What the last attempt at removing ID items from roleplay environment involved was not "a fictious entity" to replace the ID item*, but an "actually interact with people and roleplay it out" guideline, with that "pilot ID" provided as a mere example of one of the many RP possibilities one could explore when dealing with any hypothetical character. Of course it did not work, because certain people such as yourself just wanted to be told what to do, repeatedly asking for a strict set of guidelines to be given to follow, and showed absolutely no desire to invest even one bit of creativity or originality to bring something fresh out of that change - which is exactly why the greens refrained from providing any set of specific guidelines, since that would've eliminated the whole point of adding flexibility and originality to the gameplay, and would've removed the actual ID item from roleplay environment while replacing it with something else which would've just done the same thing, and in the end nothing would've really changed other than the looks of things.

The only reason it bugged some people so much was because they were too used to hitting scan and knowing all there is to know about the character they haven't even started interacting with, and so it led to all types of concerns about "gray areas", which in actuality was people actually being creative with their roleplay and doing something fresh, which apparently some people such as yourself (who refused to actually give it an open-minded shot and see where it leads throughout the one month+ the change was in effect and instead spent that time arguing about it on forums) didn't really like.

So yea, I'm sorry if my unwillingness to dictate a single set of standards on how people should play their characters ruined that trial run.

* That kinda was the whole point of that change, after all - To remove that "entity" from server gameplay, rather than taking away the item that represented said entity and merely replacing it with something else.

(03-26-2015, 09:00 AM)Mímir Wrote: [...]

Thyr and I are going on a pointless, endless argument for old times' sake. Nostalgia and all. So shush you, don't ruin the game. Go join Fynn's munching instead.

(03-26-2015, 09:07 AM)Thyrzul Wrote:

It's by far not about me wanting to be told what to do, but about me being here long enough to know (and expect) that if there are no clear cut boundaries on how far one can go with their roleplay, one may go as far as possible until an inevitable conflict happens, drama ensues, tears flood the whole community, the amount of sanction reports skyrockets and overall nothing good comes out of it. It didn't bug me because I was so much used to hitting scan and knowing everything, but that I expect a lot in this community to be like that. Maybe years ago I'd have been more optimistic about the community and the general cooperativity of players, but today it's not the case, today I expect conflict to result in drama instead of cooperation in this community. And I don't need one more month with one more toy to play with to create this view of mine about the community, I had years to experience this.

A guideline on how to play my character wasn't what I missed, a guideline on what to do in case of conflicting interests was, but it seems you kept missing that point ever since. (Note: Before you come with "talk it out with the player", that thing just doesn't work with certain members.)

That bit about optimism is unfortunately partially true (though it is kinda starting to border cynicism), however, that does not mean such changes cannot work and only means such changes would take a longer time to start working properly and require a "learning curve", so to say, which involves people actually stepping out of their comfort zone. It also requires a reasonable extent of curiosity to actually give new possibilities a try rather than trying to redefine the new environment under the same old definitions one's used to (which, if you think about it, is actually what is happening with this current attempt at reintroducing RP IDs). For instance, of all the violation reports regarding anything ID-related submitted during that trial run, not a single one was valid, and it was simply because people were trying to define new situations under "how it should've worked if IDs were still inrp items", which kinda defied the whole purpose of that change.

Of course, there's no argue that the trial run was a rather optimistic move, but the main reason it was reverted was not any gray area or possiblity for abuse it may had caused, but merely the general community's unwillingness to accept it - And so, since it was clearly not going toward the intended direction and people were clearly more comfortable with the way they were used to, that change was reverted and the subject of finding a middle ground between that system and the existing one has been sitting in the discussion bucket since then, being tossed on the table every now and again. This attempt at reintroducing RP IDs to the mod might not be a direct offspring of that "failed experiment", but certainly is done with that in mind. I'm personally still of the opinion that removing IDs from RP is the ideal solution for roleplay flexibility, and personally cant understand what gray area "long as they don't do anything against their ID, they're to be treated as their IFF" opens up, strictly rule-wise speaking of course. But since this is turning into a discussion for a whole different thread, we can try steering things back toward the original topic:

This subject actually went through a couple of admin discussions and a few things were voted on before this public discussion was posted, so a few ideas have already been considered and the IDs existing back in 4.85 were revisited. The main concern brought up during that discussion, was the subject of redundancy, and that's one of the main points which still remains undecided: Some of the 4.85 roleplay IDs were essentially copies of Freelancer ID and offered the exact same gameplay allowances while merely acting as "roleplay flavor" (Mercenary ID comes to mind), while others actually offered less freedom and so some IDs were used far more than others, and there were some that were not used at all by anyone other than "hardcore RPers" (Trader ID, for instance, which had more restricted engagement allowances while offering no additional advantages at all), so the subject of which exact IDs from the old 4.85 set should be brought back (i.e. which offered enough "flavor" to be worth pulling out of the grave) and which should be left integrated under the standard Freelancer ID is one of the subjects currently being discussed by the team.

Ideally, we're aiming to only add the IDs which would see actual use and contribute to the server roleplay, while not changing gameplay allowances too much - They're called roleplay IDs after all, and so the intention obviously is to help promote specific lines of roleplay through those IDs (with adding minor appropriate perks to each ID only if absolutely necessary) rather than overflooding those IDs with so many allowances that would considerably effect the gameplay balance of existing IDs.