003 Early Millennium Concerns

I hear concerns about OS:M. Regularly. I suspect this is due to just being on the build team and doing a lot of code writing. Why am I writing so much about code? Why is so little being said about theme? What if I don't wanna kill mobs? Will I be able to dodge a gunshot if I don't have a 'dodge' action card?

Here's the short version of my answer: Relax.

When I first heard about OS:M and its intial features, I too was worried. No, I won't say 'worried' I'll say 'hostile.' It just seemed /wrong./ Admittedly Necro was pretty rough at the time, too, so seeing that for combat didn't win me over.

Here's the thing, though: OS:M is shaping up to be pretty cool on the code front. We can do a lot of cool things with the code, yes. However, I can assure you that the code is being used to enhance roleplaying wherever possible. Let's not think of faction code as 'aww, man, something to grind', let's note that it's a way of defining a character by actually doing work for an organization. It's no longer: I have a good rep with government x. It's: I know how good of a reputation I have with government x, and I've put concrete effort into it. Roleplay that!

Action cards go into that too. Ability points let you have so many 'special actions' per combat before being worn down. MUDquests are now set up so they're reasonable to level with. Relax, I understand.

At the end of the day the power of code is cultural. Yes, the code should matter when determining some things, like wealth, faction alignment, skills, weapons, what you can do with all those... however, code does not dictate that we all have to go out and kill mobs until we hit level 50. The only way that'll happen is one of two ways: Leveling by combat is incredibly efficient (no, really, it's not). Two: Leveling by mobs is promoted on the cultural level. I'm not going to tell people to level by mob, and we've been hammering that mob leveling is optional as a staff. So who does that leave? That leaves you guys. The wannabe beta testers and future players. Ultimately, if as a group you guys want mob leveling, then it'll happen because of cultural matters. If you guys make grinding over roleplaying unacceptable as a group, then you'll see much less of it. That goes even moreso for you early beta types. So let's not freak out about leveling issues. I'll talk a lot about code here since that's pretty important to what I'm doing on OV right now, but let's not forget that the great majority of what we do around these parts is roleplay.