, maybe we should allow players to advance there rating beyond the 80 cap but give them a warning that it makes there character a target for permanent death. So- It would be the players choice if they want to grow there character beyond the skill cap but must agree that they no longer decide when there character is going to die. That story circumstance or damage delta from the story line event is a real factor in which character lives or dies. Though this strikes me as something that works better on paper then in practice.
I personally think the easiest answer is the Hard CAPs. With special request. That players are just going to have to accept that failed roles are part of the game whether they feel there character should have been able to achieve it or no. I know everyone uses the famed example of Warner missing a very obvious target cause his dice weren't on his side, and then Nyoko came along and showed him up by rolling a 100. In everyone opinion Werner should have been able to ace that shot, he didn't. Maybe he was over compensating for the wind, maybe he had cold that day, maybe he just tired. Maybe Nyoko got INCREDIBLY lucky. These are all details for the role players to work out before the post there reactions. If we start with more meaningful role playing, we'll end with more meaningful role playing.
Werner and I were speaking recently in a private conference and he let me know some of what he's been seeing and thinking. He made some pretty interesting points that that made me real get to thinking about what it is. I think the system isn't "Hard" or "Unfair" I think this problem is the age old argument that keeps popping up, "Dice vs SIM" rp.
Back, When Werner and Nyoko had there fist fight. We used to use our STO Skill Stats as our skill sheet. This system eventually became obsolete because everyone became Vice Admiral and everyone had the same skills with the same scores. But- Beside that it was described to me that back then it didn't matter. We rolled the dice and if they were high or low, we rolled with the results. Warner gave Nyoko a beat down in that fist fight because my dice rolled low consecutively. That's the history of it now. Werner a women beater. >
lol.
Is the argument for the overhead of making character too much? I can see that. It's a daunting to make character sheet and I think we should entertain ways of making it easier. Like, Rather then having to go through section by section, to train your character up in an effort that we could offer a quicker way of training them.
These are just some examples to get the conversation going but maybe we can do complete packages totals for the various jobs on a starship, and say a player has this many points to buy other skills that they want to include to make there character unique. Maybe it's just a matter of how we present our system that needs to be looked at rather then- Shrinking the skill list because people are having trouble identifying the difference between Technology, and Operations, or omitting skills we think is useless as players. I think that effort would be a more positive initiative then to scrap the system and rebuild it from scratch. (An option i think would only work if we decided to rebuild the fleet from scratch. I don't think we are that point.)
A few points from the others that i want to weigh in on. Stress Rolls not necessary that should be pure role playing decision. The moment you trade your control over your character's decisions and let rolls dedicate what choices you make. You stop Role Playing and start Roll Playing. Thats not what we do here. We offer creative space that challenges characters with Star Trek Problems and use dice as way to test our characters skills to avoid god moding.
I also believe we need to get Non-Starship Session group in place. I've been reviewing the forums and makes players decided to go with the 26th Fleet is the option for open role playing. Something we have classically lacked since we've evolved into Starship Crewed Starships. I think as players we've become serious dependent on the Game Masters power to the point where- Players choose to stop RPing because GM was unable to show up for the event, or refuse role play together because there character is else where and that would put there role-playing out of sequence. Which is a personal choice but- For me? I never turn down RP. If someone wants to RP with Nyoko, I will make time / or figure out how to fit it in. Bottom Line- We should all be trying to figure out ways to role play beyond- our weekly session.
This might come at a decision for GM's to decide how we structure our weekly sessions. That perhaps- having these long 10 part episodes is really hurting the community of the fleet as a whole, as it support isolation. An example of this would be the pilgrim. The fact that the players were isolated for a whole in real life year. Making them unable to participate in RP Socials is absurd and should never be allowed to happen again. I think if we take a more graceful stance it will allow our characters to have more interactions. Say for example GMs should consider 4 week long storylines, so that players are never out of touch with players more then 4 weeks at a time.
Though I do truly believe that our Starbase Station being player driven will do us wounder interns of casual rp, especially if we intend to invite people to play with us from the 26th, or STORP. We could fill the roles of the station constable, security, operations, and have Command Staff character supervise a What You See In Game is What you get, through improving our starbase. (which was the initial intentions of a starbase.) So the fact our Starbase has Dilithium Mine, Transwarp Gate, ect, ect, is we could consider as assets for our fleet.
A Starbase Station also allows us open up the floor for the Civilian Aspect of the game. Wives, Husbands, Scientist, and players that are outside the fleet that are coming to visit to if not enrich our experience to offer the rare opportunity to roleplay. Many times I look on STORP this is not say bad about STORP however, so many people just sit around talking about role playing and not really role playing. If we spent our times, or the Command Characters at least spent there time offering other channels chance to come and rp with us- it might make big difference in improving our reputation, and become a powerful way of pulling board players into our fleet. This is something we should start to organizes immediately. I'm leaning to asking Xem to game master it. This area could also be used to generate a lot of the role playing that our Starships crews will be used to investigate taking the burden of creativety off the GM's shoulders, and moving them into a more reactive role which is where I want the GM Team to be. I was roleplaying actions to dictate outcomes, and I want Game Masters to slap us upside the head with the consequences of the universe. This gives the fleet structure, unity, and scene of being fleet instead of being individual fleets.
Adding to that point. We don't necessarily need to have players in our fleet to have them involved in casual rp, plots, or even play roles on our ships. I sort of see it as ladder of trust. Where Casual RP on risa has the least impact on our stories, while inviting someone into our Starship Crews a reflection of our complete trust in someone to add meaningful creativity to our storylines.
Beyond all that: I think Erys said in the chat earlier and it was something I really agreed with. We should start as GMs to move away from basing our plots around Star Trek Online story. So we don't run the risk of contradiction when we do something like "End the Klingon War". That might make it easier too be involved with other rp communities. This isn't to say we can't have events dealing with specifics insinuates, but GM's should avoid deciding outcomes of STO Storyline that might later be contraindicated. For or example: The Fact Earth Space Dock has changed. Our GM's can make event that will explain it, because, in STO Space Dock has changed. Rather then too fight Undine and such, we may do better at inventing new alien races, that threaten the security of the federation (for example the Raiders, which was my rendition of space drow), or potential allies, or new worlds, cultures and so on. So that this would be stuff a player has to learn in addition making assimilation of new players less painful then saying. "Oh well- Undine War is resolved, when in STO it isn't).
This is just some of my thoughts.