PS Skunkworks

Organization

PlaneShift SkunkWorks is a team of free-thinkers devoted to the future of the open source online roleplaying game PlaneShift. We are a team removed from the system so that we can think out-of-the-box. Our sole purpose is innovative development.

Mission

Organize the hundreds of suggestions created by people on forums/bugtracker/ingame comments and come up with solid proposals on specific areas to improve.

Disclaimer

There is no guarantee the suggestions presented here will be implemented by the PlaneShift team. But if it's a good proposal there are good chances.

Tools

A collaborative editing site, this wiki, is the best way to allow everyone to edit and contribute.

Suggested list of areas to improve

Tutorial
Possible problems to investigate:

• Has been mentioned to have too much text
• Has been mentioned to be too boring
• Has been mentioned to contain outdated information
• Has been mentioned to teach only part of what's needed in game

Please verify those claims and propose an improvement.

- Results of an earlier discussion can be found on here.

UI
Possible problems to investigate:
.... to be detailed

Fun factor
Possible problems to investigate:

• The money problem. Crafting is tedious and boring, and only mining and smithing are really reliable moneymakers. The only real solution to this is to provide players with a wider variety of ways to make decent sums of money.
  • Also, it would be helpful (also more realistic) to have designated market areas (with stall objects?) so buyers and sellers can find each other easily. This already informally exists in Hydlaa. I suspect market areas would make excellent roleplay generators, too.

Roleplay focus
Possible problems to investigate:

• Easily available settings info needs to be expanded significantly. A distinction needs to be drawn between commonly known and uncommonly known information. Quests and in-game books are an excellent way of conveying uncommon info, but completely inadequate for common info, because by the time a player does the quests they've already made their character, invented a history, etc. A better place for common info is this wiki, (possibly also a library in the tutorial area?), so that new players can read up before making characters and get a better sense of what Yliakum is like, allowing the creation of characters who mesh with settings. Common info that needs to be provided includes things like:
  • General culture info for each race. What are their typical family structures like? What is a typical childhood for a member of that race like? How often do they intermarry with other races, live in mixed communities, etc? Are there race-specific attitudes about things like the proper social place of women, children, elders, etc.?
  • How well educated is the population of Yliakum? Can most people read? Are most people involved in agriculture like a RL medieval society, or is there more variety?
  • More info about what the other levels are like, what their dominant industries are, etc. Also, how much climate variation is there in Yliakum?
  • Famous cultural figures and events that everyone would know about. The info about months in chargen mentions great heroes of past centuries, but there's zero info available right now about who Taarev the Hunter, Firannis the Strong, etc. were.
• Because the settings team isn't very big and also have to deal with quest writing, perhaps player volunteers should be recruited to handle some of the workload expanding settings info? Many players have come up with a lot of very creative informal settings info already.