Kevin's Watch

While I think the idea is intriguing in principle, in pratice I do not think it would work. And it would drive Fist to distraction! How would he spam txt us anymore?!!

We tried it in Acropolis. Som players (Menolly) work really hard to figure out who's who, (even going so far as to abuse Mod status to check your posting IP addresses) and then start trying to make IC discussions with people OOC. It doesn't really work very well in the long run. Especially if you (like me) have a distinct writing style.

And from my own point of view, at a certain point, I started finding myself making decisions that weren't reasonable for the character, just so I could preserve some shred of anonymity. In the end, it just wasn't worth all the extra effort, and it got in the way of having fun.

The Numen wrote:We tried it in Acropolis. Som players (Menolly) work really hard to figure out who's who, (even going so far as to abuse Mod status to check your posting IP addresses) and then start trying to make IC discussions with people OOC.

Excuse me???

I have no way of checking IP addresses in someone else's forum.
Double checking ALT account votes for the Watchies, which shows all accounts listed from an IP address was a different matter. Asking regarding a player's frequency of being able to play once known of the master of the game was so I could keep my own impatience under control.

Heh, I just looked up my own IP after reading that, and turns out I'm even more anonymous than I thought.

It changes for each post though, Murrin.
Depends on where you are posting a particular post from.

If you post on the same IP for multiple accounts, it lists them. But if you post on a different IP on one of those posts, it does not. It all depends on which post you check.

Yeah. And it lists "other IPs this poster has posted from". Which for me is a great big huge list of lots of different IPs, none of which show more than this account.

The Numen wrote:... Som players (Menolly) work really hard to figure out who's who, (even going so far as to abuse Mod status to check your posting IP addresses)

yeah ... we all know how abusive she can get!

...oy vey...

Even writing styles can give things away. I use the word "though" more than anyone else. caam says "All Fatherer" and I say "All Father." Unless we give all writings we post to you, for you to reword...

I always try to keep which character I am playing a secret. It worked for the most part in P1, and for a while in P2, but like others have said, my writing style gives me away.

It's the SRD dash, damnit! I never used to use that bloody dash!

This doesn't stop me from trying to remain anonymous - it's something I have fun with, but Lore and I learned long ago that it's the kind of thing that you enjoy while you can and then just forget about with a shrug when it ends.

Murrin wrote:...none of which show more than this account.

But if you check Bel's, it shows that Murrin has posted form that IP address. Still, as long as you only post in the game forum, you're safe from all but the game forum mod. And the Admin's.

Anyway, yeah...nice idea, but impractical. I haven't usually bothered trying to keep it a secret in the other games I played.

In P1, I really wanted to know who was who, now I don't care. But it is usually obvious, or becomes so. (New players are harder of course. And then there are some who are only players. )

--A

Wait... what are you saying about those who are only players?

GT fo LIFE!

Just that nothing can be known about their OOC ideas/thoughts/tendancies/motivations, since they're never been exposed by regular interaction across the forum.

--A

Well, in any case I'll try to encourage players from not forming the same old alliances with the same old people. I guess that's all that can be done.

Alliances with various gods will also be encouraged by another fact. As I mentioned some time ago, the idea is that each deity will have a permanent portal between his or her godly realm and the world. This portal will be a vulnerability, since anyone could theoretically go through it and invade the deity's realm. As such, I expect that most deities will go to great lengths to protect it - either by making it physically inaccessible or by building fortresses around it. Anyway, because the location of the portal will be fixed, and one idea I have is that it could be assigned randomly at the beginning of the game, then obviously if your most immediate neighbours are gods whose players you've never interacted with before, it might still be a good idea to ally with them in order to prevent surprise attacks, if nothing else.

Besides which, I believe I'm going to strongly encourage players to create new deities - and to go beyond their comfort zone by taking domains they have not taken before, if they've played in previous Pantheon games. I won't be mandating specific domains of course, but I'll be much happier if players create brand-new deities - and in any case, playing an old deity won't give you any advantage, since the world itself will be brand-new.

Which reminds me... there will be no AllFather character in P4's world (though I'll still keep the title for myself ).

That fixed portal idea would probably suit my intended play style well, actually.

And no, I'm not thinking about Nergal.

Oh, I like the idea of a fixed portal. Though... that kind of naturally turns into each deity having his own country / empire (surrounding your portal).

Would we have some kind of leeway to dictate the environment around our portal? "The god of Air will have a portal in a temple found on top of a tall mountain, accessible only by flying creatures." "The god of Death / Decay will have a portal deep in the foggy swamps, hidden from all view."

And I really imagine that some players would have a lot of value to two gods with non-competing domains having portals nearby... if the above god of Air had a portal in that mountain, and the god of Fire had a portal in the volcanic fissure in the same mountain... they might find it useful.

Could we move portals, maybe (with a sufficiently massive expenditure of power, etc.)?

What aspect of fixed
Is not clear; they can't be moved!
Or maybe they can?

i want to play p4!!

Definitely randomly distribute the portals. Even if we can say, "The god of Air will have a portal in a temple found on top of a tall mountain, accessible only by flying creatures.", which is a good idea, don't let us decide where the mountain ranges are, or in which range the portal is.

Oh, yeah, and as I said once before, no self-destruct buttons, please. If we're gonna destroy the world, let us do it by building a doomsday weapon. Ez "throwing the switch" as he left, bringing at least part of our current troubles on, is just crazy.

Neph cracking the world in P1 was cool. (Even if he'd probably need a lot more DRP to do it now.) Others could do that kind of thing.

But really, we don't need the world destroyed. Neph was the only one who actually tried it. Asta might have tried when he got more power. But Creator's characters will always be starting global trouble anyway. Nor Yekith may be gone, but there's always others who will try to subjugate the world.