[Miller]

I've noticed a large decreasing trend in public roleplay in particular personally; this has honestly been something that has been noticeable for more than a few months. The reasons as to why this has been the case has been echoed several times over the course of this thread. But instead I'd rather list my own personal reasons as to why I think this is the case.

1) Roleplay on SL2 is repetitive. 
Roleplay has been generally restricted to a few hubs and while that isn't a bad thing; there's a distinct lack of variety in roleplay environments as a result of this. LFG has alleviated this  somewhat but this leads into another community-related issue that is worth mentioning. As another reason as to why this is the case in my opinion; the gameplay loop is extremely repetitive from a roleplay perspective with most posts within a BDP devolving into IC jokes, small comments or silence.

As a side note: There is nothing wrong with RP hubs or preferring smaller groups/one on one roleplay.

2) Lack of Active characters
The lack of approaching is quite noticeable and I'm equally guilty of this, a lot of players tend to either wait for a post or don't try to push too hard for further roleplay. Being a reactive character isn't inherently bad, but there's a very clear imbalance between the two. 

3) Mechanics and IC
This is my own personal take but I've personally found mechanics to be a huge detriment to roleplay at times and part of the reason why SL2 can be so repetitive. A lot of events that are treated ICly are a bit hard to justify in my own mind, for example; Black Beasts attacking cities and the like for several OOC years without any variance in monster variety. Another example would be people worrying too much about being PVP capable or representing their character ICly with a build and avoiding going IC because they fear getting into conflict or feel uncomfortable without a build set in stone.

4) Lack of changes to the world encourages stagnation.
I honestly find this to be a boon and bane, large scale changes often make players feel like they've missed a lot and feel left out of the action. But the lack of changes to the world environment tends to leave players feeling like they can leave little impact on the world. A system I saw proposed in a suggestions thread that would alleviate this, was adding news boards to each major city that'd update with new information on current happenings; this sort of system could be managed by both GMs and Eventmins to give the feeling that there is some change going on, just not entirely tangible for all.

5) Events
With the recent addition of Eventmins, I've been personally feeling like there hasn't been much change; while events have been generally fun when they do happen, I personally don't think they solved one of the pre-existing issues I've personally had with these kind of events; the lack of organic flow + pre-planned nature of these events. 

The blame doesn't lie with any Eventmin, but a stance I would like to see more is dynamic events to encourage roleplay and unique roleplay opportunities that are otherwise impossible to present normally. Rather than requiring a player to approach an eventmin which often feels inorganic, I'd rather see events take a more proactive approach; where an eventmin may pop up and ask if they're fine with putting a spin on current happenings. (IE: Campers getting attacked by bandits or monsters, IC BDP divers encountering a unique monster.)

6) Lack of Roleplay Roles
I don't mean this in the sense of Water Sourcing / Head Doctor, but the amount of roleplay role opportunities supported by lore are few. Players are restricted to minor nobility at most without GM supervision/permission and the Guard / Geistritter are the only open opportunities for roleplay presently. This seems to be changing in recent times however, so it may be a matter of waiting and seeing until this is alleviated.

7) SL2 feels really impersonal.
It's hard to illustrate what I mean by this, but it frankly feels like SL2 IC interactions are usually only surface levels interactions on repeat without too many opportunities to explore how a character acts or why they act that way. This may be a result of players shifting and balancing from character to character, but it's something worth noting.




There's a lot more on my mind but I think this illustrates a decent chunk of my personal thoughts on the subject. No hard feelings if anyone disagrees with my own opinions.