[prof1515]

Your other examples were lame and didn't need countering. And bashing animals with a baseball bat will not improve your skill at typing. It will improve the physical attributes that aid in typing but it will not make you a better typist. Typing will.

Which is why skill-based systems alone are not enough to call a game RPI. It's entirely possible to have a skill-based H&S (and there are examples of this). And the implementation of skill-based systems in RPIs do take into account cross-benefits, specificially through the use of crafts.

Yes, because realism isn't believable. As for fun, that's another subjective term. Fun for one player may mean killing everything in sight. That wouldn't be acceptable in a RPI, no matter how much fun it may bring that player.

And the term RPI has nothing to do with being "better". We're straying into the realm of a different discussion than what makes a RPI. This discussion got off on a tangent when the subject of the first statement you made there was contested. From there the discussion seems to have slid into yet another digression of little bearing to the purpose of the thread.

I didn't say "RPIs are better than everyone else because we lure away all your players!" so kindly refrain from fabricating and attributing ideas that I did not say. As for the subject of luring away players, there aren't many to lure away. RPIs tend to lure very few players. In fact, most MUDs fail to lure players away from other games. Players tend to stick with the games they first connect with.

Also, there is no such thing as elitism. Elitism is a perception. If you feel there's elitism going on, it's probably due to your own insecurities.

And right there the inclusion of investing "their money" suggests that they did NOT go to your game for the role-play but for the ability to use OOC factors for H&S advancement. I don't dispute players and even staff from RPIs playing other games but that's because they're seeking something other than RP be it H&S gameplay, PK MUDs, etc. And no doubt plenty of players "quit RPIs to join" your game. But I'll wager those were never players who were dedicated to RPI MUDs, rather the type that tried it out, perhaps even tried to bend/break the rules to do what they pleased and failed, and quit because RPI just wasn't what they preferred.

I don't dispute this. In fact, I'd say it's a very accurate reason why. But I have yet to see a player who began on any RPI go to a different type of game to find RP. I have seen players who first played an RPI quit to go off to play WoW and Gemstone. RPI just wasn't their cup of tea.

I have seen numerous players who did not start on RPIs leave to go back to the system they were more comfortable with. I have seen many RPI players play other games so they could do "some mindless bashing" (as one put it). But I have seen none that have started on RPIs and left them to RP elsewhere. I've known a few who've tried and they either endlessly come back to RPIs (no matter what the circumstances that caused their departure) or quit MUDding altogether. I spoke with one just the other day (and I myself essentially fall into this category). I spoke to another a couple weeks ago. Sadly, most, I don't hear from any more as they've abandoned text-based gaming altogether. And that's what concerns me as the out-flow of talent dangerously exceeds the in-flow in some RPIs, even with staff (I still have some players come to me with questions about Harshlands because, to quote one, "[they] don't have confidence in the staff to know the answers to [their] questions...." and that's scary).

I've never said anything to the contrary. RPI MUDs are not for everyone. In fact, it's been my experience that a good number of MUD players don't have the combination of creativity and maturity to successfully play any RPI, to say nothing of the grammar and vocabulary to adequately express themselves through text-based role-play.

RPIs have always had small numbers. They were and continue to be a small niche community. In 1998 there were how many MUDs? And only three RPIs. Ten years later, that number is double, but only within the last few years (since the release of the SoI RPI Engine). Several RPIs have since seen a vast increase in player numbers. Harshlands' average online numbers are up by at least 200-300% what they were when I first started playing there almost a decade ago. SoI, despite being only half as old, has a playerbase that sometimes gains more players per month than Harshlands did in its first few years combined. But a lot of this new influx of players also come carrying the baggage of code and RP policies from non-RPIs, which in itself is not unsual. However, sometimes they have trouble adapting because they've played 20 other "RPIs" where it was perfectly acceptable to do the skill spamming you refer to or to go out killing anything they find roaming the streets.

So there's no "patting [myself] on the back". If anything, I think RPIs have experienced a horrific fall-off in quality. Part of this is due to the lowering of standards by the staff of the RPIs themselves, mainly done to attract more players but also in response to the influx of players not only unfamiliar with RPIs but also resistant to conforming to the policies. In the old days, they got booted out of the game. Now, some admins are letting them stay, accepting that two or three poor players who don't know the setting, don't care about the setting, and don't care about the game's policies are better than one good one who does. It creates a sad discrepancy between the game's policies and the reality of what occurs.

Jason