(10-29-2024, 07:05 PM)Antonio Wrote: You're both missing the point that has been brought up a few times already - this isn't real life. We make gameplay concessions that "break" real life/roleplay immersion on a daily basis, literally everywhere.
To name a few:
We pretend characters are not dead upon ship destruction, and can show up in the same place with the same ship an hour later even if it's a battleship, despite being "immersion breaking" and devoid of real life logic.
20 Jormungandrs shooting New Berlin's docking ring doesn't mean that Rheinland is doomed, or that Hessians are stronger than Rheinland inRP. Player assets are irrelevant in lore, because open use makes them non-canon.
Scale of bases, solars, ships fit depending on our need. We pretend Ouray is hidden inRP despite being 10k from lanes. Or Kagoshima not even trying to hide itself inside the dust field in Kyushu. Why doesn't Kusari just come and blow it up? Are they stupid? Planet and sun sizes are laughable. The O-41 neutron star might just be the only properly-scaled solar in the whole game. It wouldn't make sense in real life, yet we accept the gameplay concessions.
You can't blow up any ship at will, and you have to type two lines of RP before shooting. Why? Why can't a pirate just silently blow up a hostile transport? In real life nothing would stop them from doing so. And they have to type lines on top of that? Doesn't make sense in real life.
Let's imagine we took just the first point seriously for a second. As "real life" and "realistic" as possible. The entire game would be different if characters and ships could permanently die. It's logical, right? Yet because it's a game we don't do it. We don't do any of the points I mentioned, and many more I'm sure you could find. The point being, roleplay and immersion can only justify so much before stepping out of the game bubble and realizing it's not real life, it's not fully logical, nor does it have to be. This doesn't mean you have to overthink every roleplay decision and overreact by saying "what's the point of roleplay if we're not fully logical like in real life?", it ain't deeper than thinking of the other side when making decisions, the one you're roleplaying with, which would go a long way. In roleplay via forum text comms, no different than fighting them in PvP, or talking to them in-game.
I understand very well that concessions need to be made. But the discussion here is where to draw the line. The best analogy I have for this is the SRP - you put in a big RP investment, and you get a big benefit in terms of your preferred gameplay.
With gov licenses, you put in the minimum amount of RP besides the application itself (e.g. a single comm to a Rheinland faction), and you get the gameplay benefit you're going for. In most cases, this benefit is barely significant, as 9/10 times you could do what you wanted without the license, by playing on another ID or using a different ship on your current id.
What it sounds like you're saying now is that the whole concept of gov licenses should be sacrificed as a gameplay concession. Because yes, I plan on restricting any ship that can threaten what I consider to be a reasonable military response - 1 cruiser (notice how the Longhorn wasn't restricted, but the Bulwark was). But if you say that this is unreasonable, then where do you draw the line?
What if I'm a junker who RPs as a arms dealer, and would like to haul weapons everywhere. Why should I have to fill out an app for that? Why can't I just peacefully trade my weapons through the houses?
Or I'm a Freelancer who likes exploring. Why am I not allowed in Thuringia? Isn't filling out an app to be able to enter restricted space impinging on my preferred gameplay?
Licenses to me are part of the INRP world, same as IDs. So if you gameify their acquisition, then you devalue the world. Would you do away with SRPs? If not, why not? Why is the cut-off for what we gameify right here, with these ships, and not say the Bustard or the Amaterasu? To me the whole point behind restricting anything behind "RP cost" is to encourage people to actually work towards something INRP, and do it well. Because yes, other type of RP is possible if people were to acquire any ship or weapon combo they wanted, but would its quality hold up?
I'm not claiming I have the right answer to the above, but this is a decision staff need to make about these licenses. And for now, I'll lean towards the more "gatekeepey" side of RP requirements, as there's plenty you can do without in the game without investing that effort.
